grasshopper_mouse

Best: My aunt's wedding. Super quick ceremony. I and my cousins were all in the 6-11 year old age range. She had a piñata for us at the reception. We devoured candy and danced and ran around like maniacs, it was glorious.

Worst: Years later, one of those same cousins mentioned above gets married. In July. In Massachusetts. Outside. The heat and humidity were unbearable. And they KNEW the weather was gonna be shit, because the wedding program they handed out to everyone before the ceremony began was shaped like a fucking fan. THEY KNEW.

The ceremony finally ends and the catering staff makes everyone wait outside the dining hall in the heat for unknown reasons for another full hour. When we're finally let in, the AC is struggling to keep up and it's hot as hell in there, too. When the dinner is served, it is NOT the vegetarian lasagna I chose on the wedding invite, no, it's a portabella mushroom burger. I hate mushrooms, I would have never chosen such a thing. They switched the menu out and didn't tell anyone. Also, no open bar, wtf.

My "Big Jim" hatch chile plant isn't looking very big yet. The Guizeppi Milds and California Wonders are doing a bit better. This was the first day I took them all outside for a few hours to start the hardening off process. I've had them inside with a fan and grow lights up until now.

I expected some flowering at this point, but it's been stupidly cold and rainy here since I planted back in late March (I'm in 6a/6b), so maybe I'm expecting too much too soon? Next week is the first week it will in theory be above 55 degrees F overnight.

I've also been battling gnats (sticky traps and mosquito dunks for the win), which is weird to me because with the fan, the top layer of soil dries out pretty quickly, but I think I have them managed now.

They're a bit more leggy than I think is healthy, but hopefully repotting them will help.

I'm about to take a long flight and am looking to expand my music library.

EDIT: Thanks so much, everyone! I've got 10.5 hours of music on my new playlist thanks to you all!

I'll start by plugging Harvard's free courses catalog as well as Udemy

Edit: Gonna add 2 more I remembered-

Blender - I wish I had more time to learn it, but I did start the infamous "Donut Tutorial" once!

Watch Cartoons Online - Lots of good older stuff!

I'm about to be unemployed, and I'm looking to get some certificates for either Tableau or Power BI to make myself more marketable to prospective employers. I use Tableau in my current workplace and consider myself a "Beginner". I'm not great at it, but not horrible either (I can more make things look pretty than write extensive calculated fields).

I've never used Power BI, but based on a bit of research, it seems like it's more commonly used in companies that are not already focused on data analytics. I've watched a few videos on Power BI, but never used the app myself. It definitely looks more user-friendly than Tableau, though.

Can anyone offer any insight as to which app would be more marketable to have a certificate in when looking for entry-level jobs? Thanks you!

First time trying to grow anything from seed by myself. Fingers crossed it works out!

A study was conducted that revealed that once a COVID vaccine was available, Republicans were more likely to die than Democrats:

Republicans' excess death rate spiked after COVID-19 vaccines arrived, a study says

Excess Death Rates for Republicans and Democrats During the COVID-19 Pandemic

"This study constructs an individual-level dataset with political affiliation and excess death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic via a linkage of 2017 voter registration in Ohio and Florida to mortality data from 2018 to 2021. We estimate substantially higher excess death rates for registered Republicans when compared to registered Democrats, with almost all of the difference concentrated in the period after vaccines were widely available in our study states. Overall, the excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democrats."

Do you think this will have a significant impact on the election results in states like Ohio and Florida?

Former U.S. presidents are authorized a security detail from the Secret Service for life. If Trump loses the election and flees the country, does his security detail have to go with him if he requests it?

I imagine this could go down in a variety of ways: He departs the U.S. before he's sentenced and just never returns, or he attempts to flees or does flees the U.S. after his sentencing. Either way, what happens to his security detail?

If he attempts to flees after he's sentenced, I would hope the detail would refuse to take part in it (if he can even board a plane/leave the country to begin with), but given all their failings, who knows.

Doesn't need to be a life or death situation, just any moment in your life where you found yourself saying "Holy shit, I can't believe this is happening!"

For some reason I've just never liked Spider-Man. He comes off as a whiney, ignorant child that never seems to grow up or mature despite everything he goes through. I love a good coming of age story, but he just never seems to become an adult.

Have you ever tried a recipe that turned out to go horribly wrong, or maybe the end product, despite being good, just wasn't worth the effort? What was that recipe, and what about it made you say "NEVER AGAIN"?

I ask this as I am actively trying to remove the stench of onions from my Instapot lid's silicone ring after making French Onion Soup in it (so far steaming it with white vinegar on the steam setting, soaking the ring in a water/baking soda bath overnight, and baking it at 250 degrees F for 20 minutes have all done nothing, so I ordered a new one, I give up). And I realized that cutting all the onions and waiting hours for them to caramelize and now this damn smell issue just isn't worth it. Plus I still have frozen soup in the freezer because I can only eat French Onion soup so many days in a row.

NEVER AGAIN.