Big Blue Huddle

While I am not going to judge people for deciding to do (or in this case not do) something that is perfectly legal and clearly their right, I am all for imposing heavier restrictions and more red tape etc for those who are not vaxed. This is the right thing to do anyway from a safety perspective, but hopfully it also has the effect of persuading some folks who are on the fence to go ahead and get it done.

It's incredible to me that the prosecutor felt they didn't have enough to convict given the number of women who came forward. Rape is obviously a tricky crime to prove in many cases given there is often no physical evidence and given people don't always come forward right away, but I would have thought that when you have that many women all pointing the finger, it becomes more and more compelling to a jury. When it's just one or even two women it's he-said-she-said, but when you have as many as Cosby did that seems like a totally different situation.

How did Cosby's case differ from Harvey Weinstein's from an evidentiary perspective? I guess in Weinstein's case they had a couple of tapes?

That Cosby ever got this non proecution agreement in the first place is pretty outrageous, but once that was done, yesterday's decision became pretty academic unfortunately. People have every right to be upset, but the blame does not like with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. They did their job. You can't just pretend the 5th amendment doesn't exist.

Quote from: MightyGiants on June 29, 2021, 02:29:44 PM
This is one of the better articles I have read


https://www.kake.com/story/44198811/as-engineers-hunt-for-answers-in-the-surfside-building-collapse-signs-point-to-the-buildings-lower-reaches

Very good article indeed. It seems pretty clear now that the primary (or at least one of the main) source of the collapse was at the base. This article definitely provides a lot more depth around the various theories.

I found this article. Amusing, interesting, and disgusting to read, all at the same time. For full disclousre, among these foods, I have tried:

1. Durian (as discussed). That was gross. I have nothing positive to say about it and would not recommend that to anyone who does not already have an acquired taste for it.

2. Kopi Luwak. I knew what it was but had never seen it before until I was at a hotel in Turks and Caicos (of all places). It was stupidly expensive (think around $20 or even $25 for a cup or a small pot), but I was very intrigued so I decided to just go for it. It just tasted like good quality coffee, but certainly not worth the price. Was a bit of a non-event. I know that it is considered to be very high quality, hence people's tolerance of the way it is procured.

3. Natto. Fermented beans. I had that once in Tokyo on a business trip. We were at a nice restaurant, and my hosts handled all the ordering, and that was among the items they selected. I didn't want to be rude, so I tried it. Defintely not my thing. Gross taste and texture. I love Japanese food, but that particular part of their cuisine is not for me and never will be.

I haven't tried any of these other foods and don't plan to. I have seen a documentary on casu marzu which included Gordon Ramsay trying it. Bugs gross me out, and so does rotting food, so no thanks. Perhaps the grossest thing on this list though is the mice wine, especially given people actually eat the rotted mice when they're done with the "wine." That is absolutely horrifying. I would eat anything else on this list before I tried that.

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2018/10/10-of-the-worlds-most-disgusting-foods/

Quote from: Jolly Blue Giant on June 27, 2021, 08:13:31 AM
In my opinion, the ONLY reason Escargot gets eaten is because of the fancy French name as well as the product is served in ornamental shells that look nothing like the common yard snails' shell. I thoroughly believe that if the menu said, "Snails.......$15.95" and they were served in their original shell, the majority of people would never eat them. However, I do respect the fact that people eat (and enjoy) things I'd never eat. Try as I may, I don't think I could eat frogs' legs, but I know a lot of people love them. Dittos with sheep's head, rocky mountain oysters, etc. I get a kick out of a local tradition in Syracuse held every October called the "Riley's Testicle Festival" where testicles are served en masse (deep fried). Interestingly, a lot of women have zero problem eating testicles, but there's very few men that want to eat them...LOL

https://www.syracuse.com/restaurants/2015/10/rileys_balls_testicle_festival.html

FWIW, I genuinely enjoy escargots. I wouldn't eat them everyday or even once a month, but once in a while (once or twice a year maybe), as part of a French bistrot type meal, I do enjoy them as an appetizer. I honestly don't think it's just because they have a fancy-sounding name. I know I'm eating snails when I eat them.

If anything I would argue that a raw oyster is conceptually a trickier thing to get over for a first time eater than a cooked escargot. In any case, I very much enjoy both. Escargots have never made me sick though. Oysters have.

I don't think I have ever tried rocky mountain oysters, and I have no plans to. If I saw them on a menu I wouldn't order them. If I'm going to order a bunch of unhealthy deep fried food, I'll stick to the classics that I know I love like calamari, chicken tenders, onion rings, etc. No need to fix what isn't broken there.

A lot of foods that we eat regularly would give anyone second thoughts if they really pondered not only what they were eating, but also the whole process of getting the food from its original form to their plate. I'm not going to get into lots of detail here, but there are plenty of "normal" foods that we wouldn't think twice about eating that have processes that would make most people squeamish if they really looked at them closely.

Quote from: LennG on June 26, 2021, 08:35:00 PM
Hey Dave, if you can eat that slimy creature called a snail, and love it, what's a little grasshopper then, plus it was chocolate coated.   

Lenn,

Very fair point, and I don't disagree in principle. It's just a line I haven't been able to cross.

And to be honest, insects as food don't seem to come up as often as escargots, which I see on menus at least one or two times a year.

Quote from: LennG on June 26, 2021, 01:44:33 PM
In my 'younger' days while I was serving in Germany, I had the 'pleasure???' of eating chocolate-covered grasshoppers. A bit crunchy but if I didn't know what they were, I might have enjoyed them a bit more.

As I said in a thread a while back on foods you hate, I HAVE eaten some green beans once and I thought I would puke. I HATE green beans. 

You just made me think of something. When were vacationing in Bali several years ago, we were eating at an outdoor restaurant and the food was very good. I had some sort of meat dish that was on the spicy side, and there was something on my plate that looked like a simple green bean. So I ate it, thinking that's what I was eating. I bit into it and it tasted fine... more or less like a green bean. About 4-5 seconds later I was blasted with an absolutely unbearable, crazy wave of heat that had me sweating, completely flushed, and visible writhing in pain. I have never eaten anything like that. The waiters (who were obiously locals) were trying to control their giggling but they clearly thought the situation was hysterical. It was so powerful that I could still feel it the next morning, and that was a lunch. That was definitely my most regrettable food experience ever, even though it was a pretty good restaurant.

Moving back to insects, I admit that I'm a little curious, but the concept just disgusts me so much. I mean why would anyone want to bite into a grasshopper? I get that in a poorer country if that is your only affordable protein source, then obviously that makes sense, but why would anyone with alternatives want to do that other than as a one-off, fear factor type experiment purely for shock value? The thought alone disgusts me.

I love escargot and find myself ordering it frequently when I see it on a menu. I also love good sea urchin. I have tried a number of weird things in my life. I have had haggis, tripe, frogs legs, and other somewhat weird foods. None really bothered me, and some I actually liked. One that I regretted though was durian. I tried that several years ago when I was in Singapore. For those who don't know, durian is a fruit found in that part of the world. It looks like a spikey cantaloupe. When opened, the fruit has a yellowish color and a custard-like consistency. It sounds inocuous enough, but man is it vile. It is one of the most foul-smelling foods I have ever come across. Some say it smells like gross feet. I would liken it more to badly rotting onions. It doesn't taste good either, although it's the smell that is really the worst. And yet it is considered a delicacy by many in Asia. Different strokes for different folks obiously. I'm sure they find certain western foods disgusting, such as cheese.

One thing I have not tried yet is insects. I think I probably draw the line there. I have friends that have tried Mexican style grasshoppers before. They are found in Oaxaca Mexico and are called chapulines. They're cleaned, cooked, and seasoned. I'm told it's basically like eating a chip or a sunflower seed, and that it's no big deal. I am just not sure I could do it. With that said, 50-100 years from now insects as cuisine could become much more commonplace, if not sooner than that.

MG,

Thanks for the comments/info. Informative and helpful - appreciate it.

Tragically, I have to assume that most if not all of the missing have probably perished by now. If your were trapped after the collapse, even if you were not seriously injured in any way, you can't really go more than three days without water, and it's probably less than that in what I would assume to be pretty significant heat.

I wonder if there is a paper trail somewhere that will lead to either gross negligence on the part of an inspector or superintendent, or, worse, that someone in a senior position in the building management company or an owner somehow knowingly looked the other way or otherwise circumvented the system out of greed or laziness.

Buildings don't just collapse like that on their own. Someone somewhere had to know that things weren't right structurally.

Quote from: MightyGiants on June 25, 2021, 08:25:03 AM
there could be nearly 100 people dead in that pile of rubble, this is a pretty tragic event

Agreed, it is beyond awful. Lots of children too.

Quote from: MightyGiants on June 24, 2021, 08:36:34 AM
How does something like this happen?!?!

Sinkhole and paid off building inspector seems to be the best bet right now.

Bowie and Floyd. By a lot.

Runners up would be U2 and The Dead.

Very true about the exercise/diet/weight loss relationship. Exercise is an important component of weight loss, but it won't move the needle if you're not dieting appropriately.

One thing I have noticed is that I tend to eat better when I am exercising consistently. Not sure if others have experienced that, but when I get into a rut and don't exercise enough, my diet tends to worsen.

For me, if I'm actively trying to lose some weight, I make sure I stay below 2000 calories in a day while exercising 4-5x a week. That formula has always worked for me. 1700-1800 calories is a good daily target area for weight loss, I find, assuming you're exercising. If you make good food choices that is more than enough calories to be satiated.

Of course, it's easier said than done to give up things like pasta, bread, alcohol, pizza, etc for an appreciable period of time.