I’m an electrician who installs (mostly) commercial electrical systems, including fire alarm systems.

In most cases, pulling a fire alarm pull station doesn’t set off the fire suppression sprinklers. The pull station just sets off the alarm and calls the Fire Department. Sprinklers aren’t automatically activated. The water in the sprinkler pipes is under constant pressure. Sprinkler heads are just nozzles with a little heat-activated stopper in them. When that stopper heats enough, it breaks and opens the nozzle, allowing water to flow (they can also be broken by fucking with them or hitting them with something). But there’s no mechanism that sets off other sprinkler heads when one goes off. Each head needs to be heat activated individually to go off. You see in movies and TV all the time someone pulling a pull station and that setting off sprinklers throughout the entire building, or someone lighting a fire in a small closet and that setting off sprinklers throughout the building. That simply isn’t how they work.

(note: there are some fire suppression systems which do have remote activation, but those are not standard. They’re usually used somewhere like a data center or a lab where there’s extremely expensive stuff that you want to be sure doesn’t get damaged. And those systems usually use a fire suppression foam or powder, rather than water.)

Also, the water in sprinkler pipes is NASTY. It’s been sitting in those pipes for years, sometimes decades. It gets black and sludgy pretty quickly. It stains/destroys anything it touches.

Younger than 63.

I haven’t found a need for it with poultry. I also don’t really cook whole birds, though. Mostly just wings or breasts. I don’t need a thermometer for those.

For her sake, I certainly hope your wife is significantly younger.

You had a kid when you were 64 years old?

I cook dinner virtually every night, but probably my (and my family’s) favorite is Lemon Chicken Picatta.

I cut chicken breasts into pieces about nugget sized, then season w/ salt & pepper. Toss them in flour to coat, then pan-fry them in vegetable oil. Basically, home-made chicken nuggets (my wife says they’re very similar to Chik-Fil-A nuggets).

When the chicken is done, I use the same pan, which now has a bunch of fond from the meat. Sautee some minced garlic, then add a bunch of chicken broth and thinly sliced lemons. Sautee that for a bit while scraping everything off the bottom of the pan. Add lemon juice and capers. Cook a bit longer. Take off the heat and add butter and parsley. Then pour the sauce over the chicken.

I usually serve it over pearl couscous with a side of air-fried broccoli.

For mother’s day, I cooked a piece of fish in some of the sauce. I don’t particularly like fish, but my wife said it was delicious.

Nah. Since my mouth doesn’t register the spicy, I don’t get the flavor of the sauce drowned out by the overwhelming spiciness. So I feel like I get a better sense for the flavor of the sauce than most people do. And I can assure you, if they advertise themselves as being absurdly spicy, they taste like straight vinegar. And not good vinegar, just a bland white vinegar.

I’m agreeing with you. Those super hot sauces which only exist to prove hot they can make them are absolute ass. They taste gross.

It really depends on the dish and what you want out of the hot sauce.

My general, everyday preference is Cholula or Crystal. Both those have a distinctly hispanic/tex-mex flavor profile. For east and southeast Asian cuisine, I prefer Sriracha. If I really want the hot sauce to be the focus of the dish, I tend to prefer Marie Sharp’s, especially the carrot or grapefruit varieties.

I have an interesting biological quirk where my mouth doesn’t register capsacin, the chemical that makes thing spicy/hot. It’s been a thing my entire life. I can and have just chomped down on habanero and ghost peppers with no immediate problems (I don’t tend to notice how spicy food is until it’s on the way out).

Those super hot sauces you describe don’t even taste like pepper most of the time. More often than not, they just taste like vinegar. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and there’s a hint of liquid smoke, but most of the time it’s just vinegar and capsacin.

Only when I’m slow roasting something that take hours. I got a bluetooth meat thermometer as a gift a little while back and it’s really convenient. There’s an app that goes with it. I just set what type of meat it is and insert the thermometer and let it cook. The app tells me when the food is ready.

But that’s only for large pieces of meat that take a long time. For anything on the stovetop or grill, or any smaller pieces of meat in the over/airfryer I just do it by feel. I’ve been cooking long enough that I can tell when a piece of meat is ready just by pushing on it to feel the firmness. And I have a pretty intuitive sense for how long something takes to cook.

I know someone who did this back in college, mostly as a prank. She found a product that was made specifically to collect menstrual blood. I’m not sure what it’s called, but she described it as some sort of cup. There really wasn’t much to it. She just collected it, then painted a simple picture, then gave it to a friend as a prank gift.

To me, “Not to mention” implies a bonus thing to consider that doesn’t need to be mentioned to form a complete thought; it’s just additional context.

I also feel like it not only adds, but enhances or expands the initial thought. EG, “I can’t go to the store with you because I have work. Not mention that you’re in a completely different city.”

The initial thought, “I can’t go to the store with you because I have work,” is a complete thought. But the addition of “you’re in a completely different city,” enhances it. Even if that initial thing wasn’t an issue (if I didn’t have work) the thought would still apply (I can’t go to the store) because of this even greater reason (you’re in a different city).

They’d be ridiculed, then kicked out of the briefing pretty immediately, then their outlet would be banned, at least temporarily, from the White House Press Pool.

This isn’t really abnormal. He’s accused of murder, and a pretty high profile one at that. It’s not uncommon in the slightest for people accused of high profile crimes and people accused of murder to be held in custody pending trial.

I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

Funnily enough, a big part of why the series didn’t even get a full first season, let alone the 7 seasons Whedon had planned, was because when Fox aired the show they did NOT air the pilot first. Fox execs didn’t like the Pilot (which had the infantry scene you referenced) and chose to kick off the series by dropping 3 episodes on the first night. They launched with episodes 2, 3, & 6. They then continued with this out-of-order lineup: 7, 8, 4, 5, 9, 10, 14, pilot, 13, 11, 12.

The show overall isn’t super serialized, but the pilot does actually introduce the characters well. Throwing the audience into the 2nd episode without the introduction to the characters in the pilot was confusing to the audience. Then jumping around, there are constant little mentions to something that happened earlier, but the audience hadn’t seen yet. Then jumping into the pilot late in the run makes it super weird.

The out-of-order release, which was an attempt by the Fox execs to do exactly what you suggested, absolutely killed the show before it had a chance to build an audience.

There’s plenty of reasons, especially in the modern media landscape. One big reason is that people consume TV differently now. Older shows and modern prestige TV are made to be watched with your full attention. But a lot of people watch shows as background while scrolling phones or doing other stuff. If you try to put a show like The Expanse, to OP’s point, on in the background, you’re going to miss a lot and be totally confused. I can see why someone might pass on it at that point, but then find it much more engaging if they try again while paying full attention.

The Expanse is absolutely one of, if not the, best sci-fi shows ever made. There are another 3 books which haven’t been adapted into the show (yet?). There’s a sizeable time gap between where the show ends and when thee final 3 books take place. And they started setting up the plot of the final 3 books in the show. There’s definitely room for a follow-up movie or revival. But the whole book series (as well as the numerous short-stories set within the same universe) is totally worth a read (or audiobook listen). The ending is bittersweet, but I’ve never got such a satisfying end to such an epic story. Then the epilogue knocked me on my ass and left me wanting so much more.

My answer to the question, though, is Breaking Bad. I got it recommended so many time. I sat down and tried to start it 3 or 4 times and just couldn’t get hooked by the first couple of episodes. It wasn’t until someone forced me to watch the entire first season. I got hooked by the episode where Walt blows up Tuco with the fulminated mercury.

someone monetizes it.