Honestly? There’s three, maybe four, routes to getting started with understanding the system of d&d. If you go with another brand of game, those might shift a little, but mostly don’t.

Path one is to find a beginner oriented DM/game. The rule set for any given edition of d&d is best learned with help, and nobody will do that better than an experienced DM running intro tables.

However, route two is to do the opposite. You become the DM and round up a table of anyone you can con into playing. You read the core rules, and dive in head first. As long as everyone playing is aware it’ll come with a shit ton of errors and fuck ups, it’s a very fun way to get going.

Two B is to do the same, but as a player rather than the DM.

Route 3 is to go all scholar about it. Obtain the books of the edition you want to play, and study it like you’ll be getting paid to play. This is more viable nowadays since the more recent editions are written up better. It helps that YouTube and forums exist as well, because you aren’t limited to just what’s written by the company. You can get explanations.

Route four is some hybrid. Obtain the core books, read them, then go looking for a group to play with, be sure they know you’re a noob, and back that up with plenty of reading and video watching as you go.

The central idea of d&d is a big game of pretend, but with a mediator to keep things sane. Everything else is window dressing ;)

Well, it’s a multi prong issue; there isn’t a single cause, and not everyone shares the same combination of causes.

First is the obvious. Age related eye and coordination issues. As we age, some things don’t keep it up like other traits can. And, worse, age related experience only counters it if the person applies said experience.

Second, you run into issues with the plumbing, as someone said in other comments. The prostate is a hell of an organ. But when it gets swollen, the stream gets sputtery. You also run into user error where you have to hold the thing different than when you’re younger because the elasticity and thickness of skin changes. It’s easier to accidentally apply pressure to the urethra. The typical two or three finger grip can apply more pressure than is good when the skin isn’t as resilient.

Third, the ol’ give-shitter runs down. Spoons, baby. You run out of them. The effort of paying attention just isn’t as bearable, depending on what else is melting your spoons down. Which applies to cleaning up after yourself as well. Which also means that remembering to behave better when you aren’t at home where you’re the person inconvenienced can be a problem.

Now, the answer to all of those is to sit the fuck down, but the folks now into their seventies and eighties had a much less free concept of masculinity. In other words, they were fed the unhealthy concept that doing things the way women do them is inherently unmasculine. That isn’t true for everyone, but actual boomers, and the generation before them have more resistance to sitting down just because they’re men. Boomers less so than their parents, as the actual baby boomers includes the very same people that fought to change such concepts.

You also have plain assholes, but that isn’t a generation thing; there’s assholes that will spray piss everywhere on purpose of all ages, so it isn’t really a factor for this question.

Legit, I had patients back in the day that would resist sitting down to put on pants because they felt it made them lesser. Not less masculine, just less independent. They’d resist canes and walkers for the same reason, accelerating their reliance on mobility aids. That aspect of seat pissing is also a factor, but like just being an asshole, it isn’t purely a generational thing. Plenty of young guys fight against anything other than standing to pee because being able to do so becomes a symbol of physical capability. If you have to sit to pee, you’re fucked is the idea, no matter how false.

I had to lay down the law with my own dad a couple of years ago. Got tired of needing to use the toilet and sitting in piss, or walking in it, or seeing it drip. In his case, he didn’t even realize he was missing, but he still didn’t like the idea. He also got cataract surgery after that and it improved his aim back to an acceptable level when he does stand while peeing.

For real though my fellow men; sit to fucking pee. Splashing toilet water isn’t a good thing, and that’s going to happen no matter what else you do.

I think you’re running into a brand specific thing. The last box of frozen gyoza we got said to warm/steam then crisp in a pan.

I’m trying to think and remember if the ones my best friend used to get had the same instructions. I think so, and I’m remembering the smell of them hitting the pan, which wouldn’t be the case if they were frozen still. I’m 85%+ confident that brand said to warm then pan fry, though it may have been the brand that wanted you to put them in and get the edges crisp and then add water cover to steam.

But I’ve seen both processes on different brands for sure.

I tend to prefer starting off with direct heat to get the edges crispy, then steam. Usually, my the time they’re finished, enough of the water has escaped the pan so that the edges get nice and extra crispy while the body of the dumpling wrapper gets this elastic and soft texture that lets you take multiple bites without it falling apart, which often happens doing it the other way around.

Hell, I’m okay with only steaming them tbh. I enjoy the soft edges just as much.

But, to answer your title question, I think that it’s less about efficiency than it is making sure they get cooked through properly. When you steam/nuke first, you’re more likely to try and rush to fry and end up with cold centers. Steaming in the pan doesn’t lose much edge crisp (when heat is maintained well), but you’re almost guaranteed to have an even temperature throughout. Frozen foods have some unusual processes because reheating or cooking from frozen can radically shift outcomes.

That’s why you used to have frozen dinners with weird instructions for the different segments of the tray, like leaving one section covered, another slitted, maybe stopping to stir the dessert partway through, that kind of thing. Dumplings are fairly simple to make fresh because you’re actually cooking them. Most of the frozen ones are par cooked before freezing, which means you end up with wonky results if you follow the same procedures as fresh.

Edit: awesome question btw

My own.

Something, something, macaroni vagina

I mean, in fairness, you do smell of sulfur, rotting jizz, sewage, and demonic ass.

So, you know, I’m dripping, but your wife can’t be blamed here

It’s a company. As such, it wants to make money. As such, it hires people to make that happen. Those people tend to think in certain pathways. When that happens, any company eventually falls into the same anti-user behaviors

Too small, too prone to “spoilage”, and waaaayyyy harder to calculate existing stockpiles. It just wouldn’t be practical.

Mind you, that’s ignoring any of the should factor, and I am absolutely unwilling to engage in that debate

Edit: also, it’s too easy to improvise ammunition for simple firearms. You can’t really shove just anything into an autoloader and expect it to feed, but anyone with a machine shop could crank out something that would work, and the supplies just aren’t trackable the way something like ammonium nitrate is

It’s giiiiiiiiiaaaaannnnnt fruuuuuuuiiiitttt! Na ba nana nana na na da nana!

On tonight’s episode, ugli comes for a visit, brings his drunk girlfriend to twerk on the counter!

Damn! I just ate and now I could eat some of that!

Amen! I’ll throw down on stovetop mac n cheese just as happily as a cheese and fruit plate perfectly paired and balanced

Okay, afaik, there’s no listing anywhere of tensile strength of living tissues of various critters. There might be, but I’ve never run across one, and my life being what it is, you’d be amazed how often I’ve gone looking for similar information for one question or another someone asks.

That being said, I have dealt with recently dead snakes. We country as fuck up in the this piece, so we got a few snakes similar in size to a rattler, and I’d guesstimate that the average blacksnake is going to be close enough for government work to the average rattler.

So, yeah, I’d guesstimate you could strangle someone with a recently dead snake that was long enough to use as a murder tool. If you ever have to extricate a dead snake from something like a dryer vent, or the various mechanical parts of a car, you have to tug on the damn things pretty fucking hard. Even with sharp and/or hard bits involved to make holes in a snake, they don’t just pull apart. The few times I’ve had to pull a dead snake out of a car, the only thing that pulled off was whatever injury did the snake in.

In other words, if the skin and muscle are damaged enough, it’ll tear apart there. But otherwise? It’ll only come apart where it’s snagged on something, and I’m a big dude, so I can haul on things decently.

I’d say the overall toughness involved is at least similar to a decent leather belt

Ehhh, a well roasted robusto is definitely going to be different than arabica, but it isn’t always sour, or terrible. It’s definitely more acidic on average, and it’s often used to make cheaper coffee, so little or no effort is put into it. But robusto has its place

Looking at what you actually wrote instead of anything else, you’re mostly dead on.

Almost all things food related are subjective, and that extends to all the items you listed.

That being said, some aspects of flavor and scent are going to be damn near universally perceived as better. As an example, while it’s fine to enjoy plain old Hershey’s chocolate bars, trying to claim that they can match a decently crafted chocolate that puts effort into their process is going to be silly because they aren’t really the same thing when it comes right down to it. They just share basic ingredients.

And, it is entirely possible to refine one’s palate. It doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means, and it absolutely doesn’t mean what snobs think it means. Refining your palate is the process of training your senses to pick up even minor differences. That’s it. Nothing else. Your opinion of those differences is still subjective, but you can absolutely develop the ability to not just detect, but describe the differences between two coffees, or two cheeses.

When it comes right down to it though, some things are going to be so universally preferred that it’s accurate to call them “better”. A mass produced cheddar from Wal-Mart is just not going to have the same complexity as a locally produced, well crafted cheese. And complexity in cheddar is what makes a good cheese good rather than just edible. It isn’t that you have to like it because other people like it, but you also can’t invalidate that when enough people prefer something, using the word “better” is acceptable and accurate because of the word itself.

I’m with you. I fucking despise food snobbery. But part of your post here is its own form of snobbery. Yes, it is. You’re saying that your subjective impression of foods is superior to others by virtue of not relying on their set of subjective values. That’s food snobbery.

I’ll also add that sometimes the “better” thing isn’t necessarily the more enjoyable thing, particularly with ingredients. Using a deeply aged, complex cheddar in mac n cheese is very likely to suck, as an example. For something like chocolate, making a dip for apple slices and using some really precisely selected, single origin chocolate is going to make the experience of chocolate sauce dipped apple slices way less enjoyable.

However, if you’re making a fruit and cheese plate, breaking out the right cheeses to pair with each fruit is likely to make the overall experience better because each given bite can be a unique thing, as the compounds in a cheddar that go so well with apples or (sometimes) pears make it a poor choice to go with berries, where something like a brie is going to do more in the mouth. Better would still be subjective to some degree, but exploring the senses in a well organized way can be said to be better than just randomly cramming things into your mouth and seeing what you enjoy the most.

I’ll also say that brewing a cheap, poorly roasted coffee well can make it better than throwing it in a percolator.

Food is like jazz. You get as much out of it as you’re willing to put into it.

It works fine, with caveats

First, that the chicken parts are likely to give up their flavors and collagen sooner than the beef bones.

Second, that you can’t make chicken broth with beef parts, but you can make beef broth with chicken parts. Even the best chicken is going to be overwhelmed by anything beef mixed in. So you’ll get texture, mouth feel, from the chicken, but you’d hate to have an absurdly sensitive palate to taste the chicken in it. It isn’t impossible, but chicken, and even pork get dominated by beef. Pork can hold up a little better, as long as it’s the majority of the bones, but I wouldn’t say it tastes the same as a pork only broth.

But yeah, it’ll taste just fine. Bone broth is yummy, period.

If one ignores the semicolon, it is at their own peril; they’re too useful, even when used slightly incorrectly

Been there. And, my physical health precludes it sometimes too.

Nothing I can say will help, but you ain’t alone, you aren’t the only one, and if you ever do have a day when you can do that kind of self care, don’t beat yourself up if/when you have the next one where you can’t.

We all gotta get by as best we can, and nobody gets out alive.

I’ll take the hitla.

Not because of political bullshit, but because damn near any other maker is going to be a better choice. Telsa is run like shit, has tons of reliability problems, and I don’t see anything else being worse.

That being said, if more information about the hitla brand’s reliability and quality were available, it might change the answer.

For fucking real, at this point in my life, idgaf about anything in a car but it being there, ready to go, when I have a fucking appointment. That means minimum fucking bullshit with sourcing parts, minimum bullshit with being able to put them in myself, and hopefully that they’re also affordable parts. It could be named Hitler, and made by the mustache fascist himself and I would not fucking care as long as I could go a fucking year without something fucking up.

My car was like that for the first fifteen years or so. Basic maintenance unless I did something stupid, and I’m spoiled on that. Even now, with it being almost twenty years on the road, having had three tree limbs fall on it, having had two cars run into it (front and back, plus one from the side, but that was barely a bump), and my dad driving it like an idiot, it’s still relatively reliable. Shit, the only reason I’m thinking of replacing it is needing something I can get a wheelchair in and out of easily. It’s a two door hatchback, and the hatch is high enough that lifting a chair into it just ain’t happening regularly.

So yeah, gimme a Hitler if it gets anywhere close to that level of reliability.

A little milk for the wee folk never hurts anything :)

They got so much wrong it’s hilarious.

About the only thing they got right is that we have chickens and like comfy clothing, and one mention based on a five year old review. Literally everything else was junk.