This may be my favorite science based meme ever

I get where you’re coming from. I tend to have to “click” with an artist/band before I can really sink into them. Sometimes it never happens.

That being said, I think the best approach to Prince is chronological. His oldest music tends to be the most accessible. As he developed, he got more experimental and that can make it harder to vibe with if you go in without familiarity.

I’d hit up the Wikipedia page and kind of surf through his first three albums. If you haven’t “gotten” what made him popular back then, then the best you’ll reach is appreciating his talent on an abstract level rather than feeling it. Nothing wrong with that at all, clicking with a given music segment or not doesn’t mean anything other than the fact that it doesn’t vibe for you.

But, he really was an amazing songwriter. So you could try browsing just his lyrics and see if that gets you into things that way. I know I’m not a musician in any way, so the subtleties of his guitar and other instrumental talent are beyond me, but I can comfortably say that he was capable of lyrics that could match any poet you wanted to point at. The craft of how he would structure a song is damn potent.

Even his bumping, club friendly stuff like Cream or Get Off is crafted extremely well. So if you’re into lyrics enough, that might be the path that makes him click for you

Woom objects to your opinion.

Man, I feel the same about most greens tbh. But I definitely agree that turnip greens don’t get the love they deserve compared to kale and collards for damn sure. Even chard gets more love

Mustard greens are in the same boat though, usually.

The great thing about turnip greens in particular is that they’re a twofer with the root. As a crop, even in small gardens, it’s a no brainer. You get so much out of the same square footage.

They cook up easier than collards, have more depth and earthiness than kale, and have a mild sweetness that mustard can’t quite match. Vastly underrated.

Have to treat them gentle, and it’s easy to overpower them with too much of the usual pork additions. When you do, they’re a delightful meal but themselves

It’s the astroturfing that’s objectionable.

There’s a lot of necessity there. Our natural speaking voices use the throat and lungs in a different way than any singing techniques. And, there’s multiple ways of using them to get a desired sound.

So there’s some degree of style involved, but past a certain point you have to change your voice to sing rather than just speak in tune (which is still a valid thing of its own)

That was my thought exactly, with the addition of something along the lines of: “gee, it must have flown through Thanksgiving dinner”

You hear about the dwarf psychic that escaped prison?

He’s a small medium at large

Ahhhh, iirc, it’s one he built himself.

It’s actually come up in comics before, more than once if my mind isn’t playing tricks.

I don’t doubt that he would have at least taken lessons from open source type projects if Linux doesn’t directly exist in the comic universe.

No worries :)

That is a very confusing set of criteria. You want someone like two specific artists in the title, then name two specific bands/artists in the text that are radically different from those in the title (not to mention each other tbh)

That being said, you might like Norah Jones. Haim has a similar vibe to Merton, though I’m not sure either is specifically “romantic” overall.

There’s Sade for another smooth soul voice.

Toni Braxton might scratch an Adele-ish itch. At least her early stuff.

Kinda spitballing here. But there wouldn’t be an Adele without Aretha, Nina Simone, and Etta James. I would even argue that those three are the greatest voices in soul, and rank high with any genre open to comparison. Shit, even if you don’t like them, you gotta listen to some of their stuff (assuming you haven’t) just to understand the foundation of soul. Yeah, there are men that could have their own top three like that, but op specified female singers by their examples. (Shout out to Barry White and Marvin Gaye in particular)

Ooh! Joss Stone! Gotta give her a listen. Not as smooth as some of the queens listed above, but just as much depth.

Corinne Bailey Rae is worth it too.

A bit less well known, but Allison Young does a solid retro-jazz style that’s not quite in the same zone, but her voice is so good you should try her out anyway.

I dunno, my brain has hit a wall trying to circle back into Motown, which is n amazing musical destination to hit, but not quite the same vibe as Adele brings, but informed the underpinnings of a lot of later singers. Diana Ross alone could take the crown in that regard. But Motown covers a wide range of styles, which makes it a great music era/genre/whatever-you-wanna-call-it to dive into when looking for romantic music.

Baldur’s gate 3, tiny Tina’s wonderlands, ff7, annnnd I’m not sure. The fourth and fifth slots are harder.

I would say pacman, but even if you gave me the arcade game for free, I don’t think I could play it worth a damn now. Same with centipede (they were my favorites back in the day, but pacman I was good at).

The original Mario Kart could be in there. And I can’t pretend that need for speed carbon couldn’t compete for a spot either. I think I’d take Kart over Carbon though.

Yeah, fuck it, pacman and Mario kart. Those are the last two spots.

No! Wait!

Neverwinter, the mmorpg. Fuck mariokart, I’d take that one, assuming I could either have ai teammates that didn’t suck, or could just keep a server for it running without cost/effort. Loved that game. Technically still love it, but when I stopped playing for a while, I got power crept and didn’t want to play ptw style like it turned into. But my haste cleric? Fuck yeah!

One problem

Batteries.

I’ve used old devices as many things: security cameras, a form of intercom, digital picture frames, etc. The real problem is that the batteries eventually go bad, and become dangerous.

For the few devices that have realistically replaceable batteries, that’s no big deal, but how many of those are left now?

No thanks to the potential fire, I’ll pass. The few devices I have left that I can swap batteries out are becoming harder to find new batteries for as well, so that’s an issue beyond their anemic hardware (I’m talking really old tablets at this point)

Oh boy! Dogging in the park at night! Can’t wait to get into some of that!

My thing is that if I’m outside relaxing, I want the birds and bugs and wind. If I can’t have those, headphones aren’t an acceptable replacement, so I’ll fuck off back inside.

If I’m outside as in going about town, I don’t want my hearing compromised. It’s a fate safety issue. Even bone conduction gear is a distraction that I’m not okay with. Like, it isn’t even about being hit by a car or whatever, it could be something as simple as a shopping cart that’s loose banging into me. My crippled ass would be in the floor.

My brain is enough stimulation for me. If I’m out in the world, my brain is going to be going a mile a minute scoping everything out. Doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been in a given location.

I prefer car hole too, but don’t tell me wife.

That’s true, but I would argue that the player owned definition of it came so quickly on the heels of the typo that both could count as valid, with the caveat that the first usage being a typo would have to be considered a mistake, rather than the coining of the slang term itself.

Which is stretching things a bit, but still fun to think about.

It’s pronounced pwned, as all right thinking people know

Air purifier? That’s a less than ideal term since it gets applied to stuff like ionizers that are of dubious efficacy.

But a straight up filter, hell yeah they work. Just check the filter on your furnace/heater sometime. Same with any AC unit.

If you have something that has a filter, it will reduce dust, period. Without a filter, you aren’t going to reduce dust worth a damn, if at all.

But you also need to make sure it’s turning the air over often enough. I haven’t looked the info up in ages, but if you want a decent reduction in particulates, the device has to move air fairly significantly it it isn’t going to about to much.

Like, my house is right around a hundred years old. Four humans, and various animals over the years. Shit is dusty what with the dead skin, particles from things like carpet, pollen, dander, etc. Enough stuff gets produced that even with the regular furnace/ac filter, and a handful of one-room filters spread throughout the house (which tends to be better than one big one imo) we still get dust buildup on everything. But if we don’t run the filters, you can both visibly and nasally tell the difference.

A newer house isn’t going to have as much, so you can likely get away with less air turnover, short term, and need to dust less. But you’ll never be totally dust free just because you can’t move enough air to prevent at least a little settling.