Michelin Stars started out as a travel guide brochure for the best restaurants in France as a sort of advertisement for Michelin branded tyres

It was really more of a way to get people to drive more and so have to buy more tires (hopefully Michelin)

The original guide had things like maps, tire shops, gas stations, and tire repair instructions. Back then, cars were still new to a lot of people, and Michelin figured that a lot of people probably wouldn’t know where they could go get gas or new tires or whatever, but if they had that information people might be inclined to drive more. If you didn’t know where you could get gas along your trip you may not want to take that drive after all.

Then after a while they started including things like restaurants to give people more of a reason to go driving around.

How did the Michelin stars become so sought after by top restaurants and chefs?

It’s advertising. If you make it into the guide, more people are going to hear about and want to come to your restaurant. And since the guide has such a good reputation, it’s seen as a badge of honor that this restaurant/chef is good enough to be recognized with a star.

Was the head of the Michelin tyre company also a renowned food connoisseur or something?

No, they were renowned tire manufacturers. But they were French and that probably didn’t hurt the branding since French food has such a good reputation. I’m sure subconsciously on some level a lot of people are going to give a bit more weight to a French company rating restaurants than, for example, an American one.

What about other tyre companiee, why didn’t they do something similar?

Why bother when Michelin was already doing it? You don’t need to buy Michelin tires to eat at a Michelin-Stared restaurant. Regardless of where the guide came from it got people driving around more and needing new tires.

There’s other travel guides out there, some focus more on other things besides restaurants, some focus on areas not covered by Michelin, some overlap or compete with Michelin or position themselves as sort of an anti-Michelin because they disagree with the criteria Michelin rates restaurants on.

And I’m sure some of them are or have been in the past published or sponsored by tire companies. But Michelin managed to get into the game early enough and did it well enough that they just became sort of the restaurant guide.

And other tire companies have taken other advertising routes that are maybe a little less obvious. Let’s consider the Goodyear blimp flying over sporting events. I’m sure there’s a small element of “you should drive to sporting events to see our blimp ~and also wear down your tires a bit in the process~” at play there.

Are Michelin Stars still given by the tyre company, or has it been spun off into its own thing?

Yes it’s still the Michelin tire company. I don’t have any real insight into their corporate affairs, so I don’t know how much crosstalk there is between the tire-manufacturing and the guide-writing parts of their business these days, but it is still the same company.

1. A “truckers” (CB) radio is exactly what I was suggesting FRS radios as an alternative to.

2. I suggested them because they are much simpler to use. With a mobile base station you need to figure out where to mount it in your car, where to mount an antenna, tune that antenna, how to hard-wire it into your car’s power (or splice an adapter onto it to power it from the cigarette lighter), whereas with a walkie talkie you just need to turn it on, put it on the right channel and push a button.

(Handheld CBs do exist. I’ve very rarely seen them for sale in a brick and mortar store)

3. It’s probably gonna depend on where in the country you are, but CB radio equipment is in fact not commonly available at gas stations and truck stops around me. It’s something I actually actively look for and take notice of because I’m a bit of a radio geek. In fact, if I needed to tell someone where to get a CB locally, their best bet for that would probably also be the-store-whose-name-you-seem-too-think-that-no-one-should-say-like-its-fucking-voldemort-or-something, and even that would be hit or miss, some TSWNYSTTTNOSSLIFVOSes don’t actually seem to carry them, but every TSWNYSTTTNOSSLIFVOS I’ve ever been in absolutely has at least one set of FRS radios for sale.

Because they’re fucking everywhere, something like 90% of the US population lives within 10 miles of one.

It’s basically shorthand for “this is a common and readily available thing that you can acquire anywhere in the country for cheap even if megacorps have driven all of the local specialty retailers out of business in your areas”

As opposed to something like a HF ham radio which is a specialty item that no big retailers like walmart, to the best of my knowledge, carry, and so you’re probably not going to be able to find it locally.

I keep a CB radio in my car, and have a few friends with them

It is actually really handy when you’re road tripping together in different cars to be able to just grab the mic and say something to the other vehicle when you need to stop for a bathroom break or you’re having an issue with your car or want to give them a heads-up about whatever.

If you’re fairly close together a set of cheap FRS walkie-talkies from Walmart does the job just as well. Probably worth stepping up to CB if you expect to lose sight of the other vehicle though, range is usually a bit better.

It’s especially handy if, like me, you go camping and such in rural areas with unreliable cell coverage.

You do occasionally also get helpful heads-ups from truckers if you’re listening to channel 19 about road conditions, police activity, traffic, etc. but mostly it’s just idiots babbling about conspiracy theories and immature bullshit.

Not only that, but it was one of the launch titles, so it was always available on the GameCube

I remember waiting in line at Target on release day and walking out of there with the console and Luigi’s Mansion in-hand.

I’m pretty much in the same boat, 720p looks fine to me in the vast majority of cases, and while I’m not great at going to my eye doctor regularly, the last time I had my vision checked it was fine, and it was right around the time I was shopping for a new TV and upgraded from 1080 to 4k, and still had a 720p in my bedroom.

If I looked really hard at them, I could tell the difference from the 720 to the 4k, but truth be told, I’m just not scrutinizing the picture quality of my TV that much.

I may be missing something obvious here, but put it in the cart?

Of course carrying a bag of some kind would also be an option, just a small backpack, messenger bag, etc. I have a surplus Czech military map bag I use for some d&d boosk and a folder of character sheets and such that would probably be about the right size for a portfolio, pretty sure there’s a ton of them still available from various military surplus websites for pretty cheap.

If you can put Velcro on the portfolio and the cart that could work. If the cart happens to be steel you could also do magnets

You could also strap, Velcro, magnet, clip, zip-tie, etc. some kind of bag, bin, etc to the cart specifically for it. Not sure exactly what kind of cart we’re talking about but some sort of a bicycle backpack with hooks to mount on a cargo rack may be an option to hook right onto your cart

If you want to get really extra, you can get an auto follow drone to carry it around for you, or if your workplace is cool with pets, get a dog with a backpack to follow you around, or perhaps hire a personal assistant (these last suggestions are not meant to be taken literally)

No because I’m married and my wife wouldn’t like that.

More seriously, It’s not a hard no, but I lean towards probably not, it would probably depend the specifics of their identity and the state of any medical transition.

In general, I’d tend to call myself a straight cis man. If I think long and hard about it, I could make an argument that I’m perhaps something along the lines of a non-binary person with a penis, who just happens to present in a traditionally “masculine” fashion in basically every way, and who is attracted to people with vaginas who present in at least a somewhat feminine way.

That’s a fucking mouthful though, and I’m just not gonna get into the weeds about that in casual conversation.

The fact that I’m a man isn’t really something that’s particularly important to me, I just kind of think of myself as a person. If somehow someone misgendered me it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest (though it may get a chuckle because I’m a bald, hairy dude with a big busty beard and fairly deep voice, not exactly the picture of femininity)

And while I quite enjoy having a penis, I don’t feel as though I’d be particularly bothered by having a vagina instead (although you can miss me with that period nonsense, but I think most vagina-havers would agree on that point) and I’d otherwise live my life the same way.

And how “feminine” a theoretical partner would need to be actually gets a lot of leeway. I can find people pretty far into the tomboy/androgynous/butch/etc end of the spectrum attractive, maybe even preferably to the extreme “girly” end of the spectrum. There’s a line there where they’d be too “masculine” for my tastes, but it’s a fuzzy one.

And for me, a certain amount of physical attraction in a partner is important. It’s a pretty wide spectrum that I’m able to find attractive, but there are limits, and I have preferences and dislikes to varying degrees.

And one of those strongest preferences is that my partner have a vagina. I am just not attracted to people with a penis.

If we want to count it under the trans umbrella, I don’t think that me dating a non-binary person with a vagina would be out of the question.

Maybe even a FTM femboy type who hasn’t had or want bottom surgery.

MTF, which I think is more in the spirit of this question, is a bit murkier though. If they don’t intend to get bottom surgery I think that’s a pretty hard no. And even if they have or intend to I can’t say that I’ve ever seen, let alone touched, a surgically-created vagina, so I don’t know if they’d do it for me the same way as a natural one.

The best comparison I do have is that I generally consider myself to be a boob-guy, and while it’s not an outright disqualifier, fake boobs don’t usually do it for me in quite the same way as real ones, but some are better than others, and while I tend to like big boobs, I have nothing against small ones, and a mastectomy isn’t a deal-breaker for me either.

So I suspect that with bottom surgery, it’s a firm “maybe”

As for a trans partner who has not yet but intends to get that surgery, I guess it kind of depends on the timeline. I don’t really want to have sex with someone with a penis and a sexless relationship for me would have a limited lifespan.

All of that said, regardless of whether I’d date them or not doesn’t change how I’d view their identity. There’s plenty of women out there I wouldn’t date for any number of reasons, but that doesn’t mean I see them as any less of a woman.

Almost 2 decades ago I paid close to that for a 50" plasma TV as one of my first big purchases after I got my first job.

Of course this isn’t a direct 1:1 comparison, they’re different display technologies, TVs these days have a 4k if not 8k resolution when that one I bought was 720p, there’s been almost 20 years of advancement driving costs down, and 20 years of inflation driving them up, etc.

So I don’t even know where to begin trying to fairly compare the relative costs of those 2 TVs

But back then tv manufacturers also weren’t getting paid to include apps, and put a button on their remotes to launch Amazon prime, or show me ads, or anything of the sort. Their only revenue stream was me buying the tv.

Slight counterpoint

I have 2 TVs in my house. A 70" Vizio as my main TV and a 40-ish inch Samsung fame in the bedroom

Haven’t used the TVs smart features in years, everything I watch is run through a game console or dedicated streaming device (currently a 4k Chromecast)

Their software is kind of dogshit, but I never interact with it except once in a blue moon after a power outage or something when it defaults back to that. I otherwise find it to be a perfectly fine TV for the price I paid for it.

However, as bad as the software is on the Vizio, the Samsung is 10x worse. And unfortunately as bad as it is, that’s what we use because it was hard enough trying to hide the box the TV came with (the way they get the frame TV’s so light and thin is by moving all of the electronics into a separate box, I installed a cabinet in the wall behind the TV to hide it) let alone trying to hide a separate streaming stick/box along with it. I also feel like using one of those may not play as well with the art mode as the built-in software, which is kind of the whole point.

Totally anecdotal, but I work in 911 dispatch, so I have a bit of insight on people involving themselves in emergencies

It’s really hit or miss.

Fires, gunshots, medical emergencies, fights, things blowing up, car accidents, noise complaints, aircraft crashes, I’ve probably taken a call about it, and those calls have come in from the person involved, a neighbor , a random passerby, their grandmother who lives in another state, or some random follower on tiktok.

And sometimes we get a hundred calls about the same thing. There are times I can just about answer the phone with “911, if you’re calling about the [thing] in [place] we’re already aware, help is on the way.” And be right about 90% of the time while that thing is going on. (To be clear I don’t do that, because almost every time I crack a joke about my job or vent about stupid shit our callers do, some self-righteous dipshit comes at me with a whole “if that’s how you talk to your callers maybe you’re not cut out for this job” spiel as if no one ever vents about the idiots they have to deal with at work.)

And there are other times where we get exactly one call about something serious happening in a very public place and we’re left wondering if it was a prank call until our police/fire/EMS get out there and confirm that yes, everything is exactly as described or even worse, it’s a total shit-show and all hell’s breaking loose.

Sometimes it seems like a whole town is turning out to help people with a minor fender-bender, and sometimes hundreds of people are driving right by an overturned vehicle.

Usually, of course, it’s somewhere in-between. We got a handful of calls about something but our phones aren’t ringing off the hook about it.

Moral of my rant is, a lot of times people will step in to help or at least call 911 in an emergency, but you can’t always count on that. The idea of the bystander effect is exaggerated and misinterpreted, but the core takeaway about it is solid. You can’t always take it for granted that someone else is going to do something to help, so if you find yourself in a position where you can be the one who helps, you should do so.

I think I see a bit of steam escaping from the pan, so I think they tried to weigh it after cooking

Which makes sense, there’s going to be some weight change after you cook it because of evaporation and such… hence the steam

Before cooking you couldn’t really call it Jollof Rice, it would just be a big pot of the raw ingredients for Jollof Rice

And they know the weight of the ingredients going in already, they’re quoted in the article, so that’s just simple addition to figure out.

How “no install” does it need to be? Because in one sense, duct-taping a flashlight to the ceiling could technically be considered an install if we really want to split hairs.

I’m assuming the main thing is you don’t want to be running wires and cutting holes in the ceiling.

If screwing something into the ceiling isn’t too tall of an ask, a plug-in chandelier/pendant lamp might be a good option, but finding an attractive way to route the wires may prove tricky.

Some command hooks and string lights may do the trick

You could also try some rope rights along the perimeter of your ceiling held on with command strips/double stick tape

A tall floor lamp could sort fill the role of a ceiling light, at an old apartment I had a lamp that was basically an enormous version of the Pixar lamp that filled that role pretty well.

You might be able to find some sort of battery/rechargeable/maybe even solar powered light fixture that you can mount to your ceiling to get around needing to run a power cord to it, but I have a feeling you’ll find the light output and battery life of most options disappointing.

Not what you’re asking for, but just a final thought- my childhood home had almost no overhead lighting, there was a light fixture or two in the kitchen, a couple bare bulbs in the basement, and a wall fixture in the bathroom. Everywhere else we just had floor, table, and desk lamps and never really had a problem with it. I feel like that’s still a perfectly serviceable solution, especially with the modern option of having smart bulbs and/or outlets to control those lights.

Most bullet casings are brass, which is a fairly soft metal, you could probably scratch some words into it with a pocket knife, sewing needle, pretty much any pointy steel object

Just kind of thinking out loud

All of those people who were brought into ERs from ground zero and the people, vehicles, etc. that brought them there would have been covered in that same dust that’s causing health issues for first responders, that means doctors and nurses probably also received some level of exposure to that dust because I doubt all of those people showered on the way.

I don’t know how their exposure level stacks up against the people who were on-scene, I’m sure it’s an order of magnitude less, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was still significant enough to cause some health problems. IBM pretty sure I’ve seen some evidence of people who live with firefighters developing health issues from secondhand exposure like that.

On top of that, there’s also the psychological burden that always gets overlooked. I’m sure that took a hell of a toll on healthcare workers.

And there’s a recognition aspect, because for all of the people who died, there were also many more who were injured, and more than a few of them owe their lives to the doctors and nurses who treated them just as much as to the first responders who got them to the hospital.

Well at the end of it, you can see he actually starts leaning pretty far to the left

Not a Doctor, take this for what it’s worth

But my understanding is that, depending on the type of seizure disorder and a whole host of other factors, there’s a lot of things that can potentially trigger seizures

Flashing lights are a classic example, but also smells, temperature, stress, diet, hormones, drug/alcohol use or withdrawal, fever, lack of sleep, etc.

Also you said that you gradually halved your dose since then, that might also be a factor. Lets say you were on 100mg before and 50 now. When your body was acclimated to 100mg, it was probably a bigger shock to your system to go without than it is now that your body is only used to 50, obviously 0 to 100 is a bigger difference than 0 to 50.

I’ve seen a couple reports that the ammo they found had anti-fascist and transgender inscribed on them.

If it’s true, that’s not definitive evidence of course, but it wouldn’t be zero evidence either.

It also feels a little too convenient to me after the Luigi thing. It could just be sort of a copycat, or it could be a right wing accelerationist trying to paint that picture.

And I fucking hate that at this point I don’t know which of those two options is more likely.

Coming up on 7 years married, probably about another 2 maybe 3 years together (she seems to think we were dating for a while before I realized it, I’m kind of dense)

We were friends for probably about another 2 or 3 years before that, and for probably about that long again before that we kind of recognized each other as friends-of-friends but only ever bumped into each other in-passing and didn’t hang out.

The type of ice cream definitely makes a difference, more premium brands tend to be a lot stiffer than cheaper brands. And I admittedly tend to buy just some basic vanilla ice cream because I like to go crazy with toppings.

My brain defaults to fahrenheit, and that probably shapes how I look at temperatures a bit, but those temperature differences between our different freezers feels pretty significant to me. In warmer temperatures, for example, that amount of temperature difference could be the difference between shorts & t shirt weather and needing a jacket.

Also, for what it’s worth, my family once acquired a full container of Ben & Jerry’s that would have been served at one of their stores. The instructions on the box were to store it at or below -20f/-29c, and bring it up to 10f/-12c in the serving cabinet.