Had to do a flame test to identify old fuel for recycling.

Made blue dye from indigo, and red and orange dye from madder, mixing in alum and other things. Making blue is amazing, it comes out green then changes colour all at once. Get the mix wrong and you get the wrong colour… Also we boiled one batch of madder and got orange instead of scarlet, so even the temperature had to be regulated.

Most recently, been making etched plates from the inside of soft drink cans, etching with copper sulfate (they sell it in Bunnings as a fertiliser). Lots of fun!

So yeah mostly art projects.

That said even baking a cake is pretty fancy chemistry.

Have you not played Dwarf Fortress? Frame rate goes way down, a situation imperceptible to the dorfs. Then eventually the operator of the machine looses interest, or a oandemic makes the pop count drop, or a combo of those.

Edit; You should read some Greg Egan if you’re into this question.

I have seen classical guitars that do, not unlike a cello, but cannot steer you at a specific brand.

I do, and he reads them days later and apologises.

Now that he is overseas on a business trip he reads them all immediately, but apparently in-house is not an option.

Sorting the safe from the scam seems a terrible way to spend an arvo playing roulette, but sure if she feels she must. Personally I have been very successful searching without those advertisements. You can hover over them as you go past, and their links are invariably complex enough to nope the hell out. I don’t need that sort of risk in my life.

If she honestly wants to shop H&M (USian I’m guessing?) or David Jones or whatever, she should go to their website. Even the most humble local shops have websites these days, my local custom paper seller has, like most shopfronts, had its website long before the shopfront arrived in the world. And buying from the small and local is better for the environment, better for your home town, and more reliable.

Thankyou for restoring my faith in you, mate. I hope the girlfriend shopping issue works itself out (perhaps she should use her phone hotspot to connect her shopping machine if she wants to be scammed? I use mine for some stuff on occasion, if and as necessary, and my boyfriend and other housemates are thus not affected) and I hope the rest of your weekend is excellent.

Ha! Here I was thinking it was some sort of garbled “your mum” joke.

I wear cheap croc knockoffs. Once I got real crocs as a christmas present, and they weren’t as comfy as the cheap no name brand notcrocs.

That said, still prefer leather sandals, they are more comfortable still. But that could be because I live in a hot climate.

Lol ?!? My girlfriend did no such thing! (My boyfriend didn’t either!)

Tell yours to use more small local shops, for the sake of the environment. Honestly it isn’t tough to shop without ads that steal your money, credit card, and identity.

I rarely see them, have never clicked one.

I suspect very few people do.

Yep, yanks tend to think they can just police everyone into doing it their way.

If you’re now in Australia, it is polite to ask “where y’from” as a starter convo, as knowing who your mob are is part of getting to know you. An Aussie would find the answer [insert country name here] as pretty standoffish (sort of an “I don’t want to talk about it or be friends with you” answer) but if they were determined to get to know you they might then ask patiently “where in Canada?” or ask about the part of Canada you might originate from, knowing it is a large place. This helps them to understand who you are and work better alongside you in big projects in future. Unfriendly people aren’t really worth working with or helping out if the going gets tough.

Think of it this way: If you have spoken four words to someone “Canada” and “why do you ask?” they are less motivated to cover your shift. If they know you are from that cool place with several excellent bands and a beautiful landscape and you often chat about whales or whatever, they might try to help you out. Also, how cold and bleak your life would be without the occasional conversation with someone at least once a day. Many people live alone.

How do you first get to know your work colleagues? Ask about a sport or the weather? Or ask about something else? Is small talk and office acquaintances not a thing where you are from?

All teachers discuss getting a difderent job. Sometimes they quit rather suddenly when the job arrives. None of us hide the general search from each other but often hide the interviews. None of us need excuses to want another job, everyone knows the job sucks.

Incidentally: If you have to work two jobs at once, then there is something wrong, mate. There’s no way I could work a second job while teaching.

It has a lot of meanings.

The oldest one I know of is that of Monkey King, who in the ancient story stole and ate the peaches of immortality. He did this without any plan; in some versions he was hungry and didn’t understand that it would make him immortal. This act of spontaneity also inconvenienced the peach owner, who had intended to serve the peaches to those who were worthy of them.

Since then various martial arts moves and stories and so on were named after that one little bit of the story, usually to showcase a combination of spontaneity and strength.

Aussie checking in, similar situation. I remember there used to be one at the hungry jacks facing the customers, and it always had puddles of liquid on the ground. Perhaps that’s why it was discontinued.

They’re not on the American Style Burger places any more, but Ikea in Sydney has customer-controlled fizzy drink fountains.

Similar to Memrise, which was really fun when you could make your own mems using imagesearch and customise everything… And now is a rubbish duolingo clone.

“Everyone everywhere should federate.”

“Not like that!”

Come visit Australia sometime. I am certain no children will knock on your windows begging for food and water when you stop at traffic lights (which happened both in cities and the occasional local township) even if you have a rental car (we were borrowing cars from locals, rentals are often too pricey for me). No one will try to steal your bag of groceries either.

If we passed through Gary I didn’t notice. The map puts it in the suburbs of Chicago anyway, perhaps we drove through at the end of our stay? Spent a bit of time in Illinois, then went through Cincinnatti on the way out toward the coast.

These stories are not any one trip, or any one city or state. This is an overview of everywhere in the US as a foreigner. People were begging me for food and stealing food on street corners from (the illinois bit of) Chicago to New Orleans, from Texas to New York. They tapped windows of the car, they stopped me in the street. It was like travelling through what the yanks choose to call a third world country… It isn’t like that in Australia.

The roadworkers? Three seperate sites in chicago, then similar seen again in New York State, and in Louisiana. Other places too but they stood out.

Knocking on our windows to beg for food and water? Everywhere on the east coast. The kid happened in New York State, but similar happened in Pennsylvania, in tenessee, in illinois, in Louisiana, and everywhere really.

I was mobbed in Pennsylvania during the notorious Apple Incident, it happened again to a friend in Charlestown with a large bag of peaches, but when we were telling this story to a bunch of other Aussies they told me a chilling tale similar that happened to a girl of their number in Tenessee. The third one happened to strangers, but they had no reason to lie to me.

I don’t rightly know what to tell you, but we saw so many beggars everywhere except manhattan. We did not like getting restaurant meals, tried to stick to takeaway, because waitstaff were upsetting everywhere we went. And if you haven’t seen the massive holes in your roads, society and infrastructure in your time there, it’s likely because you are overused to them.

America is terribly full of the desperately poor.

Edit; I have learned not to talk of the incidents that happen once, if I can help it, as I get told they are “isolated incidents” or “just happen in that state”. The girl with the dog crying in louisiana, the orphans we met in ohio, the shaking window knocker, poor bastard… That said, those isolated incidents also add up to a larger truth. All of them were due to a lack of health care or social care. All could have been cured with a little kindness, or the yanks being a little less blind to their fellow man. It is a very harsh place.