On the other hand the Internet also contains so many cats. Before the Internet, there were maybe five or six cats in my neighborhood, and some of them weren’t even friendly. Now I have access to every cat, and I should not discount that.
Also you can replace “cats” with, like, “people who know what you’re going through with your struggles in life,” so there’s that too.
hello I heard we were giving you access to pictures of our cats
if you are quiet and polite you can pet the tux in the cat tree but the tabby will demand your attention whereever you are so plz enjoy this access.
Top quality cats
Tonight’s badly lit delight, which I finally got around midnight: the one pan Singapore noodles from earlier.
(About a quarter of that size batch, for two decent-sized bowls worth. The original recipe there would make a lot, and you’d better have a big pan for it. I’d probably make half the recipe for two hungry adults.)
Some of the vegetables were a little more cooked than I meant, because I forgot that it takes about twice as long to cook the noodles with less liquid. But, very pleased overall!
One thing I did find out the hard way before, but thankfully remembered this time: the noodles also probably won’t need as much liquid as you’d think. Better to add less than the full amount called for at first. Much easier to add a little more hot water if it starts looking too dry, than to take it out later if you use too much.
The texture also benefits from letting it sit off the heat for a few minutes before eating, so the noodles can finish absorbing all the moisture on the outside.
This is a definite do again, with the results for the amount of effort required.
HOW DARE TRUMP WANT KIDS TO EAT BETTER THAN PRISONERS!
Thanks, Obama!
I won’t comment on the politics for either side with this. I only want to say: My freshman year of high school in a rural town, we had three lunch lines. One had stuffed crust pizza, fresh french fries, or chickenburgers. Another had homemade southern soul foods (a staple in any Louisianian school). The last was “the outside line” and it was usually Po’Boys or hamburgers. Everyone ate well and there was rarely more than two trash cans for the lunch room and neither seemed to fill fast. The very next year Mrs. Obama’s meal plan hit the schools. The pizza line was shut down and the quality and amount of food served to kids quickly diminished. By my senior year, no one would eat. Plates sat stacked in the middle of the tables, mostly untouched and full of wrappers from the vending machine foods because no one wanted to eat the school lunches anymore. You were lucky to be let out early for lunch because by the end of the first lunch shift the vending machines would be almost empty. There were about five trash cans and a constant janitor because all the food was being tossed instead of being eaten.
I remember always eating outside with my friends and 99% of the time we would eat from the outside line. I remember opening the to go box and seeing Po’boy buns and being so excited (because at that time they were the best thing the school could serve) but then, to my great horror, I would bite into it and find that the contents were just a slice of Spam and a half melted slice of cheese.
I remember hearing so many people saying they couldn’t wait to be out of school for the day because they were starving. When I asked about lunch they would tell me that the food was so bad that they couldn’t eat it and that they didn’t have money to spend at the vending machines every day. I remember being one of those people after my dad lost his job. I remember holding a conversation with one of the lunch ladies after I graduated from there about why the meals were so terrible and all she said was that they tried to make them taste good, it was just so hard after funding from the state got so low and the meal plan from Mrs. Obama got so bad for them.
I particularly remember one semester of high school where I was stuck in a class that let out late (the teacher talked A LOT and was one of those that always said “the bell doesn’t dismiss you, I do”) on the second lunch shift. I would often be in line for food and get sent away with at least half of the others there because they would run out of food.
I say all this because I want people to realize what this did to kids like me in poor states and in rural communities. At least two thirds of my school was starving. The students there now are probably STILL starving.
I think what Mrs. Obama tried to do was very admirable. But what failed with it, is schools like mine couldn’t afford what she planned because we were in the boonies. We had little to no funding outside of football (our one saving grace) and of course that funding rarely went to anything else. What we need is a system built for the poor kids in the middle of nowhere that buds outward to even the richest of schools. Something that works for everyone and does so actively, not just in theory. I think Mrs. Obama wanted that, but it fell through too badly before it could be saved.
I remember in elementary school I had decent food, but when I went to middle school and highschool (which was around the same time this happened) all the food was crap. If you didn’t eat what they served, you either didn’t get in the line, get Ill, or take a few bites of food only to throw it away. The only lunch everyone ate was probably on pizza day.
And let me tell you, these lunches are not in any way healthier. They have basically no nutitional value and the only things people eat they get tired of after eating it every single week so they either suck it up, don’t eat, or bring their own food. And not everyone can afford to bring their own food.
Breakfast was shit, too. You can’t give kids poptarts or muffins everyday. That is not healthy. The school couldn’t cook some damn eggs once in a while?
And even worse is when they then get rid of the vending machines. It was a sad day when I came to school and discovered all but one machine gone, the remaining one just dispensing bottled water and Powerade.
I remember Thursdays used to be my favorite lunch day because they had this really tasty pasta dish. Then around high school they rarely had it and it tasted awful. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg for my school. Again, good intentions, but poor execution.
I don’t care about your political leanings, when Mrs. Obama implemented this school lunch thing, people suffered. Even if everything else the Obamas did was hunkey dory good shit mang, this is a place where they failed. And they failed miserably. Good intentions only go so far. And don’t get me wrong, her intentions were good. But I remember when the change happened in my school. And things were not pretty.
Reducing caloric value was just about the last thing that needed to happen with a meal program intended to make sure growing schoolchildren got enough to eat for at least one meal a day.
It was already too often not enough food when I was going through school, well before these reforms. Particularly for older kids. And I did personally know some who were depending more heavily on the school lunches than anyone should ever need to.
Not much I have read about those changes has sounded like a good idea, no matter the intentions. All other politics aside.
on the one hand free speech in academia is very, very important.
on the other hand, if i ever once swore in front of a customer at any job i’d ever had, or called a coworker a d*ke, or loudly speculated about a customer’s sex life apropos of nothing, i would have been fired on the spot and nobody would have questioned it.
the lady in this article is a goddamn snowflake. she is being held to a far, far lower standard of politeness than any cashier, office worker, nurse, cleaner or person in any other kind of job would be held to.
imagine you phone up a your bank’s customer services and the person on the phone starts dropping f bombs. imagine the cashier in waterstones told a pregnant customer one of their books isn’t for “mommies and wives.” imagine the receptionist at your local dental surgery said it was “bullshit” to ask for accomodations from your dentist.
none of those people would have jobs the next day. not one.
this woman thinks she should get special treatment for some unexplained reason.
she wasn’t fired for academic opinions. making fun of a student for being pregnant is not a political or philosophical stance. neither is making fun of someone’s trousers.
if she’d said, as an academic opinion, “mothers shouldn’t study or do paid work outside the home” i’d think that was a shitty opinion but i’d defend her right to say it. but sh didn’t she just made fun of someone for being pregnant. if she’d said “same gender relationships are wrong because something something thomas aquinas something something bodily union” that would be a shitty philosophical stance but i’d defend her right to express it, but “lol your trousers make you look gay” is just being rude for no reason.
also if multiple people are leaving meetings with you in tears, and they don’t complain about any of your specific opinions but just the general way you talk to them, then you’re not being fired for unpopular opinions.
Ginn was describing her service project—a coat drive that had brought in 300 coats for needy kids—and mentioned that her fiancé had helped her out with it. “Well,” Buchanan told her, according to LSU documents, “he might support you now when the sex is good, but trust me, he won’t support you in five years when it’s not as good.” Ginn was “mortified” that a professor would make assumptions about her sex life—and she was too afraid of Buchanan, she said, to confront her about the matter.
…
But other allegations fell into different bins—mostly professionalism and abuse of power. In Ginn’s meeting with the associate dean, which was recounted during the hearing, she mentioned that another young woman in her class, Kaitlyn B., also felt traumatized. And soon, Kaitlyn reported to the university that during her own assessment team meeting, Buchanan upbraided her until she burst into tears and then began filming her with her cellphone, saying, “You need to see how unprofessional you look.” Another young woman, referred to in LSU documents as Student C, reported that in a 2012 class, Buchanan declared that only a “dyke” would wear brown pants, and that the female students shouldn’t expect to pass if they got pregnant, even offering to purchase them condoms to prevent it. The student, who was expecting her third child, met with Buchanan to discuss whether she should quit the program; the professor told her that it wasn’t really designed for “mommies and wives” and further discussed her learning disability in class, calling the special accommodations granted her because of it “bullshit.”
…
Students complained that Buchanan canceled classes and one day brought in her yoga teacher as a guest speaker. “I learned nothing, besides I should not wear brown pants, her kid smokes weed, and she is getting a divorce,” one student wrote. Other evaluations mentioned that Buchanan announced that she didn’t care if people completed their assignments because she probably wouldn’t have time to look at them.
yikes
Yeah. When I read the “when the sex isn’t good” bit I thought that was icky, but not worth firing someone over. But if someone pulls shit that makes people consistently uncomfortable and isn’t presenting it as something to debate or discuss in the class… yeah, after a certain point, the problem is you.
It probably says something about my social experiences during my formative years that I get this wave of relief whenever my favorite people initiate contact with me unprompted. I didn’t scare them off and they aren’t just tolerating me to be polite!
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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