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That article exaggerates somewhat (especially the stuff about it being "the size of a puppy") and makes it sound like the spider is a new discovery and not something we've known about for years.

 

Also, it kind of bugs me in general when people talk about keeping arthropods or reptiles as pets and some asshole inevitably interjects with "not me! I'd step on it as soon as I saw it!" or something similar. That's someone's pet you're talking about. You wouldn't tell someone how much you'd want to run over their dog, have some respect.

A few months back, Brad Shoemaker had to make a post on his tumblr (which is mostly about his guinea pigs) to get people to stop telling him that guinea pigs are edible, because it was just getting increasingly creepy and unwanted.

 

Yeah, that's definitely a shitty thing to say.

I heard from an acquaintance that someone had called up a dog breeder they knew to inquire whether they could purchase one of the dogs to eat it. Asked them whether they were "one of those people who don't approve of people eating dogs".

I imagine that must bring a very distinct feeling of unease. 

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I fucking hate spiders and they scare me.

 

Except jumping spiders. Those little guys are so adorable!

 

Female_Jumping_Spider_-_Phidippus_regius

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I've often had pet rats and I give up trying to convince most of the population that they are great.

 

I had gerbils as a kid because I wasn't allowed mice or rats. Well gerbils are idiots and fucking suck and all they do is chew on stuff, bite you, and make a lot of noise and get out and eaten by my god damn cat. Mice suck too because they are just the useless versions of rats, incredibly stupid and good food for snakes only. Hamsters, okay fine, whatever, sometimes they are fucking mean though especially the dwarf ones. And Guinea pigs and chinchillas might as well not have brains.

 

It's like the small rodents as pets market is all based on getting creatures that just aren't rats, because rats are icky. Except rats are the smartest rodent you could buy (except if the place sells squirrels, but yesh they will flip out) and extremely easy to socialize and train. They also tend to be calm, relatively clean, and low maintenance.

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I've often had pet rats and I give up trying to convince most of the population that they are great.

 

Just make a gif of the behind-the-scenes shots of Harrison Ford in Last Crusade petting and nuzzling the (iirc specially bred and trained) rats, and circulate that.

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Oooh, I'm gonna see if I can find that. I know the scene in 28 Days Later where the rats rush the group in the tunnel proved to be somewhat difficult for Danny Boyle to film because they were too nice and were not acting menacingly enough.

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The science centre I worked at had these basketball playing rats. They were awesome and really cute.

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I recently posted on a forum, stating my dislike for the way someone had jumped into a thread, posted a rant and told people with different opinions to shut the fuck up, then jumped out again. A few days later, I got about ten DMs on Twitter from said person, quoting me as saying things I didn't and accusing me of tone control. I spent a while writing what I think was a calm and thoughtful response via the forum's PM system, yet after a few days this person, while posting on Twitter and the forums, completely ignores my response and my later request for at least an acknowledgement of it. So basically they contrived to do the same thing to me privately that they had done to that thread! No real reason for posting this story other than to vent my frustration!

 

I'm just glad I'm not getting this times a thousand every day from goobergait simply for being a woman.

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Page 500! Time to celebrate with rum! I kind of became a rum *purchasing* addict in a few weeks of not drinking beer/wine due to an inflammation. A friend of mine who also likes rum suggested to check out the specials and indeed there are specials in almost every store on relatively good rums. And now I have to somehow consume all that rum I bought. I can only drink it in cocktails though, been having a cuba libre or two per evening.

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My ten-year high school reunion is tonight. The organizers were totally incompetent, so even if I'd found the time and money to attend, I wouldn't have had the chance to make the trip home. Still, it bums me out. My five-year college reunion this summer was a blast and, even though I have much less in common with my high school classmates, I could have seen the same happening there. Oh well, I'll have a pity party instead.

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If it's any consolation, I was almost in Ohio during the time of my recent ten-year high school reunion, and even if I was, I absolutely wouldn't have gone, no chance in hell, no sirree, get me the fuck out of there!

 

I will also never go to a college reunion. Well, I'd go to a DigiPen reunion, but that basically just happens every year at GDC anyway, so there's no need. Oh shit I just realized I can go to the alumni party this upcoming GDC, since I actually graduated and have my diploma now. Neat.

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My high school reunion was earlier this year, and while I was somewhat curious, Besides that I was in the midst of getting my wedding stuff done for the week after. I felt like I'd be wasting a lot of money driving there and paying for the tickets to get in at the hotel banquet room or wherever it was being held. Like that was really disappointing! In all of the movies people have high school reunions at their high school! I thought that was the thing? Apparently, as some have told me, it's more common to have some kind of event center booked.

 

But anyway my graduated class had like almost 800 people or something, and I don't remember most of them and didn't interact with most of them either, just way too many folks. The people I did interact with after high school were my good friends that I ended up ditching because they weren't really good people I wanted to associate my life with anymore, so I wasn't interested in seeing them again.

 

So about 130 of the graduating class attended and I saw the final photos for the event and I didn't really recognize many people and if it was someone I knew it was someone I had maybe seen more than a few times in a class, but never conversed with. What I did notice is nearly everyone at the reunion consisted of the pretty white kids from the nicer neighborhoods in the district while all other minorities in our class (there was a pretty good mix) were no where to be found.

 

High schools should be more like 80s movies where people know everyone and lockers held a full person. Instead most of what I remembered about high school was a lot of people who didn't really know eachother and half sized lockers no where near your classes.

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I have the secret fantasy of going to a high-school reunion and lording over everyone by being more successful and interesting than they are. the secret fear of going to a high school reunion and feeling terrible because everyone turned out more successful and interesting than I did, and the secret acknowledgement that I will never bother going to a high school reunion because I don't actually remember anything about any of those people outside of the ones who were assholes.

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So about 130 of the graduating class attended and I saw the final photos for the event and I didn't really recognize many people and if it was someone I knew it was someone I had maybe seen more than a few times in a class, but never conversed with. What I did notice is nearly everyone at the reunion consisted of the pretty white kids from the nicer neighborhoods in the district while all other minorities in our class (there was a pretty good mix) were no where to be found.

 

Yeah, the final schedule seemed to assume that you either still lived in Dallas or were rich enough to fly out for a totally random weekend picked three weeks in advance. I'm curious how that worked out for them. The Friday night events were in the park across the street from the school and the Saturday night events are at some massive warehouse converted into a bar out in Garland. It seems really low-rent.

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Is it just a safety thing then on why no class reunions take place in the actual high school?

 

I would love to just walk around my old schools and just get drunk on the nostalgia, but stupid laws and all.

 

I have the secret fantasy of going to a high-school reunion and lording over everyone by being more successful and interesting than they are. the secret fear of going to a high school reunion and feeling terrible because everyone turned out more successful and interesting than I did, and the secret acknowledgement that I will never bother going to a high school reunion because I don't actually remember anything about any of those people outside of the ones who were assholes.

You can sort of just do this part with Facebook now. So chances are if they are interested in what became of you, they already know and vice versa.

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My graduating class had like...76 people in it, I think?  I could probably name 50+ of them if I tried really hard, since I knew all of them from age 4-18.  My 20th reunion is next year.  Historically, we just rent out the building at the fairgrounds, drink, play shitty music, and then go to the bar once we get kicked out of the fairgrounds.  Or dumb people go drive around drunk in the dark on dirt roads and shoot things. 

 

It's just like high school again. 

 

 

 

Depending on how my wife and I's current project goes though, next year could be real fucking interesting.  Not sure if the new business will be open by then or not. 

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I'm not sure if reunions are even a big thing here, but the idea of it seems weird to me because I feel like I'd turn up to see a bunch of people I knew years ago to say
"Oh hey, remember me? Yeah, I'm not the person you remember any more. So how are things?"

 

As far as I can tell, the appeal seems to be that you get to see if other people have changed or just stayed largely the same.
(I say this as someone who did get on fine with people from my school but didn't retain any of them as friends since then)

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I went to my 10th, and it was really fun. It was excellent to talk to people you knew as children, now being an adult. Talking to ladies like everyone is a human being! It also inspired me to start getting healthier, because man I was not happy with those pictures. We did it at a bar. I don't think any reunions really happen in the school itself.

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I'm not sure if reunions are even a big thing here, but the idea of it seems weird to me because I feel like I'd turn up to see a bunch of people I knew years ago to say

"Oh hey, remember me? Yeah, I'm not the person you remember any more. So how are things?"

 

My sister is still friends with a lot of people she went to school with, so her reunion ended up just looking like a normal saturday night out for them:P

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I didn't get an invite to my reunion and I think I just forgot about it... I guess it was 3 years ago but I haven't thought about it until just now.

 

Nobody in high school really gave a crap about me and frankly I don't remember most of them anyway.

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When we redid the bathrooms in our house, we went with the low flow toilets that use half as much (or less) as traditional American toilets.  I had several friends who thought it was a terrible idea, that they would clog all the time and be much dirtier.  Not in our experience though.  We have clogged them, but it's been exceedingly rare.  I do feel like they are a bit dirtier, but you just grab the brush and give them a good scrub now and again. 

 

 

For what it's worth, ever since I mixed in a daily helping of yogurt, my toilet bowl is much cleaner. 

 

Probiotics: Good for you, good for your toilet.

 

In your estimation, has the addition of yogurt made the clogging even rarer, or had no noticable effect? Our drains are ... not the best, so I'm thinking this method might have beneficial effects. Or it might not. Toilet physics is not my strongest point.

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My birthday is in two weeks and I feel like butt. And old. Also, I'm childish enough that I want to buy myself something nice but responsible enough to know that I'll feel terrible for spending the money. Argh.

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In your estimation, has the addition of yogurt made the clogging even rarer, or had no noticable effect? Our drains are ... not the best, so I'm thinking this method might have beneficial effects. Or it might not. Toilet physics is not my strongest point.

 

Ha, it's kind of funny to see that conversation resurrected.

 

As for clogging, maybe?  I'll put the rest in a spoiler, in case people don't want to read about toilet physics and my personal observations on pooping.

 

For a bunch of years, I had pretty loose and sticky bowel movements. Adding in a few spoonfuls of yogurt to my morning smoothie ended up giving me, according to SCIENCE!, more normal, firmer poops. Which meant having cleaner toilets and using less toilet paper.

That's why I said maybe. I would say for a lot of people, the reason toilets clog is because of using too much toilet paper. If you've got some buildup in your drains or if the slope of the drain has changed over time due to a settling foundation, then clogs are more likely the more stuff you try to put down at once.  If clogs clear really easily, you're probably just getting clogged right there in the toilet joint.  If they are clogging on a regular basis and are much, much harder to clear, than that can indicate that your blockage is in the main drain somewhere after the toilet. 

As far as clogging goes, our house isn't a very good measurement, as the plumbing is only ~5 years old. I replaced all the drains inside the house when I redid the bathrooms, and the only original plumbing left is the final 10 feet or so underground from the edge of the house to our septic tank.  So it's not old enough to have built up any residue or to have settled. 

 

FWIW, I'm no expert on plumbing.  I just learned enough to redo the plumbing on my house and haven't done anything since. 

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For a bunch of years, I had pretty loose and sticky bowel movements. Adding in a few spoonfuls of yogurt to my morning smoothie ended up giving me, according to SCIENCE!, more normal, firmer poops. Which meant having cleaner toilets and using less toilet paper.

That's why I said maybe. I would say for a lot of people, the reason toilets clog is because of using too much toilet paper. If you've got some buildup in your drains or if the slope of the drain has changed over time due to a settling foundation, then clogs are more likely the more stuff you try to put down at once.  If clogs clear really easily, you're probably just getting clogged right there in the toilet joint.  If they are clogging on a regular basis and are much, much harder to clear, than that can indicate that your blockage is in the main drain somewhere after the toilet. 

As far as clogging goes, our house isn't a very good measurement, as the plumbing is only ~5 years old. I replaced all the drains inside the house when I redid the bathrooms, and the only original plumbing left is the final 10 feet or so underground from the edge of the house to our septic tank.  So it's not old enough to have built up any residue or to have settled. 

 

FWIW, I'm no expert on plumbing.  I just learned enough to redo the plumbing on my house and haven't done anything since. 

 

Hidden solely because it's related:

 

the best this ever got for me was when I drank a two litre bottle of water every day and had an apple every lunch

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