The heritage foundation has a plan. Why come up with your own when someone has already done the work for you?

Yup, that’s another one. I think that one is even worse because the new usage makes it a contranym. Dictionaries are starting to include the new usage of that one too. Unless you have a reason to be pretty sure the author/speaker knows the correct definition, it can be difficult to tell.

It means puzzled and/or confused.

Many authors seem to think it means amused mixed with some confusion or puzzlement or something else like that.

Some dictionaries have started to include definitions along those lines, which is correct to do if that is becoming a common usage. But that makes the word bullshit because it no longer conveys a clear meaning. Unlike some words that gain new meanings through misuse, it’s usually not clear which meaning is intended from context. Usually I can easily imagine a character’s response to something to be either of these definitions so I often can’t understand the author’s intention. I often find myself taken out of the story while I try to understand which meaning I should use. Because of this I think the word has become useless and shouldn’t be used.

Bemused

It’s used incorrectly so often that even when I suspect it’s being used correctly I can’t be sure. At this point its ambiguity makes it a bad word choice.

Absolutely, I shouldn’t have used cheap as a synonym for bad, or vice versa, that’s my mistake.

There are a lot of very good wines at low price points, especially from underappreciated regions. A little experimentation will result in finding some great value.

The same goes for the whiskey. There are a lot of distilleries out there with great offerings far below the price of the big names everyone recognizes. Especially when you take fads into account. Many bourbons and Japanese whiskeys that used to be good buys are now ridiculously priced.

Yeah, but…are you saying you never want some shitty nachos?

I can only speak for myself but I’ve eaten at Michelin star restaurants all over the world and enjoy fine dining whenever I have the time and I love it, but sometimes I just want taco bell.

Alcohol, on the other hand; good Scotch and wine has ruined the cheap stuff for me. I can’t drink cheap, or even mediocre, whisky or wine anymore. If it’s not very high quality I’d rather just have something like a gin or vodka cocktail.

I don’t think I’ve ever been that optimistic in my life.

Vilnius is fucking amazing. I really enjoyed my visit to the three Baltic nations recently. I’m glad I got there before all this started kicking off.

Coincidentally, I hope, several places I’ve visited in the last 15-20 years have become sketchy to travel to for one reason or another within a year or two after my visit. Maybe I should just stay home for the good of the world.

Turning off Java script worked when this happened to me. Firefox and ublock origin. It breaks some things but you can do it on a per site basis.

It’s not too heavy. That’s “premium feel and materials.”

It used to be that when people talked about hypersonic missiles it was understood to mean hypersonic cruise missile, something that could hug terrain and maneuver. Then Russia and China came out with “hypersonic missiles” that were just ballistic with maybe some minor maneuverability so the term doesn’t mean anything until you dig deeper.

Shut the fuck up! Now Vader, he’s a spiritual brother, with the force and all that shit. Then this cracker Skywalker gets his hands on a lightsaber, and the boy decides he’s goinna run the fucking universe - gets a whole Klan of whites together, and they’re gonna bust up Vader’s 'hood - the Death Star. Now what the fuck do you call that?

Are the novels good? I’m not interested in any of the tabletop stuff but I’d love to have a shitload of books to read.

The footprints of chargers and gas stations aren’t the same though. A lot of places I go have a row of 8-10 spots with chargers. No added footprint really, just installed at the front of the spot. Compare that to an 8-10 pump gas station, even without a convenience store. If you removed a gas station and replaced it with rows of spaces with chargers I think you’d get more cars through over a given period of time.

Malazan.

Most books, including the ten book series, are by Steven Erickson. There are several other books by Ian C. Esselmont. Read them in publication order regardless of author.

I didn’t mean to suggest 90s rap was one-dimensional but it does seem like there is more variety now. But I wasn’t in an environment where I could buy local/touring hip hop tapes out of the trunk of a car, where I was that sort of thing was mostly punk and metal, so I never experienced all there was to offer. Maybe what I perceive as an increase is just due to streaming services making discovery so much easier.

That’s an interesting point about the accessibility of digital tools. Without a completely new way to craft a sound nothing could sound all that different.

Although I do like “real” country music (sorry about the gatekeeping) “pop country”, Nashville pop, or whatever you want to call it, is the one genre of music I dislike the whole of. I guess it’s different from other country but it’s similar enough to generic pop I wouldn’t consider it new.

I do agree about rap/hip-hop though. The artists I listen to now are very different than what I listened to in the 90s and there is a much wider variety of style. I wonder how much of that is due to how easy it is to discover new artists now. Back in the 90s learning about underground rap artists, or underground anything, wasn’t easy.

Not Nirvana, wrong genre. But it wouldn’t be out of place on one of my metal stations, but I don’t have to wait for that because now I have a station based on them, thank you for that.

But Morbid Angel came up after a few songs (to be fair it was a more recent song) and that’s kind of my point. Stations based on a 90s band will get me recent stuff and vice versa. If I make a Who station, Elvis doesn’t come up. If I make a Joplin station, L7 doesn’t come up. You usually get a pretty narrow time frame for anything pre-90s, after that it’s anything goes.

That’s not to say Igorrr sounds exactly like anyone from 30 years ago, but it’s an evolution as opposed to a revolution.

Edit: several songs later I got NIN, Mr. Self Destruct, it doesn’t get much more 90s than that.

I like today’s music but it seems derivative. Maybe I’m full of shit, and feel free to tell me why, but it seems like music from my dad’s youth (which I also like) was way different than mine, but nothing has changed that much since then.

You could take today’s music and put it on a radio station in the 90s and it wouldn’t seem out of place if you didn’t know any better. I don’t think the same is true for 90s music on a 60s or 70s station.