I wrote/played an instrumental for my mom and she didn’t like it, despite it being high quality and well practiced. Not in a mean way or anything, I just don’t think it’s a good gift in retrospect and it wasn’t her thing. And if you generate it with AI, it might seem effortless/cheap on top of that.

Everyone is different, but I think people like having something in their hands, like a work of art, or a written letter, while a song is more abstract than that.

I personally use Lemmy for 2 things really, tech/foss/privacy news & discussion, and as a social media replacement (memes). When I used to be on the crappy socials, I would only really use them for memes, and left when I started to care more about privacy rights. The very first community I followed was 196 when they migrated away from reddit, so it was essentially what I came here for initially, and then found that the whole platform was miles better for discussion as well.

I love doing this in my TRPGs. Nine out of ten times an event was memorable was because of a horrible failure rather than a successful win. My table eats it up. I wish more games did this too

I’ve read through quite a few cookbooks and these are my favorites per use-case:

General Purpose: The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America
Culinary Basics: Basics with Babish by Andrew Rea
Food Science & Ingredients: On Food & Cooking by Harold McGee
Equipment: Gear by Alton Brown
Baking: Professional Baking by Wayne Gilssen
Flavor Combinations: The Flavor Matrix by Nik Sharma
Grilling: Arnie Tex by Arnie Segovia
Chinese: The Breath of a Wok by Grace Young
Indian: The Best Ever Indian Cookbook by Mridula Baljekar and others
Thai: Sabai by Pailin Chongchitnant
Vintage: The Settlemennt Cook Book
YouTuber Cookbook: Binging with Babish by Andrew Rea
Celebrity Cookbook: From Crook to Cook by Snoop Dogg (it actually has really good recipes believe it or not)

A lot of people are surprised that pizza places don’t use gloves, but the health depatment only requires them with ready to eat (RTE) foods, (think salads, fresh fruit, etc) or with already cooked products. Pizzas are usually cooked around 800°F (425°C) so any bacterial contaminants on the food before cooking are obliterated in the oven

Yesterday’s Muse is one of my favorite bookstores! I wasn’t in Rochester for too long but I got to stop by there. So cozy and they have a lot of stuff to look at. I specifically remember finding a biography about Teddy Roosevelt there, which was published in 1904 when he was president.

A lot of them are actually just re-purposed leather or pleather from jackets I find at swap meets and thrift stores. I also occasionally get scrap leather from my dads friend who owns a ranch

I bind my own books using fiberboard and leather, and wood glue has always worked for me. My oldest book is around 9 years old and it is still going strong

Same, 80% of my gaming was on older releases. The only game I played released in 2025 was an indie TD game called Dungeon Warfare III, mostly because I played and loved I and II.

Of course! If you cut it very thin it’s crunchy but not hard to chew through. A julienne cut (1/8in or 3mm) with a knife gets it to look pretty but shredding would work too taste-wise

I usually do avocado, carrot, and cucumber with a sprinkling of sesame seed. The avocado is soft while the others are crunchy and they offer a nice texture dinamic when balanced. They also have a nice fresh taste that compliments the sharpness of wasabi and the savory/salt of soy sauce

Vegetarian sushi comes to mind. Sometimes I even prefer it to sushi with fish when I’m in the mood; it’s crisp and refreshing when done right. If you use good quality nori and rice vinegar you’ll get that oceanic flavor you’re looking for without any fish.

I mainly get them from YouTube and their resppective websites. My favorites are:

Babish Culinary Universe (Everything)
Pailin’s Kitchen (Thai)
Sheldo’s Kitchen (Sotheast Asian)
Brian Lagerstrom (Baking and American)
Curries with Bumbi (Indian)
Hanbit Cho (Baking)

Second for Half Baked Harvest. I love how cozy the site looks and the recipes are great

My first instinct was to say no, but as I thought about it more it became more of a gray area. Comics use art and illustration to convey scene, and the only “reading” per se is dialogue and sometimes narration. Most novels lean more on description and imagination. But certain books/plays like Hamlet or The Iliad are also mostly dialogue/narration yet we consider those to be “reading”, essentially just without the art.

I’ve been a Steam only buyer for a long time. There are so many cool features and extra stuff, most games work out of the box, and they’ve been putting in a lot of effort on the linux scene with proton and the deck. But even despite all that, I’m starting to move to GOG. The sad truth is that you don’t own any of your games on Steam. I’ve been having more and more games be removed from my library, and games that either just don’t work or are “updated” into something worse. Not Steam’s fault really, but GOG is much more consumer friendly and I actually get files I can use and keep forever, no required updates or DRM. I really like Steam, and am having a hard time leaving it, but GOG is just the better choice from a long term and consumer ethics perspective.

Ironically, lots of food actually has wood in it. Any time you see “cellulose” or “cellulose powder” on the ingredient list it’s actually just wood pulp. It’s used as a thickening agent

Garbage plates sound horrible in theory but they are litterally so good. They hit hard after a night out or if you have the night munchies. I’m not sure if they’re popular elsewhere but they are a staple of upstate New York

Lol I was half asleep when I read that ngl

Fun fact, Ramen was originally Chinese, derived from a dish called la mian