Aight, a few suggestions so you can have something approaching a decent cup.

Assuming you’re stuck with bags, which isn’t the best tea, how you heat the water only matters a little and you can get a fairly similar state with a microwave.

Nuke the water twice. It’s going to vary depending on the microwave, obviously, but this the low powered stuff in most hotel rooms, go with 1:30 twice. The water should be just under boiling after the second zap. Stir in between, then stir before dunking bags. This also assumes a “coffee mug” sized vessel, which is usually about 8oz (y’all brits still use those liquid measures? I’m not sure, but I can calculate the CCs if you don’t have access to an app for that). If the cups are smaller, maybe do two one-minute zaps and check the temp.

Now, if you’ve got loose tea and your own steeper, it’s about the same, but you can go a little hotter (more hot? My brain can’t parse the right grammar) since the steeper will suck up some of the heat, and do so quickly.

Tbh though, the difference in nuked tea and more properly steeped is likely moot if you’re using the bags the hotel provides. Most of those are utter crap even by US hot tea standards.

That’s also assuming the front desk doesn’t have kettles. They aren’t usually in rooms, but some places do have them available on request, particularly in cities, and even moreso in cities they have a lot of European/British visitors.

You’ll likely need to warm the cuppa

As others have said, it isn’t dead, but don’t expect any future support or updates.

You hear about the dwarf psychic that escaped prison?

He’s a small medium at large

In all reality, someone I used to know dying under suspicious circumstances. I’ve known a few people over the years that, if they got murdered, there’s a non zero chance that someone around at the time might consider me a suspect.

Like, some people are just that fucking batshit that you have to cut ties in a very blunt, direct, and unmistakable way. When that happens, it tends to linger in memory longer than just a casual argument or whatever.

And I’ve run into a handful or so of people that I had to very definitively inform that they should not darken my life again. So, yeah, if one of those turned up dead in a ditch, I might get a knock on the door despite never thinking about them until s question like this comes up

Ahhhh, iirc, it’s one he built himself.

It’s actually come up in comics before, more than once if my mind isn’t playing tricks.

I don’t doubt that he would have at least taken lessons from open source type projects if Linux doesn’t directly exist in the comic universe.

No worries :)

That is a very confusing set of criteria. You want someone like two specific artists in the title, then name two specific bands/artists in the text that are radically different from those in the title (not to mention each other tbh)

That being said, you might like Norah Jones. Haim has a similar vibe to Merton, though I’m not sure either is specifically “romantic” overall.

There’s Sade for another smooth soul voice.

Toni Braxton might scratch an Adele-ish itch. At least her early stuff.

Kinda spitballing here. But there wouldn’t be an Adele without Aretha, Nina Simone, and Etta James. I would even argue that those three are the greatest voices in soul, and rank high with any genre open to comparison. Shit, even if you don’t like them, you gotta listen to some of their stuff (assuming you haven’t) just to understand the foundation of soul. Yeah, there are men that could have their own top three like that, but op specified female singers by their examples. (Shout out to Barry White and Marvin Gaye in particular)

Ooh! Joss Stone! Gotta give her a listen. Not as smooth as some of the queens listed above, but just as much depth.

Corinne Bailey Rae is worth it too.

A bit less well known, but Allison Young does a solid retro-jazz style that’s not quite in the same zone, but her voice is so good you should try her out anyway.

I dunno, my brain has hit a wall trying to circle back into Motown, which is n amazing musical destination to hit, but not quite the same vibe as Adele brings, but informed the underpinnings of a lot of later singers. Diana Ross alone could take the crown in that regard. But Motown covers a wide range of styles, which makes it a great music era/genre/whatever-you-wanna-call-it to dive into when looking for romantic music.

Baldur’s gate 3, tiny Tina’s wonderlands, ff7, annnnd I’m not sure. The fourth and fifth slots are harder.

I would say pacman, but even if you gave me the arcade game for free, I don’t think I could play it worth a damn now. Same with centipede (they were my favorites back in the day, but pacman I was good at).

The original Mario Kart could be in there. And I can’t pretend that need for speed carbon couldn’t compete for a spot either. I think I’d take Kart over Carbon though.

Yeah, fuck it, pacman and Mario kart. Those are the last two spots.

No! Wait!

Neverwinter, the mmorpg. Fuck mariokart, I’d take that one, assuming I could either have ai teammates that didn’t suck, or could just keep a server for it running without cost/effort. Loved that game. Technically still love it, but when I stopped playing for a while, I got power crept and didn’t want to play ptw style like it turned into. But my haste cleric? Fuck yeah!

I think the app ecosystem of Smart Cats is good enough to make up for the loss in simplicity from Stupid Cats

One problem

Batteries.

I’ve used old devices as many things: security cameras, a form of intercom, digital picture frames, etc. The real problem is that the batteries eventually go bad, and become dangerous.

For the few devices that have realistically replaceable batteries, that’s no big deal, but how many of those are left now?

No thanks to the potential fire, I’ll pass. The few devices I have left that I can swap batteries out are becoming harder to find new batteries for as well, so that’s an issue beyond their anemic hardware (I’m talking really old tablets at this point)

Oh boy! Dogging in the park at night! Can’t wait to get into some of that!

Yeah, if you ever run across the theories of how dogs became so close to us, it started with wolves being willing to take the risks of scavenging near us, and eventually co-evolving (until selective breeding started).

Actively, intentionally domesticating a species is a slow process overall, and it wasn’t something that I’ve seen any specialists suggest would have been the case with dogs, or cats.

You assume it’s a one-way street.

Humans having a proclivity towards “cute” animals is as much an evolved trait as animals becoming “cuter” to better adapt to presence.

Hell, for that matter, it isn’t just us that have a proclivity towards “cuteness”. It exists in plenty of species, we just tend to be the ones most prone to it outside of very similar species.

It is absolutely evolution because it isn’t selective.

Y’all ain’t never heard a southren feller afore?

🎶Immanuel Kant was a real pissant, who was very rarely stable 🎶

My thing is that if I’m outside relaxing, I want the birds and bugs and wind. If I can’t have those, headphones aren’t an acceptable replacement, so I’ll fuck off back inside.

If I’m outside as in going about town, I don’t want my hearing compromised. It’s a fate safety issue. Even bone conduction gear is a distraction that I’m not okay with. Like, it isn’t even about being hit by a car or whatever, it could be something as simple as a shopping cart that’s loose banging into me. My crippled ass would be in the floor.

My brain is enough stimulation for me. If I’m out in the world, my brain is going to be going a mile a minute scoping everything out. Doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been in a given location.

It’s already an ER spin-off

I prefer car hole too, but don’t tell me wife.

That’s true, but I would argue that the player owned definition of it came so quickly on the heels of the typo that both could count as valid, with the caveat that the first usage being a typo would have to be considered a mistake, rather than the coining of the slang term itself.

Which is stretching things a bit, but still fun to think about.

It’s pronounced pwned, as all right thinking people know