And why not fix whatever is keeping trees from growing, and then grow trees

I woild guess because that would require you to completely tear up the bitumen and anything underneath it like pipes and wires in order to make room for the roots. Trees are pretty big things y'know and it's not just what's above the surface that matters. You could put a tank like this in say, a train station platform that's raised well above the ground or on a building

Also a tub of algae isn't going to become a health hazard if it gets sick or infested and won't take decades to establish itself

A great Australian one that doesn't involve spiders or cunts is "tell 'im he's dreamin'", usually said in a real broad accent (you can change the pronouns around what more matters is the way you say it). Usually used whenever someone's asking too much money for something but can also be used for when someone's asking for too much in general and basically means "are you fucking kidding me that's way too expensive". It's from a great movie called The Castle. It also gave us the saying "[this is going] straight to the pool room" meaning "shit this is really nice thanks" (because the pool room is where you put your trophies and whatnot) but I think that's a little less common.

On the other side of the globe, Norway uses "Texas" to mean "crazy weird shit". There's also "kamelåså" which generally means "unintelligible (like a Danish person)" which is from this great comedy sketch about Denmark that's so good NRK decided they had to translate it into English just so people could make fun of Danish internationally (The untranslated bits are just danish sounding gibberish)

...in what world does Greek yoghurt taste like sour cream? Completely different taste, texture, and purpose

Bloody GM's fault for killing Holden and taking away our beautiful utes

...yes? The spotlight/quick search tool is stupid useful. Everything is just a quick alt-space and a type away

I've been using Synapse on Linux for years and Windows powertoys is way better than this nonsense (which is super confusing because that's also an official Microsoft programme. Why do they have a superior version of their search that you have to seperately download?)

Wireless electricty is a thing, as demonstrated by Faraday through his laws of induction, first discovered in 1832, 60 years before Tesla came onto the scene. Wireless electricty as you know it is mainly just fancy induction.

I'm talking about Tesla's batshit crazy plan to make wireless electricty by just, sticking electrodes into the ground and/or sky and pumping enough voltage into it so they arced because he thought the earth could be used to conduct electricity. Wardenclyfe tower failed not because of Edison, but because Tesla was an idiot who thought the luminferuous aether was real and electrons were made up.

Also please, do you know how stupidly inefficient a Tesla coil is? The most common use of resonat inductive coupling is like, RFID chips, not large scale power transfer like Tesla wanted

Niche hobby website from the 90s that's both really useful and still updated (somewhat) - the Parker pen penography. Look at all those pens! Genuinely the most useful source of info on the topic of old Parkers that isn't a big hefty coffee table book. Most of it probably isn't too interesting to non-fountain pen people, but there's some articles about the history of Parker and their decline that might be interesting if you like economics and buisness (like the one about the Itala

Maybe we should step away from China for a moment given their government has a very strong motivation to keep tabs on its citizens and the fact their very mention is biasing the conversation and look at another country which has a strong smartphone presence and I often see posted on here as an example of privacy - Norway

We're effectively cashless (I don't think I've even handled cash since they swapped the banknotes over) and I think most people do their banking from bills to petty transfers on their phone. You can't get a physical bus card, because that's on your phone, or the ticket is attached to your bank card. We don't have an all encompassing WeChat or even like, any homegrown social media. I'm not exactly sure which aspect of WeChat you're honing in on so I can't say Norway does that too, but we do an awful lot via our phones. I do have some gripes about how some things are set up, but they're complaints that aren't actually exclusive to this specific system.

I've just realised that most people kinda just add the beans in direct which isn't what I meant. Whoops - yeah nah I turn them into refried beans and add them in. Directly throwing in black beans never seems to work in my opinion. Also a big fan of just like, making a really big aloo Tika (an Indian potato cake) and using it as a burger. They're really good and the burger king where I live used to actually sell them as their main veggie option before BM muscled all the decent veggie options out. Falafel burgers are also really good, but alas they're kinda a lot of work because of all the soaking and deep frying.

My holy grail of veggie burgers is this one spinach burger I had all the time as a kid because they always had leftovers of them at school sausage sizzles and I'd get the extras for free. It was probably some deep freeze bulk thing but goddamnit one day I'll make a spinach burger that doesn't taste like some sort of goddawful diet thing.

Also honestly in general fake meat in general just does not do it for me. I'd rather eat a dish that's veggie and works with that to make something different and good instead of trying to make a subpar copy.

although I couldn't get it to accept whale.

Seriously? I get this is a New Zealand site but like, whale is a normal meat in some places, way more normal than like fugu or something. I could go right now to the local grocery store and pick up a whale steak if I wanted to. It'd be cheaper than a normal beef steak too. Why would they blacklist a meat that's actually eaten in some places?

Anyways the best way to eat whale is to treat it like a tuna steak - little bit of oil and pepper and barely cook it on each side. Traditionally though you like turn it into stroganoff.

Quick update - it won't accept whale but it will accept hval (whale in Norwegian) so enjoy this..."Recipe"

What's wrong with squids :(

It's a trend that's popping up in quite a few places - it also happens in 3d printing. Some of the biggest companies out there still do kickstarters for their more risky products under the guise of "trying to figure out demand"

Creality you're like the name in entry level 3d printers and people have been clamouring for you to release a new product for years. I'm pretty damn sure you can afford to take a risk on a concept that people have been wanting for years.