A few years ago, I went to a cafe for breakfast, quite regularly. One morning I decided to try their cooked breakfast, quite similar to a Full English. I’m not a fan of sausages, especially cheap ones, so I didn’t think anything of it when I didn’t like the taste.

Over the rest of the day and the next morning, I ate a few different meals, but nothing unusual for me. By about lunch time I was feeling very rough. I was hot and sweaty, and needed the bathroom more often than usual. Now, I have a chronic illness, and between that and the meds, I get upset stomachs fairly often, to the point where I know if it’s serious or not just from experience.

I was starting to feel weak and dizzy, so I knew that it wasn’t normal, and then liquid fire started coming out of both ends. Luckily, my wife was home, and realised that I wasn’t joking about this time being worse, and called my doctor. I ended up in hospital for several days with severe food poisoning, and had to have IV fluids.

Environmental Health were called and quizzed me about everything I’d eaten in the last week, and agreed that it was probably the sausage on my breakfast. They investigated the café, but found no serious problems. Luckily, it looked like whatever was wrong with the sausage only affected me because of my health issues, and didn’t seriously affect anyone else.

I haven’t been back to that café though, just in case.

Mid 90s is 94 to 96, not most of the decade. Most people don’t start reading as soon as they’re born, they usually wait a few years ;)

As I already said though I knew a few people who were in their teens in the mid 90s who were using computers to learn to read. They were my age, and are in their mid 40s now.

I can’t speak for anywhere else, but in my little corner of Wales, we didn’t have computers in junior school (the school we attended until we were 11), and there were no computers in our classrooms in the comprehensive school (11 to 15 or 18, depending on whether you did your A levels). There was a computer class, and a handful of computers in the school library. The kids who were missed by the teachers and who were found to not be able to read were given extra lessons to learn.

I doubt that OP was in a situation like that, but it’s not overly unlikely.

1994 was 30 years ago. They’re likely to be in their mid 30s to mid 40s, depending on why they used the computer.

In my school the kids who had trouble reading in their teens had additional lessons on the computer to help their reading, and the rest of us had occasional reading lessons on the computer when we were about ten years younger. This was the 80s and 90s in the UK

Same result for me in the UK

This sounds similar to how it works for me too. I closed my eyes to try this.

I saw a very rough version of the table that’s in the room with me. The table is a low rectangular coffee table with a coarsely threaded grey throw over it going lengthways, but I saw it as a rectangular shape with a vague grey top. The ball was featureless with no colour, and was about the size of my fist, so an adult man’s fist.

I saw a low quality arm push the ball, but I really struggled to picture it, and while I knew what would happen in real life, I couldn’t picture it happening in my head.

It’s strange, as sometimes I can picture things fairly well, but other times I can’t do it at all. I have very vivid dreams on the occasions that I remember dreaming, but I can’t close my eyes and picture my family. I know what they should look like, in the same way that I know what a rotating cow should look like, but I very rarely get any sort of mental image of them.

Ironically, I was in a coma a bit over a decade ago, and while I was in it, the dreams that I had were so realistic that it took me months to get things straight in my head.

Either that, or the page says that it’s been updated in the last month, but the content is about how to connect to the World Wide Web ‘(WWW)’ with a free AOL floppy disc

It was an air fryer for me.

I’m disabled, so I’m usually home alone, or cooking one meal for me and my kid. The oven takes about 10 minutes to preheat, and most things take 20 - 30 minutes to cook after that. The air fryer takes about half the time and doesn’t need me to turn things.

On top of that, I get memory issues, probably related to ADHD, and sometimes forget that I’ve got something cooking. The air fryer has a timer and switches itself off. I literally can’t burn the food and risk a fire. At worst it goes cold again 🤷🏻‍♂️

It’s an Epson Stylus, 235w I think. I’m not home to check at the moment. It’s not amazing, but it scans at up to either 1200 or 2400 dpi, and I usually use 600 dpi, as that’s more than enough for the typically low quality photos I’ve got.

I’m sticking with it on Windows for now too, as the software can do some corrections with one click, like certain colour corrections. I’ve tried a few Linux packages, and while they’re good, they’re all missing something compared to the Epson Windows software.

I use Onedrive for storing files offsite, and a Synology NAS for onsite. I’ve got my PC as the main source of my files, and use Syncthing to sync to my laptop and NAS, and Onedrive syncing the PC and NAS to the cloud.

I know Onedrive isn’t always popular here, but it does everything I need, and is cheap. It also lets me access my files from my phone

This is why I’m scanning in all my old physical photos. It’s great to go through the originals, but if anything was to happen, they’d be gone forever.

I need something like a pressure only on the left side of my sternum on just two ribs.

Could you fold over some gauze and bandage it in place as a temporary fix? The bandage could be wrapped around your body to spread the pressure on the opposite side.

It wouldn’t be a permanent fix, but could help you to fine tune where you need the pressure without having to design anything, and would hopefully provide some relief while you work on something better.

‘It’s got solid bones, but the inside’s a mess’

Uncle Benned, or Obi Wan Kenobi Benned? 🤔

I think I sat next to him on the bus once

I can’t decide if that would be too sweet with the apple sauce base. That might have to be an experiment :)

That’s a good point. I haven’t cooked anything with apple that could go soggy for years, so I hadn’t thought of that. Pulled pork and apple pizza is sounding nice though :)

Why is apple a bad idea? Apple with pork and cheese is delicious :)

I wonder how much something like that would answer the why too. As an example, if a person threw something across a room and broke it without an obvious reason, could you look at a complete record of their history, and the history of the people around them, and figure out the reason. Would you be able to see signs of anger building through the day and look back to the root cause?

I read an Arthur C Clarke book a few years ago, and it was based around a device that could see anything, anywhere, some sort of microscopic portal I think. One of the characters used it to look back in time following someone’s DNA, so seeing their mother, then their mother’s mother and so on, and eventually saw the intelligence disappear from the distant ancestors eyes. I’m wording it badly, but the idea stuck with me.

I’d love to know when that first spark of intelligence showed up, that separated us from animals, and what our ancestors either side of that divide did differently and similarly. I doubt that there would have been any significant differences at first, but those subtle differences could be fascinating :)

I have nothing to add but Cartman

(((>.<)))