I get that. But if you like the food but want your disdain for AI known, voting with your feet could be done either way. These companies keep a close eye, and will notice if it’s driving customers to the walk-up counter. Along with the errors, it could induce them to switch back. I don’t care about Wendy’s or any fast food personally, but you expressed regret.

Thru was a legit spelling of thurh before through came along, and although it’s now considered informal, it’s commonly used on road signs because it’s compact, and “drive-thru” is considered a legitimate use. Doesn’t confuse meaning or pronunciation, either.

Now, the “greengrocer’s apostrophe” being used for a plural is a perfectly reasonable gripe. Can easily confuse meaning, and wasteful of a space/character!

For the moment, you do still have the option of parking and walking in to order and get your food from a person.

But a human would have realized bacon on ice cream or thousands of chicken nuggets needed “Are you sure you meant what I think I just heard?” as a response rather than “Excellent order! Pull up to the next window!”

If it’s always the same microwave, could you keep a glass bowl or pyrex measure there?

Given that cops on TV routinely use them for DNA, you’re absolutely right.

Something feels wrong about this picture, that facial expression without airplane ears

Winner takes on Nanny McPhee

PSA: Don’t buy a little-dog collar if your pet is a cat. Cats, even indoor ones, need a breakaway clasp on their collar in case it gets caught on something when they’re mid-leap. Indoor cats may not need a collar at all, but mine wears a bell so she’s less likely to get kicked/stepped on/rolled on, she’s too ninja for her own good. And my cell# is written on it just in case.

Poor thing! You go make a lap for that baby on the sofa right now!

In Jesus’s parable it’s the Good Samaritan who helps out the Jewish man who’s been beaten and robbed and left for dead, after two supposedly-pious Jews walk on by. So where they weren’t even willing to help their “neighbor,” the Samaritan helps his “enemy.”

I suppose a nitpicking Evangelical could claim it only means they should have helped the person of their own religion, and that particular Samaritan was “one of the good ones” like the few people who are useful to you and semi-exempt from your general racism. They’d be wrong, of course.

The Catholic Church and several of the mainline Christian denominations (Episcopal, UCC, Presbyterian, plus Unitarian which isn’t 100% Christian) have been helpful to immigrants, including undocumented people, in these trying times. Not to say they don’t have their own problems, in history and the present.

Grow one so big you could live in a pumpkin shell like Peter the Pumpkin Eater’s wife!

Herb S. Deprovence

The S is for Sexy

True, you have to know what you’re doing in order to improve rather than ruin.

Diet cream usually won’t work in cooking because it will curdle when real cream won’t.

Try rubbing your big ol’ russet potato with a little oil and seasoned salt before baking it next time. Little potatoes like this treatment too, no parboiling needed. When finished, add your butter/sour cream/chives/cheese/bacon as you usually prefer. Because they’re still baked potatoes, just with crackly delicious skin and slightly less dry center.

You can “sun-dry” (in real sun or a dryer) cherry tomatoes (and oil them if that’s the kind of sundried ones you need)

I love them on sandwiches, you can place the halves to fit the shape of the bread. And you’re going to cut those caprese slices to fit in your mouth anyway. Use smaller basil leaves and cheese pieces with cherry-tomato halves, it would be very pretty. Or just make “Roman Salad,” with whole ones, bocconcini, pesto and extra chopped basil. Delicious!

(I have cherry tomatoes growing vigorously in a pot on my balcony, just from poking a ripe one into the dirt and watering.)

Apis mellifera isn’t native to the Americas and neither are a lot of the plants they pollinate. They crowd out the native bees and destroy their habitat. Small-scale beekeepers working in populated spaces aren’t the problem though. And they rescue swarms that would otherwise be exterminated. Plus they’re more likely than the average person to know about their local natives and support them, by making carpenter bee homes or whatever.

Can mine be mocha?