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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • From Almeirim in Portugal, there’s “sopa da pedra”, translates to “soup of the rock”. It has several kinds of meat, beans, potato, and it’s usually eaten with bread (some say even a specific local bread type, but I’m not picky on that). It used to come with a stone in it traditionally, but for higiene reasons restaurants are not allowed to anymore. Some people at home still do it, I believe.

    With it there is an old tale:

    There was once a poor friar that was traveling. Once it came time to rest, he knocked on someone’s door and asked for their hospitality in exchange for a soup. His hosts let him in and they see the friar pulling an old smooth stone from his pocket and putting it in a pot, along with water.

    “Some seasoning would make this soup better… Do you happen to have any chouriço?” [best translation I’ve got is “meat”, or maybe “sausage”] asks the friar. And so his hosts find him some chouriço that they throw in the pan.

    “It’s looking great! Now this soup would really improve if we could thicken it up a little. Do you happen to have some potatoes or beans leftover from yesterday?” And some potatoes and beans have indeed been leftover from yesterday. The friar adds it to the soup.

    The friar asks for a few more spices, olive oil, and soon there is a delicious smell coming from the pot. What a nice soup!

    They eat and once the soup is finished the friar fishes out the stone, washes it and puts it back in his pocket. Tomorrow he’ll knock on someone else’s door along the way ;)


  • I see a lot of people here advocating for peeking over the shoulder, but to me that is insane. The only times I peek over my shoulder is if the car is not moving or going really slowly.

    I’m not taking my eyes off the road for long enough to look over my shoulder. How fast are you guys moving your neck? A slight tweak of the steering wheel can veer you of course in the time it takes to look over your shoulder.

    In the motorway I peek at the mirrors frequently to have a general awareness of the cars around me and where they are. If it’s day I have a general idea of the color and build of the most relevant cars to me, so I can know if a car is suddenly missing (probably in my blind spot), I should wait a bit for it come into my vision again (though the front or the mirrors)

    When I decide to change lanes I look at all the mirrors and assess if it’s safe and if I’m aware of all the cars around me. Then I signal my lane change, wait a second, check the mirrors again, and start to change lanes gradually and predictably, to give any other driver that sees a dangerous situation plenty of time and space to react or signal to me in any way that the lane change is not safe.

    To me this is the safest way to go about it. Newer cars have extra sensors to check the blind spot for you, which is great and gives you another degree of certainty, but I drove like this before I had a car that had this feature.






  • We were in slow traffic and a car is trying to leave a parking lot. We give the other car some space to merge in, and they take it, but for the opposite way (passed us and entered going the opposite way we were going). It was a big infraction of the road rules. Right behind the guy was a cop car, I still remember his face, like “did I really just see this right in front of me?”. The cop turned on the lights and followed the rule breaker, we were laughing our asses off inside the car. The whole thing felt scripted out of a comedy schetch of something.

    A less fun one was during the first lockout of the pandemic, I was standing at the window seeing a cop car slowly going by outside with big loudspeakers: “Stay at home. If you show simptoms of cough of fever call XXX. Stay at home. Mask use in public spaces is mandatory” Felt like the start sequence of a post apocaliptic movie or something.



  • “There are idiots/assholes everywhere”, no direct translation for the word I want in English.

    I don’t mean it in a mean way, just that idiots/assholes can be from any group of people. Two examples:

    Don’t assume a doctor knows everything just because they’re a doctor. Some doctors are idiots/assholes, they might be wrong. Get a second opinion if something they said sound iffy.

    When hearing people generalize from one individual’s behavior (like racism): this one is an idiot/asshole, they are everywhere, including in this group and all other groups too.





  • I don’t think that’s exactly true. As a woman I’ve had situations where I was questioned even when I knew exactly what I was talking about just because it was a traditionally male activity.

    Yes, I know what type of battery I want for my car. Yes, I know it’s uncommon, I checked if you had it in your website before I came here. Yes, I know how to install it and I don’t want to pay you to do it. Shut up and take my money so I can leave.

    I have several stories like this. In home renovation stores men that work there are always super opinionated on the problem that I’m trying to solve. I’m just looking for the supplies I want, I didn’t ask for opinions.

    It doesn’t help that I’m small and look young, but still they should mind their own business.