Not a “song” per se, but Black Thought freestyling effortlessly for like 10 minutes straight is impressive AF: https://youtu.be/prmQgSpV3fA

For context, that show asks everybody to freestyle and some refuse, some do a few bars, but nobody goes for 10 minutes, lol.

For an actual song, and you wanna talk art, Blackalicious - Attica Black. Really love the sampling and the musicality of it, there are so many layers and it’s fun to listen to. https://youtu.be/qHRxorG8ABs

I think others have covered the economies of scale and niche products creating the disparity.

But I wanted to suggest that if your grandpa is regularly eating gluten free bread, we have found that making it at home is SO much more affordable than buying a loaf at the store. (Even though gluten free flour is also more expensive.) Most of the gluten free flours have their own sandwich bread recipe, either on the bag or their website. I don’t know what flours you have access to, but they can be wildly different blends, so using their tested recipes is always best.

We’ve mastered our favorite so it takes only 15 minutes of “work” and then just time in the oven. It’s also much better than store bought! I don’t know if that’s possible for you, but it could be a lovely weekly ritual for you and your grandpa.

Also, to anyone suggesting we just eat rice and beans, I’m an old celiac. We went without bread, pasta, cake, pastries, cookies, brownies, pizza, and crackers before these products came to market. These are mostly “fun” foods that I don’t eat regularly, but usually pop up in social situations. Do you know how many sad birthdays with no cake we’ve had? How often we’ve watched our friends and family eat things we could never have? I am so grateful to the “fad” gluten free people who made it possible to have culturally/socially important foods we were missing out on for decades!!

Oh yes, ours is a chair thief too! Little stinkers.

Our 15 year old has a new habit of coming into the kitchen every time we do, and stretching out directly in the middle of the walkway so he is in the way at all times. We have a pretty decent sized space, but he’s a very long cat when he wants to be. I feel like he defies the laws of physics because I don’t understand how he’s in the way literally everywhere. It makes me crazy.

So when we cook, which is usually 2-3 times a day, it’s like, need to open the oven? Cat. Need to get into the fridge? Cat! Sink? Cat. Oh, I need to dry my hands? Cat. We have definitely stepped on him by accident since he started doing this, but he’s still undeterred. He has bad arthritis, so I don’t mind when he sits in front of the oven when it’s on, because at least that one makes sense. (He has multiple heated beds too; don’t feel bad for him.) But it’s like, I would love to be able to grab water from the kitchen or feed the dog or do literally anything in there without almost stepping on my cat.

One of the most intense and fun punk shows I have ever been to - surprised the walls stayed standing!

Literally me thinking of your top 3 also…I guess we have to be friends now. Good picks!!

Actually, I lied, Strike Anywhere is my 5th pick

Discount

Misfits

Flogging Molly

Bikini Kill

Clash or Rancid… I can’t decide!

Ugh yes, nailed it!

Thank you for posting, I never really pursued this but just downloaded Airalo for an upcoming trip and I’m really excited to not pay $10/day with my carrier!!!

An Assassins Creed game as rich as Odyssey, but set in the Mali empire. Hanging with Mansa Musa? Visiting scholars at Timbuktu? Desert frontier towns, gigantic markets within cities, and everything in between? That period of history is so fascinating and it would be incredible to have the art budget to bring it to life.

No, I’m not referencing my original comment. I meant I drafted a detailed response to the water/arable land/invasives complaint about the entire cut flower industry, and all the orgs/lobbying efforts re: farmland and ag policy we are working on to change it, but deleted it.

I wrote out a long comment, but there are loads of people trying to change this industry for the better. 78% of all flowers in the US are imported and it’s a huge problem. I hope you’re able to always buy locally grown flowers from small farms like we do. (Many of whom also grow vegetables.) In our area, housing developers buying up arable farmland are the biggest challenge to small scale farms.

It’s fine to not read a whole comment, but there is still plenty of demand from people with money. Can you tell me more about why you believe the wedding industry is predatory?

Your resident lemmy wedding florist checking in!

Cheers to all of you who are excited about the deaths of small businesses just because you…don’t like the way other people get married, lol? Do you think artists should be paid, or not?

I, too, got married when I was a broke grad student and couldn’t afford the wedding I wanted. We didn’t go in debt for it! In big cities, there are a lot more wealthy people than y’all realize who are happy to pay people like me to make art. Business is down but still fine for us.

Anyway, what most people don’t realize is that certain wedding vendors have super low overhead costs, so they are mostly paying for labor. Your DJs, wedding planners, and photographers can afford to charge $3k/wedding and still pay themselves. Meanwhile, florists are spending $1-4k at wholesale for a typical wedding, before we even touch your flowers or get any pay for our time. I think we probably have the highest COGs outside of venues. Catering, cakes, and to some extent rental companies are all in the same boat - we have to pay a lot to provide you with the physical goods we show up with, and we don’t make much.

I know everyone on Reddit and probably Lemmy thinks every wedding vendor is fleecing couples at all times. Or that the price goes up because “wedding.” It doesn’t. The price is what it is because it takes a LOT of labor and materials to create an entire event from scratch. And because it’s seasonal/weird hour/weekend work, we have to pay our freelance teams really well to keep them coming back. (You think I can afford a salaried team year round?? Lol no.) I can’t think of a single colleague who inflates pricing between weddings vs. other kinds of events.

I only do $10k+ weddings, and you probably think I’m raking it in. But 75-80% of the cost of every wedding I do goes to someone else - paying my team $35/hr, paying local flower farmers fair wages for their products, buying vases or supplies, my web hosting and professional fees, insurance, etc. I still only take home A QUARTER of what my spouse does in a good year. We live in an expensive city, and I could make a lot more money doing something else, but I love what I do.

I hope this helps y’all understand at least the wedding floral business a bit better. We aren’t getting rich off weddings, there is no wedding tax, and wholesale flowers are expensive AF before we do anything with them. I can’t speak for all vendors, maybe there are unscrupulous ones out there, but most are just small businesses trying to do something we love for a living. And I don’t really understand the online hate when people are in my inbox every day asking me about their wedding date.

Our cat will follow us around the house, screaming, until we either sit with him in our lap (human heating pad) or put him in his heated bed but remain near (human security blanket). He’s a sweet cat and has arthritis, so I get it. But sometimes we gotta make dinner, bro.

Our dog will constantly and shamelessly be nearby when food is present, whether we are cooking, eating, feeding the cat, doesn’t matter. His previous owner gave him human food all the time. He completely deflates when you tell him to go lie down. When we cook, we just let him be in the way, next to the screaming cat 🤷‍♀️

This headline is bogus; the comparison to Brexit makes no sense here. Brexit was voted on in a democratic process (for better or worse), but all of these countries currently have junta governments that were not elected, and were suspended by ECOWAS because of it. Now they are unilaterally “choosing” to leave ECOWAS, but truthfully, ECOWAS considers them illegitimate and has considered military action (though done very little). It will be interesting to see if the threat of leaving finally prompts some collective action or not.

No, because he’s repeatedly said that he has no desire to do it, and that it’s a total indictment of our system that we are looking to a comedian for political leadership, lol. (He’s not wrong!)

Haha, “Happy HONK” does mean something to some of us! Totally plausible that she’s already in a HONK band…

https://honkfest.org/ https://honkfestwest.org/

Cardboard boxes, paper bags, and sheets of paper are all better than anything I could buy my cat, haha. But all cats are different! He also loves to hunt birds (part of why he’s indoor only) so bird toys with birdsong were his favorites for years. I’d recommend not spending a lot until you “learn” your cat! And also, if you’re getting a kitten or a youngish kitty, they will be way more playful and like anything you throw at them!