This is the bread I've made several times recently

[conuly]

It makes a good French toast or grilled cheese. As noted, if you do the baking part in a bread machine, it may eat the bread machine. All of us commenters may just need a machine with a bigger capacity. I can't do the "mix in machine, bake in oven" bit until I find my manual and figure out how to do the custom settings properly.

Still, it's delicious.

************

The Great Light Bulb Conspiracy

Crocodiles in Ancient Egypt

Right to Roam: In Scotland, Hikers Can Go Anywhere

Every Country’s Most Famous Mythical Creature, All In One Map

An Infinite Universe of Number Systems

Exponential growth (I wonder if this will make more sense in explaining how covid can go from "not a problem" to "godzilla" to people than my go-to of the huge lake with a small invasive plant that doubles in size daily....)

The World Needs Nuclear Power, And We Shouldn’t Be Afraid Of It

Wild Predators Are Relying More on Our Food—and Pets

When falling behind on rent leads to jail time

Long-term unemployment spikes for millions of Americans. Aid that’s kept them afloat may end soon

Trump fights in court to block pandemic food aid for lowest-income Americans (He's fighting against an extremely effective - and inexpensive! - economic stimulus.)

“It’s the Most Outrageous Thing I’ve Ever Seen. It Makes No Sense.”

The Worst Virus Outbreaks in the U.S. Are Now in Rural Areas

The Unique Problems Facing Native American Youths in the Criminal Justice System (A preteen who gets so drunk he needs his stomach pumped should not be treated as a criminal to begin with.)

Conflict in the Caucasus: when the soldiers are younger than the war they are fighting

How Syria's disinformation wars destroyed the co-founder of the White Helmets

Comments

[marahmarie]

*wants French bread, or Italian bread, or any kind of crusty white bread so bad*

No bread machine here (haven't had one since the early 90s). Hmmmm.

[conuly]

Well, it should be easy enough to adapt to non-machine baking, assuming your oven works.

[marahmarie]

It does! It's not calibrated exactly right so I always have to set the heat up to 5 degrees higher than a recipe might call for, but it's close enough to get the thing done (OP bakes bread all the time. He just doesn't do the long, thin crusty stuff which I'm now craving like mad.)

[marahmarie]

Oh no, things are happening again "exponentially" *ducks*

This and fractions *brain explodes*

But heh, I'll visit the link and give it a shot - hope springs eternal! (I can move decimals around and do percentages in my head fairly well, so go figure. I know the reason for fractions hanging me up: I hated the third grade teacher who taught me them so couldn't catch on because I was too distracted, making it one of the few math hangups I've never been able to work my way around.)

And yeah, every $1 spent on food via food stamps produces $1.50 in economic activity if I recall what the article said correctly (read it yesterday) so the program actually pays for itself, and then some.

[conuly]

Last I checked it was actually something like $1.75 in economic activity, so even better. Honestly, there's no need for certain parties to be such dicks about SNAP. (Also, they can stfu about "spending other people's money". An American taxpayer pulling in about $50k a year will pay out about $36 to SNAP. Sometimes I feel like saying "Here's two $20s, keep the change, ya assholes, call it a refund".)

[marahmarie]

Yeah, I'd pay them $40 in exchange for that benefit, whether I was receiving it or not. Seems like a fair enough trade to me as it benefits and can protect all of us.

[conuly]

As far as fractions go, does it help to remember that the fraction line is just a shorthand way of saying "division"?

[marahmarie]

No.

I know that say, 1/3 is one third, or 33%. I know how to read a fraction, more or less? It's that I can't add, subtract, multiply or divide them (more precisely, I can't perform operations on them).

I don't know why. But something in my head just goes "blerp". If I complete any attempt it's almost always...wrong.

[conuly]

Fractions is where a lot of Americans get hung up on arithmetic... but often, they don't realize that the problems started before that, when their early arithmetic education focused on memorization rather than conceptual understanding.

Which is to say, your third grade teacher probably wasn't a help, but if I had to guess I'd say that the problem probably started back in kindy or first grade, when you were encouraged to learn the algorithm without using your fingers.

[marahmarie]

If I recall correctly she thought I couldn't do math, then I had a freshman year teacher tell me the same thing, though he was a misogynist SOB so he was like "Because women can't do math, period". Sure enough, I could barely add or subtract by the time I was through with him. I've recovered nicely from that demolition, all things considered.

As far as my actual performance, in all truth ymmv. I'm great at some forms of math and totally WHUT on others. Good teaching or refreshers seem to bring me up to speed quickly, bad or discouraging or uh, patronizing teaching, especially, does the opposite.

[greghousesgf]

Looooooove the mythical creatures map!
and I bet your bread was yummy.

[conuly]

SO GOOD.