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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • Since OP didn’t bother, I went looking for the recipe

    Ingredients Yield: 24 squares (one 9-by-13-inch pan)

    • ¾ cup (170 grams) unsalted butter (1½ sticks)
    • Nonstick cooking spray or neutral oil
    • 1¾ cups (385 grams) packed light brown sugar
    • ¾ cup (170 grams) canned pumpkin purée (not pumpkin pie filling)
    • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
    • 2½ cups (320 grams) all-purpose flour
    • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
    • 1 teaspoon baking powder
    • 1 teaspoon baking soda
    • 1 teaspoon kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal)
    • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
    • ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
    • ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
    • 1½ cups (9 ounces) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips

    Preparation

    • Step 1

    In a small (preferably light-colored) saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Continue cooking, stirring constantly to prevent the milk solids from burning, until the butter foams, darkens into a light amber color and becomes fragrant and nutty, about 3 to 4 minutes more. (Watch closely to make sure the butter doesn’t burn.) Immediately pour the butter along with any of the browned milk solids into a large heatproof mixing bowl. Let cool for 20 minutes until warm but no longer hot.

    • Step 2

    While the butter cools, heat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 9-by-13-inch metal or glass baking pan with cooking spray or oil and line with a strip of parchment paper that hangs over the two long sides to create a sling.

    • Step 3

    Add the brown sugar, pumpkin purée and vanilla extract to the cooled butter and whisk until smooth and glossy. Add the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, cloves and nutmeg and stir with a spatula just until a soft dough forms with no pockets of unincorporated flour. (Try not to overmix.) Add 1¼ cups/216 grams of the chocolate chips and stir to evenly distribute throughout the dough.

    • Step 4

    *Transfer the dough to the prepared baking pan and press into an even layer using a spatula or clean hands coated with nonstick spray or oil. Sprinkle the top with the remaining chocolate chips, pressing them in so they stick. Bake until the bars are puffed, the top is lightly browned and a skewer or knife inserted into the center comes out clean with just a few moist crumbs attached or with smudges of melted chocolate, 30 to 45 minutes.

    • Step 5

    Let the bars cool in the pan on a wire rack for at least 1 hour. Using the parchment paper, lift the bars out of the pan and cut into 24 squares. The cookie bars will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.






  • While I support this, I am fairly certain that Elon doesn’t care. The value of Tesla stock has very little relationship to their ability to sell cars to consumers. He killed the attempts at making a more affordable car that could get much wider adoption by the public in favor of big ugly toys for the wealthy and pivoting towards fleet sales. And that was before he was in a position to basically just tell the government to throw money at all of his various businesses.

    In fact, I don’t think Tesla dissolving as a company would be enough to slow Musk down at this point. Not when his shitty AI company will be getting paid to replace federal workers, and he has blank checks from NASA and the DOD to prop up Space X. And just wait until Xitter becomes the preferred payment system of the federal government.



  • Trump doesn’t give a fuck if his poll numbers plummet. He doesn’t need to run for office again.

    Sure, midterms could let the Democrats retake the house and senate, but it’s not like Trump is using the legislature right now anyway. So long as the current administration can get away with completely ignoring the law, the other branches of government don’t really matter that much.

    Sure, it’s possible they could impeach him and actually remove his ass from office. But that will require either Republican support which will not happen, or for Democrats to win every senate race, including the safely Republican districts.

    At this point, the most realistic exit from this nightmare would be for the house to change hands so we have a new speaker, then for both Trump and Vance to cease to be available for the job. Trump’s old and in terrible shape, so we could get lucky there (though luck hasn’t been kind for quite a while), but Vance is unlikely to go away on his own.




  • Creating an environment of corruption, chaos, hate and suffering. Hurting the majority of people economically, and ripping away hope for the future. Cutting programs that safeguard people, and specifically targeting their access to healthcare. And taking away the medications that help people deal with mental illness.

    Sounds like a recipe for causing people to become desperate and decide they have nothing to lose.


  • Has nothing to do with owning the conservatives. It’s recognizing that these policies and attitudes will cost lives and inflict suffering on a lot of innocent people. The more traction they get, and the more time they have to become entrenched, the harder it will be to roll them back. Since the pandemic people have been reframing their anti-vax positions as being religious convictions, and treating the right to spread disease and oppose public health as a fundamental freedom. That kind of opposition might take decades, or even generations to overcome.

    One of the few things that can prevent that trend is an outbreak of something truly terrifying. Something visibly awful with a high mortality rate will cause most of these people to suddenly be ok with anything that keeps them protected. Better that these idiots get mugged by reality in a swift and brutal fashion than letting them linger and cause the slow and steady stream of human suffering. Ultimately, the fast and painful lesson will kill far fewer people than the attrition that will come from many smaller, milder outbreaks that spread outward in wave after wave for the foreseeable future.