Last person to post wins. . . . .

[PipChick]

Fun fact: The Subway chain in the United Kingdom is known as Tube.

HA! another top-quality dad joke at it's finest! BRAVO!

[theCapraAegagrus]

Fun fact: The Subway chain in the United Kingdom is known as Tube.

You should be stoned to death for this.

Fun fact: The Subway chain in the United Kingdom is known as Tube.

HA! another top-quality dad joke at it's finest! BRAVO!

You should be stoned to death for condoning this behavior.

[rousselle]

2jgyld.jpg (51.5 KiB) Viewed 1775 times

[PipChick]

oooo, you know that's gunna make 2pc puncomfortable lmao

Escalades I can roll with, but I'm terrified of escalators... but don't worry, I'm taking steps to avoid 'em...

[PipChick]

just wanna take a moment of silence to observe the lost of Bradius' old avatar pic...

Beaker, you will forever be missed





and Bradius, I hardly recognized you!! MEEP! lol

[Bradius]

Only gone for awhile. I wanted to pay my respects to my fav Jack for a bit.

[PipChick]

Only gone for awhile. I wanted to pay my respects to my fav Jack for a bit.

Thank god! not that I don't like the new look (that Jack is awesome! and makes for a totally great avatar) but I've grown accustomed and fond of you in your beaker form... gosh darn it, who can't help but to love the little red-headed meeper lol

speaking of which, btw, if you're not already set on your halloween costume, you could/should totally go as beaker; there's multiple sites to DIY a beaker costume (along with a ton of other easy muppet characters) - how cool is that! lol

[Bradius]

Luckily my kids are too old for Halloween trick or treating now. No Halloween costumes this year.

So, the background on Beaker. I joined Discord for a group formed for a game currently in pre-alpha testing called Dual Universe (that got huge funding on Kickstarter). It is kind of a space age adult minecraft game (in the sense you build cool stuff). Anyway, I decided the background for my character would be someone that loved science, but science didn't like them quite as much, then Beaker kind of took over in my mind. My old gaming name was Alfred, but those folks took it as Alfred, Batman's Butler. My character name however was actually derived from Alfred I of England. Ah well. Bradius goes back even earlier to a game called Caesar III.

[theCapraAegagrus]

Only 1 person mourns per avatar.

[Merlebird]

and Bradius, I hardly recognized you!! MEEP! lol

Yeah I was like "who's this new schmuck with the Rising Spade avi?"

I'm sorry I thought you were a schmuck, Brad. You're really more of a nebbish.

[Bradius]

I had to go google that term. Hum, well my staff and scouts might beg to differ on that term. While I can generally be a fairly nice person, I am actually a very exacting person with others. While generally affable, I do have a huge temper that will explode given enough pressure applied. It is best to put in ear plugs during such occasions.

[Merlebird]

I had to go google that term. Hum, well my staff and scouts might beg to differ on that term. While I can generally be a fairly nice person, I am actually a very exacting person with others. While generally affable, I do have a huge temper that will explode given enough pressure applied. It is best to put in ear plugs during such occasions.

So what you're saying is you'd rather be a schmuck?

[Bradius]

I choose door number three.

[Merlebird]

I choose door number three.

Door number three is a goat.

[Räpylätassu]

Just realised that now that Brad has changed his avatar, I should change mine back to the old Sierra Madre logo as I am currently replaying Fallout New Vegas. Almost starting to be at those levels where I can start playing the DLC's. As always, I start with my favorite one: Dead Money. Sierra Madre awaits!

[PipChick]

another poor avi lost... we mourn for you lol

also, is this a change of the seasons type of thing? should I also be lookin' for a new avatar pic to represent my online-self?? if so, what would fit best? hmmm... suggestions are welcome lol

[Räpylätassu]

Don't worry Amy, my Edward the Booble avatar will be back sometime soon when I have finished playing Fallout New Vegas. He is just too cute to be put on the shelf.

And this Sierra Madre avatar is the original avatar I had here.

[theCapraAegagrus]

You should change it to Mustakrakish instead.

[Räpylätassu]

Any Canadians here getting high on that sweet sweet legal pot? CBJ? Dazzleguts? Joeblow?

[Räpylätassu]

I ate fried crickets today. Pretty good.

[PipChick]

I ate fried crickets today. Pretty good.

One of my really good friends is studying Entomophagy for her PhD in the Food Sciences & Technology field and is currently working with breeding & raising insects for the purpose of farm animal feed but hopes to eventually create insect-based food products for human consumption. So, needless to say, I've tried a bunch of what she's brought home and experimented with and, for a short time while living together, she sometimes kept live larvae in our kitchen; last time, we even made homemade cookies with flour grounded from dehydrated/oven-dried larvae of the black fly and to be honest, it didn't taste too bad. Actually, I'm all for including insects and/or insect-based foods into our diets for a number of reasons:

1.) super easy & inexpensive to cultivate considering they require so little time, space and resources to reproduce & reach maturity relative to other traditional animal livestock

2.) much more ecological and environmentally sustainable because of reasons stated above which helps in easing such issues as climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, air & water pollution, soil erosion/depletion/degradation, deforestation, antibiotic resistance, and a whole slew of other issues in the food industry

3.) super healthy with hella high protein content and a good natural source of vitamins, minerals, unsaturated fats, fiber, etc.

4.) can also help ease malnutrition and/or food insecurity globally as the world faces increasing population growth, especially in areas that cannot support other means farming and/or animal agriculture

So yea, I definitely believe eating insects will be the way of the future - along with lab-grown cultured meat

Of course though, after that, when the Earth has been either fully depleted of its natural resources or polluted to the point of toxicity that it can no longer provide viable resources required for sustainable agriculture to produce food, we'll just have to resort to consuming soylent green as a means of combating overpopulation and food shortages. This of course will inevitably lead to the great prophesied Zombie outbreak, but by then, I'm sure we'll all be dead so it won't matter and the natural world order will correct itself - yay!

[Räpylätassu]

Just also want to clarify that the I ate those fried crickets in this extremely chill but quite high end new restaurant in Kuopio. Love that place, food is great as all their focus is on the food, everything else has been cut to bare minimum. They don't even have fancy napkins, but use ordinary hand towel paper, the kinda you see in an office bathroom. There is a certain humorous attitude about the place, but man oh man the food there...

One of Finlands top celebrity chefs, Henri Alén, also serves crickets in the menu of his new restaurant Ultima, located in Helsinki. Fun fact, they actually grow their own crickets, the idea of the Ultima restaurant is to grow as much of their own food as possible, get every other ingredient from as close as possible but also as sustainable as possible and waste as little food and energy as they can.

Crickets and other insects were legalized as food fit for human consumption about a year ago in Finland.

[PipChick]

Crickets and other insects were legalized as food fit for human consumption about a year ago in Finland.

first, this is awesome! And, was this part of the EU's new Novel Food Regulation that came into effect earlier this year? or from Finland's own regulatory agency before this was announced? Because, IIRC, here in Germany it's also fairly new (only the start of this year with this new regulation) that insect-based food products are now legally allowed to be marketed and sold commercially but it's still not at all common and I can't recall having seen any new products to hit the shelves in my local grocery stores - at least not yet. My friend told me about some insect burger start-up restaurants, but I haven't really looked too much into it. Before this new EU regulation, I think it was also legalized in Switzerland last year too.

and second, I like everything about the way those 2 restaurants are being ran; super awesome lol

[Räpylätassu]

I think the way Finland legalized them is that they we just decided to interpret some EU directive differently. Or that is how it was announced in the papers. Before that insects were actually sold but the companies weren't allowed to market them as food, instead they sold them as "kitchen decorations"

Anyways, just like that they were legal, which came as a suprise to the companies selling insects, but I think it took the goverment like a month after that to set the health regulations for them.

We have here already at least Cricket Granola, Chocolate Covered Crickets and I think I've seen them also being sold on frozen. I think there was also some spaghetti, which had cricket flour in it. Oh, and I've seen cricket chili nuts being sold as well. Might be others as well, but those are pretty much all that I have seen.

[PipChick]

that's interesting

and maybe we do have more insect-based food products on the shelves than I realize - I guess I haven't been paying much attention but I really should be keeping an eye out just to see if/when they'll be released in the common chain grocers - because chocolate covered crickets and cricket granola sound like they can be pretty good

[theCapraAegagrus]

I have eaten some insects before, both intentionally and otherwise.

[Merlebird]

It's interesting to see the discussion of the EU regulatory environment around selling insects for human consumption. So far as I know it's never been an issue in the US; natural history museums and the like have been selling lollipops with a cricket in the middle since I was a kid. (I've never had one because, while I'm perfectly content to eat things that once had a face, I'm not so much into actually eating those faces.) I guess the US is just more laissez-faire about this kind of thing.

[Räpylätassu]

Also just to correct my previous statement: I don't actually think they were chocolate covered crickets which were sold but rather chocolate covered larva of honeybee drones.

Or were there both kinds available...? There were at least for sure those honeybee larvas covered in chocolate. Apperantly they are a really tasty insect to eat, the chef that made the product and begun to sell it raved about their taste.

Oh! And Fazer (one of Finland's biggest companies and the biggest brand of Finland) started to sell a bread, which had some small part of cricket flour in it. It was a massive hit and the inital batch was sold out quickly.

[theCapraAegagrus]

I'm debating whether or not to go with the mustache this November to support prostate cancer awareness, because a girl at work has noticed me (maybe)...

[Räpylätassu]

I'm debating whether or not to go with the mustache this November to support prostate cancer awareness, because a girl at work has noticed me (maybe)...

Go with a beard then