My secret is basically paying attention to different uses of chilis. Hot sauce, chili oil, chili powder, whole chilis, and chili flakes can all provide heat, but they do it in different ways.

Hot sauce also provides acid, which is good for some things. It’s obviously also water-based, so it dissolves into aqueous solutions.

Chili oil can incorporate other flavors that can’t be extracted in aqueous solutions, and it won’t affect any crispy or crunchy elements the way hot sauce would.

Chili power, when labeled “chili powder” is often underwhelming (this is highly dependent on region/culture as different peppers are used in different places). Cayenne is obviously good for heat, smoky paprika is really good for any time you want a little smoke flavor. Anything that actually calls out the specific pepper can be great.

Whole chilis are great. Specifically, I really like to use dried Mexican chilis in different blends. I’ll also use fresh peppers, but they provide different things to the food.

Chili flakes have a similar problem to the powder where if they dont tell you what type, it’s probably not great. I specifically like ancho chili flakes and Aleppo pepper flakes, both of which typically dont have the seeds, which I find unpleasant.

I dont think most Mexican food in the US is tex-mex. Fast food like taco bell isnt tex-mex, and most taco trucks and takeout places aren’t. The main category of restaurant that seems to be largely tex-mex are sit-down places with names like “El Mariachi” that cater to non-hispanic people and advertise the cheapness of their margaritas.

I’ll thrown in another perspective, because I dont think they solution is that you just need a more expensive bike. Obviously, you can work on adjusting it better like others have noted, but also keep in mind that you are probably likely to have trouble any time you are cross-chaining. People tend to like to just change gears on 1 shifter, but you do need to be using both to keep the chain as parallel as possible to the bike. Also, while it’s sometimes unavoidable, avoid shifting under large loads. If I’m pedaling hard, and I need to shift, I might up my cadence for a few strokes, and then shift while pedaling slower so there’s not any load on the chain.

Personally, I think indexed shifters shouldn’t be seen as the “default” as much as they are. I have a bike with a modern friction shifter with 1x10 gearing, and I can shift from 1 to 10 with a single motion. Even on my 40+ year old bike with friction shifters and 2x6, it’s pretty easy cause all you do is move the shifter till the bike shifts and noise stops. It’s slower, but that only matters if you are racing or doing fairly dynamic mountain biking. For the average Joe, it’s fine. With my modern bike, I can shift faster than anyone.

It sounds like your problems aren’t with EVs. It sounds like your problems are with any modern car.

Even the concept of food being “authentic” or “inauthentic” is pretty dumb. Pretty much every food short of raw foraged ingredients is the result of cultural exchange.

You could argue that an Italian cooking with chilis or tomatoes is inauthentic and that the resulting food is more Mexican than it is Italian.

Extending the concept from ingredients to techniques, you could argue that every food that relies on the cold chain (refrigerated/frozen storage and transportation) is an American food because the cold chain was created by an American.

Do you have any links to any recent info? This link makes it seem like its still not great, bit it like to see actual hard data.

https://gearjunkie.com/motors/motorcycle-vs-vehicle-emissions

Unfortunately, and I learned this relatively recently, motorcycles are worse for GHG emissions than cars because of catalytic converters (and probably just better combustion in general).

Agreed on electric, though.

I mean, yes and no. It probably doesnt require weekly maintenance, but it’s similar to cleaning; easier if you just stay on top of it.

It some places, you have to keep shoveling snow off your roof all winter or else your house will collapse. There are ways to make houses require less maintenance, but there’s a cost-benefit.

Yeah, I suppose that’s all down to what power has been granted to them. I certainly wouldnt buy a house where the HOA has power over what you do on your own property. That’s why you dont buy a house without reading all the documents.

Ah, that all makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I can see this being really useful once apps have handled all the ways people might want to shorthand things.

Actually seeing the grid makes it way easier, I think. I bet there’s a way to turn that on in the Google maps app itself.

How does that work?

V75V+8Q Paris, France

If you reach “v75v+ paris”, it’s less detailed than the full plus code, and “paris+8q” doesnt get you anything.

A few people not understanding expansive soil in the comments. You need to keep the soil moisture consistent. In your case, I might go for something like lava rock. Especially if you can get some that’s light in color, it can help keep the actual soil cooler so you have less evaporation. The porosity will let moisture through, though, so it won’t be too wet underneath.

I wonder if you could get a moisture meter or something to make sure you aren’t using more water than you need. Also, potentially, you could hook your soaker hose up to a smart irrigation system that can handle automated rain delays.

Soils like this aren’t mainly a problem in arid areas, they are a problem in areas with alternating dry/wet seasons. They likely live in an area that gets a decent amount of rainfall most of the year, but the hot summer causes the clay to dry out and shrink, which over time causes subsidence.

Any cracking or shrinking is temporary and inconsequential.

This really tells me you dont live where OP lives (my money is on texas). In different soils, like a big chunk of Texas, the soil is expansive. If you let it dry out, you can have the whole foundation crack, and since they often use slab-on-grade foundations, where the crack could easily result in a plumbing issue with huge repair bills.

It’s cheap to build slab on grade, but expensive after that, so needless to say, developers love it.

I would hope they minimize the use of homophones. They do use different forms of words, but the way the words are assigned, you aren’t going to have 2 really similar sounding locations in the same area. If you know someone went missing on a hike in Scotland, you’ll be able to figure out that the three words correspond to a Scottish location and not somewhere in Kenya.

There are reasonable HOAs, you just dont hear about them. Plenty of them are just entities that exist to pay for care of common grounds. I lived in a place with one that just handled trash pickup, and a community pool.

I know multiple people that have them exclusively for road maintenance through their neighborhood. If that gets expensive, it’s just direct evidence that your community has sprawled too much.

Pipepipe also has sponsorblock, right? I dont think newpipe does.

It almost seems like a different use case. It seems like the plus codes are effectively like mailing addresses for places that dont have addresses (lots of countries). They still lack the ability to do clear, analog communication (e.g., over radio or just a person’s memory in a search and rescue situation).

I will say, I’ve noticed the plus codes, but never looked into them. It’s really good that they are open source and can be generated offline. Hopefully they have some adoption in other apps/devices.

The original use case, as far as I know, is helping search and rescue. Words that are easy to communicate verbally, and easy to remember, so you dont have to worry about bad radio or phone signal garbling communication. Even if your phone dies, or you dont have pen/paper, it’s easy enough to remember the three words and communicate to search and rescue after you’ve made it out to a trailhead or whatever.