In the UK our car number plates actually tell you when the car was first registered - the third and fourth digits are either the year or the year +50. Normally I object to this, since it was only introduced as the result of pressure from British Leyland to try and sell more cars, but it serves as a handy way of instantly categorising anyone with a, say, '23 or newer cuntmobile.
Yeah, me.
Here's the rule of thumb: do you think the food benefits from being cooked unevenly? For meatballs as you mentioned, I'd sear them in a frying pan to get a little bit of crispiness before I cook them through in the sauce in the microwave. Hunters chicken, cakes, seafood, all good. The microwave will cook far more evenly than a convection oven, though sometimes the unevenness is desirable.
Man, don't you be dragging down microwave cookery like that. People who depend on LLMs are not like people who cook with the microwave; they're more like people who don't know how to cook, refuse to learn, eat takeout for every single meal, and still demand you address them as "chef".
And now I'm going to talk about microwave cookery.
I think people who object to microwave cooking and see it as 'lesser' are either snobs, or people who have never used anything less than 100% power and get food that's both scalding hot and still frozen.
If you're in the second camp, try cooking for twice as long at 50% power. For most foods you'll get an even heat well beyond anything a convection oven could manage. In some dishes the unevenness (e.g. crisping) is desirable, but in most it's not.
The UK is currently experiencing some prolonged windy weather and my all-renewable energy provider offers dynamic pricing. That means cheap energy and even negative-cost energy. This is where my HA instance shines and saves me a fortune on my power bill. Thanks again to the HA devs for this incredible project.
For the curious, I'm using bottlecapdave's excellent Home Assistant Octopus Energy integration via HACS.
I'm on an electricity tariff with dynamic pricing. The last week has been pretty rough in fairness, but generally it's really rewarding on most days and sometimes, on days like this, it's amazing.
Based on my past calculations, whenever the cost is below ~20p, I'm paying less for heating than I would with a gas boiler. Where the cost of energy is negative, I'm essentially getting paid to use surplus energy.
These water fountains flow constantly with fresh drinking water for anyone to use and they are everywhere in Rome. Covering the spout with your finger forces the water out a hole on top, creating a arch of water at perfect πΌπ΅πΎπ»πΉπ²π·π° height. The Romans were/are with us.
The apartment blocks - two of perhaps a hundred - are surrounded by open greenery, wide walkways and dense tram networks. Most of them have cafΓ© bars, bookstores, grocery stores or the like on the ground level and loads of benches, play areas and exercise equipment dotted about. The place is rife with Third Places.
The remarkable thing about these is that, to the locals, they seem fairly unremarkable.
That's really clever. If you've not noticed it yet: if you hold your phone at arms length and blur your vision it creates the illusion of a vague blob that doesn't look like Taylor Swift.