Most of the condiments in my fridge are there only because it saves cupboard space, and I typically don't use enough to notice if it is cold or not. Jams and jellies specifically though I've had to refrigerate, because they will develop mold after a couple days to a week sometimes if not kept cold, and my household doesn't go through them very quickly.
It really depends on what field you are in. Additionally, once upon a time, degrees were not necessarily about getting better jobs (but without the better job options, you should be more careful about going into debt...).
Although when people complain that university was a waste because all they did was party, that isn't typically the university's fault. While I had occasional parties and social stuff, I spent time in college doing stuff that made use of resources such an environment offers, which goes beyond just classes typically. While self-teaching is potentially an offer, and easier as more and more course material becomes available, it can be amazing how much faster things going when you interact with the right people and/or get hands on experience.
I'm used to having friends that are vegan or vegetarian, while being neither myself. For get together involving home made food with more than a single dish, it has been trivial to make sure there at least some food for everyone (although sometimes non-vegetarians have to be shooed away from the vegetable dish if they risk finishing it off before the vegetarians get there). And for events where that wasn't viable or were obviously going to be more meat-centric, they either brought their own dish, or ate before and came for the social aspect.
As far as the picture, it could be as some others have said, that it is all imitation meat. Although, that is usually the worst way to make vegetarian food my opinion, for vegetarians or not, as opposed to food that stands on its own instead of failing to imitate something else. One of the few places I felt did pull off the imitation stuff well was a Chinese restaurant though.
I guess I'm lucky at this point. I'll be traveling out of the country soon, but at least I already have my passport and will be driving so I don't have to worry about potential airport delays. But I'll have to see if there are any hiccups on the return if the border station has any reduced staffing.
And although the project I am employed by is federally funded, I am a university employee and our project has a budget surplus. If I did get "sent home" I would probably still be in the lab working unless they forced me out, because stuff still needs to get done (as seems to be the policy on furlough days from the state government). Friends at national labs and other places vary from annoyed to now dealing with potentially large extra expenses associated with messed up schedules or pausing work.
The problem isn't the work of the scientists, but the PR layer on top of the actual work. While I see a need to sometimes speculate or extrapolate a little to show the big picture trend of research that is taken in small steps at a time, stuff like this seems to be going way too far.
The actual research is about the propagation of photons through an ultracold gas of Rubidium atoms, about 35 millionths of a kelvin above absolute zero. Because of the nature of such a cloud, photons traveling through the cloud will change the cloud around them, which then changes how a second photon would travel through it. So the photon-photon interaction is mediated by the cloud they are traveling through. This isn't anywhere close to making photons attract each other in the open, and requires this really cold material under a vacuum in a special containment device. Hitting someone with that, would amount to hitting them with a steel pipe.
There is other work that is similar and a lot more like a light saber to some degree. A strong enough laser focused down in air will cause the air to breakdown into a plasma from the strong electric fields (similar to using a high voltage to turn on a neon light), and heat up the air. Hot air, and especially plasma, will have a different index of refraction and light moving through changing index of refraction will bend, e.g. a lens or a mirage. If you use the right profile, it will actually make the laser beam self-focusing, that the heated air acts like a focusing lens, which keeps the laser focused enough to heat the air in front of that, and the beam will travel without diverging as long as it has enough power to keep heating up the air. This doesn't really stop like a light saber though, and only works in air or a specific material, and where the plasma part stops a rather high power laser beam is still coming out the end.
Getting $240 million over 30 years instead of $135 million is on par with sitting on most of the $135 million with 2% interest (assuming you don't invest parts of the $240 million payments). If you have enough self-control to sit on most of it, you could probably do at least a little better than that without taking too much of a risk. At the very least, it seems like taking the lump sum can simplify several things (and if you were going to just sit on it, or give it away, might as well do that starting right away).
As far as what to spend it on, the first thing should be an accountant if you don't have a solid background in that yourself. I might not do that for $100k winning, but would for a million plus.
If a reasonable substitute can be made, it doesn't seem like a big deal to request that such a substitute be available, especially if a place tends to do so for other options. It is Starbuck's decision in the end, to decide if they save more money streamlining the drink to one version (and not a vegan version), than they would make if they offered a vegan option.
Most of the time I would care less about a thief getting my cash and credit card, just as long they don't take some of the IDs and other cards I carry around. I usually don't carry too much cash, and the credit card is usually easy enough to replace. But my driver's license, work ID and keycard, and some other passes would take a lot more time and inconvenience to replace (and probably cost more in fees than the typical cash I carry). It would almost make it worth while to have a wallet for cards, and a money clip for cash and credit card.
Otherwise I just have a giant key ring, phone, pen and wallet. I have a Swiss army knife and a multitool, but don't usually carry those with me since I have a full tool set in my car, at home, and at work anyway.
I've had a fair share of issues with small, two bit companies that caused a lot of problems over relatively obscured products. This covered everything from an argument over a $20 defective part resulting in a $1000+ order being canceled, to a company refusing to answer a simple question because they insisted it is impossible I would understand basic electronics or be capable of soldering (for a specialized component requiring such knowledge to even use), to an apartment management company that sued me without any prior warning or notice over what turned out to be a clerical error on their part, and then wondered why I didn't show them the receipt I had before being sued. I've also had a mess with Citibank over an account I thought was closed that resulted in me paying enough fees I don't want to really discuss it in detail here.
But the only company off the top of my head that I remember having continual problems with was Comcast. It started when the installation guy showed up late, and checked a box on the receipt that waived the installation fee if that happened, but then customer service insisted they never heard of it, never have done that before and will not in the future. It was a preprinted receipt form with a whole section and check box for that. I've had several billing discrepancies where random charges or changes to rates happened, or double charged for things. The national office told me to contact the local office. But the phone numbers for the local office on the billing letterhead went to family answering machines or to some person's personal cell phone unrelated to Comcast. If the national office forwarded me to the local office, you would get an automated message from the phone company that an invalid number was dialed. I got most of the charges removed, but it was annoying because it was so much work over $10 here, or $20 there.
I don't know if you can call it customer service, but I've had messes with collection agencies looking for someone with a similar name (having a common name, I'm surprised I never got one for the same name... only ones that were different). One of the most persistent was a collection company that is known for working exclusively for cell phone companies, and started calling me two months after I got a new phone, trying to reach the previous holder of the number. For a company that deals with people not paying their phone bills, you would think they would learn that the phone number they didn't pay for might stop working at some point...
I'm always amazed at what is possible with a little more effort though, as there are several times I called a company for something related to a product at work, and as soon as they realize it was a business or government related purchase, I get transfered to someone much better. Especially with computer related stuff, upon reading the serial number several companies would switch from a broken English speaker that assumed I knew nothing, to a person that was very responsive and could answer direct, technical questions. Dell in particular, many years ago when I did some IT-ish work, did this a lot, having great support if the serial number was connected to the university I worked for, while otherwise, I once had the fun of being chewed out by a technical support person on the phone explaining to me that an "engineering workstation computer is not a toy" and that I shouldn't be playing with an advanced computer as a tech illiterate, nor complaining that the DVD drive bearings had gone bad under warranty and the drive mechanically locked up. Anyway, where I was going with this last bit is I find it almost backward: many cases at work, I need to chose the lowest bidder and am not allowed to take into consideration the customer service, while at home I have much more flexibility in how I use my money and can chose to pay a little more for better service, but the former is the situation customer service pampers me, while the latter is the case where even higher end options skimp.
I would normally fit a large, but for many types of shirts prefer an XL, and have been doing that at least back to the 90s. So that fad/trend might have been around for some time.
Things like aerogel are open celled foam, meaning all of the cavities connect to each other (like the structure in the picture here), so it will fill up with any fluid it is put into. Typically the density of such foams are given not counting the mass of the air that fills them up normally when sitting out, and assumes that is empty space or that the weight of air is not an issue. The density not taking into account the empty spaces still is much heavier than air, so it doesn't float.
And yet it is surprising how often animal control or someone else will get a call about a monstrous animal that, "is not a dog, I know what a dog looks like," or, "is not a cat, I know what a cat looks like," that turns out to be a dog or cat. Although in a some (but by far not all) of those cases, it is because people don't realize what mange can do to an animal, and that doesn't help with the bigfoot case.
To recover the $55 for the extra level only takes about $200 a month. Each month, 3-4 veggies, 3-4 fruit, 2 meat products, 3-4 dry goods and a paper product or two get you more than half way there. Any alcohol, frozen food, or other staples can get you there without spending money on bigger or "treasure" items, and if they can help with a single big purchase, that goes a long ways. Or if you can find a way to share the second free membership with another family (a business account can have two different households for the cards), that goes a lot faster.
I remember hearing previously that the membership fee was more of a marketing concept, that it made people more likely to buy things, to feel special, and otherwise was not a major source of income. But that wasn't from anyone with any authority.
Although when people complain that university was a waste because all they did was party, that isn't typically the university's fault. While I had occasional parties and social stuff, I spent time in college doing stuff that made use of resources such an environment offers, which goes beyond just classes typically. While self-teaching is potentially an offer, and easier as more and more course material becomes available, it can be amazing how much faster things going when you interact with the right people and/or get hands on experience.
As far as the picture, it could be as some others have said, that it is all imitation meat. Although, that is usually the worst way to make vegetarian food my opinion, for vegetarians or not, as opposed to food that stands on its own instead of failing to imitate something else. One of the few places I felt did pull off the imitation stuff well was a Chinese restaurant though.
And although the project I am employed by is federally funded, I am a university employee and our project has a budget surplus. If I did get "sent home" I would probably still be in the lab working unless they forced me out, because stuff still needs to get done (as seems to be the policy on furlough days from the state government). Friends at national labs and other places vary from annoyed to now dealing with potentially large extra expenses associated with messed up schedules or pausing work.
The actual research is about the propagation of photons through an ultracold gas of Rubidium atoms, about 35 millionths of a kelvin above absolute zero. Because of the nature of such a cloud, photons traveling through the cloud will change the cloud around them, which then changes how a second photon would travel through it. So the photon-photon interaction is mediated by the cloud they are traveling through. This isn't anywhere close to making photons attract each other in the open, and requires this really cold material under a vacuum in a special containment device. Hitting someone with that, would amount to hitting them with a steel pipe.
There is other work that is similar and a lot more like a light saber to some degree. A strong enough laser focused down in air will cause the air to breakdown into a plasma from the strong electric fields (similar to using a high voltage to turn on a neon light), and heat up the air. Hot air, and especially plasma, will have a different index of refraction and light moving through changing index of refraction will bend, e.g. a lens or a mirage. If you use the right profile, it will actually make the laser beam self-focusing, that the heated air acts like a focusing lens, which keeps the laser focused enough to heat the air in front of that, and the beam will travel without diverging as long as it has enough power to keep heating up the air. This doesn't really stop like a light saber though, and only works in air or a specific material, and where the plasma part stops a rather high power laser beam is still coming out the end.
As far as what to spend it on, the first thing should be an accountant if you don't have a solid background in that yourself. I might not do that for $100k winning, but would for a million plus.
Otherwise I just have a giant key ring, phone, pen and wallet. I have a Swiss army knife and a multitool, but don't usually carry those with me since I have a full tool set in my car, at home, and at work anyway.
But the only company off the top of my head that I remember having continual problems with was Comcast. It started when the installation guy showed up late, and checked a box on the receipt that waived the installation fee if that happened, but then customer service insisted they never heard of it, never have done that before and will not in the future. It was a preprinted receipt form with a whole section and check box for that. I've had several billing discrepancies where random charges or changes to rates happened, or double charged for things. The national office told me to contact the local office. But the phone numbers for the local office on the billing letterhead went to family answering machines or to some person's personal cell phone unrelated to Comcast. If the national office forwarded me to the local office, you would get an automated message from the phone company that an invalid number was dialed. I got most of the charges removed, but it was annoying because it was so much work over $10 here, or $20 there.
I don't know if you can call it customer service, but I've had messes with collection agencies looking for someone with a similar name (having a common name, I'm surprised I never got one for the same name... only ones that were different). One of the most persistent was a collection company that is known for working exclusively for cell phone companies, and started calling me two months after I got a new phone, trying to reach the previous holder of the number. For a company that deals with people not paying their phone bills, you would think they would learn that the phone number they didn't pay for might stop working at some point...
I'm always amazed at what is possible with a little more effort though, as there are several times I called a company for something related to a product at work, and as soon as they realize it was a business or government related purchase, I get transfered to someone much better. Especially with computer related stuff, upon reading the serial number several companies would switch from a broken English speaker that assumed I knew nothing, to a person that was very responsive and could answer direct, technical questions. Dell in particular, many years ago when I did some IT-ish work, did this a lot, having great support if the serial number was connected to the university I worked for, while otherwise, I once had the fun of being chewed out by a technical support person on the phone explaining to me that an "engineering workstation computer is not a toy" and that I shouldn't be playing with an advanced computer as a tech illiterate, nor complaining that the DVD drive bearings had gone bad under warranty and the drive mechanically locked up. Anyway, where I was going with this last bit is I find it almost backward: many cases at work, I need to chose the lowest bidder and am not allowed to take into consideration the customer service, while at home I have much more flexibility in how I use my money and can chose to pay a little more for better service, but the former is the situation customer service pampers me, while the latter is the case where even higher end options skimp.
I remember hearing previously that the membership fee was more of a marketing concept, that it made people more likely to buy things, to feel special, and otherwise was not a major source of income. But that wasn't from anyone with any authority.