Random Rants 94 I rant at the thread title and shake my fist menacingly.

[bene_legionary]

I woke up this morning to find a giant swarm of ants in my room who for some reason all really wanted to congregate on my box of kleenex. The top few tissues were missing chunks so I guess they can eat tissue paper? Who knew.

I think I got them all after much effort but man, "kill several hundred ants" isn't my idea of a fun way to spend my morning

Ants aren't pleasant. You could probably live with them if they aren't getting into your kitchen in swarms like ours once did. And they are probably getting in somewhere... a few hundred ants aren't that many if there is a nest nearby.

My dad didn't care, though, and left an entire loaf of freshly baked bread on the counter right next to where the ants got in through the walls. I threw the bread out, but he wasn't happy about that. In fact he said he would have ate the bread with the ants on it... which is an attitude I don't understand. I would have sterilised the bread before I touched it.

 

[choxorn]

To a certain extent you kind of have to live with them in an environment that's warm and humid all year and doesn't have all that many natural predators for them, I find ants and roaches all over the place all the time, they're everywhere.

 

[Kyriakos]

Hm...

Ant salad. Not very tempting.

 

[Plains-Cow]

Hm...

View attachment 664635

Ant salad. Not very tempting.

I never heard any Mexicans talking about eating red ants in Mexico.

 

[Kyriakos]

If world war famine gets close, it is nice to know you can always eat ants
Maybe buy ant-farms and cultivate them for profit.
Just be mindful of the lethal dose of formic acid (I suppose that one isn't realistic, would take way too many ants)

 

[Birdjaguar]

I never heard any Mexicans talking about eating red ants in Mexico.

Chocolate covered ants have been an available "treat" at least since the 1950s. I suspect they go back much further. In the 1970s, "back to the land" folks in the US had recipes for cooking them. IIRC sautéed was the preferred method.

 

[Samson]

Hm...

View attachment 664635

Ant salad. Not very tempting.

Ants are a great source of acetic acid, the same as in vinegar. In using them in food I would be more worried about the welfare issues than the culinary ones.

 

[Kyriakos]

Ants are a great source of acetic acid, the same as in vinegar. In using them in food I would be more worried about the welfare issues than the culinary ones.

Can't have such welfare issues in a general famine.
But I am really squeamish about eating ants.
It'd also be ironic in some conditions, eg deliberately attacking that ant nest which has a large-headed ant show up to block its entrance; when all you wanted is to eat that one.

 

[Takhisis]

I never heard any Mexicans talking about eating red ants in Mexico.

Oh, come on. Don't you trust Indiana Jones as an accurate source of geographical data?

Chocolate covered ants have been an available "treat" at least since the 1950s. I suspect they go back much further. In the 1970s, "back to the land" folks in the US had recipes for cooking them. IIRC sautéed was the preferred method.

I think I saw them (and locusts) being fried in Africa, but that's simply because in a famine-stricken land the only method of cooking available was to put anything on a pan over a fire.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Oh, come on. Don't you trust Indiana Jones as an accurate source of geographical data?

I think I saw them (and locusts) being fried in Africa, but that's simply because in a famine-stricken land the only method of cooking available was to put anything on a pan over a fire.

Look at the places that serve scorpions. You can fry em, deep fry them ect.

 

[Kyriakos]

Those beings don't have much time left anyway, so they might as well be used as food - or toys for cats. Fortunately their nature prevents them from realizing their position.

 

[choxorn]

Lately my phone has had this weird issue where sometimes the touchscreen just starts spamming random inputs and only stops if I turn the screen off and on again. Most of the time that just means it randomly scrolls or zooms on whatever I was looking at, but it's supremely annoying when it happens and I can't figure out what's causing it to do that.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

My debit card has expired and the bank can't send a new one.

 

[Arakhor]

They should send them automatically a few months in advance.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Except the bank won't let me change my address.

 

[Arakhor]

Can't you ring up the bank's debit card enquiries number? Alternatively, you may be able to do it via your internet banking portal (if you have one).

 

[Ajidica]

Call them and say you want to cancel your card because they won't let you change your address.
If your banks are anything like ours, that should trigger their "lets keep them" reflex!

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Can't you ring up the bank's debit card enquiries number? Alternatively, you may be able to do it via your internet banking portal (if you have one).

There is an option to change my address online when I could log into my account but the option just said to either phone up or go into a local branch with a photographic ID. Now that my debit card has expired I can't log in anymore.

I don't own a phone so I can't phone the bank up and I don't have a photographic ID.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

Add another thing to my list of allergies alongside pet dander and dust: wildfire smoke from Quebec. Difficulty breathing this time last week, came out of nowhere, until I put my unused covid mask on. Accuweather said air quality was "very poor", never saw that before. Much better since Sunday. But I'll have to check air quality alerts everyday this summer or until Quebec gets a boatload (more, actually) of rain.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Unfortunately, this is turning out to be a very bad year for wildfires/forest fires across much of Canada. Rain helps a bit, but it doesn't rain long enough. And too much rain means floods and mudslides, so that's the flip side.

There have been a few times this spring when I've actually been glad I've still got some unused covid masks. I'm a long way from the fires, but we do get the smoke here. One day my grocery delivery person told me that it was raining ashes outside.