Ever felt that frantic urge to overplan and it just backfires? Totally get what you mean, @lisa578, keeping it simple is usually smarter.

Those marks are actually pretty reliable if you know how to read them right. Sounds like you might have had a stiff link or some other problem causing the skip, not just stretch. A chain checker tool can give false readings too if it's not used perfectly. Sometimes the simple way is still the best way, you just gotta get a feel for it.

Wait, do we actually miss the feel or just the idea of it? Some of those old tools were straight up frustrating, @oscarw17. Like, the results were cool but the process could be a total pain. New stuff gets the job done without the hassle, and that's a win for me. I get the nostalgia but I wouldn't go back.

A buddy of mine laughed off lanterns until an outage proved him wrong, similar to @claire872's experience.

But is food waste really that big a deal? Like yeah, soggy salad sucks, but sometimes tossing a three buck container of tofu is just the cost of a failed experiment. Some stuff actually keeps fine, like a grain bowl or roasted veggies. Feels like people make meal prep into this huge moral thing when it's just lunch.