Since I was a kid my main reason for avoiding meat has been the spongy, chewy texture that makes me nauseous in just a couple of bites. I've been trying to find good substitutes, but despite vegan stuff becoming more popular, food companies are all trying to make the taste and mouthfeel imitate meat. Nice for a meat lover turning vegan, not so much for someone who never liked meat to begin with.

I've tried tofu and soya chunks, but they both had the aforementioned problem. Coarse soybean meal is the only very high protein (>50%) thing I can handle, as when cooked it closely resembles one of the few meat products I used to eat without a problem: ground beef/meat.

Are there any foods that are of softer consistency? Something similar to beans, cheese, or fish, perhaps.

I should mention that I live in Europe, so any US specific brands/chains may or may not be available here.

I feel like we’re constantly talking about how the last year and a half was the “lost year” and that no one did anything all year. But is there something you managed to do that makes you happy, proud, etc?

My wife and I spent the last few months building an outdoor tortoise enclosure for our pet Russian tortoise, Tortoro. We moved him outside a few weeks ago and he’s much more active and inquisitive.

Taking the time to build him a larger, outdoor enclosure that was designed to maximize his happiness was a nice respite from the stress of the world.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Let me start by saying this is a space I am not at all familiar with. I didn't grow up with IRC, my first text editor was Sublime (I'm not from the "EMACS vs. VIM" generation,) so I feel kinda outta touch with what all is going on.

Is there a winner? I feel invested in this topic after seeing a whole slew of posts, blogs, and medium articles posted all over Reddit and HN breaking down how these folks have personally been impacted over the past month or so. It seems to have died down which leaves me with the question of what the outcome was. An even 50/50 split? Libera destroying Freenode? Or Freenode able to hold onto users by successfully preventing efforts to organize a transition?

Without being in the Freenode community, I don't have a feeling for whether Freenode is dead, Libera Chat is "winning" and I don't think there's a good way to get metrics either.

Anyone in this world who can help the uneducated out on the outcome of all of this?