A buddy of mine used to spend 15 minutes trimming every single basil leaf perfectly for plating. His sous chef finally took the whole bunch, ripped it in half, and said "tastes the same, you're just wasting time." Now he just tears them by hand and nobody has ever said a thing about it.

Oh man, I totally get that! Last year I spent a whole afternoon sketching a kitchen layout by hand only to realize the window I measured was off by four inches.

My dad once asked if my Jupiter shot was from the Hubble, and I had to explain it was from my backyard with a $300 telescope and three hours of stacking. Honestly, maybe I should start watermarking my photos with 'yes this is real, no I didn't paint it' just to save time. At this point I'm wondering if I even saw the stars or if that was CGI too.

Wait, was it one of those Beige Brick base units from the 90s? My buddy had one that came with a shoulder strap, like you were supposed to lug it around like a purse. Thing weighed more than a cast iron skillet and the battery would die if the coffee table looked at it wrong. Only upside was you could probably use it to hammer a nail if you needed to.

And I gotta say, I push back on that a little. In my experience working with surface finds, you can still get pretty good context by looking at things like nearby plant communities and modern erosion patterns. Your mileage may vary, but sometimes a shard sitting right on the ground tells you just as much as one buried six feet down if you pay attention to what's around it.