Just because I haven’t seen it in a while

The npr article about the man behind the meme

Dude did a lot of honest work

Best friend for over thirty years :)

It’s true though.

And us NT folks can benefit from learning how to do it.

It is refreshing to talk to someone ND, because of it. Once I got into the habit of not defaulting to assuming the person has an acquired understanding of social norms, I started just gently talking to NT people that didn’t “guess” the typical norms and mores. When I do that in the same relaxed and casual way I do with ND people, it almost always ends up way better than just saying nothing, and a shit ton better than assuming the worst and behaving the same in response.

Well, it depends on what you think a role model is.

But, yeah, parents are supposed to be your fundamental guides into adulthood. That means at least partially teaching by example, which is what a role model is; someone in a role that you use as a living example of how to function in a specific or general situation.

Role models can lead by words, but words tend to be meaningless unless backed by matching behaviors. “Do as I say, not as I do” is very difficult to make work unless you’re a completely negative role model. If you really suck at something, using yourself as a model of what not to do, that’s actually valuable. But if it’s more of a mix like most people are, the whole DAISNAID model of guidance fails.

That’s not to say that perfection is required either. But it is how you act when you fuck up that’s going to be most important, not what you say.

Parents fuck up. That’s because humans fuck up. So, even if parents are incredible, you still don’t want to rely on only them as a road map. Same with family in general. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, older siblings and cousins, you watch all of them and do your best to interpret how their choices could apply to your own life.

Age isn’t a guarantee of wisdom. But experience does tend to be a great teacher, and the folks ahead of you in age can be a great source of options. Doesn’t matter if they achieved the thing you’re working towards, if what they did didn’t work out, that’s still useful.

So even a “bad” example can still end up benefiting you. Even the really shitty parents out there, once you realize that they’re the same flawed and ignorant humans that have always existed, at least model things to avoid. The problem is how long it can take to realize your parents are just people, just regular people that had to navigate the same way you’re trying to. Be patient with yourself as you figure that out.

It really is magical.

I read to my wife sometimes, since she enjoys it and it seems to help her migraines for some reason.

But it doesn’t have to be a partner even.

Back when my body betrayed me and I had to quit working, i was depressed as fuck. My best friend would sometimes just sit and read to me. We got through the entire narnia series eventually. Ngl, it was part of what kept me alive through the early stages of it all

Read to your homies, folks

Shit, try writing a book, editing it three times, having someone proofread it, putting it out via one of the etail book sellers, then reading it and finding five glaring typos

It’s like being punched in the dick, only less erotic

Ngl, when I do the occasional tablet or phone repair for someone that isn’t family or a friend, that’s around what I end up charging, with parts included, depending on the job. It’s extremely rare I’m willing to, but fucking around inside tight fitting devices with tiny screws and easy to screw up parts just isn’t something I’ll do cheap if I’ll do it at all.

There’s a problem in answering this. We don’t know what the actual cause is, and we don’t know if it’s acne, a reaction to products, ingrown hairs, or just irritated skin that mimics one or multiple of those. So, be aware that you’re going to see responses that may not address the real problem but is still good in general, even if it doesn’t lead to a fix.

So, I used to be a nurse’s assistant. Shaving people is part of that job sometimes. Back in the day, one of my teachers was even the crazy type that pulls the whole “shave a balloon” thing. Which, while entertaining and slightly useful, doesn’t actually teach what it takes to shave a person.

Anyway, shaving is always a skin irritant. It’s a matter of degrees. Most of the time, if you follow the core principles, that irritation is going to be below the threshold where it’s noticeable for more than a few minutes at most.

Number one rule is that sharp razors cause the least irritation, and are less likely to result in nicks. Doesn’t matter what kind of razor you use, it has a limited range of uses before it needs sharpening or replacement. A straight razor, you strop every time you use it. Safety razors and most of the disposable head razors (no matter how many blades) expect to get three shaves at most before you start feeling the difference.

Yeah, that’s less than what most guides will say. That’s because you can definitely get more shaves in before it turns into a problem. But you’ll feel a change before it gets to the point where you’re losing the ability to slice smoothly and it turns into damaged skin. Most safety razors, assuming your facial hair isn’t absurdly thick and dense, expect to change the razor after five or six uses. Some of the multiblade heads can stretch a little more up to maybe ten shaves total, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to shave myself or anyone else with something for that long.

See, sharpness is only the first factor. Cleanliness is another. As you build up soap residue, microscopic cells, etc; the razor not only cuts more poorly, it’s likely growing bacteria for you. There’s ways to prevent that. Make sure the razor is as clean after use as possible, then dry it thoroughly. Some folks recommend rinsing them in something like barbicide, but I tend to see that as causing extra work for diminishing returns, so I don’t recommend it when this comes up.

If your razor is sharp and clean, you’ll minimize irritation as well as minimize and bacterial growth afterwards, which is what pimples are, and why ingrown hairs look like pimples. It’s bacteria that’s gotten part way into the skin and is being walled off and killed. The pus is dead microbes and your own immune cells (basically, this is the quick and dirty version because this is about shaving, not skin infections).

Next, you do your prep. The skin itself is going to respond best, overall, when it has been exfoliated gently, and is both warm and as hydrated as is reasonable. So wash your face first, with warm water. Not cold, that’s going to cause issues.

So, back to prep. You don’t need to scrub, just a warm washcloth gently washing. If you want, use a gentle facial cleanser like cetaphil. But the key is that freshly moisturized skin is less prone to irritation than dry, and it kinda plumps up the skin temporarily, making it less likely to pile up ahead of the razor, which increases irritation and the chance of nicks. There’s a reason you see barbers wrap the face in a hot towel sometimes before a shave.

I forgot to mention it before, but if you’re shaving sporadically, and the hairs are more than stubble, it is usually worth it to trim before shaving. Razors do better with shorter hairs, even straight razors.

From there, you apply your lubricant of choice. Some things are better than others. However, any soap will do in a pinch, and some lotions can as well. Even hair conditioner or shampoo will work okay.

My personal choice is aveeno shave gel. My skin is hyper sensitive to chemicals, and it’s one of the rare ones that doesn’t irritate me just by contact. I don’t shave any more, but it’s what I would use for myself, and when I had a choice for my patients, it was my number one pick.

If you’re feeling frisky though, picking up a shaving brush and using it to apply whatever you decide to use helps a tiny bit. It kinda lifts the hairs and gets the product of choice well lathered. Totally optional though, the difference really is tiny as long as you’re working the shave product onto the face (or other parts) well.

So you’re set up. You’ve got either running water or a basin with enough water to rinse the blade as you go. You’re lathered up, your blade is clean and no more than five or six uses deep.

Technique.

The first tip is to never start with a down stroke. By this, I mean coming into contact with the skin while moving the razor in the direction of the cutting edge (unless you’re using a straight razor, where you can do that). You place the razor against the skin with the head moving away from the direction of the edge. This reduces nicks, and partially lifts the hairs for the down stroke.

You move in small sections, smoothly. No back and forth scrubbing. Go at a steady, slow pace. You want to clear maybe an inch to an inch and a half with each stroke, then gently either restart as already described, or move the razor backwards slightly above the next section.

The key is that you don’t want to shave a given section more than absolutely necessary. Each pass over the same section is going to increase irritation. The reason you limit the size of each patch is that as you move the razor, your elbow, shoulder, and wrist are constantly shifting. Even with an adjustable/swivel head on a razor, this shifts the angle of attack, and where the most pressure is focused. You want the pressure even as possible, so doing smallish patches lets your body “reset” and keep the positioning right

So, that’s how you get started.

As you progress, the razor is going to load up. The shaved hairs and whatever lubricant you’re using will be pushed into the blade housing, or be building up on a straight razor. So you rinse the razor off every three to four strokes with safety or disposable head razors, and every stroke or every other with a straight razor.

The more clogged up razors get, the more likely they are to kinda skip over the hairs and skin. This increases nicks and irritation more significantly than we tend to realize. Thing is, you can’t rinse too much. So if you want to rinse every stroke, feel free. When I still shaved, I usually did it in the shower and rinsed the razor every stroke since running water does it easier and faster.

As you progress, keep an eye out for signs of irritation. If they start showing, reduce the pressure you’re using, and slow down. Let the razor do the work, not your arm.

We now look at hair orientation. You’ll hear about shaving with or against the grain. Hair can grow at an angle. Indeed, if you ever grow a beard, you’ll find that the angle your hair grows in may change according to where it gets “pulled”. The cheeks and neck tend to start out growing straight from the skin when we’re young, but the pressure on the skin as we sleep or move shifts them into angles, with the cheeks usually growing towards the neck, the throat growing variably as it nears the chin.

If you shave with the direction of growth, you minimize irritation, nick risk, and ingrown hairs or “shaving bumps”. But it won’t be as perfectly smooth, every time for every person you absolutely can get baby butt smooth going with the hair (almost universally, though there are exceptions), it just takes patience and control.

Against the hair gets a closer shave faster. And, because it tends to lift the hairs slightly, tugging them out from the skin, you can actually end up with the hair not sticking out at all. But, that’s how you get ingrown hairs. When the end of the hair is beneath the surface of the skin, you up the chances of the hair “burrowing”, and you give bacteria a chance to get beneath the surface as well. So I tend to advise not shaving against the grain at all. Maybe if you’ve got a job that is highly appearance dependent and requires being perfectly clean shaven. But you’ll have to invest in more products to control the inevitable bumps.

Post shave, never, ever use alcohol based aftershave. Yeah, they smell amazing usually. Yeah, it feels painfully good. But alcohol dries out the skin, and dry skin is prone to tiny little crevices and cracks where bacteria love to set up shop. So use good products that are hypoallergenic and designed for facial use. Moisturizers, in other words. You moisturize, the skin stays plumper. It also can serve to shift the way sebum accumulates in pores, which can increase pimples, bumps, acne, and other types of infection on irritated and abraded skin.

I don’t have any current recommendations in that regard. I used to use nivea products designed for shave care, but I’m damned if I can find the exact products beyond that. But that’s the basic thing to look for, shave care products. The big name companies that make acne friendly products are usually going to do a good job with shave care stuff too.

In the case of nicks, a styptic pencil is better than swatches of toilet paper. The TP isn’t really faster, and it has chemicals in it that make it break down when wet. So, not a great choice where you’re bleeding. Styptic pencils can be surprisingly hard to locate on the shelf, but pretty much every drug store carries them somewhere, often on the bottom shelf.

I’m out of character space here, and it’s essentially done anyway, but I’m open to questions if anyone has them :)

@[email protected] @[email protected]

Well, that might be useful if Canada lets them in, lets them stay, and lets them both stay armed and arm up with the more aggressive tools of conflict. I don’t exactly see that happening though

I haven’t seen only fans ads tbh.

But there was a point when an average woman could make some spare cash doing it. Not enough to make a serious income out of, but to supplement, sure.

But that’s been over for years. So if they’re advertising that, it’s a thinly veiled attempt to keep their brand relevant. And I doubt it will work for long, because even the really desperate folks out there have figured out that those days are long gone. Yeah, you still run into people that haven’t, but it’s getting less and less.

Like your post said, nowadays you have to bring something in the way of a following just to get started there. It has to serve as a secondary income flow to other similar sex work, or you have to be famous for something else entirely if you want to even hope for non nude content to be worth it.

I used to know a couple of women that did okay at it, and one guy. But by “okay” I mean that they pulled a few thousand in a year.

Some of the bigger name cam models did well there, but from what I’ve heard, it’s no longer reliable for them.

Well, the comment they’re referring to is phrased weird as hell. It reads like something a hack writer would come up with for a blurb on the back of a cheap romance novel or a soft core porn movie.

Top international high-end escort. It’s just a strange way to lead off.

While I’ve heard people irl talk like that, and have seen people online do so in writing, it stood out to me too. If I was going to make an assumption based on it, I would have guessed someone trying to set up for a series of fictional posts for fun and entertainment, not shilling for something, though. But it could just be the way you think, and there’s nothing wrong with that if that’s the case. I’m prone to some pretty purple prose myself, even in my own head.

But I can’t see how this post could be turned into some kind of shilling expedition. Not successfully. That would take a sock puppet account or three to come along just begging for a link to the escort friend’s page, which would be so absurdly obvious on lemmy that it would turn into a running joke in a hot minute.

Well, the other side of it is that it doesn’t matter how good your planning and logistics are if you only have rocks to throw when you get there

Nobody with a lick of sense ever said that a civil war against an established and well equipped government was going to be fought on battlefields, lined up and infantry vs civilian infantry.

And it takes more than guns, as the Iraqis and Afghanis showed. But calling guns useless in a revolution or civil war, much less as a resistance or insurgency is just stupid.

By any means necessary

It actually is, up to a point.

You know that bullshit gets tired.

People acting like the armed left isn’t preparing.

Like, motherfuckers, the loud 2a advocates were all right wing. The motherfuckers this fake motherfucker is whining about are the ones backing this shit.

But, more important, why does every motherfucker shooting their mouth off about this think that you win a fucking civil war by just going out and shooting things? Like, does nobody get that attacks need useful intelligence, planning, logistics, transportation, and it can’t be out in the open, you gotta either fight it guerilla, or you’re just dead.

People are fucking morons.

Eh, none of them to that degree. There’s really nothing that’s ever been on TV that I can’t be patient with, and I can’t binge watch much of anything.

However, Metalocalype and The Venture Bros, I can watch more of at once than anything else, even animated media that I technically like more. Which seems weird on the surface, but the reason is that I don’t have to watch every second of those two to enjoy every second of the episodes. Particularly on rewatches, though it was the case when they were new anyway.

If you want to talk about the other shows that are almost bingeable for me, but I need to be able to sustain watching, that’s Samurai Jack and Primal. Both of them take animated storytelling and turn it into a form of art that transcends a single genre. Brilliant scripts, and the art styles were and are compelling in a way nothing I had seen before matched.

Part of the barrier is just attention span. Since I had to give up stimulants of any kind, including caffeine and nicotine, I’m reminded of why school could be so damn hard when I was a kid. Not the most severe expression of attention issues, but enough that after a few episodes, I need a break from being locked in fully.

The other part is just being old and not wanting to sit in one place and get stiff and sore.

Kurt Vonnegut came back as a cat

Well, in a post covid world, you aren’t the first person to have this problem. People that could taste and smell fully temporarily or permanently lost some degree of one or both senses.

And recipes are the answer. The handful of people I know that have dealt with it have managed to still make good food that way. And there’s professional cooks that have allergies but still cook things like shellfish that way, and do just fine. The reason it works is that a well crafted recipe doesn’t need tasting or smelling. Not all recipes are well crafted, but most of the ones you find at places like America’s test kitchen, serious eats, or other sources that actively test and adjust their recipes are. Those two resources are going to get to what you need long enough to find other sources that you can trust to have tested things.

Now, there are still going to be problems. Some cooking directions rely on smell. The biggest one is garlic. Almost every single pan cooked recipe is going to tell you to add it and stir “until fragrant”. But, again, there’s a simple solution. Counting. Garlic will become at least mildly fragrant in a pan at a five count. After a ten count, it’s mostly gone and the garlic starts becoming bitter. So, as long as you don’t count absurdly slow, keep it between 5 and 8, and then add the next ingredients in the instructions of the recipe (it’ll usually be a liquid or a larger amount of meats and/or veggies).

Now, that only really applies to pan cooking. Garlic in other techniques doesn’t need that much attention.

However, you can even bypass the “until fragrant” via bypassing the pan cook entirely. Roast your garlic ahead of time. There’s instructions on how to do it online, and it’s very forgiving. So you just add roasted garlic in with any seasonings, and you’ll get a nice result. Won’t be exactly the same, but it’s foolproof because it eliminates what can go wrong in the pan.

Another big one is the “to taste” instruction. That’s almost always going to be with salt and pepper. When it’s something else, you really end up needing a taster to help because it’s unusual, and there’s not much info out there on how at adapt each and every herb or spice.

But, people have worked out a kind of baseline https://www.thespruceeats.com/cooking-with-salt-1807478. You shouldn’t skip those kinds of salt additions, ever. That’s because they contribute more than taste. They contribute to the cooking process. The best example of that is when cooking meat or large pieces of vegetables via roasting. See, the Maillard reaction happens better and more evenly when the ingredients are salted before cooking.

So you can always add the rough amounts from that page and the handy little illustration it has until you memorize or write them down.

When you do that, you don’t need to add anything “to taste” because the pain eating can do that better than you to begin with. Most of the time, the instruction “salt to taste” is towards the end, so all you’re getting is flavor enhancement.

If you want to add some then, or the instruction is earlier in the recipe, you can usually add a half teaspoon to any recipe that doesn’t already have salt or a heavily salty ingredient like soy sauce. Some folks will be fine if you add an entire teaspoon, as long as the recipe feeds at least 4 people.

Pepper though, that’s a bit tougher. It’s an ingredient that benefits a dish at any point in the cooking process, doesn’t change that process, but does change the flavor depending on when it’s added. So you definitely want to add some at the point in the process the recipe says. Generally, a half teaspoon is going to be enough that eaters can adjust at the table and it won’t be too much for anyone not chemically sensitive to piperazine. If you know the people well enough, you can adjust to their preferences when a “pepper to taste” is included.

Most people, in a dish serving 4 are going to tolerate a full teaspoon, but it likely will dominate the dish more than is ideal overall. Tolerating isn’t the same as liking, after all. So, as long as you don’t dump more than that in, it’s not going to ruin anything.

Another little trick for pepper, if you have control of your kitchen, is to keep two containers. One, you set aside for a year, the other you replace regularly. The old one is going to be milder, so it can work well for giving some pepper taste, without overwhelming things. Now, I don’t prefer that method since it’s easy enough to just reduce amounts. But one of the people I know that lost part of their taste to covid swears that is e reliable.

His explanation is that it gives enough pepper taste that he can make mistakes, and not have the end result be hot. A lot of the piperazine fades when you have preground pepper to begin with. The longer it sits, the closer it gets to the bare minimum it’ll ever have.

Like I said, I don’t advocate for that, because adjusting is easier, but that’s me.

By all the gods and cthonic entities, I love my chickens.

Last night, I had to get up not long after my pet hen settled down next to me. I hear her trilling, and then bok-boking as I leave the room. This is with my wife and kid still there. The whole decade I was gone, she was standing on the arm of the couch, watching the doorway, craning her head around and making her little-lost-chicken sounds.

I finally come back after eternity, she stretches her little neck out, flaps her wings and dances a little.

I forgot to grab her a little treat, so I turn around and go back into the kitchen and hear buuuuuuk and feet stamping. Because I came back and just left again. I come back with a cashew and some bread, and after she savages that, she leans up against me, flips her tail, and goes to sleep.

But today? Holy pollo!

I arise from my slumber and head to the reading room for some contemplation on matters digestive. While in there, I hear my kid going out back, then coming back with the boka-boka-boks of a put-upon rooster.

Those sounds fade and they move to the living room. Big boy is not an indoor bird because, unlike baby girl, he does not recognize pads as the appropriate poop place. But he comes in for visits, and is very often hilarious. Sliding around on the linoleum, running around to visit each room, bawking at the things he’s seen dozens of times but forgotten because a rooster brain can only hold so much information before it gets shunted out in the form of poop.

Ahhh, but today, he hears me coming through the house and starts gobbling and bawking (as opposed to a bok, buk, tok, or bu-kawk, they really are all different) loudly.

I turn the corner into the living room, and my kid is holding him. He starts running in the air, his giant little feet just pumping, his neck stretched out towards me, and lets out an ear splitting BRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRRRRRRR. We call that his angry teakettle. It isn’t a sign of actual anger, the sound for that is slightly different, but it is a powerful scream nonetheless.

My kid stands up with him, and he is frantically scrabbling at the air as he is carried towards me and I walk to him.

We reach each other and he burbles. His wings fold back in, and he stretches his neck out and down. I start petting him, right at the base of the neck down between his wings and begin talking sweet to him. Like a switch, he purrs for a bit, then starts melting. I put one hand under his chest while my kid shifts their grip so he doesn’t fall. That’s because he absolutely will slide out of your arms when he’s grooving on pets and scritches like that.

I’m petting him, he’s purring and giving the occasional buk or bok while I talk to him, tell him he’s such a sweet rooster, my favorite rooster, and that he’s just a big, wonderful boy.

After a minute or so, I pull back because I need to shift my balance since I wasn’t positioned well and my back was starting to spasm. He pops open his eyes, stretches towards me with this buuuuuuk of longing. Now, attributing human emotions like longing onto an animal is rarely appropriate. But in this case, the way he was reaching for me, combined with the sigh of satisfaction when I started petting him again, I can’t think of any better way to describe it.

As I was writing that paragraph, my wife had gone to toss some scraps for the birds. Big boy stomped his self right in the door, up the ramp, and into the house. He stopped, let out a nigh window rattling baaaaaawwwwwk! And began stamping back and forth.

So my kid picks him up and starts to take him back out. Bad move. They caught a peck and a wing beating for that. Until they turned around and started coming this direction. That’s when he settled back and gave his approval via contented books. Which, again, is different from bok,buk,bawk, or other variations. I’m not even joking, there’s a dozen or so distinct vocalizations that roughly sound like the bawk or buck that people think chickens sound like.

In any case, I’m stretched out, waiting for my back to stop spasming, and as soon as they round the corner and he sees me, the excited teakettle starts screaming, his legs are pumping furiously, and my kid (being a professional chicken chauffeur) brings him to me.

Whereupon, he starts clucking contentedly while getting his pets. He got his fill and lightly pecked the kid until he was driven back outside

But, back to what I was almost ready to finish with.

Earlier, after second pets, he had also reached his desired level of interaction and played teenager jockey back outside.

Meanwhile, my wife starts crying because she remembered how scared he used to be of everything, barely willing to be near any of us, how long it took to get him to take treats from us, how long it took for him to not run off if we came close. And now, he gets excited to see us, and gets super excited when he sees me. He’s happy, or as happy as a fury driven agent of mayhem gets. He is a murderbird after all. Just ask the poor critters that have tried to take him on and been killed, or fled in terror at his wrath.

But he’s my friend, and I’m his. And that feels so fucking good. This rooster, he wasn’t hand raised, he had been neglected, seen part of the flock he hatched with get eaten, been passed around and unsure of what was going on in his life. We got him in summer of 23, not quite two years ago. It took pretty much the entire first year to get him to the point he wasn’t scared/angry when we’d pick him up to check his feet.

Now, he comes running to us. Sometimes, he’ll come running and jump into arms, or onto laps. Not for treats, either, though there was a phase in there where he’d come running and start looking for treats and not caring about us otherwise. But me and him had a breakthrough this past winter, where I’d wrap him up at bedtime and get him settled in when it was drizzly. He’d get dry, and warm, and eventually would just sit there instead of jumping off.

And that’s when I started petting him. It was weird to him at first, but he was warm and drowsy, so he put up with it. He put up with it long enough that he seemed to realize it felt good, and he started coming to me when he’d see me grab a towel. That turned into an almost daily thing. Even when the weather started warming, he still wanted a little petting at bedtime, even if he wasn’t sleeping inside (well, on the porch).

From all of that, to this goofy, dumb, but glorious beast that seems to love us. Makes me cry happy tears sometimes because it’s just so nice to see him have space to enjoy life instead of always being on swivel.

No, no, the only thing I expect of you is smugness and condescension. It’s pretty much all you ever do.

Seriously, go back through your own user history. Read it like someone else would if they stumbled across you randomly. I’m not saying you have to change, but don’t pretend you’re not just running around lemmy swinging dick.

Everyone has patterns. We all fall into habits, ways of saying things, word choices. Yours are consistently nasty, even when there’s no point to being so.

Thing is, behind all of that nastiness and condescension seems to be a person with some degree of passion. But it’s buried so deep that it eventually just becomes tiresome to keep trying to find the human in there. It comes off like you’re just trying to fuck with people. If that’s your goal, keep at it. If it isn’t? Maybe slow down some and consider the outcomes of your choices.