southsamurai @ southsamurai @sh.itjust.works

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4,204

Joined

2 yr. ago

Could be! I just thought I saw dong.

I've been around cows, steer, and bulls, but not enough to notice that kind of difference at a glance in a low res pic. Hell, probably wouldn't catch that kind of thing in high def tbh.

Come to think of it though, older cows aren't usually taken to shows, at least not around here.

They be going to a livestock show.

If you've never been to one, they are more fun, but way smellier, than you'd think.

In smaller, local shows, chances are good you'll get to pet some of the critters once they've been judged. I highly recommend petting any cattle, goats, and horses that you're allowed to.

Pigs, less so. Even the spoiled rotten ones are prone to squealing randomly, and it is ear splitting.

If you're lucky, someone local will have less common stuff like emus or alpaca. Pet the mammals, don't go near the dinosaurs. Not that emu are any more prone to biting/pecking than alpacas (though they can be) it's more than emu don't have a throttle. Whatever they do, they do it hard. Well, in my limited experience anyway.

But don't ever just assume you're allowed to approach and touch the animals. You can ask, but adept accept the more probable no with a smile. Not all critters handle strangers well, even if they're very socialized. Some of the humans just don't like strangers touching their animals. Sometimes it's show policy.

I think that cow is being used in the generic, and inaccurate, sense of being synonymous with cattle.

I'm fairly sure those are steer, not cows.

I dunno, you throw enough glitter around and anything is cute

Jfc, I can't even calculate.

Music, if we say 10 bucks a CD, at least 10k. Probably closer to 20k, and maybe more because I haven't actually counted in years because I didn't see the point in trying to keep up. However, I just went and looked at the folder on my nas and it has 1k+ albums on it, and that's way less than is on my main drive on my media PC. So even the 20k estimate is a lot lower than what's actually there. Likely closer to the $50k mark if my memory is right. I tend to grab whole albums rather than individual tracks only, and I'm prone to grabbing an entire discography when I discover a new band. My music collection is around 2tb total, I know that without looking.

Movies, even at the same price, it would be around the 8k mark somewhere, though they aren't all in one place, so I cant be certain. There's a little over 1k files on the nas, but that's only the ones that everyone wanted available on there.

Books, I'm fucked. Call it 5 bucks for a cheap paperback, and I'm close to 10k, if not over. Hard to be sure because I do have duplicates in multiple formats. I've whittled down to only "borrowing" epub files and converting on my own if someone borrows an ebook from me and wants a different format, but I've never gone through and deleted mobis and whatnot. But it's around 3k files on my boox reader, plus more on my nas drive that I really only keep because I like having access to some reference materials but don't use them often enough to justify keeping them on devices. So 15k there, at that price.

I just checked because I was curious. Almost 18k files of ebooks. That, however, does include classics that I only read occasionally, copies in multiple formats, stuff that isn't for me (kid, wife, etc), and probably some stuff that I read once and never will again, but didn't delete. So, over 50,000 bucks at 5 bucks each.

Comics, that's easier because a scanned version doesn't really have a monetary value at all, and most of my collection is of OOP stuff. So, depending on how you look at what a price should be, it's $0, maybe 600 bucks at $1 each, or you'd have to track cover prices on all of it, and I ain't doing that lol.

Tbh, I can't think of the last time I pirated a game. I just don't game that much on my desktop any more, and I know I haven't in the 10 odd years I've had that specific hard drive.

If I tried to factor in stuff that was higher priced at some point (and CDs used to be pretty expensive), numbers would go up.

Shit. Even if I wiped out the stuff I have physical copies of, it would still be in the 100k range I think.

Gonzo, obviously

Sure.

But it's also a song about two conflicted people in a marriage, unhappy and having trouble, discovering that the marriage and other person weren't the problem; that it was a lack of openness and communication.

I dunno, it isn't universally beneficial.

Votes, particularly down, can have a cooling effect on assholery.

Voting is faster, and people are lazy. So there's a tendency for people to just vote and scroll on. Remove down votes, and you get more snark if mods don't intervene.

It's kinda hit or miss though

Meh, we love you anyway :)

Shit, I down voted you for whining about down votes.

I'm not certain if full proof is an autocorrect swap, an intentional joke, or bone apple tea, but it's a damn interesting one no matter what it came from

Well, it was most likely the indirect drop in core temperature, or a change in your nervous system's detection of temperature difference.

When you warm up the skin, all the little capillaries open up at the surface. It isn't only at the source of the heat. So your body now radiates its heat through the skin, dropping core temp slightly.

A decrease in core temp is known to be part of the normal sleep cycle. This is one of the reasons a hot shower can contribute to faster, better sleep when taken an hour or so ahead of the intended bedtime.

However, another part of the sleep cycle, or rather how our bodies work leading up to sleep, is that when external temperatures feel cooler, the adaptations our bodies make promote sleep, and improve sleep. It's why a common bit of advice is to keep the sleeping area cool. But, if you trick your body into feeling a different gap in external and internal temperature, it often serves the same purpose. Our skin isn't that great at determining direct temperature, as in "the air is 70 degrees". What it is good at it "the air feels 30 degrees warmer than me". So it can be fooled sometimes.

Add in the comfort of cuddling, with the full stomach pulling blood towards the stomach, and you've got a nap bomb.

There's been some good research into this, and if you look up thermoregulation and sleep, skin warming and sleep, as well as general information about the sleep cycle, you'll run into at least articles reporting the studies. Most of the studies are paywalled, but if you're sufficiently motivated, there's ways around that.

But, by all means, do the control experiment. I would predict that you'll get a slower result than with your boyfriend, but not a ton slower. Assuming you make sure to eat the same meal, or very similar, anyway.

Just remember that it isn't 1:1. The air temp may be different by a few degrees, you may have had more or less sleep beforehand, time of day can make it vary. Clothing, textures of bed linens, etc. The boyfriend isn't the only factor involved. So don't expect a perfect result where the exact degree of reduction in time-to-sleep (aka sleep latency) is the exact same, or wildly different. You might not even be able to measure the difference since you didn't actually measure the time precisely the first time. You'll be relying on your perceived time to sleep unless you have the ability to read and record brain waves. Even watches and such with sensors aren't precise in detecting sleep. They get close, but only to degree.

Nowhere. There really isn't a concentration at all. You get some scattered around, yeah, but they don't even have enough numbers to make the few conservative specific communities show up in feeds.

The last time any number got together, it was on the exploding heads instance, and that's been long gone.

That is such a great book.

And yeah, fuck them. I would absolutely never let them in.

Degenerative disc disease ftw?

Generally, it depends on what's causing the pain as regards what reduces it.

Booze is a CNS depressant. It puts a damper on everything in the central nervous system, and that includes pain perception.

Heat typically works by improving blood flow to affected areas.

So, most likely, what's happening is that your muscle spasms are caused by the pain, rather than being the immediate source of pain. The tension does make pain levels increase, but stopping that without addressing the originating cause can't and won't eliminate all of it.

So, muscle relaxers can only do so much. I would argue that they're doing something, because there's not been any cases of total immunity to any that I've been aware of, and they're a first attempt for most chronic pain cases. But if they don't target the actual cause, then they can't do enough. In other words, if the pain is causing your muscles to tighten up, a muscle relaxer is only going to partially reduce that tension because only part of that tension is involuntary.

It may not be conscious tension, but it isn't something that is caused by the muscle itself. It's a response to pain. So a muscle relaxer is kinda like a bandaid, not stitches.

Booze, however, is going to work in your brain, blocking off the pain signals, or more accurately reducing your ability to perceive them. Once you no longer perceive the pain, that part of you that's holding those muscles tight to try and prevent/reduce the oh-so-lovely pain from bulging, slipped, or herniated discs start to relax almost all the way, as opposed to the tiny bit that the muscle relaxers can make them unclench.

Now, it's important to note that the use of involuntary here doesn't mean that the rest of your muscle tension is a choice. It just means that the part of your nervous system that is making it happen is a different section than the involuntary part. Now, you can actually exert conscious control over that kind of muscle tension, but it takes effort and practice. And, it probably won't reach 100% release because your brain and body are going to resist it. Plus, pretty much the second you stop doing the methods that relax the muscles, they'll go right back to trying to keep your back immobile. So it's never a permanent solution.

The key to finding a balance often means the long, hard road of physical therapy combined with training in progressive relaxation, breath control, and all the other tools that give you the ability to intercede in the process.

Alcohol isn't a long term solution. To the contrary, the longer you rely on it, the worse you're gong to perceive the pain, and the more it'll take to get relief.

There is, however, some good-ish news. DDD is progressive. But! Most of the time it'll reach a point of relative stasis. Things will bulge and slip more radically during the early part of the disease process. At some point, it'll slow down its progression, and the changes tend you be more localized than along the entire spine. So you'll reach a point where it won't get worse fast, and will usually only get worse in small sections. I'm in that phase of things myself, and it isn't exactly fun, but it means my pain and mobility levels are stable. There's a high chance you'll reach that point too.

Once you hit that point, as long as you haven't pushed things into addiction, stuff like muscle relaxers, Tylenol and the like can keep pain levels under control enough to get by.

Until then, keep on your PT program. You want to keep as much flexibility, mobility, and joint health as possible. It really is one of those things that if you don't use it you will lose it. But don't make the mistake of doing absurd shit when you aren't in debilitating pain. You can't actually move normally, you just can't perceive all the minor injuries you're causing that make the pain worse once whatever you use wears off. That's one of the reasons I quit accepting opiates. Yeah, I hurt less, but I couldn't tell when I was doing something wrong, so I was getting worse, faster. I'm just now recovering properly from fucking my back up the last time I took some of my opiate pain meds. And that was in November ffs.

So, if you need the relief to get by, use what you gotta. Just don't fall into the trap of thinking that lack of pain means there's nothing wrong.

Look, if I can't slap my dick down on the table, life isn't worth living. And, by definition, that is a form of dick measuring. Since it measures the dick against the table, the table is therefore measured against the dick.

However! If someone would volunteer to be a flesh table for the period of the no-table-measuring, that would be acceptable. If I can measure my dick against someone's shoulders or hips, problem solved, and I'm 200 mil richer.

Ngl, if I hadn't previously seen cat towers with holes in them like that, I likely would have assumed that the bottom paw was an ai indicator at first too.

Mind you, I would likely have zoomed in to check because, unlike a decent phone camera, most ai images don't zoom well, you start seeing artifacts; a real picture will usually zoom well enough and pixilate a little different. It isn't foolproof, and eventually it won't be that easy as the various models improve.

But both versions posted here are almost definitely real pictures of an actual cat, not generated. Zoom in a little and you can see reflections and fur details that won't be there with ai

😆

Ngl, I wouldn't use the rose scented stuff either, but mainly because my nose would clog up if I tried. Most fake flower smells do it.

I'd just go ham and exfoliate harder. Soap isn't actually necessary to be clean and not smell. It's just much easier to achieve those goals with it than without. Hell, depending on where you're washing on your body, soap can be a bad thing because even the stuff designed to not over strip skin won't always live up to that promise.

Legit folks, if you run out of soap, you can be just as clean (as in dead skin cells sloughed off, excess oils gone, and any odors from the bacteria on your body gone) with just your hands, short term. You'd need something better at exfoliating than bare hands if it's going to be over about a week, but it's still doable. Longer term, soap itself is just faster, not better, than any other product that can reduce skin oils and any clinging dirt.

You'd be amazed how many people have strong sensitivities to most surfactants, or outright allergies to some of the more common ingredients. They can be right beside you in an elevator after years of not using soap, and you won't know.

Nah. Age gaps only matter when one party is not yet an adult and free to make their own choices.

A 30 year old? If they're not capable of deciding who to date on their own, then their conservator should say no before someone tries to set them up on a blind date.

Just make sure this lady knows there's an age gap so she can make an informed decision. And be aware that while age gaps don't matter in terms of who can and should date whom, doesn't mean there aren't extra issues that might result in incompatibilities. Those incompatibilities aren't a sure thing either, though.