southsamurai @ southsamurai @sh.itjust.works

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12

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4,217

Joined

2 yr. ago

Eh, anonymity is great for some things, less so in others.

But burner emails are pretty much as anonymous as it gets on the fediverse. If you pick a random user name and cycle to a new account fairly often, you're anonymous to other users. A VPN mostly anonymizes you from the instances.

Being real though, that's kinda dickish to the instances because you're wasting the tiny bit of resources used to create accounts. If you do it often enough to really anonymize, it adds up.

Really specific here, but font control.

Us folks with dyslexia in its various expressions have trouble with command line. If you can't read a specific command, good luck ever getting comfortable with it. You can't error check yourself, so until you build up memory, you're kinda screwed if you can't use the fonts that are available.

The mods do their job. I don't know for sure which ones are and are not active, but reports get handled same day in every case where I've reported, or been reported. I'd have to check the mod log to see if there's been recent activity in that regard, but don't have interest in doing so when anyone can.

On my pen name account, I moderate two communities, and it would sometimes be months before I'd do anything on the account that would show up because those communities were very slow, and I'm subscribed to them on this account. No need to switch to that account when there's no mod action needed, unless I want to post/comment on it, which is fairly infrequent.

Lemmy is way more forgiving of relaxed moderation.

Fwiw, you get that sweet, sweet upvote for a solid post, even though I have no idea how popular or unpopular it is. It's not something I've seen discussed much at all. But you presented your opinion without any rage bait in it, and I dig the hell out of that.

However, I would argue that it's about execution, not duration. Just like short stories serve a different role than novels or novellas, multi-arc episodes have a different purpose than a single arc episode.

Sometimes, when you're writing, you get an idea. But it may not work as a long form piece. Very often, trying to stretch an idea into something long form ruins it.

When applied to an ongoing series (as opposed to a series where each episode stands alone to begin with), multi-arc episodes offer multiple benefits, but it has to be done well. Now, obviously, whether or not something is done well is subjective. So unless you have an example in mind, I'm going to stay generic.

The biggest benefit of sub plots and mini arcs is world building and character development. When you have mini arcs, they don't have to follow a seasonal arc. They can show vignettes of the rest of the world, or history, or the inner workings of a characters mind, or an outside view of usual characters.

Now, you still have to execute. If the pacing is off, or the writing doesn't flow right, or there's difficulty for the actor/s presenting something atypical, or any number of possibilities, individual mini arcs can flop, as can the entire episode.

But you absolutely can create a full story that will/would only take up 10 minutes of screen time. There's arguments to be made that any story can be fit into that, with the only question of how well it would translate. I don't really think the results of cutting LOTR into a ten minute story would ever work well, as an example of the flaws of attempting it.

Ensemble shows tend to be more forgiving of the multi-arc format, because most shows of that nature are always going to have scenes and segments that aren't the full cast to begin with. Something like Leverage is going to work better in that format than something like Sherlock. Leverage actually did several episodes with multiple arcs, to varying degrees of success.

So, I'd definitely disagree with the opinion as presented, with the exception where you state that it's basically impossible to add depth to the arcs. In that regard, I definitely agree, but I'd also argue that not every story needs depth. Some stories would suffer from depth.

Kingsize carries up to something like 8x, though not for every single thing they have.

Pretty much every bariatric patient I ever had ended up shopping with them. Hell, some of the guys that would steroid up buy from them. They tend to have designs that are made for men with atypical proportions. Just sizing up a pattern doesn't take care of that for everyone, you have to adjust how things drape, where they stretch, where seams are, etc.

But, a patient of mine that had cortisol sensitivity was able to find stuff that fit him fairly well, and he had a similar build to what the image you provided shows. Almost all belly, with everything else being proportional.

But, even with king size, a 69 inch waist is going to be difficult to shop for stuff that's also going to fit everything else well. Like, shirts as a perfect example, there has to be extra fabric across the shoulders and chest in order for the shirt to not ride up constantly. So your chest area is damn near guaranteed to be looser than is ideal visually. Even with stretchier fabrics, there's a limit to how much difference you can factor in to mass produced clothing.

Since you're under medical care, chances are that you'll drop a good bit over the next two years or so, assuming that your body responds to treatment well. So, in general, I'd say focus your budgeting on work clothes, whatever that may mean for you. Pick up enough to get you through a week of work, find someone local that can alter them for a better fit, and then expand your wardrobe slowly after that, and have things taken in as the belly decreases.

That's also assuming budget would be a concern. If you've got the resources to just throw a few thousand at the issue every six months or so, that's a different issue. I only mention it because the patients I had that dealt with this issue (or similar ones) tended to be elderly or disabled, or very limited in the amount of time they could work. So they ended up very often spending most of their budget on "public" clothing, then just rotating through stuff like sweatpants and t-shirts at home.

Also, focus on natural fabrics. There's long term "annoyances" that come with even this specific form of obesity. One of them is skin irritation where clothes bind, and it's pretty much inevitable that some binding occurs. I'd say that with this specific example, it is inevitable. Natural fabrics tend to irritate less in that regard, and also help wick moisture away from places where skin touches skin. That wicking can be vital as we head into summer months. So, anywhere that your body touches your body, like the groin, underarms, and the bottom of the belly when you sit, cotton is the go-to with specialty fabrics the second best choice. There's blended fabrics that wick better than cotton, but they also tend to chafe more, so they aren't top pick.

It sucks, but nobody other than king size is likely to have decent button up shirts from what I've seen. And you're still going to run into the fit not being perfect when you get the clothing, it'll just be better than regular brands that aren't designed right for big men at all. So, definitely start looking for a place that alters clothing. Expect to pay maybe twenty bucks at the absolute minimum per item. You might run into a tiny place that goes lower, but the last time I had to take anything to be altered at all, it was 20 bucks, and that was just hemming some jeans.

Custom tailored clothes are indeed an option. Maybe the only real option i hif you need a suit. Even Rochester big & tall wouldn't have anything cut right without altering, and they used to have the best suits for unusual bodies (the roided out dudes shopped there for suits, so it isn't just obesity). But Rochester, you'd need to have a local store anyway, even if they did have something cut right, just because their best options weren't ready to wear, they needed fitting.

But, there's some good news with the button up shirt requirement. Because your exact situation where body changes clash with that mandate happens a lot, you'll be able to pick pretty much any color and style you like. Stuff like t-shirts and polos or henleys, you tend to have less options in that regard, even with king size.

Ngl, I'm kinda out of date with some of this. While I have sizing issues myself, they're different, so I haven't shopped for your body type in a decade. That being said, kingsize has a habit of carrying the same basic items essentially forever. The first patient I had that used them was back in the numerous nineties, and the last catalog I saw a couple of years ago had pretty much the exact same items available, so I doubt that part of things would be different now.

But, hey, even if it isn't clothing, if you need advice about dealing with some of the other hassles of a body change like that, holla. There's little things that I've picked up over the years, and don't mind sharing.

I don't remember. When was this?

Oh, heck yeah! Elotes en vaso especially. It still needs the cotija or parm, but the yeast bumps it up.

Grits are the same; still needs actual cheese, but the yeast amplifies it. Popcorn, it can just go straight on!

That's why I said a reputation for, and a somewhat deserved one.

The key is that when .ml users are dickish away from their instance, it tends to be very obvious and easy to see. It's the whole tankie militant thing. It stands out in part because it varies less between individual users, as compared to the dickish sorts on shitjustworks where it's less consistent in type.

The censorship side of things is inconsistent. Depends on the specific community, imo. Some of them are just ridiculous about it, others it doesn't even happen. But, because it's a tankie instance, the censorship has a pattern to it that's easy to notice and track.

But both do exist. Whether or not it's worse than any other instances, I can't confidently reach a conclusion because it would take digging through the mod log going back years to show censorship patterns, and even then you'd have to have a way to determine what was censorship and what was just moderation along community rules (regardless of the fairness or equality of those rules). Similarly, how do you quantify dickishness? How are you going to compare between instances? I have zero way to do that.

But I would maintain that the consistency of tankie diskishness and censorship there is very clear to anyone that interacts with the instance frequently, so it isn't just a meme.

As long as you're getting "favorited", it's working as intended. Retooting (sorry, I know that's not what it's called I just enjoy the term) is less a determinant of what kind of interest there is on your post, but if you're getting any at all, you're doing good.

Mastodon as a whole isn't really about this kind of discussion. Just like Twitter was not going to have the same degree of interaction that reddit offered. Mastodon serves a different purpose, so it's very difficult to make it work for threaded discussion, even though you can even use it to interact with lemmy (or other federated services).

If you don't want to use Mastodon as just a place to send your thoughts into the world, you have to follow hashtags that are about discussion and engagement. They can be hard to find, and often aren't great because most people use instances that limit character use. Hard to have a nuanced talk with under 500 characters.

Prices never go down for things like that, they only go up.

I mean, you quoted the line and missed the last two words as umami. That's absurd, it's right there to see.

Up until the term umami spread outside of Japan, nobody called the flavor that. And it still took longer before people figured out that it was its own taste in the same wau sour, bitter, salty, and sweet are; that it has distinct receptors.

Before that, there wasn't really a specific term in use. When people referred to what is now called umami, the vocabulary was different. Savory and meaty are the two I remember being most used, and they have other usages for food. Savory is very often just used as an antonym for sweet, and meaty just means "meat like" without drawing a distinction between the saltiness and slight metallic tang of meat from the part that is umami.

I don't know how old you are, so you may or may not have been around during the spread of the term and its eventual discovery of having its own receptors. But it was "viral" in the way it initially crept in, then exploded as every cooking show started talking about it and familiarity with the term spread. There was a collective "ohhhhhh! That's what I've been experiencing", and the word got adopted. Now it's a part of the collective lexicon.

Nutritional yeast, aka flake yeast.

Intense flavor, goes with damm near anything parmesan goes with, and things it doesn't. It's fairly cheap, lasts ages when stored decently, and it packs a nutritional punch.

People like to talk about how umami's spread as a specific flavor into awareness in the west was a massive shift. But a lot of people got locked into the soy and fish sauce focus that was the first thing that western tastes became familiar with as umami. Even when folks are aware of other things, they still tend to think in terms of sauces and complex recipes for pastes and fermented products. But good old yeast is right there, cranking out a deep and rich flavor.

So it gets slept on pretty hard. It doesn't help that it isn't marketed well. A lot of people that have heard of it think it's more along the lines of a vitamin you take on its own, or lump it in with woowoo nutrition in places where it's called nutritional yeast.

One of my favourite things that really focus on it as a major flavor component is roasted cauliflower. You mix it with the spice blend, and toss it in a bowl, and it opens up with that rich, heady scent that yeast has. I don't measure for it, it's just dumping a bit of garlic and onion powders, salt & pepper, then some paprika. Then maybe two to three tablespoons of the yeast. It's mouth watering, just the smell. Fuck, my mouth is watering thinking of it.

You get that amazing caramelized flavor from the roasting, that delicate floral note that some cauliflower has, the slightly sulfuric tang too. Then the spices lift those, and the yeast ties it all together and becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Is it federated? It only works with its own protocol, so it can't be part of the fediverse by definition.

I don't know enough about opinions on the matter to do anything but upvote for a solid post.

Only thing I even know about it is the name and that fuckery was going on. It's not the kind of drama I tend to be entertained by specifically because the fuckery that would get discussed in passing that I'd scroll past was usually really really ugly fuckery, and that's bullshit, period.

So scanning the screen shots you provided is enough to make me glad I didn't ever pay attention to it. I'd have been furious

They are not the smartest birds, that's for sure. Pretty, and entertaining, but not too bright

Ngl, I would be happy if the cardinal that lives in our yard became pope. He's a cool little dude, and much closer to the divine than any human.

Gotta get the wings spread.

It is pretty much the most blocked instance I know of. Not defederated, just blocked by users.

.ml has a pretty iffy reputation as an instance, somewhat deserved, of being unnecessarily dickish as a whole. So, yeah, if you aren't aligned so heavily with the politics of the instance that you need to be based there for that, it might not be a bad idea to think about switching to a different instance if you're running into trouble with visibility and engagement.

Mind you, your posts on other instances should still be visible, if I understand how instance blocks work. Afaik, when a user blocks an instance, what happens is that no communities from that instance will show for you, but users from the instance still do as individuals. Like, if you blocked shitjustworks, you would still see this comment, and posts I make on .world or wherever, but not any posted to this instance.

So, if you're posting on communities on other instances, it likely isn't that .ml being blocked is causing the lack of responses. It isn't impossible that people with a serious problem with ml might avoid users from there, no matter what the post is, but I haven't seen many people saying they do that.

Well, it's about how you shove it back in, I guess

Critical thinking is a skill, not an inborn gift. You may end up better at it than someone else by virtue of some as-yet-unknown genetic or epigenetic factor, but only if you both learn the skills and practice them.

Worse, even with learning and practice everyone fucks up at least a little. Even if the only place they fuck up is thinking that because they have the skill and practice that they can't fuck up.

We're all fucking meat bags filled with hormones and chemicals. That shit will override every bit of common sense and critical thinking that's ever existed. Not every time, but eventually, and more than once in your life.

Propaganda is only propaganda if you aren't part of the institution generating it. If you're a random asshole in fascistan, or whatever, chances are that the propaganda is just noise, the same way commercials or waves crashing are. There's no need to think critically if all you want to do is coast and get by.

So they "believe" it in roughly the same way that people believe if they work hard, they can achieve anything they want. Even if they know better, what's the alternative? Seeing reality and still being stuck in the same place? Nah, even the ones that have practiced thoroughly aren't fucking around most of the time. Why would they bother if they apply that critical thinking and realize nobody really gives a fuck as long as they aren't too hungry, and the worst stuff is happening in some letter town? They wouldn't. It's too fucking depressing.

Also, you assume that critical thinking can overcome a lack of information. The "news" is always the news. If you have no other sources of data, critical thinking doesn't apply until something contradicts that news. If you control what people see and hear, you control the people. There won't be enough opposition to matter, if you've set up your regime right.