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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • I dunno.

    On one hand, fuck reddit.

    On another, if a given poster is also mildly annoyed at the subject matter enough to repost, then isn’t it still their post here?

    Or, on the third hand, if scrollers are popping in to talk, doesn’t it serve the same purpose as a legit original post?

    I would, however, on the fourth hand like to see it explicitly stated that just linking to reddit ain’t cool. Because it ain’t. Copy paste the post so nobody has to go there to enjoy it here.

    On the fifth hand, I suggest speaking to a geneticist because having five hands for a human is plain strange.


  • Stay chill and friendly when doing it all, no matter how hard that is.

    No bullshit, you can present almost anything with a smile and a casual shrug and get away with it as long you stay polite in your wording. Very often, throwing in a “you know how it is” and giving it that tone of commiseration keeps things smooth even if you’re essentially telling the person to fuck off.

    Since you’re in hospital setting, you can sometimes throw in “that’s out of scope” and at least befuddle whoever it is.

    And, smile a lot. But not one of those rictus smiles, or smug ones. Think inwardly of your coming escape and hold tight to the relief, and just radiate that glow. Takes serious prep mentally to stay in he right frame of mind for it, but that jolly bastard will make it so much harder for people to ramp up their aggression.

    It always helped me to remember that anyone getting all bothered and upset in that situation has a much sadder life than me. It let me reframe a given interaction to a different dynamic.


  • There’s a limit to it though.

    Biking is great for cities, unless you’d have to cross most of it to reach work, hospitals, or healthy foods and bring them home. I’ve known people that did it, but I don’t think most of the country could qualify as a paradise, even if we tore down and rebuilt cities from the ground up.

    Plus, it doesn’t address the needs of those that can’t bike, or maybe even not walk. The elderly, the disabled, the temporarily sick, and even kids considering the way the world has gotten populated ( bigger numbers mean the percentage of predators also returns bigger numbers of those).

    And it really only works in some cities, and would require shifting all of the shipping to retail connections. You can’t get supplies from a train to a warehouse on pedal power realistically, nor from warehouse to citizen available stations like stores.

    Unless you’re suggesting a total death of modern civilization. Which is cool, but not at all going to happen. Because without the supply infrastructure that gets materials from suppliers to where the goods need to be, they can’t get there. Even if we went back to horses and carriages for that, we’d still need well built roads that connect things. Doing that leaves biking in the same category it does with cars, so the only improvement is in not having to suck exhaust. Which would be great, just not sure it’s a realistic thing





  • Depends on what you mean.

    Humans can live without limbs at all. There’s issues that need to be watched because the body can struggle to regulate itself with that much mass and blood vessels gone, but it isn’t a problem by itself… We can live with no eyes, ears, nose, or even lips and teeth. We can lose one kidney, part of a liver, one lung, and segments of our intestines.

    But, again, the more you lose, the more support you need, and the shorter your life expectancy.

    However, that’s not survivable if you lose it all at once, without very fast help. Just losing part of an arm or leg can kill you without addressing the loss of blood that’s probably happening as well. The survivability of losing two feet of intestines to a bear in the woods vs losing it in a surgery is massively different, to put another slant on it.





  • Damn. I have a hard time pinning that down. Way easier by genre, but even there I wouldn’t come to a permanent conclusion since the process is highly dependent on what I remember.

    Most of the time, I end up on Fight Club. It’s my most rewatched movie for sure. It hits the right buttons between tight acting, phenomenal camera work, a structure that works, and a concept that can be challenging when first encountered. I hate that it got turned into a symbol for morons that only look at the surface of it, but that’s people for ya; they’ll take the exact opposite message from something and run with it like a pair of scissors.

    That being said, I’ve watched spaceballs damn near as many times, along with young Frankenstein. Most of the Brookes ouvre rank pretty damn high for me, and dominate my comedy folders.

    But there’s also Princess Bride that’s such a simple and comfortable movie, and Rocky Horror that thrills, chills, and fulfills me. All of those, I’ve seen so many times I’ve lost count, but reach triple digits (and probably exceed that considering I’ve been known to put any of those on to help me sleep when insomnia is kicking my ass, and some nights I’ll go through multiple via playlist now that digital exists).


  • Honestly? I’m of the mind that unless someone is altered by external matters, everything we do is in character, just not necessarily things we prefer. By external, I mean something like a drug, heat exhaustion, etc, that changes how our brain and body function, and thus can lead to success/behaviors that we wouldn’t do at all otherwise.

    Everyone feels anger and wants to scream a little, even if extremely rarely. That kind of thing, it’s all a matter of how extreme the situation is vs the internal resources available. Stuff like asking for a hug is sorta inverse in vibe, but the same principle.

    I get what you’re asking, and I’m not poopooing it, just prefacing my actual response.

    For me, my out of character stuff is when I’m social. I don’t like most people, and dislike groups of people even when it’s a group of people I like. So in those rare times when I want to go out among strangers, particularly if I want to go along, that’s such a rare and unusual thing that I think it counts for what you’re asking. But it is still part of my character, just a very tiny part (unlike me getting sick enough of people to do some screaming lol)






  • First and foremost, dog training is language training.

    You aren’t really teaching them to do things, you’re teaching them to understand the sounds and movements you make when you want them to do things.

    This means that regardless of anything else, you have to be consistent in both the execution of and understanding of what language you’re using.

    Example: you say sit when training with a calm voice and a little lilt at the end. But in daily life, you say sit sharply and without the hand gesture you’d been using during lessons. When that’s the case, you can’t blame the dog for not understanding automatically that you want them to do the thing you used different words for.

    Animals don’t process language the same way we do, but we can still run into problems understanding what someone else wants us to do when they say it in an unusual way. Why would a dog magically understand the difference between “sit, puppy”, “puppy, sit”, and/or “dammit, why won’t you sit?!”

    Consistency is how we learn languages as humans, and we have sections of our brain dedicated to language that are very developed compared to even our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.

    The flip side of that is that you have to train yourself at the same time as the dog. You have to train yourself in the commands you want them to connect with a behavior. Make sure you learn how you’re saying things, and any secondary or tertiary signals are included.

    Example: if you want the dog to eventually know that the word sit, a hand gesture, and a tone of voice mean you want them to sit, you have to consistently use those commands. Eventually, even the dumbest dog will figure out that any of those commands mean you want their butt on the floor, but if you aren’t consistent with them, it’ll take longer.

    Remember, that dog hears your words and tone, sees your movements and posture, and reads your facial expressions. *All" of those are part of the command you’re teaching them to respond to with a specific behavior.

    That’s why a lot of trainers have a process of introducing those things in a controlled and specific way.

    And, if you deviate from the command you actually taught (like screaming word sit while making angry face, bent over and shaking a finger at them instead of the usual), don’t be mad at them for not responding to this totally new and different signal grouping with a behavior you taught them with a different combination of signals.


  • Ehhhh, I tend to think the distances are less important than the fact of the infrastructure being prohibitive to set up.

    Trains like that can’t just be dropped onto the existing rail network. I mean, even if the rails p tracks we have would allow them to operate at speed, it would be a nightmare getting them to mesh with existing rail traffic. You’d lose the high speed factor, defeating the purpose.

    So, even in individual states, where the distances are closer to what you’d see in japan, it’s not a net practical solution without some serious rejiggering.

    You could likely get some lines done anyway, like from D.C. to a few major cities on the east coast. But would there really be a benefit? Would it reduce highway traffic significantly? Would it be safer and more efficient than existing passenger rail? I genuinely have no idea, but there would be a need for that kind of thing to make it worth building out. If it’s just shifting a small fraction of city-to-city commute, I don’t know that or would be worth the massive project it would take