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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • You can put them in between 2 bowls with their (the bowls) rims against each other to create an oblate spheroid-ish thing, then shake it real hard for a few minutes. It should remove the shell pretty eaily, if loudly.

    Edit: Sorry, turns out, that’s garlic cloves. Shrimp peeling is really only easier raw. You can rip the legs off and just give a squeeze and it’ll pop out of the shell. In my experience, once they’re cooked the shell will break up much easier. As someone else said, a stock is your best bet if you really want to avoid peeling. I mean, technically you can eat the shell if you make sure to grind them up completely when you puree them. I’ve never tried anything with the shell still included, so I can’t speak for the taste, but you could try a bisque if you’re dead set on not peeling.


  • How does that work, physiologically? We’re talking dopamine in the brain. If what that user said was true and “overstimulation like that drains your dopamine reserves (or something),” then another person being there wouldn’t make a difference.

    I mean, it’s because they have a misunderstanding on how brain chemistry works, obviously. Like, it can store it, but it doesn’t get used up from doing things that feel good. That’s what makes dopamine. And while loneliness is a problem in the general population, it’s more likely that longer lasting gratification from sex isn’t from the physical act or even just the physical act with another person, but the joy gained from the relationship as a whole. Pretending that there’s chemically something different happening in the brain just because there is physically another person there is ridiculous. I’ve had plenty of unfulfilling sex with people I didn’t like that didn’t make me happy/content afterwards like masturbating would have.



  • don’t even know enough to care in the first place.

    but ultimately it’s the user who decides to use the service, and how to use it.

    So you admit they don’t have access to the knowledge needed to make better choices for their digital security. Then immediately blame them. I think your bias from the point of view of a one that is already more informed on this sort of thing. If they don’t know they need to know more, how can they be expected to do any research? There’s only so much time in a day so you can’t expect people to learn “enough” about literally everything.


  • I routinely pre-make breakfast sandwiches for the week and have pretty much perfected what I like at this point.

    English muffins a great for reheating, sourdough I find reheats the best. I typically toast them slightly as well to maintain some crunch

    What you came for: Eggs. I switch up between fried eggs and scrambled. I like my fried eggs a little undercooked, so they can be messier to eat, but scrambled eggs require a good bit of cheese to hold them together. Fried is pretty self explanatory since it’s still one piece and you just stick it on there. For scrambled I’ll mix in some cheese while I cook them, then when I put it on the sandwich it gets a slice or 2 of cheese on top to melt and hold it in place. I’ve tried using cookie cutters or muffin pans to get egg rounds, but getting a size that also matches your sandwich usually requires buying a special sized thing that’s used only for that purpose, which I try to avoid. Plus I’ve found that having the eggs in a disc shape just seems to not hold up as well over the week compared to scrambled or fried. The texture tends more to rubbery for me for some reason.

    Bacon or ham is good as well

    Instead of getting sausage patties already shaped, I’ll opt for the tubes of raw sausage. like with the eggs, pre-shaped patties are always too small and you don’t get full coverage, and you definitely want every bit to have a little of everything. So I get the tubes and stick them in the freezer while I cook most everything else, then when it’s close to frozen- but not completely solid, just more firm- take it out and with a serrated knife cut into thick rounds. You’ll want them thick because you’ll need to press them to expand the diameter. They’re gonna lose a lot of that size when the fat cooks out so make them bigger than your sandwich when you press them out. Then you can just pan-sear the patties and finish off in the oven if they’re not cooked through yet.

    I’ll then put the sandwiches together. Depending on how well the scrambled eggs are holding together, I pay stick the bottom half of the sandwiches in the oven for a couple minutes just to melt the cheese slice on the eggs and keep them where they’re supposed to be.

    Once done and they’re all put together, make sure they’ve cooled off completely and wrap each one in foil (definitely spray some non-stick spray on the foil to make it easier to remove after re-heating). Then in the morning you just toss a foil-wrapped sandwich in the over (I use an air-fryer typically but conventional ovens work as well, but will need a lower temp and take longer. But you can have that warming up while you do everything else to get ready for the day).

    It takes some time to set it all up, but I usually set aside a whole day on weekends to do my grocery shopping, cooking and prep for the week. And these sandwiches seem to keep pretty well for me. I’ve been able to make enough for as far out as 10 days and don’t notice an appreciable decline in quality.



  • It’s actually pretty normal and you probably do it without realizing it. Occasionally the lungs just need to absorb a little extra oxygen to catch up. You ever watch a dog sleep and every now and then they just take a big inhale? Same thing.

    Found this neat source:

    “A sigh is a long, deep breath that is often viewed as an expression of stress, sadness, exhaustion or relief. However, the most frequent sighs are unnoticed and occur spontaneously every several minutes, about a dozen times per hour.”

    . . .

    “The lung is composed of hundreds of millions of alveoli, the gas exchange units at terminal ends of the respiratory tract, each of which is about 200 micrometers in diameter. During normal breathing, alveoli spontaneously collapse, a pathological condition known as atelectasis. A sigh is hypothesized to reverse any alveolar collapse, because it is a large breath that re-expands all alveoli, filling them all with air.”



  • Oh boy. I made the jump from SLA to (kinda) publication order. Going from his most intricate series to his first published book was almost jarring. I still liked Elantris though.

    Personally, I read through close to publication order, but grouped series together. Well, I guess it’s really just Mistborn and maybe Emperor’s Soul with Elantris, but those last ones aren’t actually in the same set, just the same planet.



  • Oh man, every time someone asks a question along these lines I always think of the movie Hank and Mike. I found it in a discount bin at a grocery store probably a decade ago so I took a little time to actually look into it more this time. I knew it was Canadian and unlikely a big hit, but apparently it was just so poorly received. It made less than $17,000 of the $2M it cost, and it’s real tough to find anyone even reviewing it. I even struggled to find the music from it. (The one song is badass). And it’s got a couple B-tier actors that I remember doing a great job, and I think Joe Mantegna really went for it in his role as the god Pan. Chris Klein kills it in this song.

    The crude humor kinda puts people off I think but the satirical aspects cut a little deeper than the movie needed to. And probably when I discovered it I was depressed and had a drinking problem and the overall mood of it really felt at home to me at the time so I was able to just live in those aspects of the film and really absorb the more subtle message. It’s definitely absurd in many points but there’s a lot of heart in it.


  • I mean, I really liked the first 90 pages or so. Goodkind clearly can write well. He’d occasionally forget himself and start doing some real character work or the characters would sit and talk a bit and do some world building. But then he’s realize he needed to move the story along and he clearly doesn’t know how to do that so he’d have a wizard pop out of the bushes (literally at least once) and just say “hey, we got to move this story along. Let’s go do this thing now.” He can write, but he doesn’t know how to tell a story. Don’t even get me started with how he shoehorns in the call to action for the hero in the first book. It’s like papers I’d write in college where I had a bunch of good parts but it’s no cohesive so I’d half-ass some connecting bits to frankenstein it together. It’s technically passable, but not a good overall work.

    And I’ve heard the Gentlemen Bastards series mentioned a few times recently so I’ll need to put it on my list. I’m working my way through Raymond E. Feist right now. The first series just feels so much like a DnD campaign (because it literally is) and I love it.



  • And to add to what this user said, planning is also key. Its actually what led my to realizing that my (really bad) ADHD was exacerbating my depressions and anxiety symptoms because I didn’t have the native skills to deal with them. Not thinking about ADHD I just learned to plan literally everything as a coping mechanism for the anxiety. Weekends I’d plan the general things for the week, then every morning I’d write out a detailed version of that day’s tasks, each broken down by parts. If it’s a call I have to make, I write out a little script with key things I need to say/ask and maybe write out the whole sentence so I don’t have to think about it mid convo, I’m just reading. Planning for as many things as I could like that really reduced the stress-load I’d deal in most scenarios.


  • I cracked a molar years ago and I was too broke and underemployed to get it dealt with. As time went on it slowly rotted away in the back of my mouth. I was already depressed and dealing with it just wasn’t a priority. It just became a part of my life and I would chew on the other side without thinking and eventually the pain just went away because I was stubborn and I think my brain just stopped recognizing those signals. It was bad.

    Last year I went to get it extracted and as I was talking to the dental hygienist about it she said something that I really liked and I was actually really surprised at the compassion from a dentist’s office.

    I’ve always tried to be open about my mental problems because the world needs to lose the stigma we’ve placed on it. I’m not ashamed by any of it, but I definitely understand why many are. So when I told her that I’d spent several years dealing with depression and taking care of my teeth just wasn’t a priority at that time, she said “Hey, it’s alright. Sometimes we have to let some things go to survive whatever we’re dealing with. But you’re able to take care of it now and we’re gonna help with that.

    You did what you had to do to deal with your anxiety and you should be proud of that. It’s not easy, but try not to view the tooth as a reminder anymore than a messy kitchen is a reminder that you were too busy to do the dishes yesterday. It’s just a result of a thing that millions of people go through every day. You’re taking care of it just like you’d wash those dishes, and then you’re going to move on with the rest of your day. I still have that empty spot in the back of my mouth and honestly, I forget about it even as my tongue pokes at that empty spot sometimes. This is the first time I’ve even thought about it in months and months, and it’s been about a year since it was removed. As for after, depending on where it is, you might not really notice soon after. Generally there’s like this plug of congealed and scabbed blood in the spot that you have to be careful with the first week or so, but I didn’t experience any pain.

    My own anxiety had my blood pressure sky high when they first went in and they couldn’t do anything yet so they gave me a while to calm down and one of the hygienists was there and explained to me what to expect afterwards. She assured me it wouldn’t even be noticeable and she was right. But you should be able to ask them as well to get a professional idea for your expectations to assuage your worry. But also, just from experience, I can say that it’ll be fine, you’ll stop noticing and stop thinking about it once there isn’t something in your mouth that you always have to be aware of.


  • I actually know this one. Access is available through the MS Office 2019 bundle officially and they pretend it’s not really there with 365, but if you have Office365 you can download the app version to work offline. Access still doesn’t show up on the main list in the app, but if you search it’s there. There’s also a way to search it in apps online in 365 but it just downloads it and only runs in the app.

    I recently went back to school and the basic degree requirements necessitated an intro to CIS class. It was just a glorified MS suite class. But I had an interesting time figuring out how to get to Access and no where online makes it clear. That’s the main reason I typed this out. Maybe some day someone else will have the same issue and this comment will show up on a search and be able to help them. You’re welcome future person!


  • Jesus fucking christ. You know how water works, right? It fits the form of the container it’s in. It’s an simplified analogy to explain what that other guy linked to. We (well, you) see a universe fit to our kind of life, but the reality is that we developed to fit the universe.

    You remind me of this guy I saw the other day claiming that a whole bunch of rocks that are vaguely shaped like body parts might be fossilized body parts.

    He just kept saying “I’m not saying it definitely is, but imagine if we don’t understand the world, and it’s maybe this way? Crazy right?!”

    It’s such cowardly bullshit. If you want to believe a thing because it sounds nice to you, don’t half-ass it and throw qualifiers on it. You brought it up, and then when challenged the tiniest bit, backed down with a “I’m not saying that’s definitely true… but maybe…?”

    and that doesn’t match our expectations.

    What expectations? Actual scientist, using facts, don’t have expectations of alien life. We don’t know the probability of life existing anywhere but here because we have nothing to compare it to. We have the one universe with the one data set available to us. Until we discover alien life, we should have no expectation for it. Do I think it’s likely there is life elsewhere? Yes. Does that mean I expect it? No. We don’t have enough information about the cosmos to even start to calculate whether it should happen.

    I had a roommate once who believed that the stuff from the Alvin the Maker book series was real. The magic and shit. I asked if he had anything that led him to believe that or if he just really liked the books and wanted it to be. OF course he didn’t have any evidence or real reason for it. He just wanted it to be so, so he decided that he was going to believe that thing.

    You’re doing that. Stop it. Be a grown-up here and stop believing in make-believe and believe things only when we have sufficient (or in your case, I’ll take any) evidence.


  • Have you heard of the puddle analogy?

    A small amount of water sits there, it this hole in the ground it finds itself in. It looks at this cavity, observes how perfectly it fits the contours of their liquid body. It’s perfect! Every nook and cranny seems to be formed to fit the puddle perfectly.

    “This hole must have been made for me! It’s too much of a coincidence that, with all the ways a hole could form, this one formed perfectly to fit me!”

    You’re doing that. You’re saying it’s a crazy coincidence that all the right things were in place here for life to exist that led to us being here… but if it wasn’t, then we just wouldn’t have developed as life-forms. Or if the environs were different, life would have developed to fit into that kind of solar system. I think you just like the idea, so you believe it, but I think it’s better to believe things we have evidence for.