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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • I would describe this kind of communication as lazy and not very good.

    I personally think that if their meaning is getting through, it’s a perfectly fine mode of communication. Lazy, maybe, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with laziness, wanting to do more with less work is kind of a basic part of the human condition, it only presents a problem if it’s preventing something from getting done. If there is a meme or a short video or something that perfectly sums up what I’m trying to say, why shouldn’t I use that resource instead of trying to rephrase everything into my own words? This isn’t 10th grade English class, you’re not going to fail life for plagiarism because you linked someone to an existing Wikipedia article instead of trying to rewrite it yourself.

    Now if their meaning isn’t coming through, that’s of course an issue, but not one that necessarily reflects poorly on them nor on you. People absorb information best in different ways, you’ve almost definitely heard about people having different learning styles, different types of intelligence, and of course everyone has their own life experiences and frame of reference. Different forms of communication will reach different people in different ways. To everyone absorbs meaning from written words well, not everyone can effectively put their thoughts into words, not everyone speaks meme fluently, different experiences can lead people to interpret something in wildly different ways, etc.

    Communication is a two-way street, it’s partially on them to tailor their message to their intended audience, but it’s also on the audience to interpret that message, however they may receive it, in a way that makes sense to them, and it’s on both halves to clarify things and make sure the meaning is being effectively delivered and received.

    If you’re getting links and videos from people to explain their positions, odds are that they feel that the information you’re looking for is in their, and probably presented in a better way than they would be able to themselves. That’s probably how it was presented to them, and in the way it was presented it made a lot of sense to them, and that’s the best way they know to present that information to you. From there it’s on you to watch or read what they sent you and try to interpret it. If you don’t want to do that, then you’re the one being lazy, and not in the good way. And from there if you need clarification, ask for it about specific parts that aren’t making sense to you. You can’t sum up a 10, 20, 30 minute or hour+ long video in a few sentences and not loose a whole lot of context and details, it’s on you to explain what’s not making sense.

    And if your counterpoints aren’t getting through to them, it may be on you to find a different way to explain it, if they’re sending you videos, it may work better to send them videos back than to flood them with paragraphs of text that they may not absorb properly.



  • I think there’s a few things that can be going on

    First and probably the most straightforward, there’s people who are trying to deflect criticism of themselves. In your example, let’s say the Jewish person did actually say something disrespectful and misogynistic. They don’t want to get called out and catch heat for it, so they deflect by accusing the other person of being an anti-semite.

    There’s also cases where cases where the person actually is anti-semitic, their motivations don’t really have anything to do with calling out misogyny (again using your example,) they’re just playing the part to attack the Jewish person. Now sometimes they might end up actually calling out actual misogynistic language, even a broken clock is right twice a day, which is a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason, or other times they might make a mountain out of a molehill or even just totally making up reasons to be offended.

    And there’s some things that can complicate it even further.

    There are cases where the Jewish person may be genuinely interpreting the accusations as being an antisemitic attack. Using your example of misogyny, some (but by no means all) Jewish communities/sects do hold some misogynistic views, under their interpretations of judaism, they have strong views about what a woman’s place in society is/should be, and to them speaking out against that genuinely is an antisemitic act.

    There are also cases where they have been conditioned to watch out for antisemitism (or other forms of prejudice,) which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and in actuality is probably a wise thing for people to have at the back of their minds, but that’s a hell of a thing to have weighing on your mind and some people can get a little overzealous or paranoid and start seeing it in places where it doesn’t exist.

    Also, as a non-jewish person, if this is something you’re experiencing regularly, it’s probably a good idea to think about what your own biases are, and try to think about what you’re saying from the Jewish perspective and why what you’re saying or doing might be coming across as antisemitic. You very well might be in the right, or you might discover some biases you didn’t know you had.

    And lastly, a final thing to keep in mind, we’re living in the disinformation age, there no shortage of trolls, bots, provocateurs, and other bad-faith actors out there trying to stir the pot and sow discord either for some political agenda or even simply for their own amusement. This especially applies online when you often have no real idea who it is you’re talking too and what their motivations might be, but it also applies in-person as well.

    One final thought is that these sort of negative interactions will stick with you, you probably won’t remember conversations where things went smoothly and civilly nearly as well. For every time you’ve seen someone play the antisemitism card, or the race card, or transphobia card or what have you in this manner, you’ve probably had other conversations where it never comes up at all, but that’s not going to stick out in your mind as clearly.


  • I haven’t seen too many shows make fun of Indian food, but to be fair my taste in TV often isn’t very mainstream and doesn’t tend to include a lot of comedy, so I may not be the right one to answer this.

    When I do see it, usually I see them joking about the smell, and I can kind of get that. Don’t get me wrong, I love Indian food, I love the flavors and smells and all that goes with it. But all of those wonderful spices can create a powerful smell, it can kind of cling to clothing and such, if you live in an apartment it’s very likely you’ll smell when your neighbors are cooking Indian food, etc. and I can get how that can be annoying or unpleasant for some people. Honestly, if I was constantly smelling Indian food wafting into my apartment through a shared vent or something, I’d probably get sick of it too.

    There’s also the fact that a lot of Americans just have a very bland palate, and all of the spices, not to mention heat, can be very overwhelming to people who aren’t accustomed to it. Personally when I see these jokes, and again, my experience may not be typical, it tends to be more at the expense of the American having boring taste in food than actually making fun of Indian food itself.

    And since I mentioned that people may not be accustomed to it, let’s not forget that America is a big, diverse country, and not every part of America has a big Indian population, which means a lot of the country doesn’t necessarily have a lot of exposure to indian food. I do happen to live in an area with a lot of Indian families, but you only need to drive maybe about an hour away for your options to dry up pretty quickly. I have friends who genuinely do not have any Indian restaurants anywhere near them, and their grocery options are sometimes kind of limited which may get in the way of making it at home if they wanted to (and not everyone is a great cook or willing to risk messing up dinner with unfamiliar recipes) And that much spice and flavor when you’re not used to it can be a bit off-putting. I’m a fairly adventurous eater, but I didn’t grow up eating Indian food (my mom is one of those kinds of people who thinks a McChicken is too spicy,) and I know the first time I had Indian I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, I didn’t dislike it, but I had to have it a couple times before I really came to appreciate it.

    Personally, in my circles the people who don’t like Indian tend to be the odd ones out that get made fun of, but again I’m not necessarily representative of America in general, that’s just been my own experience. I even know some people who love indian food but can’t/shouldn’t eat it due to all of the spices and such not sitting well with their stomachs (and there may be a discussion to be had about many American’s bland, super-processed diets having negative effects on their gut microbiomes possibly making it harder for their systems to handle certain cuisines, but that’s well outside of my depth to really go into, I’m a foodie, not a nutritionist, so take my speculation with a heaping helping of some coarse finishing salt)



  • So first of all, which American accent? There’s no single accent.

    Secondly, if you try to transition slowly, odds are you’re going to get made fun of a whole lot along the way for nearly every single American pronunciation you make, because each individual change will stick out more in context. so we’re talking about months or years of people thinking you’re weird, stupid, or have some kind of speech impediment instead of getting it all out of the way in one go. I have a fairly strong Philadelphian accent, and even here in my home turf I’ve had the odd person try to make fun of my pronunciation of things like “water” (wooder,) generally it’s pretty good-natured fun, but once in a while you get some asshole with a stick up their ass about proper pronunciation. You’re setting yourself up for a long time of that, and it will only get worse up until you’re actually able to pass as an American.

    Third, don’t try to be cool, it never works. The coolest thing out there really is just having the right amount of confidence. Trying to change your accent because it sounds cooler kind reeks of trying too hard, like weebs sprinkling way too much Japanese into their conversations for no good reason, or people using big words to sound smarter, or whatever the fuck Elizabeth Holmes does with her voice. It’s basically the verbal of equivalent of a neckbeard wearing a fedora (is that still a thing or am I dating myself?)

    If you’re actually dead-set on changing your accent, the best way is to just live in America and immerse yourself in it and come into it naturally, and you’ll pick it up, and then it gives you a solid reason to say how/why you picked it up. You’re going to need to spend some significant time here though, months at a minimum, probably years, otherwise at best people will just think you’re an obnoxious, maybe naive weirdo who’s huffing their own farts about how well-traveled they are, or at worse think you’re some sort of weeaboo type obsessive nutjob about America (Google “Rawhide Kobayashi” and you’d get a pretty good sense of how people might think of you)

    Last thoughts on the matter, if there’s American slang you like, go ahead and use it, but do it naturally, don’t force it. I sprinkle all kinds of weird shit into my speech that I’ve picked up from all over the place, things I’ve read, heard others say, movies, tv, the internet, but it’s never been a conscious choice, it just happens naturally, trying to force it never makes it feel natural. “Stop trying to make fetch happen.”



  • HP Omen

    Only tangentially related, but I’m still kind of pissed about HP buying VoodooPC and doing basic fuck-all with it and just slapping the Omen name on stuff once in a while.

    For those who don’t remember, VoodooPC used to be a higher end prebuilt gaming computer company. You can go ahead and argue about why prebuilts are trash, not really the point, I don’t know if they were at all good computers or worth the cost, but I thought they made some really cool looking computers if nothing else, and occasionally had some pretty cool ideas. The omen was one of their flagship offerings.

    I may be misremembering, it’s been like a decade, but I think HP acquired them pretty soon after Dell bought Alienware so it was probably their way of trying to stay competitive. I think by most accounts Dell kind of turned Alienware into shit, but at least they’ve kept the branding around and still make some cool-looking computers if nothing else.


  • In general, predators like dogs are a very inefficient way to get calories. Cattle, for example, have the benefit of turning stuff like grass that we can’t eat into something that we can (meat,) dogs on the other hand, largely tend to eat the same sorts of foods we would, so often we could just eat those foods and cut out the middleman

    Now dogs are not totally obligate carnivores, theoretically they can be fed on a vegetarian diet, though it requires some careful planning to ensure they’re getting the right nutrients, you can’t just turn them loose in a field to eat grass and expect to get much out of it, by and large they’re going to need to eat the same sorts of food we’d eat- a variety of fruits and vegetables. They can also possibly fed byproducts, scraps, offal, overripe or damaged produce, etc. that is unfit or less desirable for human consumption, but that still adds a lot of complexity to managing their diet, and if animal products are part of the feed it potentially means you need to worry about spreading disease between animal populations, don’t want to be feeding your meat dogs on mad cow brains or avian flu chicken bits.

    And as you move up the food chain you can have issues with bioaccumulation of toxins like heavy metals. Say from birth to slaughter a cow absorbs 1oz (pulling that number out of my ass) of lead and mercury and such that ends up in its various tissues. Cows are big, you have to eat a lot of cow to absorb that much lead and mercury from eating them. Now let’s say a dog during it’s lifetime eats the equivalent of one whole cow (again, pulled out of my ass) during it’s lifetime. That dog now has that same 1oz of lead and mercury, and dogs are much smaller so it’s at a higher concentration in their meat, you don’t have to eat nearly as much dog as you do cow to get the same amount of heavy metals.


  • A few years back on Reddit I remember stumbling my way into a comment thread discussing some camgirl or Instagram model, or “influencer” or something along those lines. The OP was a gif of her bouncing her boobs (and I’m not gonna lie, I clicked into the thread because boobs)

    Overall the comments were pretty much what you’d expect, but one dude in particular stood out to me.

    IIRC, someone made a comment about how her boyfriend was a lucky man or something to that effect, someone else commented that they had heard she was a lesbian, and that’s where this particular weirdo came in, saying something essentially like “nuh-uh, I talked to her cam-to-cam and she’s definitely straight.”

    Like it genuinely never occurred to this person that someone might not be exactly who they present themselves as online.

    Now I cannot claim to know anything about that girl’s personal life, she might be gay, she might be straight, she might be neither, but I can easily think of probably a dozen reasons off the top of my head why she might want to hide her sexuality, whatever it may be, from some stranger she was chatting with on the internet, ranging of fear of harassment to trying to get money out of him.

    I tried to explain that to him, and he was like “yeah, I get it, but I talked to her and she’s a really genuine person”

    Everything just went in his one ear and right out the other.

    I hope that dude never made his way into a strip club, he’d get talked into so paying for many champagne rooms and then probably go home and brag about his new girlfriend.



  • If we’re going by proximity, there’s some Caribbean nations that are even closer to the US than the Falklands are to Argentina, would you argue that we should annex Cuba or the Bahamas?

    And from what I understand, the people of the Falklands overwhelming want to be a British territory. I think that’s probably the more important consideration.

    It is wild that it came to be the way it is. It certainly doesn’t make sense to me in the world before modern air travel, the internet, etc. that they’d be ruled by a country so far away, but in this modern era where just about anywhere in the world is only about a day’s travel time, or available on-demand 24/7 by phone or computer, it makes every bit as much sense to me that they be a UK territory as it does that Alaska is a US state.

    Hawaii is actually a pretty interesting comparison to make, because most Hawaiians did not want to become a US territory at the time, but that’s really begging a whole 'nother discussion with lots of complex talking points about imperialism/colonialism, indigenous rights, etc. but I’m frankly just not going to go into that right now. Suffice it to say that it’s similar in the sense of it being a small island territory located far from the colonial power that laid claim to it, but the attitudes of the people living there were very different.

    I’m no historian or anything of the sort, so take my thoughts on this for what it’s worth (and I am certainly biased being an American, don’t exactly get a whole lot of Argentinian history books to study, and most of the Spanish I know is food-related, so if someone wants to enlighten me more on the Argentinian side of things, I welcome the education.) But in general my understanding is that the British were the first people to land there, didn’t really do much with it at that time, and pretty much just said “finders keepers”

    Maybe worth noting, there were no indigenous inhabitants there, so that’s probably about as ethical as colonization can get.

    Then France showed up and set up shop since the British weren’t doing anything with it. Britain came back and also set up shop, and it’s not totally clear if either of them even knew the other was there. France eventually decided to fuck off, and let Spain have their bit of the Falklands.

    Spain and Britain coexisted for a while, had some scuffles, but more or less worked things out. Eventually Britain pulled out to focus on other things but still considered their “finders keepors” claim to be valid.

    Spain eventually pulled out as well, so for a little while no one was really doing much of anything with it officially.

    Argentina (technically Buenos Aires at the time if we want to split hairs, I’m going to just use Argentina and Britain to keep the sides easy to follow) comes along, and decides it’s theirs, and this is pretty much the root of the dispute. While Britain still held their claim of “finders keepers” Argentina countered with “losers weepers”

    Argentina gave some German dude permission to set up a colony for them there to fish and hunt feral cows. Eventually he gets into a fight with an American navy captain over fishing and hunting rights, Captain America kicks their ass a bit and declares the colonial government disolved, and pretty much continues on his merry way. Argentina tries to get things there started back up again but never quite gets their shit back together in the Falklands. A little while later the Brits come back around, still claiming finders keepers, and take charge of everything again, and this time the colonies stick and continue to grow. Argentina spends the next hundred years or so muttering “this is bullshit” to themselves.

    Around the 1960s, Britain starts talking about decolonizing, and Argentina gets excited thinking they’re going to finally get the Falklands. Britain even quietly floats the idea of giving them the islands, figuring the Islanders would just kind of accept that decision if it was made, and running these islands from halfway around the world was getting kind of expensive. Turns out though that pretty much everyone on the Falklands is pretty damn happy to be British subjects and don’t really want to be part of Argentina, which made things a bit complicated.

    Argentina gets kind of impatient with all of this, and eventually decided “fuck it, we’ll just take them ourselves,” Britain cannot abide Argentina’s inability to wait patiently in the queue and was starting to really wrap their heads around the idea that the Falklands would rather stay part of Britain and so we get the Falklands war.

    Britain wins, Argentina goes back to muttering to themselves, and that pretty much brings us up to the present day.



  • Gator- tastes like chicken, kind of tough and chewy, but come on, have you ever seen an alligator? Of course it was going to be chewy.

    Frog legs- pretty much a dead ringer for chicken wings if you didn’t know what a wing was supposed to look like. Maybe just the tiniest hint of something fishy going on there.

    Escargot - an excellent excuse to eat a bunch of butter and garlic and for some reason it’s fancy even though you’re eating a garden pest

    Squirrel - kind of greasy, but not bad, darker meat than I expected. Not really enough meat on them to be worth it though, at least not the squirrels we have in my neck of the woods, I’ve seen some pretty big squirrels in other parts of the country though, so maybe they’re a little more worthwhile. If you had a handful of squirrels I suspect they could make a pretty good soup or stew though.

    Rabbit- tastes like chicken, I’ve had it a few different ways, I don’t know that I would know the difference if you swapped rabbit for chicken in any of them, but I had a rabbit pot pie at a restaurant a few years ago that has been my happy thought ever since, probably the tastiest thing I have ever eaten.

    Deer venison - very similar to beef, a bit gamey but I dig that.

    Quail - tiny chicken, that’s pretty much all there is to it.

    Pigeon- much darker than chicken, a bit greasy, overall pretty tasty (these were country pigeons, I don’t recommend eating city pigeons) a single pigeon breast is pretty much exactly the right size to make a pigeon nugget.

    Bison- lean beef, maybe a bit stronger tasting but overall pretty well within the beef spectrum. If you didn’t tell me it was bison, I’d probably assume it was either really cheap or moderately expensive beef.

    Wild boar- pork but not, kind of hard to explain this one, and the way I had it prepared had a lot of spices and seasoning so I can’t really give a straight appraisal of the meat itself.

    Kangaroo- it tastes like it evolved on a different continent than any other mammal you’ve ever eaten. It’s still very much in the red meat family but there’s something else going on there that’s kind of hard to place, sort of gamey and stronger tasting.

    Goose- kind of like a mix of duck and turkey, leaning more duck-like, and yeah, that tracks, you could probably just about assume that from looking at a goose.

    I wouldn’t really consider these to be exotic, but a surprising amount of people don’t seem to have tried them, and they’re some of my all-time favorite meats.

    Duck- its more like a red meat than chicken, can be kind of greasy/fatty but in a good way

    Lamb- red meat, kind of a strong gamey taste (that again, I personally really like) oddly somehow gamier than venison despite venison actually being a game meat and lamb being domesticated. You could probably serve me deer and tell me it was beef and slip it by me, but I don’t think you could pull it off with lamb.

    Goat- lamb, but moreso.

    Liver- it’s kind of hard to describe liver in any way but livery, but iron-y and minneral-y are probably the best adjectives I can come up with. I’ve had beef liver and chicken liver, beef is definitely a stronger flavor but both are recognizably livery. Chicken liver is probably mild enough that as long as it’s prepared well most people could enjoy it, beef liver is definitely more of an acquired taste.

    Chicken hearts- stronger flavored and tougher than regular chicken, but still recognizably chicken, imagine dark meat but lean. Little bit of a irony/mineraly taste, but not in a livery way, can be a little tough/chewy, and if you’re inclined to batter and fry them, they are the perfect size to make sort of a popcorn chicken thing with, or if you want to have little bits of meat for a stir fry or something and don’t feel like chopping up the meat yourself. They are also dirt cheap, at least around me.

    Tripe- a bit chewy, honestly not too much going on flavor-wise, there’s something going on that tastes/smells of a barnyard but in a very pleasant way, but it’s almost more of a suggestion of a taste than an actual flavor.

    Beef tongue- recognizably beefy, but definitely has something going else on, not quite livery but leaning that direction. Definitely something you need to braise or sous vide or something for a long time because it will be damn near impossible to chew otherwise, and it has its own unique texture, it will probably make you think a lot about your own tongue while eating it.

    Chicken feet- look, there’s really no meat worth speaking of on a chicken foot, it’s basically all skin and connective tissue which is tasty and an interesting texture, but not worth it to me to eat themselves, some people do, but it’s not for me. ut if you want to take you chicken stock to the next level, use some chicken feet.

    And these are probably the opposite of exotic, just weird or have bad press

    Pickled pigs feet- salty vinegary vaguely porky jello with bones in it. I like salty vinegary things, so that’s not a bad thing in my book.

    Scrapple- local delicacy for those of us in the Delaware valley, if you’ve ever heard spam described as everything but the oink, well scrapple has some oink in it too. It’s soft and mushy and fries up to a real nice crisp on the outside. Taste is sort of in a similar vein as a breakfast sausage, really nothing too wild about it.

    Pork roll (you north jersey folk calling it Taylor Ham are crazy, it says pork roll right on the package, you’re wrong) is basically just spam with a better PR department, less salty, slightly different spices, doesn’t come in a can.

    And on that note- spam, it’s delicious but very salty. If you like ham you’ll probably like spam.



  • I’m sure it’s a quite different experience, but there are people whohave gotten magnets implanted under their skin in order to feel magnetic field.

    I’m not quite ready for that myself, but I did do a little experiment my supergluing some tiny neodymium magnets to my fingernails. I suspect the implants are probably more sensitive since they better able to wiggle around but I could feel some things. The forklift charger and pencil sharpener I had at work got probably the strongest responses I noticed for the week or so I had them.

    I also got really used to picking up paperclips and such with them really quick, I caught myself trying to do it now and then for probably about a month after I no longer had the magnets.


  • If you’re careful and can’t just get it off with your fingernails, a razor blade is young best friend for scraping off stickers, if you’re less careful they sell plastic razor blades for scraping stuff that also work pretty well.

    For residue, goo gone, cooking oil, isopropyl alcohol, lighter fluid, or just some soap and water if you’re careful. Or just let the residue wear off on its own if you’re lazy.


  • I was at a music festival, we were camped out across from a bunch of really obnoxious frat bro types. They weren’t causing any real issues and we were an decent terms with them as campsite neighbors, they were just really loud and obnoxious and had a different sort of energy than my group.

    One guy in my campsite had one of the big 1 litre German boot glasses. Frat bros found out about this and wanted to give it a try, so we let them.

    We watched them pour 2 12 oz PBRs into it (it will hold about 3), and fail to chug it.

    I’m a pretty proficient chugger, so I decided to show them up. Filled the glass up with a considerably heavier beer, started to walk over to demonstrate how it’s done. As I’m walking out of our site though, it dawned on my already slightly innebrated brain that it had been a while since I’d chugged a litre, so I wanted to make sure I could still do it, so I downed a full test boot, immediately filled it back up, and walked over to demonstrate how it was done for our rowdy neighbors and executed the maneuver flawlessly.

    So with 2 liters of beer in my stomach, I then went into my tent to have a little power-blackout to recharge my batteries for a night of debauchery.


  • Dr Bronners peppermint soap and classic Old spice deodorant.

    Dr Bronners because it’s cool and refreshing and I’m a sweaty dude, plus I can buy it in a big jug that lasts me forever.

    Old spice because I’ve used it forever, it works for me, is widely available, fairly affordable, and I get a surprising amount of compliments asking what kind of cologne I have on (I don’t normally wear cologne.) I’m pretty sure I got a little sample stick of it back in 5th grade when we had a sex ed/wear deodorant because some of you stink assembly, and I tried a couple others over the years but always find my way back to old spice.


  • I think my online voice is pretty similar to my IRL voice, probably the biggest thing is that my accent doesn’t come through

    I’m from outside of Philly and while I don’t necessarily have the most strong, stereotypical accent, I do have a lot of the typical linguistic quirks, but a lot of it tends to be pronunciation differences. As far as actually words and phrases, I use "jawn” and “youse” or “youse guys” a lot less online.

    For example I might grab myself a cup of cawfee or an ahrnge juice and a begel for breakfast, before I head down to the crick to do some fishing. Before I go I’ll leave a note for my wife telling her when to expect me back, but I can’t find a pen so I use some crowns. Then when I get back I’ll warsh off my boots with wooder from the spicket outside, maybe wipe them off with a tal, and put them inside by the rattyator to dry off, while I sit down to watch the iggles game (go birds!) Maybe I’ll hit up my friend, and ask him “Jeet?” and he’ll reply, “No, jew?” so I’ll stop at Wawa and tap MAC so I can buy us some hoagies, probably paired with a lager, and maybe get some wooder ice or maybe some ice cream with jimmies for dessert.