southsamurai
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Why are you here and not on Reddit? 18 hours ago:
The second that pig boy said that Reddit’s “corpus of data” was his to sell.
The fuckstain showed that the people that were the corpus of data were irrelevant to him, and every decision they’ve announced since that moment has driven that message home.
The population isn’t really bigger any more. It’s propped up by bots and reposts so much that the actual humans get buried outside of niche subs.
Here, the chances of talking to a bot are lower, and (barring newcomers that haven’t adapted to the culture yet) most of the people range from neutral to genuinely good.
A bigger population doesn’t help anyway. Most people in the world are stupid, or cruel, or just assholes. The bigger a given platform gets, the more you run into those because it’s a numbers game.
A smaller platform can manage to self regulate and, bluntly, drive the serious assholes away. But once things get big enough, the assholes take over because there’s too many of them to drive out.
I’m not saying lemmy doesn’t have assholes. I’m just saying they don’t dominate the discourse, and tend to have a high turnover rate.
That’s why I’m on lemmy.
- Comment on I will likely never have a chance with Jessie Buckley 1 day ago:
I have no idea who that is, but since I have zero chance with wonder woman or spider woman, I empathise with you completely
- Comment on Do you care about up/down votes? 1 day ago:
Usually, no. Not for myself or others. Too many people vote emotionally for them to be useful feedback in most situations.
They also aren’t useful in short time frames on lemmy. I’ve lost track of how many people get whiny about votes, but they just didn’t wait for things to balance out. It’s lemmy, shit takes hours to spread and get seen, especially since not everyone sorts by new. Chill the fuck out.
But sometimes, they can be a warning sign, or an indicator of a successful comment/post. And other times, they can help realize you posted or commented in the wrong place.
- Comment on Why do so many people delete their posts? 1 day ago:
Deleted by creator
- Comment on New community: Biscuits (cookies if you're American) 1 day ago:
This is unacceptable.
I have now bitten three different devices hard enough to ruin their screen
- Comment on If we replace most plastic with a non plastic alternative and would that really be better? 2 days ago:
That is an awesome bit of info. I had never even thought about stuff like mirrors interfering in recycling glass
- Comment on If we replace most plastic with a non plastic alternative and would that really be better? 2 days ago:
Yeah, I meant to put that in my comment and lost track. My brain was so fried, I’m surprised any of it was intelligible.
- Comment on If we replace most plastic with a non plastic alternative and would that really be better? 2 days ago:
Well, the more I think about it and the more I look into it, “better” is likely not the best term.
What it would achieve is a likely decrease in harms that aren’t controlled.
The stuff that would replace plastics, where it’s possible, all come with their own environmental impacts. But, they’re easier to control, so are also easier to minimize or mitigate.
That comes with a price, though. Monetary mostly, but also in reshaping our expectations of things like food storage. Not that we could entirely do away with even single use plastics, much less longer term uses.
But, as an example of what I’m talking about with different more than better.
We switch everything we can from plastics to glass. Bottles, whatever. So, you’re increasing the costs of transportation, right? It’s heavier, you can’t pack as much in the same space. That increases energy use, no matter if it’s diesel in a truck tank, or via power. But, if we also switch even more to EV trucks and trains, that’s still a net positive because now that energy can be better regulated, reducing pollution alongside the reduction in plastic pollution.
But, now you’re going to need more bottles of glass. That’s more energy to make per bottle (can’t remember the numbers, and I’m too tired to go digging), though not a huge amount. You also can’t perfectly recycle a bottle without some new materials, and you’ve also now got an increased demand in silicates for new and recycled. So now the sand is even more in demand, and there’s a shortage of it. Luckily, the transportation costs of raw materials is roughly the same, on average.
But, again, at least the sand issue is tighter. Easier to control for than random plastic shit blowing everywhere.
So, it’s a net positive in terms of reducing the impact of plastics on the environment because that impact is more dangerous as well as less predictable. But it isn’t necessarily better just because it isn’t plastic. It’s a trade off weighted with that specific goal. If there was a magic wand to guarantee all used plastics be centralized and consolidated, the balance of things isn’t a net positive, it’s just a difference in what problems are occurring.
That ends up applying to pretty much every replacement material for a given use. Swapping out plastic films for waxed paper means you’re now increasing paper production, and that needs more trees. Swapping plastics out for paper in shipping protection is the same. Swapping out to metals brings the same weight issues as glass, and adds mining problems.
There’s always a price to pay. You can’t have the benefits of a modern world without some cost to the environment.
But, yeah, we haven’t started a serious switch because plastics are petroleum and there’s a shit ton of money and power tied up with that. It’s entirely doable, though it would take time and cost a shit ton. Eventually, we would cut plastics in the environment down to a level that’s more acceptable, and maybe even low enough to be unimportant (not that anyone has figured out what that would be yet afaik; we just know the shit is everywhere and causing trouble). But it has to start at the top, not from the bottom. Trillions of dollars are involved, and that kind of money wins, period.
- Comment on Now that PewDiePie is on his Linux/engineering arc, could he help boost the Fediverse? 2 days ago:
Please, no.
He is such a douche bag, and a lot of his fan base is too.
- Comment on Instance freezing as an alternative to full shut down 2 days ago:
It does? I have no clue how I missed that. Thank you very much
- Comment on Instance freezing as an alternative to full shut down 3 days ago:
Exactly.
If you’re making posts or comments that you want preserved, you should be backing them up anyway.
It would be nice if the export function copied saved items as well as subs and blocks though.
- Comment on Is it a big deal if my phone hasn't had a security update in 5 years? 3 days ago:
On a security level, yeah, obviously.
On a day to day level, no
I wouldn’t trust it to handle anything sensitive, but that doesn’t make it useless. If you can unlock the bootloader and swap in a different rom, that usually solves any problems security wise, as long as there’s a recent enough rom available. And even without that, the risks involved aren’t 100%, and can be mitigated to some degree.
- Comment on USB chorded keyset – Adafruit YT (1:52) 4 days ago:
Hey, typo seems to have gotten into your title. I believe you intended that to be corded, not chorded.
- Comment on Is it possible to basically not snore at all? 4 days ago:
You really aren’t bright at all
- Comment on Is it possible to basically not snore at all? 4 days ago:
That’s not what you said before
Most people don’t snore unless they’re overweight
That’s what you said.
If you had said that obesity increases the probability of snoring, that would be accurate. If you said that a higher percentage of overweight or obese people snore, that would have been accurate. But that’s not what you said
Overweight and obese people do have a higher percentage of all snoring people, particularly when the snoring is more severe. But that’s also not what you said.
You said that “most” as in at least half by any standard issue usage of the term, people don’t snore unless they’re overweight. That doesn’t match incidence rates, and it’s phrased in a misleading way.
There’s even some early indications that snoring may be causative to overweight and obesity, or at least make people more prone to it. Which makes sense in a lot of ways, but isn’t really directly relevant to either of your comments
Look, maybe you thought it was just an offhand comment. And it definitely read like you put zero thought into it, and that’s okay. Nobody has to be detailed every damn time they make a comment. But, if you’re going to throw out low effort comments about medical issues, you gotta also be okay when people come along and object. Shit is important; there’s people that don’t think they snore at all, because they don’t fit what they think snoring is. Then they spend years ignoring what’s actually apnea, and is fucking up their body.
So misinformation like your offhand comment merits a low effort counter comment. At least then the one skinny dude that’s going to end up with cardiovascular or cardiopulmonary issues from apnea at least doesn’t ignore their issue because they aren’t fat. Which isn’t some random unlikely occurrence. There are people that genuinely think that they can’t have apnea because they aren’t overweight at all
- Comment on Is it possible to basically not snore at all? 4 days ago:
Generally, not snoring on a regular basis is the default.
There’s a ton of things that lead to snoring, and if you factor in temporary side effects of illnesses, it would be unusual for anyone to never snore their entire life. But, depending on exactly how you want to phrase things, I don’t think snoring could be called the norm for the average person on a typical night. Obviously, those are imprecise terms, but it conveys the general situation, I think
There’s numbers out there if you go looking, but I don’t reckon you care about those if you’re asking here.
- Comment on Is it possible to basically not snore at all? 4 days ago:
That is so untrue is approaches absurdity.
- Comment on alternatives to lemm.ee? 4 days ago:
Good to know.
- Comment on alternatives to lemm.ee? 4 days ago:
In general, while it’s already huge, sh.itjust.works errs on the side of careful defederation. Afaik, none of the big instances are defederated at all.
It’s pretty stable too. I think it’s been down maybe twice for any significant length of time.
That’s the two biggest factors in why it’s where my main account is.
So, it’s an option for sure.
A friend of mine is on lemdro.id, and he’s able to reach all the usual instances. Same with dbzero, though they have a bit more focused set of policies. Both are very stable as well.
About the only instance that you’ll run into trouble accessing from most is hexbear or whatever it’s called now. All the other big/biggish ones are usually not defederated widely.
- Comment on How to get to Santa Claus beard status 4 days ago:
Aight, first, let me state that calling people gross because of the kind of beard they can grow is douchey as fuck all.
With that out of the way, you’ve already gotten great advice, but I think there’s still a few salient points that can help a beard stay healthy and nice looking.
The biggest one I can think of is to go sulfate free in your products. Shampoo and conditioners with sulfates are harsher than those without. So you want to avoid them as much as possible. I tend to favor Hask when I’m not getting stuff through my friend that can get me fancy shit cheap. I personally use the Hask argan oil stuff. It smells nice, works great, and my beard stays softer, longer.
But the key is to avoid stuff with sulfates.
Then, with those and other products, avoid anything that has ingredients ending in “cone”, like simethicone as the most common one. They make hair shiny and less frizzy, but it comes at the price of drying it out over time.
Generally, if you’re washing daily, you will want to add a bit of something after you’re out of the shower, no matter what conditioner you use. Oils tend to be easiest to use, and do a great job. But balms, butters, and even waxes can all contribute to a healthy face forest. Again, just avoid the “cones”, and it’s difficult to go wrong. I mix my own oils nowadays, just because I’m absurdly sensitive to smells and some chemicals, but you can usually grab whatever your local drug store has and end up with something decent smelling.
However, you can also just grab a decent olive oil and use that too. Yeah, the fancy stuff may be marginally closer to own oils, but olive oil does just fine in a pinch.
Just don’t go crazy. Put enough on your hands that you’ll have a layer, but not so much it can pool up. It’s better to oil up twice than deal with too much oil. Then you just rub it over the surface of your beard, then run your fingers through it a while until you get the beard lightly touched all over. It doesn’t take much, unless you also want to keep your beard looking extra shiny. Just be aware that your shirts will not be happy if your beard is long enough.
Drowning your face in oil isn’t a good thing. You want just enough to help manage frizz, keep the cuticle healthy, and maintain a nice shine.
As a rule, when you’re early into beard growth, you’ll want to let it grow out a bit before trying to style anything significant. You’re close to the point where you’ll want to start thinking about that. Now, I started out shooting for the Dan Haggerty style, like his Grizzly Adams era. It’s low upkeep, all you need is a trimmer with guards, or some decent scissors and a comb.
Now, I’m full Rasputin up in this piece, so trimming is more about keeping split ends under control and balancing things out (my right side grows faster than my left, well as slightly longer). Just some light scissor work once a month or so. But I’ll apply balm or wax to the stache if I’m going to be eating in public. Otherwise I just twist it into points lol.
But those are both fairly low maintenance styles. If you want to maximize how it fits your face, the time to experiment with shaping is before you have a lot of length to regrow if you screw up. There is a learning curve to the various tools you’d be using.
Beard braiding is actually easier than head hair imo. Head hair is smoother for most caucasian folks for sure, and you can get a better grip on beard hair because of that. It’s almost always coarser, and may well be curlier too. But there’s a learning curve for sure, so start watching videos before you need to.
There’s nothing wrong with any style at all. You rock what makes you happy, period. But no matter that style, you’ll run into less bullshit if it’s neat. Two beards of equal length, but one is scraggly, will be perceived differently. So keep your shit neat if you care about other people’s responses.
Also, if you haven’t yet, expect an itch period soon. A face that isn’t used to a longer beard is going to need to adapt. Might not take long, but it’s almost certain to come along.
Remember, those thick santa beards take work. They take trimming and care all year round. Once you do go gray/white/silver with age, you’ll likely need different products as well, but that’s a tangent. Professional santas that grow their own take it seriously. If you don’t keep it trimmed all year long, what happens is that the hairs get pushed into patterns that make it harder to shape come the holidays.
As an example, if you don’t watch how the that throat grows, chances are high that the very bottom of it is going to grow up, instead of down. And the longer the beard, the higher that area can get. It’ll make the bottom part of your beard look bristly since those hairs are going a different direction
So you gotta treat it like you want it to look while there’s a line of kids and parents in front of you. Keep it combed, don’t sleep face down much, keep the parts low on the throat and at the ears trimmed to your goal length for Christmas even if you let the rest get longer in the off season.
Be aware that until you age into gray/white, you’re going to need to lighten your beard during the season, and that is always rough on the beard and skin. So have it done professionally is my advice. A good salon will get the job done better and safer than trying to do it yourself.
There’s various beard white products out there, but you gotta apply it to a lightened beard, unless your beard is really light blonde to begin with. Most of them suck at coverage to begin with, and come off over hours of wear. So they’re best reserved for a slight lightening and darker patches than being caked on.
And you can’t cake up tbh. If you’re a chubby guy, you’ll likely be sweating some in the suit alone. If you’re more on the lean side, you’ll be wearing padding and you will be sweating to some degree. Some of the whiteners are sweat resistant, but nothing is perfect.
I don’t do pictures online, but I hit my yeard back in 2012 or so, and have kept it at its natural length since then, so about 3/4 of the way to my nipple line when dry, and almost there when wet. It’s a wonderful thing, but it is work. You can’t neglect it because neglect shows up faster in a beard than on regular hair. You get sick for a few days, your head hair is a little oily and ragged. Your beard will look like a tornado hit it. You’ll have knots and broken hairs, and it’ll be extra coarse.
- Comment on YSK: You can disable scores (upvotes and downvotes) in lemmy, and I think it's great! 5 days ago:
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
- Comment on Im not familar on how to make meth. But is my mom in trouble with amonia windex bleach 2 empty 2 liters, batteries under the sink? 5 days ago:
Meh, we love you anyway :)
- Comment on Catbox.moe got screwed 😿 5 days ago:
Shit, I down voted you for whining about down votes.
- Comment on Im not familar on how to make meth. But is my mom in trouble with amonia windex bleach 2 empty 2 liters, batteries under the sink? 5 days ago:
I’m not certain if full proof is an autocorrect swap, an intentional joke joke, or bone apple tea, but it’s a damn interesting one no matter what it came from
- Comment on [deleted] 6 days ago:
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.
- Comment on why does alcohol stop my back pain but medicine doesn't? 6 days ago:
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.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
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.
- Comment on Spread of sexual deepfake images created by generative AI growing in Japan 1 week ago:
- Comment on There's a noticable influx of trans kids in my job. Are there any topics I should avoid or considerations I should take into account when training them? 1 week ago:
Agreed completely :)
- Comment on (・∀・) 1 week ago:
Yup, it’s a nice play on words
