southsamurai
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Not disparaging the dead or anything. But why does it seem in the US we are expected to feel sorry for a person who overdoses on illegal drugs? Didn't they make the choice knowing the outcome? 8 hours ago:
Did they make a choice though? As in a fully informed, conscious choice unaffected by internal and external pressures?
That’s the key to empathizing with addiction.
Most people don’t set out to be addicts. They don’t set out to OD as the goal of using. It’s fair to say that most addicts started out either partying, or self medicating.
The party addicts tend to not realize how damn fast and hard addiction can set in. They know it happens, but it isn’t real, it’s impersonal and distant, because they also know that people really can just use a few times and not do it again. But each time gets harder, and they start needing it to feel good at all. It isn’t done with intent, and they may not even be aware of what they’re actually taking. People are stupid. They’ll trust someone, and when they get handed a pill or a drink and the person they trust doesn’t explain, but they trust them.
And even when it’s someone arrogant that thinks they’re the exception, that’s still a very human thing.
For the ones chasing an escape from ugly reality, a way to feel good, no matter how temporary, sometimes the risk is irrelevant because to them, what they’re trying to escape is worse than any of the stories they’ve heard. Self medicating mental health issues, or physical health issues, or to numb the pain of a life situation they can’t escape otherwise, that’s as human as it gets.
Empathy. It’s also a human thing. We aren’t required to feel it for everyone everyone all the time. If you don’t feel it, you can’t make it magically happen. But we all want it to some degree or another. We all need some degree of human kindness to stay sane in a society that keeps staying ugly over millennia.
So, when we see someone that’s in a bad place, it’s part of that, that we at least try to find empathy for them, if only on a transactional level where we would wish someone make that effort for us.
It is, however, not equally easy for everyone. The human mind and brain is a diverse thing. Some people are born with brains that simply can’t empathize. Others can lose the ability. And there’s also people that have trouble doing it without some kind of “trigger” that gives them a connection to the other person in a way they can understand. Some of us over empathize.
But, at the core of it, the reason we are expected to try is that none of us are immune to the ugly parts of life. Every single one of us is one post surgical dose away from feeling withdrawals. Every single one of us is capable of feeling pain so deep we’ll do anything up escape it.
If you can’t empathize, that’s okay. Though going through the effort of rationalizing how others empathize would help you out a lot when dealing with others. If you make the effort to figure out how the same thing could happen to you, even if you don’t feel sorry for the person, you’ll have fulfilled your part of the social contract as regards the idea of “there but for the grace of the flying spaghetti monster go I”, or “judge not lest ye be judged”, or any other saying that boils down to recognizing that we’re all just flawed beings doing the best we can with what we’ve got.
- Comment on What do you create? 18 hours ago:
Lots of poo.
A good bit actually though. I’m disabled, so no job. This means that while I’m on my ass recovering from the necessities of living like cooking and cleaning, I have a shit ton of spare time.
Part of that is spent fucking around on lemmy.
The rest is usually spent on some variety or another of writing fiction. Short stories, a few ongoing novels, that sort of thing. Here and there a poem or song will pop in my head.
Then there’s a bit of panting, occasional drawing, that kind of visual art.
I’ve also been known to run ttrpg sessions here and there, which is its own art form in a way.
- Comment on whales are the mightiest of fish 3 days ago:
If it swims, it’s a fish
- Comment on Do people actually use Mastodon for something else than posting cats and hiking photos? 3 days ago:
Sure. There’s a rather vibrant writers’ community, plenty of visual artists (including photography that isn’t just cats and hiking), and the endless political shit.
You don’t get as much of the random people running their mouths though.
The key to Mastodon is the # curation over time. Search your interests, use the hashtags to set up your feed, and only use the full federated feed to find terms you didn’t think to search for, or that aren’t obviously connected to your interests.
As an example, if you’re a writer, you’ll obviously follow something lunge #writing, but you might not find #pennedpossibilities, or #writerscoffeeclub by searching, despite them being active prompt based groups that end up having a lot of good interactions between writers (casual, amateurs, and pros).
Tbh, the least represented segment is the typically nerdy stuff. Much more prevalent on lemmy. There’s plenty there, it just isn’t as common as other segments.
- Comment on Are the inside parts of toilets universal? 5 days ago:
Nothing new to add, but since crowd sourcing answers is more reliable when you have more of them, I figure it’s worth it.
As everyone before this said, it isn’t a perfect compatibility, so you can’t just grab any random kit and be certain it’ll be 100% right. But, there’s a decent chance it will be, or that you can improvise things enough to get it to work long enough to get the exact right bits.
Biggest problem I’ve run into over the years is flappers not making a good seal, and the pipe not fitting well. The flapper is harder to deal with, but the pipe can usually be made to work with a gasket cut to size, long enough to get a better one at convenience rather than having to run right back out.
- Comment on [Thread] Mental Math 5 days ago:
I mean, most people do it across, rather than along the blade, what with the necessity of detecting a burr, which can’t usually be felt length wise. You slide along the blade, and it is sharp, if you screw up you get cut.
That doesn’t take away from what you’re saying, it’s very true, no matter which direction you’re feeling. Just normal, average fingertips can pick up stuff like that, that you’d need a microscope to see. It’s a trip!
- Comment on KING COLEOPTERA 6 days ago:
According to Ponder Stibbons, he is obsessed with them.
- Comment on What good thing just happened in your life? 6 days ago:
Ikr?
- Comment on What good thing just happened in your life? 6 days ago:
Just got head!
- Comment on Creamy Cartilage 1 week ago:
I resemble this meme!
- Comment on Asshole Lab Rat 1 week ago:
Well, yeah, but you should have seen what his cousins did trying to figure out the answer to life, the universe and everything
- Comment on Police investigating historical sex offence allegations against Russell Brand hand file to CPS 2 weeks ago:
Yup, and likely not the recent past, say ten years plus
- Comment on why do our noses & anuses think different types of paper are softest? 2 weeks ago:
Well, barring some form of medical issue, chances are that you’ve run into the mind-body connection.
It’s entirely possible to override the filtering the brain does. You can decide to pay attention to the signals from your finger more, and your brain will usually obey.
And it is possible that either your fingers are extra sensitive, or that the places you’re touching are atypically low in comparison to your fingers.
Generally, the two most sensitive spots on the body are the lips and the genitals. But there’s stuff that can interfere with that isn’t abnormal or a problem, but still shift the way the brain processes the signals coming in.
I’d try dimming lights, or even cutting them off, and very gently, with only enough pressure to make contact, move a fingertip, usually the index finger, across your lips. You can also try treating your finger like a lollipop, and wrap your lips around the tip to gently kiss. That gives greater area of contact, which will help if the issue is something like thicker skin on the lips.
And, at the risk of seeming weird, gently touching the glans penis (the head) or clitoris almost always works as the nerve density there is as high as it gets.
For me, my entire face feels the finger, but once I get past the chin or into the scalp, it shifts. Some people only have the lips, nose and sometimes eyes that are more sensitive than the fingers.
- Comment on why do our noses & anuses think different types of paper are softest? 2 weeks ago:
Best response ever.
- Comment on Spoopy Skeletons 2 weeks ago:
'Sokay my little homie, I see your external rigidity and soft insides. You matter, little guy, you matter to me
- Comment on why do our noses & anuses think different types of paper are softest? 2 weeks ago:
No worries ::
- Comment on why do our noses & anuses think different types of paper are softest? 2 weeks ago:
Glad to :)
- Comment on why do our noses & anuses think different types of paper are softest? 2 weeks ago:
Dammit, yet another question that I spent too much of my life on.
It comes down to nerves and tissue (cell, not paper) types.
The outside of your nose and the tissues of the anus are not the exact same. There’s a different concentration of “nerve endings”, and different types in different concentrations.
I doubt you want the full Monty of it, but if you look up the term “sensory receptors”, you can do the deep dive very easily.
The short version is that we have specific types of “nerve endings” (that’s what they’re called colloquially, hence the quote marks, but I’ll stop using those at this point). They detect pressure, temperature, pain/injury, etc.
The concentrations of them (as in how many per square inch), and the assortment of them (as in how many of each type in that square inch) varies across the entire body. The easiest way to demonstrate the relative principle is to touch your fingertip to your nose, your lips, your genitals (seriously), and your leg.
You’ll find that your brain interprets the signals in an interesting way. It’ll filter the less intense signals. You touch your finger to your lip, what your brain “says” is that your lips are being touched by something, and the signal from your finger takes the back seat. You touch the same fingertip to your thigh your brain says the finger is the primary sensation, and you feel the thigh via the finger rather than the finger via the thigh the way the lips worked.
Give it a try on whatever parts of your body you want. There’s going to be a shifting perception of whether it’s your finger touching something ( where emphasis is placed on the signals from the finger), or it’ll be the section of the body being touched by the finger (signal from the touched location being emphasized).
The anus and the nose have different jobs. The anus, mostly, needs to detect pressure, injury, and some degree of chemical contact the nose needs less pressure sensitivity, but more motion sensitivity. So you’ll get a different overall sensation with any given substance that’s pushed against either, and when the same substance is moved across either. The difference may end up being minor. But both are sensitive enough that most people can tell a difference between paper tissue products blindfolded.
Back in the day, I wiped asses for pay. The only patients I had that couldn’t tell the difference between brands of TP had medical issues that interfered with nerve signals. Do a test for yourself. Find a buddy to hand you tp or facial tissues and keep a log (heh, he said log while talking about butts). There’s a very good chance that every single one will feel different. You’ll probably be able to tell which brand is which if you’ve used that brand before.
You can probably even tell the difference with your fingers tbh. But you wouldn’t likely be able to if the same products were placed or rubbed on your back
You’d also notice that different objects will feel different when just placed on an area and pressed gently into the skin vs when you wipe the area with it.
Skin is an amazing thing. It’s armor, a sensor array, a biological filter, sunscreen, and a temperature regulator all in one! Plus other functions tbh, but shit like that gets overwhelming to read for a lot of people
You’d be amazed what you can discover with just an hour sitting around and touching things to parts of your body.
- Comment on Why is the term "bloodline" often used instead of "family tree"? 3 weeks ago:
Thanks :)
- Comment on Why is the term "bloodline" often used instead of "family tree"? 3 weeks ago:
They’re different things.
A family tree is a representation of your ancestry by tracing backwards (usually, some people use the term for anything related to family ties). It’s backwards in time, almost always.
Your bloodline is forwards in time from ancestor. The idea is that there is a clear line of descent from one person, or a small group (depending on how it’s being applied in context).
Think of it in terms of race horses.
Secretariat had a family tree of horses before he came along. He had a dam and sire. They had dams and sires, and so forth. The tree, when laid out, may include siblings of secretariat, but wouldn’t include “nieces and nephews” under normal circumstances because that’s not really the point of the family tree as a term/idea. That steps into general genealogy.
However, from secretariat, you can trace records of horses descended from him, and that’s literally his bloodline. That’s his genetic line where his semen was used to make other horses.
Unlike horses, you couldn’t guarantee paternity for humans until genetic testing came along. At best, you could exclude someone via blood typing, or some inherited features (like a cleft chin).
The term bloodline itself started before knowledge of genetics was a thing to any serious degree. Mendel didn’t do his thing until the 1800s, and bloodline is a compound word that goes back 200 more years. But it is related as an idea. Related being the key word to that.
To reframe it, I have a family tree that includes a wide range of ancestors going back to Europe before we can’t find anything on either my matrilineal, or patrilineal side. Both my father’s surname and my mother’s maiden name have been traced back as far as the 1700s. However, my “bloodline” descends from the oldest known ancestor, a man that had a different name because it was in German instead of being anglicized. It also descends from multiple other people, but you could trace each of those and determine who else shares that bloodline.
Me and my sister are the only living people that have the exact same family tree, but we share any given bloodline with thousands (at least) of known individuals.
- Comment on Moderators protect us from the worst of the internet. That comes at huge personal cost. 3 weeks ago:
Well, it’s one of those things where you either learn to compartmentalize, or you quit fast.
I moderated forums back in the early days of the internet. It was rough some days, to the point I had someone show up at my house because I wouldn’t let them abuse other users.
I moderated on reddit, and it was both easier and worse. People like to complain, but automod being able to filter out so much of the worst without having to see it at all made the job bearable. If I’d had to wade through the bigotry, the worst slurs, and similar stuff that a well crafted automod rule could magic away, I wouldn’t have done it at all.
But the fact that you have to constantly adjust the automod to catch up with the most persistent assholes is draining.
And that’s not getting into the stuff that isn’t hate speech, misogyny, bigotry, and that kind of infection. People think they can say anything they want, any way they want, and you stopping them means you’re the asshole, even after that went on a rant about fucking someone’s wife and kids (seriously, that’s a ban I had to make) because someone didn’t agree with their opinion of a flashlight. Seriously, that fucking happened.
Point being that while there are mods that go too far, the internet, and places like reddit or lemmy, would be unbearable without it. There has to be someone making those calls, keeping things from turning into the non stop scroll of venom and porn that used to be way too common back in the day.
- Comment on Is it okay to take drugs to make yourself a better person? Does it make a difference if "better" is mental or if it's physical? 3 weeks ago:
That’s not improvement though, it’s augmentation. It only works while on the drug, no lasting changes.
I mean, I get what you’re saying, but there’s a difference in that bit of semantics that matters.
Stuff like adderal is like using special fuels in a car. You’ll get benefits while on it, but it doesn’t change the engine itself. Something like steroids bores the engine out a cubic inch or so.
Antidepressants are closer to running a fuel with extra detergents. If you stop using the detergent fuel, and then go back to using the old fuels, you’ll just get clogged up again. But if you rebuild the engine piece by piece while using it, you end up with the engine running smoother no matter what fuel you put in.
But, you have a good point, some drugs can become your standard fuel for when you’re driving in the mountains and need better response. Or you can just run that fuel all the time and negate the drag from adhd that hinders your performance overall. Drugs like that, while they don’t actually improve or change the person, keeping them in your system amounts to the same thing when you’ve got an underlying issue that can’t be “rebuilt” in the first place.
- Comment on Why do we all have mayonnaise in our fridges instead of béarnaise sauce? 3 weeks ago:
Depends on what good means for the application. But store bought is almost always bland as hell compared to homemade, that’s for Dang sure
- Comment on Is it okay to take drugs to make yourself a better person? Does it make a difference if "better" is mental or if it's physical? 3 weeks ago:
Define better.
There’s people that think they’re better with a few drinks in them. There’s people that think they’re better when they’re on meth. Same with pretty much every drug.
But drugs are never, ever a one stop shop for self improvement. I’m not talking treating medical conditions here, that’s a different issue entirely.
It doesn’t matter if an a given drug helps, it never fully works in a vacuum. It takes some degree or another of willingness to change, and some degree of work.
Example: roids. Used appropriately, they can help improve your body. But if you just shoot them and stay at home, it’s a waste of money. That being said, I’ve seen way too many otherwise good people turn into wrecks by using them, so don’t unless it’s on a regimented and careful medical plan. So, while the drugs have benefits, they can only give you an edge, they don’t do the work for you.
If you go to something that isn’t as often abused, antidepressants are a great tool in dealing with depression and related illnesses. But they’re a bandaid. If you don’t do the work needed to fix the underlying issue that’s causing the depression, they aren’t any better than weed, or booze, or whatever because they do have side effects that can be just as problematic as use of recreational drugs (as opposed to abuse or dependency, which aren’t the same as having a toke or a drink after work to deal with the stress).
Afaik, there aren’t any drugs, legal or illegal, that improve the self without effort on the part of the patient. Again, this is not about treating an injury, infection, or whatever. It’s about self improvement in the general sense.
- Comment on Why do we all have mayonnaise in our fridges instead of béarnaise sauce? 3 weeks ago:
This isn’t a simple thing tbh.
It’s partially the difficulty in keeping hollandaise and bearnaise shelf stable and unbroken without sacrificing flavor.
It’s partially cultural, in that mayo is what got popular at the right time for an effort to make it shelf stable and maintain flavor.
And there’s the versatility, though that’s largely a matter of perception. Since mayo is a thicker sauce in the form that gained popularity, you can do a lot more with it than a proper sauce that’s going to be more runny.
I mean, if you’re asking this, you’ve made hollandaise at least, and probably bearnaise. So you how that it can difficult to keep together in the fridge. It tends to break in a way that home made mayo just doesn’t.
If you add enough extra emulsifiers to keep it together through shipping and storage, then you mute the taste. It’s like you said, you can’t buy good hollandaise. It’s the buying part that interferes in making it a sauce/condiment for the people at large.
Since getting either one to a store that’s tasty isn’t currently realistic, it’ll never get enough demand for it to improve. Anyone tasting the store bought stuff that’s out there already isn’t going to be a fan. If they’ve ever had it in a restaurant, the packaged stuff is unpleasant in comparison (if only bland and uninteresting on its own merits). And, if they can make their own, they probably aren’t interested in buying it because it isn’t exactly hard to pull off at home. My teenager can do a passable hollandaise, and they don’t even care about cooking.
- Comment on Iran moves to triple military budget amid Israel tensions 3 weeks ago:
Just need a running start and plenty of lube. Once you get it in, the rest is easy
- Comment on Iran moves to triple military budget amid Israel tensions 3 weeks ago:
Where there’s a hard cock, there’s a way.
- Comment on Sugar vs baking soda to neutralize acid in canned tomatoes? 3 weeks ago:
Nah, you aren’t going to buy fresh tomatoes and get the same results. They get picked too early 99% of the time when it’s for stores, so you end up with better results using canned (be it store bought or home canned).
- Comment on You have a bad friend if he isn't willing to help you bury a dead body or if he is willing to help you. 3 weeks ago:
Nah, you have the right kind of friend, they don’t just help but the body, they kill the fucker for you and you never know there’s a body
- Comment on Iran moves to triple military budget amid Israel tensions 3 weeks ago:
I mean, fuck Iran, but yeah, Israel has gone full batshit.