southsamurai

Go screw

Well, yeah. That’s the idea. Why would they go this far and not go all the way? They know damn good and well that as long as they keep things just barely on the end where genocide isn’t stated as a goal, and they maintain a position of alliance with most of the west, nobody is going to actually stop them.

Hell, without starting a world war, I’m not even sure they can be stopped.

On the world stage? There aren’t enough nations with power that actually care about Palestine. Yeah, leaders will make noise and pretend to care, but Palestine offers nothing to the major powers worth intervening for.

Sounds sociopathic, right? That’s the leaders of most of the world. People drawn to power rarely have the ethical rigor to wield said power. Those that do, still have to deal with oligopoly, hidden fascists, and the reality that no nation can really take action without upsetting the whole damn thing.

Yeah, even the big names tend to not care much as long as nobody else is profiting off of their work. Agents and publishers, they tend to get right snippy about piracy lol.

Mind you, there is a segment of working authors that do suffer in their ability to go from a part time, almost hobbyist situation into a proper career of it. They tend to see the lack of sales as more of a problem, but they tend to be younger and didn’t ever see how impossible breaking in to traditional publishing was. It’s easy to look at your self published income and think “oh, if people had to buy these, I’d be making a living at this instead of it being barely enough to cover expenses for writing”. But, most of the time, back before self publishing was actually a valid and useful route, they wouldn’t have been selling anything, they’d be hoping for an agent to get their first sale for them.

And I’ll never tell anyone that they can’t profit from their own ideas and labor, and expect anyone consuming it to pay up. Authors that object, that’s fine by me (and I actually don’t pirate their stuff). But like you said, most writers would rather someone read and enjoy for free rather than not read at all.

As a published (if hilariously unsuccessful) author; no, no it isn’t.

I love that you recognize the original hillbilly usage :)

Nah, go bugger lol. One side of my family is mostly from potato famine Irish, and we all love some corned beef. It’s definitely on the menu for holidays

Nah, it has some irish origins, just not only Irish

Me too, tbh. Just remember it being interesting and friendly

Do you have access to any healthcare services?

A good CNA can help you figure out how to manage hygiene as long as you have some degree of upper body mobility. I mean, obviously, an occupational therapist or physical therapist is going to be better, and be able to offer a wider range of options, but without a way to pay for those, it can be out of reach for self pay. But an hour or two of CNA time is usually within budgetary reach. Other pros can help too, but again, they’d be more expensive.

You can sometimes find a local disability support group, and the difficulty with tasks like bathing, brushing teeth, etc is a pretty common topic. You don’t automatically get trained advice, but you do get practical tips from people that may well be better.

No kidding? That’s kinda cool since I recognize your name too. Had a great conversation.

Thank you :)

Shhh, I snuck out while anyone was high

My first threeway.

Holy shit, never, ever try and play with a bi/lesbian couple if you’re a straight guy lol.

This was ages ago. Back in the eighties still, if only barely.

I met a girl. We became friends. She got flirty, and I returned it. Now, she was honest pretty early on, once we both realized there was some sexual energy there. She told me she was with someone, and that the someone was also a girl.

I figured that was it. End of story, right?

Nope, the girl is bi, though her partner wasn’t exactly into non monogamy. But we were first, and was cool with it not going anywhere.

So, we hang out. Turns out her partner is pretty damn cool. Butch as hell, but not prone to the machismo you sometimes run into. Which, the partner ended up being trans, but back then that wasn’t a thing in anyone’s awareness. At the time, she was a butch lesbian.

Anyway, ignoring that, we all get along well, so I become their beard. When they needed a guy to “date” to keep their family off their backs, or whatever, I would step in. Went to prom with the partner even.

Turns out, we all got along well enough that the partner was willing to open things up and see if a guy in the bedroom could satisfy the bi girl, without bothering the partner. And, I was the one they both trusted. So, it happened.

I guess the easiest way to cover it is to say that there’s only so many things you can do when one person out of the three simply can not handle contact with a penis, and is also not willing to have anyone go down on them. It meant there was always someone left out. I mean, we tried. But it amounted to taking turns, and the partner couldn’t really handle watching.

We ended up trying what I’ve seen called a Roman chair, and that kinda worked okay, but it was so damn awkward with me and the partner kind of looking at each other as the bi girl was between us. Like, if we’d been able to touch each other, maybe the awkward would have been gone, but we tried kissing and it was a hard no for the partner, and not fun for me. Any kind of gentle shoulder touching was out too.

We could hug each other with clothes on, even give pecks on the cheek when we’d say goodbye after hanging out, but with the clothes off, neither of us was down for much in the way of contact. I would have been fine with casual touch, maybe some hugging, or even a high five lol. But I didn’t want to grope him (fuck it, the dude transitioned, and trying to not call him him is annoying, even though this was ages ago), no matter how nice his tits and ass were. It just felt wrong to grope my buddy. And I had zero interest in his vag, which was still more interest than he had in it.

So me and him were just each in a hole (him via strap on) kind of wanting the whole thing to be over lol. The girl had some fun, but after I had to admit there was no way in hell I could come, she started feeling awkward too lol. Like, there I am in her ass, doing my best to stay hard so she can have this experience, and her partner is just going through the motions for the same reason, and once she realized that, she felt weird as hell.

Tbh, I’ve never liked threesomes. We tried a couple of other times, and it was better than that one, if only by virtue of knowing what was absolutely not worth trying. But even with other people over the years, they all end up disappointing unless it’s two people taking care of one, without trying to mix things up.

But holy shit, that first one was just horrible lol. I’ve seen guys talk about the fantasy of being with that kind of couple, and I can’t help but laugh. The chances of a lesbian being all chill with a guy in the situation are pretty damn low. And there’s no such thing as good sex when one out of three people would rather it not be happening the way it is.

Which, gods damn, my buddy there tried so hard to do what he thought was right by his girlfriend. Later on, he tried to be open for some contact with me, even tried going down on me. Neither of us could handle that lol. I couldn’t stay hard, and he couldn’t do more than take in just the tip for a second. It was kinda hilarious after the fact. We still joke about it.

He couldn’t handle either of us going down on him. We didn’t have a word for it then, but the dysphoria was just too powerful. It wasn’t about me being a guy, it was him being so out of connection with his genitals because they were the wrong genitals that any contact was just pure distress. Even hands were too much.

We only tried a few times as a threesome before calling it a failed experiment. Then a couple of times with just me and the girl, with him having done some preliminaries and then just watching. That was almost as awkward for me because it felt like him being left out was wrong, and it didn’t work well for either of them.

But none of the other fails were as bad as the first lol. I’d call it a clusterfuck if any of the fucking had been worthy of the word.

There’s a handful, yeah. Some folks are prolific posters. Others just have altered text I’m their name, which makes it stand out enough to recall easily.

But generally, it takes extended interactions to remember a user name for long.

Nah, that’s part of the point of granular control. Sometimes you want/need a decrease in a given band without an increase in the rest.

Perfect example is the Metallica album St Anger. If you fiddle with the eq in a good player that allows for per-album or per-sing settings, you can dial back the over mixed high hat and partially dampen the tin can snare. You end up with a better sound (particularly in headphones) that doesn’t fatigue the ear as much.

If you took those attenuated bands and upped the others, you’d just have muddy mids and you’d lose the clarity of James’ low end.

That album is so over drummed that it’s hard to listen to without eq tweaks. With them, it’s a much better experience.

Lmao. Don’t you threaten me with a good time! I will verbiage allll over your semantics.

Because they’re effective synonyms in common usage. All kinds of jargon get used outside of the original field.

In general, we all learn words piecemeal. You have to encounter a word to know it exists. The more specific and/or niche a word is, the less likely you are to run into it. Even after you do, you still have to find a definition. If that definition is simplified, or doesn’t come with links to more information than a solid definition, that’s what the person knows, and they can’t know any other usage until and unless they encounter that too.

Now, that ignores the raw fact that language shifts as long as it is being spoken. Dictionaries follow language changes, and aren’t really good at preventing shifts because they only contain partial information.

Symbiosis isn’t going to have a full explanation of everything it entails in a general dictionary (though it might in field specific ones the way things like medical terminology have). It’ll have a basic definition and some variants. If you want explant, you go to encyclopedias for basics, then to field specific texts/instructions if you want more depth.

As you anyway already said in a fairly compact comment, symbiosis contains within its definition other words. And you even gave a simplified definition of those. Now, anyone finding those words through this post will know that there are multiple “types” of symbiosis. But it is never the default to know things.

Ignorance is the default. We’re born ignorant of almost everything. We die less ignorant than we started, though exactly how much less varies.

That’s the reason people use the word in the colloquial sense; that’s all they’ve encountered. As long as you don’t act like a dick about it, most people will appreciate the kind of simple expansion you gave in your comments, and you can help people expand their knowledge. But you gotta remember that your pet peeves are meaningless to anyone else, just like theirs are to you. Come at it from friendly, kind frame of mind, and it’ll work out best.

It’s dumb as fuck.

Hate it if we want (and I have major problems with how young phones and similar devices become glued to kids), but they’re here to stay. They’re a part of modern life, and trying to completely ban them is the most idiotic waste of time and resources possible.

You gotta find a way to limit use in a consistent and evenly applied way so that parents and school staff are all on the same page. Then you just keep enforcing the rules amd explaining them over and over. Eventually, it becomes a manageable annoyance instead of the chaos it currently is

Well, if you make it to breeding age, and successfully do so, then it really doesn’t matter from a species perspective. If you don’t, then whatever traits led to the grinding are weeded out, so that’s also irrelevant to the species in a different way. Also, there are treatments to help with bruxism. It isn’t something that can’t at least be managed to reduce the speed of damage.

It’s a shame the r/sharpening community moved to discord for the most part.

That being said, the average person, with the average knife, only needs one stone in the 1k range. Anything else is personal preference, or window dressing.

The general consensus is to use what’s called a “splash and go” stone. Shapton, particularly their “glass” stones, is one of the more popular brands. Water stones, as opposed to oil stones, tend to be a fairly gentle learning curve. You do eventually have to flatten them, which isn’t difficult, but by the time that happens, you’ll likely have picked up enough skill to have a better idea of what you’ll want, so don’t jump into that yet. No need to buy up all kinds of stuff to get started. Hell, it’s better to only get one stone and nothing else to get started.

But avoid the double sided, at least for now. They can be a pain in the ass over time. Just get one good stone and practice as you use your knives.

Now, if the chipping is bad, you might need to find someone local that does hand sharpening to grind those out, but minor chips and dings come out fine over time. But never, ever machine grind a good knife, and definitely never trust anyone that claims you should let them do so unless you know for a fact they use a water cooled device. Seriously, just don’t.

Grinding out heavy chips is a bit more difficult, so it takes more experience to do right on a good knife. You don’t want that to be your first project. A cheap knife, that’s fine, nobody really cares if they screw a cheap knife up while learning. But minor chips, say something under an 1/8 inch at the biggest, you just sharpen and let the chip get eaten away as you go. You waste more metal than necessary otherwise.

The exception to that is something that you’ll be using for professional cooking. And it would need to be pretty fancy restaurant cooking at that, where perfect presentation is mandatory. Little chips won’t show up in the results for a home cook. Being real, even fancy chefs usually can’t see the difference, but they’ll freak out despite that. Only time I’ve ever had a chip that small be a problem was doing food carving. And you ain’t doing that with a bigger knife, it’s kinda specialized.

One stone. Practice developing a burr on the blade, and removing that burr via the stone itself. That’s it, that’s the recipe to a very sharp knife. You don’t need high grits, you don’t need some kind of magic guide or whatever. Just your hands, one stone, and a knife.