Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00
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I don’t think I ever got a philosophical lecture because of spiders.
I finally have my accommodations settled with the university and I started really using them. Joined a disability rights club and I started helping out a couple friends with their Discord servers. It feels like I have things properly tuned in to my pace for the first time in a while, and it feels like I’m seeing that pay off.
Also it’s been a hot minute since I’ve been on. Glad to see things are holding up and glad to be coming back 👍.
A couple of my local groceries sell packed chicken feet, and I absolutely love them for stocks. They’re packed with gelatin and I end up with silky stocks that look like Jello in the fridge. Store rotisserie chickens are also great for stocks in my experience. I get a meal or few out of most of the meat, then you chuck the rest in a pot to turn into stock.
I think at least one of my local groceries also used to sell ox tail. Great for beef stock, but I think it got expensive after it became a trendy cut for some reason. I don’t remember how that happened, I guess people got in the know 🤔.
Better Than Bullion is some high quality stuff, but any bullion is great to have on hand. It’s hard to beat a fresh stock if time and resources permit, but I’ve just about entirely switched to using bullion derivatives instead of stock cans or cartons for lower effort meals. The stuff keeps for ages and is practically impossible to waste. Sometimes I used to have incomplete stock cartons and wouldn’t use them in time. That’s a non-issue when I’m making stock as I go with something like BTB or Knorr.
Kosher salt, and by extension salting by hand with a salt cellar instead of using a salt shaker. Salt is some real basic stuff, I’ll definitely admit. But switching from table salt and changing up my salt game was a small detail that really got me into cooking.
I grew up in a house that was entirely table salt and salt shakers, so I didn’t learn about kosher salt until I started to learn more about cooking on my own. Handling kosher salt by the pinch and the hand made it much easier for me to develop an intuitive sense of seasoning food. If anyone is wary about over salting or doesn’t trust their salt shaker not to turn their meal into a salt lick, I highly recommend giving kosher salt and salting things by hand a try.
Adam Ragusea does a better job than I can at the moment of describing kosher salt’s context and advantages. I’ll leave the elaboration to him, but I’d be happy to give my personal perspective on details if asked. Apparently kosher salt is primarily an American thing according to him? I didn’t know that until reviewing the video for my comment.
beehaw is only one instance, and I’d love to keep it an instance that I know is full of actual people.
That’s an insightful way of putting it that didn’t come to mind.
I think part of what Beehaw uniquely offers is the drive for its own kind of instance and user culture and a closer and more organic community. Bots, save for moderator tools, admittedly detract from that kind of vibe. I could imagine that sacrificing less necessary bots, either partially or entirely, could be an important measure toward securing those aforementioned values. Federation with more Reddit-esque instances still allows us to scratch Reddit sort of itch when it comes up.
I don’t think I have a strong opinion toward bots. They could get gimmicky and unnecessary, but I never felt like they detracted from my experience to a noteworthy degree. I don’t think I ever disliked bots too much on Reddit? But then again, I rarely liked or wanted bots, either. I have a loose leaning toward letting people reasonably experiment with how they interact with a platform online, but “bots” as in the kind of stuff I remember from Reddit seem like a relatively weak expression of that. If I had to put an opinion down, I’d say that I’m in favor of their continued presence with the caveat of some guidelines and defined best-practices. Otherwise, if I wake up one day to learn that bots are banned on Beehaw, admittedly I wouldn’t be all that bummed about it.
th3raid0r and Lionir seem to get pretty well at the kind of recommendations I’d like to see. Bots ideally should provide a meaningful contribution to communities. Bots should be clearly labelled and identifiable as such. Bot creators should have consent from the community’s moderators to have a bot interact within the community. The Cardinal Bee Nice applies here, perhaps to a greater degree: bots shouldn’t be used to fake engagement, impersonate people, commit technical attacks on the community, etc.
the_itsb also reminded me of another aspect: we may want to consider how active and populated a community is. Bots take up the attention and visual space of everyone else browsing a community and its discussions. It strikes me as a worst-case scenario, but I could imagine it’s possible for a bot overabundance to choke out legitimate conversation. That’s enough for me to start thinking twice about whether or not I have a loose stance on this.
I worry that most Lemmy instances are too young/inactive for this kind of bot yet. I don’t think we’re past the tipping point where the people commenting will automatically outweigh the bots, and I don’t think those bots are fun unless they’re dramatically outweighed by normal human interaction.
That’s an interesting way of putting it that I didn’t immediately consider.
I don’t necessarily like them, but I’m not really all that against them, either. If we don’t have the activity to balance out bot input, however, it might be reasonable to limit them one way or another. It seems to me like a worst-case scenario, but if a community or thread has what feels like a noticeable amount of bots, that would be a turn-off for me.
If the community decides to limit bot traffic either partially or entirely, it might be good to revisit that decision later on if there’s an upward trend in users and activity.
Do spoiler foldouts maintain their functionality across UIs, either directly or in essence (eg. popup instead)?
Part of me wishes that Lemmy also had spoilers that reveal in place, but foldout spoilers have some functionality that makes me appreciate having both on hand. I’d bet bots could benefit from using that to minimize visual space if we go through with it.
Almost makes me think that we have a fighting chance to make tags on Lemmy work. Part of me would want to see tags get some unique formatting like post flairs, but even just inline tags would be a leg-up.
Or maybe both in-line and post tags. Neat stuff to daydream 🤔.
I’ve been in touch with my therapist over maybe three distinct periods since 2018. It was always surprisingly slow, draining, and exhausting to get things started for a range of reasons. Slog aside, however, it was always incredibly worth it to get a professional perspective and to begin with professional solutions. By no means has it been perfect, but it’s been much better. I think it’s fair to say it’s been life changing, even. I’d always recommend people consider professional help if it even crosses their mind and they’re in a position where they can access it. All the best in finding a therapist!
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Ditching music streaming sounds cool! I think I’ll still have a place in my playlists for streaming to handle stuff like music I’m trying out or some lower priority tunes, but I’ve been gradually building up my own library. There’s something really satisfying about having the files on my own hardware, or at least having something I purchased online rather than relying on streaming. I’ve had the rug pulled under me with songs or shows I was streaming before. It’s always a bummer to discover one less song or episode in my media library 😞.
Thanks for the heads-up. Part of me isn’t too surprised given how long some side-effects lists can get, but for the most part it didn’t occur to me that my taste getting funked up was potentially in the cards.
I’ve been on Adderall for maybe eight-so months now. It hasn’t perfectly resolved my challenges, but things have been much better compared to taking nothing. My psych recently asked that I start taking my blood pressure to send that in, and it looks like it’s elevated. I’m doing what I can to bring it down, but given my understanding, I won’t see results until later. I think I’ll be okay if I’m put on a different medication, but I’ll admit it’s not fun to think about.
It’s the first I heard about longboarding on trails, too. I’d be interested to learn more about what that’s like.
My brother used to do a lot of longboarding when I was growing up. He was more into doing things on smooth/paved ground as far as I knew. Going down hills was his thing; had a few buddies he’d do it with. I remember he had the road puck gloves for it. I should ask if he still has those lying around in some drawer of his apartment. Scraped his knees and arms plenty of times, occasionally pretty gnarly. Probably broke at least one bone 👀?
I never got into it myself, but it was some cool stuff to see from the side while he was still into it.
Goin’ aight. It was fun last week, but pretty busy for a summer week for me too. I had a friend over while they were in town for the summer, got to see Les Mis while there was a performance in SF, and was unexpectedly enlisted to help another friend practice for their driving test. All a great time, but maybe I’ll get some more time this week to tend to some personal hobbies and projects.
Maybe there’s a conspiracy? Maybe there isn’t. There isn’t much I can do outside of weening off my use of them, ultimately deleting my content there, and using and encouraging alternatives. Past that, I’ve come to find out it isn’t worth the trouble for me to give that kind of thing too much airtime in my head if I can help it. If I wake up one day to learn that there’s A Whole Thing going on, though, frankly it wouldn’t surprise me all that much.
If I had to give it an absolute Yes or No based on what I know and figure, however, I’d say there isn’t a conspiracy. I’d wager that it’s just the likes of ignorance and capitalist business practices.
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I’ve heard that the economic landscape in the past decade-ish allowed certain sorts of companies and people to do business in a way that likely wasn’t as sustainable as they thought. 2020 comes around, the economic landscape changes for intersecting Reasons, and I’d figure that the companies and people operating the least sustainably realize they have to change it up if they want to rake in the dough. Some of these businesses were social media platforms, and some of those platforms are lead partially or entirely by people like Musk or Huffman, who make some Less Than Thrilling decisions because they think it’s a sound bet to get a lot of cash. That’s not to say their decisions are sound bets, let alone good in sum, but I’m inclined to give the benefit of the doubt and say they weren’t decisions made in a vacuum.
As much as we may use platforms like Reddit or Twitter to connect with one another or find and do something besides consuming and entertainment, we have to remember that these places established themselves as capitalist businesses. They are for-profit companies that ultimately answer only to the likes of a board, their shareholders, or their leadership. I think it’s reasonable to say that the end game for a lot of these businesses is to make money. A lot of it. The consumer’s most important purpose in this approach is to serve as a means to that money. There might be exceptions here and there that are given various labels, both inside and outside of a capitalist lens, but Twitter and Reddit certainly don’t read like exceptions. Ill-advised or not, if the right people at Twitter and Reddit genuinely think their recent decisions will make them more money, it doesn’t surprise me that they’ll do it. The trouble is that there’s typically more to life than a dollar—actions tend to have consequences outside of their intended ones, especially at this scale. Even if Twitter and Reddit didn’t mean for this to put a dent in the ability to organize (or even to just be like, a Shitty user experience,) it can, and will, have that effect.
Writing it out, it’s kinda funny. I still don’t think there’s a conspiracy per se, but the effects of these business practices create the sorta symptoms you’re talking about, anyway. How does the saying go? “The system is working as intended”? Whether that’s better or worse than a literal social and class conspiracy I’d say is up to the individual.
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As an aside, this is why I think projects like Lemmy and Mastodon are a big deal. Actually making the platform has got to be one of the hardest hurdles to get a social media network started. For all their faults, stuff like this is ready to slap onto a server and run, and it’s free and open source. That lowers the barrier of entry drastically to let people try and make this kind of thing work in a non-profit format.
It’s shattered my drive to find One Platform for all of my needs, and I think that’s going to work out to be a net positive. I used to be against having to hunt and peck through multiple sites and juggle multiple accounts, but the less time I’m spending on Reddit, the less I’m bothered with the idea of doing that. I can picture some of the old-guard Forum Folk looking down on my reliance on one community rather than spreading out across multiple sites—ah well, better late than never 😅.
Losing out on previous Reddit content has felt a bit like a Library of Alexandria kind of thing for me, however. I’m sure that Lemmy and the wider fediverse will ultimately help to fill that kind of knowledge, and Reddit was by no means some Bastion of Knowledge, but I can’t help but think about what prior content, both large and small, meaningful and trivial, is going to be inaccessible because of this whole intrigue.
I still have a lot of work to do in archiving my content and saves from Reddit, but I don’t see myself going back to substantially engage if I can help it. The culture around here in Beehaw, if anything, has felt much more worthwhile to engage in than I ever felt anywhere else online.
I wonder how much of that is down to how we were taught though and it being more familiar and linked with education and cognition.
I’d be curious to learn more about that as well. I never felt a strong difference in embedding to memory between writing or typing something, but my dad also started putting me in front of computers as early as when I was, like, 4? I by no means can’t speak on it academically, but anecdotally speaking, I’d suspect that getting in front of a mouse and keyboard relatively early on might’ve played a part in that?
I’d like to see some professional research into it, but I’m also interested in more anecdotes. Do you think you got into computers around the same time as your peers? Earlier or later? I’d also like to hear from anyone else if they wanna chime in 🤔.
Personally I’ve always had a strong preference and better time with typing compared to writing.
Maybe it was because I was put in front of a keyboard at a relatively early age, or maybe because I was on a computer more than many of my peers? Maybe it’s related to potential traits that could come with being AuDHD that I was never raised to consider? Maybe it’s being left-handed and writing in a left-to-right written language? It’s probably a loose combination of all of these.
My typing is quicker than my peers, but I think that gets compounded with my writing being slower, too. I’d say that my handwriting is legible enough, but I just absolutely cannot write at an efficient speed compared to a lot of other people. I don’t necessarily mind taking things slow, but it means I miss out on info that others wouldn’t. Having the ability to type my notes starting around late high school and going into college was a serious boon for my notetaking. Before then, I’d have a solid idea of what I wanted to jot down, but the class would be leaps and bounds ahead by the time I wrapped up a bullet point. Getting pencil lead or pen ink all over my fingers certainly didn’t help my ability to keep up, either.
I also find a lot more benefit from doing notes digitally compared to by hand. I really appreciate being able to tag things and search around loosely, and I find myself much more capable of shifting things around and getting things to look just the way I want them compared to doing so on a notebook. Sometimes there’s quirks with my notetaking app of the time that’ll grind my gears, but it’s ultimately a better experience than doing it by hand for me. Need to shift something from one section to another? What about from one page to another? No problem, Cut-and-Paste is something that any program will have. I’m not gonna do that cleanly and quickly on paper. Need to make a table or put in an image? Most if not all of the notetaking apps I’ll use will be capable of that, whereas doing that by hand will take me much longer. Is there something I really need to write or draw by hand? Likewise, most if not all notetaking apps I use let me switch between the two when I’m on a device that lets me take advantage of that. I don’t have the freedom to choose how I do that on paper.
While I get that there’s a lot of evidence out there that says people remember things better when written down compared to writing, that’s just…never been my experience? I never felt a strong difference in how I remember something or how creative I am whether I write it or type it. If anything, I personally find it easier to remember things or explore things when I do it digitally. By all means, if someone does better with writing, I say let them write. But personally, being forced to write has only been a disservice.
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All that said, there is a place in me for writing or generally working physically, however. It’s still oftentimes a lot easier and privacy respecting to directly hand strangers a note jot down on a pocketbook than it is to juggle contact info and send it over. Physical notes can also be placed to be read later in a way that digital notes can’t. And no matter the preparation I do, I’d say there’s always a higher chance for my digital devices to die on me compared to my physical ones. It doesn’t get nearly as much use as my phone, and most days I don’t need it, but I keep a lil’ pocketbook and a few pens on me to fill those edge cases.
I love Tech Connections. Unnecessarily long deep dives, but that’s the kind of content I absolutely appreciate. His stuff is a treat that helps to highlight the rabbit holes that can be found in the mundane.
I don’t know if I have a settled opinion for or against defederating from Meta instances, but I know enough to say I absolutely respect the decision to.
I may appreciate more exposure to federating social media, but I also appreciate that Meta has a problematic track record. Besides, my shifting away from Reddit has me realizing that juggling accounts is not as difficult as I thought. If I end up having a reason to get on a Meta instance, it wouldn’t be an issue to make a compatible handle that can communicate there.
Goes hard. Gonna save that line for later.