Procrastinations

Michael is: Born in 1980, seeking rest, seeking amusement.

[baroncognito]

I am watching Strange Aeon's Moran steak house video, and it is just so weird watching someone eat steak and drink milk.

[baroncognito]

[teaboot]

TRIED TO COME UP WITH AN ON-THE-SPOT ANALOGY FOR BEING ASEXUAL AND THE FIRST THING MY BRAIN SHAT OUT WAS "IT'S LIKE A WAFFLE MAKER"

[teaboot]

Ways that sex is like a waffle maker:

1. Lots of people have one but you don't really think about it until they start talking about making waffles and you're like "oh shit they have a waffle maker"

2. Messy as fuck and you know what as far as I see it why even bother when you have pancakes, you don't need to bother with all those fluids and crevices with pancakes

3. WHY DOES EVERYONE AT THE WEDDING THINK YOU NEED ONE

4. Theoretically implied fun with whipped cream until it melts and starts soaking into shit

5. If you don't prep ur surfaces ur gonna have a bad time

6. It's fun in the kitchen but only on like special occasions cause again it's a pain in the ass to clean

7. ??? I prefer crêpes tbh I don't get it

[teaboot]

Looking forwards to celebrating the 6th birthday of the post I made to describe a stance I was assured I'd grow out of by 13

[baroncognito]

Being Asexual is lovely, but if you hand me an ice cream sandwich made with Pancakes instead of waffles there will be words.

[tim-official]

that poll going around of the guy who thought "people only eat tofu as a bit because they're deranged vegans" or whatever really crystalizes something that i have never been able to precisely say - which is "a nonzero fraction of people who start picky-eater discourse just happen to precisely hate those foods which are not from north america and refuse to introspect on this whatsoever"

[tim-official]

In contrast some people say "there aren't any picky eaters in Asia 🙄" but this is laughably untrue. I have a cousin in India who refused until his 20s to eat anything in a sauce. as you can imagine in India this was difficult. he basically had to pick things out of curry and wipe them dry

[bobcat-pie]

[hollowedskin]

[prismatic-bell]

And on the other end you have the person who called me racist because I won't eat sushi.

The reason I don't eat sushi is because I have had it exactly once and it made me violently ill. I've had many people tell me the fish was probably stored improperly. That's probably true. It's also true that after you've spent an entire night sobbing and expelling everything in your guts from both ends until all that's left is fish-flavored bile and dry-heaving, you really don't want to fucking try again.

[imnotoverlyobsessive]

You can get cooked ones, which eliminates the risks of raw fish, but even though I have been eating sushi since age three, I can imagine that anything remotely sushi-adjacent would preemptively come with Bad Vibes, because nobody likes to puke their guts up.

[prismatic-bell]

Yeah, exactly. I've even had people offer to take me to a vegan restaurant that does vegan sushi just to be absolutely certain there is not a single molecule of fish in it, and I'm like. You do not understand. The fish is not the problem. Sushi made entirely of rice and vegetables has the same NO THANK YOU factor. If I'm cooking fish in a western style I still don't like serving it with rice. It just looks too similar.

[baroncognito]

I left my milk out in the sun once when I was five or six, came back to drink it later, and have not been able to drink warm milk in the forty years since then.

[wordfather]

idk if this is an usamerican thing or not but it always blows my mind as a small european country resident that yall have many names and types of apples???? what do you mean its not just red yellow or green??? why is it so complicated??? who is granny smith????

[wordfather]

'whats your favorite apple' 'red' 'no i mean like what type' '??????' actual conversatiom i've had with a mutual from usa

[wordfather]

THIRTY TWO??????

[phillyphillyphilly]

Listen that doesn’t even account for all the weird shit local farmers are getting up to.

May I present the best apple:

[wordfather]

the world is so big and beautiful

[prismatic-bell]

@wordfather I'm happy to tell you there are HUNDREDS of apple cultivars, actually. Some are extremely local, others are now called "heritage" cultivars (meaning they fell out of demand and are now only grown by individuals or as preservation), and some are nationwide, like Gala and Granny Smith. If memory serves me, we even still have daughter trees from an apple tree planted by Thomas Jefferson. Rather hilariously everyone who tries to eat its fruit goes "EW this is awful!!! They ATE this?!" and has to be told that no, apples in Jefferson's time were actually mostly grown for hard cider. Jefferson's cultivar is optimized for getting drunk.

Which brings me to why we have so many: they're good for different things. Granny Smith is often considered "the apple pie apple" because it's hard and tart, so it holds up to the oven and also doesn't quickly turn into sweet-on-sweet-on-sweet. Galas are widely considered "eating apples" now (means they're the ones you just grab off the counter and eat, rather than preparing them), but when I was a kid, McIntosh held that crown and I'm kind of sad they've gone out of fashion. Golden Delicious are notorious for being awful to cook with because they're too soft and fall apart quickly. I guess if you were doing something that doesn't need structural integrity they'd be okay, but they're also kind of bland.

Red Delicious used to be very good, when I was a kid. They were "the lunchbox apple." Unfortunately over the last 20 years growers have selected for redder and redder and redder and forgotten the delicious part, and what we've ended up with is insanely red and...not much else. Tasteless. Kind of mealy. Red Delicious tastes like when you finally get to go outside after school or work and it turns out the weather looks beautiful but feels sucky. You finally get your teeth through that stupidly thick skin and are greeted by the day after your birthday. If Red Delicious was a person its personality would be The Stanley Parable. It minmaxed its entire identity with max on RED and min on literally everything else. They are offensive simply by virtue of how inoffensive they are. They are an apple designed by committee. If I was the president of the United States and I wanted to tell another world leader I hated their guts without starting an international incident I would have them for dinner with an apple-heavy menu that used only Red Delicious. Capitalism ruined a perfectly good apple.

And finally, I would like to share with you a classic Pennsylvania dessert, which I am aware sounds utterly bizarre but it's actually really good: baked apples and cheddar cheese.

(People in the notes are probably going to be like "this would be better with XYZ cheese" and they're probably right. Applewood-smoked Gouda and apples is amazing. But that's not the classic version.)

Take your apple and put it with the stem facing up and the blossom end facing down and take the stem out. Cut it in slices about half as thick as your finger. You can core it first if you want to be fancy, but I always just trim the little seed bits out of the rounds after I've cut them.

Lay these on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Sprinkle some cinnamon and brown sugar. (If you don't have brown sugar in your country, which is a devastating turn of events I've heard does happen, white sugar will do. It's just not as good.) Lay a slice of cheddar over each apple round.

Now if you were in the US I'd say "bake at 350 for six to eight minutes or until the cheese is melted but not brown," but you are not in the US. DuckDuckGo tells me this is about 175 for you.

Wait a minute or two so you don't burn yourself on melted cheese. Nom.

[baroncognito]

Cheddar Cheese on Apple pie seems to be a fairly old tradition, I wonder if this recipe is a version of "a pie crust would be way too much effort" or an entirely separate origin like baked brie with fruit compote.

[baroncognito]

Make-up has given me unrealistic beauty goals. I will never have Groucho Marx eyebrows.

[sithbelle]

Has there ever been a situation where Num Lock *shouldn't* be on?

Why do we keep insisting that these keys to the far right side of the keyboard are temporary? Do we really need alternative arrow keys to have this much power?

[prismatic-bell]

Running Place Everywhere for Fallout 4. The scaling and axis controls are accessed by turning off NumLock.

That said, I think NumLock is a holdover from early computing days when keyboards looked different. Like I remember when 2 wasn't @ and @ was a special character, although I don't remember what was there before. It used to be incredibly important and isn't anymore, sort of like the second Shift key.

[prismatic-bell]

So I just went to look it up, and 2 used to be ", but...

WHERE IS THIS KEYBOARD FROM THAT Z AND Y ARE FLIPPED AND WHY

[baroncognito]

Germany. Notice it also has umlauts.

[prismatic-bell]

Hence my assumption it came from elsewhere and wasn't just someone being a smartass. The Z/Y thing is so much more uncomfortable to my eye, though 😭 probably because I have no frame of reference for where umlauts "belong" on a keyboard so that's just like "sure, seems legit" BUT I KNOW WHERE Z IS AND THAT ISN'T WHERE.

[baroncognito]

Apparently the qwerty keyboard was designed to dodge certain existing patents, moving and swapping certain keys, so it's possible that the german keyboard layout did something similar and that's the reason for the z, y shift. (and since I'm familiar with German keyboards, I knew it was German before even looking for the umlauts. As a native English speaker typing on a German keyboard, you never need the umlauts but the z y inversion can mess you up. Is that the esset up by the backspace?)

[sithbelle]

Has there ever been a situation where Num Lock *shouldn't* be on?

Why do we keep insisting that these keys to the far right side of the keyboard are temporary? Do we really need alternative arrow keys to have this much power?

[prismatic-bell]

Running Place Everywhere for Fallout 4. The scaling and axis controls are accessed by turning off NumLock.

That said, I think NumLock is a holdover from early computing days when keyboards looked different. Like I remember when 2 wasn't @ and @ was a special character, although I don't remember what was there before. It used to be incredibly important and isn't anymore, sort of like the second Shift key.

[prismatic-bell]

So I just went to look it up, and 2 used to be ", but...

WHERE IS THIS KEYBOARD FROM THAT Z AND Y ARE FLIPPED AND WHY

[baroncognito]

Germany. Notice it also has umlauts.

[afurioushawk]

These people are why the Confederates were never punished.

[baroncognito]

Andrew Johnson is why the Confederates were never punished. Lincoln's assassination was unfortunately very helpful to the south.

[starlightomatic]

ok… confession… i don’t understand why everyone felt like the original loss comic was so cringy

[baroncognito]

[baroncognito]

[nariarts]

Longtime readers may be aware of how much I relish an excuse to bully a company, so I'm sharing the wealth;

Clothing company Patagonia is currently sueing drag queen Pattie Gonia for "irreparable” harm to their brand.

To be clear; Pattie named herself after the region in South America.

So Pattie is asking people to politely ask Patagonia to drop the lawsuit.

I'm extending the invitation to all of you, because sueing a drag queen for 'infringement' in the current political cultural landscape is vile. Especially a drag queen who has raised millions of dollars for non-profits, uses her platform to raise awareness for climate activism, and fully aligns with Patagonia's apparent climate-conscious mission statement.

They're claiming they're sueing for $1. They're actually asking her to stop using her name, and pay over $1 million in legal fees. They're straight up harassing her.

In contrast, drag queen Jan Sport has a Jansport bag line. It's that easy to just... work with a queen.

Anyway. Be respectful(ish), but feel free to be annoying on Patagnoia's socials, asking them to 'DROP THE LAWSUIT'

I think they have a twitter and tiktok too!

[shadow-manor]

This is being discussed heavily on Bluesky, such as here.

Patagonia is suing specifically for trademark infringement, and they're suing for the sum of $1. If they don't sue, then that means they could lose the trademark. They aren't trying to "silence" them or prevent them from using the name, they're specifically protecting their company trademark. They'd have to sue *anyone* who was using such an obvious knockoff of their logo; in this case it happens to be a drag queen.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

you'll have to forgive me for not weeping for a billion dollar company's trademark being violated

[shadow-manor]

Go nuts. The point is that this isn't a company trying to dogpile on a drag queen, it's a company following a standard legal practice to protect its trademark. Disney does it all the time.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

... yes, and I also hate Disney? I don't understand what you think you're selling me on here

[shadow-manor]

If you get a soda out of a vending machine and it has a Coca-Cola label but it's actually a knockoff made with ditchwater, that's obviously okay because Coca-Cola is a huge corporation and it's thus fine for someone to violate their trademark.

You can hate Patagonia all you want, but the lawsuit is about anodyne trademark law, not specifically that a drag queen is involved.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

and what part of Miss Gonia's schtick is doing the harm equivalent of tricking someone into drinking ditchwater exactly?

[shadow-manor]

...the trademark part.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

right, okay, I forgot that she's singlehandedly putting Patagonia out of business by using a silly joke name

[netherator]

if Patagonia loses their trademark, which they would if they didn't sue and win (again for one dollar), there would be no assurance against people putting a Patagonia label on amy dogshit

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

well I hope Amy Dogshit enjoys wearing the label I think she'll look very nice

[kitsunekat9]

Oh my fucking god y’all bootlickers are driving me crazy.

I’m a law student specializing in Intellectual Property, which includes Copyright and Trademark. I’ve studied these subjects and the law is clear that everything y’all said about Patagonia “losing the trademark” if they don’t sue Ms. Pattie is absolute bullshit.

Trademarks are only lost if they are abandoned by the user or if the product made by the company becomes so ubiquitous, everyday, and common that people start calling all types of that product by the trademark name. This is called genericide, because the trademark has become so generic, it is no longer an indicator of one singular source. Think Band-Aid or Thermos; we use those terms to refer to the generic products they’re associated with. We call pretty much all sticky bandages Band-Aids and all containers used to keep things warm in Thermoses.

What Patagonia is doing is actually closer to suing for trademark infringement based on tarnishment, which means the infringer is using the trademark name in a way that makes the company look bad or associates the company with things like drugs or pornography. Queen Pattie Gonia is someone who raises awareness for climate and environmental activism. Nothing about Miss Gonia’s use of the name tarnishes Patagonia’s brand.

The only possible argument the company has is that Miss Gonia’s queer identity could be seen as not “adult-friendly” but that very quickly slides into homophobic and moralistic territory that will absolutely be shot down by the court based on First Amendment rights. People are allowed to use “not safe for work names,” based on caselaw that states that “labels that are disparaging or morally offensive” are a violation of free speech because it’s people’s choice to say and use those names. For example, an all-Asian band applied for the trademark name “The Chinks” because they were taking the racially disparaging name and reclaiming it. The Trademark Office attempted to refuse to grant the band’s trademark, and when the band sued, the Supreme Court sided with the band.

That got off on a little bit of a tangent, but the long and short of it is this: Patagonia has absolutely no basis for a trademark name. Any IP lawyer would say the same. The reason Patagonia is getting away with a frivolous suit like this is because they know their target is a member of a vulnerable minority. Miss Gonia is 100% correct that they are trying to bully her because they know she doesn’t have the money to withstand a years-long expensive lawsuit.

It’s because of idiotic bootlickers who kiss companies’ asses like this that big corporations can get away with hurting independent creators. Patagonia does not have any chance at winning, but they know that just by filing and announcing their lawsuit against Miss Gonia, they are putting pressure on her to give up. If this lawsuit goes on, even if it doesn’t make it to court and just goes to a judge for a quick summary judgment, Miss Gonia would still have to pay for a lawyer to defend her and lawyers cost more money than the average person has. Miss Gonia would win, but because Patagonia set the damages for $1, even if she did win, she’d still end up in debt because in America, the typical rule is that each party pays for the cost of their own attorney’s fees. The only time the opposing side would pay your lawyer’s fees is if you have a contract with them that says so, and that’s usually only used in contracts between businesses or high profile individuals.

What Patagonia is doing is capitalizing on society’s hatred for queer people and anyone resembling a trans woman. Miss Gonia is a drag queen, not trans as far as I’m aware (though please do correct me if I’m wrong) but it’s not like a big company cares to differentiate; they’re just mad that a queer person is using their name in a way they don’t like. Patagonia knows that this particular population has been facing harsh discrimination in society currently. By siding with them, people are actively harming the queer community. Don’t pretend to hide behind trademark law to cover up your prejudices.

[baroncognito]

The complaint can be read here:

[thestuffedalligator]

A while back there was a tiktok going “Ooo this is the best restaurant and I’m not telling you where it is ;) you’re going to have to guess ;)))”

And another guy stitched it with a whole breakdown of her most recent posts to go “The day before you posted this you posted another video saying you met this celebrity and he had just posted that he was in this city. You also posted a video in a hotel room and after searching up hotels in this city, we can tell it was this hotel because the wallpaper in your video matches the wallpaper in pictures on their website. By looking up restaurants by this hotel we can tell you went to this specific restaurant” and he was right

And people called him a creep, but I think we should take this as a moral lesson to lie about ourselves online more. I’m actually a talking dog and I live in a Montreal poutinerie

[baroncognito]

Poutine should not be prepared on french fries! French fries are designed for dipping, not being eaten with forks. The proper potato for poutine is tater tots or home fries.

[baroncognito]

Every time I get reminded of Minority Report, I get annoyed. I liked Larry Wilmore's show, but movie is also annoying. There were really two problems with the system set up in the movie:

You're arresting someone for a crime they haven't yet committed and effectively sentencing to death. I mean, sure, they're just "on ice" or whatever, but if you never release them, they're effectively dead. It makes more sense to just remove them from the situation and give them treatment of some sort.

You cannot base your entire justice system on three people that have no time off and spend an unfortunate amount of time seeing murders and other crimes. If it takes three people to keep the system active, then you really need at least 54 pre-cogs to make sure everyone has the appropriate time off, work hours, sick days, and vacations. If you have no method of getting 54 pre-cogs then you've got maybe one generation of the system working.

[pinesourcearchive-deactivated20]

Chris Pine as Captain James T. Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Commander Spock in Star Trek Beyond (2016)

[baroncognito]

I expected that last panel to be "try to take over the world!" and now I'm just imagining Jim/Spock with a Pinkie and the Brain flavour.

[grison-in-space]

you know what? I want dragons with ontogenetic niche partitioning.

niche partioning is a concept from ecology wherein groups within a species expand into different ecological niches so they're not competing with one another, right? so for example, sexual niche partitioning happens when sexual dimorphism means that one sex eats different things / occupies different spaces / etc. as another within the same species. you have one species that occupies multiple niches within the ecosystem.

ontogenetic niche partitioning is when this happens as a result of developmental changes. paternal care tends to obliterate this partitioning--hard to have your juveniles eating something different from your adults if the adults are feeding them!--so we just don't see it very often in mammals or birds, but it's quite common in other species, especially invertebrates. for example, a caterpillar and a butterfly are examples of classic niche partitioning, even though every butterfly will occupy both niches over the course of its life. you don't have to have a big fancy chrysalis transformation to engage in ontogenetic niche partitioning, but those transformations are a pretty big sign that it's happening in a given species.

anyway, it's most common in vertebrates among fish, lizards and snakes these days, especially monitor lizards, where juveniles will occupy a different (often arboreal or otherwise sheltered) niche from adults and hunt different prey until they get big enough that the juvenile niche. there are some good reasons to think that some dinosaurs might have engaged in ontogenetic niche partitioning, especially the bigger species, too. we think sea turtles might do it, although that's hard to say because we don't know very much about sea turtle development once the hatchlings go back to the sea.

the neat thing about ontogenetic niche partitioning is that it allows a given ecology to host a much larger population size for a given species than would otherwise be the case, because the total space occupied by that species is spread across a lot wider niche space. this is especially relevant for, say, a large carnivore that eats livestock.

basically, what if dragons are just the very oldest, reproductively mature members of their species, and the common wall lizard or whatever is just a juvenile that might or might not survive long enough to reproduce? imagine if dragon eggs are very small with big clutches of little insectivorous hatchlings that are eaten by anything that comes by, any of which might have the potential to become a great fire-breathing monster if it lives long enough.

imagine that dragon society. do people know that the hatchlings and the dragons are the same species? (they might not: there are real examples of people mistaking ontogenetically niche separated groups for independent species in their own right.) if dragons are sapient but the sapience takes time to develop, what does that say about the nature of sapience itself? how does a society work and transfer wealth if you remove parental care?

so many possibilities.

[baroncognito]

I kind of like the idea of combining this with cow birds. A dragon's young can mimic any species, and will get raised as that other species. Maybe it kills any of the other young, maybe it doesn't.

At some point, it gets the urge to start building a hoard, once the hoard it large enough, it cocoons itself. What it was raised as and the nature of the hoard both impact the dragon it develops into, and that's why there's so much variety in dragons.

[its-funnytwittertweets]

[theres-a-hole-in-my-wall]

it is NOT. There's a Website called wikibiases just for that. If you go to any topic that isn't European you'll find PLENTY of mistakes. Because Wikipedia is eurocentric! It is not better then textbooks (some textbooks at least)

[nonbinaryjudean]

Wikipedia is only “more reliable than most textbooks” if the textbooks are all extremely outdated lmfao. Even if there are good sources, the information written in the actual article CAN still be incorrect. I have also seen tweets, blog posts, and opinion pieces used as “sources” for important information which is ….. questionable at the very least.

It is a known fact that there are Wikipedia editors with biased motivations who have been rewriting articles mainly related to indigenous people and Jewish history to push a few specific narratives. Some of these articles have been locked with incorrect or biased information in them preventing people from correcting them.

The stuff on Wikipedia is also way more basic than what would be in a genuine respected textbook. Go to the library. Go on the internet archive. Read primary sources and find more than one source. Learn to discern bias or wording that frames things in certain ways. Humans are inherently opinionated and it’s important to avoid confirmation bias.

The lack of media literacy is a MAJOR problem right now and as terrible as AI is that doesn’t mean wiki sites are *good*. Please just use your brain. Some of this is sounding like “big textbook is lying to me” conspiracy brain stuff.

[rosebramblewolf]

and does this person think the people writing the textbooks do not also skew towards autistic pedants lmao

[baroncognito]

Well, for a long time Texas Board of Education has been one of the largest purchasers of text books in the US and kind of set the standard that other states would have to use. And they were very conservative. And then you add to that private school text books that teach creationism and young earth...

Of course, there's plenty of misinformation on Wikipedia too. There are malicious editors who don't like the world as it is and would like to pretend thing were different.

I wouldn't be confident making a claim in either direction.