[pansylair]

I'm an anthropologist and the whole H. naledi thing is wild. highly agree that the netflix documentary (unknown cave of bones) isn't worth watching. The timing between his paper (NOT peer reviewed! every credible journal he submitted it to rejected it) and the release of the docu shows very clearly that they were already producing it before he'd officially published anything. and then he sent some of the remains to space as a publicity stunt so fuck you if you wanted to do any genetic testing on them or anything, solar radiation is a hell of a beast. I hope he's remembered as a laughingstock and a sham for this, discovering Au. sediba does not excuse his current blatant disregard for science 😤

i knew things were generally bad prior to reading this but houghh my god yoU GOTTA BE SHITTING ME

bro needs to put on his clown nose and little squeaky clown shoes and honk his way outta town

[kaijutegu]

I am forever going to be furious that holotype material of human ancestors got shot into space. That's global heritage, not a toy for billionaires! But there's something a lot more insidious there, too.

We do not have a lot of hominin material! There are some species we know from a handful of teeth and finger bones. There are two partial skeletons that make up the entire A. sediba fossil record. Most fossils do not leave their home region because it's considered unsafe to risk them to travel. It was a huge deal back in the mid 2000s when Lucy went on tour because that was the first time that fossil had left Ethiopia; even professionals at the Smithsonian, the only museum in the US to have any non-human hominin fossils on permanent display (the specimen is a partial Neanderthal) were deeply concerned about the risk posed to the fossil.

And that was just international travel. They put Sediba and Naledi in space. (Well, low Earth orbit.) At the whim of the billionaire who bought the land they were discovered on. This wasn't a case of letting more of the public see an ancestor, this wasn't an activity done for scientific study, and it does nothing to support a better understanding of human evolution. So what was the point? Publicity? Attention? Did money change hands, and where did it go? Did it go to the institution that houses these fossils? Did it go to the people who live there today? Did it go to Lee Berger himself? Who made money from letting a billionaire pay to play with these fossils, who made money from letting them be risked like that? The transparency surrounding this choice was completely nonexistent, and for Berger to be as highly supportive of the plan as he was... It's alarming.

That said, they're fossils, so genetic testing was never an option. In a fossil, all organic material has been replaced by inorganic minerals. Subfossils that still have organic material remaining can sometimes be tested, but the material that got launched into space was not.

However, there is a kind of testing that exposure to ionizing solar radiation could fuck up, irrevocably.

Dating.

Our methods for precisely dating fossil material rely on elemental decay. There are careful calibration curves that are used to account for fluctuations in atmospheric radiation, nuclear testing, and more. That material that was taken to space can never be tested, and while yeah, there's other material from the same fossil that could be tested, again, we have two specimens of A. sediba. Two.

Destructive analysis is often scientifically necessary and valid- but we learned nothing from sending these fossils into low earth orbit. There was no public information, no net good here. Was anybody inspired by this? What, other than Berger's PR campaign for naledi, was the point? Was the active destruction of potential scientific information worth whatever justification they had for sending that material to space?

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

Wife how have I not heard of this until now?

[paxardens]

I don't have an answer for you, sweetie, bc I'm now trying to figure out how tf *I* hadn't heard about this before...

Like.... jfc. Hominin fossils just.... Should NOT be goddamn toys. As stated, we do NOT have a whole lot of hominin material. Like, if you take out A. afarensis, H. neanderthalensis, H. erectus and early H. sapiens, you could fit most of the remaining fossil material in the trunk of my goddamn Honda Civic.

We cannot be fucking around like this, ffs. Especially ESPECIALLY with holotypes and paratypes.

(Though I do want to clarify one thing, since biochem/genetics/molecular bio is my jam... A. sediba is definitely Too Fucking Old to get genetic material out of, but H. naledi may not be. And you CAN get genetic material from true fossils- there are forms of organic material that are not generally targeted by the mineralization reactions involved in most fossil formation. The limiting factor, however, is that DNA has a half-life, and anything measured in millions of years old instead of tens-of-thousands is DEFINITELY too old. Naledi is in the grey area of hundreds-of-thousands of years old, where getting usable genetic material out is theoretically possible, just REALLY fucking difficult and success is based heavily on luck and the exact taphonomic processes that preserved the fossil in question.

But, like, organic material definitely exists in true fossils. I mean, fucking cholesterol has been extracted from *pre-Cambrian* fossils- it's why we know Dickinsonia was almost certainly an animal, bc the fossils contain animal cholesterol, not plant or protist cholesterol.)

[yesornopolls]

have you ever had a genuine near death experience?

Have you ever had a genuine near death experience?

Yes

No

Voting ended onJan 3, 2025

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

Trying to tell myself not to treat this poll like a game I can win.

[paxardens]

I mean... You've been on cardiopulmonary bypass twice, which kinda counts bc the heart is literally stopped and patients don't breathe until the surgeon (hopefully) successfully zaps their heart back into action and weans them off.

You've also stopped breathing multiple times during medical emergencies not associated with being on bypass.

You've had to be cardioverted more than once, in addition to the two times that had to happen bc that's how bypass and open heart surgery works, bc your heart forgot how to beat correctly.

You're only still alive bc I'm paranoid af and have response plans in place, and also bc when I WASN'T there, we were incredibly lucky that a friend was supposed to drop by that morning, called for an ambulance and then literally kicked down the door to the apartment to get to you.

I've managed to barely keep you alive for 13 years, and I'm certain you've been Princess Bride style "Only MOSTLY dead" at least several times...

So, like... You're definitely a hell of a contender for "winning" this game. 🤷‍♀️

[heartnosekid]

vampireoftheshire on ig

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

wife, coiuld you knitt something like this if ytou could have pain free hands?

[paxardens]

Yes and no.

I could 100% knit something that has that color pattern, shape, and structure. I could NOT knit something that MOVES quite like that, though, bc even with rods on the top edge and a lightly weighted bottom edge, the way knitted fabric works means it would be *annoyingly close* to impossible to knit something that is light enough to swirl like that AND catches the air properly AND doesn't stretch weirdly while doing so.

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

It is wierd to think I may live to an age where people look back at the90s the way we look back at th 50s now

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

The difference is I'll be honest with you about how it "really" was When you ask because of the grimdark back to the future reboot.

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

Before grimdark goes back to 80s 90s. Aids turns you into a zombie. Soits a zombie movie

It constantly conflate hiv/aids and covid pandemics

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

The intro music is greenday haven't decided which song. But mjf needs to get back to his time before the jan6 zombie attack on the capital.

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

Netflix you lisening? Hmu after the strike ends.

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

I've already got a director picked out; Roland Emmerich, ofc I've already got an art director picked out. Already got a set decorator picked out( known for his work on sin city(since we're going dark and gritty)

[paxardens]

"Already got a set decorator picked out"....

Well, I should HOPE so. It may be a bit nepo, but if you make a movie and DON'T hire your wife's uncle, the next time we actually get to be with family for a holiday is gonna be awkward af.

Only reason it's not FULL nepo is that he's actually objectively fucking good at his job, in all the right ways for your artistic tastes and the specific premise of this idea....

[aqueerkettleofish]

As a side note… I am really annoyed by one thing about Star Trek.

“Replicated food is not as good as real food.”

That’s ridiculous.  In Star Trek, replicator technology is part of the same tech tree as transporters.  Replicated food would be identical to the food it was based on, down to the subatomic level. 

[covington-shenanigans]

Proposal for a Watsonian explanation:

In a blind taste test, nobody, but nobody, can tell the actual difference between replicated food and “real” food. (Think back to our youth and the New Coke vs. Pepsi taste tests, only worse.) BUT, humans being What We Are, the human Starfleet members insist that “real” food is better than replicated food for reasons including, but certainly not limited to:

1. Hipsters have survived even into the 24th century. “No, you just can’t make good curry from a replicator! You gotta toast the spices yourself right before you cook it or it’s not the same, maaaaaan”

2. All military and para-military members everywhere always grouse and bitch about the food and sigh over What We Get Back Home. It could literally be the same replicator recipe you use at home when someone has to work late or just doesn’t feel like making the effort to cook, but people are people everywhere so they’re going to complain about it.

3. Humans tend to think we’re smarter than we actually are and we can totally tell when something is going on; as a result, human crew members insist they can “taste the difference” because their minds are making shit up, as our brains do.

4. One could presume that, generally speaking, a replicator recipe programmed into a starship or base replicator database would come out the same every time. This is perhaps the 24th century equivalent of mass catering. (I won’t try to account for the nuances of replicator tech that might allow for variances, and leave aside for the moment the fact that some people probably tinker with the standard “recipes” to suit their own taste.) The single thing that would be different in this case about “real” food is the variation, since of course the “real” dish will have slight variances every time due to the whims of the cook, the oven temperature fluctuation, freshness of ingredients, etc.. And since we are an easily bored species who really, really hates boredom, I bet people would jump all over that to lament the lack of “real” food when they’re out exploring strange new worlds and new civilizations and whatnot. (This is the only reason I can think of that might hold up to scrutiny.)

The Vulcans in Starfleet (and Data), of course, remain baffled by this human insistence that “replicator food isn’t as good as ‘real’ food”, as it defies all known forms of logic.

[aqueerkettleofish]

Hmm.  This is a fair point.  It occurs to me that I once met a Texan who commented that the chili in a restaurant I worked at was not as good as what they made in Texas, and when I pointed out that the cook was a Texan and the chili was his personal recipe, for which he had won awards in Texas, just said “Doesn’t matter.  Wasn’t made in Texas.”

I gotta be honest, Replicator technology is one of the things I am SUPREMELY jealous of, and I’m… okay, I’m not a great cook, but I can cook and there are several dishes I do very well.  I think if I had access to the technology I would cook a lot less, though, and I would for sure use replicated ingredients. 

[math-is-magic]

1. It is not just hipsters that act like this about food. All the grandmothers I know feel this way too, and I don’t see that ever changing.

[mermaidelephant]

The missing ingredient is love, obviously. You can’t get that from a replicator.

[aqueerkettleofish]

Right, for that you need the holodeck.

[lemonsharks]

Okay so, we’ve missed a few things that I think are relevant here: 

The replicator or replicator + holodeck combo can’t recreate the experience of cooking, nor can it recreate the experience of being cooked for. And that experience makes food taste better. 

Cooking is what makes us human. No other species on this wet rock cooks its food–only us. 

First: if you’re making lamb stew, or phở, or mole, or curry goat, you spend hours puttering around the house doing chores in a cozy sweater, periodically petting the cats and playing with the kids, waiting an anticipating the hour in which you get to eat the soup. All the while: your house smells like lamb stew, or phở, or mole, or curry goat. 

You get a tamale from the replicator: it’s pretty good. You wish it came with a green olive with the pit still in like the kind your abuela puts in her tamales. 

You get a tamale from the tamale lady on the way to work on a clear, crisp fall morning. It’s so hot from her steamer that it nearly burns your fingerprints off and it smells divine; you use all of your Spanish to tell her how good it is and how grateful you are that you pass her every day. On a whim, you buy 30 more tamales to share with the office; they’re still warm at lunch and they taste like friendship. 

You get a tamale from your abuela. It’s Christmas Eve, your entire family has spent the last seven hours making them, your tio Juan just busted out his tuba and it is definitely too hot outside for the fake snow  your baby cousins have started throwing at each other in between begging to open just one present and if you don’t hurry up you’re all going to be late for mass. 

The tamale tastes like home. 

You get a tamale from the replicator. Its neural network reviewed your order against every known tamale recipe and variety and decided that your addition of “green olive, pickled, pit in” was a mistake, and omitted it. 

Your tamale tastes like homesickness. You ball-up the corn husk and 

Second: The replicator is probably not accounting for regional variations in ingredients for its base foods. 

The ingredient library may have jalapeno, red; jalapeno, green, jalapeno, (color slider), (heat slider). It probably does not have: jalapeno, Hatch new mexico, USA, earth, sol system; or jalapeno north face Olympus Mons Mars, sol system. Replicator Parmesan is very likely a scan of a Parmesan and doesn’t duplicate regional variations between, say, a Parmesan from Mantua vs a Parmesan from Parma. 

Did your grandmother use san marzano tomatoes that were actually grown in san marzano in her red sauce (, canned, peeled, whole in juice)? Sucks to be you, the replicator scanned a hydroponically grown plum-type tomato which environment was carefully controlled for optimal nutritional value and “pretty good” taste. 

Is the replicator cilantro a kind bred or genetically engineered for maximum palatability across the broadest spectrum of individuals? Is it missing the gene that makes some people taste soap when they eat it? Is that gene the one that makes it taste good to you, so that the replicator chimichurri is always missing something, some particular specific type of freshness, a unique vegetal taste that you can’t put your finger on, and it’s not important enough to track down when you just like the chimichurri you make at home, from cilantro your grew yourself, much better? 

Third: The recipe database is probably sourced from hundreds of thousands of recipes written over centuries’ time – and then averaged using a combination of median and modal averaging to come up with something that’s Pretty OK to most people, but which is going to leave others wanting–no matter how much they tweak it. 

And then you have many, many people in a state of, “yes but I like my/mom’s/spouse’s/grandparent’s/aunt’s/uncle’s/best friends better”. And that’s OK.

I mean, really. Think about this for a minute.

Fourth:

You go to get a cup of tea from the replicator, because everything is terrible. You know in the darkest depths of your soul that everything will still be terrible with a good cuppa in your hands, but it will be terrible and you’ll have tea, which is a marked improvement. 

The replicator gives you a glass of brewed, iced sweet tea. 

It takes you three more tries to get a cup of hot earl grey. You decide you’ve finished pressing your luck with this positively infernal machine today and don’t even bother asking for a lemon wedge. 

If that doesn’t indicate that the replicators were programmed by an American, I don’t know what does. 

[taraljc]

holy shit boo this is fucking AMAZEBALLS and I miss the tamale ladies at Stone on the way to the Target so much right now but also you *hugs you tight*

[subbyp]

Also, regional recipes are calibrated to work with the local tap water. That’s why pizza from New York and sourdough from San Francisco taste better–the micro-organisms in the water enhance the flavor. The chili that wasn’t made in Texas probably did taste subtly different than it would’ve back home.

[united-federation-of-trek]

There are lots of things that would change with replicators because they take out the human factor.

Maybe you really wanted that one meal from that one restaurant except the restaurant doesn’t release their recipe so it’s slightly off and always will be.

You programmed the replicator with your mum’s favourite mac and cheese recipe, but you didn’t know that your mum always added a little more salt and a little less mustard than the recipe called for, so it’s just not the same and it’s not as good.

[alarajrogers]

Pretty much this. Also I think we cannot overstate the degree to which “the food always comes out exactly the same” would end up bothering people over time.

[jagatcurious]

Important point is that these are “military grade” food replicators and military food is never really great. Hence the difficulty with the tea. Food replicators in private homes and restaurants are more controllable and may have programming for varieties of chilies or tomatoes or even carrots. There are 4 basic kinds of carrots but only one is available commercially, the others need to be grown at home. With a programmable home replicator one can have chantenay carrots… all the infinite varieties of foodstuff ingredients will be available with the right programming and therefore civilians in the 24th century in star trek will have perfectly customisable food. My mind is boggled now…

[kraznyoktyabr]

For a real-world example, but in the other direction:

When I was a child, my mother used to make chili using “Carroll Shelby’s Texas Chili Mix.” It made… okay chili.

When I was in college I found a book called “Chili Madness” at a local used bookstore, that had the winning recipes from the National Chili Cookoff for the last 30 years. It included Carroll Shelby’s actual recipe. So I made it. (Had to get one of my apartment mates to source beer for me, as I was not of age to purchase it yet.)

Wow. What a difference. Adding the spices at different times rather than as a blob of “spice mix”. Beer instead of water. No masa. So good!

So the bagged mix would be the replicator mix in this scenario.

[kaldurcalm-deactivated20240513]

@subbyp you said what about the tap water?

[subbyp]

It has microscopic crustaceans in it.

[kyraneko]

The microorganisms are different, if not missing.

The process of creating it is removed, along with all that entails: this spice left to simmer for the entire cooking time, that fresh leafy thing added in just at the end, a tiny bit heat-wilted.

The quality, not in terms of “is it good” but “what characteristics does it have,” the difference between grass-fed beef and corn-fed, mast-raised pork and commercial feed, how much sunshine did the animal get, what breed is it, how much exercise did it get.

What soil microbes mingled with the roots of that plant and what was planted next to it and how many rainy days did it get and how much sun? You have wine connoisseurs talking about how this or that year was “a good year” because of how the patterns of temperature and sun and rain hit the vines, and everybody has a memory of getting a really good batch of blueberries from the store ONCE and wishing they could all be like that.

When I was a kid we picked strawberries at you-pick fields that don’t seem to be around anymore, and they tasted so much better than anything I’ve ever gotten from a store.

One of the things that screws up my suspension of disbelief in Star Trek is how weirdly specific and intuitive the computers both are and aren’t, at the same time. Picard always has to say “Tea, Earl Grey, hot!” at the replicator so there’s obviously no means of personalization where the replicator knows if it’s Picard asking for tea, he wants it Earl Grey and you can just jump to that unless he specifies otherwise, but also that one time he was able to pull up the musical recording of HMS Pinafore on the working screen of a shuttle by pressing just two buttons, and there weren’t a whole lot of buttons on either screens, so what the fuck?

Anyway there’s probably a shitload of data storage in a Federation starship, but are they really going to fill it up with enough molecular data to store

every extant cultivar

of every food plant

at every stage of edible ripeness

prepared every way it’s commonly prepared

in combination with every other ingredient whose presence or absence affects its taste?

Plus every cut of every food animal

with all the variables of how it might have been raised, and then

with every variable of preparation?

If you bake bread it will taste differently based on how you let it rise, at what temperature, if you put it in the fridge overnight and then let it rise, if you use a starter or a pre-ferment, as well as what yeast you use and how you knead it and what flour and what water and the temperature and shape of the oven and the atmospheric pressure and humidity of the day and the altitude you’re doing your baking at and

that’s

ONE

type

of

food

and you can’t just reduce all that into “bread, artisan, sliced” or whatever

don’t get me started on the butter

or the absolute multitude of things that you could mean when you say you want “chili”

and even if you go into the Settings menu the first time you take a Starfleet posting and spend hours on end going into detail about what varieties of peppers should go into each of your favorite Mexican dishes and how much crispiness is The Correct Amount Of Crispiness in your bacon (and how thick it should be and how it should be smoked and seasoned) and how big and numerous you want the holes in your sandwich bread to be

you’re still gonna find yourself missing the taco truck and the tamale lady and that one bakery and the sort of fried rice you get when you throw six days’ worth of leftovers in plus whatever spices feel right at the time.

[feifiefofum]

i always figured they’d have a gourmet chef produce a dish, scan the pattern, store the pattern in a database, and there you go. same dish every time, until the end of time. just have a masterclass chef who had this one dish they’re passionate about and have them make it.

but then you’ll run into the problem of ‘it’s a great dish but it ain’t what pappy used to make’. and that’s that.

look, you can get a gourmet chef to make you some artisanal mac n’ cheese, and it’d be great mac n’ cheese, stellar even. and the computer will even reproduce it indistinguishable from the masterclass chef’s creation- but sometimes the palette of the common folk don’t want the 12 layers of flavor in a masterclass chef’s fancy mac n’ cheese, you just want mac n’ cheese.

sometimes we do be wanting that uncultured stuff.

look, with all the minecraft builders of today, i highly doubt there isn’t some dedicated ensign or other, mucking around in the ship’s library, trying to reproduce a taste of home.

and they’ll probably frankenstein a pretty good approximation that they’ll be so proud of, they’ll have it served at their funeral.

forget that one time i saved a planet’s civilization from radiation poisoning, i finally got the mac n’ cheese right. and it’s just the generic box store mac n’ cheese with butter and cheddar.

fuck the gourmet chef’s 12 layers of flavor, some butter and cheddar? that’s where it’s at.

[elodieunderglass]

I don’t know shit about Star Trek but I can tell you:

As a child I loved the hard, crumbly, springy, salty feta cheese that was sold at the deli in Market Basket. (Tell me you’re from NE without telling me-) The deli clerk would pick up these great blocks of feta and put them in a plastic container full of brine. In the UK i was startled to learn that this is not Greek feta cheese, and that feta cheese is actually soft and sweet and sour and smeary, and I don’t like it at all. The closest thing to the experience, “my” “feta” cheese, is Apetina (sold as salad cheese - it isn’t legally feta) when cubed and sold in brine. And it isn’t it. I read pages trying to understand what Apetina is, and it isn’t Feta because it comes from Denmark, not a specific area of Greece, but that doesn’t explain why Market Basket feta and Apetina are both tasty and brittle and dry and briny, and Actual Real Feta is like failed chèvre. “The terrain on which the animals graze (in Greece) is very different from that of Denmark,” one website offered hopelessly. I don’t think a work cafeteria is prepared to deal with this, I really don’t.

Annie’s macaroni with white cheddar, in the purple box with the bunny on it. Smartfood popcorn. Smartfood popcorn! I crossed an ocean not realising I wouldn’t eat it again. People have, with the best of intentions, have heard my grief about this tried to tell me how to make Mac and cheese from scratch as if I don’t fucking know. This is not a bechamel, sir, this is not a roux-based sauce, this is white cheddar powder and if you don’t know then you don’t know. Operating under wild cravings, I bought a packet of UK-produced cheddar powder from apparently the only company in Europe that makes it - apparently as a protein supplement - and cannot explain what is wrong with it to my own family, let alone a computer. Let alone a catering company. Let alone a work canteen run by a catering company’s computer. “White cheddar popcorn,” you say, and it gives you popcorn covered in cold grated cheese. We can’t even reconcile this between friends on a planet let alone the vastness of all spacetime.

Those Maruchan creamy chicken ramen noodle packets - did you know they stopped existing? They never will again. Do you remember them enough to teach a computer?

When my husband moved to the US he just could not get sausage. He was astonished by American sausage: sweet breakfast sausage, fennel sausage, hot sausage - but could not get back bacon (“Canadian bacon?” “No, back bacon”) or sausages for a fry up. He found an English butcher in the USA that would ship the right kind on ice, and had a fry up and was happy. Now I think suddenly of hot sausage, Market Basket again with those twelve-packs of weirdly red sausage. If we can’t argue these distinctions with people then what can we do?

Did you know that Old El Paso spice mixes, those cheap “Mexican” ones, have the same names and packaging but the ingredients vary by country? Just like Coca-Cola, thought to be the universal American import, actually being made from the cheapest sugar source in the country of manufacture.

I don’t know anything about Star Trek. I am absolutely starving.

[captainlordauditor]

I’m Jewish. Being a diasporic people spread everywhere from Eastern China to Ethiopia to just about everywhere in Europe and the Middle East, we’ve had access to a lot of very different ranges of foods. However, also being a diasporic people, we all trace our roots back to the same place and the same language, which means that we all nominally share things like the dish cheroset.

My mother makes her cheroset with apples, walnuts, fortified wine, and cinnamon. But…. every single one of those ingredients is one that I’ve seen swapped out for something different depending on region, tradition, or dietary needs. My mother also has a cookbook which has about ten different versions on this dish. If I make my cheroset with apples, walnuts, fortified red wine, and cinnamon, and someone else makes theirs with dates, almonds, grape juice, and cloves, and someone else adds raisins or figs or ginger or nutmeg….are we really all eating the same dish? Is the replicator going to distinguish between those important distinctions of nutmeg vs cinnamon? The type of grapes that went into the wine? Whether or not there’s added honey? 

Like, this isn’t just “we don’t have that here” or “we have made differences to a thing that still has some semblance to your thing”. This is every Jewish community having their own dish that we all call the same thing.

[paxardens]

I adore baking. The process fills up holes in my soul, especially if I bake *for others*- when it was still safe to spend time around other humans, I intentionally held tea parties *for my OWN birthday*, where I'd use up every last drop of my physical ability, baking through the morning and early afternoon while pushing through my chronic pain, because being able to sit down with my dearest friends by mid-afternoon and share the scones with homemade jam, lemon tarts, cake, and tiny smoked salmon mousse sandwiches with pickles from the particular cucumber varieties I love to grow on my freshly baked bread (or whatever was on that specific year's menu) I had been laboring over was always the best birthday gift I could give myself.

So, like, there's one thing replicators couldn't give me.

But also..... I'm constantly tweaking the flavor profile of my recipes (though not the fundamental ingredients, bc baking chemistry needs precision). Replicators don't make that straightforward, and take away the ability to, say, slowly add more of a spice until a tart filling recipe I'm adjusting tastes *just right*.

And also..... I have SIX different cinnamon jars in my pantry right now. Each one is from trees that grew in a different country. And they all taste RADICALLY different, despite being exactly the same species, and are each best suited for different applications.

And when I make my pot of earl grey tea to go with what I've baked, I blend three to four different loose leaf earl grey styles, in whatever ratios make the final combo smell the way that *feels* right in that specific moment.

90% of the time, I actually LOVE it when my favorite meals always taste exactly the way it did the last time I made it. I'm usually aiming for precise flavor/texture/etc replication, so I'd be absurdly happy with a replicator most of the time once I'd either found enough already-programmed dishes that I enjoyed or successfully figured out how to program my go-to meals just right.

But if it meant I couldn't play with baking with my pantry full of ultra-specialized spices and flavorings or do on the spot tea blends I love so much, I'd be pretty damn cranky and regularly grumbling about "ugh, what I make is so much better....."

[demilypyro]

so sorry for the helmet shame ur experiencing, usamericans are fed a bunch of bike safety videos as children about how if you Do Not Ride With A Helmet you will Fly Off Your Bike and your brain will be jello on the sidewalk

https://youtu.be/9OSVeMVJDIk?t=65 this is Ride Smart It's Time To Start, the one I was shown repeatedly in school. link should skip to relevant content

why are they using a racing bike wtf none of this makes sense YES YOU SHOULD WEAR A HELMET ON A RACING BIKE THOSE ARE FOR RACING WHERE IS THE CITY BIKE

[demilypyro]

WHAT

WHAT THE FUCK

[fear-of-the-familiar-and-known]

Yeah Americans only know about racing bikes. Notjustbikes even mentioned a store that claimed to sell regular city bikes but only sold racing bikes

[demilypyro]

okay uh

a city bike is like this, the handlebars are higher than the seat so you can sit straight up and bike casually, as opposed to a racing bike where they’re level so you’re bent over so you get less wind resistance.

you just. sit on it. and bike through the city. when a Dutch person says “bike” they’re referring to a city bike 99% of the time

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

We wear helmets in the US because we make bike riders use the same lanes as motor vehicles, without any specific bike infrastructure like protected lanes or signage, in most places. While there are a few "bike friendly" cities, this usually means multi-lane streets with one of the lanes painted with a bike to indicate which lane a biker should be in when it gets run over by a car.

[paxardens]

Also, like.... Most non-specialized, affordable bikes (e.g., NOT BMX type bikes or the expensive af and ultra-thin wheeled fancy-ass road/racing bikes with custom handlebars used by actual athletes or rich folks who want to appear athletic) folks in the US have access to are perfectly capable of being configured for an upright, casual position. And, in fact, usually *come* configured that way. My hybrid commuter bike, that I used to do long-distance cycling on before my arthritis said NOPE, came that way, and I never changed it bc the back pain and instability generated by that awful racing crouch was NOT worth any of the reduction in overall exertion provided by better aerodynamics. It also doesn't have all the extra gears and shit- I think it's a 6 gear bike? Just enough that I have the gears needed to go up a bit of an incline without stalling out and falling over.

But I will STILL wear a helmet any time I am on a bike with intent to either go faster than my ultra-slow walking pace OR potentially travel downhill on a grade above a couple percent. Even on roads with REAL bike lanes, or even roads closed to vehicle traffic.

Bc wearing a helmet in such a situation is the only reason I didn't get murdered by pavement when I was 13. Bc there was a downhill slope, I picked up a fairly small amount of extra speed bc there wasn't any reason to keep my velocity completely constant, got distracted by a twinge in my leg, tried to slow to a gradual stop, and hit the front brake SLIGHTLY too hard. Which made my bike buck me off like a pissed off horse.

The front of helmet was completely smashed flat, and it was split in two. But, aside from a cut on my chin, my head WASN'T. The helmet meant I *only* had minor wrist and elbow fractures and a few stitches, rather than emergency brain surgery.

So, uh, sorry Europeans... EVEN WITH y'all's city bikes and good urban cycling infrastructure, the fact y'all don't wear helmets is utterly absurd.

[eroticcannibal]

Hello, as part of their home ed Noah would like to make cakes and we were wondering if anyone outside of the UK knows of local cake recipes or similar that we dont have over here and would be willing to share those?

(We are gonna do some googling too but I am aware that sometimes what can be found online in english can be less than authentic so some help would be appreciated)

[queerautism]

In Spain, lemon yoghurt cake is quite traditional!

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

@paxardens

[paxardens]

My fave VERY American cake is german chocolate!

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/8257/german-sweet-chocolate-cake-i/

I have absolutely no idea if it's gotten any sort of foothold outside the US, so apologies if you're familiar with it and it thus does not meet the criteria. If not, though....

The cake hasn't got anything to do with Germany, despite the name- it's name came from the baking chocolate brand originally used to make it, whose founder's name was Samuel German.

It's one of the many recipes directly attached to a specific product, and printed on the product packaging, that came out of the Ultra Consumerism Frenzy of 1950s America, but unlike most of those recipes, it doesn't suck.

These days, people rarely make it from scratch, bc the coconut custard icing has become the primary focus that identifies the cake, no matter what kind of chocolate cake its put on, but the original recipe produces an incredibly fluffy, perfect chocolate cake that is worth the effort!

Note: Since y'all across the pond typically don't have US chocolate brands that aren't the huge international corporations, I doubt you have access to the specific branded chocolate. What you're gonna need is four ounces of a SWEET, and DARK, baking chocolate. Not unsweetened, not bittersweet. Not milk chocolate. Yes, it's very sweet chocolate as the base, but that's already accounted for in the recipe. So the cake itself ends up NOT being as sweet as most cakes are, bc it has to contrast with the sugary caramel custard in the icing.

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

After today's SCOTUS ruling am I the only one that is counting the days until religious exemption claims for masks become A Thing because something something war on Christmas?

[vanshira]

Well, if vaccines become mandatory except for religious exemptions we know who’s getting weeded out

[paxardens]

Uh. That's already the way vaccines mandates work in the bulk of the US.... Also, @candidlyautistic and I are both immune suppressed. It's still worth getting any vaccines we're "due" for or need for any reason (except live virus vaccines), but, uh. There is a constant risk that any given vaccine might just... Not work properly. Either completely just not providing protection, or providing considerably less protection. In my case, that risk is far larger than someone with a typical immune system, but only on a relative scale. In HER case, well... Her immune suppression meds are far more hardcore, and directly target the cells required for effective ongoing immune memory. So, like, if the % of people who get the covid vaccine is too low, there are a LOT of addditional folks who have shit immune responses or who are unable to be safely vaccinated who will be "weeded out" along with people who refuse vaccines for bullshit reasons that have nothing to do with science.

[antimasculist]

cis people are having a little too much fun with the “all enbies listen to mother mother” and “all enbies have stupid weird names” jokes

[thyesteann]

(if i made add) kinda like how cis people are getting a little too comfortable making jokes about how trans guys all have the same names or making fun of how they try to act masc…

[lichen-punk]

(if i may also add) cis people are also getting a little too loosey goosey about “all trans girls’ goals are anime catgirls” and “trans girls all want headpats” jokes….

[courtofthevampireking]

(if i may add) cis people are using jokes intended to be used by trans people a little too much

[anexperimentallife]

Hey fellow cis folks, please read the above and take heed!

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

For those genuinely wondering, a lot of these intracommunity jokes arise out of the self aware nature of being denied appropriately gendered things at what cis people consider appropriate ages.

Cis people conflate developmentally appropriate with age appropriate. From the perspective of a trans person who is denied any appropriate gender development at the “right” age, gender appropriate development happens at an older age, and often filtered through the lens of a teen or adult rather than a young child.

Healthy psychosexual development (which includes healthy understanding and expression of gender and does not mean tee-hee sex is a thing I can say penis and vagina oh no!) is withheld from trans people by society, and we are aware of this BECAUSE so many of us are adults that are not exposed to gender appropriate and developmentally appropriate, healthy psychosexual development at all. We have to teach ourselves bc society sure as shit doesn’t do it (understanding this development is also part of academic studies vis a vis queer studies).

For that matter, we are also acutely aware that this failing ALSO affects cis people, who do not receive a complete picture of healthy psychosexual development, else trans would be treated in par with cis and the vis would not fret because they would understand that transition is personal, not systemic, and you can’t be MADE trans against your will - either you are or you are not, and only self actualization determines that.

Cis people coopting self-aware intracommunity jokes highlights the societal failure to provide healthy and appropriate psychosexual development.

I’m other words, all a cis person does by making those jokes is paint a sign over their head that says, “Society failed to teach me appropriate understanding of gender AND of behavior,” and I would point that out to cis people but most of them would take this lengthy replied to mean, “Trans people are mentally ill bc they don’t know what sex is,” despite that being the literal opposite of what the message is.

But you know, cis gonna cis. (And terf gonna terf all over this post I’m sure).

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

Put in simplest terms, trans people would probably be happier hitting these phases (like cat girl) at what most people consider appropriate ages, but cis people don’t let us do that so we wait until we have control over own lives and cis people can either die mad about that OR stop preventing us from appropriate experiences when we are, say, five, or nine, or fourteen, or whatever.

It is APPROPRIATE for a five year old boy who wants to be a construction worker when he grows up to play with a toy dump truck, but if cis people are going to prevent a five year old boy who happens to look like a stereotypical five year old girl from doing that, then he’s going to play with his dump truck when he is thirty, has a job, and can buy it for himself, and that is ENTIRELY the fault of cis people.

[paxardens]

....... I mean, yes, 100%, to all of the above. But also, my enby ass has never heard of whatever "mother mother" is, and I am now wondering if I totally missed something... Plus, my name is Megan. It's what my parents chose before I took my first breath, and it suits me just fine, no matter how average, common, and femme-coded it is. Not to say there's anything superior about keeping one's original and gendered name, or anything bad about choosing something unconventional. But I'm the kind of autistic that prefers to avoid unnecessary changes, especially with things that require quick audio processing (such as recognizing someone is saying my name), and it would take YEARS to adjust to a new name for myself, or pronouns besides she/her. It's mostly easy to adjust to other folks' name or pronoun shifts, bc the neuro paths responsible for processing what word is going to come out of my mouth are very different from the ones that would hear someone saying a new name and accurately recognize it as my own. And since I don't have any dysphoria at ALL about name and pronouns, it is NOT worth the effort and anxiety to bother messing with something that works just fine. But it's ALSO frustrating that The Cis looked at the subset of enbies that express themselves through creative names and freedom from convention.... And decided it means I can't possibly be an enby bc I'm happy being Megan. FFS, even the otherwise-awesome queer doctor that prescribes my (new-ish, only been on for a few months) low-dose T keeps pressing me about whether or not I want to be called by a new name or use different pronouns. Every telemedicine session, I keep firmly saying variations of "No. And I never will. I'm happy with what I've been used to for almost 33 years. If, for some reason, a snowball forms in hell and my position changes, I. Will. Tell. You." And get back variations of "well, you know you can tell me anything, you don't need to be afraid to ask, so let me know what you want to be called whenever you're ready". And then, sure as anything, next appointment... "Do you have a new name you'd like me to put in your record this time?".... I can't wait until I can go months and months between appointments. 🙃🙃🙃

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

Trying to teach myself to knit again and remembering that the most annoying thing is the sickly sweet voice of every. Video. Ever.

Like yes, I am at the most basic step of learning how to cast on but I'm not a kindergartener that needs to be babied.

I want someone who understands learning shit is cool and exciting but REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING and frustrating when you start something new and it sucks that you have to do boring foundational shit to get to the coolest parts.

I want a person who can say, "Look, this is the first thing you have to learn and you need to sit there watching an episode of star trek practicing casting on the entire time until you have muscle memory and it fucking sucks but you're going to do it anyway because you're a beast that will eventually make REALLY COOL SHIT."

Not, "Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii and welcoooooooooooome to another episode ooooooooooooooof Learning How to Kniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit the easy waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay. Now pick up your yaaaaaaaaaaarn..."

Drunk History for knitting classes? Hosted by someone who is ADHD/ASD as fuck and either a trans man or a trans woman but you're not sure which, and is like OG queer elder would be perfect.

Anyone have suggestions?

[paxardens]

Meanwhile, I, your WIFE, who GAVE YOU THE KNITTING NEEDLES and CHOSE GOOD BEGINNER YARN OUT OF OUR STASH FOR YOU, is sitting here side-eyeing you bc why tf are you watching sickly sweet knitting instruction videos on youtube when I'm RIGHT HERE, never more than 30 feet away during the times you might be trying to learn, available to teach you anything you want to know. In my usual blunt, slightly twangy, butchy voice.

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

I want to get a diagnoses, but I’ve found that therapists/psychologists in this state really aren’t that great in general and specialists for autism are usually for children and they’re focused on correcting the person’s behavior instead of helping them. Do you know anything that could help me? Maybe websites that would have a list of therapists/psychologists or someone who could find one for me? I don’t know where to start and it’s been really hard since I can’t do this on my own.

In the US, look for the nearest major university that has a psych program and an is associated with a hospital. Most will have behavioral centers for therapists and psychs getting their masters and phds.

These are also the places most likely to be up to date on current diagnostic guidelines, are more likely to be progressive about taking into account diagnostics that are not yet official but are commonly recognized, and are more likely to diagnose adults even if they ostensibly only diagnose children.

Most of these, but not all, are state universities so start there, then move on to private universities with associated hospitals.

Hospitals are not usually on main campus. For example, in Houston, University of Texas has several hospitals in Houston, including the Behavioral Health Sciences where autism diagnosis is done. The hospitals are in the Houston Medical Center, while all of the UT main campuses are in other cities (all several hours away).

Anyhow, yeah. Universities are your friend.

[paxardens]

Heeeey, sweetie, darling, beloved wife… Just want to point out that the UT system actually has a full blown individually accredited med school in Houston (McGovern Medical School), loosely attached to a dentistry school, nursing school, and to graduate-only universities in biomedical studies and public health. All bundled, along with their public-serving medical institutions, under the “UT Health Sciences Center”, all academics entirely based in Houston. Dr. Loveland (who diagnosed CandidlyAutistic and I, for any other folks who happen to be reading this public letter to my wife), despite having a PhD instead of an MD, is a professor in the psychiatry and behavioral sciences department at McGovern Med School. Best bet might be specifically suggest looking for med schools nearby. Or nursing schools.

[paxardens]

In fact, if I ever to a point where applying to grad school can happen, Houston has TWO major entries in the battle that could mean going back home: University of Houston, and the UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. UTHealth is doing some bloody incredible shit with biochem, and their program is structured kind of like a Build Your Own PhD hobby kit- they don't accept students under any specific program title, but instead, every student starts out undifferentiated, and can mix and match from classes under all three primary academic umbrellas the university offers (Biology, Biochemistry, and Medical Physics).

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

I want to get a diagnoses, but I’ve found that therapists/psychologists in this state really aren’t that great in general and specialists for autism are usually for children and they’re focused on correcting the person’s behavior instead of helping them. Do you know anything that could help me? Maybe websites that would have a list of therapists/psychologists or someone who could find one for me? I don’t know where to start and it’s been really hard since I can’t do this on my own.

In the US, look for the nearest major university that has a psych program and an is associated with a hospital. Most will have behavioral centers for therapists and psychs getting their masters and phds.

These are also the places most likely to be up to date on current diagnostic guidelines, are more likely to be progressive about taking into account diagnostics that are not yet official but are commonly recognized, and are more likely to diagnose adults even if they ostensibly only diagnose children.

Most of these, but not all, are state universities so start there, then move on to private universities with associated hospitals.

Hospitals are not usually on main campus. For example, in Houston, University of Texas has several hospitals in Houston, including the Behavioral Health Sciences where autism diagnosis is done. The hospitals are in the Houston Medical Center, while all of the UT main campuses are in other cities (all several hours away).

Anyhow, yeah. Universities are your friend.

[paxardens]

Heeeey, sweetie, darling, beloved wife... Just want to point out that the UT system actually has a full blown individually accredited med school in Houston (McGovern Medical School), loosely attached to a dentistry school, nursing school, and to graduate-only universities in biomedical studies and public health. All bundled, along with their public-serving medical institutions, under the "UT Health Sciences Center", all academics entirely based in Houston. Dr. Loveland (who diagnosed CandidlyAutistic and I, for any other folks who happen to be reading this public letter to my wife), despite having a PhD instead of an MD, is a professor in the psychiatry and behavioral sciences department at McGovern Med School. Best bet might be specifically suggest looking for med schools nearby. Or nursing schools.

[valtsv]

two characters fighting? nice. two characters flirting? also nice. but two characters flirting while fighting (other people or each other)? *chef’s kiss* fucking transcendent

[sweettifalockhart-archived]

@devilreno

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

You can just say Ingio and Westley

[paxardens]

So, TIL that I've been deeply shipping a fabulously bisexual Inigo-Westley-Buttercup triad for a very long time without ever consciously recognizing it....

[reupstayup]

Reblog if you have a scar with a story behind it.

[jessieboooooo-blog]

This one time I tripped

[italy-curl-deactivated20200116]

this one time I split my forehead open

[thefirstmissamerica-deactivated]

This one time a dark wizard tried to kill me when I was a infant but couldn’t

[steampunkforever]

Stab

[hellobendykitty]

I tried to hold an angry cat

[donesparce-deactivated20160928]

someone put an iron on my hand

[jsgiguere]

My teammate tried to jump over me and cut the back of my neck open with his hockey skate.

[castironjackelope]

I got a couple left over from chicken pox.

[spookients-deactivated20160207]

tried to climb a dead tree

[ghost-nettle]

as a child I came up behind a sleeping dog with a squeaky toy in my mouth

[supernachtkuchen]

Twisted up in rusty metal chains.

[bunjywunjy]

got one from a sledding accident and one from learning That’s Why We Don’t Cook Barefoot

[i-draws-dinosaurs]

Threw a weeding fork into the top of my foot

[randomslasher]

I tripped on a petrified dinosaur footprint.

[on-and-on-we-go-forever]

belly flopped on rebar

[possiblyawesometmblr]

fell down on a treadmill while wearing shorts

[sialiawings]

ran straight into the corner of a bench

[pengychan]

I got stabbed through the left cheek with a pencil.

[cursedskull-666]

I got two:

1) Face vs glass door. It could be argued that I won.  2) Epic: Guitar slide across living room floor.  Not so epic: Guitar sliding across a bit of glass on said floor and cutting my foot. 

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

Dog bite.

Scraped knee.

Playing rough with the kitty.

Knife to the chest.

Knife to the chest again.

[paxardens]

Forehead vs. glass table corner.

Chin vs. asphalt of Tx Hwy 159, @ 30 mph.

Cat dewclaw vs boob, x50.

Access point for shoving corpse bits in my foot, 1/foot.

Upper right canine of corgi vs. inner thigh.

Scalpel vs. belly button, x3.

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

I'm sorry but KNIFE to chest...tWicE!?

To be fair, I DID ask for it.

[paxardens]

No, no, sweetie... It was a HIGH SPEED ROTARY SAW to the chest. Twice.

[systlin]

Hi, you sometimes prepare your own fiber for spinning, right? Do you have hand carers for wool? Did you buy them, can they be made? Thank you for all the advice you post :)

I do! I’m carding wool this moment, as a matter of fact (well, not this moment, I’m typing at this moment, but working on carding a fleece I washed). 

I bought my hand carding brushes. I got factory seconds, which have some scratches in the wood, which meant that they were half the price. I don’t give a shit about some scratches on the backs at all. 

You can make them, but I’m not a good enough wood worker to do that myself. 

[dancingalongthestars]

hi different person from anon

do you generally recommend wool cards or wool combs? combs kinda scare me bc they are So Sharp but cards tend to scratch the shit out of me when I use them anyway

[systlin]

I’ve actually never used wool combs, so can’t compare. I’d like to get a set, but they’re pricier than carding brushes for some reason.

Once I find a set I can justify and get them, I’ll for sure post about it.

[auressea]

I’m in this process myself right now! curious how do you get from Carding fleece- to spinning.. What does the intermediary step look like for you?  is it producing Rolag? or a ‘Batt’?  I’m trying to visualize what you draft from!

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

@paxardens

[paxardens]

Producing a rolag, OR drawing the fiber off the comb using a diz, which forms roving. (Batts require a drum carder or carding BOARD to make, cannot be done with hand cards.)

[butterflyinthewell]

I want to smack tv producers every time doctors defibrillate a patient in asystole (flatline).

Nooooooo!

Defibrillators are meant to correct a chaotic heart rhythm. It can’t Frankenstein a heart with no electrical signal back to life.

Fibrillation is your heart quivering instead of beating properly. What defibrillators do is stop your heart with electricity so your heart can reset its own conduction system and correct itself.

You know the meme “have you tried turning it off and back on again”? That’s what defibrillators do, literally!

I’m not a medical person and I know this.

How come movie and tv producers don’t? 🤨