I mean, we could also actually tear it down, but that’s not going to happen, so I guess that’s good advice.

Did they make a choice though? As in a fully informed, conscious choice unaffected by internal and external pressures?

That’s the key to empathizing with addiction.

Most people don’t set out to be addicts. They don’t set out to OD as the goal of using. It’s fair to say that most addicts started out either partying, or self medicating.

The party addicts tend to not realize how damn fast and hard addiction can set in. They know it happens, but it isn’t real, it’s impersonal and distant, because they also know that people really can just use a few times and not do it again. But each time gets harder, and they start needing it to feel good at all. It isn’t done with intent, and they may not even be aware of what they’re actually taking. People are stupid. They’ll trust someone, and when they get handed a pill or a drink and the person they trust doesn’t explain, but they trust them.

And even when it’s someone arrogant that thinks they’re the exception, that’s still a very human thing.

For the ones chasing an escape from ugly reality, a way to feel good, no matter how temporary, sometimes the risk is irrelevant because to them, what they’re trying to escape is worse than any of the stories they’ve heard. Self medicating mental health issues, or physical health issues, or to numb the pain of a life situation they can’t escape otherwise, that’s as human as it gets.

Empathy. It’s also a human thing. We aren’t required to feel it for everyone everyone all the time. If you don’t feel it, you can’t make it magically happen. But we all want it to some degree or another. We all need some degree of human kindness to stay sane in a society that keeps staying ugly over millennia.

So, when we see someone that’s in a bad place, it’s part of that, that we at least try to find empathy for them, if only on a transactional level where we would wish someone make that effort for us.

It is, however, not equally easy for everyone. The human mind and brain is a diverse thing. Some people are born with brains that simply can’t empathize. Others can lose the ability. And there’s also people that have trouble doing it without some kind of “trigger” that gives them a connection to the other person in a way they can understand. Some of us over empathize.

But, at the core of it, the reason we are expected to try is that none of us are immune to the ugly parts of life. Every single one of us is one post surgical dose away from feeling withdrawals. Every single one of us is capable of feeling pain so deep we’ll do anything up escape it.

If you can’t empathize, that’s okay. Though going through the effort of rationalizing how others empathize would help you out a lot when dealing with others. If you make the effort to figure out how the same thing could happen to you, even if you don’t feel sorry for the person, you’ll have fulfilled your part of the social contract as regards the idea of “there but for the grace of the flying spaghetti monster go I”, or “judge not lest ye be judged”, or any other saying that boils down to recognizing that we’re all just flawed beings doing the best we can with what we’ve got.

I dunno for sure, but that looks like something in the 400 grit range followed by steel wool.

It’s a lot of work tbh. Enough so that I don’t do it any more.

But, it does improve the cooking surface. You sand down and season with flax oil, and you’ve got a great surface that even eggs won’t give you too much trouble cleaning up.

It doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth, mirror finish. And some small pits are okay. No need to really grind the hell out of a pan, you just want to kinda even it out so there’s less texture, with the end point being where you decide is good enough.

Back the last time I did one, I used an orbital sander with 200/400/600 progression, then hand sanded to 800, and it was more than smooth enough. Going past that is diminishing returns. I’ve seen people do a mirror finish and it wasn’t worth the time imo. Even 800 is kinda extra tbh. You just don’t want highly visible scratches.

Same as it does on a rough surface.

You get the oils polymerizing, which is going to stick to pretty much anything, no matter how smooth it looks. The surface isn’t microscopically smooth, there’s still roughness.

However, it wouldn’t matter if it was perfectly smooth. The bonding between the iron and the oils isn’t purely mechanical. It bonds on a molecular level, meaning that the little bits on the atoms of the polymerized oil make sweet, slippery love to the little bits on the atoms of the pan.

A smoother surface is actually better. You don’t have as irregular a surface on the polymer, and there’s less gaps where they contact the metal. Which, ideally, you’ll be applying very thin coats and prevent gaps, but it’s never a perfect process.

Sanding down a pan before seasoning improves the bond, improves the cooking surface, and makes it easier to season.

You ever use a stainless steel pan of some kind and have oil get solid-ish on it? It leaves that layer of brownish, maybe amber stuff that’s slick and hard to scrape off. It’s the same thing. You can polish stainless still to a mirror finish and that will still happen, and it’ll still be difficult to remove.

When it comes to that, a rough surface is more likely to chip, flake, or otherwise fail.

Your best seasoned pan is going to be sanded smooth, then seasoned with food grade flax oil (though it is by no means the only option, it’s the best drying oil that’s food grade). You’ll cycle it three to five times, depending on your freedom to do so. Then you’ll have very low stick, heat resistant surface.

Now, nothing is perfect. If you can’t get flaxseed, stuff like canola that’s semi hardening will work almost as well (most of the time, you can’t tell the difference until or unless you abuse the hell out of the pan). If you can’t get that, any oil that’s safe to eat will get the job done to some degree, so long as it’s heat reactive at oven temps. Which, if you can’t get flaxseed, the chances of being able to source anything that unusual isn’t likely to begin with.

Self care is pretty much what you make of it.

But the key is that it is something that makes life more bearable, improves your situation, and/or makes you relaxed/happy.

However, it isn’t work related, it isn’t something that you do because you’re obligated (because it ends up being a stressor eventually, even when it’s something otherwise beneficial), and it isn’t things that are just pleasure seeking like smoking weed, even though it may well fit other criteria. That last is because chasing pleasure ends up causing as much trouble as help.

But, yeah, if you have minimal responsibilities, don’t have much work stress, and you’re fulfilled by how you spend your time, you don’t really need the psychological types of self care, though you might need more physical self care like exercise.

Metric is essentially a blend of two things; a set of units (meters, liters, etc) and dividing them by decimals.

Where both the units and the decimal divisions have a problem is when you don’t have well labeled measuring devices. Anyone can figure out a third, or a half or a quarter, and then divide down from there with any given container. Dividing a container into tenths, and then more tenths isn’t as viable. Not impossible, just not as easy as fractional divisions.

Then there’s the units. To get a cubic centimeter, you first have to take a meter and break it down.

This applies to weights and volumes as well. Grams are such a small base unit that estimating with it is difficult. Liters are the exception to that, you can easily visually estimate a liter or a gallon, and if it’s a liquid that’s familiar, do so by feel as well.

But milliliters, cubic centimeters, those run into trouble.

Which is whatever. But the point is that the units are arbitrary. You could take a foot and divide it into ten and have a unit just as useful for decimal maths as centimeters. It’s decimal vs fractional calculations that most people bitch about. And fractional is just as useful, and no harder to do on the fly once you’ve gotten to about the 6th grade.

All of that may seem moot when you’re baking at home and have your scale and measuring devices of choice. But when you aren’t in a kitchen set up for your preferences, relying on the smaller units becomes a problem. If you’re away from an actual kitchen, the gap becomes even more significant because it’s not that hard to make containers that approximate cups with accuracy, less so with liters, and even less with milliliters.

That’s because most of the cooking units in imperial pretty directly fit readily available objects, with a small enough variance to not waste resources in the process.

Now, you can learn to visually or tactilely approximate SI units too. You can get used to the weight of what a hundred grams feels like, or what it looks like when it’s known material. It’s just not as simple as the imperial units in that regard.

Now, if you want to run into where imperial units really suck, look into the different standards for what sets dry and liquid measure by volume. They’re different, but a gallon and a cup are rarely specified as liquid or dry, which means that the other units derived from them are a pain in the ass if you don’t know the difference. And don’t get me started with the fact that us standard units and imperial units aren’t actually the same in every case.

But, again as units they are standardized and no more or less useful than SI units inherently. Nor is fractional vs metric/decimal a comparison that’s inherently better on one side or the other for all uses in the kitchen (and definitely not in the general sense).

Tbh, it always has been.

The only problem is that we’ve been set up so that the people that are most likely to oppose the worst case scenario are the ones least likely to be both armed and willing to fight.

Just wait, though. If things slide the way they could, it won’t be long before the party policy shifts against armed citizens.

Lots of poo.

A good bit actually though. I’m disabled, so no job. This means that while I’m on my ass recovering from the necessities of living like cooking and cleaning, I have a shit ton of spare time.

Part of that is spent fucking around on lemmy.

The rest is usually spent on some variety or another of writing fiction. Short stories, a few ongoing novels, that sort of thing. Here and there a poem or song will pop in my head.

Then there’s a bit of panting, occasional drawing, that kind of visual art.

I’ve also been known to run ttrpg sessions here and there, which is its own art form in a way.

Well, one thing is that the kind of jewellery used in nipples isn’t going to be the same as in ears. You can kinda use actual hoop earrings as a ring in other places, but it won’t be a great idea. Most of the time, hoop earrings have a very thin part that goes through the ear, as in thin enough to essentially be a wire.

The way nipples get pierced leaves a bigger channel through the nipple. So, you use the thin wire in that hole, and you get irritation as well as a higher risk of it causing trouble when it gets snagged because a thinner gauge is going to pull through skin easier (up to a point). Most hoops for ears also use a different way of closing. The little wire gets put into a hollow in the opposite end, whereas body jewelry tends to be secured by balls that are either screwed on, or are pushed into place and secured by divots in the ball.

I’m not saying that nobody ever uses regular hoops in their nipples, I know plenty of people that do. I’m saying that you wouldn’t mistake one kind of ring for the other; there’s really not much visual overlap.

As far as how you would write the kind of idea you’re wanting to express, that’s a more complicated question. I tend to favor such things coming out via dialogue. Two old friends talking about the things they’ve left behind, there’s a dozen ways to say that one of them has stopped wearing their body jewelry.

Makes zero difference in end results.

If anything, measuring by weight only is better for liquids other than water. You try measuring other liquids by volume, you run into issues with it not matching as well. One container of milk may have more or less grams per liter than another. Maybe only a gram difference, but still.

Besides, a cup is always a cup the same way a liter is always a liter. A pound is a pound. You might run into crappy measuring devices that aren’t accurate, but the units themselves are standardized.

Metric makes some things easier, but other things harder.

Definitely not an unpopular opinion. Anybody that bakes more than once a year ends up wishing it was by weight. And I agree fully with your opinion.

Mind you, it doesn’t actually matter with all baking, and even then it matters less what the actual measures are as long as the person using the recipe is consistent in how they measure.

What measuring by weight achieves is consistency more than ideal results, though consistency leads directly to ideal results. So, if you measure by volume, and you measure out each cup the same every time, you’ll get the same results every time, within the degree of variability in things that can’t be standardized like humidity, water content of flour, precise gluten amounts, etc.

Where volume measurements in baking fail is when you hand the recipe to the next person, which is what your post is really about. But, even that has limited impact on results since there are factors in end results that can’t be standardized. The difference between a densely packed cup and a loosely packed one matters for sure, but it also won’t make a cake recipe fail entirely in most cases.

For things like quick breads, you don’t worry as much about measurements at all, since you’re going to be adjusting liquid amounts no matter what the measures are. The only part that matters there is the ratio of leaveners to flour, and there’s more leeway in that than there is in cakes.

But, even with cakes, you’ll have as much or more difference in results from the type of flour as the measures. If your recipe is built on using AP flour, me using cake flour is going to end up different, even measured by weight. Noticeably different even to a non baker. But it’ll still be yummy no matter what the measures are.

Bread baking is where you see weight measures used the majority of the time, and there’s still a ton of variability between loaves because the environment plays such a big role. A five degree difference in room temp during proofing has more effect on the end results than those caused by measures.

The key is that you can actually control the measures, which is why I agree fully with your opinion. If you’re enough of a baker to be publishing recipes (as opposed to just sharing them with people that ask), and you aren’t giving the recipes in weights, you’re a prat lol.

This is why it’s important to remember that in any revolution, resistance, or targeted action, it’s the police that are the first enemy. They’ll be the ones that respond first, and will likely toe the line the most reliably.

Or was it shöen?

Yeah, IDGAF if someone is masturbating in my home, as long as they follow two rules: clean it up, and no pictures of my home. That’s just rude as fuck for even a guest, much less someone that’s being paid to primarily pay attention to the animals. You can’t actually do both and do them right.

No worries :)

That’s what community is supposed to be like.

Well, fuck. It always sucks to lose a companion for any reason, but cancer sure as hell sucks a little extra. Winston was a sweet looking dog. Nothing ever makes it better, but you aren’t alone in the grief. Plenty of us have lost our canine buddies, so we know the pain of it too.

Hail Winston!

45 tends to be a favorite among long term shooters, particularly us older guys. Good stopping power, not so much recoil it’s a big problem, and usually easy to get. But it isn’t really a good beginner’s choice, imo. If you start with it, and get good with it, it tends to set you up very well since it does have enough recoil you have to learn how to stay on target between rounds. However, the learning curve is worse because of that.

There’s ammo that’s way more potent, for sure, but it’s the absolute most kick I’d ever put in a beginner’s hands.

Mind you, there isn’t really a default ammo choice across the board. It is a very popular pick for personal and home defense. But it isn’t ideal for concealed carry for everyone’s preferences because you just can’t carry as many rounds in a compact form factor. I personally carry a full sized handgun as my concealed carry because I’m a big dude and it won’t show, so I carry 45. If I can’t handle something with the 14 rounds +1 in the two magazines I keep on me, I’m screwed anyway, so I’d rather have the extra punch.

If I couldn’t carry a full sized concealed option, I’d probably either step down to a 9mm, or switch to a revolver in 38 or 357, whichever I could get a good deal on. The kind of ammo in between 9mil and 45 for semi auto is good, but not significantly different performance wise, and tend to cost more since they aren’t as popular. Which is why I’d go with 38/357 for a wheel gun. I like cheap and easy to find ammo lol.

Also, as a side note, I’ve mostly been talking in reference to a general purpose carry and range shooting handgun. Which is what most people asking what you’re asking are wanting to know, but there are other applications that might change things, like a desire to shoot competitively at some point, or wanting to hunt with a handgun (which is very niche tbh).

My advice overall? For a first handgun, in the 3-700 buck range, pick up a 9mm, probably a sig or glock since they’re popular enough to run into good prices sometimes. Learn how to shoot, get used to all the safety and carry rules, and then figure out exactly what your needs are as you go. Resale value on the popular brands is solid, so you won’t lose much by selling and switching to a different caliber in a year or two, if that’s where you end up. Same way if you just want a fancier handgun in 9mm, you’ll have part of the new cost covered by the resale.

People still take nsfw as the point of the tag, since they scroll at work. Which, that’s kinda on them if you ask me, but the nsfw tag is a courtesy originally intended for people at work so they could avoid rings that may cause issues in that setting, rather than specifically for sexual images.

C’mon, y’all all were singing it too

Yeah, gun shopping is always a process, but the way the market has expanded the last decade or so makes it more difficult for new shooters. Used to be that there really wasn’t much in the way of junk out there, just slightly less good. Certainly not much that would utterly fail the way some hipoint products can.

Well, that model of cz is on the high end of things. The good part is that it’s worth the price tag in terms of durability and function. Great firearms imo.

If you’re buying new, don’t waste time with anything that’s under 300 unless you’ve had a chance to thoroughly research the exact model.

Again, for new, you can end up with some damn fine handguns in the $3-500 range. Glock, Sig Sauer, Smith & Wesson, and a lot of other reliable brands have offerings in that range.

If you’re going used, you run into the low to mid end range overlapping a lot more, so you can’t really set a price where you’re going to be reasonably certain you’re getting something good. There’s used glocks out there in great shape that you can snag for maybe 300 with some luck. Some in rough shape go for less, but are still perfectly good in function; they’re just beat up visually. But a visually pristine used taurus might only be fifty bucks less, despite not being as good a buy overall.

As far as caliber, there’s a lot to be said for 9mm. It’s usually easy to find, and if you stick with a major brand, the aftermarket accessories are wide open. The ammo is also relatively cheap. There’s also plenty to be said against it, like it lacking one-hit stopping power (which isn’t a guarantee with any handgun a beginner spoke should be looking at, but still), and the supply chain issues with the ammo recently. But it really depends on individual needs/wants.

Is 9 the ideal beginners’ caliber? Ehhh, probably not. I’d rather a new shooter start with something even gentler to learn fundamentals with. But if someone is only going to buy 1 handgun, it’s difficult to pick a better round to start out with. It’s almost certain that a total noob can handle 9, and that means they’ll practice more, and that matters. But it is a debated topic for sure.