southsamurai

Anyone that enjoys the Cthulhu mythos, and isn't at least neutral regarding tentacle references is just silly

Eh, I am an asshole.

Friends are hard to make. It's even harder to find good friends. The key is to move through life open to the possibilities as they come.

Given enough time, and the willingness to be a friend, regardless of whether or not it works out at any given time, you'll find people. Might take years, might get lucky at any time.

No bullshit, the real secret to having friends is being one. You'll meet people at work, at stores, at events, wherever. If you comport yourself as the kind of person you would like to have as a friend,, it is inevitable that you'll meet someone that wants that kind of friend too. From there, you do your best, and let them do their best, and see where it goes.

It can be harder the more unusual you're desired friend traits are. But that's not the point.

It's okay to "fake it til you make it", btw. If you want a friend that's compassionate, but you're more of a stiff individual that isn't moved by others, you might need to learn compassion by faking it. But as long as you're acting with compassion, you'll eventually either learn it for real, or become so good at mimicking compassion that it becomes the same thing. And that's true for almost any trait. Hard to fake raw intelligence, or being tall, but stuff that's behavioral? Absolutely possible to pick it up as you go along.

Be the kind of person you want in your life

The problem is that free speech absolutism is a pipe dream. It's idealism that assumes bad actors will be countered and eventually drowned out by the folks acting in good faith.

I wish it were true, but it isn't.

When it comes right down to it, speech as a right has limits, and it has to. Pretty much everywhere has limits about what you can say when. But, that's another form of idealism, expecting that state/government actions are in good faith. So you also need limits to what kinds of speech can be limited.

Riots are not speech/expression. By nature, they are an uncontrolled, chaotic thing. A riot is not the same as violent protest, or other forms of direct action.

And, free speech is not the same as revolution, rebellion, or other forms of action. You do need free speech to organize such things, but they aren't the same, just tightly interwoven.

Wanna see something ugly? Those right wing assholes have just as much right to rebellion as those of us on the left do. And I use the word right as a human right, not a civil right. We all have the right as individuals and as groups to self governance. When a government entity exists in a state we can or will not abide, it is our right to overthrow it.

But! It's the right of everyone else to object to and resist that.

Censorship is inherently bad, even when directed at ideology that is also inherently bad. But, sometimes, we have to do bad things in order to have a stable society. That's when enough people get together and agree that suspending the right to free speech is necessary in order to function as a group. That suspension may be in part, or in toto, it doesn't matter.

And, yes, of you're going to suppress such a core right, you'll have to use other inherently inherently bad means to do so. You can't just waggle your finger at a nazi and assume they'll be quiet. You have to stop their ability to spread their ideology. That means imprisonment, killing, or otherwise stomping out anyone that holds that belief.

We've already proven that leaving nazis alive is a failure. It does not work to prevent the ideology from staining humanity.

You know what's fucked up though? That's exactly what a nazi would say. They'd be right, in that the only way to ensure their beliefs become dominant is to be merciless to their enemies.

So, you come back to the ugly truth of human society. Might, power, numbers do make right. Not in a morally absolute way, no. But in the way that matters, where the steering of human society is done by the people with the power. That power may be money, words, numbers, arms, whatever. But the motherfuckers that can take the reins and control the masses get to decide what right is, in any way that matters.

Now, I'm pretty damn far left in the American sense of things. Kinda mid-left in the more global sense. I think my set of beliefs is "right" in that it would allow the greatest number of humans to live as stable and healthy a life as possible within the boundaries of natural forces. I want equality for all, I want a well educated, and well taken care of populace. I fair want war to be a relic, along with poverty, famine, disease, and all the other ills you can think of.

But we ain't getting there by holding hands and pretending that there aren't people willing to eradicate others based on something as pointless as skin color, or genitals, or whatever.

So, no, your question isn't stupid. It's only part of a bigger picture, but it's very much a central principle in the struggle for people to have the freedom to be, the freedom to not be eradicated by hate.

Which, there's a shit ton more to all of that, but there's only so much text that's readable on a screen. So it's broad brush strokes, and that's the best that I can do in this format.

Hey, you're new to lemmy.

Some advice.

It's one thing to point out bad acts, it's another to make recommendations. You're here saying to use .ml, and if that's your opinion, that's fine. But you've missed a lot if you're making that recommendation based on mods/admins stances on trans issues and rights.

You simply haven't had this account long enough to be making recommendations at all tbh, but you really gotta do your research before doing so. Lemmy.ml, for all the good it has, is also run by some people that have a track record om trans rights that's dubious to some degree or another. Even if the fediverse C/ is moderated by someone that isn't dubious, it's still a strange recommendation to be making here.

You do you, but you're likely to end up mixed in drama if you keep diving in head first without due diligence.

Nah, fuck that shit.

Unless the dude is pounding them, it's no better or worse than caffeinated drinks.

No, no, they have big balls. Bouncing to the left and to the right.

Eh, there's some things that carry a stigma. Roaches are garbage dwellers, and it's hard to shake that, even if the ones used to make the "milk" are rigidly contained and fed.

People tend to think of insect foods as "free range", where someone just scoops a bunch up, even though that's far from the truth. Any of the insects used for human consumption can't be free range because they just don't stay that close together in the wild. You can't farm bugs the way you can chickens, letting them roam and taking what you need.

You have to farm them in containers, feeding them with something that's generally going to be at least as clean as chicken feed. Not necessarily because doing otherwise is gross, but because you can't risk losing your entire stock because you let a pathogen into them via bad food practices. And that's true even when you're farming the bugs as pet food of fish bait.

That being said, I'd pass on roach anything. I've smelled roaches that were being raised as pet food. No way am I putting that in my mouth. Even crickets smell better, and they tend to be funky. Strangely, mealworms smell less, but taste worse than crickets. But the smell of roaches is bad, not just strong the way crickets are. Well, bad to me at least, that's a subjective thing. Smell is usually a very big part of perceived taste, and nothing that bad smelling is going to taste good.

I mean, it's greentext, so you know the two rules.

That being said, mine and my sister were pretty horrible to each other as kids. Not in the same ways, but that's beside the point.

It wasn't until we were both not only older, but had lived apart for a long while that we could be friends rather than just doing the bare minimum you do for family.

Sometimes, it's about growing enough to let go of the bullshit, and that takes time

Well, the problem is that the kind of brace you'd want has to be shaped by hand right now.

3d printing will likely get there eventually, but turning out a chest/back brace that's not only effective but wearable is as much an art as anything else.

I'm not sure where someone without training would get started. Orthotists and prosthetists are specialists; orthotics is a master's program, and that's the kind of endeavor your desired brace is.

It's doable for sure; though whether it's practical to recreate the decades of research and experimentation that led to where orthotics is today is a different issue.

Iirc, you'd start with thermoplastics, I can't recall the ones that are used. But they're shaped by mold, taken from the patient directly, then adjusted during fittings so that there's no/less issues with long term use. And you can't just skip the kind of shaping needed. Afaik, nobody is printing orthotics yet. Casts, yes, though that's fairly new; but those are short term use, so don't require the same kind of fitting.

I've seen, and been present during fittings for, braces for scoliosis, which is going to be similar to the kind of orthotic you'd need.

If you decide to go the home brew route, you'd want to start with a plaster cast of your torso. Best way to go, so you can have a solid form to shape whatever material you go with.

TPU was a common material back when I was still a caregiver, though that has been over a decade ago now, so it may have been supplanted by other thermoplastics.

Carbon fiber was starting to be used back then, but it tends to be too rigid for applications like a torso piece. Maybe with enough foam in between you and the rigid parts, but at that point, why not just go with something less expensive, and more flexible? Iirc, CF was being used for things like leg and ankle orthotics where they'd be bearing weight and need the extra rigidity.

I know that there was CAD based modelling and fast prototyping being done for orthotics, but it was mainly useful in prosthetics, where they could make reproducible units that would then be customized.

Tbh, I would try finding an orthotist irl to meet with and brainstorm. Even if they can't/won't help you make your own gear, they'll likely still warn you off of really bad ideas.

That's at least in part because you say you have little interest in medical or anatomical study, and that's what you need if you want your end device to do the job you want. You just can't fine tune a torso brace without understanding the musculoskeletal system in that area, and what you'll need to avoid doing.

Like, the curvature of the spine. It may seem like you could just mold your body and make the brace conform to that. But, if the goal is to give support to part of your body, the brace has to apply pressure to your body applying it at the wrong place, or in the wrong way could make things worse. So if you don't have the time/interest/willingness to gain the level of understanding of anatomy to achieve that, you'll be better off consulting with someone that already has that knowledge. It's kinda like self surgery, there's only so much you can do blind without causing problems worse than what you're trying to fix.

The first one or the new one?

Haven't seen the new one.

The first one though? Fucking awesome.

The important thing to me is that, even if someone has no idea about the Joker as a character could watch the movie and see an incredibly well made movie. It's a great story, the acting is world class, the way it was shot brings depth and emotion to every scene, and the details of the writing are unusually good.

As an example of the last, the background characters, and people with only one line, they have similar ways of speaking, a distinct almost accent in the way the lines are arranged. It ends up feeling like everyone in the movie is from the same place. You know how you go to a city, and there's turns of phrase, word choices that show up, even when different parts of the city have their own accent? That's what I'm talking about. Even De Niro's distinct way of speaking shifts to feeling like his character is from the same city as the clowns.

But, as a joker movie, it's just as successful. It tells his origin story from a fresh perspective. It does so in a way that even as someone that's complained about comic based movies doing origin stories instead of just telling a good story with the character/s, I was riveted. I am absolutely fine with the movie being another origin story because it's just that damn good.

If that's the one you're asking about, watch it. Even if you end up not enjoying it as much as I did, you'll at least have seen a movie that's crafted the way a movie should be.

Hell no.

Fiction is just as, if not more, valuable as non fiction. Stimulation of the mind needs more than just facts. Non fiction is something you can pick up way easier via a documentary than by book, assuming similar degrees of adherence to fact. You can compact a biography into a few hours of watching that might take an entire day of reading, and get just as much information out of it.

Compacting fiction in the same way isn't always possible. Even fairly short books of fiction often suffer by being as short as a movie.

And that's ignoring any value judgement of the fiction. But it's true that not all fiction is equal in its ability to stimulate thought. I would argue that escapist, light fiction is just as valuable as something like Shakespeare or Hemingway, even though something like Beverly Cleary's Ramona books might not cause the reader to explore via thought in the same way or degree.

But if you want to place value judgements on fiction, there are definitely works of fiction that are much more useful in terms of stimulating thought and feeling than some random time-life grade history of the civil war. Hell, I'd argue that any piece of fiction is more valuable than badly written history or science. Badly executed non fiction serves to reduce accurate knowledge. Bad fiction just wastes the reader's time, it doesn't mislead them.

Well, I had been taught about Munich and Ribbentrop in public school, both during standard history classes (though they were only mentioned in passing during US history, as part of the background of what happened before the U.S. joined in)

The famine, I didn't hear about until maybe fifteen to twenty years ago. Can't pin it down exactly because of shit that was going on in my life at the time, but it was something I read about in one of the books on ww2 that covered events outside of Europe and the Pacific theater.

And I've seen many a debate about the degree to which Great Britain was responsible for it.

But, I'd have to say that none of them are exactly high on the list of what the average person remembers about the era. Most people I've even mentioned Molotov-Ribbentrop to had no idea what it is. They maybe remember hearing the words in school, but didn't pay enough attention to link them to anything. The Munich agreement is pretty much unfamiliar to anyone that didn't have an interest in ww2 beyond high school history. And the famine is outside of what most people that do have an interest care about. The only books I have on the subject of ww2 don't mention the famine at all.

Ww2 is far enough in the past now that most of us no longer know anyone that fought in the war. It's passed into the kind of history that's "dead". Even though we all, everywhere still live with the ripples in world events that started then, it might as well be aztec history as far as the typical person here in the US is concerned. Even my generation, that had grandparents that were alive during the war, or fought in the war, the interest is largely no greater than surface level.

And I'm not sure that the details like the two pacts really do matter now. They're not anything that affects us still, unlike a lot of of events of the war. IMO, the famine is more important since it was a much broader event. Depending on how you look at it, the famine shaped a lot of events for India as a whole in ways that neither agreement did for Europe.