athos77

Jam is mashed, preserves have chunks of fruit. With some fruits it’s hard to leave large china during processing (like raspberries, which break easily when properly ripe), at which point raspberry preserves might have less sugar then raspberry jam.

I went to a party that lasted all weekend. We weren’t drinking or anything else, so I want to emphasize I did all this to myself, completely sober:

We were tossing lightsticks back and forth in the dark; I was barefoot. I leaped up to catch a lightstick; when I came down, my right foot landed fully on some kind of spiny, prickly, thorny plant, and I got a bunch of the pointy spiny bits embedded into the sole of my foot. This was particularly ironic, as I had made a point of pointing out the plant to everyone else earlier and telling them to avoid it.

The toilet backed up and I had to clear it with a plunger that had a broken handle. I cleared the toilet, and also managed to flay about a fifth of the skin off the palm of my right hand.

I slipped on the stairs and wrenched my back pretty badly. The dog ran underfoot and I sprained my left ankle. Something else happened, I don’t even remember what, and I injured my right hip.

The worst part was that I had driven myself and a group of friends to this party, which meant I had to be the one who drove us back: my car had a manual transmission and no one else knew how to drive stick. So envision this:

My right foot, with the spikes still in it, was used for the gas and the brake. My left foot, with the sprained ankle, had to delicately balance the clutch as we drove up and down these narrow back hills. There was no way to balance my weight on my injured right hip, so every movement on the gas or clutch put some torque on the hip - as well as twisting my injured back. And I had to shift with my right hand wrapped like a mummy’s, but the shifting pressure was still on the part of my hand with the flap of skin. And the roads just kept jostling every single injury I had.

It was an incredibly, insanely painful drive home. And it was still one of the best parties I’ve ever been to.

Are they looking meaningfully at you while they’re doing it?

When you check in, just tell the desk that you don’t want housekeeping sitting your stay.

One of my neighbors moved out and I’ve mostly been murdering the tiger lilies he planted in the common areas. (He said he liked them and the deer would keep them in check. The deer only ate them in the spring, and he ‘liked’ them because then his pitbulls could chase the deer. Fucker . Then one of the other neighbors’ dogs chewed on the lilies and got sick, so …)

Anyway, I’ve replacing them with a mix of like 20 local pollinator plants, chosen for a mix of both pollinators and seasons. Trying to figure out how I can get some rain barrels in to feed the new gardens without pissing off the HOA, and carrying on the eternal battle to let the HOA let us install solar (beyond the two panels we hid in the backyard, but we can’t get any more in there).

Common area veggie garden has finally settled in, and the apple trees should be bearing fruit in another year. [The berry bushes we snuck in the woods are doing nicely, and the local animals love them!]

Serious Trouble, by the further hosts of (and essentially a continuation of) All the President’s Lawyers.

Nocturne, by Vanessa Lowe. A podcast about the night, and things that happen during the night. Favorite episodes: Night ways about what ancient people use to do at night and how archeology and anthropology are changing their perceptions; Finding the Void about a guy who lived inside a mall; On the North Face about a guy who got lost while climbing Mount Shasta; What’s Would You Do about the fear of night.

I usually check in on The Daily like once a week to see if anything interesting has been covered.

And This Week in Virology, which I got into during the pandemic. Usually the weekly update on Friday on what contagious diseases are currently circulating, and about half the time their Sunday episode.

In addition to those, consider getting a hypoallergenic mattress cover and hypoallergenic pillow covers. And wash your bed linens more frequently.

I’ll often buy a packet of seeds that I want to plant, but I have a small garden and I usually only want 5-10 seeds from the packet. I take the rest to my local seed library so other people can have some too!

Snow or static. It’s cosmic microwave background radiation - the remnants of the big bang.

Are there upgrades that would make it usable - more RAM, switch to an SSD?

Have the vomiting cat(s) been checked out by a vet? Vomiting can be normal, but it can also be a sign of various health issues.

Is there some way we can DM across instances?

The cheapest one is apparently in the town next door. It’s a 3 bedroom, 1 bath, 984 square foot single family home built in 1955, on a third-of-an-acre lot with no HOA.

All the pictures are of the outside only, so I’m assuming the inside is pure shit. However, I also have to assume it’s some kind of liveable shit, because the places that aren’t liveable generally have to list as “0 bedrooms”.

It’s $60,000, in south/central New Jersey. Or $665 per month, which includes 30 year mortgage as well as property taxes.

Are dht and pex enabled?

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan.

This is how I feel and how I handle it: I truly believe that allowing Trump to regain power will be the end of American democracy, and that the likely successor forms of government will be repressive, vindicative, dehumanizing and marginalizing of everyone they consider “other” - and so far, “other” is everyone who isn’t a older, white, upper-class, Christian male. [Not that you won’t be attacked if you’re an older white upper class Christian male, but if you’re young, or not white, or poor, or non Christian, or not male, they’re going to feel free to attack you.] And getting the Democrats into the White House isn’t overly helpful if the Republicans control Congress - something that’s particularly important when the Supreme Court is so conservative.

So that’s my starting position: I need liberals (or at least non-conservatives) in every post I can vote for. How can I influence things while still maintaining those goals?

Well, every party micro-analyzes every piece of data they can get their hands on, and every election report is analyzed for advantages and weaknesses. So I publicly contribute to Green causes and liberal candidates. I vote for Green, or DSA, or other liberal candidates in the primaries. The Democrats are harvesting my data and I want them to be fucking worried about me and my vote. I want them to look at me and say, “This person is talking to other people and maybe changing opinions, so we need to pay attention to the things that move this person.”

And I don’t do that just subtly, I do it openly: I write letters and emails and make phone calls to my representatives at all levels of government. I tell them when I’m against a position, and why. I tell them when I support a position, and why (so many people only contact when they’re against, but it’s just as important to contact when you’re for!). I tell them when I approve of a piece of legislation but wish it went further. There’s some old estimate that every letter represents 1000 other people who feel the same way but who didn’t write in, and I try to make sure our positions are represented in the feedback they get. On and off, I’ll talk about my concerns with friends and family. I’ll also write letters for friends or family, if they want me to, give them a pre-addressed stamped envelope - but they have to sign and mail the letter. Probably only half of them actually go out, but that’s another theoretical-1000-people for each one that does.

Like I said, I’ll vote “extra liberal” in the primaries. If my liberal candidate of choice isn’t an option, I’ll write them in. But when it comes to the general elections, right now, it’s too important to keep the Republicans out as much as possible. So I’ll hold my nose and vote Democratic then, then continue trying to influence the thoughts and policies of those that get into office.

TV-Vault, but I have no idea how you’d get into it these days. Feel free to PM me what you’re looking for, though.

I usually set mine to mono and get along okay.

Lemmy.ml also has a datahoarders.

I use TMSoft’s White Noise which runs on most platforms, or stream. It has plain white noise, yes, but it also has a wide range of other sounds that you can use (brown noise, railroad, city street, stream, etc). You can also upload your own sound, get sounds/mixes from other users, or make your own mix.

My personal mix has a mild background of pink noise, with both a thunderstorm and some rain mixed in: the pink noise filters out common background, the rain helps with masking as well, and the thunder helps me sleep through bass sounds like lawn mowers and trucks.