It’s become a new years tradition to just play a bunch of random asylum movies just to have something on while we’re hanging out and so we have something to occasionally point to the TV and comment on.

We usually try to pick a known movie that we can start at a specific time so that something cool happens at midnight. A favorite is Hitler getting punched in the balls in Kung Fury

Shitty b movies. Anything by the asylum, anything that may have once appeared on an episode of MST3K, any weird VHS your parent brought home for you one day back in the 90s by some obscure polish director that you half-remember and now that you think about it where the hell did your parents even find that movie?

I don’t think I get recognized, but I’ve had a handful of people say that they like the way I write, so maybe I have a group of dedicated followers somewhere.

Funnily enough, I just earlier messaged some random lemming that I had tagged for a while as “this guy seems cool” to let him know that. I figure everyone likes to get a little compliment like that from a stranger now and then. Just some random dude whose username kind of stood out to me and I noticed every time it popped up he seemed like a nice guy. So some of you are probably out there like him being recognized for just being a decent person.

Just gonna chime in to say check with your local libraries to see what they do have available, and also check with surrounding libraries,

My local library is a small branch of a countywide network of libraries, so I can go check things out from any library in the county.

I was a little surprised to learn that my local branch has mobile wifi hotspots available. They’re nice for families that are struggling to pay for Internet service so their kids can do schoolwork, I’m also thinking about checking one out for road trips and such.

A bigger branch has a pretty impressive library of things available- tools, cookware, board games, small appliances, AV equipment, etc.

One thing I’d really like is vehicles, although I’m sure it would be an absolute liability/insurance nightmare, not to mention the upfront and ongoing costs and such, so I totally I totally understand why it’s not a thing.

I’m lucky that I’ve always been able to borrow a car from my parents when I needed one because mine was in the shop or whatever. Not everyone is so fortunate though, and unless we step up our public transit game, a lot of people need cars to get into work and run errands and such. A small fleet of basic sedans or something that you could check out for a day or two when needed without paying out the ass for a rental would be amazing.

And almost everyone needs to move something big or transport a few people once in a while, so a pickup truck or passenger van in the fleet might be kind of nice.

Even if it’s not totally free, they could be rented out at-cost and not have to turn a profit like regular car rentals.

Anvil firing

You get 2 anvils

Pack some gunpowder between them

Light a fuze

Run

The top one shoots off into the air

And you try not to looney tunes yourself.

American/meat-eater

Bread stays out but is wrapped

Butter stays out in a butter bell (that’s not a common thing in America BTW but they should be)

Some sauces and condiments and such that are packed full of salt and vinegar and such stay out

Leftovers and such go into the fridge after a few minutes to a few hours, there’s not exactly a hard rule here, just kind of based on what feels right and whenever we get around to it. Overnight is too long, with few exceptions if it’s been out that long we’d probably throw it out.

One exception to that is if I make stock, there’s a good chance that’s going to sit out for a good while to cool down. It takes a while to get a big pot of liquid down to a reasonable temperature to put in the fridge. I also figure it’s been simmering for several hours, so odds are there’s no bacteria alive in it, so I throw a lid on it to try to keep it that way, especially when I do it in the pressure cooker because it’s basically been autoclaved at that point and it’s staying in a pretty damn close to totally airtight vessel.

Most vegetables and fruits are fine out on the counter for at least a day or two, and some will last weeks or months depending on temperature, humidity, how much light they get, etc. but most of them last a lot longer in the fridge so that’s where they go. Onions, garlic, potatoes, pineapples, and bananas always live outside of the fridge. Other things like apples, citrus, tomatoes, peppers may go either way depending on how fast I’m planning to use them and how much fridge space I have. Cut-up produce always goes in the fridge.

If you’re dining out getting it hot and fresh from the oven, I’d tend to agree with you

But if you’re getting delivery or takeout, which at least in the US, probably accounts for most pizza consumption, odds are that when you eat your pizza it’s probably been sitting in a box for at least a few minutes, maybe up to an hour or so, soaking up its own steam and juices, and maybe going cold

Which, of course, would change the texture and probably not for the better.

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I’ve largely avoided any major injuries pretty much my whole life, so I don’t have the best frame of reference

Most scrapes, bruises, cuts, sprains and other common injuries are right as rain in a couple days, maybe a week or two if it’s a particularly bad sprain.

I tend to not get sick too often, but I have noticed that when I do as I get older stuff like a sore throat or cough will linger a few days longer than they used to, fever still breaks in a day or two, and I’ll be feeling just fine otherwise, just that little tickle in my throat sticks around for a while.

For some it kind of is, the leather subculture is a thing, and needless to say leather is a pretty important part of it.

I am not at all qualified to really go into it too much beyond just pointing out that it exists.

I do have a little anecdote about it though. I know someone who is an all-around very kinky person, into all kinds of fairly extreme bondage stuff. She entered and won some sort of “Ms Leather [city we live in]” competition/pageant thing a few years back but there was a bit of controversy about it because she wasn’t part of the leather subculture, even though there was a pretty decent amount of overlap between her own kinky interests and the leather community, and so she decided to resign her title and apologize over it.

I think Adam Savage has actually gone into this a bit on his YouTube channel, dude really likes space suits and have a lot of videos about them so I’m not even going to try to find which specific video it was

Kind of, but not much, certainly not anything like a steady income.

I gave one of those apps a try that give you rewards for installing and playing games. After a couple of years I earned up enough points to get about a $50 gift card. None of the games on it are amazing, but some of them are passably entertaining when you just need to kill some time. They’re all, of course, loaded with ads.

This is more of theoretical money at this point, but years ago I bought a small quantity of Bitcoin (like less than 0.1 BTC) and I’ve just kind of been sitting on that. It was about $20 when I bought it, it’s worth quite a bit more than that now. If I were to cash out now, it wouldn’t exactly be life-changing money by any stretch of the imagination, but it might get me a crappy used car, or maybe offset the cost of a nice vacation for me and my wife.

I do the Google opinion reward surveys, which basically pays out as credit for the android app store. Every so often it adds up to enough for me to spring for some paid app I wouldn’t have bought otherwise, or maybe a book or movie or something.

If you want to count it as online, for a while I did taskrabbit, basically an app to get hired doing odd jobs for people, putting IKEA furniture together, yard work, hanging shelves, etc. That wasn’t a bad side gig if you’re handy, but I don’t have the free time for it these days and it was kind of a pain figuring it out on my taxes at the end of the year.

Not me, but I have a friend who was a stripper for a while, when she got out of it, she actually made a decent little chunk of money selling her used stripper heels because some foot fetish people are all about that. She figured out that it could be feasible to just buy some heels, wear them around for a few weeks, and sell them for a profit. She decided it was more trouble than it was worth for her but something like that is potentially an option as well, pretty sure used shoes aren’t the only thing with a weird fetish secondary market you could take advantage of if you know where to look to sell them.

First name is ultimately derived from Hebrew, it’s one of the most common names in the English-speaking world, and variations of it are similarly popular in basically every place where Abrahamic religious have a foothold.

It’s fine. I’ve met plenty of people with my name, I don’t particularly like or dislike it, it is just my name.

My last name is kind of interesting. It’s ultimately of Italian origin, but sometime after arriving in America someone basically decided that it sounded too Italian, dropped the vowel at the end, swapped out about half of the remaining letters, and created a new name that kind of sounds similar to the original.

Looking at it, you’d probably never peg it as an Italian name. Sometimes people look at it and try to pronounce it as if it were French, but that’s not how we pronounce it.

I rather like my last name. I probably use it more than my first. It’s got a nice ring to it, it’s unique, there’s rarely going to be anyone else around with the same name to avoid confusion, it’s got some fun family history to it, and as far as I can tell, it doesn’t exist anywhere in the world outside of my family.

Unfortunately, my family is pretty uncreative with male names, if you look at the top 100 names in the US from the last 100 years, my entire family tree can basically be found in the top 10 or 20. I’m aware of at least one other person with the same first and last name as me and there’s probably a good handful more, and there’s a solid chance they have the same middle name as me too.

I rarely see the extended family so not a huge deal.

I don’t normally recognize specific users online except for a handful of novelty accounts. For all I know, I’ve only ever talked to 3 people on Lemmy. I don’t generally look at usernames, and certainly don’t remember them.

So, my dude, I think it says something that I recognize you. I hit about the 1st sentence of your second paragraph and went “is this that guy again?” And sure enough, you were.

I’m not saying this to belittle you in any way, please go on being your sensitive, submissive, gender-nonconforming self. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But you’re on here every couple of weeks posting along these same lines, so I can tell that this is really eating at you at a pretty deep level, and while I don’t know what the best solution for you is, it might be professional help, it might be as simple as getting out more, it might be anything in-between, I’m pretty confident that just posting about it on here is probably not going to find you the solutions your seeking.

I’ve usually seen “double bass” used to refer to the string instrument, also called the contrabass, upright bass, or just a bass.

I think you’re thinking of paywithfour.com

Which seems to be a standard by-now-pay-later company, which isn’t necessarily a scam, but those companies are very predatory with excessive fees and interest rates and such so they certainly feel scammy. I didn’t do a deep dive on them so I can’t say if they’re necessarily any worse or less legit than any other company (or maybe even better)

But four.com seems to be some sort of enterprise authenticator/SSO company . The website is weird because it doesn’t really tell you much about them, it just kind of has a link to request an invite to sign up

I figure there’s two main options with that. Either they’re sort of a fly by night company just sort of squatting on the domain hoping to profit off of selling it and just have the shell of a website up to give an air of legitimacy

Or they’re just really focused on their enterprise customers and see no reason to really have a public-facing webpage, either your company uses them and you need to log in to manage your account, or you have no real business with them. Maybe they’re sort of a legacy system that a parent company is keeping around to fulfill a contract, maybe they’re getting enough business from in-person sales and word-of-mouth and don’t feel the need to risk overextending themselves by marketing more aggressively

Or of course it could be something nefarious, but without looking into them too much nothing on the face of the website gives me any particular reason to think that.

Counterpoint- why hasn’t blocking been more common?

I’m a millennial, so I’ve basically grown up with the internet. Blocking has been a feature on basically any website, app, etc. that lets you interact with other people for as long as I can remember.

And I’ve never been afraid to use it. I’ve blocked probably hundreds of people across countless platforms over the last 2 decades or so, and I think my Internet experience has been better for it.

When I was in school, and I assume still to this day, one of the big things that always seemed to have people’s feathers ruffled was “cyberbullying” and other sorts of online harassment.

Now I’ll admit, somehow I ended up a reasonably well-liked, maybe even popular dude, (no idea how my weird, antisocial, probably-autistic ass pulled that off) so I was never really the target of it myself.

But it always baffled me how people let it be a thing. A whole lot of those problems always seemed like they could have been solved by just hitting the block button.

Not all of them of course, but a lot of them. Blocking someone of course doesn’t stop them from talking about you to someone else, but at that point a lot of it can just be out of sight and out of mind.

Back when I still had a Facebook, I had probably half of my town blocked because they were always posting dumb shit in the local groups. I had a bunch of businesses blocked because they spammed advertisements everywhere. I had actual friends who I hung out with IRL blocked or at least unfollowed because they flooded my feed with shitposts. Half of my family was blocked because I just didn’t want to deal with them on social media. I preemptively blocked people I work with or otherwise knew casually because they don’t need to see what I’m doing online.

Totally anecdotal, but I work in 911 dispatch, so I have a bit of insight on people involving themselves in emergencies

It’s really hit or miss.

Fires, gunshots, medical emergencies, fights, things blowing up, car accidents, noise complaints, aircraft crashes, I’ve probably taken a call about it, and those calls have come in from the person involved, a neighbor , a random passerby, their grandmother who lives in another state, or some random follower on tiktok.

And sometimes we get a hundred calls about the same thing. There are times I can just about answer the phone with “911, if you’re calling about the [thing] in [place] we’re already aware, help is on the way.” And be right about 90% of the time while that thing is going on. (To be clear I don’t do that, because almost every time I crack a joke about my job or vent about stupid shit our callers do, some self-righteous dipshit comes at me with a whole “if that’s how you talk to your callers maybe you’re not cut out for this job” spiel as if no one ever vents about the idiots they have to deal with at work.)

And there are other times where we get exactly one call about something serious happening in a very public place and we’re left wondering if it was a prank call until our police/fire/EMS get out there and confirm that yes, everything is exactly as described or even worse, it’s a total shit-show and all hell’s breaking loose.

Sometimes it seems like a whole town is turning out to help people with a minor fender-bender, and sometimes hundreds of people are driving right by an overturned vehicle.

Usually, of course, it’s somewhere in-between. We got a handful of calls about something but our phones aren’t ringing off the hook about it.

Moral of my rant is, a lot of times people will step in to help or at least call 911 in an emergency, but you can’t always count on that. The idea of the bystander effect is exaggerated and misinterpreted, but the core takeaway about it is solid. You can’t always take it for granted that someone else is going to do something to help, so if you find yourself in a position where you can be the one who helps, you should do so.

Luckily I don’t have it quite that bad I am just very uncomfortable with it.

Sprained my knee really badly once and the doctor used a giant syringe to drain some fluid after the swelling hadn’t gone down much after a couple weeks. Really didn’t like that, wasn’t even close to passing out, but can’t think I’ve ever been more uncomfortable.

Similarly I’ve also been on-scene with some pretty nasty injuries, and I work in 911 dispatch, I’m generally not bothered by too much.

I have 3

I cannot juggle. I don’t generally lack in hand-eye coordination (not that I’m overly-gifted with it either, but I’d generally say that I’m at least average,) and I understand the theory of it well enough, I’ve even been able to teach people to juggle successfully, it’s just that I, myself, cannot juggle.

I’m also a reasonably handy, technically-minded person, again not an absolute wizard, but if I crack a gadget open, with a couple Google searches and how-to guides, I can usually understand more or less how things work and how to fix them if they’re broken.

But something about sewing machines breaks my mind. There’s something going on right around the bobbin that just doesn’t make sense to my brain and doesn’t seem like it should work, but it apparently does, because I’ve successfully used a sewing machine and can confirm first-hand that they work.

Lastly, I don’t like needles. It’s not a horrible phobia that sends me running for the hills, but something about needles sleeves me out like nothing else. I can suck it up and get my necessary vaccines and such, but I do kind of have to give myself a little internal pep-talk first. It’s not a fear of pain, I have pretty solid pain tolerance and needles really don’t hurt that much at all, it’s specifically needles that weird me out. If there was an option to get my vaccines where a doctor would shank me with a scalpel and rub the vaccine into the wound, I’d absolutely go for it.

In no particular order, and not an exhaustive list

• The Big Lebowski
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Sin City
• Lord of The Rings Trilogy
• Star wars Original Trilogy & Rogue One
• Casablanca
• Mad Max Fury Road
• Arrival
• Pulp Fiction
• All the Studio Ghibli movies, but Especially Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited away, and Grave of the Fireflies
• Blazing Saddles
• Young Frankenstein
• Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
• Monty Python & the Holy Grail
• Jurassic Park
• Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Blade Runner
• Blade Runner 2049
• Mary & Max
• Akira
• Rocky
• The Godfather 1 & 2, and at that point I guess you might as well watch 3 as well
• Rashomon
• Chinatown
• Jaws
• All quiet on the western front
• Psycho
• Kill Bill 1&2
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Forest Gump
• Fight Club
• The Matrix (just 1)
• Silence of the Lambs
• Taxi Driver
• Back to the future trilogy
• The Usual Suspects
• Apocalypse Now
• Indiana Jones Trilogy
• Dune parts 1&2
• The Shining
• Dredd
• Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
• The Room
• A Clockwork Orange
• Gone with the Wind
• V for Vendetta
• Trainspotting
• Fargo
• Ben Hur
• Children of Men
• Shoot 'em Up
• Logan *The Princess Bride
• Old Yeller
• John Wick series
• Most Disney/Pixar movies
• Most Don Bluth movies