Technology Connections made a 25 minute video about American extension cords and why they’re dangerous, if you want to watch a long form answer.

Edit: oops, just saw I’m late to the party with this video

Mixed research has come out, if it was debunked it wouldn’t be nearly so mixed. Regardless, the idea that plant based food is unhealthy because it uses ‘processed flours’ (literally all flours are processed?) is a fringe view.

Lab grown beef isn’t going to be healthier than vegan fake meats, you can’t make saturated fat be good for you even if it’s from a lab.

This fear mongering about veg replacement meats is mostly manufactured and not a mainstream view among dietitians.

This works with signs, too. “Keep off the grass” is the least effective, followed by “please keep off the grass”, with “thank you for keeping off the grass” being the most effective.

So I’m a trans guy and as a kid I was very obviously masculine, stereotypical tomboy. One of my aunts that married into the family gave me, maybe around age 5-7, a toy makeup kit. To this day I don’t know wtf she was thinking, because it wasn’t like she never met or saw me. Was it thoughtless or passive aggressive? Who can say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don’t live anywhere cold now, but when I did it was in an urban area. Urban snow is pretty for a couple of hours max before the cars, people, pollution, shitting dogs, etc give it a disgusting tinge. It was also miserably cold to me, regularly getting down into the 10s and 20s F (-12 to -6 C).

I wouldn’t say I was dreaming of a green Christmas necessarily, but a white one isn’t all it’s cracked up to be if you’re not living in a cottage in the woods!

Even just doing this on the portion of the wall directly behind your computer will help, if you don’t want to/can’t afford to do all your walls.

Dress decently and bring a book or some other way to entertain yourself, you should mostly expect being bored. Most cases plea out so they wind up not needing most people they call in, so you might not even make it to the selection process.

And the people that run those companies, should they kill people depending on their company for healthcare if it makes them money?

Where do you think they got the $10 million/year to pay this man? Who do you think instituted a policy to use AI for approvals/denials, which resulted in a 90% false rejection rate? What’s crazy is acting like the murder of thousands of people through denial of medical care for money, if done from a sufficient distance, is somehow less abhorrent than doing it up close and with a gun.

Expecting people who have either been directly impacted or had family medical care impacted by the policies of this man to show sympathy for him isn’t just unrealistic, it’s deranged. Considering United is one of the largest insurance companies in the US, that’s a lot of fucking people who are at best apathetic about the whole situation.

Obligatory ‘I suspect some people who can’t read might reply to this’ disclaimer: obviously you shouldn’t murder people. Including if you’re a healthcare CEO and it’s done by setting policies to squeeze the maximum profit out of people before they die.

The children of today have no idea what it was like to go into a McDonald’s and see used ashtrays on the tables. And good for them. But holy shit, how did anyone ever have an appetite?

A large portion of my TL on Bluesky is people fundraising for specific Palestinian families. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You see what you follow

Possibly having my ID documents reverted to the wrong gender at the federal level, losing access to HRT, my marriage being dissolved by the federal government, being excluded from public life… Just normal trans stuff 😔👍

If you don’t already have an audience you should try to establish one before doing commissions. Furries generally don’t want a Walmart that just has whatever commission is cheapest, they want to commission an artist that has a style that speaks to them and they enjoy.

You don’t necessarily need to have your own fursona or do porn, but both help.

If you can crank out high quality drawings you can earn a fair amount. The fewer people are willing to draw it (weird porn) or the higher quality* the art is, the more you can charge.

Whether or not you can live on it is something you’d just have to sit down and do the math on. With rent/taxes/expenses/savings, how much do you need to charge per page or per hour of work? If you’re doing it as anything other than a side hustle DO NOT skip this step, or you will be working below minimum wage.

* subjective, but you probably have an idea of what a potential client would mean by that

Edit: realizing I assumed this was asking for advice on how to be profitable with drawing furry stuff and not a general inquiry, lol. It can be profitable, but you have to be good at self marketing and not be shy about charging an appropriately high rate for your art.

My sympathies as a fellow asthma sufferer, but congrats on the medication at least. It’s really crazy how much easier everything in general is when you can breathe!

My husband finally bit the bullet and upgraded his computer. I’m planning to upgrade my phone before the year is out, because mine is 6 years old and probably not getting security updates for another 4 years.

Not that these things didn’t need to happen, but having it forced on us last minute has sucked.

The percentage of all Latino voters going up between 2020 and 2024 doesn’t necessarily mean there was more turn out from Latinos; if the voter demographics have shifted between 2020 and 2024 so that Latinos make up 1% more of the population, then they are still turning out at the exact same per capita rate as before, as a group.

Which sounds like a short time, but that’s a small shift and plenty of people turn 18 every day.

This is a good avenue to go down, before assuming mental health. I’ve had some vitamin levels through the floor and just felt like shit. It would have been very easy to misdiagnose as solely depression.

Check your local community colleges, you might be able to audit Spanish classes for a small fee. IIRC this means you won’t do tests, but learning from someone who actually speaks the language you’re interested in is a huge advantage.

Duolingo is okay, IME many other language learning apps don’t distinguish between Latin American Spanish and Spain Spanish. But as others said, there’s a LOT of regional variation even within Latin America. So even if you’re able to comprehend and speak it well you may still run into a lot of “wtf do you mean” when trying to talk to people, lol. Like learning British English and trying to understand wtf a Texan is saying: not impossible, just with a very different usage of vocab.

Belly rub hack: if your cat is being annoying and trying to get at something they’re not supposed to, it’s really easy to get away with grabbing and rubbing/jiggling their primordial pouch. The curiosity/naughtiness usually outweighs the flee/attack desire for much longer.

Not the exact same as a belly rub on their back of course, but I’VE GOT YOUR BELLY! I’VE GOT YOUR BELLY!!