conversational aglets

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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{{ourladyoflampreys asked:}}

Ooh! Brin!

Is your fiction anywhere we can read it?

Or is it only secret, and private?

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sacrificedtoatree:

brin-bellway:

brin-bellway:

The current one is semi-private, but most of my fiction is publicly available at the Glowfic Constellation (a roleplay/collaborative-writing site: some rat-Tumblrites may recognise it as “that format planecrash / Project Lawful was written in”).

Glowfic is an infamously high-context medium and needs a certain amount of tolerance for reading things without having read their prerequisites, but you can get a head start on understanding the background context relevant to my stuff by reading How to Read Glowfic and the glowfic wiki page on medianworlds (people who understood the phrase “the format planecrash was written in” may recognise this as the relationship Keltham’s homeworld has to Eliezer Yudkowsky).

ourladyoflampreys / @sacrificedtoatree replied: “Ah, I have heard of glowfic, actually. I read through some of Alicorn’s posts and fics on her site at some point and found a brief explanation of it, although I confess I didn’t understand it very much. But you know, I have a long bus ride tomorrow and I hear them Greyhounds have decent wi-fi these days, so I may take a dive into this!”

Thanks for the shoutout!

The Greyhounds, it turned out, did *not* have decent wi-fi.

Tags:

#conversational aglets #glowfic #writing

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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trailertrashin:

bea18fce0535d1f4f15d5501220441c96645920c

(my tags:)

#this can’t be real right, #this has to be a parody, #I could buy *most* of this as a particularly amusing juxtaposition of standard-issue slightly-shady-strip-mall stores, #and I’ll buy that the gun joke is a cultural thing, #but there’s no way “The Glass Eye Adult Greeting Cards” is a real place, #…oh my god it’s fucking real, #I found this exact sign on Google Street View, #1233 Lane Ave S in Jacksonville FL, #they have a webpage at the-glass-eye.business.site, #where they sell a variety of psychoactive drugs‚ sex toys / porn‚ healing crystals‚ and their “custom clothing line”, #(they don’t specify whether the custom clothing line is more like the healing crystals or more like the sex toys), #(they link to their Etsy page‚ but it’s empty), #((ah‚ they’ve uploaded a bunch of images to Google Maps and it does appear to be more like the healing crystals)), #((though if they *also* have a custom clothing line that is more like the sex toys I’m not sure they’d be allowed to upload that)), #it remains unclear why the sign specifies “greeting cards”, #is this a standard euphemism for porn in Floridian

—

@itsbenedict replied: “no yeah i can absolutely see why you’d think that was fake at first glance, but Florida is actually Like That”

Tags:

#replies #conversational aglets #home of the brave

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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{{ourladyoflampreys asked:}}

Ooh! Brin!

Is your fiction anywhere we can read it?

Or is it only secret, and private?

​

brin-bellway:

The current one is semi-private, but most of my fiction is publicly available at the Glowfic Constellation (a roleplay/collaborative-writing site: some rat-Tumblrites may recognise it as “that format planecrash / Project Lawful was written in”).

Glowfic is an infamously high-context medium and needs a certain amount of tolerance for reading things without having read their prerequisites, but you can get a head start on understanding the background context relevant to my stuff by reading How to Read Glowfic and the glowfic wiki page on medianworlds (people who understood the phrase “the format planecrash was written in” may recognise this as the relationship Keltham’s homeworld has to Eliezer Yudkowsky).

ourladyoflampreys / @sacrificedtoatree replied: “Ah, I have heard of glowfic, actually. I read through some of Alicorn’s posts and fics on her site at some point and found a brief explanation of it, although I confess I didn’t understand it very much. But you know, I have a long bus ride tomorrow and I hear them Greyhounds have decent wi-fi these days, so I may take a dive into this!”

Tags:

#(January 2024) #(he’s changed his username in the three weeks since this reply‚ hence the slash) #(in related news‚ I looked at the list of glowfic accounts and saw that user ”sacrificedtoatree” joined February 1st) #(welcome to the Constellation) #((I am aware that in-between the previous reply and this one‚ Blazer sent me a music meme)) #((but that will take more energy to do and I think it will have to wait for the next cycle)) #((I appreciate its existence and I still plan on doing it at some point)) #replies #conversational aglets #glowfic #writing

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itsbenedict asked: happy birthday! congrats on 30!

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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brin-bellway:

\o/

maryellencarter replied: “happy birthday!”

Tags:

#this was three months ago #but I’ve been preparing (agonisingly slowly) for quarterly backups #and saw that there are several Tumblr replies I haven’t agletted yet #there’s another such reply on one of the other birthday-related posts coming up shortly #replies #conversational aglets #birthdays #<3

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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maryellencarter:

calware:

how many digits of pi (after the decimal point, so 3.?????? etc) do you have memorized?

pi-memorisation-poll

“anyway I am surprised that 5 is such a popular answer, I can understand 2, but why 5, it’s so lopsided” (via @brin-bellway )

I answered 5! In my case, it’s because I once saw a nerdy math cheer that included those digits – something along the lines of “local math team, we’re so fine, 3.14159” – and it stuck.

Tags:

#conversational aglets #math #pi #the more you know #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #surveys

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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rustingbridges:

a few years back zinc acetate lozenges were doing the rounds and I love a good superstition so I went ahead and incorporated that into my belief system. been a while so I thought I’d check to see if the state of the science on the subject had shifted since then

afaict there hasn’t been much work on the subject in the intervening time, and nothing much to change your mind one way or the other. good work everyone, you may return to your superstition behavior.

some details:

  • one study¹ recently reported a null result, but based on the going theory for zinc lozenges that’s what you would expect (zinc acetate was administered by capsules). also the study was lacking in other ways.
  • another² has a good looking graph and is maybe positive for the concept. haven’t read the fully study yet

that’s maybe about it? my method for researching this research was to search pubmed for “(zinc) AND ((acetate) OR (gluconate)) lozenge” plus some other words instead of lozenge, as there were too many results without an additional keyword for filtering. I am sure there are other places results are published besides pubmed. feel free to catapult relevant studies into my inbox

{{OP’s tags:

#1: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37739466/ #2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8844493/ #links in tags because I think this evades the thing where tumblr refuses to show your post if it has links in it #idk if that actually works but as previously established I am a superstitious man }}

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robustcornhusk:

a graph of cold duration in people treated with zinc lozenges vs placebo. notably, the longest colds in the placebo group were 19 days, versus "only" 12 days in the lozenge group.

i assume this is the promising-looking graph in question

you know, i don’t love the idea that colds get dragged out that long. 19 days? some poor assholes get colds for 19 days?

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rustingbridges:

yeah that sounds fucked up! had no idea that was the case for some people, I always thought of a cold as a 1-3 day kind of thing. but presumably if someone gets 20 day colds they’re probably very glad to cut a week off that

​

brin-bellway:

The third week of a cold sucks a lot less than the first week so, like, maybe only as much as a normal person’s cold, but yeah if there’s a pill for cutting that third week off, I’m interested regardless of whether it helps with the main brunt of the cold. Gonna have to look into this.

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rustingbridges:

the basic tenets of the going theory are this:

  • you want zinc acetate, or if that’s not available, zinc gluconate. it has to be a lozenge or otherwise dissolve in your mouth, since the theoretical method of action is coating some tissue or receptor or something with ionic zinc. preferably with as few additives as possible. if it doesn’t taste bad and feel astringent, it’s not working. in the US everyone buys the life extension ones. idk about elsewhere
  • it is ideal to start as soon as possible. preferably in the not-sure-if-im-actually-sick-yet phase. starting once the infection is well developed seems to be much less effective
  • tbh I will actually take one prophylactically if I feel like I was in a high exposure environment. this is a not the protocol the research was done on but it seems reasonable and as long I don’t do this every day it is at worst a bad tasting zinc supplement
  • iirc the studies mostly had a protocol along the lines of one lozenge (of varying size and type?) every 1.5-2 hours while awake until symptoms subside. that’s a lot. it seems to produce some effect in the studies. I do not know that anyone has done any real study on taking more or less to compare, so it’s unclear what the optimal amount is, or how long it is worthwhile to persist in taking them

Tags:

#conversational aglets #recs #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #the power of science #illness tw

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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trystimuli:

trystimuli:

brin-bellway:

https://brin-bellway.dreamwidth.org/136754.html

me: I have no idea how much water we use because we don’t have a meter on our well.

10 sec later: Oh no… I’m in the middle of redoing the plumbing and now I’m going to add a meter.

20 sec later: Yeah, a meter on the hot water sure would be useful too.

me (yesterday): orders a meter

them (yesterday): emails me “Do you really want this meter? It measures cubic meters, we could give you one that measures gallons.”

me (yesterday): emails them “Yes, I want the one that measures in m³, and has pulse output counting liters.”

them (today): calls me (aka. voicemail) “Do you really want this meter? It measures cubic meters, we could give you one that measures gallons.”

me: …

Tags:

#conversational aglets #domesticity #adventures in human capitalism #embarrassment squick?