disordered eating?

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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etirabys:

counterintuitive to me that, even with the high rates of immigration and the quality of translation technology, I’m so insulated from the Chinese internet. I don’t know what discourse they have. I read about crazy intense doxxing and harassment incidents in books about China (like Age of Ambition) but that’s like being a Chinese person who kinda knows what Twitter is like from the Justine Sacco incident. I want to… oh, get their jokes, be in some actually good Discord servers, know whatever arbitrary sexual acts or dynamics are taboo in their culture. (There was a really good tumblr thread on Chinese fandom is totally okay with… was it incest? Something that US fandom feels weird about? but is not okay with poly or even multi-shipping? I loved that thread.)

Would be so amazing if there was a blog run by a normal Terminally Online person in China who just happened to speak very good English and was willing to post 1 screenshot a day of something that was on their feed, translating and explaining everything to me. God, I’d fund that Patreon

​

etirabys:

My wishes are answered! The spouse of someone I share a Discord server with is running weibo.substack.com

Premise: just faithfully translate the first 1500 words of whatever shows up in the Weibo trending posts today. No cherry picking articles, no punditry or commentary. Come experience the Chinese internet!

I’ve enjoyed every single post. Just picking a random one:

A lot of parents are asking a blogger for advice about going to high school overseas, because Chinese high school is too stressful. But they’re concerned about their children not being patriotic anymore after leaving China. The blogger admits that this is a very valid concern, especially since lately, there’s been many incidents of very patriotic Chinese students going overseas and getting into violent physical conflicts with their classmates over political differences, and that this is illegal in a lot of countries. So therefore, his advice is to send their kids to Russia. There are a lot of great schools in Russia. Russia’s leading the world in tech, and is pretty good in the arts too, and their food is great. A lot of modern Chinese processed food actually comes from Russia, so it’s very easy to find things like cream popsicles and sausages that were a hallmark of Chinese people’s childhoods. And you don’t have to worry about war in Russia, because it’s such a big country that no invader can win. Also, lots of hot chicks in Russia. But if your child is a girl, you have to be a little careful going to Russia, because their food is high in calories so it’s very easy to get fat. And Russian men like to drink a lot, so it might be a little scary for girls.

Two recurring themes that make me go “oh wow, huh” are bride prices (major driver of social drama and economic action) and treatment of children.

Tags:

#reading a random selection of trending Chinese Twitter-analogue posts has immediately reminded me #of why I don’t read random selections of trending Twitter posts #I would like to listen to some chill Chinese nerds please #(I know I said I have issues with the concept of chill-ness) #(but in this case it would be a much more graceful failure mode than the reverse) #discourse cw #sexism cw #child abuse cw? #disordered eating? #alcohol mention #oh look an update #China

Anonymous asked: Your anti-nausea food is a BLT?? I love it but that’s chaotic. When I think of anti-nausea food I think of, like, honey tea. Hot milk. White rice. Hearing someone say their anti-nausea food is a BLT is like hearing someone say that they unwind after a stressful day by breaking into their neighbour’s house and rearranging the cutlery.

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

tototavros:

if it’s really important I’ll put bean sprouts or maybe an egg on it but i also think that prairie oysters are a good idea but a little much for the modern age whereas many people tend towards revulsion

if i’m nauseous i’m probably already drinking lots of water and gatorade so honey tea is just adding more liquids to already too much liquid, i’m confused and mildly turned off of milk[1] tho hot milk is the best way and i would *love* to be able to have serving size heavy cream for warming some of that up, and rice reminds me of descriptions of large znttbgf (rot13’d because I don’t like looking at the word)

blt is simple, if i don’t feel like grain, i just eat the rest like a salad (easy on the gut) or i might take off some tomato (too acidic); bacon and bread are easy on me, mayo only as long as i don’t make the sandwich myself (weird but w/e)

[1]: i had frozen milk for my school milk too many times in a row, then one day i was desperate for cereal, only to find that the milk at home had frozen. I rarely drank milk after that (occasionally if i overshoot on spice but that’s hard to do, i’m not averse to lattes but prefer warm to hot milk and as creamy as they can get).

I’m pretty much with anon here: I did not know how much variation there was in anti-nausea foods, and it’s fascinating.

Bacon is one of the *worst* things for me to eat if I’m already not feeling well: greasy foods give me stomachaches. I don’t use honey tea or hot milk, but I can kind of see those (in theory I can also see white rice, but yeah I do sometimes struggle with the appearance).

I like mint for acute anti-nausea. (Usually just peppermint oil on a cotton ball for the smell, but occasionally edible mint.) For longer-term “halfway through a 300-hour stomach bug and trying to get some calories into me”, [popcorn popped in moderate amounts of canola oil] and to a lesser extent graham crackers.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #food #disordered eating? #in which Brin has a food poisoning phobia #unsanitary cw? #illness tw?

I Went to Disney World

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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{{Title link: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/07/disney-world-during-pandemic-extremely-weird/614617/ }}

{{OP by bambamramfan}}

jadagul:

brin-bellway:

jadagul:

brin-bellway:

jadagul:

This article is amazing and wonderful.

I can’t trust any take on Disney from someone so clearly ignorant of what he’s talking about that he can say this with a straight face:

“That is because in normal times you must choose perhaps four or five big rides, each lasting mere minutes, and spend hours waiting in line to be admitted to each.”

Dude, just showing up at a major Disney ride and expecting to be seated is like just showing up at a fancy restaurant and expecting to be seated: in both cases *you are supposed to make a reservation*. When I went in the autumn of 2015, ride reservations (“FastPasses”) were quite flexible (one-hour usage window) and very often available on a same-day basis: while we *had* reservations months in advance, we made last-minute adjustments to them pretty much every day (you can do this on your phone, thanks to the complimentary Wi-Fi [link]).

(Also a part of me is going “you’re complaining about how expensive everything is and yet you stayed at the fucking *Contemporary*??”, while another part goes “why did the Atlantic send some poor dude with a COVID-19-naive immune system to fucking *Florida*? they’re a bunch of Americans in the summer of 2020: did they *seriously* not have anybody who’d had it already that they could send instead?”)

Still, it’s interesting to hear some reporting from the field. Just…with some caveats.

That is all relatively recent, though. Fastpass was introduced in 1999; I definitely remember the process he describes from when I was growing up. And the author is of course describing how Disney “usually” is off of secondhand reports, since he’s never been before.

But yeah, the article is great as a description of how Disney is now. And the observations about it as being part of the American civic religion aren’t original but they are fairly good points.

I *suppose* you could call 21 years relatively recent compared to the total span of Disney World’s existence, but it’s simultaneously a long time.

I guess a generational thing does add another layer to the bit about his parents refusing to go there: *I* grew up hearing Dad complain about “standing in line for hours for every five minutes of ride” as the reason he refused to go to *Six Flags*, and perhaps even specifically as a reason why Disney was better than Six Flags.

(A bit of context: I was born in 1993 to a family that *was* upper-middle-class at the time and a mom that loves Disney World. I’ve been five times: 1998, 2000, 2001 (we were there on 9/11, it was a hell of a thing), 2004, and 2015. Our trips were generally around 1.5 – 2 weeks long: trying to cram everything into a long weekend is a recipe for exhaustion and FOMO.)

—

In additional to the description of how things were going on the ground, I thought the bits about the Disney World government having legitimacy in the eyes of its constituents, in a way the American government does not, were an interesting way of looking at it.

Yeah, I think there’s something of a generational thing going on there maybe?

I was born 1986 and we went to Disney World like eight or ten times when I was a kid/teenager. I think we might have gone there, one way or another, every year from 95 or 96 to 2000 or 2001 or something like that? And then I wound up there again in 2004.

(And then I also went to Disneyland in August 2004 because it was effectively a compulsory part of college orientation, long story. I used my deep knowledge of Disney World to go around with a couple friends and maximize the time we could spend in air conditioning. I think we rode Small World multiple times becuase it was shady, air conditioned, and had short lines.)

Fastpass was introduced toward the end of that, so I definitely remember it as “that new thing they just rolled out that makes the lines easier to deal with”. But by the time they’d introduced it I was absolutely fucking sick of going to Disney World.

But yeah, if you asked me what Disney World was like, my gut reaction was “Standing in these awful lines constantly, although I think they did a thing to make that better recently.” Also, I don’t know how the system works now, but when Fastpass was new you could only have one at a time. So you’d get a Fastpass for a long-line ride like Space Mountain or something, and then you’d go stand in long lines for other attractions while you waited for your time to come around. So it let you do more things but still the dominant experience was “standing in line”.

But yeah, the bits about Disney’s “governmental” legitimacy were really interesting. I kept using the phrase “American Singapore” to a Disneyphile friend today, who eventually responded: “I think there’s a limit to my appreciation of the dystopian artwork in which we find ourselves.”

(see also)

As of 2015, there were three tiers of ride and you started off with one reservation in each tier. There were circumstances (I’m not sure of the exact rules now) where you could snap up extra FastPasses that other people had abandoned (and/or perhaps that Disney had added upon seeing the ride wasn’t full enough), and I remember them being fairly easy to find. But OTOH this *was* September, a month so slow that Disney bribed us with a free meal plan to schedule our trip for that time period.

(Joke’s on them: we were planning to go for September anyway. That meal plan was great: more credits than we could possibly use (presumably it was aimed to accommodate people with much higher appetites), and with prices denoted simply in “meals” and “snacks” rather than dollars. Being 100% price-insensitive in your food-buying decisions is a wonderfully liberating experience.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #Disney #politics cw #illness tw #covid19 #home of the brave #food #adventures in human capitalism #disordered eating?

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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brin-bellway:

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@rustingbridges​

​ replied to your post

“rustingbridges: brin-bellway: rustingbridges: rustingbridges: I…”

I think this makes perfect! I’m curious in what way this is surprising to you

Well, first of all the entire idea of balanced meals weirds me out. I eat in small-but-frequent quantities (you can see what a normal day looks like for me here), so to me the natural time unit across which one should balance one’s nutrient intake is the *day*. (Maybe even 2 – 3 days, since on any given day I often run out of appetite before covering all the categories I’d intended to.) I actually feel thrown off planning-wise when I *do* eat a balanced meal, because what am I supposed to eat to counterbalance it later? It counts towards a little bit of everything, which means it doesn’t *really* count towards *anything*.

(In fact, the entire idea of *meals* kind of weirds me out. My foods are generally much more atomised, and it never ceases to amaze me that there are so many people who go through meal levels of complicatedness and preparation almost *every time they eat*. I do that kind of shit once a day at *most*, and left to my own devices I make relatively simple meals at that.)

While my diet is quite rigid and has had some thought put into it, it’s not exactly *planned* in the same sense that yours seems to be. I don’t track precise nutrient intakes: I just try to cover a bunch of different kinds of food over the course of a time unit. The only thing I specifically seek out is fibre, as my body has repeatedly complained that [a version of my diet in which I do not actively seek out fibre] is not fibrous enough. I’ve also been eating fewer and less frequent high-fat foods, again because of negative physical responses rather than an abstract intellectual belief that they were bad for me.

 

rustingbridges:

so part of it is that it’s not a balanced meal – the dietary ‘goal’ of the yogurt is to meet my desired level of protein intake.

I want to be hitting a minimum of 80g/day, and ideally closer to 160g/day. plausibly you can’t usefully consume more than 30-50g of protein at a time.

this is kind of hard to do with balanced meals unless your whole diet is oriented around it. my diet is not and includes a bunch of shitty carbs, so I gotta make up the protein elsewhere.

the most straightforward supplement here is chicken. nonfat strained yogurt is one the next best things, the tier two of protein supplements if you will. fatty strained yogurt with add-ins is kinda down there, but still batting above replacement.

so the more skewed towards protein the yogurt breakfast is, the more room I have to eat cookies or something later. 160g/day is ~650 Cal from protein per day, which is 15-25% of my daily needs. a food which is ~30% protein by calories is considered high in protein, so either you need to eat exclusively that or you have to make up the difference with actually high protein foods.

 

brin-bellway:

Ah, okay. Pretty much the same reason I eat popcorn, but with protein instead of fibre.

What made you decide to seek out extra protein?

 

rustingbridges:

Want Beeg Mussels

 

brin-bellway:

#at greater length:  #higher protein intake seems like it has upsides in terms of maximizing potential muscle gains  #and minimizing losses if attempting to cut  #with relatively few if any downsides

@rustingbridges replied: also, popcorn is great

It *is* great in many ways, but I do find it a bit time-consuming to make and eat, and I worry it’s going to wear down my teeth (I *definitely* have at least one chipped tooth directly attributable to popcorn, and I wonder about more subtle wearing as well). I considered buying some psyllium at the grocery store yesterday, but apparently you’re supposed to take it several times a day and that hardly seems any better on the hassle front.

Mom just ordered another batch of high-fibre tortillas off Amazon, and I accepted her offer to throw in a bag of the smaller-sized tortillas: they’re lighter and less prep-requiring than popcorn, and if I don’t like them she can just use them herself. Next time I’m able to get to a bulk-food store I might try some flax seeds: they do *sell* them in the grocery store, but the packages I saw were 450g and that’s far too much for a test run. I’m also thinking of buying a *different* flavour of fibre bars for evening use, so as not to confuse my brain by eating breakfast food at night.

(FTR, I’ve tried prune juice, but it’s easy to overshoot the dosage on that and also it only lasts a few days once it’s open. Separating out smaller quantities and freezing them only helps so much.)

Tags:

#food #disordered eating? #reply via reblog #medical cw #replies

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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brin-bellway:

Rustingbridges Icon

@rustingbridges​

​ replied to your post

“rustingbridges: brin-bellway: rustingbridges: rustingbridges: I…”

I think this makes perfect! I’m curious in what way this is surprising to you

Well, first of all the entire idea of balanced meals weirds me out. I eat in small-but-frequent quantities (you can see what a normal day looks like for me here), so to me the natural time unit across which one should balance one’s nutrient intake is the *day*. (Maybe even 2 – 3 days, since on any given day I often run out of appetite before covering all the categories I’d intended to.) I actually feel thrown off planning-wise when I *do* eat a balanced meal, because what am I supposed to eat to counterbalance it later? It counts towards a little bit of everything, which means it doesn’t *really* count towards *anything*.

(In fact, the entire idea of *meals* kind of weirds me out. My foods are generally much more atomised, and it never ceases to amaze me that there are so many people who go through meal levels of complicatedness and preparation almost *every time they eat*. I do that kind of shit once a day at *most*, and left to my own devices I make relatively simple meals at that.)

While my diet is quite rigid and has had some thought put into it, it’s not exactly *planned* in the same sense that yours seems to be. I don’t track precise nutrient intakes: I just try to cover a bunch of different kinds of food over the course of a time unit. The only thing I specifically seek out is fibre, as my body has repeatedly complained that [a version of my diet in which I do not actively seek out fibre] is not fibrous enough. I’ve also been eating fewer and less frequent high-fat foods, again because of negative physical responses rather than an abstract intellectual belief that they were bad for me.

 

rustingbridges:

so part of it is that it’s not a balanced meal – the dietary ‘goal’ of the yogurt is to meet my desired level of protein intake.

I want to be hitting a minimum of 80g/day, and ideally closer to 160g/day. plausibly you can’t usefully consume more than 30-50g of protein at a time.

this is kind of hard to do with balanced meals unless your whole diet is oriented around it. my diet is not and includes a bunch of shitty carbs, so I gotta make up the protein elsewhere.

the most straightforward supplement here is chicken. nonfat strained yogurt is one the next best things, the tier two of protein supplements if you will. fatty strained yogurt with add-ins is kinda down there, but still batting above replacement.

so the more skewed towards protein the yogurt breakfast is, the more room I have to eat cookies or something later. 160g/day is ~650 Cal from protein per day, which is 15-25% of my daily needs. a food which is ~30% protein by calories is considered high in protein, so either you need to eat exclusively that or you have to make up the difference with actually high protein foods.

 

brin-bellway:

Ah, okay. Pretty much the same reason I eat popcorn, but with protein instead of fibre.

What made you decide to seek out extra protein?

 

rustingbridges:

Want Beeg Mussels

#at greater length:  #higher protein intake seems like it has upsides in terms of maximizing potential muscle gains  #and minimizing losses if attempting to cut  #with relatively few if any downsides

Tags:

#conversational aglets #food #disordered eating?

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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rustingbridges:

brin-bellway:

Rustingbridges Icon

@rustingbridges​

​ replied to your post

“rustingbridges: brin-bellway: rustingbridges: rustingbridges: I…”

I think this makes perfect! I’m curious in what way this is surprising to you

Well, first of all the entire idea of balanced meals weirds me out. I eat in small-but-frequent quantities (you can see what a normal day looks like for me here), so to me the natural time unit across which one should balance one’s nutrient intake is the *day*. (Maybe even 2 – 3 days, since on any given day I often run out of appetite before covering all the categories I’d intended to.) I actually feel thrown off planning-wise when I *do* eat a balanced meal, because what am I supposed to eat to counterbalance it later? It counts towards a little bit of everything, which means it doesn’t *really* count towards *anything*.

(In fact, the entire idea of *meals* kind of weirds me out. My foods are generally much more atomised, and it never ceases to amaze me that there are so many people who go through meal levels of complicatedness and preparation almost *every time they eat*. I do that kind of shit once a day at *most*, and left to my own devices I make relatively simple meals at that.)

While my diet is quite rigid and has had some thought put into it, it’s not exactly *planned* in the same sense that yours seems to be. I don’t track precise nutrient intakes: I just try to cover a bunch of different kinds of food over the course of a time unit. The only thing I specifically seek out is fibre, as my body has repeatedly complained that [a version of my diet in which I do not actively seek out fibre] is not fibrous enough. I’ve also been eating fewer and less frequent high-fat foods, again because of negative physical responses rather than an abstract intellectual belief that they were bad for me.

so part of it is that it’s not a balanced meal – the dietary ‘goal’ of the yogurt is to meet my desired level of protein intake.

I want to be hitting a minimum of 80g/day, and ideally closer to 160g/day. plausibly you can’t usefully consume more than 30-50g of protein at a time.

this is kind of hard to do with balanced meals unless your whole diet is oriented around it. my diet is not and includes a bunch of shitty carbs, so I gotta make up the protein elsewhere.

the most straightforward supplement here is chicken. nonfat strained yogurt is one the next best things, the tier two of protein supplements if you will. fatty strained yogurt with add-ins is kinda down there, but still batting above replacement.

so the more skewed towards protein the yogurt breakfast is, the more room I have to eat cookies or something later. 160g/day is ~650 Cal from protein per day, which is 15-25% of my daily needs. a food which is ~30% protein by calories is considered high in protein, so either you need to eat exclusively that or you have to make up the difference with actually high protein foods.

Ah, okay. Pretty much the same reason I eat popcorn, but with protein instead of fibre.

What made you decide to seek out extra protein?

Tags:

#reply via reblog #food #disordered eating?

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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Rustingbridges Icon

@rustingbridges​

​ replied to your post

“rustingbridges: brin-bellway: rustingbridges: rustingbridges: I…”

I think this makes perfect! I’m curious in what way this is surprising to you

Well, first of all the entire idea of balanced meals weirds me out. I eat in small-but-frequent quantities (you can see what a normal day looks like for me here), so to me the natural time unit across which one should balance one’s nutrient intake is the *day*. (Maybe even 2 – 3 days, since on any given day I often run out of appetite before covering all the categories I’d intended to.) I actually feel thrown off planning-wise when I *do* eat a balanced meal, because what am I supposed to eat to counterbalance it later? It counts towards a little bit of everything, which means it doesn’t *really* count towards *anything*.

(In fact, the entire idea of *meals* kind of weirds me out. My foods are generally much more atomised, and it never ceases to amaze me that there are so many people who go through meal levels of complicatedness and preparation almost *every time they eat*. I do that kind of shit once a day at *most*, and left to my own devices I make relatively simple meals at that.)

While my diet is quite rigid and has had some thought put into it, it’s not exactly *planned* in the same sense that yours seems to be. I don’t track precise nutrient intakes: I just try to cover a bunch of different kinds of food over the course of a time unit. The only thing I specifically seek out is fibre, as my body has repeatedly complained that [a version of my diet in which I do not actively seek out fibre] is not fibrous enough. I’ve also been eating fewer and less frequent high-fat foods, again because of negative physical responses rather than an abstract intellectual belief that they were bad for me.

Tags:

#rustingbridges #replies #food #disordered eating? #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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rustingbridges:

brin-bellway:

rustingbridges:

rustingbridges:

I made some yogurt (with my roommate’s instantpot) and it’s pretty good. it’s super easy to do, it tastes like how I remember yogurt tasting, and it’s probably something like 30 or 40% of the cost so that’s a win I guess

turns out one banana for an bowl yogurt is a lot of banana. but no way in hell am I going to the effort of preserving half a banana. guess I either need to lose the granola or eat twice as much yogurt

Eat the other half of the banana straight-up?

eh the theory here is to manage my macros during breakfast. strained yogurt is pretty good on this front – it has a very high percent protein if you get the no fat, and it’s not bad otherwise – but both the fruit and the granola push more carbs onto it.

the calories from the extra half banana aren’t exactly killing me, and fruitrients are probably good for me, so really what I ought to do is knock out the granola. but it’s tasty! and the cronch! so much cronch!

Tags:

#food #disordered eating? #conversational aglets #I don’t really get most people’s approaches to food but I’m glad it’s working for them I guess #(except the people it is not working out for which to be fair is a lot of them)

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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rustingbridges:

The concept of companies paying for their employees’ food continues to boggle me, but then my entire family works in food service, so our idea of company-provided food is “the customer changed their mind about wanting the food after I made it, and the boss let me keep it”.

Covering some food during travel is pretty standard, I think, since it’s a business expense and employees rightly don’t want to pay for it. My old roommate worked at best buy (which was by no means a great employer) and even they gave him a per diem which covered (cheap) food.

B: Nah, there are starving children in Africa future selves to think of. We keep getting inheritances just as we’re about to run out of money, but that streak’s bound to end sooner or later, and it’s best to start preparing now.

So the question with this is kind of, where does it end? I think if I put my back into it, I could get by pretty much without ever paying for food, except when doing stuff with friends. I’ve definitely done two or three week stretches.

And even if you are counting labor costs, you can buy food at the supermarket for $1-2/day. It just gets really boring.

We keep getting inheritances just as we’re about to run out of money, but that streak’s bound to end sooner or later, and it’s best to start preparing now.

Also no offense but that sounds like a pretty bad situation and hopefully you can get out of it somehow?

 

brin-bellway:

>>and employees rightly don’t want to pay for it.<<

I get the justification for paying for the hotels and such because the employee wouldn’t otherwise have needed to buy them, but you have to eat either way. Sure, it’d be *nice* if they paid for it, but I wouldn’t be pissed if they didn’t.

(I speak from some experience here: my job *did* used to provide some free food each week (but only a small amount, and only from a limited selection of the cheaper menu items), but later switched to an employee-discount system. And every friend or family member who learned about it got angry on my behalf *even though I wasn’t angry about it myself*, and it was really annoying having to try to calm them down and defend against their attempts to instil negative emotions about it in me.)

—

>>It just gets really boring.<<

I would be perfectly content to eat peanut-butter-on-a-spoon for lunch every day for years on end. The *occasional* variety in food is nice, but as the exception, not the norm.

(Also I have a low metabolism and an appetite to match, which is helpful.)

I barely even have to try to knock my food budget down to about four USD a day, so in practice I haven’t done that much other than severely cut back on restaurants.

—

>>I could get by pretty much without ever paying for food, except when doing stuff with friends. I’ve definitely done two or three week stretches.<<

How?

—

>>Also no offense but that sounds like a pretty bad situation and hopefully you can get out of it somehow?<<

…I am worried by the fact that you started this sentence with “no offense”, because it suggests that there is something offensive about the rest of the sentence that I have overlooked.

(Is it something to do with, like, dignity or some shit?)

Our expenses are already extremely low by developed standards even without going full-on rice-and-beans [link]–a thousand USD per person per month would be enough, with room for a small emergency fund–but underemployment is a big problem.

(Though to be fair, I have a positive amount of money and have never been homeless, which makes me better off than most of my friends. (From multiple social circles, at that.))

 

rustingbridges:

I get the justification for paying for the hotels and such because the employee wouldn’t otherwise have needed to buy them, but you have to eat either way.

Sure, but I don’t need to eat out. Compare: eating in the comfort of my home, at supermarket prices, with they company of my lovely girlfriend vs eating at some random nearby restaurant, at corresponding prices, with the company of some random work people (who I happen to like, and may I always be so lucky).

If they want me to keeping doing these kinds of things, they ought to make it minimally bad. My job didn’t involve regular travel (I only did a few times) so I can’t comment on how that works, but while I’m sure the expectations change, I would expect it to change in the direction of more generous compensation for traveling, since traveling kind of sucks.

Sure, it’d be nice if they paid for it, but I wouldn’t be pissed if they didn’t.

I’m going to accuse you of being insufficiently entitled for your own good here. Sure, the expectations should probably with the job, but if I’m doing this for my employer he ought to cover it.

How?

In short, be places where they’re giving out food. Exact options may vary. In nyc you can get roughly a large pizza every night monday thru thursday just from tech meetups, if you’re willing to talk about The Cloud™ and Data Science™. There’s all sorts of things where there’s food and all you gotta do is be around to eat it.

Somewhat less respectably than that, a lot of businesses get rid of extra food. Depending on where you are, there may be organizations that are dedicated to not letting it go to waste. Depending on what you’re after you may in contention with various other indigents but not necessarily – there’s a lot of stuff that’s only good if you have a kitchen and the will to use it.

And at the bottom end of the spectrum, you wouldn’t believe some of the things people throw in the trash. Am I above eating some fancy looking, individually wrapped gifty desserts because the container was once adjacent to garbage? No I am not. (totally untouched nice looking garbage is disproportionately gifty looking, presumably because they are perfunctory, unwanted, and quickly disposed of gifts.)

…I am worried by the fact that you started this sentence with “no offense”, because it suggests that there is something offensive about the rest of the sentence that I have overlooked.

Uh I would say I probably said no offense because it’s a combination of: a) slightly prying b) casting some amount of unasked for advice / judgement on a situation which clearly I have spent less time thinking about than the person to whom I am speaking.

 

voxette-vk:

And at the bottom end of the spectrum, you wouldn’t believe some of the things people throw in the trash. Am I above eating some fancy looking, individually wrapped gifty desserts because the container was once adjacent to garbage? No I am not. (totally untouched nice looking garbage is disproportionately gifty looking, presumably because they are perfunctory, unwanted, and quickly disposed of gifts.)

I suppose I wouldn’t either… but how do you do this in practice without spending a lot of time sorting through nasty garbage?

 

rustingbridges:

Luck, mostly? I used to walk past on my way home from work a particular trash can which was usually completely full and often had that kind of thing just sitting out on top or next to it.

I’m not sure why that particular trash can was like that, but it was a popular / touristy area so it must have just been a, uh, blessed trash can in that respect.

I would not recommend actual garbage sorting as a hobby (fun fact: this is very specifically a legally prohibited activity in many public places).

I think people tend to put “nice” stuff off to the side rather than really shoving it in there, anyway.

[reblogging this version mostly for completeness; all of my responses are to the post immediately after my last one]

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>>Sure, but I don’t need to eat out.<<

You don’t need to eat out at a hotel either. I always make sure I know where the local supermarkets are when I’m going to a hotel. Maybe there are hotels where you can reach a restaurant but not a supermarket, but I’ve never had to deal with that.

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>>I’m going to accuse you of being insufficiently entitled for your own good here.<<

I’ve seen what happens to people who don’t accept their lot. I want no part of it.

(I don’t even mean what *other people* do to them, just the way that the resentment makes them miserable, and the way it skews their decision-making: some of them towards risky plans for the chance of a better life, others towards denial, in both cases ending up even worse off than they’d have been if they’d buckled down and dealt with it.)

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>>If they want me to keeping doing these kinds of things, they ought to make it minimally bad.<<

Or else what? You’ll leave? Good luck paying the bills. Hell, you’re *American*: at least my dad was still able to get his broken ankle fixed.

(He was laid off from abovementioned cushy programming job almost thirteen years ago, and has never again made enough to make ends meet. He’s finally back in a position where he can at least make *some* money, just not enough.)

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>>In nyc you can get roughly a large pizza every night monday thru thursday just from tech meetups, if you’re willing to talk about The Cloud™ and Data Science™. There’s all sorts of things where there’s food and all you gotta do is be around to eat it.<<

Who–among the set of people who care enough about how much their food costs to seek out free food, but are not living on the street–can afford to live *that* close to places where they’re giving out food? I’m pretty sure the transportation costs of getting to any place like that would be enough to buy an entire day’s worth of food, and instead you only get one meal out of it.

(Low appetite is a blessing when you’re eating supermarket food and can make the same size of stockpile last longer, but it does mean I suck at exploiting all-you-can-eat situations. I try very hard these days to avoid buffets, because compared to normal restaurants they’re more money for *less* food (in that you don’t get to take home your leftovers).)

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>>Somewhat less respectably than that, a lot of businesses get rid of extra food. Depending on where you are, there may be organizations that are dedicated to not letting it go to waste.<<

We’ve had friends go to food banks, but I think my parents think those are for people more desperate than we are. Hell, they might even be right.

(Though when said friends offer us the bits of a food-bank variety pack they aren’t able to use themselves, we *do* at least accept them. Ate a cookie bar from a food-bank-sourced bake-it-yourself just yesterday.)

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>>And at the bottom end of the spectrum, you wouldn’t believe some of the things people throw in the trash. Am I above eating some fancy looking, individually wrapped gifty desserts because the container was once adjacent to garbage? No I am not.<<

I’ve experimented with dumpster diving a few times. Mostly for stuff to sell, but I did once find and redeem a voucher for a free protein bar. (I turned down the spicy ramen cups, though: I dislike pain.)

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>>I probably said no offense because it’s a combination of: a) slightly prying<<

It’s not like I don’t talk about it [link].

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>>b) casting some amount of unasked for advice / judgement on a situation which clearly I have spent less time thinking about than the person to whom I am speaking.<<

I don’t mind people calling it a bad situation, though as you can probably tell from the rest of this reply I have had more than enough [people trying to coerce me into having negative emotions] for one lifetime. (Although usually it’s people trying to get me to perform grief about [death of a relative I was not close to] or anger about [insert latest SJ Discourse topic].)

Tags:

#adventures in human capitalism #food #disordered eating? #reply via reblog #discourse cw? #long post #death mention

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