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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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brin-bellway:

https://brin-bellway.dreamwidth.org/89538.html

@rustingbridges replied:

tomatoes really don’t travel well

they’re one of the fruits where the supermarket variety is the supermarket variety because it survives the trip, not because they’re good

meanwhile tomato plants are really low effort. if you have favorable conditions you can do literally nothing

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Where are you *finding* conditions that aren’t full of weeds and wildlife-competing-with-you-for-the-food and the occasional blight? A greenhouse?

(…actually, that might not be a bad idea. I *have* heard of people building little personal greenhouses in their backyards, and nothing keeps squirrels from taking one bite out of your mom’s tomato and walking away like a fucking *door*, right?)

Re: surviving the trip, home-grown zucchinis taste about the same but we’ve noticed the shelf life is *vastly* longer. Store-bought zucchinis start to shrivel up and go soft within a few days of bringing them home; home-grown zucchinis can sit in the fridge for several *weeks*. Makes it a lot easier to plan your meals.

Honestly, probably a good part of my problem with gardening is that, because *Mom* loves home-grown tomatoes for some fucking reason, they end up the focal point of the garden and a great deal of my gardening-related labour is thoroughly alienated: I never see the fruits *or* the vegetables of my labour.

A garden optimised for what *I* thought was most worth growing would have zero tomatoes and more garlic and zucchini, with perhaps just enough potatoes to keep in practice so that I can put potatoes in the victory garden. And probably more perennials like mulberries. And possibly mushrooms. And I would want to do a bunch of research and expert-consultation regarding which weeds are secretly edible, since anything *that* easy to grow sounds like something I should take advantage of.

(I’ve been meaning to do some more digging into how to eat dandelions. I’ve heard you can put the new greens in salads and the petals in pancake batter, but I don’t normally eat salads *or* pancakes. Can you just, like, munch on a raw dandelion flower straight-up? Can I fulfil my childhood dream of eating a pretty flower I found in the backyard?)

Tags:

#replies #rustingbridges #gardening #food #speaking of fulfilling childhood food dreams I’ve started hearing rumours that *cantaloupe seeds* are edible #that you can treat them the same way you’d treat pumpkin seeds #I rarely eat cantaloupes these days but god I spent so long as a kid wishing I could eat cantaloupe seeds #maybe (after some double-checking) I should buy a cantaloupe just so I can finally eat the seeds #(not that I wouldn’t *also* eat the fruit)

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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@moral-autism​ replied to your post:

Tell us about the web serials? Anything good?

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I’ve seen one of each so far.

(I can’t find a way to sort either of these chronologically, so I’ve linked to the reverse-chronological pages)

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Seattle by Night [link] (based on the author’s TTRPG campaign, by a guy who does a lot of those) started publishing in the spring of 2020 and is set in the-present-day-as-of-start-of-publishing. It is canon compliant.

It reminds me of the thread you were in once (at least I’m pretty sure it was you? can’t find it now, though…oh, wait, here’s a copy [link]) about stories that are *informed* by their speculative worlds without being *about* them, but applied to the real world: the story’s not *about* COVID-19, but its presence pervades everything. Seattle by Night has got its own stuff going on, but it’s *very much* set in the spring of 2020 and you will never once forget that.

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The Chilliad [link] started publishing in 2018, is set twenty minutes into the future (basically present day but with self-driving cars good enough that blind people can use them independently), and has declared COVID-19 to be non-canon via a fourth-wall-poking joke:

“well, maybe some of us studied public policy and then a global pandemic hit so we are stuck at home without a full-time job, slowly going insane,” homer snaps.

“co-vid what?” asks donut mouth. “i thought you were a poet.”

“huh?” homer asks, blinking. “i don’t know. maybe i’m still drunk. i think i’m dissociating. you should send me to a hospital.”

“nice try,” says ray ban.

Tags:

#replies #moral autism #recs #storytime #covid19 #illness mention #Iliad #(fun fact: apparently Tumblr defaults to capitalising that ”iLiad”) #(some sort of buggy heuristic I presume) #fanfic

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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aa49d59ecd971a3ba9bdd142e45b94af69c121f2

twitblr:

Definitely masking up post-COVID (x) {{the original link didn’t actually lead anywhere; I have replaced it with a genuine source link}}

 

juliainfinland:

Also, let’s keep having soap and disinfectant dispensers everywhere.

 

derinthescarletpescatarian:

By contrast, I’ve been getting the same number of sniffles that I do every year even though there’s no one to catch them from, which is how I learned this year that I’m not prone to minor colds; I’m prone to hayfever.

 

brin-bellway:

Huh, you’re still getting hayfever with a mask? I started wearing a mask in 2017 *specifically* to avoid pollen, and it’s been working wonderfully for me.

Have you been keeping the mask on outside, and when near front doors that people are opening a lot? Does it have a well-fitted nosepiece?

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I also had no colds in the calendar year 2020. It used to be fairly normal for me to go entire years without getting sick (after I adjusted to my current microbial milieu, that is; I got sick a *lot* the first couple years I lived in Canada), but then I started working a customer-facing job where nobody else ever took sick leave and staff members were forbidden from wearing masks, and I went from a cold every 1 – 2 years to a cold every few months. Getting rid of that damned fast-food cold rate wasn’t worth what it’s cost, but it’s a very nice silver lining.

(for anyone who finds my rate of colds bogglingly low: I’m guessing the two big components are “trained myself out of touching my face in public when I was a pre-teen, and always wash my hands upon returning home” and “rarely travel”, in that order)

I didn’t even used to do any anti-airborne measures†, just anti-fomite. I plan to start wearing a mask in indoor public spaces from October – March or so each year and on public transit year-round, and it’ll be very interesting to see what that does to my baseline cold rate.

(also, on a broader scale, it will be interesting to see if COVID-19 vaccines grant any cross-protection against cold-type coronaviruses)

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†Except in extreme situations like “on an airplane two seats away from a coughing dude”. Guess who didn’t get sick until an incubation period *after* the rest of her family? (unfortunately there’s only so much you can isolate from people you’re sharing a hotel room with)

 

derinthescarletpescatarian:

I very rarely wear a mask. I hardly leave the house and when I do, almost nobody wears masks here because there’s no covid in my state outside of the quarantined medi-hotels for infected international arrivals; we just sanitise, social distance, keep records of where we go and get tested any time symptoms show up so that when it does show up, we can respond before it’s got more than a couple of people. The distancing and group size limits are enough that basically nobody’s getting colds.

My probably-hayfever is very mild and isn’t debilitating at all (which is probably why it took me so long to notice); I just get a sniffly, runny nose so I haven’t bothered with any pollen precautions. They’d be more annoying than just living with it.

 

brin-bellway:

Fair enough, I suppose.

When I started wearing pollen masks, my only symptom was mild sore throats. The main problem I was having was that pollen attacks felt exactly like…well, the onset of a cold. *Physically* the sore throats per se weren’t a big deal, but I hated never being sure whether or not I was coming down with something.

I’ve started getting runny noses too now, which I found even worse in that they’re impairing in their own right. Maybe I’m just more bothered by having a runny nose than you are.

 

alarajrogers:

My allergies are for animals and dust. I have pets and am far too disorganized to dust. So yeah, I’m actually just as miserable this year as I am every year, but I definitely have noticed, no colds. Runny nose and sneezing and occasional sore throat and cough… but at my age, the biggest symptom of a cold is a draining and horrible fatigue. All my fatigue this year comes from diabetes and depression.

I do think I’m going to keep using masks during the winter every year.

 

brin-bellway:

At your age? Are you implying you *didn’t* get horrible draining fatigue from colds when you were younger?

When I saw that one of the DSM rules is that in order to qualify as having clinical depression it has to be at least two weeks, I thought “ah, of course, they’re thinking of self-limiting diseases”. The last week of December, 2017, I had a cold that *didn’t* come with a transient depressive episode, and it was amazing how much less it sucked. Turns out that while sore throats and stuffy noses and coughing fits *are* pretty annoying, *most* of the badness of colds is from direct inducement of misery.

…if there are people who *normally* don’t get depression from colds, that would explain a lot about how blase they are about disease prevention.

(…“people with enough depression at baseline that colds are just background noise” would also explain a lot but in a much more horrifying way. you indicate that in at least some cases they can be distinguished, though.)

@rustingbridges replied: “no, I don’t feel that way. identifying a cold mostly consists of ruling out allergies and guessing”

holy fuck

Tags:

#this explains so much #oh my god #replies #illness tw #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #depression

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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maryellencarter:

brin-bellway:

maryellencarter:

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@rustingbridges The bacon pretty much dissolved, just added some flavor. Onion might be a good idea but I absolutely loathe trying to chop the damn things. Do they sell pre-chopped onion?

Sausage might be a good mix-in. Maybe just thaw and chop some breakfast links and toss them in. That might be a good plan.

Onion powder?

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For my dad’s kidney beans we use hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, chopped green bell pepper, salt, black pepper, onion, and garlic. When I make hummus I pretty much just embrace the bland, apart from some garlic and salt.

Worcestershire sauce! I definitely need some. I think I had looked for onion powder at Target but they were all out, and in my experience onion powder and paprika don’t really have any flavor anyway. Maybe the bottles my family had were just very stale though

moral-autism replied: “I’ve seen stores sell both fresh prechopped onion and frozen chopped onion potato mixes…”

Tags:

#conversational aglets #food #the more you know #bluespace #replies

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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brin-bellway:

https://brin-bellway.dreamwidth.org/78928.html

@itsbenedict​​ replied: “i’m a resident of 2020 and thought that meant “sun” until you explained it”

Potential near-future mes dealing with the aftermath of coronal-mass-ejection EMPs are definitely grumbling about “don’t we have *enough* coronas fucking us over this year?”.

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(I’m actually in the middle of reading a thing about this right now: https://www.governmentattic.org/27docs/UnpubFEMAgeomagRptsU_2010-12.pdf )

Tags:

#replies #itsbenedict #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #apocalypse cw #illness tw #covid19

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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@rustingbridges​ replied to your post:

surgical masks do not seal that well ime                         

basically all the background smells come thru

yeah it would be nice if they came with better nose pieces but they don’t

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Firstly: it can be easy to acclimate, and the different between surgical-mask and maskless is often best observed through comparison. When you take your mask *off*, especially but not necessarily outdoors, are you abruptly hit with a wave of scent?

(Taking off my mask for a solo picnic a couple weeks ago was a powerful experience. After all these months of worrying every time I smelled anything outside my house, it was bittersweet to be so viscerally reminded that yes, I really am missing a lot.)

Did you have the same problems with 2010s-made masks, back when they let ordinary people have medical-grade ones? I tried a 2020-made disposable mask a couple months ago and it was complete shit, absolutely did let all of those background scents through [link].

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I saw some random doctor recently saying that he supplements his nosepieces by putting a band-aid seal on over the top. Seems worth a shot: might try it at work tonight, I *have* been noticing early signs of nosepiece failure in both of my cloth masks. (So far I’ve just planted my glasses firmly over the top to help hold it down.)

Tags:

#replies #covid19 #illness tw

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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@rustingbridges​ replied to your post:

“under normal conditions a substantial fraction of influenza cases are “asymptomatic”, whatever that means in that context, so I’d presume there’s also a contingent of very mildly symptomatic cases”

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Meta-Boss is dragging me back into the restaurant tomorrow now that he is no longer legally forbidden from doing so. If I *am* carrying something, I hope I don’t fuck anybody over too hard. We *will* be taking the now-standard precautions, so that’s something.

(And as for hugging my mom, unlike me she’s finished her flu-vaccination ramp-up period, so that tilts her odds favourably.)

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TBH, if this was influenza, chalk another one up on the board of “we should just wear masks all the time by default”. I’ll gladly dull my sense of smell while outside the house and be unable to read customers’ lips if it means turning the horrific suffering of a flu into *this*.

(and if you have to talk to someone who really needs to read your lips (and you can’t just write to each other like civilised people), wearing a mask except when around them would still beat not wearing one at all)

Tags:

#replies #rustingbridges #illness tw #in which Brin has a job #influenza #covid19

Finally, A Personality Quiz Backed By Science

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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{{Title link: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/personality-quiz/?group=-MLnw84-zDddzbQsP6ta }}

brin-bellway:

rustingbridges:

voxette-vk:

TIL 538 has a personality test

Follow the link above to be in the “group” I made so that you can compare your score against the average. (Hopefully. It seems not to want to load the results when I refresh the page…)

c7f813ba153e5b17bb4cf97bd1a2bcff06a6571a

we’re doin big 5 I guess:

9687af0eccb13aa6f1d4cd1764ad61a4ca562d69
30ccfc5eb49856a1b965b3797179e9514352f62e

My first thought was that it was attempting to tell me what I want to hear: most of these are rather “better” figures than I was getting on Open Psychometrics a couple years back.

Then I looked at the more detailed breakdown, and a lot of my supposed middle-of-the-road-ness is from having very high scores in some subcategories and very low scores in others, which “averages out” when seen at lower resolutions. Are you very anxious but not depressed? Congratulations, your negative emotionality is “moderate”.

(Except conscientiousness, which is a nice symmetric equilateral triangle with every vertex at ~75.)

((…wait, how does the *average* American have *75th* percentile conscientiousness))

This version seems to place somewhat more emphasis on *treating* people well when it comes to agreeableness, as opposed to Open Psychometrics’ questions which were pretty much purely about how you felt about them on the inside, and that difference is most of what dragged me from 12 up to 38. I am a proverbial kitten who thinks of nothing but murder.

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“You might also have a low opinion of your own looks.” I look plain in a vaguely pleasant manner, which is *exactly how I like it*, thank you very much

“Some scientists think low extraversion has protected humans from disease — you can’t pick up a bug from people if you avoid people.” saaame

@voxette-vk​ replied: “These aren’t percentile scores”

 

Hmm, I suppose I read too much into this bit:

“A lot of the outcomes that correlate with low agreeableness, like being chronically bullied (or bullying) or having a criminal record, don’t kick in until someone’s score is down in the 10th percentile.”

I guess that makes the two sets of numbers not directly comparable, then.

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I just went and took the Open Psychometrics one again to see how they portray their results, and it looks like this:

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And yeah, you can really see the difference grading on a curve makes, huh. Like, if you hear “your score is 7 out of 100″ you would not intuitively expect so much of the agreeableness bar to be filled, but I guess their other test-takers are so agreeable that moderately low agreeableness is enough to make you way below average.

Tags:

#is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #memes #surveys #anger management #replies

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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@rustingbridges​ replied to your post:

is that where the word ontario comes from

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Pretty much?

Apparently some people claim it’s actually “big lake” (or the more influenced-by-the-English-name-for-the-region translation “great lake”), and I seem to have misremembered *which* Iroquoian language it was, but everyone seems to be in agreement that it’s about impressive lakes. Because unlike the Cucamonga Desert, we have us some goddamn lakes.

(I guess that means there’s a little bit of Hillhillhill Hill going on with Lake Ontario, but anyway.)

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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moonlit-tulip:

One big problem with mystery shows, as compared with (well-signposted) mystery novels, is that they don’t give the viewers time to think things through before the parlor room scene. There’s no clear narrative break-point where the viewer knows they have all needed evidence to solve the mystery and can stop to think; even if the detective comments that they know who did it, what are you going to do, pause 3/5 of the way through the episode to comb over all the clues and discuss the mystery with your friends and so forth? That’s impossible during the initial serialized release (since TVs don’t allow one to pause), and impractical when watching via stream or disk (since it requires groups of people to take the generally-unnatural action of staying paused in the middle of an episode for an extended timespan, and that’s if they know where to pause at all).

Fortunately, there happens to exist an already-developed TV structure perfect for avoiding this problem: the structure of the 1966-1968 Batman series. Each two-episode story (which was the show’s default length, albeit with occasional exceptions (always in the longer direction, not shorter)) ends its first episode with Batman and Robin in some sort of death-trap, and its second episode starts with them escaping the trap and ends with them beating the story’s villain(s).

I’d really like to see a mystery show based on a similar structure. The default story length is two episodes. The first episode of each story ends with a dramatic reveal after which, by one contrivance or another, the audience is clearly told that the case is now solvable. The second episode then starts with the protagonists responding to the big reveal, and ends with the parlor room scene. Live viewers get a week to think through and discuss the solution between the episodes’ releases, and after-the-fact viewers get the advantage of a clear narrative break-point at which to coordinate their pausing-and-thinking, for an overall-improved mystery-solving experience relative to the current one-episode-per-story status quo.

(For bonus quality-of-life, make sure each episode is free to stream at least until the release of its associated parlor-room-scene episode, such that live viewers are on equal footing with archival viewers in terms of being able to rewatch pre-reveal episodes and refresh their memory about all the clues.)

maryellencarter replied: The 1970s Ellery Queen TV show had a point just before the last commercial break where Ellery would turn to the viewer, recap the case, and mention that it was now solvable. At original broadcast it would only have given you a few minutes to think things over, but it was sort of a thought in the same direction.

Tags:

#interesting ideas #story ideas I will never write #oh look an update #replies