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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 12th, 2023

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  • King Trent from Xanth 😂

    fr though allmy parents were physically and emotionally abusive. School was a nightmare due to ND and the parents. There really weren’t any good adults in my life. I raised myself on books, pretty much. King Trent was my idealized role model, I read those books during a very formative time.

    He was the most powerful guy in the land but he was kind and caring to every creature. When the people who are supposed to protect you are hurting you that kind of thing seems very wonderful.

    The Xanth books haven’t held up very well at all, the author let a lot of pretty creepy misogyny in to his sci-fi in the way a lot of authors did back then.

    But I still would hope that if King Trent met me he would be proud of me and say some super nice kingly shit. Then I would ask him to make me a woman (he could transform things) :)




  • I become them. I absorb everything I know about them and create a simulation of them in my mind. I run this simulation through activities i’m aware of them partaking in, trying to include their current possessions in the simulation, and try to estimate how they would be feeling in the simulations as I introduce likely gifts to their routine.

    When possible use past conversations and observations as rails for these simulations to keep them constrained to good gift ranges.

    As an example of this technique in action every year at birthday and christmas time I’ll run through a little simulation of my partners day in my head, like they wake up and turn on the light and then go in the bathroom turning on the coffee maker on the way and then brush their teeth and then make some coffee etc. just going through each step i’m aware of and looking for opportunities to reduce friction or inject happiness. The most recent gift using this method was a bento style lunchbox. I had simulated from our conversations and observations that her lunch was sometimes at her desk and sometimes in her car so the surface could be quite variable. I thought that instead of trying to deal with a bag full of small containers in the car that it would be easier to work with a single more stable compartmented container. I also suspected she might eat more variety if it was all available at once instead of having to sort through different containers.

    This was a wild success and she’s thanked me multiple times for the bento style lunchbox. Well i got that by simulating her, it’s an effective method for picking out gifts I have a good success rate!



  • I bought speakers from a van once!

    I knew enough about audio (not much) to know that the connectors were nice and the cones weren’t paper so I went for it, they wanted a lot but I only had $200 so they said okay we’ll take it! They had the whole fake laminated sheet showing the ‘original price’ as $1200 and everything. These were pretty big speakers about 2.5-3’ tall each with removable front covers. They were wrapped in plastic and definitely fit the story the guys were selling about it being excess inventory they had ‘acquired’.

    They were really nice speakers; a big upgrade from what i had and were really cleann when driven by my roommates receiver. I then learned about the ‘back of the van speakers scam’ and I was like oh no I wonder how much I got taken for.

    So i took one of the speakers in to the local hifi shop to have them look at them for me, I was very curious and found the whole thing fascinating. Anyway their verdict is that they were fine loudspeakers and that I didn’t really get ripped off. The exact quote from the guy (who was clearly disappointed I bought speakers from a van and not my local hifi shop but dude i’m a soft sell honestly if he had rolled up with his wares he could have got a sale from me too i’m sure) was: “I could have sold you better speakers for $200, but I couldn’t have sold you louder ones for that price”. Those babies could get cranked to 11 with no distortion. All in all I was pretty happy with being scammed and would definitely check those guys van out again.






  • from the 70’s and 80’s imported asian cars were called ‘rice burners’ (‘rice rocket’ for fast asian motorcycles) and tuning your car with visual improvements that didn’t actually add horsepower was known as ‘ricing’.

    source: grew up knowing car people during that era and heard this casual racism along with ‘beaner’ for anything hispanic


  • are you properly rinsing grease from your dishes? I have moved a lot and had dozens of dishwashers.

    The one time i experienced this exact smell (literally like a wet shaggy dog) was after my kid put a pan with like a cup of beef grease in the dishwasher.

    The upper and lower rinse arms are propelled by water moving through small pipes and being forced out at speed.

    The fat melted into the water but as the water cooled that beef fat solidified inside all the tiny hoses and lines.

    I had to run the dishwasher in high temp sanitize mode like 9 times to get the dishwasher to stop smelling bad and greasing up the dishes.