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3 yr. ago

  • If I can pull it apart a little more, it comes from the Greek "Phobos" which is usually translated as fear, but there's a bit more to it than that.

    The Greek god Phobos was the god of fear and panic

    Panic is a bit deeper than just plain old fear, it's a state where your fear is so intense that you're not acting rationally, you're in fight-or-flight mode, you're not thinking through your actions, you're basically running on adrenaline and instincts, and not necessarily good instincts.

    A phobia is that sort of irrational fear. It's panic.

    I'm a tiny bit afraid of heights (really it's a fear of falling from a high place, but I'm splitting enough hairs here already,) I don't have a phobia of heights. I can approach my fear rationally and overcome it, and even enjoy experiences in high places (I love roller coasters, I'm a hiker and love standing on top of a mountain, etc.) I just have to sort of calm myself down a little and tell myself I'm gonna be ok as long as I pay a little extra attention to what I'm doing. That little bit of fear actually makes it more exciting and enjoyable in its own weird way. If I had a phobia of heights, there's no way in hell I'd be getting onto a roller coaster or going up a tall mountain, even the thought of it might set me off, maybe I'd run away from whoever suggested it, or I'd curl up in a ball hyperventilating, if my friends grabbed me by the arm and tried to drag me onto a trail I might start throwing punches.

    To let my nerd flag fly a bit, the "Litany Against Fear" from Dune comes to mind.

    I must not fear.Fear is the mind-killer.Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.I will face my fear.I will permit it to pass over me and through me.And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

    That's about not letting your fear turn into panic. To face the things you don't know and don't understand with a level head instead of going off half-cocked in fight or flight mode.

    That's where homophobia fits in. It's not rational, there's no good, logical reason for them to dislike gay people, and they're not approaching it with a clear head. They take this non-issue that they don't understand, and panic about it, they let it consume a ridiculous amount of their (usually very limited to begin with) mental capacity, leaving no room for them to approach it rationally. They can't flee from it, because how do you flee from normal people who are all around you, so that leaves them with fight, because their panic doesn't leave any room in their minds to just accept that gay people don't actually pose any threat to any of the things they're worried about.

    Similarly, you get the gay/trans panic "defense" that some people try (unfortunately sometimes successfully) in court to avoid the consequences of their actions, basically claiming that they reason they assaulted or killed a gay person was because they thought they were being hit on by them and they panicked.

    With terms like hydrophobic materials, we're kind of anthropomorphizing them a bit. A hydrophobic person is afraid of water. Rabies was known as hydrophobia because people and animals infected with it often had an aversion to water, they'd be thirsty, but one of the symptoms is difficulty swallowing, so when presented with water they'd panic because they wanted to drink but also knew if they tried to they might drown. When it came time to slap a label on materials that won't interact with water, they just repurposed the existing word "hydrophobic" instead of creating a new term.

    the word "panic" itself is actually derived from the god Pan, a god of things like shepherds, nature, music, and having lots of sex. Overall a pretty chill dude as far as Greek gods go, seems like kind of a weird choice to name panic after, so where did that come from? Well Pan liked to take naps in the afternoon. And if something disturbed his nap he'd give a loud, startled shout, which scared all the sheep away. That sort of sudden fear became known as "panikos." You can kind of think of panic as people acting like startled sheep, "sheeple" if you will.

  • I had one of the earlier model iPod Touches, maybe 2nd Gen? It was the first one to include Bluetooth (if memory serves, and it may not, I vaguely remember at launch Bluetooth that was disabled and I had to jailbreak it to use it, pretty sure Apple eventually enabled Bluetooth with a software update)

    Around that time I'd also gotten my first job and had purchased a new laptop for myself, and sprung a little extra to get one with Bluetooth.

    I saw the future, I was sick of wires and dongles, I got a Bluetooth mouse, a pair of Bluetooth over the ear headphones, and for my iPod I went to Best buy and got a pair of rocket fish "earbuds" (it doesn't feel right calling them earbuds, since they were connected with a rigid band around the back of your head, but that's what they were calling them) and sprung an extra couple bucks for the warranty because why not.

    Those earbuds were a piece of crap. They worked fine, but they weren't rugged enough to deal with everyday life. Getting knocked off a coffee table onto a carpeted floor was enough to break them.

    So for a couple months it became almost a weekly ritual for me to go back to best buy to exchange them, until they just stopped stocking them and gave me my money back.

    In those days, there weren't many options for smaller profile Bluetooth headphone, you could get bulky over the ear models that were never really my thing, or you could get a mono earpiece. I'm pretty sure that those were literally the only model I could find at any reasonable price point.

    It actually kind of soured me on Bluetooth headphones until fairly recently, and honestly if my phone still had a jack I'd probably still be using the Shure 215 earbuds I bought after that.

    (Also, if you're in the market for wired earbuds, I'm no audiophile, but I do not regret getting the shures one bit, they definitely sounded better than the Skullcandy buds I upgraded from back then, and they are damn-near indestructible, there may very well be better, cheaper, and more rugged earbuds out there, but for the $100 or so I spent over a decade ago, mine have gone through the laundry a couple times and had just about every other kind of abuse you could imagine inflicted upon them and they're no worse for wear, and the wire is replaceable if that ever gets fucked up but I'm still on the original)

  • I'm no electrician, I don't run a lot of cable, I'm just a maybe-slightly-more-competent-than-average DIY homeowner type

    Personally though, I like having cables run through conduits when possible for the ease of running them. I'm not particularly worried about water or mice or anything, it's just a lot easier to just drop a cable down a pipe or suck a string through them with a plastic bag and shop vac than to try to fish them through the walls, especially anything I might want to upgrade at some point down the line when a new standard comes out like Ethernet or HDMI.

  • Yeah, it is probably largely dependent on the parts of the internet you inhabit, I can't see it coming up in gamer forums outside of maybe in-depth discussion of piracy laws, but it's definitely something I've seen around the internet as long as I can remember (my family got online in the mid-lato 90s, I feel like I first encountered it in middle school or early high school so early 2000s-ish.

    But by that point it was pretty well-established, it wasn't hard to google what it meant at that time.

  • People have been throwing that kind of disclaimer on online comments so long that they came up with the abbreviation "IANAL" back in the 80s or 90s, back when the World Wide Web was either not even a thing yet or brand-spanking-new and Usenet was king.

    There are, frankly, a whole lot of absolute morons out in the world.

    Sometimes those people are the ones asking for advice, sometimes they're the ones trying to give it.

    Some people who will take anything you say at face value, won't verify any information for themselves, won't do any research, etc. and if they follow your advice and screw up they sometimes like to lug litigious about it.

    And when they're the ones giving advice, they'll confidently state stuff that is just flat out not true and sometimes dangerous.

    Hopefully you can see at least some of the ways those could be a bad combination.

    Personally when I make those kinds of disclaimers, it's because I'm

    1. Looking out for myself, I don't want to get sued, I dont want some asshole to harass me or dox me or ruin my reputation or anything because they followed advice I gave because they thought I "sounded like I knew what I was talking about"
    2. I'm looking out for the other person. I'm not a professional and I know it, I'm warning them that they should only take my thoughts or advice for what they're worth which may not be much, and there's a real chance the person I'm talking to is an idiot.

    I also feel like it kind of invites someone who does actually know better to come in and correct or add on to what I've said, and I always welcome that sort of learning opportunity.

    And it can sometimes be a way to slip in a little humor if you slip in something like "I'm no octopus psychologist" or something when you're discussing the behavior of an octopus. (To the best of my knowledge, "octopus psychologist is not a real job, and that's why it's humorous, at least to someone with the same kind of dry humor as me)

  • I kind of think of myself as "prepper light" I keep a small stockpile of food and supplies around, have at least general plans for most emergencies that might arise, like I live close to a nuclear plant so I know the evacuation route I'm supposed to take from my home if something ever happens there, what radio station is going to have information, etc. I know what I'm doing if we lose power for an extended period of time, etc.

    But I'm not devoting a significant amount of my time to it. A few minutes or hours here or there, a little casual research, the occasional "roughing it" camping trip for fun and practice

    But most importantly, I have friends. I'm a pretty all-around capable guy, but there's a lot of gaps in my knowledge. When it comes to fixing cars, spinning yarn and weaving cloth, more advanced construction, plumbing, gardening, etc. I'm kind of clueless. But I have friends who are really good at those things. If shit ever really hits the fan in whatever sort of "end of the world as we know it" sort of scenario you might be imagining, none of us are going to cut it long-term by ourselves, but with all of our various skills put together we might just stand a chance.

    And also I like those people, I want to make sure they make it through it with me.

  • US

    My situation is a little fucked up because I work 12 hour shifts, but PTO is based around 8 hour days because that's what most employees here work and they haven't made any special exemptions for us. These numbers are going to be based around 8 hour days because I don't feel like doing the math

    Vacation time- 10 days for new hires, and you get 5 additional days at 5, 13, and 19 years, so assuming I stick around for 19+ years I'll have 25 days. You can carry over up to 15 unused days to the next year

    5 personal days, no carryover

    Sick days accrue at 1 day per month, so essentially 12, with unlimited carryover,

    1 personal holiday

    Certain things like perfect attendance, coming in for overtime, etc. can earn you "flex time" which actually is usually awarded in 12 hour increments.

    I'm kind of bad at using my PTO. My schedule is kind of wonky and I work less days overall than most people and tend to just slot most of my vacation plans into that. If I plan things right I also only need to take 2 days off to get a whole week, and every other weekend I have a 3 day weekend. I don't tend to take a lot of elaborate vacations, 3 day or less trips are kind of my norm. Every couple years I'll do something a bit more elaborate and take a week or more, but more often my PTO tends to get used for other things besides going on vacation. I have a week coming up that I took off to paint some rooms in my house for example.

  • It's not literally meth, but it is an amphetamine (in fact, literally amphetamine, it's one of the two enantiomers of amphetamine, and the more potent of the two at that)

    So same class of drugs, produces the same kind of effects to different degrees. You can kind of think of it in the same way that opium, morphine, heroin, and fentanyl are all in the same family of drugs, fentanyl is of course way more potent than opium, but at its core is still doing essentially the same thing.

    And for what it's worth, meth is also an ADHD medication, sold under the brand name Desoxyn, not super commonly prescribed but it is used for that purpose.

    And since I've already touched on this concept- meth also exists in 2 enantiomers, Desoxyn and the street drug are dextro-methamphetamine, and levo-methamphetamine is sold over-the-counter in some places to treat stuffy noses as a "Vicks Vapor Inhaler." Chiral chemicals like that can be weird, sometimes they can be almost entirely interchangeable, other times they can have completely different effects or mildly different potencies.

  • FWIW, if you haven't already, it may be worth giving the packaging of your "regular" bacon and such a good looking-over

    I haven't done an exhaustive survey, it's just something I tend to notice because like I said, I dabble in cured meats as a hobby, but at least around me a lot of bacon, hot dogs, etc. across the whole spectrum from bottom of the barrel store brands up to the fancy high-end name brands are touting that they're "uncured," and even if they don't outright say that as a selling point they're only listing celery powder and natural flavors in the ingredients and no sodium nitrite/nitrate

    It's not all brands by a longshot, but it's a lot of them.

    Not trying to push any kind of cured meat agenda, just kind of giving you something else to look out for, maybe it will give you a few more options or help you discover some other things you should avoid.

  • I don't know about that, I was on Reddit for a few years before 2015 and /r/conspiracy always came across a little crazy to me. The specific brand of crazy fluctuated a bit over the years, and they definitely got worse at hiding it over time, but even when I first joined it seemed like you didn't have to scratch the surface very deep to find some really weird and concerning shit.

    I've always been a conspiracy theory enjoyer, never really bought into any of them (besides a few pretty mainstream ones, but who doesn't have a favorite Kennedy assassination theory?) So that was probably one of the first subreddits I checked out, I don't think I ever bothered commenting on anything there, everything there pretty much immediately gave me the sense that "oh no, these people are actually crazy and maybe even kind of dangerous"

  • I think possibly the best steak I ever had/made was a cheap chuck steak that I gave a nice long sous vide treatment

    There is a whole lot of flavor there, but it can be as tough as shoe leather, but with sous vide it came out as tender as any filet, but way beefier

  • FYI, a whole lot of "uncured" meats, at least in the US, are just kind of using loopholes. Often there's a little asterisk next to the word "uncured"

    And if you follow that asterisk to the bottom of the back side of the package or wherever they decided to hide it in small print you'll see it says something like "contains no added nitrites or nitrates except those naturally occurring in celery powder or other natural ingredients"

    And spoiler alert, celery has kind of a lot of nitates and nitrites.

    And while there are regulations about how much pure nitrates/nitrites they can add to your food, there's no regulation on how much celery powder they can add because it's just considered a "flavoring" ingredient and not a curing agent. "Uncured" bacon or hot dogs or whatever could technically contain far more nitrites than would legally be allowed in their cured counterparts (though in practice I'm sure they're probably roughly the same amount)

    Regardless of if those nitrites are pure or coming from celery powder, it's the same chemical doing the same thing in your food and body.

    Other veggies contain a lot of nitrites/nitrates too, cabbage for example. I've occasionally had it happen when I make cabbage rolls in a pressure cooker that despite being totally cooked through the ground beef is still a pretty vibrant red/pink like corned beef because of the nitrites from the cabbage.

    I'm not saying this to scare-monger or anything, there are valid health concerns about nitrates and nitrites in general, and of course people like you who have a particular sensitivity to them, and it's well worth being aware of all of that. That said, I've been dabbling in curing my own meats and have a big jar of Prague powder #1 in my pantry which is 6.25% sodium nitrite, so clearly it's not something that's particularly high on my own list of concerns. I also intend to try curing my own corned beef at some point with celery juice and other natural sources of nitrites, not because I think it's any healthier but because it sounds like a fun experiment.

  • Luckily most people with those sorts of implants I've seen are fairly scientifically-minded, and I'd like to think that's the sort of thing they'd think of and would wear some sort of appropriate medic alert bracelet.

    It's not like there aren't other sorts of medical implants, piercings, situations like people with shrapnel embedded in their bodies, etc. out in the world that could potentially cause issues with an MRI machine.

  • I read about people getting magnets implanted so that they can feel magnetic/electrical fields

    Not quite ready to commit to implants, but i did try gluing some tiny magnets to my fingernails once.

    I suspect that the implants are a bit more sensitive since they can kind of wiggle around under your skin more, but I could definitely feel some things, the two that stuck out to me were a forklift charger and an electric pencil sharpener.

    I also got really used to picking up paperclips and other small metal things like that with them. I only had the magnets for maybe about a week, but I caught myself still trying to pick up paperclips with them for probably about a month afterwards.

  • All 3 of them, but no one's home

    He's got a few other stupid tattoos. He's got some more words tattooed above the stoplight in sort of a fancy script, but I can't really make them out because he's always wearing a hat. Some knuckle tattoos I can't make out because in all his pictures he's either holding a 40 of old English or flipping off the camera (or both) so his hands are always contorted weirdly, a few words that he probably thought sounded tough, some symbols I don't recognize, and a crucifix on one arm and a devil holding a cross on the other that might be actually kind of well-done but I don't have a great eye for tattoos.

    He's a shrimpy white guy with a patchy beard, who grew up in what passes for the ghetto in an otherwise pretty nice suburban area (not to sell it short, it is a pretty shitty town, once in a while it manages to crack some "Top X Most Dangerous Cities in state/country" sort of article, but compared to the "bad neighborhoods" in pretty much any major city it's nothing)

    I could go on for quite a while about him and the rest of that branch of the family, and all the dumb bullshit they've done even though I've never met most of them, their reputation far precedes them. All through grade school the prevailing advice from my parents was "if anyone asks if you know/are related to any other [our last name]s, just say 'no'" and that's always served me well.

    None of his profiles seem to have been updated in about 10 years, so with any luck he's locked up somewhere, or maybe dead. Or maybe he had just enough sense to stop broadcasting his dumbassery out onto the open internet.

  • I have a distant relative with a traffic light tattooed in the middle of his forehead, just a black rectangle with red, yellow, and green circles.

    And on either side he has some graffiti style writing that I'm pretty sure says "con man"

    I became aware of him because we share a fairly uncommon last name, and one day police came to my house grasping at straws looking for this guy because he had been breaking into cars, so the basically went to the first person with the same last name they could find to see if we knew where he was.

    It was the first time I'd heard of him, we're not at all close with the extended family. Eventually I looked him up and found his social media with those stupid tattoos.

  • I don't know what actual products are out there, but there are other time signals that could potentially be used, for example GPS.

    Off the top of my head I don't think I've seen a gps-synced clock, let alone one with a pendulum, but I've also never really looked for one either. It certainly feels like a product that probably exists somewhere to me, I'm sure there's someone out there who would appreciate a clock that can automatically detect the timezone, whether the region your in observes daylight savings time, etc.

  • Plot twist: Trump thinks "recognizing a Palestinian state" means "Annexing Palestine as the 51st state"

    Bonus points if some major shenanigans go down and Simpsons did it again, and we end up with Saudi Israelia

  • That's true for mechanical clock movements, but I think OP is looking for a quartz movement that includes a simulated pendulum for aesthetic purposes, which isn't particularly uncommon, unless your circles include a lot of antique enthusiasts, people who inherited an old grandfather clock, or people who just really dig mechanical clocks (and I won't knock that, I certainly think they're neat) odds that a lot of clocks you've seen with a pendulum are that type, powered by a AA battery and stuffed into a fancy wooden case

  • Aside from not needing to adjust the time, is there any particular reason it needs to be WiFi enabled?

    Because that kind of feels like an overly complicated solution to a problem that was solved decades ago with "atomic" clock movements.

    Which aren't actually atomic in any way on their own, but contain an antenna to pick up the signal from an NIST atomic clock to set the time (and I believe other countries and regions have their own equivalent if you're not in the US)

    As far as finding a pendulum movement, I don't really know what is out there, but it may be another avenue for you to look into.