southsamurai

Are you fucking joking?

If that's really where you thought I was going with that, you're the racist.

If you're trying to troll, good job because now I think you're either a troll, a racist, or an idiot. I prefer to think you're a troll.

It's artificial boosting of the same bigotry that's been ongoing for generations. The new part switching the target.

See, there's been a very concerted effort to radicalize the right wing of the American populace by media oligarchs. It's part of an overall strategy going back to at least the post-nixon era.

Want to crush black people? Find a way to villainize them indirectly. "Inner city" crime. Step up arrests for things that are disproportionately a part of black people's lives. Spread drugs into the chaos brought about by destabilizing black communities to engender greater violence between gangs. And it worked. Look at how many black people are in jail compared to pretty much any other group.

Go back to Stonewall, when the biggest movements for gay rights got going hard, and remember that trans people were involved from the beginning, but didn't have a convenient label, they didn't have a way to be a distinct group. Gay rights efforts worked to some degree. Enough that the far right plans to use gay people as the enemy had to find another target the same way that they had to change targets from black people to Hispanic people in the form of "illegal aliens".

When your plan rests on fomenting anger, hate, and fear to stir up the lowest common denominator of a populace you have to have a target, ideally more than one since there's always going to be gaps where your desired audience will fall prey to the manipulation for one hate focus, but not another, like when you run into conservatives that aren't actually racist, but hate anyone in the LGBTQ+ umbrella because of religion, or sheer stupidity.

So, when gays weren't a useful target for hate any more because enough people knew gay people, and there were enough gay people of prominence to make it harder, why not switch to the next best thing? Trans people!

See, we had a major shift in awareness of trans issues back in the late nineties and early naughties. That's was followed by a large shift in trans people now having a serious chance at transitioning as medicine advanced, funding shifted, and there was just enough support that more people could transition and not be alone.

This meant that the assholes pushing their agenda to gain and maintain both wealth and power had a gift given to them. A new label to attack, using the exact same rhetoric they'd been using against gay people. "It's unnatural", "but what about the children?", along with the ability to use lingering misogyny via to attack trans women in specific since they are now women, but used to be men (in the rhetoric), so they must be groomers sneaking into bathrooms.

It's the exact same bullshit over again.

People have forgotten that the same methodology has been in place every time people in power needed to scare the populace enough to achieve a goal. Remember reefer madness? Before my time, but the entire thing was built in order to continue the oppression of black people, to keep them firmly under the boot.

Go back further, and it was the Irish, the Chinese, the Italians, whatever group was "other" at the time.

But the modern version is so directly a rehash of the anti gay rhetoric that's not even fifty years in the past that I'm amazed it isn't glaringly obvious even to the people that have jumped on the bandwagon of both.

I've said it before, but people are stupid. They're easy to manipulate, easy to fool, and that's the majority. Even the ones that aren't easy to manipulate can still fall prey to it if they aren't paying attention. People are also lazy, and have little long term thinking ability, or attention spans. That's why we got zero lasting changes after George Floyd was murdered. Anyone that's made it this far, think for a second. How long did it take you to remember that name and what it means? Now, ask yourself how many people didn't remember at all.

That's why trans hate is working. People suck. The vast majority are easy to control, and will believe anything fed to them with the right language behind it. It just so happens that while all of the distractions being used to build up the hate also created a smoke screen to hide gerrymandering, which ends up with more and more control over what language is being used everywhere.

So, here we are with a manufactured, strawman enemy being propped up as the target and then painted with the word "trans". None of the bullshit used to build up the hate is true, it isn't accurate, and most of the people behind the hate actually know it's bullshit, but they aren't allowed to hate the blacks and the gays out loud any more. They can't just scream the n word or call people faggots at whim the way they used to.

So, now they've got trans people to hate. And they want that hate because it means they don't have to look at themselves, their own lives and choices. They don't have to stop and think that maybe everything they've built their identity around is empty, so they scream about "wokeness" and "transgenderism" as code words.

There's no serious, legitimate arguments against trans people being allowed to have the full protection of the law, to have full medical access, to have whatever gender they want on their driver's license. There's just the bullshit excuses to have someone to hate. There's not even a good argument about bathrooms, they're all built on bullshit too, and that's the one that's the low hanging fruit because it seems reasonable to people that aren't buying all the bullshit immediately, but aren't quite bright enough to think it through all the way on their own. Which, again, that's the majority, stupid people too drowned in lies and manipulation to bother thinking.

So, Don, if you've gotten this far, I know I went wide of what you asked, but it really is all related. It all comes down to the same thing in different faces over time.

For anyone else, I know this got a little ranty in parts. I know it is long enough to look a little crazed. IDGAF. This shit is patently obvious, it's not even a secret. The people that have been running the right wing of things for my entire lifetime and before have outright and publicly talked about it. One part of it, the "southern strategy" they brag about. It's infuriating, so I get ranty.

Dang, I didn't even think of that.

Hello friends! happy t-rex arm wiggle

Absolutely. All it takes is a competent script writer and director. Adapting a book to a movie is harder because you have to cut material for time. A series based on a book, you have plenty of time, so you can pretty much take the dialogue as written, and the rest is about set construction and costuming with whatever effects are needed.

It isn't like it was with game of thrones where the series wasn't finished. Even there, they diverged from the books enough that they didn't really need Martin the last two seasons if they wanted to diverge even more and ignore what he intended as the finale.

Well, yeah, she has a right to free expression.

We have the right to ostracise her and anyone espousing the kind of bigotry she expresses. That's up to and including HBO or it's affiliates

But, separate from that, her involvement is a disappointment on quality level. As much as I love the books and goddess movies, the woman is a mid tier writer. Which is still better than most people, but if she's influencing production decisions along her established works, then the new stuff will be just as flawed as the old because she's run out of new ideas and is coasting. She's neither necessary nor useful to a series based on an established set of books

I mean, we could also actually tear it down, but that's not going to happen, so I guess that's good advice.

Did they make a choice though? As in a fully informed, conscious choice unaffected by internal and external pressures?

That's the key to empathizing with addiction.

Most people don't set out to be addicts. They don't set out to OD as the goal of using. It's fair to say that most addicts started out either partying, or self medicating.

The party addicts tend to not realize how damn fast and hard addiction can set in. They know it happens, but it isn't real, it's impersonal and distant, because they also know that people really can just use a few times and not do it again. But each time gets harder, and they start needing it to feel good at all. It isn't done with intent, and they may not even be aware of what they're actually taking. People are stupid. They'll trust someone, and when they get handed a pill or a drink and the person they trust doesn't explain, but they trust them.

And even when it's someone arrogant that thinks they're the exception, that's still a very human thing.

For the ones chasing an escape from ugly reality, a way to feel good, no matter how temporary, sometimes the risk is irrelevant because to them, what they're trying to escape is worse than any of the stories they've heard. Self medicating mental health issues, or physical health issues, or to numb the pain of a life situation they can't escape otherwise, that's as human as it gets.

Empathy. It's also a human thing. We aren't required to feel it for everyone everyone all the time. If you don't feel it, you can't make it magically happen. But we all want it to some degree or another. We all need some degree of human kindness to stay sane in a society that keeps staying ugly over millennia.

So, when we see someone that's in a bad place, it's part of that, that we at least try to find empathy for them, if only on a transactional level where we would wish someone make that effort for us.

It is, however, not equally easy for everyone. The human mind and brain is a diverse thing. Some people are born with brains that simply can't empathize. Others can lose the ability. And there's also people that have trouble doing it without some kind of "trigger" that gives them a connection to the other person in a way they can understand. Some of us over empathize.

But, at the core of it, the reason we are expected to try is that none of us are immune to the ugly parts of life. Every single one of us is one post surgical dose away from feeling withdrawals. Every single one of us is capable of feeling pain so deep we'll do anything up escape it.

If you can't empathize, that's okay. Though going through the effort of rationalizing how others empathize would help you out a lot when dealing with others. If you make the effort to figure out how the same thing could happen to you, even if you don't feel sorry for the person, you'll have fulfilled your part of the social contract as regards the idea of "there but for the grace of the flying spaghetti monster go I", or "judge not lest ye be judged", or any other saying that boils down to recognizing that we're all just flawed beings doing the best we can with what we've got.

I dunno for sure, but that looks like something in the 400 grit range followed by steel wool.

It's a lot of work tbh. Enough so that I don't do it any more.

But, it does improve the cooking surface. You sand down and season with flax oil, and you've got a great surface that even eggs won't give you too much trouble cleaning up.

It doesn't have to be perfectly smooth, mirror finish. And some small pits are okay. No need to really grind the hell out of a pan, you just want to kinda even it out so there's less texture, with the end point being where you decide is good enough.

Back the last time I did one, I used an orbital sander with 200/400/600 progression, then hand sanded to 800, and it was more than smooth enough. Going past that is diminishing returns. I've seen people do a mirror finish and it wasn't worth the time imo. Even 800 is kinda extra tbh. You just don't want highly visible scratches.

Same as it does on a rough surface.

You get the oils polymerizing, which is going to stick to pretty much anything, no matter how smooth it looks. The surface isn't microscopically smooth, there's still roughness.

However, it wouldn't matter if it was perfectly smooth. The bonding between the iron and the oils isn't purely mechanical. It bonds on a molecular level, meaning that the little bits on the atoms of the polymerized oil make sweet, slippery love to the little bits on the atoms of the pan.

A smoother surface is actually better. You don't have as irregular a surface on the polymer, and there's less gaps where they contact the metal. Which, ideally, you'll be applying very thin coats and prevent gaps, but it's never a perfect process.

Sanding down a pan before seasoning improves the bond, improves the cooking surface, and makes it easier to season.

You ever use a stainless steel pan of some kind and have oil get solid-ish on it? It leaves that layer of brownish, maybe amber stuff that's slick and hard to scrape off. It's the same thing. You can polish stainless still to a mirror finish and that will still happen, and it'll still be difficult to remove.

When it comes to that, a rough surface is more likely to chip, flake, or otherwise fail.

Your best seasoned pan is going to be sanded smooth, then seasoned with food grade flax oil (though it is by no means the only option, it's the best drying oil that's food grade). You'll cycle it three to five times, depending on your freedom to do so. Then you'll have very low stick, heat resistant surface.

Now, nothing is perfect. If you can't get flaxseed, stuff like canola that's semi hardening will work almost as well (most of the time, you can't tell the difference until or unless you abuse the hell out of the pan). If you can't get that, any oil that's safe to eat will get the job done to some degree, so long as it's heat reactive at oven temps. Which, if you can't get flaxseed, the chances of being able to source anything that unusual isn't likely to begin with.

Pretty much, even if you know a model inside and out, you can still get scammed by fake pics. You'll eventually get a refund, but it isn't cool.

Self care is pretty much what you make of it.

But the key is that it is something that makes life more bearable, improves your situation, and/or makes you relaxed/happy.

However, it isn't work related, it isn't something that you do because you're obligated (because it ends up being a stressor eventually, even when it's something otherwise beneficial), and it isn't things that are just pleasure seeking like smoking weed, even though it may well fit other criteria. That last is because chasing pleasure ends up causing as much trouble as help.

But, yeah, if you have minimal responsibilities, don't have much work stress, and you're fulfilled by how you spend your time, you don't really need the psychological types of self care, though you might need more physical self care like exercise.