You are right, I completely forgot about Book Club! Shame on me. 😮

Thanks for reminding me of this! With having reached my limits with US politics, I’ve dropped all my podcasts for the last few months so I haven’t heard Margaret for a while now.

Margaret is great on every topic she covers, but as someone who isn’t trans, I feel she’s really helped me to have a better understanding about the internal and external pressures surrounding the subject matter. I’m sorry I still can’t really verbalize any of my feelings on it, but I’d say to anyone thinking that writing about trans people is written only for trans people, I don’t find this to be the case with any of Margaret’s work. I’ve never had the physical sensation of someone unlocking parts of my mind so frequently to things it couldn’t grasp before.

I’ve been wanting to find something to break up my power run of reading Discworld for the first time, and I think this would be a great book to do that with.

You dont wanna feed those things to animals you like! 😅

Rats can be expensive! They go for around $2-5 each, and it adds up really fast when you’ve got a lot of carnivores to feed.

It’s really tough anymore to post positive content here. It feels like spitting on a fire to put it out.

I’m from the US, but I’ve always tried to include everyone in my posts, at the price of looking ignorant every now and then when I get things wrong, but it’s nice when I’ve had people from across the world remark how they’re pleasantly surprised to see something local to them being covered by a non-local. I’ve learned so much in return from just having brief interactions with users from other countries, just by showing some genuine interest in them, their languages, and their home countries. But outside of my own posts, it’s hard to find a place on Lemmy where there doesn’t seem to be things looking to drive a wedge between us.

I used to be able to jump into random posts, even if it was something I wasn’t very familiar with, to try to get conversations going, but so many news/political posts just feel rigged to get people riled up, and I’ll scroll through and not find anything to interact with a lot now.

Plenty of people tell me that I’m doing something important by doing positive stuff here. I really like the small community we’ve got of people that regularly interact. It’s hard to feel like I’m making any kind of difference though. I’m going to show up as long as people are talking to me, but there’s plenty of times I ask myself why I don’t just devote this time back into music or my volunteer work. I’ve dropped all my news and politics podcasts at this point because I’m sick of hearing it all. I censor myself on discussing animal rights issues because I don’t want to add to the pile of negative stuff to worry about. I’ll keep at it the best I can, but a lot of people here are sure making it an exhausting effort some days.

I get bummed that the political stuff has really taken over. I find myself spending more and more time just working on my own content and answering people’s comments than browsing the other communities. It’s draining scrolling past so much stuff to find the fun bits, but I don’t want to just block it and not see how our platform is developing as a whole.

A lot of communities have rules that posts need to be titled the same as the source article, which, while it prevents editorializing, it also brings all those ragebait headlines here. Plus I’d like to see Lemmy users’ opinions moreso than an article I could just read myself. I’d probably prefer more of the political post to be thoughts/feelings and then discussion is backed up by decent articles rather than an article being the post and comments are just all steered back to a single, often inflammatory article.

If half our content is just reposted mainstream media, why would one expect our comment sections to look any different than the comment sections of those mainstream sites?

I just watched the first episode of the most recent series of Black Mirror and it was this too.

Implant had range limitations, premium tier to avoid you randomly shilling products, constantly increasing subscription fee, etc.

Summit is peak!

Just tried dry shampoo for the first time yesterday actually. I’m a male in my mid 40s who started growing my hair out about 2 years ago and it’s to my shoulder blades now.

I have electric heat, hard water, and somewhat dryish hair so I try to use shampoo just twice a week if I can help it, so as to strip a minimum amount of oil from my hair and keep it from frizzing all over. It works pretty well, but by day 3 it is pretty heavy and there are spots that look greasy and don’t feel great or look good.

I’ve been sick as hell this week and have been falling asleep at random times. So I woke up yesterday after falling asleep before showering. I had time to shower, but having long thick hair takes a long time to dry, and part of my work is outside, and since it’s around freezing here, I didn’t want to have a wet and heavy head of hair outside while I’m already sick.

So I looked in the wife’s rack of hair stuff and saw dry shampoo. I said if this isn’t what this stuff is made for, what is? And I shot my head all over with it. My hair was still heavy and not the best feeling, but man, did it look a ton better than it did before using the dry shampoo! In some ways it even looked better, as the heavier hair can style better, but it usually isn’t visually appealing, but with the excess oil absorbed, now it did look good.

It got me through the day looking kempt and professional, and while I fell asleep immediately when I got home again and still haven’t washed it, if I had to leave home this second, it’d still be passable. Again, it doesn’t feel like the best hair ever, but it will fool everyone else if need be.

So while teens may overuse it and it is no excuse for a shower, I don’t see how the owner of the hair would be fooled into thinking it’s clean instead of just dry and manageable. If the high school girls have gym or sports, I bet they would have some of this so they can freshen up after activities and to not look or feel gross while being constantly judged by other teens.

As a guy who had quarter inch hair for most his life, none of this ever made sense to me either, but now trying to learn how to care for long hair, it is such a complex thing! You’ve got to learn your body chemistry by testing all these things so you know how to keep your hair looking nice when it’s super hot out or humid or windy. Hair snags hurt, and frizz is a bitch if you’re trying to look presentable. So until you live it, try not to get too judgy. Using this stuff isn’t fun, but for people that want to have long hair, these products exist because people need and want them to make hair care better for themselves.

Anti War Quackers (Bangkok protests)

Anti War Quakers

I can’t help but tease, I am from very prime Quaker territory, so I see the mix up constantly. 😜

All in a day’s work, friend!

Tl;dr - Trump ruining environment and economy for the whole world, not just the US.

Didn’t see any new stuff besides some stuff from Newsom and the Pope about how it’s probably wrong to let people die and poison the planet.

Make sure both people get tested before doing the deed.

Not one for spontaneity, eh? 😄

“I’ve had a great night, what do you say we keep this night going?”

“Sure, swab yourself here, here, and here and spit in this tube, and in a couple days, if all goes well, I will be so down for that!”

I got a vasectomy when I was already in for other surgery, but condoms were a mild annoyance with a more than acceptable tradeoff. They’re ready to go whenever, it’s a no-go for some if you won’t use one, and it’s as much for my own protection as it is for the other person. I wouldn’t necessarily expect someone to take my word on it that I got it done right off the bat either.

If you’re out dating, I think it’s just respectful to have them available. Different people have different comfort levels, so one should come prepared to accommodate.

The latex free ones aren’t a bad idea either if you need to keep some on hand. My partner has an allergy so I couldn’t use regular ones. They were more expensive, but I actually thought they were better, and it was still a low price to pay, considering what I got in return. She carried her own, but after we continued going out I wasn’t going to make her keep paying for them every time.

I’m with you. I’ve tried it a bunch of times since so many people seem to like cucumbers, cucumber water, cucumber in sushi, cucumber gin, and whatever else. I don’t like pickles either. I just cannot cuke.

I used to be about the slashers, but now I like stuff that makes you use your imagination. It’s hard to make something that will scare a large group of people, but if it gets you to engage your mind or feelings to fill in the gaps, it fills it in with things you do find scary.

I just watched Weapons last weekend. I wasn’t expecting much, it sounded like a simple plot, but it really created a disturbing vibe that was creepier to me than the on scene deaths. It kept my attention throughout and though the ending went gorey, I think it would have been just as good without showing the result.

More of these guys want to keep the “official” post while dropping the “public” part…

Lol who knows? I mean, I’m sure he’s still better than we would have got with Oz, but that presidential run thing made me laugh too. You already lost half the people that voted for you, and as we’ve seen playing across the aisle isn’t getting anyone anywhere.

Yeah, I got Brian Fitzpatrick as my rep, the “#1 Most Bipartisan Member of Congress” for however many years now. Still votes with Trump 51% of the time, and it’s only on money things he’ll break with Republicans on, very rarely ever is it a moral thing.

Meanwhile Fetterman is polling better with Republicans (around 60% favorable) compared to with the Dems (around 50% favorable).

Want to come up with a compromise on farm aid or disaster recovery? Go right ahead. Compromising on genocide and using the military on US soil? You better not reach across the aisle on that if you want my support. Fetterman deserves to be judged by the company he keeps.

Oct 16 - Daily Beast

Top-ranking Democratic Party officials in Pennsylvania are gearing up to run against Sen. John Fetterman in a 2028 primary contest, according to a report.

Big names in the state who could well run against the increasingly embattled incumbent include House Representatives Brendan Boyle and Chris Deluzio, along with former Congressman Conor Lamb, Axios reports, citing multiple inside sources.

Axios added it was not clear whether Fetterman, who is understood to have ambitions of running for the White House, plans to run again for the Senate or the presidency in 2028.

Fetterman texted Axios saying, “enjoy your clickbait!” and requested “please do not contact” in response to follow-up questions. He also shared an article citing him as one of “the least Trump-aligned Democratic lawmakers in the state.”