southsamurai

On the fairbuds, I don’t own them, I’ve only used them on loan for a few days.

That being said, I didn’t notice any sync issues on YouTube, or the one movie I watched via HBO’s service.

Fairbuds.

That’s the current best Bluetooth ear buds with user replaceable batteries that can be found at your budget. But they’ll be used.

Beyond that, check out ifixit for their repairability reviews. But you won’t be paying 150 for anything else, even used. Lowest I’ve seen fairbuds go for is about a hundred, and they were in good shape. Lowest I’ve seen the repairable Sonys reach is about 200, used. And don’t ask about the bang & olufsen set, which is pretty much the best out there overall that’s repairable, though I’d have to look up that model.

With true wireless buds, you either pay for crap that’s useless when the battery fails (unless you’re seriously skilled with rebuilding such things), or you pay out the nose for stuff you can keep going. What really sucks is that the prices on the better ones that you can’t repair aren’t even lower than the repairable options.

Having seen people go through high priced buds in a year or two and then the buds essentially die because they won’t hold a charge, there’s no way in hell I’d ever spend more than about thirty on a set that I can’t swap them out without soldering. But you gotta pay up for the ones worth having, or be patient and be willing to buy used. Sometimes you can run across refurbished buds from repairable models as well, and they tend to hit about 3/4 of the original price.

Maybe…

I’m going to fuck it

I wasn’t in that first wave of fans.

But it was a massive shift that was partially driven by backlash against the pop of the era, and the pop/hair metal scene.

Since what the grunge bands in general, and nirvana in specific were doing was relatively unknown to the general populace, and that first wave of grunge (again, with nirvana in specific) being really good, and the first songs reaching for the whole wave of depressed realization of how fucked the world was getting from the generation that was in their late teens/early twenties then, it was the right thing at the right time.

Hell, I didn’t really like a lot of grunge at the time (and I’m still picky about it), but I don’t think you can underestimate how hard Smells like Teen Spirit hit. Even those of us familiar with the punk influences of nirvana could tell that shit was fresh. It was an explosion of a new expression of rock that hadn’t been explored in the public at large yet.

Yeah, it got vacuumed up and churned out by later bands as labels went crazy trying to shoehorn other bands into the style, or unsigned bands tried to copy it, but the first few years there were pretty exciting, even for a non fan just because it was obvious that a new genre was forming.

There’s times I regret that I didn’t click with nirvana at the time ( it took years for that to happen), but there’s also a good bit of satisfaction that I didn’t because when I did click with them, it was a powerful thing, and I could do a deep dive rather than having to explore their music one album at a time.

Typically, it’s done in stages, with exaggerated signals.

Whichever person is the “active” initiator can take a step by touching publicly open locations, which are places on the body that are generally considered available for touch by strangers to get their attention. In other words, shoulders and upper back

The receiving dancer then has the choice to rebuff by stepping back or otherwise indicating a no, and the initiator should stay at a distance

From there, the active party can move to dance specific open locations, like the lower back, very top of the hip, or around the back of the neck (depending on the type of dancing). Again, the receiving dancer can indicate disapproval and that should be respected.

From there, the two people will move closer together if there is going to be a sexualized component to the dance, with the likelihood of being so close that words can be detected via being spoken right into the ear. And/or, a pass can be made by either via a kiss, or hands moving to nonpublic locations on the body like partially onto the glutes, pectoral (when the receiving dancer is male), ribs under the arm and close to the breast (but not the actual breast, which should be reserved for after verbal confirmation of intent to become sexual, or when non verbal actions such as kissing give a high probability that such contact is acceptable/desired.

Now, it is also possible for the receiving dancer to become the initiator, especially with more assertive dancing styles where there’s a lot of body contact in the groin or gluteal regions. In other words, someone switching from dancing to grinding is usually a sign that things are going to become sexual eventually. But if there’s no switch in dancing style, you can’t assume. If the dance starts out with grinding, twerking, or other high contact dancing, they may well only be offering dance, so proceed carefully.

Nothing is ever guaranteed. Always be watching for withdrawal of consent and respect it, verbal or non verbal.

Also, that’s all generally true regardless of sex/gender. A lot of that was picked up via working at bars and clubs, which included gay and drag venues. When the music gets loud, people revert to bigger signals, and it really doesn’t matter what kind of genitals they have, or how they present gender. It really becomes about being an initiator, or a receiver of contact levels. Those roles aren’t static though! Initiator and receiver roles may switch multiple times during a single song, and over a night of dancing, it’s roles will switch since even the most passive receiver is going to make the decision whether or not things will turn sexual, and likely begin giving those signals.

It’s also the case that when both people are looking for sexual contact to begin with, there will be two initiators mutually escalating signals until there’s a possibility of juices on the floor. Literally, not figuratively. Some people will fuck on the dance floor.

Newcomers to club dancing can run into issues since they may not have an understanding of signals, and may not be aware that they can set boundaries freely without over reacting to what is generally considered an acceptable step towards sexual or a sexualized contact.

Nice! A good nutritionist is like gold for sure.

Eh, hold out for the nutritionist before you start fucking with your diet and exercise regime as it is.

But, yeah, it’s possible. It’s just a fuck ton harder than it already would be without them. What they do is fuck with your overall chemistry, which changes insulin sensitivity, the way glucose is managed, and satiety. So not only are you likely to not feel full as quickly, your body converts that food to fat sooner and faster, but slows down when and how fast it burns.

So you’ll need to be more precise with your intake tracking, and be willing to adjust on the fly, probably while having trouble feeling hungry even when you know you shouldn’t be. I’m lucky enough to have never needed them, but I had plenty of patients that did back when I was a caregiver, and the pattern of it is so common as to be the default with people taking antipsychotics.

But, like I said, don’t fuck with your current regime yet. The nutritionist is likely going to want you to track your intake precisely as part of the evaluation, and they’ll be better able to help if they have your actual baseline rather than what you think it should be. You’ve already cut as much as you should without specialist guidance.

It comes down to your shrink being partially right. Short term, a little weight gain is worth stability. You need time to work on the underlying mental health issues with the cushion the medications give. Get that in line before you start changing meds. The good news is that a nutritionist really can help you regain control of your body. Outcomes for people with access to that kind of specialist are not just good, but great. It can take a few months to get things dialed in, but the results are comparable to things like metformin, and are less side effect prone.

There’s been some fairly good research into the subject over the last decade or two, and it’s been reproduced and reviewed, so the chances are that the conclusions that your situation of staying on the current meds, and working on nutritional intervention is going to get you back to a healthy weight while also keeping the benefits of the medications.

Now, part of the regime is going to include the idea of CICO, but what people don’t realize is that CICO isn’t simple. It’s actually a pretty complex thing to get right, particularly when there’s exacerbating factors that can’t be changed, like a medication or condition that screws with insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism. When that kind of metabolic fuckery is involved, you can end up with an intake level that’s not sustainable and still not lose fat. So CICO almost always needs to be combined with other methodology to be effective.

But exercise is the other big factor, and the one that’s most effective in countering not just the weight gain, but in modulating the very factors that are causing the weight gain because it shifts insulin effectiveness back towards normal even without also changing intake.

Plus, you know, the exercise also helps with the stuff that people need the antipsychotics for in the first place, boosts other hormones and neurotransmitters, and just plain feels good across the board.

Which, in case you haven’t heard it, this isn’t in your head. The changes in your body from the medications is a thing. It’s extremely common and is not about willpower or any factor other than the medications. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone taking the ones you listed that didn’t put on weight, plus have spikes in cholesterol and triglycerides.

With all of that said, keep thinking long term. As much as it sucks to put on unwanted weight, it is temporary. With the plan you’re currently building with providers, you’ll get back in control at some point, likely inside of a year. And then you’ll be able to whittle it off again, and have relief from the psychiatric/psychological issues as well. In a few years, you’ll be so much better across the board that it’ll be worth it. But the next year or so is kinda gonna be a pain in the ass.

Man, the only time it’s too late to rain a dog is when it has dementia. Which sucks, not that they cease to be trainable, but that they get dementia; it isn’t fucking fair.

All you have to do is find the right reward, and break down the desired behavior into steps combined with signals.

You want a dog to sit, as an example, you find their magic reward. For the example, let’s stick with a food treat. You get the dog’s attention, you give a gentle push on their rear while giving the signal and when they get a little lower, you give the reward. Easy peasy.

You expand that by extending how far into the sit they get before they get the reward. Most dogs, you can have responding to a verbal sit command in ten minutes, and they’ll remember it for ages. Once they’re responding to a verbal command at all, give another signal with it, like a finger moving from pointing at them, then down. That way, they’ll be able to respond to visual signals as well, which is handy when there’s a lot of noise and they need to obey a command for safety.

It doesn’t even have to be a word or a gesture, you can do whistles, clicks, whatever. The key is that each command needs to be distinct, and short. Trying to say “hey dog, jump up into my arms” might eventually work, but it’ll take longer.

Which leads into training to get them doing something like that. Easiest is when they already display a behavior, like jumping. They jump up, you say “good jump” and give them a treat. Eventually, you say jump and they do it. More importantly, if you switch to only rewarding them when you give the signal, they’re less likely to jump in their own, which is nice when you want to stop a behavior.

All training is a variation of that, with complex behaviors needing to be broken down into small steps, like “sit”, then “sit up” when you want them to raise their front end off the ground after sitting. If you want them to go get a beer from the fridge, you teach them what beer is by first teaching “touch”, which is making contact with something on command, then having them touch a can and saying beer. Then you have them go to the kitchen. Then to the fridge. Then pull the rope, then get the beer out. Eventually, you chain the commands, and they learn to do it all when you tell them to “fetch me a beer”. What’s really fun is when you extend that and get them to bring one to whoever you point at, or to someone whose name they know. This example here isn’t structured perfectly, it’s just to give the idea.

Timing signal, behavior, and reward is the key to all of it. Works on humans too, btw.

But you never need to use negative reinforcement at all. To the contrary, doing so delays training, and makes it harder. All positive, all happy, all reward based. You can get the dumbest dog on the planet to follow basic commands with the right reward and some patience.

Now, food rewards tend to be the easiest. They’re portable, they can be used almost anywhere, and most dogs respond to a treat enthusiastically. But our isn’t the only possible reward, nor will it always be the magic reward for every dog. Sometimes play is the magic reward, sometimes it’s praise or touch. But once you find the thing your dog wants the most, give it to them regularly and connect it to behaviors, and they’ll learn fast.

My little girl? She was amazing. She was trained to go get a treat, bring it to you, give out to you, and wait until you gave it back before eating it. Took a week. But, if you said “go eat a treat”, she would go, get one treat, bring it to where she could see you and then eat it. If you said to bring treats, she’d bring the bag and give it to you, prancing the entire way since she knew it was play/training time and she’d get lots of treats.

She knew the names of every toy she had. She would go to the box and bring whatever you asked for, then “clean up” at the end of a play session by taking all the toys to the box.

Which, that’s going off topic, but I can’t talk about dogs without thinking of her, and the two year date of when she was put down was not that far back, so I’m missing her extra hard lately. She was best girl. Fifteen years of love, and I hope the best girl or boy you’re asking about brings your family just as much joy.

I mean, arm and train. That’s what it always boils down to.

It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to prevent a takeover, resist one that’s underway, or are attempting to serve as a resistance after a takeover, there is never any other answer.

If each and every person isn’t ready and willing to fight, then it’s already over before you start getting to organize. That means being armed, training to use those arms, and being willing to use them if it becomes necessary. Anything else is a circlejerk.

Nice to see someone else respect the perfection that is the Reuben :)

It’s a toss up, but we have one chicken that prefers salad (as in leafy greens) as a treat over grains of any kind, even corn. The other is definitely a grain lover though

Hmmm, favorite is hard to pin down since there’s a discrepancy between pricing, availability, time to make, etc.

Like, I’m a pb&j fanatic for sure, but it isn’t the sandwich I enjoy the most when eaten. But, if I could have things I enjoy more, more often, would that change? I don’t really know.

That being said, I kinda doubt you meant anything that simple.

So, ingredients.

First is sourcing some good, thin sliced corned beef, with pastrami as an acceptable alternative.

Good sauerkraut. The exact type is variable, since what’s good kraut is so relative. I prefer a Bavarian style seeded kraut.

Rye bread. This is where you have the most freedom since any rye bread will get the job done acceptably, but go after fresh, and ideally seeded rye. If rye isn’t something you can handle, a good sourdough will work as well, but it isn’t traditional.

You’ll need spicy brown mustard, which isn’t traditional, but it improves things.

Then you get into dressing. Originally, it was russian dressing, but thousand island has kinda become the default at many places that make a Reuben, and it’s just as good. Just don’t cheap out with store brand. You want something thick, and the cheap stuff is too runny, and since beef is expensive, why fuck around?

Cheese, the only option is swiss. Aged is best, but as long as you aren’t cheaping out, go with what you like.

Now, you get butter and get it soft.

While the butter is softening, get out your skillet and get it up to medium heat. Then throw the corned beef in. Yup, heat that beef. Don’t cook it, but let the edges brown a little and all of it heat up. Do not microwave it, just skip the step if you object that much.

As that’s finishing its process, get your first slice of bread, and lightly butter. Get your cheese and condiments ready.

Once the beef is just browned at the edges, pull it and slap the first piece of bread in. Apply cheese, then a heaping dose of kraut. Apply dressing. Allow that to progress until the cheese juststarts to melt.

As that’s ongoing, apply mustard to your other piece of bread, and get your beef into a neatly managed stack.

Once the cheese is starting to melt, the kraut will just be picking up heat. Let it sit for a bit before peeking under and checking the browning of the bread. Once it’s almost there, place your beef. Then the bread slice, then butter said bread.

Remove the sandwich with a sturdy spatula. Place a small plate on top, then flip. Pick up the sandwich on said spatula and return to heat.

Why not flip? Because unless you’re way more nimble than me, you’re going to have kraut spillage, and maybe beef as well.

Why butter the bread when you’re just going to put it on a plate almost immediately? Because when you spread butter, it gets into the crumb better than when you put butter in the pan, let it melt, and then put the sandwich on it. You end up with a deeper browning, but not the kind of slightly bitter browning you can get when the butter is melted all at once. The butter that’s in the crumb melts out slowly, keeping the overall browning to the surface of the bread.

Yes, this does mean the bread is a little more buttery. If you think that’s a bad thing, then do it your way, you poor, sad, no-butter enjoying fool.

Now, just let the bread brown slowly. If you have the heat high, you get well done bread and a barely warm pile of kraut in the middle. You keep the heat to medium high to medium, your the the same butter toasted bread, but you don’t risk over cooking it, and the heat is even throughout the sandwich.

Watch the sides of the sandwich. When the cheese starts dripping a little from where it started, you’re probably close to the meat side bread being a golden brown. So check it at that point. After that, just brown to your preferences, and pull the sandwich when done.

Let it sit on the plate while you get a pickle and whatever side you think your belly can hold, but will end up just sitting there uneaten because a Reuben is two meals, no matter what size it looks. But that pickle is going to serve to cleanse your palate between bites, perhaps every other bite, depending on how big you made the sandwich.

Obviously, this pickle should be a kosher dill, quarter sliced.

Why not have the pickle ready to go? Because that half minute to minute lets things rest. Even bread benefits from a brief rest after pan cooking. But it’s a small rest, nothing like with whole cooked meats. Just enough for the surface of the bread to even its temp out so that the outside is just toasty enough. The difference between resting and not is minimal though.

Unless you’re a Reuben obsessed freak, you might not even notice the difference from one sandwich to the next, unless you make multiple, time the rest and test at intervals to estimate the time for your preferences. Which, I guess would mean you are a Reuben obsessed freak. But the difference, no matter how tiny, is there.

Would most people give a flying fuck about the exact steps in order, and what tiny changes they make to how each flavor presents on the tongue, how the mouth feel shifts when the meat is between the kraut and cheese, or the dressing is used as a spread on the bread, etc? No, probably not. But they’re philistines, and are not worthy of a truly great Reuben ;)

I am always on the right side of any discussion. Otherwise I wouldn’t be on that side.

I mean, nickelback is a pretty good band.

Maybe even the best metal band ever

Yeah, it’s the real barrier to graphene for me. Pixels kinda suck as a primary device.

That at any time I want, I can opt out.

I don’t have to stay here and put up with the bullshit if I don’t want to.

That’s also a possibility where I could do something useful by taking someone else out with me, if I can manage to get it done.

You have no idea how freeing it is to be okay with death. When you cease fearing it and look at it as a welcome friend, everything changes.

Now it is important to realize that this is not a desire to die. It’s simply accepting that death is inevitable, and that it is possible to choose when and how I die, if that’s something that seems useful. Life isn’t inherently sacred, there’s no special glory in not dying, there’s no particular benefit to sticking around other than more of the same that’s already happened.

This means that every day is a choice. It’s something I own. I have alternatives. We all do, but I’m aware of that fact in a way that makes even the truly horrible much less impressive.

Again, this is entirely different from wanting to off myself, it isn’t depression. It’s just the way I see things.

Well, tbh, the world is an ugly place. The kind of friend you would kill or die for, and would do the same for you, that’s a powerful thing.

And yeah, dude was pretty fucking chilling. Loyal as it gets, but definitely one scary motherfucker. Strangely, as broken as he was, a really great dad and husband. I once saw him whack a guy in the teeth with a bottle over a spilled beer, but he cried like a baby when his kid was born. Which is a whole story on its own tbh.

It kinda depends.

Men can be incredibly intimate friends, sharing everything, having deep emotional bonds, and doing so in complete stereotype breaking ways like not making jokes of things, or playing it off, and being fully present and supportive directly.

It is not, however, the most common way men express friendship. Like, I’ve had male friends that would be ready to kill someone with me, but wouldn’t even think to offer a hug. I’m not even exaggerating, I had a bad breakup once, and a very good friend watched me cry, and asked me if I wanted to go kill her. He wasn’t joking, he said he knew a place we could bury her where nobody could find it, dead faced serious.

Which, tbh, did shock me out of crying.

But you’d be surprised how supportive men can be. Most of my friends over the years were not afraid to hug, to listen, and talk. It isn’t all blank faces and pats on the back

Then again, I tend to develop friendships slowly and value people that are emotionally open.

I’m not knocking the kind of friends that will give you a listen, offer you a beer, and then take you into the game room to blow up digital enemies. Or the ones that’ll get you drunk and let you cry it out that way. Or any other expression of support. Because a lot of men, that’s the kind of support they actually want, and some need.

See, there’s a certain degree of the whole stereotype of men not wanting to show emotion that isn’t just patriarchal bullshit. There’s still a connection to that, but it isn’t the only reason we stay as self contained as possible. Sometimes, if you let shit out at the wrong time, in the wrong way, it gets out of control. So having a buddy that’s going to stay calm and by doing so help you keep your shit together as you process in a healthier way, that’s as valuable as someone that’ll hug you and let you fall apart.

A lot of men, they’re also going to be your biggest hype man. The same dude that will stone faced listen and then pat you on the arm can be the one that tells you you’re a fucking boss, so don’t put up with that shit job, he knows a guy that can recognize your potential, or will drive your ass around town finding a better job, or give you a couch to crash on while you’re broke in between jobs.

The expression of friendship may not always look intimate, and it may not fit the definition of it being based on communication of personal thoughts and feelings. But sometimes you don’t need that kind of expression because you just get each other and words would devalue the connection.

Me? I’m a lucky motherfucker. My best friend is one of those guys that can do it all. His husband is pretty much the same, and also someone that’ll wrap you up in his arms and hold you up when you’re falling apart, and they’ve both done that for me. The guys from my support group are also the kind of friends that if you call one of them, all five of them show up on your porch ready to get you through whatever it is.

I try to be a good friend to all of them too. I would literally kill for my best friend and his husband. No doubt, no hesitation, there would be bodies on the ground if anyone ever goes after them. Last time someone laid a hand on my friend, it didn’t end well for them as it was. I’m also willing to drive my ass across three counties in the middle of the night when someone is in crisis, just like they are.

Men can be very intimate, in ways you wouldn’t expect. The key is to accept them as they are, and to recognize their expression of intimacy, friendship and love. You do that, and as long as they’re a decent person, you’ll be fine.

The younger guys are usually better at the emotional openness than us guys from gen-x and earlier, but there’s never been a complete lack of that kind of intimacy from men, it was just rarer. But us old farts have learned too. My dad is much more of an emotional connection to his friends and family than he was twenty years ago. But, there’s the flip side that some of the younger guys push the emotional intimacy too much, they treat it as a kind of mandatory thing rather than as something offered freely.

You asked about men, so that’s where I’m leaving it, without comparing it to women, but there are differences there, as well as similarities.

It depends.

Part of what makes a cologne or perfume really work is how it interacts with your own body.

There have been “tests” that indicate some do better than others specifically for attraction, but I’m dubious about the reproducibility.

In any case, I have a few that I receive consistent compliments on, particularly from women that ended up doing more than just sniffing me. From men too, as far as that goes, though none of them did more than sniff since that’s not my orientation.

The single most significant one has actually had strangers sniffing at me in places where you wouldn’t expect anyone to sniff you. Lagerfeld. Their standard cologne. It hasn’t been a month since a lady got uncomfortably close to me and said I smelled so good. My wife calls it the panty dropper. My dentist asked me what I had on back when I first started going to him. He wears it now, but it smells a little different on him.

I started using that back in high school. I had been doing the usual teenage boy stuff. Old spice, brut, avon brands, basically junk (except for one of the Avon, but I’ll get back to that). But my grandmother had one of those hyper sensitive noses, and started complaining about not being able to breathe through her nose and got involved in my scent choices lol.

Lagerfeld was my uncle’s cologne, that my aunt had picked out for him. She recommended Lagerfeld for me, and out of the various types they got me on a shopping trip, it was the one that I loved. It’s an amazing scent by itself, but on me it really is great, it takes on this extra woody note with a hint of musk that isn’t there in the bottle. I really could tell a page of stories about being sniffed and followed around when wearing it, it’s fucking crazy.

Anyway, it didn’t bother my grandmother’s nose, and everyone liked it. The girl I was dating at the time made note of how good or was compared to the junk I’d had before.

I have met a few guys over the years that it didn’t smell right on, but none where it smelled bad unlike some popular scents like polo that can end up smelling like cat spray on some guys.

Now, back to Avon. They have a scent called wild country that is very spicy. It really is a tad too heavy overall, but if you go light with it, spraying into the air and walking into it, then moving as it dries, it can be nice. There’s hints of amber, sandalwood, maybe some cedar in there too. But it’s mostly like allspice to my nose, right out of the bottle. It was a runner up with my grandmother, but if I went too heavy, it was all she could smell.

There’s always cool water. It gets a bit over citrusy on me for my preferences, but not offensively so. And I’ve never smelled it on anyone where it smelled bad at all. It’s a bit cheesy because it got too popular and every frat boy would bathe in it, but if applied properly, it’s a fairly clean scent.

Aqua di Gio is one that’s been reliable over the years for me. Not my favorite, but sometimes you want a change just for the heck of it. It’s floral, with hints of citrus. On me, it ends up muted, like it’s been sitting on a shirt in the sun all day and is about gone. But I’ve smelled it on other guys over the years, and it tends to hold its own scent more than most, so it’s one I tend to recommend guys try out if they’re having trouble with cologne not smelling right on them.

But, again for me, Lagerfeld tops everything. To an extent that I sometimes won’t wear it out. My wife isn’t the jealous sort, but even she gets annoyed when there’s one of those extra effective moments of it. And I’m not actually a big fan of being touched by strangers, which has happened before because of the scent (also my beard, and also my shoulders. Women can cross boundaries about that kind of thing where men wouldn’t. Like, I’ve never had a dude cross the line and touch my beard, but I’ve had a double handful of women do it over the years).