sappho [she/her]

They made it so much worse. Essentially any person you encounter (the language says “occupant” of a public or private space iirc) can legally require you to remove your mask.

Ooblets. It is the game equivalent of a warm hug. Charming, polished, anti-capitalist.

I don’t know about Temu but I use AliExpress frequently in lieu of getting the same item from a reseller on Amazon. Over the years I’ve had a couple of things just not show up ever, but that’s rare - most of the time everything goes as expected. I tend to pick items that have photos from reviewers, and I don’t buy stuff that goes into my mouth/otherwise enters my body.

The Forest for sure, assuming that magical deep rest works even on my ME/CFS. Can’t do any of the others without my health anyway

If I wasn’t sick, though, I’d pick the shop. For stress relief sometimes I enjoy making massive wishlists of items I never actually buy, and this is like the upgraded version of that. Just seems like it’d be fun to wander and marvel and gather and choose… Plus it’s the one that is most likely to be helpful to your outside life and other people you care about.

I feel this is the first of many laws like this. I haven’t felt this deeply crushed, hopeless, and afraid for a very long time. It’s hard to keep going when your life is so small and everyone in power is bent on making it even smaller. I don’t know how I will do it, and sometimes I wish I wouldn’t keep trying.

The single best thing you can do to ensure you’re protecting yourself is to do a home fit test. Surgical masks, KN95s, N95s have generally the same kind of filtration layer; the essential difference is the fit. Is it sealing on your face with <10% leakage, even when worn for long periods and while you speak and make facial expressions? You can’t really know this for sure unless you do a fit test.

It is pretty cheap and easy to do a DIY fit test.

Here’s a video that explains how to do it with a trash bag, some Splenda, and a $7 nebulizer.

Here is a written guide.

There’s a source control version of the Eclipse with no exhalation valve. One could also just cover the exhalation valve with either something impermeable or the electrostatic filtration layer scavenged from a medical mask or respirator if needed.

Other elastomerics that are popular these days:

MSA Advantage (speech diaphragm, with source control)

3M Secure Click (speech diaphragm, great feature where it auto-seal checks for you, no source control)

Honeywell RU8500 (speech diaphragm, no source control)

FloMask (low profile, good speech audibility, source control)

EnvoMask (low profile, source control)

It also just isn’t true that humans are the only creature that shows empathy. We’ve observed altruistic and empathetic behaviors in lots of animals, and I think anyone with a pet would argue they can love

I feel the same way, but I think for most of these people it’s actually about the social rewards/ego strengthening effects and not the material boons. Like, imagine if the constant drumbeat of capitalist society that tells you “you’re disposable, you’re subhuman, you’re nothing” was actually whispering the opposite in your ear. “You’ve won. You’re better than all those wretched people. You are justified, you are sanctified, you made it, you’re gonna live forever.” Like that kind of external motivation and validation is not a recipe for true happiness, but I have to imagine it feels damn good to have all of society’s messaging and all the people you know pretend that you are some elevated class that actually matters.

Ugh, this gets right to a massive pet peeve of mine regarding mainstream climate change coverage. This relentless fucking fixation on having hope, the absolute strident necessity that we all feel the “correct way” about what approaches us. It’s toxic positivity. It’s emotional policing.

All of these people are terrified of death and they have no idea what hope even is! Yelling at some teenager grieving the destruction of the biosphere, “Be more optimistic! Look at the cool tech!” - it’s not just ineffective, it’s the literal opposite of helpful.

Hope isn’t optimism! Hope isn’t believing that we will win. Hope is when you’ve gone fully into despair and then find yourself, somehow, still alive there. This facade of positivity they call hope will break at the first sign of stress; that’s why they push it so hard, insisting we all perform optimism as well, propping up their fragile feelings for them. I just want to shout it in their faces: You can’t have hope without death! You can’t have peace without grieving! Fuck you, start weeping!

Possibly there is something about the beer that you’re reacting to. Like, beer has gluten in it. If you have a sensitivity to gluten you get an inflammatory reaction, and a hangover is a inflammatory response too, so it might just feel like a worse hangover instead of a more obvious gastrointestinal sensitivity.

There is a major oversight here that precludes proper representation. Chocolate is not a type of milk, it’s a characteristic of milk.

Sincerely, a chocolate almond and chocolate soy milk enjoyer.

I do this too and I think it’s great. I still have my screenshots from my 3DS, and seeing my old Animal Crossing town is really nostalgic.

I’ve had similar thoughts about the popularity of the carnivore diet. There are several kinds of gut issues (SIBO, MCAS, other kinds of dysbiosis and sensitivities) that leave meat as one of the easiest things to digest and least likely to trigger symptoms. Especially with uncontrolled COVID spread these days, because it has the ability to cause all of these issues - I think there’s tons of people with unrecognized chronic health problems who might find relief fasting/on carnivore essentially because of the elimination diet aspect.

She adds that “fad diets are very unlikely to take off in societies where there are food shortages or food insecurity.”

lil bit of foreshadowing for the coming decade

I used to fast regularly and it made me feel great. Turns out I had celiac and my body was just relieved I was taking a break from poisoning it

I’m really sorry for what your internal mental/emotional landscape must feel like. That is a brutal amount of shame/grief to be carrying around. I mean this genuinely, I hope it improves for you.

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For me it’s cost, convenience (not having to remember to buy something regularly), less waste - but I also use hypochlorous for other household disinfecting so making large quantities is useful to me. If you’re just doing skincare with it, I can see it making sense to buy it premade, especially at first when you don’t know how much you’ll like it. Though I will note that, while the information can be intimidating at first, once you make it a couple times it’s extremely simple going forward. Now that I know the ratios of vinegar and salt I need for my own machine, I just dump things in and run it and it’s good every time without having to make any adjustments.

It’s the most effective single chemical I’ve used for acne and I’ve tried a lot of stuff!

I bought a water electrolyzer from Amazon. (You can also apparently make your own but I haven’t tried.) Fill it with distilled water, add vinegar to adjust pH (important, otherwise you can accidentally make bleach), weigh out a couple grams of non-iodized salt, then run for like 15-30 minutes and bam. If you’re using it on your face you should definitely get chlorine test strips to make sure it’s not too high ppm.

It gradually loses efficacy and reverts to water after a week or two, so I make more regularly. I put it in a mister bottle and spray it on my face multiple times a day. It’s refreshing and doesn’t seem to cause any irritation, even when I use it a lot.

Whether or not sunscreen is needed indoors is kinda complicated. Here’s a good blog post breaking down the science about it