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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • Monument@lemmy.sdf.orgto196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneRide for free rule
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    15 days ago

    Honestly, no. I have mentioned it to my doctor, but for something that occurred once every 2-4 years from the ages of 9 to 22 (Oh, crap, I guess it’s been almost 20 years since the last flair up), they viewed it as a low priority when I got health insurance and got over my fear of asking for medical help in my early 30’s. (Cost reasons, not doctor phobia.)

    Which I get - “Hey doc, I have an allergy to something - I don’t know what it is and it hasn’t occurred in 10 years. What do we do about it?” They gave me the advice I was already following - which, 10 years ago, was to take Benadryl and record the ingredients for everything I ate, so we could try to figure it out. I will slip a line into the document I keep for my yearlies to ask after what is an appropriate replacement for Benadryl, however.
    Although, with my current knowledge and economic level, I’d probably just rush to the ER if anything above my chest swelled up. My insurance will blunt the cost just fine and I’ve got too much going on to choke to death.



  • What’s the consensus on the rules of the game for the chosen card?

    Would a Cards Against Humanity black card, which does not require mana to play, be playable? Would other players have to ‘respond’ with a card from their hand?

    If you get multiple of these (or recall from graveyard) can you play the card if you also bring in the activation mana/cost whatever?

    Is mana equitable across games? If you pull a card from a game that uses the same color mana as your deck, can you play the card? (For example, the game Not Enough Mana uses blue mana that is represented by a water drop.)


  • Monument@lemmy.sdf.orgto196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneRide for free rule
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    15 days ago

    Thank you. I appreciate the head’s up. And I appreciate that you’re out here spreading the word. We need folks looking out for others.

    I am aware of the risks, but I have a use case, as much as I don’t like that I do. I have an unknown food allergy that crops up randomly. I’m not even sure if it’s a singular food allergy or if it’s an allergy that only occurs when certain foods are combined.         
    In the situation above, my face swelled similar to how Will Smith’s face swelled in the movie Hitch (except it was my forehead/scalp). I was 17 and did not know what an anaphylactic reaction was at the time, and we were all so poor that we just did not go to the hospital. Fortunately, the last time it occurred was 15ish years ago (and we got the reaction before any swelling occurred), but I do still keep some around, just in case. It’s definitely not something I use normally.
    I hope that my daily allergy medication use (Allegra) will help stave off any future reactions.


  • Today I feel like telling you all some trauma because I’m avoiding work while I wait for Adderall and coffee to do their thing.

    Many years ago I was a highly ignored, heavily traumatized kid. Despite living in a fairly big metro area, I lived on a long dead end street that was accessed via a 4-lane road that was technically a highway. The side near to the highway had several businesses with no close homes along the highway, and the 7 houses on the street were deeper in. There were some kids my age and they also were mostly ignored and heavily traumatized.

    The neighbors parents were interesting. They were sort of like mine. Dad was blue color, an addict/drunk. Mom was a nurse. They weren’t financially okay as us. My dad had been given a successful plumbing business by my mom’s dad, but their dad drove a dump truck for a construction company. Their mom was an LPN (licensed practical nurse/lower paid nurse), and my mom was an RN (registered nurse - higher pay).
    Weirdly, our parents didn’t seem to get along.

    I always regarded their mom as being a better mom. She loved having kids, and really cared about her boys. And me, too, when I stayed with them. When she went to work, she packed lunches for us. At my house it was ‘find what you can.’ Anyway - their dad, though. He would spend his entire paycheck the day he got paid. Sometimes he’d buy something dumb - a new TV to set on top of the TV he’d bought just 6 months before, a bunch of fishing gear he’d use once before realizing he didn’t like fishing, shitty plastic chrome ‘upgrades’ for his car. But mostly, he spent it on booze. He even sometimes took us to the bar with him. We loved it - ordering virgin daiquiris at the American Legion and poorly playing pool at a table we could barely see over while he got intensely drunk. Then he’d careen down side streets to take us back home. He came across as jolly and even happy to most folks, but when his guard was down he was intensely angry, and very emotionally abusive. Once, and only once, in my teens, he even attempted to become sexually abusive, but apparently it is possible for two 14 year olds and a 13 year old to topple and hog tie a 500lb man.

    I’d already started to fall out with the boys by then. My life path had taken my different places. My parents split up when I was 6, and by the time I was 8, we lost the house, and my mom had moved across the country to escape my dad, who died maybe a year and a half later. We came back to the area and I resumed my friendship, but from a different part of the city, and different schools. The older brother, who I’d always been friends with had changed. He got mean. He started picking on people for fun. Started thinking being an asshole was funny. The younger brother became more of my friend. He was kind, but always tried to please folks. He kept getting traumatized by now not only his dad, but his brother.
    We hung out a few more times, but really, the last time I hung out with them was when I was 17ish. I drove over intending to hang out for a bit, but ate something that triggered an allergic reaction and wound up taking a bunch of Benadryl and staying the night. Their mom out to work a double overnight - I think I saw her in the morning before I left. At that point their dad had stopped working due to health issues. They had a girl there - 15-16ish, and apparently the dad was giving her his Vicodin, presumably in exchange for money (god, I hope it was money). She was gone in the morning before mom came home, but apparently she just hung out there while mom was at work and went into the nearby woods while she was home.

    Their dad died about 5 years later, and at the funeral, I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. I had nothing nice to say. There’s a lot more that I cannot convey in this comment to you, reader, nor that I can even fully recall, but I remember looking at this family with that deep well of experience and emotion. They were my childhood best friends. Two damaged people that really, really didn’t get a fair shake. Both boys wearing stained T-shirts because they didn’t have nicer clothes. Didn’t finish high school. Didn’t have jobs. And the mom, who loved them all, and never got supported.

    Leaving, I talked to the oldest. He said he was ‘working with’ a cousin that was showing him how to drive a big truck on the sly, so that maybe he could start driving dump trucks.
    We stopped at his car, and he asked me if I wanted to go drinking with him - he told me he was gonna get shiftfaced. It was a Tuesday at 11 AM.
    I politely declined as I read his bumper sticker - the first time I’d ever seen one - “Ass, Grass, or Cash, no one rides for free.”

    It struck me as really sad and appropriate.




  • So - I don’t think Firefox would be generating captions for PDFs on PDF creation.

    But of the major ways that PDF’s do get created - converted from text editors or design software, I know that Microsoft Word automatically suggests captions when the document creator adds an image (but does not automatically apply captions), and I believe that some design software does, as well.

    I think that, functionally, both suggesting captions at time of document creation, or at time of document read are prone to the same issues - that the software may not be smart enough to properly identify the object, and if it is, that it is not necessarily smart enough to explain it in context.
    By way of example, a screenshot of a computer program will have the automatic suggestion of “A graphical user interface” (or similar), but depending on the context and usage, it could be “A virus installer disguised as ___ video game installer.” Or “The ___ video game installer.” Between the document creator and the creation software or screen reader, only the document creator would really know the context for the image.

    Which is all to say that I think that Mozilla has the right idea with auto-tagging, but it will always fail on context. The only way to actually address the issue is to deal with it within the document creation software.
    But I wouldn’t be opposed to ML on those that can auto-suggest things or even critique how content authors write their descriptions.



  • Monument@lemmy.sdf.orgto196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneParty rule
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    2 months ago

    The actual food items I suggested were a bit of a joke, but the food science and baking store suggestion you offered are excellent.

    It looks like the closest fit for a baking supply store is a Williams Sonoma, otherwise I’ve got an hour+ drive of me. But it’s on the list for next time we travel to more populous cities!

    Edit: A local (hour drive away) baking shop has a pretty comprehensive website. I’ve learned that Vanilla powder exists and I might wind up buying edible metallic powders to put on things that shouldn’t be those colors.
    We’re doing a ‘super soft’ birthday for one of our dogs this year. My whole paradigm for decoration and (human) foods has shifted.


  • Monument@lemmy.sdf.orgto196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneParty rule
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    2 months ago

    But I’m old and I like to shop with my feet and ADHD fueled puppy-like enthusiasm. If the staff leaves me alone and there aren’t many people there, I’d wind up with a whole chemistry lab of barely regulated food additives.

    I’d have whole brunches with solid mimosas (agar), and fully cooked liquid eggs (I don’t know, but I’d do it. I’ll find something that prevents the proteins from tangling!). My friends would hate me.




  • Monument@lemmy.sdf.orgto196@lemmy.blahaj.zonerule
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    3 months ago

    If I had the capacity to remember the exact URL of a webpage I looked at 20ish years ago, I’d definitely not be working right now. Or anymore.
    I’d spend every moment that I’m not full of existential dread from the things I cannot forget sleeping on the comfiest bed that I could buy using the money earned through my horrible burden of unforgettable knowledge.


  • Monument@lemmy.sdf.orgto196@lemmy.blahaj.zonerule
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    3 months ago

    At some point before the healing brush and patch tools were available, I saw an entire porn gallery (heh, remember when porn came in galleries?) of pixel perfect stitches where someone had joined waists to waists, to create a bunch of concatenated top/top, bottom/bottom images in front, back, and front/back configurations of a naked woman.

    Because this was the early days of the internet, all I’d seen was gross, taboo, or unsettling stuff. I was sort of immune to it, but this was definitely my first “confused boner” situation. I still remember my absolute bewilderment. I was way more unsettled by that than goatse or whatever.


  • A colleague is one of those classic late start stories. He went to school late for a sort of niche field, and worked shitty job after shitty job, while applying everywhere, trying to break into his career.

    After he’d gotten his current job, one of the selection committee told him that they picked him because the ‘interests’ section of his resume said he “Likes plants and other green things.”
    He did not know that was in there. A few years prior, a friend/former roommate had added it as a joke, and my colleague never looked at that section because his interests didn’t change. He kept getting passed over for interviews until a huge stoner read that and thought it was hilarious, so they called him in for an interview, to see what kind of goof they were dealing with.

    He was pretty pissed at his friend, but without knowing how many places passed over him for that reason, he can’t define how pissed he should be. Plus he (mostly) really likes the job he got.