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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: May 14th, 2023

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  • Sort of.

    I was making a gigantic batch of mead. Like 5 gallons of it, boiling away merrily. I carefully prepared my glass carboy ahead of time and poured the must (aka: that-which-will-be-mead-after-yeast-farts-in-it) into my carboy. This was fine. All according to plan.

    The bucket of ice and cold water I added to the sink to cool it down faster so that I could throw the pitched yeast into it… also according to plan.

    What was not according to plan was a gunshot sound going off, shards of glass shooting through the air like a grenade, and honey water cascading out over the edge of my sink all over my floor.

    I’ve never felt more broken.



  • Sure did, I think it was part of a bunch of tests we had to do for the… Presidential Fitness Award or something?

    It was done in Elementary school, so Fall 87->Spring 93? I have no idea if they’re still doing any of that crap now though.

    I do remember it being the neatest dang thing because our school had like this entire wall of collapsible gym equipment that folded out like a playground with like 2 or 3 story monkeybars and gigantic poofy mats at the bottom, and you better believe some kids fell off.

    The more I think about it, the more I suspect they don’t let them do that anymore







  • ohai, a fellow bacon maker!

    i make 3 sides at a time and freeze the lot in vacuum sealed bags, about a pound or pound and a half in each. i leave them unsliced and cut what i need as i need it, resealing the vacuum bag each time.

    my recipe is:

    per pork belly:

    • 186g brown sugar
    • 9g black pepper
    • 78g kosher salt
    • 16g apple spice rub
    • 32g curing salt

    getting even slices is a pain so i actually cut the belly in half length wise prior to curing for a week. i find it much easier to get uniform, super thick cut slices that way. 3 sides is enough to get my and my extended family’s households through most of a year!

    this is the last batch i made, before settling on cutting it in half down the middle. applewood smoked


  • My own experience in life makes it reek a lot like mental health issues in those who are antinatalists.

    I mean, is that not a good enough reason not to have kids?

    Assertions I’d like to make, in no specific order:

    • Yes, my retirement might not even happen because of falling birthrates.
    • We live in a world of finite resources and an imperfect method of distributing them.
    • It’s only going to get worse, especially with climate change.
    • If we don’t have a population contraction voluntarily now, eventually we’re going to have one involuntarily later, as people turn to force.
    • Wars over constrained resources are an end in and of themselves. It doesn’t even matter if you gain control of other resources; if you win, you get more resources to buy your people a little more time. If you lose, you got rid of a lot of people who need and want things.

    These problems are all solvable. These problems are also not plausibly going to be solved, as those who have will do their level best to turn away from those who have not. We have literal centuries of evidence neatly showcasing just how selfish our systems are, and how resilient to change they are.

    You can absolutely have as many kids as you want. I personally think it’s myopic, as you’re forcing someone else to deal with these problems and you didn’t even give them an option - and by the time they’re old enough to understand the magnitude of the problem, they’re in too deep to get out. It just screams of selfishness and duplicity to me. But, I mean, I’m still friends with omnivores - hell, I’m one myself - being selfish and inconsistent is kinda fundamentally what humans are, so it’s not like my shit doesn’t stink too.

    Edit: I should also note that the one reason I allow myself to eat animal products is because I’ve said “well, I’m not having kids, so I’m just a temporary problem, not an ongoing one”