Things that are things.

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Re: Things that are things.

Postby jbobsully11 » Wed Sep 04, 2019 8:42 pm

It occurred to me that I hadn’t heard from that temp from my work since she left, even though I texted her last week. Apparently the message never sent. So... that’s fun.
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: Things that are things.

Postby cmsellers » Thu Sep 05, 2019 6:36 pm

The Atlantic has implemented a metered paywall. As with all metered paywalls, it's very leaky, and does nothing to prevent me from reading as many of their articles as I want.

It will, however, change my behavior in one way. Several people on TCS are not set up to automatically bypass metered paywalls, and so I make it a point not to use articles from WaPo or NYTimes when other options are available. My preferred alternative source was The Atlantic, because it's free and often has good in-depth analysis.

Until today, The Atlantic was, as far as I know, the only major, mainstream, non-television, US news source without any sort of paywall on their website, which means it occupied a niche, and I bet I'm not the only person who used The Atlantic's coverage disproportionately as a result. Starting today, however, I will no longer be linking to Atlantic articles unless The Atlantic's coverage itself is the thing I want to talk about.
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Re: Things that are things.

Postby cmsellers » Sun Sep 08, 2019 4:37 am

I've been wanting to try osmanthus for awhile, either in a tea blend or as a tisane. I figured it was hard to find in the US because osmanthus is a lot more expensive that artificial peach flavor; I certainly see plenty of peach-flavored teas, but don't drink artificially-flavored teas myself. But I like enjoy other floral teas: I love rose and jasmine and like lavender-flavored teas, so a flower that smells like ripe peaches sounded intriguing.

Well, it occurred to me "the Asian market probably has osmanthus or osmanthus tea, for cheaper than on Amazon," and it did (dried osmanthus, not osmanthus tea, which is a shame because based on my experience with rose teas, the result is far better if the tea was dried with the flowers). It was actually more per ounce at the Asian market, but I could get a smaller packet for a lot cheaper than a small packet on Amazon. I brewed some up with black tea, and really enjoyed it. Then I brewed a larger amount on its own, and found it underwhelming.

It seems that the reason Americans don't use osmanthus in tea very much isn't just the price. With jasmine or rose, if you can smell it in the teabag, you'll taste in in the tea. With osmanthus, the scent is almost overpowering, and yet the taste is ... extremely subtle.
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Re: Things that are things.

Postby NathanLoiselle » Tue Sep 10, 2019 11:42 pm

So this is a thing. So I'm shoving it into this thread 'cause I don't want to create a thread just for one post. But if others want to share then maybe the powers that be can create one.

Hi, I'm Nathan and I'm an audiophile.

I've got a Yamaha S-301 for an amplifier, a Denon DP-300f for a turntable and I use a micro computer that's really, really small. Seriously, I've had bigger shits. Anyways, I run a HDMI cable from the computer at 24bits/96kHz to the television which does a quick digital-to-digital conversion over to an optical cable which goes in the DAC on the amplifier. If I'm listening to records, well I don't have an external pre-amp. I just use what came with the amp.

So what do I test new equipment with? Well....
On the digital side I play Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" as a 16bit/44.1kHz and The Moody Blues "Long Distance Voyager" at 24bit/96kHz Flac. It seems to do the job as far as sibilance and volume changes go. Plus the bass at the beginning is great.
On the analog side I play Delerium's "Karma", Portishead "PNYC", Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here", and Massive Attack's "Mezzanine" for something more laid back.

I'm planning on getting me a Schiit "Modi 3" DAC though because I have no idea whether or not the DAC in my amplifier supports 24bit or not. I also want to get a Schiit "Mani" pre-amp for my record player because I keep hearing that external pre-amps are superior for vinyl. Both won't be user-facing though as they don't eat up much electricity and can stay on one preset for the rest of my life.

Anyways, there's my things that are a thing.
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Re: Things that are things.

Postby cmsellers » Thu Sep 12, 2019 3:30 am

So, I looked up an old song, and now I'm comparing covers. One of the covers is from a boy band, in 2009. Several of the top people commenting basically "like if you agree that music these days has nothing on [boy band]." I wasn't expecting to see "music was better in the 2000s" comments before the 2030s.
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Re: Things that are things.

Postby Pedgerow » Thu Sep 12, 2019 8:52 pm

Based on your other post, the boy band was Westlife, wasn't it? That was released in 1999, so it's not as bad as you think. I do believe it might actually have been #1 for the turn of the millennium.

Facebook recently reminded me of a post I made in 2014 about how scandalised I was to see the dreaded, "This was back when music was GOOD" comment on YouTube while listening to the admittedly good Say It Right by Nelly Furtado, released in 2006. That's a gap of just eight years, and still probably the shortest window I have seen for that comment.
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Re: Things that are things.

Postby JamishT » Sun Sep 15, 2019 1:45 am

Today, I had to tell my 30-something year old housemate that AIDs doesn't just magically develop from having gay sex.

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JamishT was a heck of a guy,
With a devilish twinkle in his eye.
With his hand-picked flowers,
And his feel-good powers,
He made all the girls blush and sigh.
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Re: Things that are things.

Postby cmsellers » Sun Sep 15, 2019 3:28 pm

The other day, I heard two girls gushing over Lily's chocolate, which if you're not familiar, is a stevia-sweetened chocolate, because it had "like half the calories of regular chocolate." I initially thought that was breathtakingly dumb, for two reasons, one that should be obvious to anyone, one that would not be.

Firstly, because if you replace sugar with stevia, a non-caloric sweetener which takes up less volume, you're getting more chocolate, which is basically pure fat, with twice the calories by weight. (Fat being more calorie-dense isn't actually a good reason to avoid it, but most people subscribe to the calories-in, calories-out hypothesis, since that's the one medical authorities all embrace despite nearly a century of experiments intended to prove it doing the opposite.)

And secondly, because sweet tastes promote the release of insulin, and if your body doesn't get carbohydrates with that insulin, you'll end up craving carbohydrates because you can't burn fat (from chocolate or your body) with elevated insulin levels, similar to the issue with diet soda.

But the second point isn't one most people are aware of. And as for the first point: I looked at Lily's nutrition information and it does, indeed, have just over half the calories of unsweetened chocolate by weight (it's going to be more like 2/3 for typical chocolates, but I'll say it's within the bounds of allowable hyperbole). Not because it's sweetened with stevia, but because the manufacturers also add substantial amounts of inulin, a mildy sweet-tasting soluable fiber, which is not believed to have any calories since we can't digest it.
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Re: Things that are things.

Postby NathanLoiselle » Mon Sep 16, 2019 6:56 pm

Turns out that I could have borrowed $5000 instead of $3000 and paid $2 less a month for a longer term period. Seeing as how I couldn't care about how long the term period is I'm going to the loan people to see if I can bump up my loan.
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Re: Things that are things.

Postby cmsellers » Mon Sep 16, 2019 8:03 pm

The Austin Public Library has a librarian-compiled list of "books we've been avoiding": classic books they've put off reading for various reasons.

I've read three and a quarter books on the list: Confederacy of Dunces, The Silmarillion (I may be one of the only people on the planet who likes it better than LotR), and Moby Dick, as well as starting War and Peace and getting bored to it 300 pages in. (For a long time, it was the only book I started and never finished.)

I object to the suggestion that Marie Kondo's book, being new and weirdly the only non-fiction entry on the list, and The Fountainhead, being an Ayn Rand novel, constitute "classic" literature.

I have no intention of ever reading The Fountainhead or Ulysses, both of which I consider literary masturbation of different sorts. I also have no intention of reading Swann's Way, considering that it's part of a seven volume series that doesn't sound that interesting to me. I also don't have any particular desire to read Kondo's book, though it's the sort of thing I might eventually read just to talk with people who are obsessed with it.

I probably should read Naked Lunch and A Clockwork Orange at some point, though, and neither one had been on my radar, so thank you, unknown librarians?
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Re: Things that are things.

Postby Absentia » Mon Sep 16, 2019 9:18 pm

I was supposed to read Moby Dick for school back in the day. Read a chapter, got bored, skimmed the "abridged" version, failed the test. I stand by my decision.
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Re: Things that are things.

Postby cmsellers » Mon Sep 16, 2019 9:38 pm

Absentia wrote:I was supposed to read Moby Dick for school back in the day. Read a chapter, got bored, skimmed the "abridged" version, failed the test. I stand by my decision.

I was supposed to only read certain chapters, but I read the whole thing, because that's the kind of student I was back before the school system managed to nearly destroy my love of learning.
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Re: Things that are things.

Postby jbobsully11 » Tue Sep 17, 2019 5:14 pm

cmsellers wrote:I probably should read Naked Lunch and A Clockwork Orange at some point, though, and neither one had been on my radar, so thank you, unknown librarians?

A Clockwork Orange was pretty good, imo. Stanley Kubrick left the last chapter out of the movie (if you've ever seen it), and I like it better with it in.
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: Things that are things

Postby cmsellers » Tue Sep 17, 2019 7:38 pm

Cap Metro has a new ad on the back of its buses. A longhorn steer with the caption "Don't steer around the bus. Cutting off the bus is dangerous."

I feel personally attacked.
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Re: Things that are things.

Postby NathanLoiselle » Tue Sep 17, 2019 9:34 pm

Don't you mean triggered?
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