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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • It’s bending the rules, since it’s a camping meal, but I have made it at home, too, since it makes a great depression meal. I got it from backpackers, who I’m pretty sure got it from prison inmates:

    The Ramen Bomb.

    Cook a crushed up packet of instant ramen noodles, maybe with a little more water than usual. Add like half a packet of instant mashed potatoes. You can also add a protein, like… chopped up Spam. Maybe some hot sauce or other fixings if you’re feeling fancy.

    I hated how much I enjoyed it. Granted, that was when I was really tired and hungry, but that hit the spot.

    Also, I’ve heard meals like the ones in this thread affectionately referred to as “glop,” by a fellow glop-enjoyer.



  • Oh, another one: anti-vaccination was pushed by health insurance companies to dampen public perception of government-run healthcare.

    Vaccine development and implementation fucking worked. If people were happy with the results, they might end up swayed towards publicly-funded healthcare. So… put a lid on that by whipping up a bunch of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Some folks will no longer see the vaccination programs as successful efforts to protect public health, but as a conspiracy to… do something. And instead of pointing to it as an example of a public healthcare program, you’ve first got to spend time defending evidence-based medicine, which takes up so much fucking time and energy, and ultimately won’t convince people who bored too deeply into that alternate-reality tunnel.

    It turned a public health initiative into a fucking tar pit, and now the once-free vaccinations cost over a hundred bucks if you don’t have insurance.


  • Paper straws were pushed by big corporate polluters to build a negative association with environmentalism.

    Plastic straws are single-use plastics, but seem unexceptional by those standards. It’s almost a meme that they’re being singled out like they’re the single greatest source of plastic waste, or uniquely damaging to ocean life.

    On top of that, there are way better ways of reducing straw usage. I’ve used bioplastics that seemed way better. You could redesign the lids. You can do the plastic bag thing and charge people a nickel for a straw or whatever. Hell, you could just not give straws with every drink, and plenty of people will just drink from their cups and glasses. Instead, we get paper straws, something that is so obviously a bad idea it sounds like a joke, or a metaphor for a useless invention. Often served with cups and lids made entirely out of plastic.

    So you get a bunch of people who have their drinks kind of ruined by a frustrating straw. It’s a small thing, but it’s just a little nudge away from environmentalism. You build an association with disappointment and inconvenience. Maybe it doesn’t cause a big sway, but it makes people maybe a little more anti-environmentalist than they already were, or just less passionate about environmentalism.




  • If you’re going to make simple syrup, use a stick blender.

    Firstly, it’s easier and faster than heating the sugar and water in a pot, which is the most popular method.

    Secondly, you don’t lose any significant amount of water to evaporation. That’s not a big deal if you make 1:1 simple syrup, but if you’re going 2:1 (which I prefer), you’re already very close to the maximum solubility of sugar in water at room temperature. Losing a few grams of water can make it supersaturated, which leads to sugar crystals falling out of solution over time. Not a big deal, but a little annoying.

    If you give it a try, bear in mind that you’re going to get a cloudy syrup at first. That’s totally normal, and it’s not undissolved sugar, it’s just air bubbles. They’ll float out over time.


  • This is especially true with generic medicines.

    The cheapest I can get Claritin in my nearest supermarket is 50¢—$1.12/pill.

    The store brand can be as low as 7¢—37¢/pill.)

    The CostCo version is 2 or 3¢/pill.

    All of them are the same. 10mg of loratadine, highly regulated by the FDA.

    They can differ with inactive ingredients, so maybe you’d like a syrup or something from a name brand. But it legally has to be the same active ingredients, in the same amounts, in the same forms.




  • And remember how they made a big deal about Bernie’s age in 2020? They asked for medical records, and even after getting letters from two or three doctors, that wasn’t enough. It was like the birthers all over again: when they got what they asked for, they moved the goal posts and wanted the long-form documents.

    Meanwhile, not a peep about Biden, who is Bernie’s junior by fourteen fucking months, as if that made all the difference.

    And then, four years later, it wasn’t an issue anymore. Just run the guy again.

    On top of that, the DNC would condescend to anyone left of center about electability.


  • Sometimes I think about how much art was never created because of capitalism. It either never got funded, or a potential artist never got the chance to make it, because just to scrape by, they had to spend too much time toiling to make some business owners money. It’s depressing.

    And, just to cut off one potential counterargument: I don’t give half of a shit how “good” that art would be. I’m confident there are spectacular works of art that never came to be, but even putting it aside, it’s all subjective. Some folks would have loved it, and the artists would have found value in making it. That’s more than enough, and a hell of a lot more meaningful than breaking your back working for a living so that other people can own stuff for a living.






  • And capitalist regimes. The Russian Federation was literally founded by a betrayal of a reformist movement in the USSR, and China consulted with Milton Goddamn Friedman on their economy, ending up with billionaires. I even saw .ml users crying about Russian *oligarchs" having their assets seized (“stolen,” as they said), and unironically citing Matt Taibbi. Not even “back in the day” Taibbi, but literally The Twitter Files. Using bought & paid for corporate propaganda to make their point.

    They’re just campists. I don’t want to run afoul of a “No True Scotsman” situation, but fuck, for people who seem to think they’re the Only True Socialists, they’re willing to drop socialism in an instant if it means they can be edgy dickheads on the internet.


  • Lianodel@ttrpg.networktoMemes@lemmy.mlA strong hunch
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    6 months ago

    Yeah, pretty much. It ties into the “white genocide” and “great replacement” conspiracy theories, where the mere existence of nonwhites is taken as violence. It also often blames Jews for orchestrating it. It doesn’t make any sense, but it appeals to paranoia and supremacy, and provides a scapegoat for literally any actual systemic problem.


  • Lianodel@ttrpg.networktoMemes@lemmy.mlA strong hunch
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    6 months ago

    At least in the contexts I’m talking about, and I’ve never seen it used in another, it’s really not that. It’s coming from talking heads fearmongering about nonwhites, portraying nonwhite immigrants as criminals, ginning up a “border crisis” narrative, and even calling it an “invasion.”