• 0 Posts
  • 66 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 17th, 2023

help-circle


  • A lot of people are afraid of new things they don’t understand. The hope is that people realize that the fear is irrational and listen to experts in the relevant field.

    That would be me, highly reluctant to try the new possibly risky thing until many other people have done it. But I DO realize my fear is (mostly) irrational, so after a bit I gather my courage and do the thing anyway. For covid mRNA vaccines, I skipped the first round, and watched the news carefully for word of people dropping dead. It didn’t happen, so I caught the second round of vaccines in my area about a month later. I was still afraid, but considered it my civic duty to reduce the spread to the greatest degree in my ability. And since then I’ve got every “booster” I was eligible for. As an old person, I’m eligible among the first, lol.

    I’m not convinced there aren’t some under reported risks to the vaccine. But I still consider it my civic duty to help prevent the spread of something much riskier, covid.










  • Personally, I feel it’s the proper job of a mod to decide what kind of a community they want to foster, establish their rules to reflect those goals, and enforce accordingly. Not every online space has to be a wild frontier allowing the worst of online behavior. Furthermore, any person who wants such a wild frontier community on reddit or here is certainly free to make that community. If enough people enjoy hanging out with that behavior, then your community will be a success. And THAT is actual freedom of speech: make your community the way you like it, and see how many other people want to hang out with you. I promise, if I visit your community, I won’t complain about being offended or aggravated.

    Most of my experience with people complaining about lack of freedom of speech have tried to force their wild frontier self expressions onto spaces where civil speech is enforced or the topics to be discussed are tightly defined.




  • Both washer and dryer can cause shrinkage, but the dryer will cause more. Also natural fabrics will shrink more (by far) than polyesters. To your comment “I’m not gonna handwash. That’s just too much.” Well no one can blame you for that. But it’s still true that the gentler you wash your clothes, the less shrinkage you’ll get. It’s a balancing act, how much effort you’re willing to put in vs how long you want your clothes to last.

    Personally I’m a natural fabric addict, there is very little non-natural fabric in my wardrobe. And I also do hardly any hand washing, but not zero. I often use a gentle cycle on my wash machine (top loader, sadly). Any non hand-wash garments that I still want to protect go in a garment bag on the gentle cycle, and do NOT go into the dryer. The bulk of my wardrobe gets dried but on low heat, and pulled before it’s quite all the way dry, because a lot of shrinkage happens as the garment goes from barely dry to fully dry. In particular my knits get the low temp dryer, and also any clothes which I consider semi-delicate, particularly well loved or barely big enough.


  • I had never heard of ego depletion, and after looking it up frankly I think, outside of psychology, the idea is at best misinformation, to the point of disinformation. Not something to incorporate into your life beliefs. From Wikipedia;

    Ego depletion is the controversial idea that self-control or willpower draws upon a limited pool of mental resources that can be used up. When the energy for mental activity is low, self-control is typically impaired, which would be considered a state of ego depletion.

    As a self sufficient Boomer, that sounds too much like shooting yourself in the foot. Maybe it’s a symptom of a mental disease/weakness, which is why it might be useful to psychologists. Maybe the ego needs to be repleted, if it’s depleted. But rather than believe you start the day with a limited amount of will power, start your day by giving yourself a boost. Tell yourself what you can do, rather than what you can’t.

    So I stand by my original comment, flippant as it was. Don’t buy into bullshit. If you are hanging out (real life or online) in places where the attitude is that we’re each limited in what we can accomplish, then you should hang out elsewhere. How can you reach for the stars if you’re convinced you don’t have what it takes?

    Yeah there are things that are legitimately hard to do. Excruciatingly hard sometimes. Overcoming hardships makes you stronger. Believing you only have so much “will” does not.

    From your source:

    Just as a muscle gets tired from exertion, acts of self-control cause short-term impairments (ego depletion)

    Short term impairment. Like a tired muscle, which will be stronger tomorrow for having been worked to the max today.