the examined life

The "Grocery Shop like a Boss" post is making rounds again, and one of the bitchlings commented that they are moving out on their own for the first time so they were collecting ideas/recipes.

Which got me to wondering; do we have a "How to Preserve Your More Precious than Gold Grocery Haul" post floating around? And if not, should we start one?

We do not! And I agree--we should start one!!!

I'll start:

Tomatoes, carrots, and peppers can all be frozen without any preparation whatsoever. Just bag 'em and toss 'em in the freezer. So if you're worried you won't get to those vegetables before they go bad, freeze them for later recipes. They can then be used in a stirfry, curry, soup, chili, sauce, salsa, smoothie, whatever. And it's much easier, cheaper, and faster than canning.

WHO'S NEXT, BABIES? How are we preserving our grocery hauls?? This WILL become an official Bitches Get Riches World Heritage Post.

Cosmic Truths of Cheap Grocery Shopping: 12 Universal Rules to Save Money on Food, No Matter What You Buy or Where You Shop

When you get fruit or vegetables in plastic cartons take the fruit out and wash it and also wash the carton. If there is any bruising or broken skin, cut those part off and eat the rest immediately or freeze. In general though you should be washing (and drying) your produce immediately after you bring it home and before you put it in the fridge. It greatly reduces any potential bacteria or whatever might try to eat your food before you can.

Also dairy is freezable. Liquid milk and sometimes yogurt will thaw with a weird texture but it’s fine and you can run it through a blender if the texture is an issue. Butter, cheese and all that freeze perfectly well.

Bread and tortillas also freeze well but will go stale if left in the freezer too long. Generally though you can just take out a few slices at a time and pop them in the toaster. Or heat them on the stovetop.

Potatoes, sweet potatoes and similar root vegetables can be half baked and frozen for continued baking later.

Those bagged salads can go in the freezer and then used later for stir fry. Top it with whatever dressing it came with even if it’s cooked. Get the ones with kale or spinach or greens other than lettuce. Stir fry lettuce is not great.

In general if you’re buying bagged salad greens spinach and kale will last the longest whether you’re using it raw or cooked.

Meal planning. Meal prepping. Useful for making sure you use what you have. Match your current food stash to specific recipes and only buy what you need to use up what you already have. Don’t buy costco size quantities unless it’s something you can eat everyday or you are feeding half a dozen people.

Get jars and containers that actually seal and not the decorative aesthetic jars. You want something that will keep your dry goods safe from insects.

Just thinking about this cuz I finished a book that I loved, but when I was reading other people’s reviews on StoryGraph so many gave it low ratings and then said something along the lines of “I quit reading halfway through when the MC/narrator started doing some really shitty stuff and I didn’t like him anymore.” And I went??? He’s fictional! Would I want to hang out with him if he existed IRL? No. But I do find him fascinating to read about.

I don’t know, I think some of it stems from the thing where people need characters to be relatable to them (whereas I don’t care if I relate to a character to find them compelling). And on top of that, they won’t let themselves relate to a morally ambiguous (or straight up evil) character, or even just a regular person who does some shitty stuff, because then they’d have to recognize that they might have the capacity for some of those things, too, if they were in a similar situation to the character.

Read the manual. Work through the manual from front to back. Read the troubleshooting section even when you're not having a problem. Read it. Keep it handy. Maybe download a PDF too, just in case the hard copy walks off.

Buy an iron and ironing board. They don't have to be fancy, a bigger board is only better if it is stable. An regular Ikea board has worked for me for years. A $20 iron from Walmart will noticeably improve your work. Press every seam before another seam intersects it. Don't just iron at the end.

Sewing machine needles have sizes AND types and you need to match them to your fabric. They also wear down. The often quoted rule is 8 hours of run time and its a pretty good rule.

The problem is almost never the tension settings, and even less often is it the bobbin tension. The problem is almost always your threading or needle.

for instance, take the way nearly everybody I know that grew up using a screen device in a home or school with authority figures who might disapprove of what was on that screen still experiences a moderate anxiety to mild panic spike when they realize someone is looking over their shoulder at their screen, even if the content on the screen is entirely mundane.

The following month, we read a dark romance where the hero (who briefly met the heroine while she was dating his friend/roommate and became obsessed with her after she started commenting on his kinky online account where he wears a mask but no shirt) uses his near-supernatural hacker skills to put secret cameras in her house and otherwise stalk her. Her reaction is "this guy is fucking insane and probably dangerous...but this is really hot and actually I have a feeling he's not dangerous." Which is validated by the story. The handling of the dark subject matter is basically a shrug before a continuous jerk-off sesh. And the book club LOVED this story. Everyone was like "oh, he's not really a bad guy and this is barely a dark romance."

Here are some basic primers. If someone is wearing what look like Meta glasses, they usually have a small circular camera in the outer corners of the lenses, like the one on your phone.

I would also regularly check their own product pages so you're on top of what the models look like. They tend to have larger frames, but come in a variety of shapes and colors.

A new hobbyist developed app warns if people nearby may be wearing smart glasses, such as Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, which stalkers and harassers have repeatedly used to film people without their knowledge or consent. The app scans for smart glasses’ distinctive Bluetooth signatures and sends a push alert if it detects a potential pair of glasses in the local area.

The American Foundation for the Blind has said that "The Ray-Ban Meta glasses are an accessibility tool only by coincidence. That makes them more affordable and, in many ways, unaware of the needs of users with reduced vision" although they do have seemingly positive views on Meta Glasses as a whole. (source 10). It also seems like their marketing push as accessibility devices began last year (source 11).

But to add even more into the nonsense, Meta is now toying around with adding a "limit" to the functionality of their glasses unless their users pay for more access (source 12). AND, as stated above, Meta has officially added facial recognition code in their glasses and only admitted it after being called out, which is basically the death of privacy as we know it (source 13, source 14, source 15). And oh look another lawsuit because of it (source 16) THAT THEY LOST (source 17)!

Long story short: I don't begrudge someone using them as a disability aid overall, but ultimately both their privacy and other people's privacy are being disregarded by Meta and that is not and should not be acceptable by any means.

I understand there is no ethical consumption under capitalism but there is a level of personal responsibility someone has to take when using them if they truly truly need them, such as opting out of sharing information, not filming strangers without permission, not posting footage of strangers online, opting out of facial recognition if possible, etc.

“I need to to tell u something important pls DM” - accidentally reported you scam

“Someone impersonated you and I reported you by accident” - accidentally reported you scam

“You sent me free tumblr premium link but it scammed me” - accidentally reported you scam

“You stole money from me so my friends reported you” - accidentally reported you scam

“I saw your post about looking for artists to commission. I do commissions and would love to illustrate your idea.” - commissioner scam

“I read your fic and was inspired by a certain scene. I’d love to draw it for you as a commission just let me know your budget.” - commissioner scam

“(Ai generated summary of a fic) and I’d love to draw dm me on discord pls.” - commissioner scam

“Your account has been put into lurker mode” - verification scam

“Creator funding has been paused.” - verification scam

“Pls kindly go to this link to verify.” - verification scam

“Insulin is $300 nt asking for a windfall” - donation scam

“Need medicine to prevent lungs collapsing.” - donation scam

“Nose freezes and asthma” - donation scam

“DM me if commission open.” - Commission scam

In places like New York and Seattle, where the Republicans are almost electorally inexistent, the risk of splitting the vote and letting them win is very much not there, and candidacies by a well organised leftist third party should be able to win in general elections, establishing the image and legitimacy of the party in other places of the country.

Does it mean that this would eventually and inevitably result in the DSA or another leftist party to be the dominant progressive political party in the US? No, but it means that that party would almost certainly become a permanent national presence, with legislative, local and state representation, and a real chance to achieve the presidency as well, and with which the Democratic party would be forced to negotiate to keep their own candidacies viable in many places, or risk being them the ones that split the vote.

COLD WATER SHOCK

I nod, setting down my chalk and spellbook. “It does sound like there might have been a bit of a misunderstanding.”

“She took against me, that's what happened,” the dead girl says with a scowl. She looks about fourteen, round faced and spotty, with whisps of brown hair peaking out from under her mob-cap. Her face and her crossed arms have a tell-tale bluish tinge to them. A cholera death.

“I been here for don't know how long and never gave any trouble. Nobody ever complained about me 'till her.”

…well, that's not strictly true.

Number 12, Barclay Street has been attracting rumours of haunting since the mid nineteenth century.

Sounds of faint singing and crying in the corridors at night. Cold spots. Doors that open and close by themselves. Animals acting strangely. Harmless, mid to low-level stuff, typical for a bored teenage poltergeist.

Still, pointing that out isn't likely to achieve much, and certainly the most recent complaints of blood running down the walls, screams in the dark and paralysing night terrors seem distinctly out of character.

The ghost toes the chalk again, more tentatively this time. It stays resolutely unbroken.

She could get out if she wanted to. I'm not one of those assholes who brings out their full arsenal of wards and sigils for a first meeting with a level 2 spectre. The summoning circle will keep her in one place for as long as I need her to talk, but it wouldn't hold for a moment if she really fought against it.

I take it as a good sign that she's still here. Pouting or not, she's clearly willing to work with me.

“None of the others could do this,” she says. “None of 'em even saw me.” She looks up. “Are you here to exise me?”

“Exorcise,” I say instinctively, and curse myself when she flinches. “Sorry, no, no! I don't exorcise people from their homes without good reason, not if they're happy where they are.”

“I was happy. Till she started calling in all them ghost hunters.”

Mrs Delaney had been quite persistent in her attempts to 'fix' her haunted house. Most of the people she found were charlatans, of course, but I'd still arranged an appointment as fast as I could once word reached me. It wouldn't have been long before she happened upon somebody with Talent, and unfortunately not everybody in this field knows how to behave like a professional.

“I think we might be able to help each other,” I say, careful to keep my voice calm and level.

“Don't see how. Not unless you can exorcise Her.”

“Not quite what I had in mind.” I pull out my phone and scroll through my photos. “You say that you're not the cause of the most recent incidents of paranormal activity?”

A pause. The ghost gnaws on her lip. I wait, patiently, keeping my body language open and nonthreatening. “I… I knocked her coffee cup over,” she admits at last. “She was being mean and talking on her telephone, saying I done all these things when I never did! So I decided to show her what I could do if I wanted.”

“Hmm.” The ghost eyes me nervously, as if expecting me to pull out a book, bell and candle and banish her on the spot.

“I only tipped it,” she adds. “I didn't break it or nothing!”

“You shouldn't have touched it at all,” I say sternly. “But… I can appreciate that you were frustrated, so let's say no more about it.”

The ghost looks relieved.

“My point is,” I continue, “if you weren't the one making blood rain from the ceiling or tormenting people in their sleep, then what was? There's no other ghosts on the property.” I find the picture I was looking for. “You can get anywhere around the house, right? Including behind the furniture and in the backs of cupboards?”

“Yes'm.”

I hold the phone up so that she can see the picture on the screen. “I'm going to let you go free in a moment, and I need you to see if you can find anything that looks like this.”

The ghost wrinkles her forehead. “What's that when it's at home?”

1) Yue Qingyuan is a side character from the author’s least popular novel

2) Yue Qingyuan is frequently headcannoned as a big, giant, bear, and is canonically an older brother figure/sect leader/strongest sword wizard of several generations— WHILE AT THE SAME TIME being a pathetic pushover that misses his wife so bad

3) Yue Qingyuan has a soul eating sword that wants to kill him, and I have no idea how it would react to a pregnancy

4) As many have claimed before, the longer he is pregnant, the longer I cannot harvest the fetus for my abortion shrine (don’t ask)

5) After everything he has gone through, I’m not convinced Yue Qingyuan would make any noise giving birth. Completely silent operating room until the baby starts crying

6) His big fat milky tits will get even bigger and rounder. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want big round hairy tits full of milk? Please, do it for me at least?

Please vote for him. I beg you. I will shrivel up and die without his breast milk to sustain me

https://www.tumblr.com/need-him-pregnant-poll/820818085624905728/need-that-man-pregnant-season-2-finale-poll-5