I dig it. I would display this in my home

Thank you! Haha

I wish my fingerprint scanner worked D:

Honestly, the only two problems I have had at all are fingerprint scanner (like, lowest priority for me), and the battery continues to drain quickly even when I close the laptop or put it in sleep mode or whatever it’s called

That’s wild! I always assumed it pointed out towards space! I never knew it was pointed at earth and reflecting from the eyes of Trailside Pika!

Is it one Pika in particular, or is it more or a pika-seeking guidance system?

(Fr, though, if you wanna explain how it actually works I would very much so enjoy learning)

Ha!

I’ve never wanted all of those ostentatious rich people things, but it I ever get to the point of being able to afford it, and do it in any kind of environmentally friendly way, an indoor heated pool is on my list. I’m more likely to live in my car than have that, but God it’s the dream. Haha. I want to live someone cold, and still be able to swim every day. Rural Alaska, snow filled with snow melt in a big glass greenhouse full of tropical plants. Haha

I can only compare it to waxing a little bit. I got part of my arm and that little patch between my eyebrows waxed once, and it hurt like a sumbitch, not in a good way. Lol. The sugaring doesn’t really hurt at all, despite hitting that same mechanism in my brain as SI. And your skin is sooooo soft and smooth afterwards

Hahaha. Nice. I do actually wish I had gotten into competitive swimming as a kid. Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up so fat lol

Oh! I thought you were telling me off for not competitively swimming! Lmao. I genuinely thought I had, like, stumbled into the start of a flame war. Haha.

…

I love swimming, but I’m more of a “float really well and kinda nap while I do so” type than a competitive swimming type.

Though, occasionally when I go to the beach I end up making headlines if I lay out on the sand. “BEACHED WHALE SPOTTED”

Absolute favorite character in all of Trek. Majel is such a fucking treasure, and her portrayal of Lwaxana was incredible. I know most people don’t agree, but I will always love my problematic Queen 👑

I mean, I’m not encouraging self harm. But sugaring has been an excellent alternative to self harm for me.

I make my own, and it takes forfuckingever to get the recipe right, but I recommend just looking up sugar wax recipes on YouTube. You apply against the direction of growth (against the grain), and remove it in the direction of growth (with the grain). The exact opposite of traditional wax.

A couple tips I’ve learned:

Always shower first, dry completely, and then powder. I use corn starch.

You do not want to be in a super hot room (like a steamy bathroom after showering)

If you make your wax too hard, you can soften it slightly by putting it in the microwave for no more than 10 seconds. Be very careful, it is much hotter than you think. Your fingers and hands can handle much hotter temps than your legs and naughty bits.

If your wax is too thin, you can apply it to the skin, and then apply a piece of cotton or muslin, and use it like strip wax (again, in the opposite directions to standard wax). Unlike traditional wax, you can reuse these strips by just running them under hot water and allowing them to dry.

Traditional wax can only really go over an area once or twice, because it is pulling at healthy, living skin. Sugaring can over the same area as many times as you like, as it only sticks to the dry, dead skin and hair. It leaves healthy skin alone. Added perk is dead skin removal.

You can use the same piece of sugar as many times as you like. I generally toss it when it turns white.

If you’re a guy or have particularly thick facial hairs (like hirsutism from PCOS or something), it will work on facial hair, but I find it best in that scenario to use a strip, but not with the thin sugar. Use the regular thickness sugar and add a strip. It grips the hairs better. Apply the sugar, apply the strip, hold your hand against it with firm pressure to make sure it attaches well, and then remove your hand and let it cool for 30 seconds to a minute, and then rip it off and meet your God.

Making the sugar is not complicated. It’s just sugar, water, lemon juice. It’s basically caramel, but it’s all about temperature control. Get a candy thermometer. You can buy it premade, but it’s not as good…

The coolest part is that a failed batch of sugar nets you either a thin caramel syrup, or rock candy.

Edit:

Forgot the most important bit:

Wait about 24 hours, and then make sure you exfoliate the shit out whatever body parts you sugared. Chemical exfoliates are great, like salicylic acid, but you need to also use something rough and manually exfoliate as well. That’s how to prevent the ingrown hairs.

I’ve learned that waxing (sugaring, actually) hits the exact same mechanism in my brain as SI, without leaving scars, and leaves me with nice smooth skin that’s well exfoliated. Only problem is that I’m a guy, and people think it’s weird that I sugar my entire body. But OMG, the relief. I intentionally don’t do everything at once, so that I can sugar at least once a week if I want to, so I’ve always got that as an outlet.

One of my best friends is a vegan, married to a vegan, and raising two kids who are chegans (like, mostly they’re vegan, and sometimes they eat some chicken nuggets at Grandma’s). Through him, I have met dozens of vegans. The most I’ve ever heard a vegan “go on” about veganism is if they’re specifically asked about it. Occasionally, you’ll hear them bring it up in discussions around related things (like if you’re talking about climate change, they may mention that animal farming is a massive contributor, or something to that effect). But mostly, it’s just a diet and they do their own diet thing.

The real issue is when someone asks “hey, wanna go to x restaurant tonight?” And they reply “lemme check the menu and make sure I can!” And then the person who originally asked the question wants to pretend like they’re Christ on the cross because they’re being so put out by the audacity of this filthy hippy to want to eat somewhere they can actually eat, instead of just sitting there and drinking water while everyone else eats.

My first ever time flying was a trip to Mexico from Knoxville, TN. On the return trip, we got a layover in Detroit, and our flight was grounded due to a mechanical problem. They offered to let us stay overnight in a hotel plus a 200 voucher, or we could take a different flight into Knoxville, with no voucher. My brother was super sick and just wanted to get home, we we took the flight.

This plane was tiny. Like, 30-50 seats? Fucking miniscule. It had ashtrays built into the armrests, and if you needed to use the bathroom you’d have to ask the flight attendant to move, because her jump seat was attached to the bathroom door. It rattled like a smokers chest cough, and I swear I thought it was going to give up the ghost and just drop out of the sky.

But the seats were very comfortable, and I was at the back in a single seat without a neighboring seat, so I got to chat with the flight attendant the whole time haha

i was confusing the mask for the cage. I thought you were talking about one of these, but apparently they are for oncology treatments.

Still, the cage would be awful. The washcloth is a great idea. I panicked really badly my first time in an MRI when I was a kid. I got to a point by 14, when I had my last one, where I was mostly okay… But it being 20 years, I don’t know how I’ll handle it when I get the next one, especially if they introduce a cage >.<

:( God, that’s awful. It’s making me wonder if they’re going to do it to me when I get my next scan. I haven’t had one since I was 14 (34 now…), and I was in Virginia then. Doc told me a couple years ago I should probably get a scan sometime soon to confirm everything is okay. It’ll either be in Tennessee or South Carolina this time around.

Do they use the mesh one that hardens in place on you?

Also not defending chester Cheeto. But I’m curious why they make you do the cage. That thing absolutely terrifies me, and I was so glad they never made me use it when they were scanning my brain because of my chairi malformation. Maybe it’s because it’s my brain stem they’re looking at?

At any rate, I’m so sorry you have to go through that. I can’t imagine. Literal nightmare fuel

Tried to figure out how to post this comment a couple times without it sounding like proselyting my own view point. Can’t manage it. So I’ll just add this here: that’s not what I’m doing! I’m not attempting to convince anyone of anything. Lol.

I’m a nondualist. Panentheism, to be more specific. I believe that existence is God’s way of experiencing. In other words, we are not just ourselves, and not just reincarnated as the next thing down the line, or spending eternity in heaven. But that every creature, every rock, every thing that has ever or will ever exist is you. You are Ghandi, and you’re also your own mother. You’re hitler, and you’re Stalin. You are God. And in between, after, and before, when you’re in that state of being without limitations, without boundaries and illusions of duality and separateness, you are fully aware of every thing you have been and will be. You understand all.

It brings me comfort. It has allowed me to come to peace with the fact that I will die some day. It hasn’t given me peace for the people I have lost, but I try to remember them as the forms of God I love best, and the forms of God that knew me best. One day I will be gone, and I will dissolve back into the divine, and I won’t be so sad about losing those forms and those people, because I will be with them, as them, and know them better than I could ever have in this form.

As a little aside, another way I like to look at this is through a Betty White quote. She once asked her mother what happens after we die, and her mother told her it was a secret. So whenever Betty lost someone she would say to herself “they learned the secret today”

The secret is that you get to learn everything, at least as far as I believe.