tunetardis

@tunetardis@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has Fast Food Gotten Worse, or Am I Just Getting Old?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s a beautiful story. Thanks for sharing. My mom was an avid gardener also. I miss her so much!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has Fast Food Gotten Worse, or Am I Just Getting Old?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh man, you sound like my mother! She was actually Japanese and grew her own tomatoes. She was always forcing them on me, saying Ne, umai-deshou! (See? They’re full of umami!)

  I actually like cooked tomatoes in all forms, but there is something in the flavour profile of a raw tomato that turns me off.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has Fast Food Gotten Worse, or Am I Just Getting Old?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That is fascinating! You should do an AMA.

  I would love to see fewer monocultures at the supermarket. I have noticed lately that a number of new apple varieties have been popping up, at least where I am in Canada. I keep hoping for some kind of craft beer-like renaissance in produce where there is a lot more to explore and rabid fandom over particular varieties.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has Fast Food Gotten Worse, or Am I Just Getting Old?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah that would certainly explain it.

  My working theory had been that maybe they were being selected for size à la strawberries, which have grown almost comically huge in recent years. But it’s as though nature can only provide a set amount of flavour per fruit, and by growing it larger, it only gets diluted over a greater volume? But I haven’t been able to determine whether fast food tomatoes are behemoths since they are already cut up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has Fast Food Gotten Worse, or Am I Just Getting Old?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The other day I ordered a burger and they put tomatoes on it even though I asked them not to. I was about to complain, but decided to take a bite anyway and…huh. The tomato had no flavour whatsoever. I used to not like the taste of tomatoes but how could I object to this?

  So what does this mean? Are my taste buds not functioning like they used to? But I spent lunch looking it up and apparently, there is a fair consensus that tomatoes, along with a host of other fruits and vegetables, really are blander today than when I was a kid. For something I never liked, this kind of works out but…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I find as I get older and my vision is not what it once was, I need bigger screens with good contrast but don’t care so much about resolution. I think it was on the show Corner Gas where they were talking about how big a screen you should get and concluded the size in inches should match your age. That made me laugh but I have to confess now there may be some truth in that…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is space 2 dimensional?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s been a long time since I got my astronomy degree, but your version is what I recall also. Whatever small rotational perturbation in the initial gas becomes more pronounced as it coalesces in on itself and defines the plane of the star system. Planets form within this plane after it is defined, and they all travel in the same direction around the star.

  Regarding galaxies, the most common spiral ones like our own Milky Way follow the same principle at a larger scale. But there are also elliptical galaxies, not to mention irregular ones. In an elliptical galaxy, there is a more random movement of stars in a cloud around its core. So they look more 3D I guess, to go back to what the OP was asking about. I seem to recall the most accepted explanation for how these form is from the aftermath of a collision between 2 spirals? So presumably, when our galaxy collides with Andromeda in several billion years time, the resulting combined galaxy may emerge as an elliptical?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there a difference in meaning between the words *people* and *persons*?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sometimes people will say “That person’s name!” or “Those group of people!” in anger. “That Donald Trump! How dare he claim immigrants are eating pets?” to give you a current example.

  When spoken of a family member or mutual acquaintance with a chuckle, it means more like “That person has some strange quirk but what can you do? We still love him.”

  For example, you might hear “That dog! Always chasing his own tail.” So I think this is likely what you were getting from that conversation? It’s certainly not a criticism of your use of the word “people”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do deaf people play media with sound on?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I am not deaf, but this is triggering a pet peeve.

  It seems a pretty common occurrence that I will be walking into a restaurant, bar, airport, doctor’s office, or whatever, and there will be a TV on a news channel with the sound muted or very low. For F’s sake, put the captioning on! What’s wrong with you?!?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Trump Made of Teflon?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Years ago I watched a documentary about Trump’s shenanigans in Atlantic City. Basically, he stiffs the contractors who build his casino. They sue, and so he hires some big shot lawyers to defend him. They get him off for the most part, but then he then turns around and stiffs the law firm itself! Like what even?!?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can you "change" the environment in your "local" area?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think with 50 acres, you should be able to do a lot to combat the urban heat island effect. I say this based on my bike commute which alternates between suburban subdivisions and trails over conservation land. The trails always feel noticeably cooler, even where there are no trees casting shade. The coolest spots do tend to be where have trees and/or water nearby, but even open fields feel cooler.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨if you ever had to start consuming low fat dairy and cheese due to high cholesterol, did your ldl cholesterol levels decrease?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Tbh nothing lowered it for me until they put me on a statin. Genetics are a bitch. But maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough diet-wise? I don’t know.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it just me or do Lemmy communities tend to skew left wing? Why might this be?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think people here tend to question and fact-check posts and comments a lot, which is a healthy thing. Now some say reality skews left, in which case could it be that the right have left because the left is right?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why isn't jerking off more valorized as an easy dopamine hit that's also literally good for you?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  literally good for you

  I actually asked my family doctor at one point about the health effects of masturbation. She said that as a guy, if you are not otherwise sexually active, it’s good for the prostate to keep the plumbing working down there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Slack users horrified to discover messages used for AI training⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  We need to watermark insert something into our watermark posts that watermark can be traced back to its origin watermark if the AI starts training watermark on it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do Americans measure everything in cups?⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well since we’re nitpicking, a kilogram is a unit of mass, not weight. So unless by “kilo” you meant kilonewton…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Could a bird propel a skateboard by flapping its wings?⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t see why not, though I bet it can’t go as fast as a turtle on a skateboard?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Low tech DHCP⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  1st reaction: lmao 2nd reaction: hey wait, this is pure genius!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨how serious is a slightly chipped front tooth?⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Do you just see white along the crack? Nothing darker? In that case you’re probably fine? I chipped my front tooth when I was a kid in the stupidest accident ever. I was playing some game with friends outside and started laughing so uncontrollably I hit my tooth on a stone fence. It didn’t even hurt but my friends were like “dude!”

  The dentist repaired it with some sort of fake enamel-looking stuff which lasted a number of years before falling off. They did it again and it fell off again. Eventually I was like you know what? Let’s just leave it this time. It’s not causing me any grief.

  Anyway, as middle-aged guy, I have lost one tooth from infection at this point, but it had nothing to do with the chip. It was a gum infection that led to a root canal and eventually they had to remove the whole thing. I’m contemplating whether to get an implant but again, it doesn’t really bother me that it’s missing? It’s pretty far back.

  For future reference, if you ever see a pussy white looking mark on your gum a little above the tooth, that’s an abscess and do get that shit looked at pronto. It’ll probably hurt and let you know it’s there though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who owns the servers for Lemmy?⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Accounts, yes. Posts, not necessarily. I joined during the great Reddexodus, when the influx caused several instances to go down temporarily. What I recall happening was the communities that were mirrored to other instances still had accessible posts and comments, but they were essentially frozen? Like you couldn’t contribute any more to them without the host instance coming back online.

  I think the way it works is if you are the first to subscribe to a community from a non-local instance, its content gets synced to yours, which adds some resilience in case that the remote instance goes down. At least that’s my impression of how it works.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does the film press talk so much about box office income?⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ok sure. The grapevine effect. I’m trying to think of how often I’ve seen a movie on a friend’s recommendation. I guess it happens from time to time?

  One thing though is that those same entertainment people love to talk about the opening weekend. Isn’t that a bit quick for the friend effect to kick in? I realize that in this day and age of social media, word can spread rapidly. But I for one am not the sort who would just drop everything to go see a movie immediately based on a friend recommending it hours earlier.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does the film press talk so much about box office income?⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I try not to read too much into it. The box office income is obviously important in terms of what sort of films may get produced in the future. If a movie flops, it will be unlikely to get a sequel, but more broadly, the whole industry may pivot towards one genre or another depending on recent successes.

  But I often wonder about entertainment columnists who write things like “They really liked this film over in China but not in North America.” How good an indicator are box office sales of how much people really enjoyed a film? The reason I ask is based on my own viewing habits. When I feel like going to a movie, I look at what’s showing and think ok, that looks pretty interesting. I might read a review or watch a trailer, but at the end of the day, I’m taking a risk that I will like it. I may or I may not. And either way, it is unlikely that I would see it again at the theatre.

  So I guess what I’m saying is that for me, at least, a ticket purchase is not an automatic vote of confidence that I think this film is great. But maybe I’m not a typical moviegoer, introvert that I am? Maybe the normal pattern is you see it with a couple friends, and if you like it, you gather more friends and see it again and again? If that’s more the way it goes, I can understand why box office sales would truly correlate to a film’s worthiness. But if more people are like me, it could just be that the movie was really hyped up and people decided to go see it even if they come out of there going wow, that sucked. But they still paid for the ticket regardless, which reflects well on box office sales.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are humans the only animal that wipes things off?⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Same in Japanese. araiguma translates as washing bear.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How should I wash dishes/surfaces in contact with raw chicken?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh right. Now that I think of it, it’s often somewhere near the back of the store, so you have to go past everything again to get to the checkout. Clever.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How should I wash dishes/surfaces in contact with raw chicken?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s weird but I can’t think of the last time I bought a raw chicken? My wife did the math at one point and concluded it was cheaper to buy bbq from like Costco, cut it up, and toss it into whatever. And that’s not even factoring energy costs to heat up an oven or anything. It is literally cheaper, at least where I live, to buy a pre-cooked chicken than raw. It makes no sense I know?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is this it? Is there anything more to life, am I missing something?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I would bring this up next time you see your doctor. Sounds like a mood spectrum thing which could slide into depression? I’m not an MD though, so don’t take it from me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone *not* love using their bidet?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I can only think of 2 downsides to our bidet:

  • Ours attaches to a regular toilet, and it does make it harder to clean particularly around the jet mechanism. Someone needs to invent a bidet for cleaning bidets.
  • Going anyplace without one now makes me hate life.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it possible to eat in such a way that you'll never have to fart?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  All I can say is don’t take metformin if you’re worried about farting. Otoh I’ve been reading that it’s something of a wonder drug that extends your life expectancy and quality of life, though perhaps at others’ expense where the latter is concerned…

  Otherwise, I do know of a Japanese folk remedy that involves cooking any bean dish with some kombu–a type of hard dried seaweed not to be confused with the rather faddy kombucha, which I think is made from mushrooms or some kind of yeast? You don’t even have to eat the kombu but toss it aside like a bayleaf, though it is edible. Then again, there is always beano.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does a cat ever wonder why humans feed them?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it depends a lot on the individual cat? In my experience, their attitudes towards humans can vary quite considerably.

  Some are more aloof and independent and see their human as a source of food like you say.

  But then I think about our current cat. He’s a rescue who’s clearly been through a lot on the streets. When I come home, he just wants to climb onto me and head butt and do that slow blink thing. He wants this more than food, even, which is a first for me.

  When we were adopting him, we fostered first for a couple of weeks before he had to go in for a surgery, and in the week or so when e was boarded, the staff said he was wailing every night wanting to go home. So he had clearly developed an attachment to us that transcended simply wanting any human who provides food and shelter.