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stoneparchment stoneparchment @possumpat.io

(biologist - artist - queer)

  • tea
  • anime
  • tabletop

>You’re the only magician that could make a falling horse turn into thirteen gerbils

Posts 3
Comments 155
Is it weird to try to behave perfectly?
  • You didn't mention it, but have you considered how it would feel if you had a bad day and didn't live up to this standard?

    You're framing it like a moral philosophy, but feeling anger is not a morally bad thing. Neither is jealousy, or selfishness, at times. It's just part of the human experience, and we can avoid it most of the time, but occasionally we're going to need to focus on ourselves and our needs and our feelings.

    Similarly, it's impossible to avoid having an ego 100% of the time. Honestly, it sounds like this quality is part of your identity-- would you like yourself less if you lived up to this standard imperfectly?

    I don't think it's unusual to want to be a good person and to want to control our worst impulses. But to describe it as "trying to act like a saint", and saying you're "deaf to your own needs"-- those are concerning statements.

    I don't think anyone can speak for you or guess what's going on from the outside. But if I were you, I'd be exploring if there's fear underlying these impulses. Fear of judgment: how do you think the world would perceive you if you stopped being so strict about it? Fear of badness: how does it feel when you have a bad day and you fail to be perfect? Do you resent yourself? Fear of impurity: do you feel like other people are bad when they have these natural reactions? Do you fear being like other people who are experiencing and dealing with normal feelings?

  • Why do leftist blame the Democratic for sabotaging Bernie Sanders?
  • Disclaimer: I am not an expert in this and this is just my understanding of how to answer this question

    You may or may not realize that most voters don't usually go out well in advance and research all potential candidates, selecting the one they feel represents their values the best. Many of them don't even check in to the conversation until the primaries are over and they can make a simple red vs. blue choice. Among voters that do participate in primaries, they mostly rely on information they learn about those potential candidates by watching advertisements, endorsements from other well known politicians, clips from debates, news and social media coverage, etc.

    Creating that information (ads, debates, news coverage, social media, etc.) requires two things: money and momentum. Money comes first, and is disbursed according to the process the other commenter described-- the party talks with its donors and collectively they decide who to fund.

    In Bernie's case, he was systematically deprived of money by the DNC as described above, in addition to his moral philosophy of not taking money from big donors. Instead, he funded his campaign through small donations-- which he earned a LOT of-- but he still had fewer funds to generate advertisements, to host events, to "get the word out".

    Without this funding and support, Bernie couldn't generate momentum as effectively. The fact that he is as popular as he is despite the lack of support from the party illustrates how popular his platform is, but that isn't enough to get disengaged voters interested. Further, in his case, other party members actively wanted him to NOT be the nominee, so there were fewer endorsements, more intentional maneuvering by the party to convince voters to vote for other candidates, etc.

    In essence, the idea that having the purest moral and policy philosophy is the most important element to winning the nomination is naive: it takes money and support from institutions, or else no one will ever even know what that pure philosophy is.

  • This hair product remains effective up to 230 degrees C which is really handy because when I'm exposed to ovenlike temperatures, my first thought is "Oh no, my hair!"
  • none of y'all ever style your hair, huh? No girlfriends/wives/other friends or significant others who curl/straighten/blow dry?

  • rule
  • bogus

  • What’s behind the widening gender wage gap in the US?
  • I want to point out that in the article/interview you posted,

    1. the expert disagreed with the interviewer that the causes of the gap are biological in nature, and

    2. that they both agreed that the causes of the gap are undergoing rapid change due to social factors from the covid pandemic, and they bet it will be decreasing over the next few decades

    Figured I'd clarify in case anyone read your comment and got confused about what the expert was saying :)

  • “Agony” and “Suffering” as Alabama Experiments with Nitrogen Executions
  • Yes, this is true. Using an inert gas doesn't cause CO2 toxicity, but rebreathing atmospheric air does.

  • “Agony” and “Suffering” as Alabama Experiments with Nitrogen Executions
  • I want to warn anyone thinking of trying this: don't.

    Obviously there's the don't commit suicide part, and that's the most important part. But also, as someone who has unfortunately spent time considering various methods, I can tell you: don't even consider doing it this way.

    Genuinely sorry to be contradictive, but you absolutely would have been in a painful situation if you'd continued. The only explanation is that you didn't get to the point that your body 100% takes over from you and forces a desperate, painful, writhing attempt to get air.

    You would die of increased CO2 concentration in your blood long before you actually ran out of oxygen. That increased CO2 would be very painful. Like, lizard brain stem absolutely taking over, full panicking levels of painful. Don't try it!

  • Daylight savings
  • Oooh, fair point. I do think that's still tricky now (I work with an international team) but it definitely wouldn't get any better

    EDIT: WAIT unless the date switched over at 00:00 every day no matter where you were

    It would be annoying to be the many people whose work or waking hours were on "MonTues" though lol

  • Daylight savings
  • Not the original commenter, but why couldn't it be more like "John sleeps from 12-20:00 and is usually working from 21-5:00" and "Stacy sleeps from 8:00-16:00 and works from 17-1:00", so Stacy and John decide to plan their video call for 6:00-7:00? Like I don't super care what light schedule it is, more what my friends schedules are specifically, right? And the question could just be, "What times are you available?"

  • Teens Say Trump’s Former Personal Aide and Project 2025 Higher-Up Made Them Uncomfortable in Chats
  • It's not the same dude. Dog murderer is Kevin Roberts, this guy is John McEntee

  • If the obscenely wealthy benefit most from having Republicans in power; and collectively they have disproportionate control over the economy; wouldn't they use that power to sabotage Democrats?
  • we're in agreement :-) what I said is an Orwell's 1984 quote. My overly simplified explanation of the quote is that the governmental entities in the novel were able to maintain absolute authority because of a manufactured conflict. In essence, two sides intentionally maintained a stalemate at war so that each of them could keep absolute control over their populace using fear of the other. In reality, both groups were controlled by the same people-- an autocratic ruling class.

  • Sad plant giving up on life - a call for help
  • also... if it dies anyway and you're heartbroken, dm me and maybe I can send you a cutting from mine :-) cheers!

  • Sad plant giving up on life - a call for help
  • So the plant you have there is a Maranta leuconeura. I have one that looks just like it!

    There's a couple things that could be going wrong. In general, here are the conditions it likes:

    1. It likes indirect light. I keep mine by a south facing window that has an awning cutting the harsh light outside. Additionally, I have it behind a sheer curtain.

    2. It likes to be kept in moist soil, and in a humid place. I don't let mine fully dry out before rewatering it, and I live in a place where the ambient humidity is often 60-80%. If you live in a dry place, water it often and maybe keep it in the most humid place with enough light (kitchen or bathroom is usually more humid)

    3. and this is key, it does NOT like hard water. I honestly think this could be the problem with yours given what you said. Hard water has a lot of minerals, and over time, they build up in the soil. The plant might have been fine with tap for months, but now the soil could effectively be too "salty" for it.

    If I had this plant, I'd do one of two things.

    Option 1:

    • buy fresh potting soil
    • gently remove the plant from its pot
    • shake off the soil from the roots
    • rinse and scrape off any residue on the inside of the pot
    • replant in fresh soil
    • water with RO/soft water from now on (see note below), keeping it moist, in whatever spot it already lives

    Option 2:

    • buy or obtain real reverse osmosis (RO) water (see note below)
    • water the plant so thoroughly with RO that the mineral salts dissolve and are carried away. This means soaking the pot in a large volume (like more than a gallon) of RO water for an hour or so, or watering it so water flushes out the bottom 5+ times in a row. You can tell if you flush the minerals out because there should be no grey dusty residue left on the soil or sides of the pot!
    • add a small amount of balanced fertilizer (like follow miracle grow instructions or something)
    • water with RO/soft water from now on (see note below), keeping it moist, in whatever spot it already lives

    As backup, I might also try and root a cutting (again, in RO water) just in case it still dies anyway. Hopefully with these efforts it will revive, though!

    Note on soft/RO water:

    If you are looking for soft water, don't use water from a water softener (confusing, I know). This is because water softeners for humans replace the minerals with sodium ions. In essence, water softener water is just as "salty" as hard water, it's just different salts.

    Instead, try and get deionized (DI) or reverse osmosis (RO) water.

    Ideally, this would come from an RO system, which is a common kind of in-house water filter. If you live by a college, you could maybe ask for some from their science departments (especially biology or chemistry). You can also buy it online and have it shipped to you, but this is really expensive, especially considering that the maranta needs so much water.

    Instead, I would buy a TDS meter (available on Amazon for like $7). It's a little stick device that you put in the water and it tells you how hard it is. With this, you could test a few brands of bottled water (avoid "spring water", or "remineralized" water-- go for "filtered" or "purified") until you find one with less than ~30 ppm / ~75 µS/cm dissolved solids. My grocery store sells water in big machines out front that reads 15 µS/cm, and it costs $2.50/5 gallons!

    Honestly, I cheat and get lazy sometimes with mine and water it with tap. You saw yourself how long it takes for the solids to build up, and watering it with RO dissolves some of those over time. It's not like tap will kill it right away, but these guys sure are picky! :)

  • me when- when tall women
  • I like how the artist included the one cyclone turning the opposite direction (on the right, hair blowing the other way)

    ... if you know you know 😎

  • ‘Help us’: Guam's nuclear radiation survivors’ plea to the United States
  • ... their government IS our government. Guam is a US territory.

  • Wells Fargo employee found dead in cubicle 4 days after she clocked in: ‘She was just lying on her desk’
  • Dude, what? I might be misunderstanding but there's a huge difference between 15 minutes and four days? Or even between "hands off" supervision and no one looking to see why she hadn't clocked in or out for DAYS? Or even just looking in the cubical?

    Like... The employer definitely bears responsibility for being this neglectful. It goes way beyond "hands off" lol

  • Autocorrect Rule
  • Women are not included in those polls

    ... accurate

  • There has to be another way
  • Whack. The only thing I can think of is if your base activity level has never been low enough in that several year period, you might not know what it feels like to be completely sedentary by comparison?

  • Android games for girls?
  • Oooooh I have some ideas! Some of these are paid/premium (but NOT micro transactions) and some have mild ads. But I share the distaste for data-mining, money grubbing, brain-melting-ad-ridden games, so I'm certain they are on the least intrusive end of the spectrum.

    I really love biology (I'm a biologist...) so these are both pet games and usually breeding/evolution games!

    • Fish Tycoon -- This one specifically. A classic! Breed and care for cute fish!
    • Niche breed and evolve -- so neat and pretty educational about evolution/genetics. There's a slightly more complicated/difficult pc game if she decides she likes the nichelings/universe.
    • Pocket Frogs -- Simple, low stress collecting game. it would take years to collect all the frogs, and there's a relatively active community of people who trade sets of frogs to other people to help them complete collections. Would be fun to play with her friends at school!
    • Reigns Her Majesty -- a game about running a kingdom as a queen. When you die, you become your heir and retain some progress from your last lives. It doesn't fit the exact criteria you mentioned, but I think she might like it anyway!
  • Adult Jazz -- So Sorry So Slow

    bandcamp album link

    Only had to wait 8 years 🤩

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    gifts rule

    5

    Advice requested: Advisor was transferring universities and taking me with them, but has now backed out

    Sorry if this isn't exactly the right community, I'm just going nuts and need to ask somewhere.

    So I'm a 2nd year PhD student at an R2 institution in a conservative area. My advisor was offered a job at an R1 in a highly desirable, liberal area, and I was planning on going with them. Now, I found out that they're backing out and intend to stay here.

    Some important info:

    • Advisor told everyone in our department they were leaving before backing out. I told everyone I was leaving, too, and lost some committee positions and collaborators in the process.

    • My spouse and I are visibly queer, and have been harassed in our town. My spouse only moved here for me, and was delighted to find out we'd be moving. They're completely destroyed by the bait-and-switch.

    • Advisor was actually only planning on moving because their spouse wanted to live closer to family and was currently unemployed. The reason they have decided not to move is because the new institute gave my advisor's spouse a job in a department they didn't like. The rest of the job offer letter was fine; they described it as good, even.

    • My advisor did not tell me about the job search when they started looking, and confessed they didn't intend for me to come with them originally. It turns out they brought me into their lab knowing they intended on leaving me behind, and they were surprised when I asked about going with them.

    • I rotated into this lab and have funding through an NSF GRFP.

    • I have paid ~$1000 out of pocket for travel expenses and application fees to facilitate my transfer to the new school.

    I feel overwhelmed; when they told me they weren't going I just told them I couldn't talk now and needed time to process and we would talk later. I barely kept myself together long enough to leave, but now I have to talk to them. My take is that I don't feel comfortable trusting this person with my life direction anymore, since they would waste that much time and money and back out over something so stupid. I also think it's insane that their spouse was the reason for the move to begin with, but is also demanding they back out because their spousal hire wasn't good enough. I don't know how I'm going to talk to them professionally because it all seems crazy and I get upset even thinking about it.

    Has anyone been in a similar situation, or know anyone who has? Advice is greatly appreciated

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