Looking through the answers so far, I think the only thing not covered is why not the po white folk or other groups.

The simple answer really is that they aren’t black, because when it comes right down to it, any excuse they found to target black people would have excluded other groups except by accident.

But, that misses out on the other factor. The Appalachians aren’t a hotbed of protest and opposition. Folks up in the hills are too poor, too spread out, and too disconnected from external policies on a national level. There’s simply no need to destabilize those communities because they’re not a problem to the people making laws and decisions.

Same with the asian populations you asked about.

Black folks in cities have an advantage that rural people of any color don’t. Numbers in concentration. Even a minority can be a disruption to oppressors when there’s enough in one place. So keeping that population off balance becomes a priority for oppressors. That it’s black people in the U.S. is largely a matter of detail because the same principle would apply everywhere, with any given minority population being a target where that population group is a potential difficult to enforcing power. Like the rohingya or uyghur peoples as recent examples that were in the news.

Now, being real, black people across the world have been oppressed and abused for hundreds of years. So pretty much anywhere they exist, they get shit on in some way.

I prefer to use what’s on the box, no matter what its orientation. That’s because the box usually has a cutter of some kind built in, and the position varies between brands of a given wrap.

Now, I have noticed on average that when the cutter is on the box under the lid (and thus you’d pull down against the box) I get less tears and fucked up edges overall, regardless of quality or brand.

So I guess that’s my preference overall if I could wava a wand and make them all the same

I’m pretty basic. Van Gogh is top for me.

Mind you, Gonsalves ranks right up there along with Magritte and Monet.

I reckon you can guess what “schools” I tend to respond to most lol

In that context, it comes from “crunchy granola”, aka the sort of hippie/hipster that tends to embrace that kind of trendy natural diet. Granola entered the hippie sorts back in the sixties and the terminology came around somewhere in the mid seventies to early eighties.

By the time I was in my teens, it was in use for those retro-hippie sorts that also tended to the more idealized parts of hippiedom. Those kids are now the uncles and aunts (and sometimes even grandparents or great aunts/uncles) referred to.

In that specific context, adding in the aunt/uncle part, it is a positive. However, it’s also a tad condescending, if unintentionally so. That those aunts and uncles are something that needs an extra label to lump them into an outside group is often done because the person doing the lumping thinks they’re better.

Truth? Some of the crunchy granola sorts are dipshits. They’ll eat “natural” even if it isn’t actually healthy. They’ll rattle on about stuff that nobody else present cares about not because that’s who they are, but because they’re evangelizing. So some of the reputation for being hippie-dippie if you’re also crunchy granola is deserved. Same with being a skeevy stoner hippy being often linked to the other labels.

None of my fucking business.

See, that’s the thing about people being grown-ass adults. They get to decide what does and doesn’t work for them.

And, despite people that want to knee jerk the matter, there’s less difference between those two ages than there is between a 21 and 25 year old.

Personal development is heavily front loaded. By the mid to late twenties, most people are who they’ll always be. Friendship, romance, whatever. The only real barrier to age gaps are cultural touchstones and a handful of probable experiences (like job stuff, kids, etc) that aren’t even guaranteed to not be present.

Folks just get all het up over it because they’re morons that can’t look outside of themselves long enough to realize that their motivations and concepts towards other people aren’t actually universal.

Two consenting adults are just fine, and nobody else has an opinion that matters about them

I dunno, even after we got a team close enough to count as home, my choices have always been arbitrary . Mind you, I don’t really get into team sports, but it’s always fun to have a team for casual conversation.

When I was a kid, it was the Jets, the Eagles, the Vikings or the Bengals, depending on the year and my mood. For us football, obviously. All based on their uniforms or logos. As an adult, it’s the Ravens. I just like their logo better.

Celtics for basketball, just because I liked Larry Bird back in the day.

Hockey, it’s the Rangers for no reason other than the name sticks in my head

Football/soccer, it’s Arsenal. Because it’s easy to remember.

Baseball, I tend to go with whatever Sox team pops in my head, or the Dodgers.

Past that, I couldn’t name a team for other sports tbh

Hang around down undah much?

Wrong, no, absolutely not.

Not giving a shit isn’t inherently wrong. Can’t be because nobody has enough inner resources to give a shit about everything. I don’t give a shit about large swathes of the human population by dint of my give-a-shitter being defective from the beginning and having worn down significantly over the years.

Like, I don’t want bad to happen to anyone lest it be being hoist by their own petard. You know, fuck around and find out. I have enough shadenfreude in me to appreciate someone fucking their own shit up by being an asshole.

But even “innocent” people getting wiped out by floods or whatever, I just don’t have the fucking spoons.

So, even the best cop in the world, 1000% what a cop should be instead of what most of them are, it just ain’t a big deal. Soldiers, or any other job where there’s danger inherent to it as well. That actually goes for my fellow medical folks too tbh. There’s some things where the assumption of risk is there, and when the risk eventually happens, it sucks, but I lack the energy to be upset when there’s just so much fuckery in the world that people don’t agree to.

Unless there’s malice involved in why you don’t give a shit, who cares? Hell, even if there is malice, as long as you don’t try to make it happen, who cares?

Empathy is not an infinite well. How it gets spent is only partially voluntary. So if there’s some segment of the world that just isn’t on your concern list, it’s fine

Well, as always, it depends on who’s telling the story.

Generally, one’s “true name” is the same thing as they were named at birth, if you’re a real human in our world. There are exceptions though! And yes, one of those exceptions is trans people. However, in real world terms, if a person has never internalized their birth name for any reason, then their true name would be up for grabs, in that they could choose or otherwise a true name of their own.

Now, that is largely based on real world occult practices. But real world occult practices differ, sometimes significantly. There’s some branches of ceremonial magic that hold the birth name you be the true name. Others that it’s a chosen magical name that is never told to anyone, and a third “public” magical name is used for rites and rituals. So it isn’t like there’s only one way of thinking about this stuff in those belief systems.

But what about the fey/sidhe/fairies or other supernatural entities in fiction (and yes, there’s a difference between literary fiction, mythology, and religious or spiritual beliefs in the real world. IDGAF if any given person wants to partake in those beliefs or not, they are different from fiction in several important ways that are off topic beyond saying that).

Well, that’s when it comes down to the author/writer.

A lot of writers of things set in our world, even when it’s a fictionalized version that works in a different way, tend to base their choices off of whatever mythology they’ve run across, then adapt that to their writing. So you run into a couple of different answers.

Mostly, they go with the birth name being the true name. There’s exceptions, but it’s the dominant trope. In some cases, the birth name isn’t enough, it’s the exact way a person says and thinks their name that makes it true. Iirc, that’s part of the Dresden series if you want a specific example.

That idea is where words carry more than just definitions, and names are more than just some random phonemes. The process of how we (or the characters) take our name and etch it into ourself through thought and speech is what makes it a true name. It’s a really neat idea tbh. Have you ever noticed that sometimes a mom or dad will say their kid’s name slightly different? Minor changes in inflection or emphasis.

Plus, everyone sometimes says a name different. Your mom using your full name with stress in her voice hits harder than your friend introducing you to someone. And that’s different from the DMV (or equivalent) person calling your name as next. The words are the same, but the energy is different.

So, the way we think of our name, inside, is ours in a way that nobody else can ever be exactly right unless we teach it to them. The way we speak it is different as well, but a supernatural entity in a story can overhear that part easy enough.

Which all means that there’s no single answer to your question, but it’s still a damn fun one :)

There’s no set limit, not in days. Weeks, yeah. Generally, you’ll start noticing it tastes off after about five to ten days. It won’t necessarily be spoiled, but once opened, everything starts losing freshness fast, relatively. Safely wise, a week is what most people say is the cautious limit. But the truth is that if your fridge is stable, the jar didn’t have anything dipped into it, and it isn’t being opened frequently, it could potentially last a month or more without being dangerous to health.

However, it could also grow shit overnight that would make your toilet very unhappy.

So there’s a good bit of sense in not risking going past a week.

The nose is a decent enough detector for most things, but in this case, the bacteria that are problematic can grow well before anything that will smell bad. Botulism ain’t stank, and that’s the one you have to worry about the most. Mind you, the risk is low. A lot of sauces are acidic enough that botulism isn’t going to grow well. I’d even say most. The other two risks are usually going to be less likely, because they have to get in by cross contamination of some kind, where botulinum can come in over the air (not likely, just possible).

Me? I’d chuck it out after a week unless I had a specific plan to use it soon after. I hate wasting food, but the truth is that pizza sauce is cheap and common. Nobody is losing out if a half a jar gets trashed. But that’s me, I don’t make pizza often. If you’re using it regularly, and only pouring out into a bowl or onto dough without dipping things in, you’ll use it up before it could hurt you, even if it’s a few weeks.

No bullshit, commercial canning is very good at killing nasties off. It’s only when we stick things into the container that risks start climbing to “oh shit” territory in a fridge.

Aight, you asked multiple questions, so you’re going to get some strange answers, possibly including this one.

To your title question, the only time I’ve heard anyone say that, they were being a douche. My response online is mostly of the “down vote, report if appropriate, and move on” variety.

In meat space, my response is usually either an eye roll and walking off, or a “fucking moron” and walking off.

I have big dude privilege in meat space, and roll well armed, so have no need to pretend to be nice to douche nozzles spewing bullshit.

The other questions are harder.

1: for a given value of factual, sure, I guess. But it’s using imprecise language that’s been weaponized, so I would be dubious of someone stating it until there was more context. “Biological” isn’t as definitive and limited in usages as to be without question in that context.

2: don’t matter. If a guy says he’s a guy, he’s a guy. If a gal says she’s a gal, she’s a gal. End of fucking story, and I will gladly tell anyone fucking with my trans homies that they’re a fucking moron and be willing to either walk off, or fuck them up if they insist. IDGAF about sometimes XY or XX status, or any of the other possible combinations (remember when I said “Biological” isn’t that useful or definitive? Yeah, biology ain’t a binary). I care about the person’s expressed self. It’s about basic human decency and respect.

3: I wouldn’t respond logically. It doesn’t merit any effort on my part. I’m not in the business of convincing anyone that everyone has human rights, should have equal acces to all civil rights, or that someone else’s gender is none of their fucking business. It isn’t about logic. Anyone at this point trying to frame gender as some kind of science debate is a douche and can go fuck themselves. The debate at this point has nothing to do with “biology”. It’s about human rights. And yes, I will fight on that hill.

4: it would only contradict if the person trying to bring “biology” into a conversation is being a douche instead of just missing the point. I don’t automatically assume a person trying to frame the subject in those terms is acting with malice. So they may not be contradicting the fact that trans women are women. They may just be exploring the language of transness in an attempt to better understand the matter. And that’s okay. It isn’t a built in part of language, so everyone has to absorb the concepts over time.

Alas, assholes and morons use that language to denigrate trans people. So I also can’t assume someone isn’t doing so. I have to wait for context, or be proactive in stating that I ain’t putting up with bigotry, so if that’s where they’re going, it won’t end well.

Me? The debate is over. What’s still in play is people finding their path to internalizing the subject. We don’t get to debate what is a fundamental human experience. Trans people exist. It isn’t imaginary on their part, it isn’t bad parenting, it isn’t trauma. They’re trans, and that’s it.

I’m a music fiend. If there’s nothing preventing it, I would have music going 24/7. There’s times I do, though not as much as I used to.

Oh fuck.

In my main cabinet, each drawer holds… Ahhhhhhh, I wanna say just under a hundred? That’s times six drawers. Of CDs. I have fifty here in my room, plus another hundred-ish boxed up.

Vinyl, I haven’t counted since I put them in storage when our last record player bit the dust. But it was around 140? Ish? There’s a dozen or so cassettes shoved in a closet of local bands I can’t replace, so they got digitized.

Digital purchases, I stopped counting once it got hard to scroll through. I was an early adopter of burning discs, so I wasn’t worried about shelling out for digital goods back then. I just made plenty of backups. But it had to be maybe 200 back when I got disabled and couldn’t spend on such things often.

I’ve only bought a double handful since then tbh. I’m fucking poor, so I only spend on small artists. I pirate the rest.

Soooo, that’s what? A little over a thousand? Right around there anyway.

If you count pirated stuff, and I don’t call that owning in the same way, there’s two terabytes currently on my main drive of just music, though it isn’t all albums. Maybe 20% of that is singles or a few tracks.

I actually end up listening to most of it over time. My phone and music players tend to only have maybe a few hundred gigabytes on them what with sd cards in the tb range being expensive for my budget, and only my newest devices support that big anyway.

But when I’m really in the mood, I crank up my old gaming PC and just hit play. Since musicbee is set up for it, alli have to do is remember where one the alphabet I was, and start from where I left off.

I reckon I end up cycling through it all maybe once a year to every other year or so.

Reduce it? Fuck that. I could get rid of stuff I pirated for other people, but we’re talking about maybe a dozen or so gigs. Why bother?

Some of the vinyl was my parents’, so I wouldn’t actually play them at this point. Which means I could get rid of the stuff I have in digital format. But, again, fuck that. Vinyl is much cooler to handle. I like having them, despite not needing them. Besides, only a few were worth any money back when I stored them.

I don’t think there’s a single objective answer.

The gist would be that it’s habitual due to long term cultural patterns, the same as what any given culture has in regards to food.

At some point, the concept of big piles of food being the default crept in. I suspect that it originated between feast/celebration foods and the “working man’s meal” where early workers in agriculture and industry needed a shit ton of calories to keep doing their work. Once enough people see that kind of portions often enough, the mind decides that must be what everyone is supposed to get on their plate.

Then, as things like machinery and eventually robots removed more and more of the physical labor from jobs, sizes never went back down because the outcome of eating beyond what you need isn’t immediate and obvious. So you follow the defaults, do what you have seen and internalized as the norm.

But there are still plenty of jobs where loads of calories are necessary to get through a shift. So people still see that, and thus expect it on their plate even if it isn’t a healthy amount for the job they have.

TV just follows society most of the time, so a show will most often mirror a norm without any effort to correct for what’s best for individuals.

When it comes to restaurants, there’s an extra later though. Even if people know they don’t need that much, there’s an expectation that if you pay for a given order, you’ll get the same amount as anyone else that orders it. So restaurants have to scale to what at least a decent sized segment of the population expects to see. They won’t be happy if they get less return on their plate compared to another diner, despite that other diner being on a road crew busting their ass laying pavement in the sun all day and needing more.

If a restaurant either changed sizes per customer needs, or charged an extra amount for people with higher needs, they’d go out of business fast

Restaurant waste, which is what your post body starts with, can’t be recycled like that. It’s an unsafe practice due to the contamination gained at the table combined with time out of the temperature safe zone. Even if you killed an the pathogens there, the risk of the toxins left by those pathogens is problematic. That and it would ruin the food trying to kill them to a reasonable degree.

Now, back in the kitchen, you could do what some restaurants do and donate the prepared but unserved food to local distribution centers (often focused on homeless charities or government outlets). But it wouldn’t make sense to turn it into some kind of “nutrition loaf”. Seriously, look up that term and be prepared to hate the prison system more than you do currently.

And that is why even if the process could be perfectly safe, it would still suck. Nobody should have to eat the horrible crap that it would turn into. If would be cheaper, safer, and more humane to just make sure everyone has good food to eat in the first place.

The only application for the kind of bricks you’d get from the process is feeding people that don’t have access to good, healthy food in the first place.

No bullshit, I’ve yet to run into jank. My bank is a credit union that isn’t a bunch of assholes, so their app works fine.

I don’t need any authentication apps, so no worries there. Ifi ever do, there’s some known to work with graphene.

I’m happier with graphene than I have been in years with android overall. Last time I was really happy with android, we were still in single digits. The ever increasing limitations Google was applying broke my joy of it s an enthusiast.

But graphene at least returns me being able to use my device without the layers of Google bullshit unless I just want to.

So no frustrations at all just easy to use handled computing.

I’ve had this phone since early last year. I think? Might have been june? Damned if I can remember without digging up old messages lol.

Whe I got it, my plan was to use the pixel for my second line in case I couldn’t make the transition. I switched sims out two days later and haven’t looked back since. If I could put graphene on my second phone, I would.

Stock? Nah.

I have something like a dozen tablets and phones stacked on my desk. I get new ones, but the old ones have enough life in them that I don’t just count them as ewaste and wash my hands of them. Only two of those have current lineage available, and I can’t be arsed to update what amounts to a picture frame that isn’t connected to Wi-Fi. The rest get used as security cameras for very short term use.

Most of them still have the os they came with as, again, I can’t be arsed to fiddle with the ones that I could dig up a rom for, or they couldn’t be unlocked to do it in the first place. But none of them were ever stock Android. Since when I got them, I favored Samsung and LG tablets, the ui was highly altered from regular AOSP.

Now, my main phone? My absolutely amazing friend gifted me a pixel with graphene ready to go as soon s it reached me. But I do still use some play store apps on it, when I can’t find something good enough that isn’t (nothing touches poweramp, and I haven’t had the budget to put towards a licence for it from the dev, yet. Higher priorities).

Never touched a pi unless it was a pie being shoved down my throat.

Ngl though, if I wasn’t lazy as fuck, I’d likely swap to lineage on my older oneplus that’s my backup phone. Just don’t feel like dealing with the time it would take. So it’s as stock as it was when I got it a few years ago. I doubt I’ll ever do it unless I get a newer graphene device and it gets retired to the desk for infrequent uses. That’s how I end up with a still working Galaxytab 2 lol. Barely still working tbh.

Ignoring private schools, it really depends on locale. Most schools are run by a combination of local and state guidelines. So each state has its own minimum standards, which are then implemented on a district level.

However, in some districts, the budget isn’t equal between all schools.

So you can have varying quality within the same school system, and even more between different systems.

The good thing about school meals is that they aren’t usually super expensive, don’t require packing only foods that won’t spoil or be gross by lunch time, and there’s usually some kind of budget for free reduced cost lunches (sometimes breakfast too) for those in need. It makes sense that most students will choke down even the bad options instead.

Some schools do damn well though. The bulk is usually going to be supplied by one of the industrial food distributors, but most of that is similar to or the same as what you’d get in terms of ingredient quality as chain restaurants.

So the staff of the cafeteria can make a huge difference in quality right there. Knowing how to turn fairly meh ingredients into something tasty is a great thing.

When schools supplement with fresh produce, it can be damn good food. Local farmers out in rural areas often contribute. Some high schools have agriculture programs where they grow stuff that gets used in their own school, and may be distributed to others. Our closest high school supplements their own cafeteria, plus the elementary schools, and part of the jr high schools (some of those have their own gardens, so they tend to handle their own). My kid was very happy with the high school’s food, unlike the food at their jr high in another state that they hated.

I ate at the high school a couple of times. Waaaaaay better than when I was a student there, and the agriculture program was starting up back then. Mind you, the lady that ran the cafeteria was doing a great job with what she had. The supplies were just crap back then. All canned shit for veggies if it wasn’t grown local, mandated recipes on a schedule set by the county, so you could only do so much to improve things. She ran a damn good kitchen though, so even when the food was bad, we knew the cooks were doing their best.

And that’s pretty much the problem with school food. It just isn’t a nationwide priority.

I’d hold off another few years. There’s just enough published info pointing towards risks being higher under the mid twenties. The brain never stops developing, but that first twenty years in particular is easier to disturb since the development is more significant.

At 18, you’re still putting the polish on some key centers, so fucking with that for a little hedonism seems unwise until there’s more and better research available.

Me? I think I’d hold off until at least 21-23. Honestly, I’d do the same with any mind altering stuff. It’s not long to wait, and going at it too early can have long term consequences. There’s plenty of time to experiment and enjoy all sorts of recreational pharmaceuticals.

Iirc, I had my first (of three lol) drunk at 17, and while it did no harm as a one-off (not much will tbh), I also didn’t really sink into the experience the same as later experiments with mind altering. Mind you, I’ve never liked being drunk, and avoided any of the high addiction potential stuff, but the difference in my second drunk compared to my first was massive just by dint of being 21, just a few years of added perspective on what I wanted out of it, and how I approached it.

Weed, that’s another one that my initial exposure in my late teens (18 or 19) was just not as good as years later (late twenties).

But, I can say that trying it once is worth it. If you end up not liking it, no big deal. I’d just wait a little longer. Weed, be it smoked, edible, or otherwise, is a very powerful experience when used infrequently. Steady use weakens the benefits of it for fun imo, but a few times a year? It’s nice. It enhances joy and good feelings.

Just be easy with edibles. They hit slow, but hard. You can always have more if you don’t get the degree of euphoria you want after a half hour, but you can’t take it away if you get too stoned, which is absolutely possible.

For humor, strokin’ by Clarence Carter. I’ve been known to say “ima put on some mood music”, then start that track and do a bump n grind to it. Surprisingly, it works often enough that I keep doing it.

More seriously, I favor Barry White for background music for sex. The combination of solid rhythms and that sweet baritone get the job done when a partner doesn’t have their own preference, but wants music.

That being said, Prince, during his symbol era, put out a song called 7. It’s not even a sexy song, per se. But the rolling rhythm and vaguely romantic lyrics work for me, and tend to work well for others, so it’s high on my list of songs for sex. As a single favorite, it takes the spot. https://youtu.be/9V-vcXOpG9g

Depressing though? I am not depressed by music, even sad music. Sad music may make me somber, but not sad.

However, if I need a good cry, the Dixie Chicks version of Travelin Soldier will do it damn near every time. Don’t even know why really, but I think it’s the voice tone and arrangement that push it into tear jerking rather than the lyrics, even though the lyrics are sad. That’s because there’s other versions, including by the original songwriter, that don’t make me cry at all. No other song comes close to the reliability of tears that one does.