I work out in sleeveless tops.

Had a friend who swore by ammonia for armpit stains on shirts, maybe try that?

I haven’t been the disliked person (surely not universally liked but widely liked so far) but I have sort of disliked a couple of reasonably competent coworkers - so not disliked because they sucked or dragged us down - just personality clash - and I have learned to ignore it because it’s not predictive of how well their work will get done.

Our IT department would listen to any ideas BTW, it’s getting more corporate (I joined when it was a start up but it’s been a dozen years) but not to the point of being heirarchish yet. I am sort of outspoken too and have found the wild west chaos of a startup to be my best fit, may have time to do it once more before retirement if this place gets too beaurocratic.

I also would say Hayes Carll, in the American Dream song (though it’s partly the delivery)

“Nothing changes, even if it wants to.”

People drinking in situations where nobody would be drinking.

And, obviously, running faster than explosions.

By remembering how bad the past sucked. How much better off I am as a woman now, than at almost any time in the past - even if we are going in the wrong direction, still better off than even my mom was. My mom was alive for the integration of schools, alive when women could not open bank accounts in her state, we have made plenty of progress. Violence is less than 1/10th of what it was here when I was a kid.

Yes inequality sucks, because there are now enough resources for everyone. But it doesn’t suck like the middle ages, or the 1930s, or any time before that.

I don’t know! It’s so much more fun to watch. Games are shorter, action, the silly scrimmage. It seems perfectly geared to our short attention span.

I do like doing my hair, and to some extent curly is easier (at least it always does something, I can just scrunch it) but occasionally it’s nice to go let the stylist blow it out straight - that will hold for a week.

And I wanted to comment on the brushing - I used to have SUCH tangly hair that “tangled” was my hair type. If I looked from one side to the other, it would tangle. These ladies on the old Naturallycurly site kept telling me to stop brushing it, just detangle with a wide tooth comb in the shower and then it would not be so tangly. I thought they were out of their minds, that my hair was just different - it wasn’t damaged, no split ends, nothing, just tangly. Well I tried it and guess what? Once I had a crop of never brushed hair, it was not tangly. Ever since putting down the brush it is so much easier. No big detangling sessions. Just wash, can comb the shampoo through it. Condition, some styling products, and go. It doesn’t dry as fast as yours but if I wash in the morning, diffuser a few minutes, it’s dry by lunchtime.

I can’t imagine I’ve read enough to know that but have always loved this one, from St Augustine, of all people.

Dance is a transformation of space, of time, of people, who are in constant danger of becoming all brain, will, or feeling.

The whole poem is amazing.

Such a hard question.

Old - Boz Scaggs Silk Degrees

New - Fontaines DC Romance

Borrowed - Cafe Tacuba Avalanche de Exitos

Blue - Nick Drake Bryter Later

Generally speaking, products labeled for curly hair are gentle (because curly hair is often delicate) and designed to help reduce frizz and help with definition.

So it won’t make straight hair curly, no. It will help curly hair look “curlier” because less frizz and better separation of the curls makes it look curlier, but it doesn’t literally tighten them, may even relax them very slightly.

So they are for people with curly hair, to improve the look and/or health of curly hair.

Yeah, I have a trans son, and he had to literally come out to me, because my conception of womanhood is so broad that simply dressing like a fashion-averse 40 year old lesbian did not even register with me as anything boyish. I have other kids (when you have a lot of them you are more likely to get some of everything) who are gay so I just figured he was a butch girl.

I mean, it says the temperature it has to reach. So hotter will get it there faster. I don’t generally buy frozen pizzas but when I do it’s for a party so inevitably I end up with a bunch of boxes that say to cook at different temperatures. I heat the oven to 425, put them all in and remove as they finish (I have 2 ovens and 5 oven racks)

I do agree they should advise a temperature, you are right. But maybe more people are like me and disregard it?

I dunno about favorite, but liked reading about St. Augustine of Hippo. Really interesting life.

They have a kind of cool story too, were developed as a replacement crop for tobacco farmers in North Carolina. So easy to propagate. Just let one sprout then put it in a big container of dirt (easier to find them if you grow in a container) and if you get too many don’t sell them, I think they are still under patent.

I grow them! Stokes Purple. They are the best because they are not as gluey as other types of sweet potato. They even grow in our hot summer weather.

ETA: it’s resource intensive but my favorite way to prepare them is freeze then bake, and I like them with olive oil, goat cheese, pepitas and salt & pepper.

I cannot tell the difference between scent, sent, cent, they sound the same.

This reminded me of my ex though - his name was Don and down here the boy name Don and the girl name Dawn sound the same. This made him so mad because where he came from (also in the US) they sounded completely different. He pronounced the girl name Dawn almost like “Dwan” and the boy one Dahn, sort of nasally.

So I can believe they sound different in different places but it would not be related to the volume or pitch. Rising pitch at the end of a phrase makes it a question so it has meaning in that way, and some words can change based on which syllable gets the accent - object, content, project as examples.

OMG this is so good, thank you!

My work mandated we use the copilot. And the only thing I have found it really good at is converting or extracting information from a PDF to build me a spreadsheet. The native conversion programs in both Adobe and Excel suck so bad.

I have some suppliers who won’t send a spreadsheet or CSV nothing that is data, only a PDF.

It’s a stupid and computationally expensive way to do it but does solve a problem for me, a problem that doesn’t need to exist at all but has frustrated me for years.

Two birds, one stone. I can honestly say to my boss that I am using the copilot for work, and it’s a workaround for the insufficient reporting I get from our payroll provider in particular, but also some bulk invoices that are detailed and only come as PDF.

So yes I am in this group. I’ve only used it for file type conversion, and once to “write” a process document just so it would be formatted in Word, I went in and wrote over most of it.

Scavenger’s Reign

Wicked Little Letters

I agree on Chernobyl it was so good.

That’s not quite true. Medical billing here is hopelessly complicated, a universal system would likely have universal rules, and streamline the process of billing and payments.

So if a medical practice now needs 5 people to do the insurance billing, it might need only one if there was one payer (Medicare) or two if there was a German sort of system, but not 5.