ryan

Calorie counting through MyFitnessPal. I am unable to accurately gauge how many calories I’m consuming just by eyeballing it, and this is especially difficult given my TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) is about 1350 calories. (I’m short.) The only way I’ve been able to manage my weight is by turning it into concrete understandable numbers.

I have a 3,312 day streak of calorie counting now. It’s the one habit I’ve managed to keep up, and while my weight has gone up and down I’ve kept track of it all. At my starting point, I weighed 150lb (obese by BMI), and I’m currently down to 118 (high end of normal by BMI).

Self-reply: looks like Clozemaster Pro now has a ChatGPT-enabled “Explain” feature which is extremely helpful and breaks down the sentences. You can do this on your own with ChatGPT of course, copying sentences in and asking (I have done this), but it’s nice to have the option embedded in.

Which language are you trying to learn? There are different answers depending on that.

As someone learning Hindi, I’ve found that Duolingo is wholly insufficient in grammar and vocabulary (the entire course is far too short) and did not concentrate on listening comprehension. I’ve started using a combination of the following:

• Clozemaster for vocabulary in context of (sometimes pretty wild) sentences. (I’ve got a lifetime subscription to Clozemaster, it goes on sale during holidays.) Clozemaster has grouped “common words” and a combination of reading/listening skill and multiple choice / vocab word transcription / entire sentence transcription. It feels very overwhelming at first as you’re just thrown in but keep at it - start with reading and multiple choice and once you know the words and sentences in your grouped section start typing them out via listening.
• A combination of textbooks and websites to explain certain grammatical concepts.
• A listening-based podcast, example Innovative Language, for listening comprehension. (This also goes on sale regularly.)

Somewhat unrelated, but I do find it funny that farts aren’t considered acceptable, but sneezes and coughs are. Like, farts have an extra barrier in the form of your clothing (assuming you’re not at a nudist colony or bathhouse) and won’t make other people sick. I guess it’s just because they’re stinky.

I vote to normalize farting with an “excuse me”, and saying “bless you” to people when they fart.

While I get what you’re saying and I think sometimes emojis can absolutely be overused or used in place of textual clarification, I feel they also serve as an effective substitute for a lack of non-verbal communication. Generally speaking, “what people say” is only half the story, and “how they say it” (the nuances of facial/bodily expressions, tone of voice, etc) is the other half.

When writing narratives, we get away from this by means of, well, narration. “… he said, cheerfully”; “… he replied, with just a twinge of annoyance to his voice”; “she said, while averting her eyes”.

In first person communications like social media, we don’t really have an effective way to communicate that sort of nuance. We do have action asterisks shudders in horror, shorthand expressions to represent actions like LOL, and emoji 🤷‍♂️ as potential alternatives, as well as some community-driven linguistic nuance like Reddit’s usage of “/s” to indicate sarcasm.

We could also go all old-timey letter writing and say things like “while I find myself hesitant to reply to you in fear that you will consider it an attack, I do find myself with some concerns in regards to your comment and will elaborate below. I hope that you will not take these concerns as dismissive of your opinion in any way, as I simply mean to clarify some doubts and seek your own opinion on my thoughts as presented above.” (This might be an example of “overly eloquent” and there is probably a happy medium.)

I find the ever-evolving linguistics of internet communication to be really fascinating, if you can’t tell!

Is it actually a Mandela Effect if you’ve just forgotten what a guy’s name is? I always thought it was more about mass confabulations.

On the other side, as someone younger it’s hard to date people much older, as they start casually talking about what they did during various wars, or comparing the COVID pandemic to the black plague, and I’ve just got zero frame of reference to connect.

Everyone much older I’ve met has been just delightful (I assume the rude ones eventually get murdered by their local townsfolk) but it’s just so hard to make that genuine connection when your life experiences are so different, you know?

This is Windows-based and mutes your microphone globally, but if you’re concerned about leaking video/audio accidentally I’ve found it very helpful:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/video-conference-mute

This is part of PowerToys. It says “legacy mode” because they were gonna deprecate it now that they’re trying to build the functionality into W11, but relented and are keeping it based on the outcry from W10 users.

Now that I have a Kindle, digital all the way. It’s so nice to just throw that tiny thing in a bag and read somewhere, and if you finish your book there are a bunch more on your device. I like that the Kindles allow you to email ebooks to your address to be downloaded so you’re not locked into the Amazon store.

Cobbling together data from a couple sources…

Install each bulb, and toggle it on/off five times with the wall switch. Make sure to wait 10 seconds between each toggle. (Edit: like on for ten, then off for a couple seconds, repeat)

Unsure whether there’s any visual feedback once this process is complete - I would assume it may go into some pairing indication mode like a dim/brighten cycle to indicate it’s ready to pair.

Bob, short for Bobert. So that every time he has to say his full name to anyone on the phone or fill out forms somewhere, he has to repeatedly explain that, no, it’s not Robert, it’s Bobert.

Maybe try leaving one in cola for a week or two as an experiment? You’d probably be able to see how the acid affects the enamel, which is why dentists recommend drinking soda through a straw, and also why generally you’re not supposed to brush your teeth directly after drinking soda (toothbrush is too abrasive on the weakened enamel).

To keep as much of your original sentence as possible, “There’s a thing, (I don’t know what it is,) and…”

Basically the only way to smush those two concepts together in the order you’d like is if one is basically an interjection to an ongoing sentence containing the other. In that case, you wouldn’t use any connecting words at all.

If you wanted a single sentence, many other commenters have already given great suggestions.

Upvote is like a Mastodon favorite, and should be used similar to a favorite across other ActivityPub implementations. Boost, likewise, is common across other implementations.

(Fun fact though: kbin originally had these reversed - upvote performed a boost, and what is now called “boost” was originally favorite! This was switched a bit ago for better interoperability with Lemmy and other AP implementations.)

Downvote, to my knowledge, is a unique implementation to Lemmy/kbin.

I think it could be fun if it were opt-in per community, similar to custom awards on Reddit but free. The downside would be losing compatibility with other ActivityPub implementations (although FireFish does have emoji reactions so implementing it the same way as FF would help to set a standard).

Pants sizes. For women, drop the even/odd numbering for women and juniors and move to waist and inseam like men. For everyone, implement some sort of standard policy where the actual measured size can’t be more than an inch off the stated size (to account for variability in manufacturing and such).

I’m 34. Yes, my bones hurt, but it’s not terrible and I’d rather stay 34 forever (or at least drastically slow my aging, like if there were serious side effects I could take one every two days and effectively double my longevity).

Sign me up. Even if there’s side effects like nausea or whatever. I’ll do whatever it takes to stop my bones hurting more every year.

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God I love beef stroganoff. Haven’t had it in years. My mom used to make it for dinner sometimes. What a delicious meal.