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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • We make food “from scratch” on a regular basis.

    We’ve found a few different sources for fats. I’ll focus on the pork-fat ones.

    The most common source is to just collect fat any time we make pork things. The advantage is that it’s cheap and easy; just let it cool and add it to a jar in the fridge. The disadvantage is that it will have a lot of other flavors (especially salt).

    Sometimes we just by processed lard. That’s basically the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s very pure and has no flavor besides the fat itself.

    Often we’ll wet render our own fat. Traditionally that would be the trimmings off of other cuts. Unless you’re butchering a pig (or have bought into a fractional pig through something like a CSA) those bits usually aren’t available. Typically we’ll just buy cuts that are very high in fat. For pork, that would be pork belly. We’ll just buy an uncut slab and wet-render it. Trim any meat you want to cook with (belly is the part that bacon is made of) throw the rest in a pot of water an simmer it for a few hours. The fat layer that collects on top is almost pure lard.

    We’ve also found that duck fat is a great substitute for lard. It has a similar smoke point to lard (slightly higher). It tastes different from lard but it’s also good enough that the flavor itself will improve meals. Duck breasts are about 50% fat if you buy them with skins. You can also buy duck fat on its own.



  • I’ve been thinking about this exact question recently.

    My Austrian grandmother and her sister were working class teenagers during the war. They couldn’t realistically have done anything to stop the Nazis. They didn’t really do much to help but since they were seamstresses they secretly snuck the Jewish family in the building some sewing supplies. It wasn’t much and they stopped when they were told that someone had reported them to the Gestapo. Their experience during the war was dodging bombs and trying to find something to eat.

    None of that matters. When I was a kid growing up in the US people regularly made Nazi jokes as soon as they found out about my heritage. Nobody was willing to entertain any ideas that maybe those civilians shouldn’t have been held accountable.

    History judged all of Germany and Austria harshly. It judged the civilians harshly and it judged their descendants harshly.

    https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144717
    The world is watching.



  • It’s not just the sexual aspect that makes people uncomfortable.

    Many people view it as childish. Children are really into their stuffed animals and love playing dress up. There is nothing inherently wrong with enjoying activities normally associated with children but other adults tend to look down on it.

    Some furries like to talk about their fursona as a spiritual extension of themselves. Many people associate that kind of language with crazy old hippies.



  • Allies are only ever allies of convenience.

    The US was allied with both the USSR and China for the sake of convenience. Right after that war the US allied with its erstwhile enemies, Japan, Germany and Italy for the sake of convenience. The Marshal Islands maintain diplomatic relations with both China and the US for their own convenience.

    BRIC (South Africa joined later) was initially coined as a description of quickly emerging economies by a Goldman Sachs economist. Since then it’s become an actual trading block that coordinates on economic policy. It’s very obviously dominated by China but the other members see advantage in joining a club that’s not obviously dominated by the US.

    The combined GDP of BRICS nations now exceeds the combined GDP of the G20. If it’s a joke, it’s a pretty successful one.




  • Yeah. It confused me at first too.

    It’s not too bad when they use some word that we never use at all. I had no trouble figuring out what a “bellend” is.

    It’s more of an issue when they use a word differently.
    Me: “Yo blondie, that’s not how you’re supposed to wear condoms.”
    Nigel Covington III: “You git, I most certainly do wear rubbers on my feet.”



  • That’s one of many many plot holes in Harry Potter.

    There’s really no depth to the world building beyond, “What if British public schools taught magic?”

    It doesn’t make sense in any context beyond that because the author never considered it from any context beyond that. Whenever you run into some crazy crap in HP and wonder, “Why TF would anyone do it that way?” The answer is almost always, "Because that’s how they do it in British public schools.


  • I can’t guess what individual people will do but, as a group, shoppers end up spending more this way. Supermarkets and grocery stores typically sell many things besides food; toys, magazines, beauty products, etc.

    The store also doesn’t need you to eat all the food you buy. If you throw out a bunch of food, as many people frequently do, the store still gets paid for all of it.


  • They do it to make you spend more time browsing. Shoppers typically get the same stuff every time they get groceries. Over time people learn the layout of their local store and develop efficient patterns to move through it and get everything they want. When the store shuffles everything around they force shoppers to wander around the store and to look at all the shelves carefully for the stuff they actually want. Some percentage of them end up finding new things to buy and spend more money.


  • I have to applaud David Nolan on some next level marketing for this one.

    He invented the predecessor of that chart as a way to promote libertarianism. It’s very clever in how subtly it introduces a loaded question.

    The phrasing asks the viewer to consider if they want more or less political freedom and if they want more or less economic freedom. Obviously, most people want more freedom. Therefore Libertarianism is the best form of government. QED!

    But that makes two big assumptions that are almost certainly incorrect:

    1. It assumes that choice of government is entirely, or at least predominantly, determined by your views on economic and social regulations. Questions of military, legal process, environmental policy, etc are all either irrelevant or can be entirely described within the economic and social regulation factors. That doesn’t even pass the sniff test. If two people agree that they want social and economic freedom, do we really believe that they necessarily have identical political beliefs? No, because we know that in real life they’ll define those freedoms differently.
    2. It assumes that complex topics such as economics and social regulation can be entirely described on a single axis of “more vs less". If you look at the disagreements that people actually have, it’s almost always about the types of regulations, not on the degree of regulation.

    It’s a little frustrating that unabashed marketing is so frequently trotted out as though it were an established fact.


  • nednobbins@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlPlease don’t nuke me
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    1 year ago

    Primarily because it’s really difficult to move countries. Even when an other country is “better”, by whatever metric you may choose, the high switching cost makes the move worse for individuals unless staying in a country is really really bad. That threshold is typically when subsistence in the country of origin becomes untenable, often due to war or famine.


  • Didn’t know it had a name.
    That once stopped me from registering a video game title.

    I was feeling silly so I figured I’d go for a nonsensical contrast. “Evil Grape” got rejected. After several failed attempts it eventually dawned on me that some dumb algorithm thought it was a reference to sexual violence.

    It kind of annoyed me but I just picked an other fruit. It wasn’t until later that I considered that “Evil Banana” was probably more sexually evocative but it was too late by then.

    So if you’re ever playing a video game and shoot (or get shot by) “Evil Banana”, know that, if it weren’t for the Scunthorpe Problem, it could have been “Evil Grape,” but either way, it wasn’t intended as a sexual reference at all.



  • This isn’t about own vs rent, it’s about house vs apartment.

    Open flames are dangerous and smoke is annoying to neighbors. Condos and coops typically won’t let you grill. Some of them have designated grilling areas and those often have restrictions on how you can use them. Even many apartments with fireproof balconies won’t allow them because not all the neighbors want a balcony full of smoke.

    Every house I’ve ever rented, allowed grilling. Even the cheapest one, a row-house in Baltimore, let you grill in the back “yard”.


  • nednobbins@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlEarth-shatering vibrations
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    1 year ago

    It’s functionally close enough to a conglomerate though.

    I’m not exactly sure what ‘“free market” cultist’ is or if you’re accusing me of being one. Modern economists don’t normally align themselves with simplistic ideologies like “free market”, “communist” or “capitalist”. They’re aware of the historical and modern usage of these terms but they tend to focus on areas that are far to specific for those terms to even make sense. You won’t find a lot of economists that argue for complete Laissez-faire capitalism any more than you’ll find real economists arguing in favor of classical Marxism.

    There is general agreement that conglomeration benefits management more than shareholders. There’s general agreement that they are more likely to arise under some economic conditions and that those conditions usually aren’t associated with socially optimal economic policies.