Normie here, Lemmy is pretty easy to use imo. I think the transition is happening now kinda like the Internet in the 90s or online dating in the 10’s.

Ofc I just got here and I’m using Voyager.

A theory I have is that everyone who hates reddit eventually left leaving the milk bags brains. I was mod of r/mapporncirclejerk and left when I saw my mod queue get exponentially worse. My friend told me it was because the decent people left for Lemmy.

Now I’m mod of !cartographyanarchy@lemm.ee and it’s sooooo much easier.

It also will make your house smell great! I’d also suggest making enough for friends and visitors.

I’m in Chicago and it can get lonely if you decide to stay couped up in your house for too long. Make sure to be intentional on inviting friends over and becoming close with your neighbors. I noticed comments here are focused on the physical aspect of winter, but it’s also important to take care of your mental health.

My theory is the Midwestern kindness is just a regional Stockholm syndrome. We’re all in this together.

So you spent the day outside shoveling snow, maybe you had to walk 20 minutes to get to a friend’s house, maybe the cold itself just took it out of you because your body was burning calories just to stay warm. You finally get home and you are out of breath and just wanting to dry off and get warm again- and that’s when you thank your past self for what you did on meal prep Sunday:

French onion soup.

You can look online for recipes, but here’s what I improvised last Sunday (probably not definition french onion soup, but at least a variation on a theme). Mine takes about 1 hour to make (10 min prep, 50ish minutes to cook)

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 tablespoon fat (I use leftover bacon grease)
• Onions (I used 4 but you could do more)
• garlic (I used 1 bulb, but you could always do more)
• Apple (I used 1, but you could always do more)
• veggies (I like zucchini and carrots)
• mushrooms if you like em
• protein (stew beef, ground meat, chicken, turkey, hell even sandwich meat will do)
• cardamom
• Curry powder
• vinegar (I use white balsamic, but apple cider vinegar or anything flavorful will do)
• chicken broth

1. Cut up the onions into thick chunks, no need to get precise, just hack 'em quick so you have less time being in a tearful agony
2. Peel the bulb of garlic, but leave the cloves whole- don’t crush them.
3. Heat up your butter and fat, then add in the onions and garlic. Let it sautee for like… 30 minutes? If you have time to do a proper caramelizing then do that, but it’s still good if you want to make it faster.
4. While the onions and garlic do their thing, prepare your meat in another pan. Of course if you use ham or something pre cooked you can skip this step.
5. Slice your apple(s) however you want, I like thin slices but cubes are good too.
6. Add in veg and apples, let them cook for 15 minutes or so
7. Add meat
8. A couple dashes of cardamom and curry and also pour in your broth to desired consistency
9. Give a taste then add a dash of vinegar to see how it really cuts through the fattiness

Dish and serve! If you want to really clog those arteries, go ahead and add some cheese on top, I like smoked Gouda. I also use a pipe sweater to torch the cheese and give it a little melty/ crispy texture. This soup should be thick and hearty to restore your energy and give you the gumption to brave the elements again. If you were link in legend of Zelda, you’re getting at least 10 yellow hearts from this.

That and a hot tody will give you the coziness that will lift your spirits in the dark cold months.

Good luck!

It was interesting because everyone thought she wasn’t hungry and kept giving solutions for that, but it wasn’t that she wasn’t hungry- she kept pawing at me and walking over to the kitchen/ her food bowl, but just wouldn’t eat what I gave her. She was very hungry, but I guess she was pickier than she was hungry.

“we thought we hit rock bottom, but then we heard a knock from below” -Russian Joke

As you hear the words “goodnight sweet prince”, you take your final bite of the Däz.

Thats what I’m talkin’ about.

And I bet this time you recieved blood before you got them

Obligatory OP comment:

I’d probably drink PBR Xtra and the Cookies and Cream ice cream from Aldi all day and then croak.

I’m digging myself out of a $13k credit card debt hole. I burned through my savings when a job that I had ended on my unexpectedly, and because it was contract work I wouldn’t qualify for benefits. They kept me around as a sub, promising me a full time position if I just stuck around long enough and I was foolish enough to believe them.

I’m self employed now and making do with the best I can, but I’m planning on ending my dream as a musician/ teacher and moving home. I don’t know who would want my skills, but I know they are specialized and strong. I just gotta see what kind of work would value them.

Fair, but I do like seeing the federated model thrive and prove itself as a viable alternative to main stream social media. My utopian dream would be that profit driven internet would fall apart against what we have. I hate how much power is given to so few.

Thanks so much for your kind words.

I’ve taught at a private school as a long term music sub, which while being the job that put me in the red (I kept asking when the normal teacher would come back, they never gave me a straight answer until I walked into my office one day to find her stuff there. After that they kept stringing me along in hopes that they’d start a full band program- I spent weeks putting together a proposal for it to be rejected for “various reasons”).

I’ve been thinking about the regular job, but I have no idea what I can do to get me out of the red. Anything that would pay $80k+ just seems out of reach since those tend to be senior positions or for people who can code. I’ve tried coding many times but just can’t seem to get it. Sales has burned me time after time and marketing just doesn’t stick. I can do it for myself alright, but it’s just not something that wants me around in the corporate setting.

Sadly so much of the music industry is for creating commercial music to be used for businesses. When music is a commodity to be bought and sold, humans aren’t really necessary. Why would I pay a human to create a catchy tune for my advertisement when Ai can pump out something that does just fine? AI is also breaking the music tech side. It’s not 100% yet, but Ai mixing and mastering is taking off. If I’m an artist, especially one on a tight budget, an Ai mixer could do just fine for my album when normally I might pay someone with the experience to do so. This might seem great for the artist, but once they have their album, they can get paid $20 a year from Spotify.

The tech spokespeople keep trying to convince us that Ai won’t steal our work and livelyhoods. The thing is everyone in my industry, me included, don’t buy it. These are the same people who said tech would bring Seattle jobs and prosperity, but all it did was raise rents and push out the artists. Tech bros will disagree and say Seattle is just fine, but they weren’t the ones negatively impacted by the industry that allowed them to move there. There’s a group of us in Chicago who call ourselves Seattle’s artistic refugees.

We aren’t the only ones- San Francisco, Boston, Austin, Denver- so many cities are losing their artistic communities that made them worth living in. There’s still music in these places, but you’ll notice those performances are taken by big names for people who can afford those $60+ tickets.

Hell, even Death Cab for Cutie wrote an absolutely heartbreaking bop.

Digging for gold in my neighborhood

For what they say is the greater good

But all I see is a long goodbye

A requiem for a skyline

💔💔💔

I’m not trying to be doom and gloom, but I can’t keep living like this.

I love you. Thank you for commenting and being.

I think a huge misstep of the original argument is “career politician bad”. Biden is seen as a one man “dynasty” because he has ~50 years of experience. Obama and Clinton are only seen as dynasties because they had active First Ladies so there’s a “power couple” image.

I think it’s fair to say there are political dynasties- the Kennedy’s, the Bushes- and it makes sense that they will tend to happen naturally. If my dad was president of the United States, at the age of 12 I’d have a much better understanding of the Washington Political Machine than most people.

Usually when we think of “Outsider” candidates, we think of people who have 0 government experience who enter the arena. Notice that Trump isn’t mentioned in the post. Ofc Trump was as embedded in the Washington establishment as much as anyone else when he ran in 2016, having ran for president previously and using the ol’ “wine and dine” method generously to help him get a leg up in business.

I personally don’t think it’s a bad thing to have a ton of experience in getting a lot of people to do one thing together- oddly enough that’s an INCREDIBLY HARD THING TO DO. We need all sorts of people in politics in order to represent the people accurately. The Tim Walz’s and AOC’s in congress brought so much to the table- they know what it’s like to grow up as the everyday American. The Biden’s and the Pelosi’s have been removed from that world for so long it’s understandable they might not have the most accurate picture of modern American life, but they do have the deep understanding for how to get things done. In Biden’s single term, he has outpaced most presidents in getting legislation passed. I remember being optimistic in 2020 hoping Biden would be a modern LBJ, and by gum I think ol’ Joe did it.

“I will have you know I’m a self made man, just like my father and his father before him”

So I dealt with this a shit ton in my 20s, and have only recently found an effective way to reframe my mindset.

First, my friend introduced me to parts theory. It’s a practice that’s underscored by “nonessentialism” for my philosophy friends here (i.e. there is no single you, you are made up of many, many identities that come together). The exercise I would recommend you do is to name the different parts of you. Hell, to make it fun, pretend they are tarot cards or something. For instance my negative feelings came from a part of me I now call “the sleezy politician” who manipulates people into doing what he wants. I also took note of the origin story of this character- I had very unstable family dynamics that had a lot of backroom conversations, and also I had a traumatic friend group explosion in highschool that taught me I need to control others through charm to survive.

I also have “the musician”, “the teacher”, “the council”, “the romantic”, “the child”… I listed 34 and I could probably keep going. Recognize each one of these people is trying to take control of the wheel of your life, and you can choose who you give it too.

I also just listened to Kevin Hines on the Man Enough Podcast . The man enough podcast is a podcast that deals with men’s issues through a feminist lense- I see it as the antidote to the manosphere. That said, I don’t think you need to be a dude to take something from this. TW: it has a lot to do with suicide, but it is very uplifting when it comes to self love. The exercise I took away from it is to note the thoughts repeating in my head of who I tell myself I am, and then say the opposite. I am responsible. I am kind. I am genuine. I am honest. I am enough.

Finally I had a thought yesterday- I need to love myself before I love others. If I’m not comfortable in my own skin, how can I be comfortable with someone else? My friend who just got married said he knew she was the one when “the relaxed feeling I have when I’m alone at home is the same when I’m with her at home. I feel at home.” That’s when I realized I need to be at home with myself.

But don’t just love yourself- have a crush on yourself. Idk about you, but when I’m absolutely crushing on someone I’m seeing, I become like a bird of paradise. I keep my place clean. I exercise. I eat right. I take them out to dance and see the world. I do everything I can to be my best self for this person. So why not do that for me?

I hope some of this can help friend. You aren’t just wanted here, you are needed here, and for a reason.

Lol right? That’s absurd. Mine’s 15" like normal.

Like any proper gentleman.

I noticed that with other threads, or when I edit comments. I’ve accidently pissed off a lot of people 😅

Yea I saw that then deleted my comment…

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