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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: January 26th, 2024

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  • I’m an instance owner and mod. I’ll describe what we see.

    Like anyone else, I can check a post or comment and see the upvote and downvote counts. If I click on a specific menu item by a post or comment I can also see who voted which way.

    I check it often and to date have only banned two users, out of thousands, who were consistently downvoting posts. These bot accounts were literally voting within seconds of the post going federated.

    It’s a useful feature on my end and I think others should be able to see it.



  • You’re forgetting wear and tear. When the Yaris is moving, the gas is not the only being used, but so are the tires. And the brake pads and rotors. You’re putting mileage on the odometer, spinning those wheel bearings, blasting the A/C, and maybe loosening up that CV joint more and more every time you turn left. Was that an exhaust leak I’m starting to hear?

    With the moving truck, you don’t care about that stuff, as it’s baked into the rental cost. Even when the cost of the trailer is factored in you’ve saved money from wear. You still win.





  • A Catholic Christmas Eve Vigil (not Midnight - different kind of Mass).

    The scene was thus: A strange-to-me Catholic church off of something and Capital in Milwaukee, near where my mom, not a religious person but a nice person, took me and my sis when Christmas happened to fall on our regular visitation weekend one particular year.

    The priest spoke on and on, as fathers and Father tend to do. The readings familiar, unre(M)arkable, (L)ukewarm, Psalm verse, same as the first.

    The Homily was delivered in the patented priestly monotonic nasally drone, the incense and insensitivity flowing too freely. The easily-employed white, gray-haired, “middle class rich”, Kohl’s-suited, stoic husbands stood, sat, knelt, genuflected, stood, knelt, stood, sat, stood, knelt, genuflected, prayed, sang-chanted, with their wives, who were fully guilt-jeweled for common marital slights, whether real or imagined, or who benefited from rich parents who left their ill-gotten legacies to their ill-raised, now boomer kids who have become reluctantly over-sexed wives. The department store credit cards tucked safely in their expensive clutch purses, these women were fully-prepared to wage full-out Karen-esque, post-Christmas sale consumerist war in the following post-holiday sales season.

    Retail workers never stood a chance.

    In short: The church was overheated, like hell hot, probably good prep for some of these people, and my not-Catholic mother was next to me trying to morally fix or better herself, or maybe she was trying to impress my sister and I, or, more than likely on reflection, trying to placate my very-Catholic dad and stepmom, but mostly I had been standing for what seemed like FOREVER, and my knees alternately locked and unlocked, and my youth-fitting suit that was too small but too expensive to replace at Kohls just yet sweltered me under imagined and real guilt, and the incense, and the droning, and the HEAT…

    I was about 4 seconds from passing out when some stranger approached me and said “Hey, you don’t look OK. Let’s go outside now before you faint.” and I swear it’s the best religious experience I’ve ever had: A human being a human and taking pity on a young kid dealing with physical and emotional distress. I went outside and cooled off in the Midwestern December air. Soon after, my mom and sis came outside and we left in the beater car that smelt like gas if the heater was fully turned on, so we had to leave the freash air selector on and the slider control at no more than 3/4 quarters, but that’s OK because the A/C, which hadn’t functioned in many presidential election cycles, was fully-replaced by the December air, the religious experiment over.

    I’m not at all religious but I hope that guy knows just what he did for us that night. We were faking faith, just trying to be good people, and the droning, heat, guilt, and THAT FUCKING CHRISTMAS INCENSE just did us in.

    Lesson learned.





  • Welcome to the fediverse!

    Definitely search for the communities you are interested in and click subscribe. There may be several similar communities on different Lemmy instances with different rules or vibes. Also, if the subscribe button says subscribe pending, you can ignore that.

    Lemmy is amazing to be a “knight of new” as it were because the cross-talk, noise, bots, etc are just not there like they are in reddit. I’ve found communities I never would have known about.

    Keep in mind Lemmy is very actively developed. If you do end up staying with Lemmy consider tossing a few dollars to the devs. I’ve always found the devs courteous and approachable when I’ve encountered a bug.


  • oleorun@real.lemmy.fanto196@lemmy.blahaj.zonesmall penis rule
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    4 months ago

    The small penis rule was referenced in a 2006 dispute between Michael Crowley and Michael Crichton. Crowley alleged that after he wrote an unflattering review of Crichton’s novel State of Fear, Crichton included a character named “Mick Crowley” in the novel Next. The character is a child rapist, described as being a Washington, D.C.–based journalist and Yale graduate with a small penis.

    Power move




  • Ex-Army infantry guy here.

    In basic training, location Ft. Benning GA, late August. Hydration was important, and that was impressed upon us by the drill sergeants, who would pause the activity at hand for the moment and do the ‘Drink Water!’ call, to which we’d reply mostly in uninspired enthusiasm ‘Beat the heat drill sergeant beat the heat.’

    We’d then down a canteen (a quart) of water. On especially hot days, we’d do two canteens. No dumping on your head or on the ground - you had to finish one or both. We’d refill canteens and get back to the day’s task of doing push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, and in-between those, learning Army stuff (sir).

    One guy, Peterson (name changed), couldn’t do a canteen of water. This guy was the opposite of Joey Chestnut. He ate and drank like a bird but never lost weight. Slow metabolism and high energy conversion I guess. He never seemed dehydrated I would say. But water and food were just minimal for the guy. He’d drink a pint, maybe a sip more, and done.

    Our drill sergeants weren’t having that. You had to finish the canteen and flip it over your head. Failure to comply was met with drinking more water, until you finished the canteen, while your platoon did push-ups. No pressure.

    The rest of the story transpired really quickly.

    The drill sergeants hit him with the order to drink more water, and he did, and he stopped, and then they said keep going private, and he was in obvious pain, and he said no drill sergeant, and you could see the crinkle in the eyes of the questioned, but before that drill sergeant’s body language became verbal, Peterson puked up water, gallons of water it seemed, then breakfast, and the upper contents of his colon I’m pretty sure (j/k being illustrative). A medic, who just happened to be Starship Trooping on by, got on the horn and got the kid to a clinic. He was water intoxicated, we later found out.

    One of the great things they forget to show you on the recruitment brochure lol. He was eventually fine, and we were relegated to drinking until we could spit out saliva a few inches.