This is common to a lot of drinks, foods, scents if you haven’t been exposed to a variety over a period of time and all you drink is the same instant coffee each day then yeah, the flavour is “coffee” and all you really notice is the volume dial on how coffee it tastes. If you start intentionally drinking different types of coffee regularly and actually try to notice the flavours then yeah, anyone can start to identify the nuances. Its hard to identify those different components and qualities unless you try different things where they have them in different ratios.

I’m personally really into tea and similarly when people say “green tea tastes like grass” its the same thing. I try loads of different ones and am pretty good at noting the various notes, stone fruit, honeysuckle, muscatel, minerality, milk etc. Yet to most green tea tastes like grass, oolong is that weird weak tea you get in the chinese restaurant and black tea is best served with milk and sugar by the gallon in a Sports Direct mug.

And maybe I’m not entirely oonga boonga on coffee but I definitely don’t drink it enough to be good at being able to notice what exactly it is thats changing between them to be able to point it out.

Certainly agree with some of it but I don’t know if I necessarily agree with legalised non-harmful CP. I absolutely think that non-acting paedophiles deserve compassion, I can’t imagine how genuinely awful it must be to have thoughts like that, particularly if they clash with your own moral values. Even trying to get help could potentially wreck your life so it feels for some its a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. I wish I knew what the answer could ever be but absolutely we need to somehow reduce the automatic prejudice on those who want help. As you say, conversion doesn’t seem to be the answer, if you haven’t seen it then I highly recommend watching Louis Theroux’s A Place for Paedophiles where he spends time at Coalinga State Hospital looking at people convicted of these types of crimes where they are held indefinitely unless they enroll in a conversion therapy course which has an insanely low number of successful patients being able to leave it and get back to the real world. The stuff feels inhumane and almost designed to fail.
Its an area that absolutely needs more researchers and resources thrown at it but no government in this awful timeline is ever going to survive the right wing press backlash on “wanting to let predators live around children”.

Oh I’m aware, just wild is all. At least with antifascist they shorten it to antifa so that they can pretend its not the same thing.

I find it wild that “progressive” can be negative. Like, no, I’m not one of those progressive types, I’m happy being regressive…

Lol, totally agree about Techmoan, AvE and Electroboom. I hadn’t thought of why I’ve not watched them in forever but I think you hit the nail on the head.

Colin Furze is another I think fits into this, when all his stuff was janky and sketchy as all hell, like a attaching a pulse jet hydroformed using a pressure washer to a bike, great, loved it. It was really like he just thought something would be fun and made it with the tools he had. But ever since he got a youtube series everything started getting less janky and more properly thought out. All the things were bizarre contrived contraptions that have no use and made using fancy CNC machines, expensive specialty parts and he even has time to make fancy decorations for it all now rather than looking janky by design. Or otherwise hes digging under his house again and I’m just not interested.

I had heard so much about it that when I visited the US years ago I really wanted to make sure I tried it. I was rather disappointed to say the least, as you say, it was fine… nothing special, just fine.

The first one I’ve had recently that has really wowed me was Popeye’s opening in the UK, holy crap that was amazing. Huge bit of chicken, perfectly cooked, so juicy inside and so crispy on the outside. The proper amount of sauce, it even looked like the pictures… I crave that experience again…

Probably gonna have american’s rolling eyes at me waxing lyrical about Popeye’s but I’ve had it before in America and it was really good, but not superlative like the UK one.

Do I think theres something magical about it here? No. My theory is that it is because its new here, expectations and standards are really, really high, they need to establish themselves as worth going to over KFC or the local bossman chicken shops but I have no doubt that the standards and quality will start to drop, corners get cut as more franchises open and it will be back to ‘fine’.

Is it pedantry if it isn’t true though? Or am I being woooooshed?

Totally agree on the sari, was at a friend’s wedding and the bridesmaids were all wearing them, many of them white but the bride was Indian. Was so jealous that they had the opportunity to wear them, and not just wear but get fully dressed up for the event.

I have a ton of abandoned or occasional hobbies but the main one I have atm is leatherwork.

Honestly I don’t fully understand what lead me to it but I saw some videos and it was like, not only do I want to do this but I want to do it properly.

So I didn’t do my normal thing of buying a ton of equipment, getting in way over my head and abandoning to the pile of failed hobbies. I booked a beginner course at a place near me and the rest is history. Been slowly building up my skills and techniques and getting really good feedback from people. Some of my recent items even have people saying that if I was to open a shop then they would be interested in buying or commissioning…

If you want to see my stuff then just have look at my post history, I should really just make a site or something at this point… Most of my stuff is small goods, accessories etc. but be warned I’ve just created a new community to have somewhere for the darker side of crafts (mildly NSFW) - but if anyone is interested in the spicier side of crafting then come join me there!

Doesn’t quite fit the requirements perfectly but I love Ella Red’s soft cover of MCR’s I’m not okay (I promise).

We use sat nav in the uk too.

I still enjoyed it, I’m just highlighting the bit I wasn’t as keen on. Its purely a subjective opinion on it, I’m not saying the books are objectively bad or anything. Its fine to like different things.

Heh, yeah they can get pretty dark… There are definitely a few gateway ones if you were ever curious without it getting too full on.

I don’t think it ever left… Its not popular with Gen Z that’s for sure but I love my side parting! Give it a go for her.

Well yeah, gotta have a nice purse, its too useful, didn’t mean it as a separate thing just that apparently crossbodies are apparently a very millennial thing…

I thought it was crossbody bags and side partings that gave us away?

They are absolutely fascinating. Sure, I’m certain a lot of videos ham it up a bit because of the way they look around and do certain things but generally animals with that much visual acuity have a lot of processing power to deal with the info so its not a far stretch at all to imagine there is something more to their intelligence.

Spiders in the genus Portia show behaviour which is really fascinating, not only do they use their eyes to actively hunt but they ‘plan’ attack routes - they can see their prey, plan a route to get closer, which involves breaking line of sight for extended periods yet still remember where to go and where the prey was. They also exhibit strong learning traits and pattern recognition. Absolutely fascinating, and adorable, things. I really want to get a pet jumping spider, one of the big ones.

2003 1.2 Vauxhall Corsa (which I still own!), yeah had to hit that boost button, god it was slow with aircon on.

Yeah it was interesting but honestly I just kind of found Gideon a bit too much on the cringy side of edgy… There was a lot to like but I found a lot of it very grating somehow.

My favourite book when I was a teen was Bloodtide by Melvin Burgess. It an imagining of the Icelandic Volsunga Saga (so lots of Norse gods and myths) but set in post apocalyptic London controlled by ganglords.

I think my overall favourite it probably Shogun by James Clavell - people are probably more familiar with it now because of the recent TV series but the book is huge and goes into huge amounts of depth along with a gradual shift in focus and character as you migrate from being thrown into this alien society with strict but unclear rules to large scale political outmanoeuvres

Right now I’m reading Her Majesty’s Royal Covern by Juno Dawson - about milennial witches operating in secret in modern society (think nature, earth, pagan witches, not the ones from the series that must not be named). Written by a trans woman with trans topics in the plot.

I also want to read a new series I only discovered a day or two ago called Custodians by Dan Alexander. I don’t actually know a huge amount about it other than it is a detective mystery that involves magic and queer representation. I only mention it as, in a bizarre chain of events, I met and spoke to the author and the actors involved in the audiobook and tv pilot.