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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2025

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  • Those are the five socialized by a particular author, but I’m certain it’s not all-inclusive.

    However, I have found over time mine changed a bit based on what I felt I was missing. At this point, for receiving words of affirmation are first, quality time is probably second, and physical touch is also up there (not sex, just touch).

    For expressing love, I found I default to gift giving and touch.


  • Potassium is often used because it buffers the sodium in a way that makes it easier on your stomach. For salt pills, I will only use Vitassium, but that does have potassium. Straight salt tablets are cheap, but they’ve made me extremely sick before.

    As for mixes, whew, I have a long list of what I’ve tried! I’ll share the two brands I actively use, but I can dig up the review list of about a dozen things I sent a friend, if you want it.

    LMNT is my favorite (1000 mg per 16–32 oz). (They have a referral program that will give a new customer a free sample pack and me a free box, so if you are interested and willing, I’d love to send you a link.) They have a lot of common flavors but have a lot of more unusual ones too. I know a number of people like their mango chili flavor because it’s different and not all sweet (I was not a fan). I actually love their chocolate one iced cold; sounds gross and not for everyone, but I’m glad I took my friend’s suggestion to try it!

    IQ Mix is the other one I’m using (500 mg per 16 oz). I wanted a piña colada flavor, and it was the one I settled on. Their other flavors were fine, but I had my heart set on the one. It includes lion’s mane and some other things so it’s not for everyone, but I just like it for the sodium and flavor.

    I’m more than happy to share more, but it might be overwhelming, lol.


  • I read the article. I “love” that she raises that there are some health conditions that require you to drink less water, but doesn’t mention that some require you to drink more.

    I have POTS-like dysautonomia. My water target, set by my cardiologist, is at least 100 oz a day. My salt target is 10 grams, so I also have 2–3 high-sodium electrolyte mixes a day, on top of a high-salt diet and salt pills as needed.

    I also “love” when people tell me electrolytes are a fad and I probably don’t actually need them. It’s great to know people may soon talk about my water consumption the same way! *eye roll*



  • Not sure what you mean by “system,” so I’m just going to answer a thing I wish someone explained to me much earlier.

    Not everyone feels hunger cues, so “just eat when you’re hungry” can be bad advice.

    I learned about anorexia nervosa as an eating disorder in middle and high school. People worried about me because I was thin and didn’t eat a lot, but I didn’t try to stay skinny and I ate when I was hungry, so I knew I didn’t have that. Ironically, learning about EDs made me sure I didn’t have a problem.

    In college I took a class that defined anorexia as “a lack of appetite,” identifying it could be a drug side effect, from stress, or just how someone’s body is. It differentiated “anorexia” from “anorexia nervosa.” That opened my eyes that I did have disordered eating, but it was from physiology, not psychology.

    I trained myself how to eat enough, but I still have to be careful not to fall back into old habits since I don’t have normal hunger cues. It’s constant work that might have been easier if I started building these habits from a younger age.


  • If there were an equivalent to reddit gold on Lemmy, I’d give it to you. This is such a great overview and explains what I wish I had words for a decade ago when I had a conversation with a leftist friend of mine who was in her 60s, and she posed a question along the lines of, “Why can’t I have white pride?”

    It was completely with good intention and not with an ounce of white supremacy. I realized it came from a place of wanting an identity or culture, to feel like she came from something. She saw others get to have a community around their ancestry and longed for something like it.

    White supremacists have ruined any chance there could have been to find healthy pride in a white identity, and American history is completely mired in that. So many white people feel this loss or lack, and try to fill it with anything they can cling to. 1/32 Native, half Irish, 1/4 German; whatever, just to feel like there’s some history that ties you to who you are.

    But you already said this more eloquently than I!




  • So many, but several of my absolute favorites all happened in the same 2-day window years ago. I took a semester off college and traveled around the US. I rode the Empire Builder train from Chicago to Seattle, a 2-day trip.

    The first was a deaf man who took that trip multiple times a year. He knew the train didn’t have enough outlets for everyone, so he brought a power strip to share with everyone and he’d monitor devices and return them when they were full battery. He and I ‘talked’ for quite a while by passing notes on his phone back and forth.

    The next is the one that came to mind first for this question. I was traveling on a budget, and I have a low appetite any way, so I bought snack bars and things for the train so I could save money over the train’s food. At one point, a woman offered me a granola bar out of the blue and I turned her down but didn’t think much of it.

    Half a day later, she and her partner were preparing to get off at the next stop. Her partner walked up to me and said, and I quote, “Now I know it’s none of my damn business, but do you have supple money?” It took me a moment to process what he was asking, and I told him I did. He insisted again. I ultimately didn’t take any from him, but what I realized was that the two of them had been watching this young woman, traveling alone, never getting up to go buy food for almost two days straight. They thought I wasn’t eating and offered me food and money. Total strangers. It makes me tear up thinking about them and their kindness.

    The last was a young man, closer to my age who got on the train with a full on double bass. He was heading out west with plans to busk his way down the coast. He and I chatted for the last couple hours of the trip, sharing music from his MP3 player. It was an enjoyable bond that lasted only for the moment, as we didn’t exchange contact info or have any other way to connect again.

    I still think about those people, and I’ll always remember that trip as one of my favorites because of those strangers.


  • My dad has always been on the right and he’s a Trump voter, but he’s mostly avoided going full MAGA-proud. We have always had a tense relationship when it comes to politics and at times had very little personal relationship. Now we just avoid political discussions or keep them very high level, and it’s manageable. I talk to him a lot less than I would if he didn’t have those views. His health is declining significantly at this point so I have decided it’s not worth trying to change his mind.

    My mom is still with him and she’s leftist and we talk all the time.

    My dad’s two sisters are deep into MAGA (they were proud attendees of Trump’s first inauguration). They’ve been far-right fundamentalist Christians most, if not all, of my life, so I already had a strained relationship with them before 2016. I haven’t even tried in over a decade now. I was recently diagnosed with a chronic disease that one of them also has and I kept thinking about reaching out but ultimately decided I don’t even want her in my life for that so I haven’t bothered.


  • My company has started using a survival metaphor of air/water/food.

    • Air - “keep the lights on” work; things that will fundamentally stop the product or business (legal, compliance, security) if not done in the next year
    • Water - foundational work; tech debt is here
    • Food - strategic work, new features, experimentation

    It works because it recognizes that you need all three to survive and you have different time scales on which you can survive without them.

    We will choose not to drink water sometimes to make sure we can eat some food. But we will die if we only consume food.

    I’m on the product side and trying to buy my teams as much capacity to pay off some of our wayyyy overdue tech debt, and this metaphor has made it easier to convey where we are to my higher ups.



  • I use alt+0151 for em dashes and alt+0150 for en dashes, or if I’m in Word or Outlook I use its autocorrect to trigger them (“word - word ” turns into an en dash while “word–word “ turns into an em dash).

    But now I’m starting to avoid them. I’m just glad AI hasn’t ruined semicolons yet (especially since I’m using them sometimes to replace em dashes).