Sure. There’s a rather vibrant writers’ community, plenty of visual artists (including photography that isn’t just cats and hiking), and the endless political shit.

You don’t get as much of the random people running their mouths though.

The key to Mastodon is the # curation over time. Search your interests, use the hashtags to set up your feed, and only use the full federated feed to find terms you didn’t think to search for, or that aren’t obviously connected to your interests.

As an example, if you’re a writer, you’ll obviously follow something lunge #writing, but you might not find #pennedpossibilities, or #writerscoffeeclub by searching, despite them being active prompt based groups that end up having a lot of good interactions between writers (casual, amateurs, and pros).

Tbh, the least represented segment is the typically nerdy stuff. Much more prevalent on lemmy. There’s plenty there, it just isn’t as common as other segments.

Yup, best keyboard I’ve ever used. They made slightly different versions over the years that fit my hands as well, but none that lasted the way those do; mine is still fully functional.

Fwiw, and I don’t know if it was intentional or not, it’s embarrassed and wielder, not imbarrest or wilder.

Dude, I am happy as hell for you that it took this long to experience one.

Instrumental metal is what you’d search to get where you want to be. There’s plenty of bands that don’t have vocals at all, and even more that do instrumental tracks here and there.

Thing is, you’ll run into a pretty broad range of styles under that heading since a lot of sub genres are defined by vocals and/or lyrical content. But instrumental is a sub genre of its own. It just gets defined by the lack of vocals rather than any distinct sound like the way thrash is going to have that “thrashy” vibe.

Edit: Animals as Leaders is pretty much the go to recommendation for instrumental metal. They run closer to prog than death, but so do most instrument only bands.

Nothing new to add, but since crowd sourcing answers is more reliable when you have more of them, I figure it’s worth it.

As everyone before this said, it isn’t a perfect compatibility, so you can’t just grab any random kit and be certain it’ll be 100% right. But, there’s a decent chance it will be, or that you can improvise things enough to get it to work long enough to get the exact right bits.

Biggest problem I’ve run into over the years is flappers not making a good seal, and the pipe not fitting well. The flapper is harder to deal with, but the pipe can usually be made to work with a gasket cut to size, long enough to get a better one at convenience rather than having to run right back out.

Yeah, boob owners seem to not fully appreciate the sheer joy of having regular access to boobs for a boob lover. It’s like, “I can see and/or touch those forever? Hell yeah!” But I guess if you aren’t a boob lover, having them might make them become old hat after the first few years.

The good news? My wife is leaving me her boobs in her will.

Well, I can say this much: never discuss your philosophy on life and death with your doctor, because you’ll need to find another doctor after they flip their shit and assume you’re going to off yourself.

;)

Good idea!

Nah, she’s got this one old, worn out bastard pf a sasquatch, but she’s a free agent otherwise

Jfc, my wife does this. And it works every fucking time

Yeah, I feel that. If we accept things as they come, and accept when they leave, even the bad things are less bad because we know they’ll leave, and we can work on letting them go easier.

Ikr?

Just got head!

The Manitou

It’s the only horror movie that ever gave me a nightmare, even as a younger kid than I was when I saw it.

My parents were willing to let me watch horror movies pretty young, depending on the exact movie. Like, old school fifties and sixties era horror I was laughing about at 5. So they had gradually loosened the limits up because it never bothered me, nor did I get obsessed.

So we watched this one one night after I picked it out at the video rental place (vhs). It wasn’t scary per se, I did way more laughing than anything else because the effects were not impressive.

But the core idea of it, that stuck in my brain apparently, because that night, and a couple after, I had the nightmare of the Manitou growing in me.

I’ve seen it as an adult a few times, and it isn’t exactly a great movie, despite being a fairly classic example of body horror. Decent, not not great, and you have to overlook the era’s film making style.

The Wikipedia link

The trailer

I’m not aware of where it might be available, but YouTube has a few clips.

I’ve never had anyone, online or irl, know that it existed, much less having also watched it.

I mean, it is the central precept.

The precept is that stress stems from attachment to things. Thus, if you let go of attachment to a state, then you have less stress when it isn’t there.

Suffering, which is what the idea gets translated to despite it being more along the lines of distress or stress or upset, is an internal thing in that concept. We can’t control the world around us entirely, so there’s no easy to go through life without some degree of “suffering”.

When we cling to things that are transient, such as happiness or even sadness, we are certain to have additional stresses above and beyond the bad things life throws at us.

Since it is nearly impossible to actually hold a single state of being such as happiness, the way you avoid distress at its absence is by accepting that transience is the only truly permanent thing, and finding a way to let go of the “desire” to have that state. This extends to things other than emotions, since material or worldly things are most definitely something we cling to, that we have attachment to.

However, and this is very very important, there is no claim in any of that, that doing so is going to cure depression or anxiety. It can help in dealing with such things, but it would only be one tool to use. And nobody has ever said that using that tool doesn’t take practice or that it’s instantaneous.

You don’t just think “hah, I will not cling to this” and magically enter remission of depression. It takes the same level of time and work as talk therapy. You have to practice with the tools that help gain the ability to let go of attachments.

That’s why this comic isn’t a literal thing, it’s only a demonstration of the principle. And, it is important to notice that the person on the bench needs help to let go of the attachment to happiness. Just like we all need help to escape depression or other psychological distress. It isn’t suggesting that it’s simple, or easy, just that it can be done.

And, yes, I’ve dealt with depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Have for my entire life so far, and still do. But the tools in the concept presented here do help. They help a lot. When you combine the acceptance of that concept with good meditation practices, good therapy, and a willingness to explore other tools as they come around, it makes a huge difference over time.

You don’t even have to be Buddhist, or practice Buddhism to make use of the tools. It isn’t really important to follow the other precepts of Buddhism, the eightfold path stuff. You just need to recognize that nothing is permanent, and that letting go of attachment to things will help.

Well, there’s a whole shit ton to unpack about identity.

Let’s start with definitions.

Ethnicity is essentially genetic. There’s usually an associated culture that goes with a given ethnicity.

Culture is the combination of practices, beliefs, and “tradition” of a given group, whatever that group may consist of.

Nationality is where you live.

Race is a loose grouping based on primarily skin color and the region one’s ethnicity came from.

Identity is the parts of those things you internalize, what you self label as.

So, based on what you’ve said in your post, you’re multiethnic, a mix of multiple peoples and places. You can freely choose which of those you integrate into your identity. It won’t ever mean that you aren’t those things, as regards external factors like the kind of hair color you have because of being north african in ancestry.

You could freely choose to integrate Mexican culture into your identity, or not. It would not, however, change your nationality.

If you move to the states, then you’d also have to deal with the legal side of things, which is not the same as identity. It’s an ugly truth, but race matters here, way more than it should. As such, you can’t really just pick your race on legal documents. It has to be as accurate as it’s possible to get, or there can be consequences. If you look white, but put down black, it’s going to end up being a pain in the ass for you.

However, since race itself is arbitrary in a lot of ways, there’s some wiggle room. There are some pretty damn dark white folks, and some pretty damn light Hispanics. And it isn’t like most people can look at someone and tell if they’re greek, arab, or south american. A lot of forms specify the difference between being white Hispanic and white, non Hispanic.

So there’s room to pick your race unless you’re black, in which case, it doesn’t matter what ancestry you are, you’re black and stuck with it because the us is fucked you in that regard. You don’t even have to be of African descent to get shoved into being black, you just have to be dark enough. Which is very fucked up, even for a country as fucked regarding race as this country can get.

So, you do have to be thoughtful in what you put in official documents, or it can end up fucking you later on.

But we can all identify as whatever we want, within reason. My pasty white ass could try to identify as black, but it ain’t going to end well, despite having grown up in a black neighborhood and having a lot more in common with my neighbors than the arbitrary similarities I’m supposed to have with other crackers. But if I want to internalize my Irish heritage, nothing is stopping me. Same with my German heritage, the traces of Polish, Welsh, Spanish, and Scottish. I can identify as man, as a southerner, as a resident of my state, of my town, as an american, as whatever, really.

Largely, as long as there’s no cognitive dissonance to overcome, most people don’t give a fuck about someone else’s identity. Like if my pale ass says I identify as black, that’s going to be strange enough that people are going to wonder if I’m an idiot, a troll, or pulling some kind of racist shit. If my big bearded ass puts on a dress and claims to be a woman, there’s going to be people that can’t accept the difference between the claim and the visual reality. Now, if I shaved and lost more muscle, it wouldn’t be as hard to overcome. You see what I mean? The more people have to think against their senses and preconceptions, the harder it is to lay external claim to an internal identity.

There is the flip side though. If you come here, claim the identity of whiteness, but you don’t also lay claim to the external factors of the culture of white america, then it doesn’t matter what your skin color is, you aren’t going to have much support. And yes, there is such a thing as white culture in the US. There’s actually multiple versions of it. It’s just hard to see since it dominates all the other race based cultures, and becomes the default american cultural base. But it is distinct from the more general american culture.

All of it is largely a construct though. Even ethnicity has a degree of arbitrary limits to it, since most ethnicities aren’t isolated enough in origin for there to be no bleeding between a given ethnicity and one a hundred miles away in origin. And, an ethnicity may ignore subethnicities in general usage, like “black” Irish largely being ignored as an ethnicity that’s distinct from Irish. And you’ll have regional variations that get ignored in the same way.

There’s really a lot to it all. More than I can reasonably pack into a comment and it still be readable by most people (screen reading is harder to follow than printed). So I’ll not belabor the subject.

The real advice is to not bullshit. Treat any paperwork as needing as direct an interpretation as possible, and leave identity out of it, relegating identity to non official usage

Hmmm, if you’re asking if the external flow of what we perceive as time would shift according to an observer’s state of mind, that’s doubtful.

But our perception of time isn’t the same thing as the flow of time. Our temporal sense is definitely subjective, and there’s been some research into that (though damned if I can recall the details without looking it up, and I’m getting a bit brain fried tired, so not up to doing so).

Anticipation, be it fearful or happy, definitely shifts how we perceive time.

Well, that’s an accurate origin of latino.

But that doesn’t mean someone is obligated to internalize being latino. That’s extra true when a person is the child of immigrants. They can be raised within their parent’s culture, and then take on varying degrees of identification with either that culture, or the surrounding one.

And there’s nothing saying that someone in the Latin American country they’re born in can’t separate themselves, at least internally, from the culture of their country, or their region.

That’s true of any culture. You can be from the us and take on any degree of identity as an american, or reject that entirely and build your own identity on any number of factors.

You never met anyone that’s of latino origins that assimilated fully into the culture of a different country? It’s pretty common. My best friend’s husband is Nicaraguan, and identifies as that, Latino, and American. He’s got siblings that were raised in Nicaragua before the family moved here that outright ignore that culture and don’t even speak Spanish with anyone poster than their parents. He’s got nieces and nephews that embrace being latino, but not necessarily Nicaraguan, and vice versa.

A sense of cultural identity is largely voluntary.