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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • 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.








  • 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



  • 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.





  • I’m not sure if it would be better or worse, but even in places where organized crime is stable and relatively low key, there’s not much in the way of cooperation.

    Like, in the city I used to work in, the drug trade was pretty much owned by one group, gambling by another, moonshine by a third, and if you wanted guns, you tended to deal with the drug guys, but that was because they had outside deals with one or another of the cartels (I have no clue which) where they could get more than just the same stuff you could buy on your own legally (but would probably buy a stolen one if you were looking for something for a reason). This meant that they ran the trade de facto, despite it not being something they cared about if someone else sold guns here and there.

    Now, the cartels did have people that were killers. But not hired guns, so to speak.

    But those groups didn’t really communicate. There weren’t regular meetings to divvy up the city’s vices or anything. They just didn’t fuck with each other because they weren’t set up to handle other trades.

    There were some Russians that tried to move in at one point, running heroin, but they went away. Went away being a euphemism for eating a bunch of lead salad, which is bad for one’s longevity. Supposedly, and I was not involved in the shit at all, it was handled in house, nobody asked the cartel for any help. The cartel wouldn’t have been willing to send their men up, fight some group anyway. They’d just wait and make deals in other ways. Not worth it in terms of risk/reward. They’d sell guns to the gang, but not manpower.

    Again, supposedly, there was an Armenian gang that ran gambling at one point, and they got busted which opened up room for the mixed group to pick up the pieces. But that was before I paid any attention to any of it. Only reason I paid enough attention to pick that kind of stuff up was bouncing and doing security. The guys running shine liked to swing dick around bars sometimes, trying to play a protection bullshit, and the titty bars I bounced sometimes were fairly popular with them in that regard and because they could get free attention.

    Also have a friend that made high interest personal loans for a few years, and he had to pay a cut to the guys running the gambling. I mean, didn’t have to, it was just easier and safer. One of his uncles was a moonshiner, so he knew some of those guys as well.

    From what I gathered, that’s the way most cities operate. There may have been a time when there was more broad organization, but afaik, that was dying out in the eighties.

    However, pretty much any city of any decent size has some kind of organized crime. It’s just a matter of how big the group is, and how much they control. Some places, you’ll have one of the national level gangs running things, others it might be all small groups running territories within a city. Shit, it isn’t just cities. The drug trade is like that out here in the boonies. Only difference is that you run into specific types of drugs being handled by a group. Locally, there’s a bike “club” that more or less runs the meth and pills, but weed is a free for all, and coke is really only for making crack, which is spread all over.

    Anyway, that’s going way off topic. The point is that there’s rarely any kind of cooperation at all, much less enough to have some kind of justice system in place.


  • Eh, the kind of thing you’re asking about is essentially fiction. Not that murder for hire isn’t a thing, it’s just that it doesn’t work like anything you’ve read or seen in movies. It’s one of those things where if you aren’t part of a criminal enterprise, you aren’t going to be able to hire someone, and you’ll be hiring them from someone else in the same network.

    So, in any semi realistic situation, there won’t be any arbitration or argument. You fail, you fuck up, you die. Or, I guess, turn state’s evidence, which is where what little about actual “contract” killing that’s known comes from. It isn’t like an actual contract.

    Now, in fiction? Tons of options. Likely, you’d have whatever head of the crime network making the decision, maybe with other heads, maybe solo.

    But, again, the term contract killing isn’t exactly about a contract. There’s not a formal arrangement involved. It’s contract in the meaning of hired.


  • Eh, for a given value of “works”, it works fine.

    The non alcoholic wines suck though. I don’t even like most reds, and I’d still rather suck down boxed cabernet than drink the non alcoholic stuff. It just tastes meh at best.

    There’s a general rule that you don’t cook with wine you wouldn’t drink. While it isn’t some kind of rigorous standard where only the finest possible wines are worthy of cooking with, it does mean that if something is decent out of the container, it isn’t going to get better once it’s concentrated.

    So, if you want to try it, try a sip of the stuff straight. If it’s palatable, you’re good to go. There’s very few things that require the alcohol to give the desired results, it’s only mandatory when you’re extracting compounds out of food that can’t be brought out because they aren’t soluble in fat or water. Otherwise, by the time you dilute the alcohol even in something like bourbon across an entire dish, and cook some of the ethanol out, the amount left isn’t going to be detectable in the flavor it’s the other things in wines, liquors, and beers that we use them for.

    For deglazing, the alcohol itself does nothing they you’ll be able to taste at the end. Even the kind of “super tasters” that test things for corporations have trouble detecting the residual ethanol, when they can at all. And there aren’t any substances in a fond that aren’t water or fat soluble, so it isn’t useful that way.

    IMO, you’d be better off skipping the idea of adding grape juice at all. It just isn’t going to do anything worth mentioning. Any stock is going to be better than that. You’re adding more sugar, and that’s going to shift the taste more than deglazing with plain water would. Not necessarily in a bad way, particularly if you then reduce the liquid and let the sugars develop a little, but it’s still further away from the taste of red wine as a deglazing liquid than water is.

    Obviously, taste is subjective, so YMMV, but I’ve dicked around with substitutions over the years for recovering alcoholics, and religious folks. Nobody misses the actual wine unless the entire dish is wine centric in the first place (like beef bourguignon). Most people, if they do notice difference from a version that uses wine will think it’s just the variety of wine changing. If they’re never had the wine version in the first place, it won’t matter at all.



  • I rarely worked the window, and it was only when someone was on break, or we were under staffed and the other people on shift weren’t exactly capable of running a register.

    But we had a few regulars.

    My personal favorite was “farmer man”. Homie would ride through with his animals. Usually it was one of those pot belly pigs, named Harvey. But he had a goat named Bill, a rooster named Charlie, and sometimes a nanny goat called Maria.

    Why those names? No idea, it was drive through, so no time for long chats. But he’d order for them by using their names, as in, “I’ll have a whopper, and Harvey here’ll have a cheeseburger.”

    The awesome visits from him were when the cab of his truck was essentially full of critters. One day, the rooster was with him, along with a bunch of hens just chilling on the passenger side.

    Really good customer, he would roll through a few times a week, always polite and had his shit ready. He was literally a farmer, there’s plenty of them out here in the sticks. One of the normal window staff asked him if she could bring her kids to see a farm, and he was happy as hell to say yes. His critters were essentially pets, though the chickens were an egg source. Dude was a one man petting zoo lol.


    Then there was “coffee”. He’d roll up, and order “coffee”. That’s it, nothing else. And I mean that’s all me would say. You’d ask what size, and he’d just repeat “coffee”. At first, people just got mad, assuming he was fucking with them. But he kept coming back. Eventually the manager just said “fuck it, tell him he’s getting a large”. He got told that, and to drive forward. He’d take the large coffee, hand over his money, and that was it. But he never said anything. If you told him to have a nice day, he’d nod and smile a little.


    There was also “naked lady”. As the name might indicate, she would come through naked. There would be a visible pile of clothes in the passenger seat of her car, sometimes just a robe, but usually what looked like jeans and a t-shirt. Her order varied. But she’d been coming there for years by the time I ran into her at the window.

    It was usually only night time, fairly late, but every now and then she’d come through during breakfast rush. Story was that she had called in one day to ask if it was okay to come through the drive through naked, and the manager at the time thirty it was a joke and said she didn’t care as long as the money didn’t get pulled out of her twat, before hanging up. No idea if it was true or not. If you worked the window at her usual times and were new, you’d get warned amd asked if you were okay serving her. We were also warned not to be creeps about it.

    She was probably in her early forties, attractive, and friendly. Knew the window workers by name and would chat while waiting, when it was night. Didn’t really flash anyone, didn’t try and get any extra attention, but didn’t make effort to hide anything either.

    One guy asked for a better look one night, and she said that he could look all he wanted, but she wasn’t putting on a show. Manager gave him hell over it, though the lady didn’t complain about it.

    There was one lady that was usually on nights that wouldn’t deal with her, and that’s how I first encountered naked lady. Got called up from the kitchen and asked if I was okay taking care of a naked customer. I was in training to be a nurse’s assistant at the time, so I didn’t have an issue with nudity. It had already become just kinda unimportant to me. So I just shrugged and said sure. The manager warned me to be chill and that was that.

    Nice lady.

    What was weird was seeing her elsewhere in clothes. She was just as friendly if you ran into her at the grocery store or whatever. But it was always a little jarring, like she should be naked everywhere lol.


    Beyond that, it was just the usual drunks, potheads, and occasional crack or meth head that were weird enough to stand out.