Well, the problem is that the kind of brace you'd want has to be shaped by hand right now.

3d printing will likely get there eventually, but turning out a chest/back brace that's not only effective but wearable is as much an art as anything else.

I'm not sure where someone without training would get started. Orthotists and prosthetists are specialists; orthotics is a master's program, and that's the kind of endeavor your desired brace is.

It's doable for sure; though whether it's practical to recreate the decades of research and experimentation that led to where orthotics is today is a different issue.

Iirc, you'd start with thermoplastics, I can't recall the ones that are used. But they're shaped by mold, taken from the patient directly, then adjusted during fittings so that there's no/less issues with long term use. And you can't just skip the kind of shaping needed. Afaik, nobody is printing orthotics yet. Casts, yes, though that's fairly new; but those are short term use, so don't require the same kind of fitting.

I've seen, and been present during fittings for, braces for scoliosis, which is going to be similar to the kind of orthotic you'd need.

If you decide to go the home brew route, you'd want to start with a plaster cast of your torso. Best way to go, so you can have a solid form to shape whatever material you go with.

TPU was a common material back when I was still a caregiver, though that has been over a decade ago now, so it may have been supplanted by other thermoplastics.

Carbon fiber was starting to be used back then, but it tends to be too rigid for applications like a torso piece. Maybe with enough foam in between you and the rigid parts, but at that point, why not just go with something less expensive, and more flexible? Iirc, CF was being used for things like leg and ankle orthotics where they'd be bearing weight and need the extra rigidity.

I know that there was CAD based modelling and fast prototyping being done for orthotics, but it was mainly useful in prosthetics, where they could make reproducible units that would then be customized.

Tbh, I would try finding an orthotist irl to meet with and brainstorm. Even if they can't/won't help you make your own gear, they'll likely still warn you off of really bad ideas.

That's at least in part because you say you have little interest in medical or anatomical study, and that's what you need if you want your end device to do the job you want. You just can't fine tune a torso brace without understanding the musculoskeletal system in that area, and what you'll need to avoid doing.

Like, the curvature of the spine. It may seem like you could just mold your body and make the brace conform to that. But, if the goal is to give support to part of your body, the brace has to apply pressure to your body applying it at the wrong place, or in the wrong way could make things worse. So if you don't have the time/interest/willingness to gain the level of understanding of anatomy to achieve that, you'll be better off consulting with someone that already has that knowledge. It's kinda like self surgery, there's only so much you can do blind without causing problems worse than what you're trying to fix.

The first one or the new one?

Haven't seen the new one.

The first one though? Fucking awesome.

The important thing to me is that, even if someone has no idea about the Joker as a character could watch the movie and see an incredibly well made movie. It's a great story, the acting is world class, the way it was shot brings depth and emotion to every scene, and the details of the writing are unusually good.

As an example of the last, the background characters, and people with only one line, they have similar ways of speaking, a distinct almost accent in the way the lines are arranged. It ends up feeling like everyone in the movie is from the same place. You know how you go to a city, and there's turns of phrase, word choices that show up, even when different parts of the city have their own accent? That's what I'm talking about. Even De Niro's distinct way of speaking shifts to feeling like his character is from the same city as the clowns.

But, as a joker movie, it's just as successful. It tells his origin story from a fresh perspective. It does so in a way that even as someone that's complained about comic based movies doing origin stories instead of just telling a good story with the character/s, I was riveted. I am absolutely fine with the movie being another origin story because it's just that damn good.

If that's the one you're asking about, watch it. Even if you end up not enjoying it as much as I did, you'll at least have seen a movie that's crafted the way a movie should be.

Hell no.

Fiction is just as, if not more, valuable as non fiction. Stimulation of the mind needs more than just facts. Non fiction is something you can pick up way easier via a documentary than by book, assuming similar degrees of adherence to fact. You can compact a biography into a few hours of watching that might take an entire day of reading, and get just as much information out of it.

Compacting fiction in the same way isn't always possible. Even fairly short books of fiction often suffer by being as short as a movie.

And that's ignoring any value judgement of the fiction. But it's true that not all fiction is equal in its ability to stimulate thought. I would argue that escapist, light fiction is just as valuable as something like Shakespeare or Hemingway, even though something like Beverly Cleary's Ramona books might not cause the reader to explore via thought in the same way or degree.

But if you want to place value judgements on fiction, there are definitely works of fiction that are much more useful in terms of stimulating thought and feeling than some random time-life grade history of the civil war. Hell, I'd argue that any piece of fiction is more valuable than badly written history or science. Badly executed non fiction serves to reduce accurate knowledge. Bad fiction just wastes the reader's time, it doesn't mislead them.

Well, I had been taught about Munich and Ribbentrop in public school, both during standard history classes (though they were only mentioned in passing during US history, as part of the background of what happened before the U.S. joined in)

The famine, I didn't hear about until maybe fifteen to twenty years ago. Can't pin it down exactly because of shit that was going on in my life at the time, but it was something I read about in one of the books on ww2 that covered events outside of Europe and the Pacific theater.

And I've seen many a debate about the degree to which Great Britain was responsible for it.

But, I'd have to say that none of them are exactly high on the list of what the average person remembers about the era. Most people I've even mentioned Molotov-Ribbentrop to had no idea what it is. They maybe remember hearing the words in school, but didn't pay enough attention to link them to anything. The Munich agreement is pretty much unfamiliar to anyone that didn't have an interest in ww2 beyond high school history. And the famine is outside of what most people that do have an interest care about. The only books I have on the subject of ww2 don't mention the famine at all.

Ww2 is far enough in the past now that most of us no longer know anyone that fought in the war. It's passed into the kind of history that's "dead". Even though we all, everywhere still live with the ripples in world events that started then, it might as well be aztec history as far as the typical person here in the US is concerned. Even my generation, that had grandparents that were alive during the war, or fought in the war, the interest is largely no greater than surface level.

And I'm not sure that the details like the two pacts really do matter now. They're not anything that affects us still, unlike a lot of of events of the war. IMO, the famine is more important since it was a much broader event. Depending on how you look at it, the famine shaped a lot of events for India as a whole in ways that neither agreement did for Europe.

Well, fwiw, that kid wasn't playing doctor, which is inherently a mutual event. That is a normal thing, a mutual exploitation of bodies.

That's not what you call what happened to you. What it was is called child on child abuse. It's a common enough thing, but using the normal for it would be inaccurate in any common usage of the word.

It is, sadly, not even that rare in the extreme nature of what you suffered.

Not only that, but chances are very high that you're exactly right about it being him reacting to previous abuse he suffered. Which doesn't make it any better, but maybe it can serve as another point of support for your feelings being validated. The cycle of abuse is a very real thing. Not that there aren't kids that have the ability to be horrible, there are, but it's more likely to have been something he learned.

Nothing anyone here can say will really make it better. The best we can offer is validation that your feelings, your pain is not you being over sensitive. There is no world in which what happened to you is anything but horrible. I would go as far as to say that anyone being dismissive of your experience would be committing a different form of abuse.

Being pressured into sexual activity is abuse, it is rape. No qualifiers. Being threatened with a knife, even when the threat wasn't to hurt you with it, is definitely rape.

Ma'am, I'm sorry you experienced all of it, and any of it. Nobody should have to go through that, much less a child.

All I can hope is that you getting this off your chest helps a little. I could wish it helps a lot, but trauma like that tends to be healed in small steps.

I'll repeat this again, because I think it is what you are seeking right this moment, from this post. Your experience, your interpretation of it as abuse is 100% right. Anybody that says otherwise isn't worth the air it would take them to say it.

My block list lags my browser

Tbh, if they don't have a damn cell device calling home, I'd jump on board myself

Hey, you gotta be specific with kids, and teenagers need extra precision. You're lucky they didn't put on clean clothes and then get a shower since that's the original order it came in.

An aiel wrote this

Social navigation has no business in the American constitution, period.

You're talking about rebuilding the constitution from the ground up, and you're building prejudicial ideas into it. That's fail from the beginning

More power to them!

The language requirement is useless. Why enshrine any language over others? We're a nation of immigrants. Nobody on this continent originated on this continent, and the U.S. in particular has had waves of immigration from around the world. Tying citizenship to language mastery of only first nations languages, English, and Spanish is silly, and vaguely racist.

Why not German too? Massive amounts of German immigrants here. French is still in place names all over the country, and big parts were originally taken over by the French, just as much as the Spanish and English.

It's ignoring the contribution of Chinese workers entirely.

And, most important, there's not a single African language mentioned at all that I could see, and you'd be hard pressed to find any other diaspora that contributed as much to the success of the U.S. as a nation as the African diaspora. I'd argue that there isn't a single other group that contributed as much. Why not their historic languages too?

It's a very eurocentric selection that pretends concern about the people that got here first.

Edit: I did read it all, and the rest is full of similar poorly thought out and poorly phrased items. It would offer no improvement over the current constitution, and would only serve to reset a lot of arguments that have already been worked out. I just used that first one as an exogenous example of the weak thinking that went into it.

Pirate it.

The only important concern about consuming the work of a douchebag is them gaining from it.

Now, you may or may not be able to ignore the person having done shitty things, it might break your enjoyment of it. That tends to be more of a problem with actors and comedians because you see them, rather than their work.

Seriously, the idea that a given body of work is somehow bad because the person or persons that made it are bad is bullshit.

Cosby is a harder because a lot of his comedy, and the show, were based on him, portraying himself as this decent, fatherly, nice person. Him being a douche the entire time, knowing what we know now, it can be dissonant to see him being a dad, or joking about his wife. Someone like Louis CK, he was never portrayed as some kind of paragon, so it's easy to just enjoy his work as it is since there's no "wait a minute" inherent to his performance. You might still have trouble not picturing him being a creep with his dick in his hand, but the jokes aren't him pretending to be some upright, moral human.

Art and artist are always separate when piracy is an option.

In general, it isn't about waiting for prices to drop, though that's definitely a part. It's more about avoiding early adoption, imo. Waiting until there's some degree of information about the game that isn't marketing, then deciding.

The goal is to make sure the game is stable, that it's something you actually want to play, and avoiding hype based playing. If the price drops, or there's a sale, that's icing on the cake.

In the case of visual novels, I don't really think it applies. The only thing you'll really avoid by waiting is any bugs that need fixing, and they aren't prone to a lot of bugs that break the enjoyment of the story. It does happen, but it isn't like the usual mobile game bugfest at launches.

A Kennedy sticking their dick into strange? Noooooo, that could never happen.

You know, that article might have a point if people hadn't been saying the same damn thing for about 49 years.

It's empty bullshit. No comedy show hits 100%. SNL, for all its flaws, has managed to keep people laughing for as long as I've been alive. Any time the cast changes significantly, people removed about the new cast, and people removed about the old cast, and compare casts, and removed about everything.

I wish I could tell that writer how many times I've heard the same crap they spouted since I was old enough to understand what people were talking about, and how often those same people kept watching, and kept laughing at roughly the same frequency, only to keep saying it and repeating the cycle.

Here's a form of truth. Enough people watch the show regularly that it sells commercial time reliably enough, at a rate high enough, that NBC has kept it going. Which means that in raw numbers, it's one of (if not the) most successful shows ever. NBC as a company does not give a fuck about it being a cultural touchstone, they care if it makes money. And it does, because people keep watching it.

Any bullshit about it losing its path or whatever is a joke.

Eh, disgusting is subjective, but there's never only one person with a given opinion, particularly when it comes to food.

Uncooked meat can actually be delicious though, so it's kind of a double subjective lol.

While it isn't anything I have regularly, I tend to favor some steal cuts "blue", which is essentially uncooked at all in the middle. Steak tartare is uncooked. Sashimi exists, and is amazing. Then there's stuff like ceviche that's not truly raw, but isn't cooked with heat.

The list of raw meat foods could keep going, it's not an uncommon thing.

Beyond that, you can't really go by photographs for whether or not something actually matches visually. Raw meat and cured meats often do look similar in color, but not in texture. Not that color really matches, but it's usually close enough to fool the eye depending on lighting and the film/sensor.

Again though, whether or not a pile of raw meat would be disgusting is indeed something that you'll find plenty of people on either side of. And you'd likely find people that see this picture and think it looks raw, at least at first glance (it really doesn't once you pay attention to the variations in color across the slices).

Brobdingnagian! My favorite word!

Well, we've tried shifting the bulk of calories to a more even amount. The problem comes in when trying to get 4 people on the same page. It worked out this way since I'm an insomniac to begin with, and I couldn't get everyone to have a reliable lunch schedule. After dinner, I'm not hitting bed until midnight or so, and we have dinner by 6:30. We could probably do better, but it would take the adults agreeing to eat the same thing, which is like herding drunken cats.

About the only thing I add sweetness to is my biscuits unless we're doing something specific as a dessert. That's one of those things where if a spoonful of something is going to throw everything off, then it does. Well, that and the occasional cup of coffee or tea, but that's in the same category.

As far as alternate milks, I don't dislike them. Oat is my preferred, and I'll do that in cereal or coffee sometimes. I just have to use some dairy of some kind or my guts hate me. So I might as well just drink milk since I can get it for about half of what it costs in stores, and know exactly how the cows are treated, how the milk is processed, etc. I used to just do fruit and yogurt for breakfast, back maybe eight or nine years ago. But my cousin doesn't make yogurt, just cheeses, so I'd be back to paying more for stuff I can't verify the conditions of. I keep trying to talk him into yogurt, but the last time they tried, it was a loss for them; not enough local demand.

It's one of those things where I could consume less milk as milk, but it would just shift to a different kind of dairy product to keep the lactobacilli happy and active. Since the milk is way cheaper with the family discount than any other option, I just go with it.

I'm thinking of trying to make my own jams and jellies again though. It's a pain in the ass, but it's cheaper, and I can use way less sugar than branded options in stores. I haven't yet because the only reliable sources locally are usually first come first serve, and I can't always get to the farms when things are ready and then do the picking. Only one place will pick for you and sell directly. The rest, if they're going to have to pay pickers, they'll just sell the crop off in bulk and get a better profit margin. Can't say I blame them.

Hmm, it's pretty variable.

I don't do a breakfast at all, it's more of a brunch. I'm nauseous when I first wake up.

First meal is usually a bowl of cereal, whole milk, whatever the single serving on the side is. Sometimes it's a biscuit with a teaspoon of jelly/jam/honey/whatever, and a pat of butter. Less often, it'll be something like pancakes. It's always something carb based because that's all my stomach can handle as the first food of the day.

Then I'll do something simple towards early afternoon. A sandwich, rotating between various meats w/cheese, pb&j, that kind of thing. Usually something fruity along with. Depends on the season, but we keep something around all year, even if it's just bananas and apples. Sometimes the fruit is the sandwich, sometimes it's instead of. Now and then, I'll do up some eggs, two or three, since our hen lays more than the rest of the household will eat before they go bad.

Dinner is usually bigger. Assuming someone is able to cook that day, it's almost always going to be veggie heavy, we too damn poor for a lot of meat. There's no steady menu, we buy what's on sale, or what's available from family that farms. But it'll typically be something like a big spoon of legumes; a similar size spoon of whatever we have between corn, rice, maybe something like quinoa or potatoes, running towards the starchy end of things. Then will be the "yummy" veg. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cooked greens, okra, carrots, sweet potatoes.

Most of the yummy veg is roasted because that's what we prefer. A little olive oil, some salt and pepper, whatever herbs or spices work well with the specific veg.

The no meat days, it'll be multiple yummy veggies, sometimes a medley.

In any case, that's where I really splurge. It's going to be a heaping spoon/spatula full of those. Two if I'm really into something with a craving.

Meat days, that's typically going to be chicken unless it's a special occasion. We usually go with breast meat because it can store better without turning funky. Approximately a half breast per person. Now, most of the time, we get that from family. I've got a cousin that does chicken farming alongside his corn. They're red rangers. Not as big as some breeds, but they grow fast and do it almost entirely free range. So the pieces we eat tend to be smaller than a thigh you might get at a store. Usually around the 6 ounce range, though that's obviously variable. Each breast comes in a little under a pound most of the time, after trimming and such.

Red meat tends to be ground beef, maybe every other month or so. I make some wicked meatballs, sometimes we'll do burgers or a meatloaf. I never bother to measure much. We get our meat from a different cousin (yay for country life lol) that runs a dairy and raises a few steer for the family as a whole, so it's cheaper than buying at a store (and better tbh). Usually a pound, pound and a half at a time. Split between 4 or 6 people, two meals each, depending on what we make with it. Those meals, I couldn't tell you any measurements at all beyond that. We plate with a generous helping, but splitting it into amounts per person rather than a specific serving size.

Snack wise, I tend to not snack. But we keep fruit around, so that's usually what it'll be when I feel like having one.

Now, I do have my splurge choices. Stuff that's purely for pleasure. I keep some dark chocolate around, and I'll allow myself 2 squares a day if I want them. It isn't every day, but a few times a week. I love me some chocolate milk, and I'll have a 16oz cup once or twice a week, though I'll add a smaller cup if I'm having a pb&j. Sometimes that's a store bought, sometimes it's from syrup.

I have a ginger ale or ginger beer as needed when my stomach is extra grumpy. I keep a few bottles of bundaberg in the fridge and cork them after I pour a glass. I think they're 12 oz bottles? It's into a cocktail glass, and it usually takes about half a bottle. That might be every day, might go a few without. Rarely, it's a couple of times a day.

Now, that's the norm, the way it usually is day to day. Days that nobody is physically up to cooking, we end up having shitty freezer food because it's realistic. Chicken strips, prefab lasagna or pizza or whatever. My and my wife are both disabled, and my dad is old as fuck. So on the bad days, we feed the kid the good food and eat the cheap freezer crap as fuel. Which fucks up dietary balance (and calorie count), but it's the best we can do some days.