There’s definitely something to be said for building up a tolerance to heat. I put peppers, especially ground hot peppers (various varieties) on a lot of my food. I’d say at least 5/7 dinners a week in an average week I try to find a way to work in some sort of spicy.

The point though isn’t just heat, it’s about flavor too in combination with the heat sensation. I’ve eaten and enjoyed buldak noodles but they are kind of mild to my tastes. I tend to make mine by adding oil and stir frying them longer at the end as well as adding additional ground hot peppers while preparing to increase the heat level to something fun for me. I’ve tried 2x and it’s fine but it has more heat than flavor, the other Samyang offer a better flavor and heat profile and I can doctor them up on my own. I do like the Samyang black sauce to add to protein like tofu before baking/frying it and it can produce an interesting flavor especially when used with a few other things like soy sauce and some spices.

So I think it’s just exposure and building tolerance. If you keep eating foods at that spiciness level you’ll get used to them. You may still experience a little sweat but it’ll be more tolerable and less intense as you acclimate.

Anonymous = FBI / CIA.

Don’t believe anything they say especially on foreign relations topics.

So you signed a piece of paper. A treaty with a nation that broke treaties (with native Americans) since the start of its existence and you expect a century old piece of paper with a country that has been breaking treaties for twice that long to be worth anything?

Lol

Resident Evil (2002)

Star Trek.

Everything after Voyager gets axed completely. 100% retconned. Doesn’t exist. You can’t even joke about happenings in it in any new works.

Voyager and DS9 themselves get trimmed down. DS9 loses 75% of its episodes, Dominion war erased, mundane space station stuff instead, no religious weirdness validated. Voyager gets better ending but retains most of its episodes.

ToS gets turned into legendary chronicles rather than full canon with the more absurd less science bits cut out or reduced to the fantasies of the chronicler. Main stories and characters retained with >=80% of it surviving. Movies from both ToS and TNG era retain full canon status.

It is established that alternative dimensions are extremely limited in number, you cannot do Marvel universe #69 stuff with it, the main one is the nega-universe with evil everything and a few other isolated pocket universes that are short-lived and unstable (often as a result of warp core implosion weirdness and such).

All existing writers and producers currently associated or associated since the end of the Voyager era are summarily fired with prejudice. New ones are hired and quizzed by me to ensure at least the main producers are communists like Roddenberry and do not want to turn my hopeful FALGSC property into grim-dark in space IP number 3. Prominent transgender characters are MANDATORY in the new series and other steps will be taken to drive every last reactionary out of what’s left of the fan-base.

It becomes studio policy to viciously copyright strike anyone uploading video of retconned parts of the IP to any platform as well as to bully journalist insiders with access into adopting the new line by excluding anyone who disagrees with it from access or favor.

MKVToolNix.

An excellent tool for working with video files as long as you’re okay with your files being in MKV containers (you should be they’re superior to mp4). From within it you can add and remove tracks such as audio and subtitle, change flags (flag subs as forced, default, etc), rename tracks for clarity, adjust track timing with positive and negative delays to fix sync issues. You can do batch scripting against it to iterate through whole folders of video files. For anyone who has a home media server it’s a must. For anyone who works with videos regularly it’s at least useful.

You can I believe sign up with a wechat account as well. So you’d create that first, then use it to sign-in.

A Chinese social media app. A ton of US tiktokers fled to it when it seemed a ban was imminent.

Read the linked source FFS.

Me: Provides evidence that in decades past last century they were paid for and did dirty work of British intelligence, at no point were the people responsible cast out, at no point was this influence purged and processes and organs put in place to prevent this

Me: Also provides evidence they are in the bag as of the twenty-teens they were doing propaganda work for the British against Russia in coordination with the British state through cutouts

You: um acktually do you have any proof they’re still doing that this month? No? Checkmate.

Yeah it’s called a pattern of behavior. Why would they change? What would cause this? Sudden secret come to Jesus moment that fits your idealistic wants and needs in this particular argument? The burden of proof is on YOU and on THEM to show a sustained pattern of change. More than to show that but to admit, call out, and have a reckoning about their past behavior, bring it to the front, make everyone aware of it, apologize, and explain how they’re changing and what they’re specifically doing to prove this isn’t happening.

Partnering with Tass in what way? As wire agencies? Carrying some of their stories? That’s proof of nothing. You think because some org that’s deep in with the intelligence apparatus of one state has some casual or professional cover level contact with a state media organ of a rival state that is proof of what? Impartiality? That they’re actually Russian spies using British intelligence?

What I linked claims they agreed to use journalistic contacts within Russia to influence Russians and others within the CIS sphere for the interests and goals of the UK. If I was doing that I’d want contacts like that including contracts to carry out that work and legitimize my stories to my targets. I’d want to pretend to be friendly, professional and open while carrying out this work.

The new leaks illustrate in alarming detail how Reuters and the BBC – two of the largest and most distinguished news organizations in the world – attempted to answer the British foreign ministry’s call for help in improving its “ability to respond and to promote our message across Russia,” and to “counter the Russian government’s narrative.” Among the UK FCO’s stated goals, according to the director of the CDMD, was to “weaken the Russian State’s influence on its near neighbours.”

Reuters and the BBC solicited multimillion-dollar contracts to advance the British state’s interventionist aims, promising to cultivate Russian journalists through FCO-funded tours and training sessions, establish influence networks in and around Russia, and promote pro-NATO narratives in Russian-speaking regions.

In several proposals to the British Foreign Office, Reuters boasted of a global influence network of 15,000 journalists and staff, including 400 inside Russia.

No.

They are a British government and intelligence cut-out. That doesn’t mean they always lie but they skew coverage, are manipulative, dishonest, and serve the interests of the British state. They’ve been that way for decades, receiving funding in the 1960s and 1970s from MI6.

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reuters-bbc-uk-foreign-office-russian-media/

A series of official documents declassified in January 2020 revealed that Reuters was secretly funded by the British government throughout the 1960s and 1970s to assist an anti-Soviet propaganda organization run by the MI6 intelligence agency. The UK government used the BBC as a pass-through to conceal payments to the news group.

In the modern era they still target Russia under the direction and funding of the UK government. One cannot be in bed with spies like these and hope to hold them and their friends like the US, EU, etc to account.

The fourth estate in general in the west is highly compromised. Russia and China and many others openly fund state media and the west decries it as propaganda, but they never hide it. Whereas the west secretly funds, manipulates, and controls supposedly independent press and declares itself the free one while it lies to the rest of the world and their own populations.

As a wire agency Reuters does tend to have less room for deception than say Fox News due to a lot of short form news breaks. So in that regard they’re more trustworthy than say CNN or Fox News but that doesn’t mean a lot.

I would go for an Apple TV 4K box with ethernet (don’t burden yourself with wifi when you can have gigabit ethernet for $20). No ads, simple, works, looks really nice, apps are very responsive, I can fly through my home media collection’s wall of posters using the remote without any delays in loading images. Compatible with all the major streaming services. Has infuse for streaming local media as well as Plex and Jellyfin apps.

If you’re interested in spending some money and want something better without the Apple ecosystem (be warned, Google seems to be cracking down on sideloading so who can say how much longer that lasts but do as you feel right) I’d recommend something from Dune-HD.

Considering how old the Nvidia Shields are at this point, the disinterest from Nvidia in refreshing them periodically as Apple does, the insertion of ads, framerate switching issues, etc I think Dune-HD makes the superior product for upmarket non-Apple TV streaming. People have been waiting for a Shield update for 4 years now. In that time Apple dropped their own prices to make Nvidia look like even bigger clowns still selling old hardware and chips all these years later at such mark-up.

They support AV1, dolby vision, atmos and 2 of their 4k models have a dual OS set-up. One is Netflix certified Android which gets you full support for 4k streaming, DV, atmos, etc from all major streaming services, the other is a special virtualized container running a customized version of linux with a media center which you can install Kodi, Plex, Jellyfin, etc onto.

People who say “just run it off a PC you install Linux on” are not very serious or not very discerning (or more hardcore than me in their refusal to ever pay for any streaming services). Quality from such non-certified devices is capped at 720p without dolby atmos, dolby vision, etc from nearly all the major streaming services.

If you don’t want to drop as much as Apple or Dune-HD charge I’m not sure what to say. Walmart’s onn USED to be a great choice as you formerly could root them but they changed that and locked them down since 2024 I believe. Just get something beefier than a stick that plugs into your TV IMO, any kind of box is going to be superior in terms of ability to deal with heat.

I need at least sheets that are thick enough not to let light through, not super thin sheets. It’s annoying in summer months. I need my feet covered because I’m paranoid about mosquitos though it’s rare for them to actually get inside and I need my head/eyes covered as well or it just doesn’t feel right, partly about light and muffling noise.

And for me it’s definitely a horizontal sleeping thing too. Propped up I can fall asleep while being only partially covered or hardly at all but horizontal I have to have it.

Discord.

Doesn’t matter whose. They’re all shit. They’re not a substitute for forums for support yet everyone uses them as that. They breed power-tripping children (and man-children) who think they’re super special because they mod some server. They’re made for churning out drama. They aren’t searchable from search engines. I mean they were made for GAMERS and then spread out to the rest of the toxic internet.

Those are the ones that actually work, yes! It’s just most of the buns aren’t that and even some of those aren’t so good.

• Mustard, lots (none of that Frenches garbage, either a good dijon or spicy brown),
• diced raw onions,
• finely diced garlic
• dill relish,
• peppers (cayenne or jalapeno)
• sauerkraut
• chili sauce (optional overload topping)

It’s a real challenge getting hot dog buns that can accommodate all those toppings, I swear the manufacturers either expect really skinny dogs or hate toppings. Only a few premium brands seem to carry buns that will bear it all, the store brands and things like ballpark are hopelessly inadequate for more than mustard and one other topping at best.

Not even a choice.

If you choose over 100F you will see electronics failing more often, working harder, less efficient, working badly, etc because the heat is causing them to throttle in various ways. In the modern world it is far, far easier to heat up a space with a house full of electronics and humans than it is to keep it cool. The energy required to raise the temperature from say 5 degrees F to a more comfortable 40 degrees (35 degree change) pales in comparison to the energy required to keep yourself and your devices cool a mere 10-15 degrees less to around 90 degrees which is still uncomfortably hot and sweaty.

I’ll note that a constant 100 degrees is more than hot enough to cause various foods, medications, substances to break down and go bad. Check your medicine cabinet, most of your pills including over the counter are only rated for storage at up to 86 degrees. Your medicine will lose efficiency or go bad in some, perhaps many cases. Your food outside your fridge will spoil more quickly, mold and bacteria will grow more quickly and readily. Your fridge itself will work harder and die sooner.

The tap water will run hot or warm most of the time meaning a shower won’t necessarily cool you off much.

The colder temperatures are cheaper all costs considered, feel better, can be negated at a moment’s notice with socks, a jacket, and a blanket.

It’s easy to insulate a home against extreme cold and just retain heat you generate inside including by your body and devices. It requires a lot more effort to keep the inside cold when both the outside and things inside are generating heat and trying to warm it up.

This is a reason why climate change is a nightmare not just for human comfort but on so many levels. Our electronics are going to operate less efficiently in a warmer world and draw more power to do so.

And Syria took a decade to crumble after Obama started in on it.

The US didn’t give up in Vietnam until it had been involved for over a decade.

Only time will tell however I suspect this is strategic dishonesty and narrative manipulation. Specifically planting these seeds of ‘honesty’ and doubt they can reference back to in 15 years to claim they were impartial and not totally rags of the bourgeoisie and Anglo-American imperialism. They know if they get caught just being stridently wrong for years that hurts public trust in them which lowers their propaganda value to the bourgeoisie and empire planners. But if they can pivot like this, even if they don’t stick it out they can point to this and claim, oh we got that one wrong but we had dissenting opinions and we can change, we can change, which is the same kind of narrative America uses to convince its population it’s not an amoral evil empire and hasn’t been since inception. Admit to crimes in the past or when they’re already mostly done, say you’re sorry for the crimes or they were wrong. Claim to have changed and learn from them, continue committing new crimes, repeat the cycle forever and the poor saps, the indoctrinated children will believe they live in a country that can change and was flawed but constantly improving instead of just constantly inventing new crimes and victims and excuses.

This is also what is so foolish about the conservative rage about schools allegedly teaching kids to “hate America” by teaching about past crimes and atrocities. They don’t understand that it’s a relief valve. That it teaches those but also whitewashes the crimes and allows new ones by constantly apologizing for the past but never changing the present. And without that kind of valve if you have any kind of educated population you have problems as people start connecting the present to the past. Probably why they also want to gut education entirely and replace it with Evangelical fundamentalism.

So IMO, no forgiveness. This is a cynical ploy, if you weren’t condemning ‘israel’ as an apartheid occupation settler state before Oct 7th and you were in a position to have an educated and informed opinion like being a journalist then you’re scum. If 8 months after Oct 7th deep into the accelerated phase of the open genocide which has been continuing at various tempos for half a century you were not against them then you’re scum, you’re an apologist for genocide, you’re Goebbels. If you weren’t acknowledging the legitimate right of Hamas to violent resistance and therefore the legality of Oct 7th after a year you were on the side of the genocidal oppressors in muddying the waters at the least.

This is also I think part of the pivot to heap blame for all of this on Netanyahu, to basically put this all in his lap. To say yes atrocities against humanity (they’ll waffle on genocide as the right term) were done but they’re all the fault of this one guy, not ‘israel’ as a whole which has always been and will always be a settler colonial project built on genocide and land theft and religio-racial supremacy. And certainly that the west is blameless and didn’t know. Absolutely at all costs that it wasn’t the west doing anything wrong. That way once they kick Bibi out of office there they can claim the zionist project has changed because that one uniquely bad man is gone, ignoring the massive support his genocidal policies have, ignoring the massive documented racism and hatred and genocidal intent among the entirety of ‘israeli’ society. They will do this to save the greater project of ‘israel’ as a western colonial outpost by sacrificing one leader and a few other usual suspects in the sphere of public opinion condemnation. And they will do this to pretend their own hands are and always were clean and that they were just duped, misled by this scheming Jew and oh wait they’re doing classic anti-semitism but they’re allowed to do that because it’s been redefined as being against ‘israel’ and anything else including literal Nazi salutes is liable to be defended by the zionist entity and their western backers.

No need to be rude. Let me attempt to further elucidate on my point.

Colonialism came before fascism was ever coined or uttered much less a movement that’s true but I dispute it being an entirely different animal and insist it’s merely colonialism adapted for specific circumstances of a specific time in Europe. Some people might say just the same that it was “proto-fascism” and our disagreement is not about what came first but whether it is a different animal instead of just a rebranding.

I think the conversation about colonialism as an enduring phenomenon is more important to center the conversation around than allowing certain parties to reframe the conversation and the victim-hood of 20th century European people as particularly special and unique and isolated from these practices when there are so many clear connections openly admitted by the perpetrators themselves.

Don’t ask meaningful questions about history and politics and systems and then get defensive when people give you academic answers that address it and give context and information. Don’t agree? That’s fine.

Now for you I’ll even expand a bit further since you’re so fixated on “proto”. History is not a series of events happening in separate vacuums. It is a series of connected processes going back all the way to the start. Some connections are stronger than others yes, some closer to one another, directly preceding or even being necessary for the development of for example.

Fascism is a loaded word. People bandy it about not to mean a specific phenomenon in Europe in the 20th century from say the 1920s to the mid 1940s centered on Germany and Italy but to mean broadly “oppressive bad political system or act”. Yet that’s not what it was or means. If you’re using it in those loose and inaccurate terms then well there are lot of historical oppressive, repressive, reactionary, and what we might call bad systems including but not limited to monarchy. But in my opinion there’s no direct line between monarchism and the actual historical fascism. Monarchism didn’t directly give rise to it. Arguments about whether it was historically necessary are more complicated, I’ll just say that colonialism was much, much more necessary as was the American example of genocide and settling and for that matter as was capitalism. For that matter the rise of socialism was a necessity because fascism existed and rose to power in opposition to communists and its rule was seen as preferable to the communists by big business and industry and by a variety of reactionary political ideologues and ideologies including but not limited to monarchists.

Not really.

Colonialism is proto-fascism or more correctly fascism is merely colonialism turned on white people by their immediate neighbors instead of an empire an ocean away. All the tactics and horrors of fascism were adopted from colonial practices by European empires in Africa, by American settler colonizers in the Americas, etc. The mass propaganda model was designed based on American advertising psychological studies and practices. The only true innovations were mechanization (use of extensive trains, computer systems for organizing the exterminations, etc), and white people being the victims. Fascism itself arose specifically due to the threat of socialism as a way of combating it by the capitalists.

Monarchism is an unjust, vile, backwards, reactionary system of government and rule. It has presided over colonialism but it also predated it and colonialism has also occurred from nations without monarchies (US is prime example, but France is another, they continued colonialism well into the very end of the 20th century long after they chopped off the heads of their own monarchs and some including myself would argue their neo-colonialism has continued right up until recent events like the formation of AES in the African sahel).

Now I haven’t thought a lot on this particular question or explored it in depth looking for a connection (maybe you can find one if you want to start drawing lines from x through y to then z) but right now I wouldn’t say that there is any kind of direct line from monarchism to fascism per se. Monarchism upholds itself through brutality and injustice yes and is predicated on unjust thinking and supremacy and I suppose one could explore the influence of monarchism and monarchist thinking on the development of colonialism and racism but in truth capitalism and proto-capitalist modes of production are the father of fascism via the development of colonialism.