A fellow I know brought a durian to an sf con, but opened it in the parking lot for the safety and convenience for the rest of the con-goers. I didn’t partake. Or watch. Or get anywhere near it.
I don’t go to watch the blooming of the corpse-flower either. Smells really bother me. Like cat litter. Or cat food. Or mold.
When we were looking for a new place to live, there was one abode the real estate agent took us to (for some reason) where she refused to step inside because of the strong frying smell. We took her lead and said “no thanks.” I wonder if it could actually be cleaned from the house, or had absorbed into the plasterboard to the point of no return.
So moldy cats are right out then I suppose.
For me, it’s wet dog. 
It’s cool, I’m over here with my sardines, but at least there are no people around to be bothered.
Hmm. Maybe not. I eat stuff with fish sauce a fair amount, although it’s the westernized stuff sold in supermarkets and not the authentic fish sauce made and eaten by Southeast Asians. I also enjoy a good spicy curry, the spicier the better. When I cook for myself I’m a big fan of spicy gumbos, sauces, stews, etc. My issue is more with the canned stuff, chunked and brined and drenched in mayonnaise, then served steaming hot to people so white even their food has no color. It’s the combination of steaming hot brine, equally hot mayonnaise, and D-grade fish that gets to me.
As a rule, I will eat fresh fish but won’t go anywhere near preserved fish. Also as a rule, I have an aversion to stuff that’s supposed to be cold but served hot.
Good point. I believe it is. I used to work as an engineer in a factory where the manufacturing people were mostly Southeast Asian and the engineering staff were Mediocre White Men like me. Because this was 1) a manufacturing site 2) for a big faceless company, we had signage everyfuckingwhere telling us what to do and what not to do. It seemed to me that the signage in the kitchen was aimed mostly at the Asian factory workers, who typically brought in large bowls of food, used the sink while preparing their food or cleaning up,* and ate food that actually smelled and tasted like food. The signage bitched about smelly food, large bowls, proper sink usage, etc, while nobody really cared if some white guy in middle management kept a 12-pack of stinky yogurt in the fridge and sloshed his coffee everywhere.
*you don’t need a sink for Lean Cuisine
Durian = mango custard smoothie eaten out of the moldering corpse of a long-dead cat.
I can ignore all but the first three word of that. Not sure why.
Mango custard smoothie sounds bad enough, without the corpse too.
Wait, wait… people eat tuna salad HOT? I mean, I’ve heard of tuna melts, but always thought that was more of an oldschool greasy-spoon diner thing rather than something one would actually bring for lunch…
especially with canned tuna. I mean, it’s already been cooked! I begin to better understand your aversion now
Well to be fair I suppose that’s what fish sauce or anchovies are. Does that mean no lox or smoked fish either?
Yep. The casual cuisine of the American Midwest is a dangerous terrain. It starts with loose meat sandwiches, the Illinois Horseshoe, and the Hot Brown* and only gets weirder. Tread carefully.
*not what it sounds like
The fish sauce I’m used to is more of a paste. Probably not authentic exactly, but definitely closer to preserved fish than to Worcestershire on the scale of fish sauces. Anchovies are also okay with me, because they’re dry and therefore more tolerable… especially on a pizza with pineapple and green olive.
/runs and hides
I was more talking about the lutefisk, pickled herring, hakarl etc that my Scandahoovian neighbors enjoy but I can’t stand.
Where I’m from, lox and smoked fish isn’t really a thing, and whenever I’ve lived other places, it hasn’t been anything I’ve sought out. Smoked salmon was okay when I’ve had it. Not anything I’d seek out, but I would eat it.
I know of it by reputation, never by experience.
Considering that I’m already not a big fan of mangoes and I loathe custards and puddings, I don’t see myself trying it anytime soon, even if afforded the opportunity.
Well, I’m sold. I’ll get a mango. (Mangoes are great.)
I may have posted about this before (it’s a recurring issue), but:
An open letter to one of my neighbours:
Hi there neighbour,
You know that concrete bit between the road and your lawn? The vertical part is called a “curb”, and the horizontal part is called a “gutter.”
Gutters are designed to channel water from the street into the nearest storm drain. In this case, from in front of my house, past your house, and then into the drain.
When you (or perhaps the company you’ve fired to clear your driveway) pile snow on top of the gutter in front of your (or possibly your neighbour’s) house, then when everything starts melting (as it will tomorrow), the water doesn’t get channeled into a drain. It pools in front of my driveway, and the whole section of the street will first become a slush swamp, and then an ice rink when the temperature drops again. I know this, because this is what happened last year.
You don’t seem to have noticed, but this year, every time you’ve dumped snow so that it obstructs the gutter, I’ve been carrying it across the street and dumping it onto city property. Hopefully, when the melt happens tomorrow, you’ll see the effect of a clear gutter.
It would make my self-appointed task of having the street not become an ice rink ever so much easier if you’d find someplace other than the street to dump your snow.
Thanks in advance,
Your neighbour.
I’ve noticed that Disqus moderation is even worse than most other moderation. Disqus-based comment sections become cesspools of hate speech, regardless of whether the site wants hate speech.
(See Hatewatch or Media Matters for extreme examples.)
I’m kinda frustrated how often people double down on slurs, even if I just ask people to avoid slurs. I’m wondering if the shitty list of reasons to report is part of the problem-- targetted harassment is the closest fit, but mods may not see slurs as targetted harassment. The effect is to create a hostile environment for everyone else.
Stepping back from the moderation question to the wider social question, I’m wondering if some people’s world-views are so hateful that they can’t express them without being hateful. If they aren’t able to use slurs like m****, then they’re going to use broader insinuations about people’s intelligence and/or mental health making them unworthy.
I wonder if Disqus moderation might be automated. I have seen hundreds of flags on outright spam that gets only hidden, but never removed. Other than that, it seems to just have a word filter. One post I was jokingly referring to myself as a c*nt - in a movie review where my comment was a relevant quote from the movie - and it was instantaneously hidden, like as soon as I hit the post button. If one doesn’t run afoul of its word filter, nothing else seems to happen.
A word filter can’t do much. But a site-specific word filter could block slurs, if it were programmed that way.
Wish I could get somewhere quiet but everywhere I can get is painfully loud.
This morning I went for a routine endoscopy - I’ve been on PP for 7 years. The consultant couldn’t get the tube down. My gullet just refused to open.
I felt really bad as we know the NHS is under pressure this winter, but there was nothing I could do about it - didn’t want a perforated oesophagus, especially at the moment.
So - wasted time of several hospital staff for nil result, now need to have barium meal. Lovely.
The next question with disqus is why does it give you a bar marked load comments. Press that then you get one going show comments.
What did the programmer think I just want to sit there with the warm feeling of knowing the comments are waiting for me.
I contacted my clinic about my problems with the pain bombardment. They told me to contact them by pain. I can’t contact anyone by pain when I am under so much pain.
I got another post about how we need to CALL congress CALL CALL CALL CALL FUCK OFF AND DIE FUCK OFF AND DIE CALL CALL CALL CALL and I fucking sick of it.
I fucking hate the expectation that we’re all supposed to use phones.