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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • C.S. Lewis, specifically The Screwtape Letters. I had been raised very conservative Catholic, and this book was my introduction to moral philosophy, as odd as that may sound given the overtly religious nature of it. The idea that morality has nuance, that an action can be wrong and still not damning, or ‘virtuous’ and still evil, was a new idea to me in my early teens.

    While it would take me several more years to really start learning more definite philosophical concepts, that book was the first one that actually challenged me to ask myself why I believed the things I did, and made the case that blind, unchallenged faith was not faith at all. I started paying more attention to the things I had previously accepted at face value, and that examination would lead to me leaving the church and Christianity entirely later on. I still have faith of a sort, but it is more a faith in humanity and an undying and unifying spirit of community than a religion.

    Now I have read quite a bit more in terms of philosophy, though not as much as I would like. All thanks to one book about demons trying to send a man to hell.






  • I do have the family plan actually, I forgot about that!

    And I do occasionally. Certain live albums and more niche stuff can be hard to find, and one hit wonders can be tricky depending on the genre and time the song is from. The song I’m Blue by Eiffel 65 is only available in a longer club mix and not the radio edit, for example.

    I will say that, in my experience, it has a slightly larger selection than Spotify for classic stuff and different versions of the same song (covers, remakes, remixes, etc). For example, my husband was very excited that they had the whole readout of How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Boris Karloff (in two parts, but still) because they used to play it on certain radio stations every year around Christmas. On Spotify I was only ever able to find the same version of the song from several different albums of Christmas mixes.




  • Interesting. I have not had any issues using their engine even with the issue with Bing’s API, but you are correct that they use Bing’s index. Given that there are only four indexes to choose from, that isn’t too surprising.

    I actually switched to them when I saw that DuckDuckGo was about to start providing ‘AI assisted results’. I wanted to ensure I was using an engine that actually respected my privacy and didn’t harvest my data for slop.

    Anecdotally, I can confirm that the results I get from SwissCows are very different and usually better than the ones I got from DDG. So I wonder how much of Bing’s API they use.





  • If you are asking if she knew beforehand, yes. We once had to rush out of a restaurant because a dish included wine and I didn’t know until my mouth felt like it was on fire. She has been there many times as I have had to explain it to others, and when I have been checking food to make sure it doesn’t have wine or vinegar.

    If you are asking if I have mentioned it to her since she gave me the gift, no. I haven’t had the energy to try to deal with that conversation, I still have plans with people through New Year’s. I will probably bring it up in a few days, but right now it hurts to even think about and I just want to get through the rest of the holidays.


  • My supposed best friends gave me and my husband a bottle of wine for Christmas. I can’t drink wine because I have an allergic reaction to something in wine, and they are very aware of this after me having reactions to foods at restaurants we would go to together. So they gave ‘us’ a gift that I can’t actually have.

    This comes after my husband and I have spent the last year being there for them through losing their jobs, their car, almost losing their house, and a bunch of other drama. It also comes after we spent all day making a meal free of their allergies, as I always do, and after I spent several days making Christmas cookies that are safe for them.

    I don’t know if the bottle of wine is cheap or expensive, and it honestly doesn’t matter. Last year they got me an ornament for our tree, and it is one of my dearest possessions because it has a small poem about friendship on it. This year’s gift stung because of how much of ourselves we gave to them, only for them to clearly pick up something last minute and without any thought.

    I don’t really have any family or other friends to celebrate with, so the most important people to me besides my husband are them. It hurts to see how little I apparently mean to them in comparison…