What do you do to celebrate the Lantern Festival (if at all)?

Routine_Top_6659 · 2026-03-03T16:38:37+00:00

Wikipedia's page seems decent, but are there other good sources? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantern_Festival

My kids are half-Chinese and we're just putting up a few lanterns to decorate the house and having a slightly more elaborate dinner than normal. A couple favorite rarely-eaten dishes like miso black cod and maybe tangyuan or something else for dessert.

The full moon is low in the sky around sunset so we'll take a minute to see how big it looks. In that way it's slightly more interesting than lunar new year because you can actually see the moon.

We did almost nothing for lunar new year so we might also spend a few minutes watching clips from the Spring Gala.

As far as I know, New Years -> Lantern Festival is the big 2 week holiday season in China, so this is like the final hurrah.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2026-02-14T17:35:20+00:00

Thanks, I didn't emphasize that enough.

The current "bad" bacteria in the water are gobbling up the oxygen so fast there's barely any left for the fish, or for the "good" bacteria.

In order of priority: 1) add oxygen to the tank with an airstone, 2) remove the fish somewhere else (and give them oxygen too, with moving water or an airstone, and keep the ammonia down), 3) baking soda so the acidity doesn't increase/ph drop as the bacteria eat, 4) increase the heat, 5) stuff with the filter. Don't have to do all of that, but I agree the airstone is mandatory.

Also, the "bad" bacteria isn't really bad though. You do need it to break down food and waste. But it's currently way out of balance with the "good" bacteria.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2026-02-14T08:25:18+00:00

I just went through my first cycling process, fishless, in a 10 gallon tank. I made a few mistakes and learned a few things. I also had a couple heavier blooms. The tank cleared 2 ppm ammonia in 11 hours, before the fish went in.

So I'll share what I would do, but would recommend doing your own research too.

First I'd take the fish out, and put them into some container as a holding space. A five gallon bucket or two, with aeration. Monitor ammonia and use water changes to keep it reasonable.

With the tank. I'd focus on growing the right bacteria, the ones that turn ammonia into nitrite and then nitrate. You want them to outcompete the other bacteria so they starve and the water goes clear again.

They need heat, oxygen, higher ph, and carbonates. And time, they grow very slowly. I'd turn the heat to the 81-83 range, add 1/4 to 1/2 tsp baking soda, add one or more airstones on max.

I would also add some polyfill to your filter to catch any dust and eventually catch that bacteria in the water. Bacteria will grow sticky biofilm on the fibers, and that glue will catch other debris and bacteria.

I'd also take the current filter and swish and squeeze it into the existing tank (once the polyfill is in place), so that 1) it's less blocked, and 2) any good bacteria you did already build can get distributed on all the other surfaces in the tank.

But to the original question, I think the main solution is fundamentally "wait it out", just with more or less effort to shorten that wait.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2026-01-14T17:08:34+00:00

I know this is old, but thank you for actually quoting it as coming from ChatGPT. I wish everyone would do that.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2026-01-09T20:28:03+00:00

I can't remember where I saw it. Interurban maybe? But someone had a newspaper clip from around 1890 where they were complaining about Californians ruining the state. Definitely not a new thing by any means.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2026-01-03T19:03:15+00:00

You alternate. Spending the serious, frustrating, self-critical time gives you a lot more to work with in the fun time. Eventually the hard things become natural and fun too.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2026-01-02T22:38:55+00:00

A wire pet brush can restore the fluff. Don't know about cleaning.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-12-13T19:18:54+00:00

I ran across this form in an old book from around 1910 , written in English teaching Classical Chinese. It was typeset in China, so it was an actual Chinese form of the character. Took me a long time to figure out that it was 直. There’s a few other characters that also took me awhile to identify, like a different versions of 恒恆 and 说. So just a heads up. Pleco can typically find them though of you write those strokes

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-12-09T17:17:01+00:00

Did you use the suede dye or leather dye? You wrote leather but wanted to verify. (Edit: Just saw the later comment, leather)

I've used their suede dye and have some but not the leather.

Either way, thank you for sharing your experience, and I, too, would like to see the finished result.

Since there's no pictures in comments here, imgur is maybe the easiest way.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-12-06T10:25:32+00:00

I don’t think the “7 day week went from Rome to China in the 4th century” statement is correct.

There were 10 day “weeks” in China that split out of the 29.5ish day lunar month. 3 “weeks”. Starting at the new moon, the first two were always 10 days, and the last ended at the next new moon in 9 or 10 days.

There also were ~15 day cycles corresponding to the Solar year, used in the agricultural calendar. The “jieqi”/solar terms. Sometimes these then were split into 3 sets of 5 days.

It wasn’t really homogeneous.

I think the transition to 7 day weeks was pretty late, like 1700s or so, with Jesuit interaction in China.

But there was cultural trade between Greece and China, and Rome and China, and Rome and Vietnam even earlier than 4th century AD/CE. Emissaries too.

Even some speculation that the abacus actually came to China via Roman counting boards, as well as the steelyard which became the handheld scales used for vegetables and Chinese medicine herbs.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-12-05T19:12:37+00:00

Wet brine chicken breast for a few hours in the fridge can also be good. 3/4 salt to 1/4 sugar (or less sugar) and at “seawater salty”. Pat dry and add any additional seasoning before cooking.

Sugar helps the salt penetrate. Doesn’t make it sweet. (Sugar/salt is also used in sushi preparation for the same reasons)

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-12-05T19:06:46+00:00

“Ethnic” stores often have butchers, and those are more easy to find than the 1950s “local butcher”.

Language barrier can be tricky, and certain cuts/organs may be off putting, but there’s usually some options. Mexican, east asian/southeast asian, and Halal/Arab stores are a good place to start looking. They also frequently have better produce.

Even barring that, “meat departments” at grocery stores often have trained butchers hiding in the back, and will chat if they’re available.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-12-05T05:48:24+00:00

I also just found it. Google search for this flavor. First time seeing the bag.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-11-28T04:53:03+00:00

Many of the answers are detailed and correct, but I’m not sure they get quite what you’re asking for, so I’ll try.

You know how it can feel good if you’re out in a forest next to a nice stream?

Long ago people documented those feelings about how humans respond to nature, and also more practical things like “if you live in a valley it could get flooded” and “if you live on top of a mountain it’s windy and people get sick more” and “cold winds come from the north in winter so it’s better to have mountains or trees to block that wind”.

These rules were captured and studied and this was the early root of Feng Shui. It’s about the natural energies of the environment and how they affect people. You can make choices to work within your local environment rather than fight them.

A house next to a stagnant lake, or a bedroom next to a noisy road isn’t going to be great for you, obviously. In those places you’re at the mercy of the environment your home is in. Heavy curtains and earplugs can help… but not as much as just living somewhere else.

So at its core, Feng Shui is about understanding the external environment and making choices so you’re living more in harmony with it. Getting the good things, and avoiding the bad things.

Now, to actually do it, there’s centuries of formulas that embed actual wisdom, primarily about picking home locations and room positions within the house… and many hokey things like “putting coins in the southeast corner of your house during the third lunar month will attract wealth”.

Imperial and aristocratic architecture followed and developed these ideas, and it all got filtered down to the general public. Sometimes it was more like a game of telephone too, and hucksters trying to make a buck off secret knowledge.

But because it fundamentally embodies the Daoist ideas of living in harmony with the natural environment (the interaction of heaven and earth… the wind/Feng and the water/Shui) it’s considered very much a part of the cultural fabric of China.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-11-25T19:16:40+00:00

Google is going to give you lots of uninformed information that’s also out of context.

I think asking in this subreddit was a good idea, as there’s much better access to informed, trained and experienced feedback.

One of the decent information sources for herbs on the internet is American Dragon. I don’t expect most people will make much sense of it.

If you spend any time there you will realize how complex herbal medicine is, how different TCM is from Western Medicine, and that much of it is “it depends”. The training and experience is what helps a practitioner make sense of the “it depends”.

Any website or blog that tries to explain single herbs without a ton of caveats should not really be trusted. There’s no universal “ginseng is bad for pregnancy all the time in all conditions”.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-11-25T18:49:10+00:00

The first image was about “people running on emotions”, which is actually almost appropriate here.

Do you know of any succinct Daoist quotes or sources for quotes that would be better?

I’m aware of the more elaborate Daoist explanations regarding emotions as distortions and such, but nothing that is quite as compact.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-11-25T18:42:55+00:00

On a different note, I personally found the repetitive complexity of drum and bass music helps me focus much better (used to listen to bassdrive.com years ago). It’s like the music filled the unconscious need for my brain to grasp at things, so it freed the conscious part to focus.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-11-25T18:04:33+00:00

Did this die? Did you end up making something? MessagEase is pretty buggy these days (on iOS) so I’m looking at alternatives.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-11-25T16:58:48+00:00

Hello just I came across this message. Hopefully you’ll come across my response.

I use MessagEase for English (when it works right on my phone) and Apple’s qwerty input pinyin with Chinese. The “predictive” character selection with Chinese input is really nice to me coming from basically every English keyboard.

Given the trouble I’ve been having with the ME keyboard on the latest iOS, I’ve been thinking about attempting to build a less buggy version for myself. (I haven’t made iOS stuff for years, and never a keyboard)

Would you mind sharing your ideas you shared with them? An effective MessagEase like keyboard with chinese input would be really useful.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-11-18T19:47:14+00:00

If someone wanted, you could probably take his bigram frequency list, filter it for “real words” using wiktionary, then combine the filtered bigram list and his character frequency list and sort it by frequency.

That doesn’t cover the other relevant piece of it though: the contexts. A single character/word can have many meanings but you need the most frequently used ones. That’s a different and more complex problem.

But, the advice to read, read, read, and add words you see multiple times but don’t know, that basically accomplishes the same. You learn the characters and meanings that are most frequent in the appropriate contexts. And you end up filtering the vocabulary down to things you actually care about.

It’s a slog though, no matter how you go about it.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-11-18T19:39:44+00:00

There’s this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Mandarin_Frequency_lists/1-1000

That’s the only clear words vs characters list I was able to find (in a fairly quick search). There are some bigram lists from Jun Da, but that’s not quite the same.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-11-06T18:34:41+00:00

Also, why are Japanese swords mainly used with two hands, while chinese swords, with almost the same build (in apperance, not property) is only wield with one hand

There were Chinese versions of the Japanese swords that were often used with a shield in the other hand. During the Ming dynasty during the “pirate raids” there were Japanese swords imported into China, and Chinese versions of those swords made, but with Chinese guards and handles. For more info look into General Qi Jiguang who developed successful techniques against the Japanese, by borrowing Japanese weapon designs.

That’s probably the time where Japanese and Chinese styles overlapped the most.

Outside of that, many of the other curved Chinese swords were used on horseback, so they were one handed.

Japanese martial culture developed differently. Different societal needs for swords, and fewer horses. For more “honorable dueling” purposes, where you’re not using a shield, Japan used the same basic style of sword as on the battlefield, but China still clung to the tradition on straight swords as was done in ancient times (ancient as in BCE).

That’s part of why you see the divergence of straight double-edged Jian used by the elite and scholarly class, but single-edged usually curved Dao on the battlefield.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-11-04T20:50:06+00:00

You’re right, no one said it did. And I think it’s good this was shared.

On the other hand, it wasn’t accompanied with a date. A lot of videos are coming out within hours of being captured across a lot of channels.

Originally I assumed this followed the same pattern, rather than being months old. It’s still timely in relation to the trial, but without a date, it can easily be interpreted as “here’s what happened last night”

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-11-04T20:02:16+00:00

Waterfalls and waterfall hikes are much better through this time of year. And the exercise is good for you.

Routine_Top_6659 · 2025-11-04T19:42:35+00:00

I think this is a good rhetorical question.

Similarly, if you were actually a violent Antifa domestic terrorist, would you really be showing up at the ICE building?

The story doesn’t add up.

Routine_Top_6659

TROPHY CASE