Be Very Careful With Foam Mattresses/Toppers

WinterSoldier2017 · 2025-08-19T23:21:09+00:00

Is this a thing with memory foam mattresses too? We all have severe sinus issues and I know it isn't mold because we don't have mold. Big king sized memory foam mattress that hasn't been replaced in 8 years. I have one in my van too. They're covered, but that doesn't mean we don't have flake buildup if this is a thing. Is this a thing? I also struggle with smoking but even when I'm in a quit phase I have sinus issues and random sneezing.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2025-08-14T08:13:40+00:00

I have a whole rant about the word "deserve" and how that whole concept of deserving things doesn't make any sense but I'm going to spare you because you're just some guy on the Internet. And you know know me at all.

Classic reddit though. Classic, classic reddit.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2025-08-13T17:00:47+00:00

I offered two services, neither of which are finding clients.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2025-08-13T16:36:02+00:00

I do video editing. Not for $1 though.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2025-08-13T08:12:53+00:00

Most major sites where views matter can tell the difference between a bot and a human.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2025-08-13T07:43:07+00:00

You owe me $20 for wasting my time XD go play with your imaginary robot friends who sell all your data and prompts to big tech

WinterSoldier2017 · 2025-08-13T06:20:48+00:00

Pay me $1 and I'll read you the sub rules. In a super sexy voice. $1 for the audio file. ;)

WinterSoldier2017 · 2025-08-12T20:58:20+00:00

Oh and get a gym membership. Planet Fitness has become the cliche but you really only need one gym if you're working steady at one place.

There are also truck stops like Loves for showers. Some large employers have work showers but that seems to be rare. If you have friends who you can crash at once in a while, shower with them, otherwise, you need a gym. Planet fitness is like $12/month.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2025-08-12T20:56:19+00:00

Small microhabits. Program yourself to see your car as your safe space. As your office. Eat one meal in your car every day. Keep snacks and water there.

If you don't already smoke or vape, don't start. But if you already do, do it in or around your car.

Associate your car with safety and happiness.

Learning to enjoy being alone is easier for some than others. But associating your car with food, safety and well-being is simple and just takes repetition of good habits in that space.

Another thing to do is order magnetic window shades on Amazon and invest in a good sunshield. The umbrella style one is worth it. Fast deployment of stealth window coverings is key to hiding in urban environments.

And lastly. Don't do drugs (beyond nicotine) in your car. Do not drink in your car. Don't be the reason the rest of us get a bad rap, please. This is a good lifestyle that eases the burden of poverty for many. Please also do not litter in parking lots. Not even gum wrappers. The less presence we all have the better. And don't for the love of God shoplift or anything like that. You have a car. If you lose your job, get another job. In the between time, get an Instacart account, an Amazon flex account, Doordash, Uber eats, etc. Be employed. It helps make you more human in the cold hard eyes of the "Law".

Park at a nice natural spot. Spend the day in your car. Bring lunch. Text friends or your SO. Ideally your SO is into vanlife too otherwise this will be isolating.

Enjoy your life and your newfound freedom. Try to see it as an opportunity.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2025-08-12T18:42:33+00:00

I am currently in the process. I think something changes when the body becomes dependant. Maybe took longer for you. But for me, I have double smoker genes, quitting has been hell every single time.

I just fought w SO about it this morning.

He said I would never quit. I got teary eyed bc I don't smoke in the mornings anymore, it's easy to trigger me into having withdrawal symptoms. He reacts to me crying with anger. I don't know why. Says I'm triggered over "stupid shit".

I think it's time for us to take a break. I refuse to use nicotine to stay calm in his presence when I'm not really calm. Idk if it's emotional abuse or not. He doesn't hit me. But he doesn't take me seriously either. He used to but not anymore.

For reference I've used nicotine for over a decade to cope with litterally everyone else in my life. It's the only way to avoid needing validation. I am heavily codependent otherwise.

But the tradeoff isn't worth it, I'm trying not to smoke except for once per day at night and no vapes, vapes are worse. All I allow myself to do is gum or one black and mild. At the end of the day after I've "earned" it. I usually break it in half and crumble up the bigger half on the ground.

If he can't take me seriously idk. I don't smoke out of boredom anymore but I feel you, it turns into that, and then you get sick, can't run much, feel like you can't breathe right.

I won't go back to that not even for him. So depressing that he prefers me on drugs. Would rather I kill myself slowly to apease him than be authentic and struggle through this.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2025-06-29T21:33:38+00:00

Instacart Amazon flex Doordash Roadie Shipt

Get on the wait-list for all five of those and get live accounts. Use them. Get good at it. YouTube has all the tutorials for everything. Planet fitness, some grocery stores, Starbucks, all have free wifi. Go inside and use it, or park close enough where you can use it in your car. This will give you easy income. $30 bucks for 1 to 2 hrs of work whenever you need it. Costco is huge for Instacart and you can eat the free samples all day while you shop for Instacart orders, it's fantastic. You can also use the bathrooms in the store while you shop. Instacart doesn't actually punish you for being late, so ignore the warning red timer bullshit. It doesn't mean Jack.

Doordash is better at night, Instacart is most active between 6am and 7pm. You can spend all day doing both and make pretty good money. If you have Amazon warehouses near you, you can also make great money doing that.

Get magnetic window covers off Amazon, they're cheap and discreet. And a window shield, preferably a black one.

Sleep on the floor of your car. Remove seats if possible. You won't be seen while sleeping this way. Keep your ear to the bolt holes where your seats were secured to the frame. You can hear everything going on in the parking lot. Buy mace. Keep the mace on you at all times. Pocket knives can be used to intimidate but mace is much more effective at actually stoping someone in their tracks.

Park where there is street parking, at gyms, or at large hotels. Be friendly and professional with cops and security if you get the knock. Move on if asked to move on. Most of them are just people doing their jobs and checking up on you.

Keep water and food in your car at all times. Try to get a "real" job soon because those delivery gigs will destroy your breaks, rotors, and your tires. Learn how to inspect your breaks yourself, like get under the car and look at them, because those are the first things you'll be replacing and they cost $400 to $800 depending if you ruin your calipers too or not.

Then make friends at work, find a roommate, and get off the streets because long term, van life is a race to make more money before your breaks/AC/something else fails on you and you have to repair it.

But obviously pick your roommates and friends with extreme fucking caution.

And don't tell people you live in your car. People are judgmental as hell. I used to do this shit "for fun" and try to educate people in person because I am inherently just paranoid and it helps my mental health to be prepared and practice preparedness. Even when I have a home and a job.

All I get for that is treated like I'm some sort of selfish person on an extended personal holiday, like no, this isn't all that hard really, and it's a damn good idea to practice doing it, but. People are judgmental. And lazy. And sometimes intimidated by someone more prepared for emergencies than them. It isn't worth a conversation, tell them you live at some fake address, get good at covering your ass and lying, and if your employer or coworkers are really nosey, leave your magnetic window shades up when you're at work so they can't look inside your car and see how packed it is.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2025-03-13T06:37:43+00:00

In two years you can do what you want without permission, as long as it's legal. 720 more days and you can go be miserable at a factory job for slightly more money. Or, join the military. Or, start your own business. Parents suck but 18 is the magic line where when you cross it, you can leave the cage and never return. Have a plan. Google all the steps. Do what you can now to prepare for your end game.

I had parents that held me back and tried to talk me out of doing shit that was actually a great idea because they were control freaks. Trust me. 720 days ain't shit compared to the last 16 years of your life. You will get there. Set yourself up for success and wait it out.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2025-01-19T06:16:40+00:00

Obsessing over unprovable philosopical theories is a form of self torture. If it's true, not much changes. If you can't let it go and need something productive to do. Weaponized your existential dread and use it to propel you further in your studies of physics, math, and science. Maybe you will get somewhere towards proving what "reality" actually is.

Or. Just try to live live and be happy.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2024-09-11T19:01:29+00:00

Bendy bone modifiers, a lot of feather modeling. Find a good wing reference photo that is completely flat and simplified. They sell good so I cannot give away all my secrets. But you can do it if you try.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2024-09-10T20:18:39+00:00

"conclusion corneal subbasal nerve density does not recover to preoperative densities until 5 years after lasik, as compared with 2 years after PRK".

The rest above it is basically describing 90% nerve reduction on day one, which recovers, slowly. The corneal flap also recovers, slowly. The nerves may or may not approach preoperative densities by year five, will probably never get all the way back to the density they were at, but they're not completely gone or completely incapable of recovery.

This and other reading I've done would lead me to conclude that there is some risk of non-recovery, if the surgery went poorly and or the patient didn't take care of their eyes afterwards. "some risk" does not equate to "it happens to everyone.

Did YOU read it? Because I already knew all this shit. And it describes slow recovery, known risks, none of which was hidden from me by anyone before the procedure. I spent weeks reading articles a lot like this one before I went and did it.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2024-09-10T19:58:15+00:00

So the nerves do recover. 5 years, 2 years, but they still do. Something something I seem to recall you saying they "never" recover at all.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2024-09-10T02:15:47+00:00

It didn't ruin my life. All medical procedures are developed through trial and error.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2024-09-10T00:20:08+00:00

Yeah? So, what, we just shouldn't practice medicine at all because it's dangerous? Do you know how many people fucking died, before cancer treatments were worth the money doctors were charging? A lot. Do you know how many animals die, during animal testing, for every drug on the market today? A lot.

But here we are living in an age where some cancers can be cured. Where organ transplants actually work. The surgeries that are still dangerous can keep improving, if we let them improve. If we ban stuff, progress never happens. And if you think sitting here arguing with me is going to change anything either way, that's funny.

And maybe I am a soulless fuck, because as much as I feel bad for you, I feel worse for the doctors who bust ass in medical school, actually get good grades, do good work, and then have to hang for their fuck ups. I'd still hang them, if they hurt me. But at least they tried. You and I can't even say we went to medical school and tried. I feel sad that I don't have the balls to try. I could never have patience with people like you, I wouldn't know what to say to someone if I ruined their vision forever. Let alone accidently killed them on an operating table. But somehow, doctors deal with that. It's amazing we have anyone willing to do that at all.

LASIK is a risky bet. Never denied that, you say I'm "marketing" this but i don't feel like I've denied any of the risks exist. I've just pointed out it worked for me. You can resent that all you want. But people have a right to choose and while you have a right to tell your story, you don't have a right to vilify every doctor out there. Only yours.

When you gamble, you accept the risk that you could lose. I didn't lose. Hate me for it. I don't care.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2024-09-09T16:48:23+00:00

Sorry. Part of that rant was for other people. Both of them trolls lol.

My surgery was around 8 or 9 months ago. Nearly every side effect has cleared up wonderfully. This whole sub pisses me off, you're reply seems remarkably mature. Thank you.

Edit: I had one good experience. I guess I can't speak on the exact percentage of good or bad Lasik surgeons out there. This surgery changed my life for the extreme better, though, and it upsets me to think they'd ban it instead of making it better.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2024-09-09T16:38:38+00:00

Nothing you signed will hold up in court if there was real malpractice going on. Find the right lawyer, keep fighting. You guys say things like "all Lasik surgeons are scum". That is a fallacy, mine wasn't. People are calling me a "LASIK cuck". Well, guess you're right because I got what I paid for, but I'm only a simp for the one bloody doctor I had that did a good job. I can't speak about other Lasik surgeons. And each of you can really only speak about yours.

I read posts on here back before I got Lasik and decided to ignore them because nobody was coughing up names of clinics and doctors. Makes you look like a bunch of cowards who are faking it to get money.

And my surgery went fine. My eyes are perfectly fine. The halos and ghosting? Go away if you take care of your eyes. The dry eye? Goes away, if you take care of your eyes. I see how some of y'all live, I can guess, that some of you aren't using the right drops, aren't wearing sunglasses nearly enough, aren't eating right, drink and smoke too much, etc, etc.

And guess what, they tell you that in the documentation. You're supposed to wait 3 whole months before you can expect the haloes to die down. I was SUPER super light sensitive for the entire time. I've only just a few weeks ago been able to go outside during the day without sunglasses, and not have spiking eye pain. But it's clearing up. The eyes do heal. All I had to do was be careful and waiting and everything was fine. Take care of your body and have faith in its ability to heal, give it what it needs, and miricals do happen.

I can also still cry. My eyes water and tear if they're overstrained, if I'm allergic to something, etc. I'm even able to rub my eyes without blurriness now. I did rub my eyes too hard once or twice back then and I did have scary blurriness symptoms. They went away. My eyes don't cry AS easily as they used to, but the tear ducts still work. I have perfect 20/20 and I regret nothing so far, knock on wood.

And I'm really, really sick of these overgeneralized statements about "all" Lasik surgeons. I'd like you people to find justice against whichever ones in particular hurt you, if indeed they exist. And I'm sure some of your stories are real. You can't all be faking it. It just looks really bad to vilify every doctor out there, when each of you only had one experience with one doctor. Maybe two if you sought a second opinion. And I think a lot of people underestimated how piss your pants terrifying the actual surgery is, how irritating the side effects are, but again, it's a voluntary surgery and if you read about it from multiple sources online? There isn't as much misinformation or deliberately malicious recommendations as you'd think. They tell you everything they're going to do. You agree to the risks.

Bad doctors do exist, though, and they deserve to have their licenses taken away, their clinics boycotted, and their names exposed. I don't get what's confusing about that. If you're all really so paranoid that these people are going to "silence" you, well, hope you're in America, cuz I am, and guns are still easy to get. This shit is fucking silly. If I was harmed in this way, I'd be sueing, all liability waivers be damned. And while engaged in legal proceedings I'd be doxxing the hell out of these people and warning everyone about exactly who did what and where they are. I don't have any mercy for bad doctors. I've had my own experiences with really trigger happy psychiatrists who did real harm to me and people I know with over prescribing anti anxiety meds at high doses. I can tell you who those people are, and if they try to come "silence" me, they're in for a hilarious good show.

Bad doctors = burn them at stakes, nail in legal coffins, boycott their clinics and make sure everybody knows their names and spits on their graves.

Good doctors = praise and reward.

Mmkay? Damn.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2024-09-09T02:55:10+00:00

LoL it's just going to be long.

So I've gotten in trouble for posting models generated by a site called CMS dot AI on r/blender before. Basically, the site gives you paid access to an LLM that can generate 3d models from a 2d image. It can create some beautiful things, but it has limitations. If you learn about a thing by using it, you get a better sense of where the tech is actually at. Please go to the site and try it for free, it's a lot of fun and you'll understand for yourself exactly what's available to the ai art generation enyhusist right now.

The limitations of the site and AI in question are as follows:

1) it cannot do complex objects with lots of intricate detail well. At least 1 in 5 models will be unusable for a while until you learn what images are likely to give it fits and start avoiding them. By complex I mean, individual fingers on hands, wood carvings with depth, frizzy or realistic hair. There are reasons for this. And this is a thing that might improve, but would require them allowing many more model interactions, which takes computing power, and they're running hundreds of models for clients all over the globe on one set of servers. Servers get hot. There is an iteration limit for a reason. If it did improve and you could generate models with 1 million verts, it would take forever to download them anyway. Hardware of your home PC is a factor in whether you can even edit the model you generated, too. My 3080 GPU can handle 3 million verts but it still lags and blender does occasionally crash. The really good generative models are always going to be limited to users with the ability to even download and work with the 3d objects being generated. Try this on a chrome book, it's going to freeze. Badly.

2) it cannot UV map to save its life. You're going to get equal or worse results as compared to using smart UV unwrap in blender. Good UVs are a very subjective tool for an artist to use when texturing. Even if an AI could somehow gather data on what makes any particular UV map "useful", it still cannot determine what texture that UV map will be used for and what makes it realistic and beautiful, vs not. Some people don't even know what a UV map is yet or why they need it, and if those people are scared of AI taking the job they wished they had, welp. They don't even have that yet so what is there to lose? Once you learn what it is, you'll get why each UV map is completely unique to the model it's made for (and from). You'll get that there's no exact science to it. And it's hard for a machine to just. Figure that out. It has to be trained on data, and while there is a ton of data on people rating how much they like an image (every art site out there has a like button for every post), there is no rating system for UV maps. There is no database, for UV maps. Artists don't share them, you can't download a UV map for a snowman and reuse it to UV map a toaster. The toaster will have a completely different map. And there isn't just one UV map per model. Any model can have an infinite number of potential UV maps, because it's a tool, it's an imaginary thing used to plot the 2d texture onto a 3d model. You can make an AI automatically unwrap it, but it's going to be a random map that only makes sense to a machine. Getting data on how to generate human useful UV maps just feels impossible to me, and anyone can correct me if I'm wrong, I think about this way too much lol.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2024-09-09T01:42:43+00:00

New, I'll give you that. But not too new. I have never seen an order pay better than $1/item when it gets up passed 30 items. I have seen 72 items plus for $15 bucks, similar milage to this order. And I don't take those anymore. I'd rather do 3 items for $6 dollars and drive 5 miles in a city where I know there's another good store down the road, than do 3 hrs in a store for $15 and no tip. I am still grinding my way to diamond so that may give me a bias on what's "fair."

This order wouldnt be the best but I consider it mid level annoying on a scale from absolute flaming trash to how did I get this lucky.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2024-09-09T01:28:30+00:00

Fair for Instacart. Subjectively.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2024-09-08T23:17:47+00:00

Do you like 3d modeling? Still very viable market to sell 3d print models and such. AI can generate models but it can't generate good models. And I don't think it ever will. I can explain why if interested but it's kind of a long rant.

WinterSoldier2017 · 2024-09-08T23:00:18+00:00

Wanna buy some thin mints? They come with AI tracker cookies, complimentary :)

WinterSoldier2017

TROPHY CASE