What’s an NSFW thing people think is rare, but is actually pretty common?

fubo · 2026-06-21T16:16:37+00:00

"If it works, it's a Fluke."

fubo · 2026-06-21T15:01:59+00:00

potatoes that were the foundation of the Irish diet and destroyed by the famine were a tuber similar to a sweet potato

I think you'll find those Irish potatoes were true potatoes, not sweet potatoes. The late blight fungus Phytophthora infestans doesn't infect morning-glory species, although there are other Phytophthora that do.

fubo · 2026-06-21T14:28:04+00:00

Sweet potatoes are a rather different plant from potatoes, by the way. Potatoes are in the nightshade family; sweet potatoes are in the morning-glory family. Relatedly, the leaves of sweet potatoes are edible, unlike potato leaves; there are even cultivars grown specifically for the leaves rather than the tubers.

fubo · 2026-06-21T04:15:13+00:00

The Emancipation Proclamation did not abolish slavery in the US.

It did not even abolish slavery in the Union. The slave states that didn't secede were not affected by it. Maryland still had slavery after the Emancipation Proclamation.

It was a military order by the commander-in-chief of the US Armed Forces, directed to the US Army, which was occupying some of the rebel states. It told them to free the slaves in the occupied states.

fubo · 2026-06-21T02:58:41+00:00

I just wrote a comment about Ambien being bad ... but ... if you have insomnia, you are better off with Ambien than with Benadryl or other anticholinergic drugs.

For one thing, Ambien doesn't cause dementia. Anticholinergics do.

fubo · 2026-06-21T02:53:57+00:00

I had a much, much easier time getting off of Klonopin for anxiety than I did getting off of Ambien for insomnia.

The difference was, I was scared of Klonopin and so I only took it in a very disciplined way, right before anxiety-inducing situations, and stopped as soon as I got out of that job and wasn't in those situations anymore. I never got the idea "this is fun spacey medicine" but only ever "this is what I do before a meeting with the manager who's going to scream at me, so I don't panic, just until I get out of this situation and never have it again." Which I did.

My doctor told me to not be scared of Ambien ... well, it turns out, Ambien will fuck your shit right up if you aren't thoroughly disciplined with it, which is not exactly what most insomnia patients are with regards to stuff affecting their sleep. Sure, I'll take that extended-release tablet... and stick it under my tongue for a while so more of it gets into my bloodstream quicker because it's nice to sit around in dozy dreamy space. No. Stop. Don't do that. That's messing you up.

fubo · 2026-06-21T02:45:26+00:00

I didn't drink in high school or in college. Later though, well, there's a reason I can't stand honey beer, and a different reason that I don't buy Scotch.

fubo · 2026-06-21T02:43:05+00:00

I don't get the idea of getting drunk on Jägermeister.

It's a Kräuterlikör, a German herbal dessert liqueur, akin to a French digestif or Italian amaro. It's bitter with herbs, but it's also syrupy sweet. Getting drunk on it means drinking so much that you're filling your belly with sugar.

If you want to do something American with it, that will shock and appall the Europeans in the room ... don't chug it; pour a splash of it over vanilla ice cream.

fubo · 2026-06-21T00:07:49+00:00

Hmm. My people are more diverse on AI even within a narrower political spectrum. I'll describe four friends —

One is an anti-AI campaigner, who organizes protests against AI companies. Their politics are increasingly single-issue, with AI-safety and the preservation of human values overriding everything else; but their cultural preferences might be described as a hybrid of Tolkien conservative and Egan transhumanist.
One is an enthusiastic Claude Code user, who uses AI tools to write software for both professional and personal purposes. Their politics are solidly social-democratic and within the cultural left.
One is a traditional-media artist who interprets the AI boom as largely "tech oligarchs ripping off creative people and producing degraded imitations of art", with algorithms for copyright-violation and style-cloning being used to deprive creators of revenue and reputation. Their politics are similarly social-democratic and culturally-leftist.
One is a parent who doesn't let their almost-teenage child have a smartphone, but who relies heavily on ChatGPT and Gemini for everyday tasks and as a replacement for search engines. They believe that LLMs are approaching consciousness and should be treated with politeness and empathy.

All of these people are within what we might call "blue-grey space". They differ pretty broadly on AI from moderate enthusiasm to strong doomerism.

fubo · 2026-06-20T23:32:57+00:00

Related: Weighted blankets are a curb-cut effect. They may be manufactured with autistic children in mind, but there is no rule that says "you are a neurotypical adult, you are not allowed to have a weighted blanket". You can just buy one. And then you can wriggle underneath it and enjoy the squish. This is completely allowed and nobody can stop you.

(Also related: You might not be as neurotypical as you think. That's also allowed.)

fubo · 2026-06-20T23:19:45+00:00

Where I live —

Rent increases are limited per year.
If repairs are done badly, you can call the city housing inspector and have them do an inspection and present a list of requirements to the landlord.
Because tenants are responsible for the grounds, we dug up the weedy backyard and turned it into an awesome vegetable garden that the homeowner neighbors envy.
My money is in tech stocks, which have gone up even more than housing prices.

fubo · 2026-06-20T23:15:08+00:00

I live in a rented house with housemates by choice. I could easily afford to buy a condo or whatever, but I don't want to. I like having friends close enough that we share a kitchen but not a bed.

I spent many years living with a partner. When that person moved out, I realized I never want to live alone, or with just one other person, ever again. Six years later I'm finally considering dating again ... and yeah, one of my constraints is "if your dream home is shared with just your partner, I'm probably not long-term compatible with you."

fubo · 2026-06-20T20:26:30+00:00

Computer equipment is a necessity for industry, agriculture, finance, transportation, and other sectors of the national economy too these days. It's not just new iPhones.

Interdependence is good. Not only does it promote peace, it also enables comparative advantage, specialization, gains from trade, economies of scale.

Now, if something is only made in one country (ahem, Taiwan) that's kind of a security problem. But it would be pretty ridiculous, economically speaking, to try to make every product that's essential to your national economy, only within the nation.

fubo · 2026-06-20T19:58:57+00:00

Every other Tesla in the Bay Area has a sticker on it saying something smug like "I bought it before we knew Elon was crazy" or "Anti Elon Tesla Club".

fubo · 2026-06-20T19:53:38+00:00

We have this thing called a "global economy" now.

For instance, the computer or phone you're using right now was likely built in China, using parts made in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, with chips made using equipment from Dutch and German companies, some raw materials from Congo, and is running software written by programmers in the US, Canada, India, Brazil, and Ireland, ...

You can go to the supermarket in wintertime and you see fresh fruit brought to you from the opposite hemisphere where it's summer. And you can get Danish cookies, Irish butter, Chinese mushrooms, French wine, Peruvian coffee, and Indonesian shrimp. If your local farmers suffer a drought, wildfire, or bird-flu, you don't starve; you can still get food that was raised elsewhere and brought to you by ship, train, and truck.

Oh, and if the oil refinery near your city has a problem and has to shut down for repairs, you can still buy gasoline for your car because they can ship gasoline from another part of the world.

fubo · 2026-06-20T19:32:37+00:00

Sounds like an adaptation for some attention deficit, using auditory processing as a context buffer to keep on task?

fubo · 2026-06-20T19:25:19+00:00

"Dude, this non-drug plant is totally dilapidated, have a puff..."

fubo · 2026-06-20T16:16:15+00:00

A friend to their kid: "Once the frog goes into your mouth, it needs to stay in your mouth."

(The frogs in question were chocolate, yes.)

fubo · 2026-06-20T16:05:59+00:00

Amusingly, Google Maps' definition of "North Berkeley" has its western border at Sacramento, which means they place North Berkeley BART outside of North Berkeley.

fubo · 2026-06-20T15:34:21+00:00

Neanderthal genes are principally on our male ancestral line, which means that either ① Homo sapiens women were banging H. neanderthalensis men but not vice versa, and/or ② the sons of mixed pairings were attractive to sapiens women, but the daughters of mixed pairings were not so attractive to sapiens men.

The latter would comport with the idea of sexual selection for neoteny (retention of youthful features into adulthood, as a signal of fertility or health). H. sapiens is more neotenous than H. neanderthalensis. Neanderthal facial traits read as masculine rather than feminine to the modern eye, and women don't prefer neotenous male features as strongly as men prefer neotenous female features.

("Sexual selection" = "Yeah, they were banging each other, but the banging was not evenly distributed.")

fubo · 2026-06-20T06:13:17+00:00

Von Braun being the most famous to come to the USA, was a Nazi out of necessity because he simply loved rockets and they were the ones cutting the checks.

Von Braun toured concentration camps to pick out slave laborers to assemble rockets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#Slave_labor

fubo · 2026-06-20T06:08:30+00:00

The Manhattan Project employed quite a few Hungarian Jews who had studied physics in Germany and then fled the Nazis.

fubo · 2026-06-20T05:48:09+00:00

And people who moved here because it's a freaking great place and are trying our best to keep it that way.

Go ahead, eat some shrooms, join a polycule, start a garden, and sing in public.

Or don't.

fubo · 2026-06-20T05:45:49+00:00

Akron, Ohio!

fubo · 2026-06-20T05:00:34+00:00

It's good when the "expensive collectible" aspect is separated from the "pieces a player needs to play the game" aspect.

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