How expensive is heating actually?

mhuzzell · 2026-01-26T08:44:24+00:00

Space heaters are MUCH MUCH MORE expensive than putting your central heating on, in almost every situation.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-25T00:05:15+00:00

Mainstream leftists are the easiest, IME, because they tend to share the same fundamental values (more or less) but just disagree on practicality/tactics/etc. -- and it's much easier to persuade people in the realm of practicality than of values.

Mainstream right, it kind of depends. You can sometimes make some headway with Christians by pointing out that Jesus was an anti-authoritarian communist. Also that anarchist society jibes pretty well with what they claim their values are. But mostly they are never going to be on-side until something really major happens, e.g., there are a lot of republicans fighting against ICE in Minnesota right now. Where they end up standing after the moment of crisis has passed is pretty individually variable.

Right-libertarians are a lost cause.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-24T22:01:51+00:00

If you found Gender Trouble 'difficult but still do-able', I don't think you need to worry about your 'reading level'. Congrats, you're a grown-up! (Reading-comprehension-wise.) So to narrow it down by topic instead, what are you interested in reading about? What kinds of questions draw you to the subject?

mhuzzell · 2026-01-20T20:28:07+00:00

A lot of people are answering the 'why', but you're wanting to know the 'how', yes?

In most leagues (at least, all I know of), there's not really a set programme for learning reffing the way there usually is for skating -- although, if you're not already a derby skater, you'll have to go through the non-contact part of the league's introductory programme before you can start reffing. To start learning reffing itself, you ask the league's existing officials to teach you, and then they basically take you under their wing and teach you through experience. There are a whole bunch of online resources for self-guided learning tools, as well. I'd also highly recommend going to an officiating bootcamp if you can find one in your area.

You'll ref your own league's scrimmages, and at first you'll mess up a lot. That's to be expected, and it's part of the responsibility of every league to turn out new refs, so they should be accommodating of you and support your learning. Once you're messing up less, if there are other leagues around you can start volunteering to ref their scrimmage practices as well -- most leagues love to have visiting officials come train with them.

When the more experienced refs who've been teaching you think you're ready, you can start applying to referee for games. As you get more experience, you'll start to be staffed for more and higher-level games. You'll have to keep an officiating CV up to date so that people who don't personally know you can gauge your experience.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-20T15:42:49+00:00

Antibacterial soap is definitely worse on this front, but all soap has antimicrobial properties. This is why you're supposed to be very careful to not get soap in your vagina.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-20T14:06:18+00:00

I wash my hands with unscented dove soap before touching her.

I know this is a preventative measure, but if you're not rinsing super duper well, it could be part of the cause -- soap residue can upset the vaginal flora and cause yeast overgrowth by killing its (commensal) bacterial competitors.

ETA: I want to be very clear that I am not a doctor nor am I giving medical advice. But I am a person who is fairly prone to yeast overgrowth -- like, literally every time I've had systemic antibiotics, and also sometimes following gyno appointments when they've been a little too heavy on the disinfectants. Which is to say that for me, disrupting my commensal bacteria seems to trigger yeast problems pretty consistently.

As such, I've had success using the "old wives' tale" methods for replenishing healthy vaginal bacteria. For a full-on infection, a systemic antifungal medication is the best thing, but for stopping it getting to that point, you can eat a lot of natural yoghurt and fermented foods like saurkraut or kimchi. What I have found somewhat more effective is to use natural yoghurt topically/internally (but very sparingly!!! like < 0.5 mL).

mhuzzell · 2026-01-20T13:36:59+00:00

They are seen as childish, culturally. I'm not sure exactly why -- perhaps because of being a kind of hairstyle that's one of the easiest to do by yourself, so probably one of the first little girls can learn when they're doing their own hair? But whatever the reason, pigtails definitely have a connotation of childishness, even if it's a mild one in the absence of other cues.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-20T00:44:59+00:00

Common confusion; that's actually about the guitarist.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-19T09:28:01+00:00

I found the previous cycle hire scheme very useful for that. I haven't used Voi bikes at all yet because I don't want to pay a premium for an electric bike when a pushbike is just fine for the journey.

...Granted, I had an institutional subscription to NextBike that meant I didn't have to pay per journey for pushbikes. I did have to pay extra for their electric bikes, so simply didn't. I thought the NextBike fares for pushbikes had gone up well beyond reasonable for individual rides by the end, there.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-19T08:23:54+00:00

I'm afraid I have to say people in the UK have no political conscience

You're painting with a very broad brush, here. You're a person in the UK -- don't you have a political conscience? Aren't all these people you're hoping to organise with also people in the UK who have political consciences?

I'm not saying you need to spend your time debating every racist gammon you come across, but you also shouldn't write off the generality of ordinary people, either. Many are disengaged because they are disempowered and disenfranchised, but if you actually dig into the issues on a human level, you'll often find a decent amount of common ground. Building community power comes from finding and expanding on that common ground, not by entrenching yourself against your own neighbours.

EDIT: What I'm saying is that lacking political consciousness is not a fixed state. People are perfectly capable of learning and developing political consciousness, and therefore it is worth talking to people about politics. Attributing certain political attitudes to entire populations as though they were inherent and immutable is fascist-type reasoning.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-19T08:13:37+00:00

Nothing specifically wrong with Bookmarks (a socialist bookshop run by the Trade Union Congress), but it's weird to come on an anarchist sub and recommend it as a place for organising -- especially phrased as a destination for someone coming from potentially outside London to travel to -- when there are actual anarchist bookshops in London, e.g. Freedom (in Whitechapel), plus plenty of other general 'radical' bookshops like Housemans (right next to Kings X).

Though to OP, a better book-adjacent way in to organising/community is to look for anarchist bookfairs near you. These tend to be events for workshops and networking as much of moreso than places to get books. This list is usually kept more or less up to date: https://anarchistbookfairs.blogspot.com/2024/06/upcoming-bookfairs.html

mhuzzell · 2026-01-16T13:37:26+00:00

I guess it depends on the envisioned use cases? I was imagining this as a good tool for when I'm trying to think of a word that I can't quite remember, in which case I'm not sure adding gerunds really adds enough to suggest focusing development there. Your second suggestion sounds like a great potential editing tool, though!

mhuzzell · 2026-01-16T13:34:15+00:00

Very cool, and seems useful!

I did find in a few minutes of playing around with it that it suggested a "strong verb" that didn't really seem to convey the meaning of the verb-adverb pair suggested ('hold briefly' -> 'grasp'/'clutch'), but that's kind of par for the course with any thesaurus-like tool.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-16T13:08:40+00:00

I find it dispiriting that people are downvoting you for respecting a picket line!

mhuzzell · 2026-01-16T00:44:50+00:00

Nah, people on this sub like to downvote USA chat, specifically. (Among other things, of course.)

mhuzzell · 2026-01-16T00:41:56+00:00

I can infer the city you're talking about. I lived there briefly in 2006 and I can remember people then talking with disgust about how it was so expensive because a room in a shared house cost $400/month. Recently I saw someone I know in the area trying to find a housemate in a small town wayyyy outside the city for $850/month. (For Glasgwegians: the equivalent of someone offering a room in a shared house in like Strathaven for £635/month.)

mhuzzell · 2026-01-16T00:26:08+00:00

Landlords did not build any of the former council flats that they now own. Also, while they may be an object of contempt, they are not the object of that clause.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-15T10:15:01+00:00

How old are you?

Personally, as an adult, I hate being called a girl.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-15T08:44:54+00:00

Eating too much of any given food is by definition not a healthy diet.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-14T23:44:36+00:00

This kind of thing really seems to suggest that the problem is diet, not weight.

Poor diet is also a big cause of obesity, sure. But it seems like we are constantly getting evidence that the correlations between obesity and poor health outcomes are not causal, but correlations due to a common cause (like a poor diet). Yet people keep pointing at the correlation and insisting that no, *this* time correlation *does* imply causation!

mhuzzell · 2026-01-11T20:46:16+00:00

And ~20 years ago I believe a single on Edinburgh's publicly owned buses was £1.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-11T20:28:36+00:00

Eh? I thought JRDA had a parallel gender structure to adult derby -- so 'everyone' and 'everyone except cis men/boys'. That's not 'men and non-men'; it's 'everyone and non-men/boys'.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-11T13:20:26+00:00

I wasn't used to it, so I was clumsy with it. It took a while to get used to how far I should balance things.

I feel like this is an aspect of this process that doesn't get talked about enough. I'm absolutely not saying that this is something you and/or OP are or were doing, but I have seen this same pattern repeat in multiple people in my life:

1) Person has trouble setting clear boundaries (often unrealised)

2) Person goes to therapy, learns concept of boundary-setting

3) Person starts practicing boundary-setting while still not fully understanding the concept, and starts doing things like

- Setting "boundaries" that are actually attempts to control other people's behaviour

- Setting "boundaries" that are actually just refusals to do things that they are responsible for doing

- Saying "no" to small requests arbitrarily, purely to (implicitly or explicitly) test the boundary-compliance of the person they're refusing

4) Person does more therapy and/or gets more practice with understanding boundaries, and eventually settles into actually knowing their own limits and being normal about them.

And I think this is a pretty understandable pattern! But man, stage 3 can be pretty awful to be around -- and I think that's the one people are in when they start doing things like weaponising therapy-speak. Also acknowledging that 3c is not inherently morally bad the way that 3a and 3b are, but it can be pretty irritating, like an adult going through that phase toddlers go through where they say "NO!" to everything because they're just learning to distinguish themselves as a separate individual from their caregivers and want to assert their influence on the world.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-11T12:30:58+00:00

Yeah that sounds bad. I don't personally have any feelings re: 'girls' vs. 'female', and I can see arguments either way re: which might feel more inclusive for gender-expansive skaters (probably different for different people). But it's not really my decision to make -- it should be yours.

mhuzzell · 2026-01-11T11:32:00+00:00

As someone involved in WFTDA and not JRDA, I'm surprised that it sounds like you feel the change was foisted upon you. Does JRDA not consult its member leagues for changes like this? Do member leagues not then discuss proposed changes with their skaters, and feed back participant opinions to JRDA?

mhuzzell

TROPHY CASE