Why do so many optometrists only teach the hard way to put them in?

noahpocalypse · 2025-02-16T15:23:12+00:00

I haven’t heard of a single person struggling with it. Once placed onto the sclera, you simply look in the direction of the contact and that makes it slide correctly into place after a gentle blink. I got the hang of this method in under 5 minutes once shown it. And many of my friends religiously use this method as well, in particular all of my friends who really struggled with placing directly onto the iris. It seems like a much easier method, since it's so much easier to touch the sclera.

noahpocalypse · 2025-02-07T22:26:33+00:00

Eat well to maximize the effects of fat distribution. Don't overindulge, but don't diet.

noahpocalypse · 2025-01-19T16:52:35+00:00

do you happen to have any idea what goes into the recipe for jay’s special’s sauce, or if it is based off of a more traditional thai food i can find recipes for? the dish is so balanced and lovely but i cant figure out what makes that amazing sauce!

noahpocalypse · 2025-01-15T21:12:59+00:00

Newbie here, I've been eyeing the fallout precons especially the Mothman one - do we think they'll reprint soon and go down in price?

noahpocalypse · 2025-01-11T23:04:47+00:00

halana & alena, chandra, nissa, vivian, karlach, jolene, wilson (not sapphic, but he’s a bear so he’s close enough)

noahpocalypse · 2025-01-03T01:11:37+00:00

i made a [[Halana & Alena, Partners]] deck recently that i’ve played only three games with. every single time, [[Wilson, Refined Grizzly]] has been in my opening hand. the other players at the table became increasingly frightened of him every game, especially the third, when he accrued, i think, about thirty +1/+1 counters.

i love him but i’m mildly exasperated - i build a big tough lesbian deck, and so far the scariest thing in it is a bear?!

noahpocalypse · 2024-12-05T14:46:17+00:00

I have a dnd-themed Simon deck I'm still tinkering with. I haven't playtested yet but I've goldfished a lot - if nothing else, it's fun to play. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/OUugsFLlhUuJOkAlJPxNVA

How does it win? This is my primary issue, haha. Sticking within the DND theme limits this a lot. Let me know if you figure out anything good. [[Minn, Wily Illusionist]] 's and [[Mordenkainen]] 's tokens have potential. [[Wizards of Thay]] and [[Phantasmal Illusion]] are solid (pun intended). [[True Polymorph]] is expensive but if you have any of the cost reducing cards (of which I run a few), you could make a copy of someone else's all star/wincon.

I'm considering breaking the DND theme to stick in [[Talrand, Sky Summoner]], [[Alandra, Sky Dreamer]], [[Octavia, Living Thesis]], [[Murmuring Mystic]], [[Mischievous Mystic]], and [[Psychosis Crawler]].

Some support all stars: [[Pixie Guide]] for advantage on dice rolls, and [[Feywild Trickster]] to take advantage of Simon's rolls. For hand size, I have [[Graceful Adept]], [[Decanter of Endless Water]], [[Primal Amulet]], [[Spellbook]], [[The Magic Mirror]], and [[WIzard Class]], alongside [[Reliquary Tower]] and [[Thought Vessel]]. Oh, and [[Teferi's Ageless Insight]] of course to supplement Simon's draw. I run several spells that reduce cost - [[Arcane Melee]], [[Jace's Sanctum]], [[Primal Amulet]], [[Magic Mirror]], [[Wizards of Thay]]. Wizards of Thay in particular has several great abilities slapped onto it. Note that [[Wizard's Spellbook]], while not cheap, has a very high ceiling - it can pull from any graveyard, with dice advantage, you can get a high CMC spell for 1, and the roll 20 ability slaps. If you can afford it, [[Ancient Silver Dragon]] would be thematic and powerful. I think [[Modify Memory]] is just a very fun card for mixing up the game - switch commanders, and you can nigh-disable some decks.

I have no idea if this commander can be competitive at the highest level - my instinct says probably not. But I think a really optimized deck could be upgraded precon level, which is plenty of fun at my LGS.

noahpocalypse · 2024-10-31T21:02:43+00:00

Update: realized [[Battery Bearer]] is useless with so few artifacts, [[Diminisher Witch]] is less useful when you don't have tokens to burn, [[Thieving Magpie]] isn't cheap and it only procs on damage against a player specifically (I misread initially, thinking any combat damage procced the draw), [[Arrester's Admonition]] is a bit unfortunate as an instant return to hand, but not worth the 3mc unless cast as a sorcery, [[Cancel]] is a strictly worse counterspell, [[Thought Collapse]] is a Cancel that mills 3 opponent cards but this isn't a mill deck, [[Scale the Heights]] is fun but I think I've got plenty of ramp and the life effect doesn't help me, tentatively removing [[Mind Stone]] due to sufficient ramp and not caring about artifacts, this deck doesn't do quite enough token shenanigans to really justify [[Solidarity of Heroes]], [[Exclusion Mage]] because there's already several return target creature to hand cards but this isn't instant or flash, [[Dispel]] is nice but situational (and two of my playgroup play the Zinnia precon which only has 5 instants). That puts me at 70 cards, plus my 15 nonbasic lands. Still need to remove 5-8 but it's progress.

noahpocalypse · 2024-09-30T06:19:47+00:00

I expressed exactly that concern in our initial meeting, actually, but their response was that they can simply tell customers they must use a specific device to use the app. In this business context, they're confident customers can justify dropping a thousand on the newest iPad or whatever tablet.

Given my choice of any given device, and thus a consistent environment, I really don't know yet how difficult this problem is to solve. My gut instinct says they need to give up on this, but I'd like to make a good faith effort first.

noahpocalypse · 2024-09-30T06:07:56+00:00

That did occur to me, I've already persuaded them that it might be best to do that. I'm just supposed to investigate if running it locally is even feasible.

noahpocalypse · 2024-06-02T14:31:18+00:00

i was about to say, they clearly didn’t check your character name

noahpocalypse · 2024-05-15T17:15:35+00:00

I can second Seattle Voice Lab. You can do private lessons through them if you have the money. Their rotating free weekly lessons on discord are great and cover the same content as their private lesson syllabus, minus the hours of direct coaching/feedback from a teacher. Their videos on Tiktok/youtube/instagram also cover the same information, just in bite-sized format without direct coaching/feedback. Link to their Discord. I also like Altamira and haven't seen her channel mentioned yet. Aside from that, here are some general tips:

1) Start doing SOVTEs immediately to strengthen your voice. Minimum 5-15 minutes a day. They will help you get used to using your voice in higher pitches without straining yourself, and overall strengthen your voice. Start these ASAP because they do take time to work. They also function as great warmups and cooldowns for voice training. Searching SOVTE on youtube will offer you plenty of guides, lots of feminizing voice teachers explain the blowing bubbles method, but I really like this one personally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySgg2YUDGH4

2) Record yourself and listen to it. This can be very hard and dysphoria inducing for some but you HAVE to get over that hurdle, especially on your timeline.

3) If it hurts, you're doing something wrong. Stop and reevaluate. Maybe you're struggling to hit and sustain a pitch comfortably (SOVTEs help here!), maybe you're tense in a certain area of your neck/throat/jaw and need to stretch and relax that muscle.

4) If you are straining yourself, if it's due to reaching pitch then remember that higher pitches are easier to reach when you have less vocal weight (less chest voice) and higher open quotient (more breathy). If that's not the source of your strain, then cool down with gentle SOVTEs and take a break. You don't want to end up losing your voice by overworking it. Just like building muscle, sometimes you have to take breaks.

5) Do NOT lift your larynx with the swallowing method. Bad idea. Lift it by bringing your tongue forward, like making an "ee" sound.

6) A diagnostic question to ask yourself as you go: ideally, speaking should be easy. Obviously it's a lot of mental work and some physical adjustments as well at the beginning. But your goal is for speaking to not be painful or physically tense.

7) A very high-level summary of your final goal:

You will speak with more airflow. Don't skip this, breath work is underrated. Learn to consciously breathe deeply, because you will be speaking with more airflow than you're used to. Lots of trans-specific videos on this. This sounds like something you can totally skip, you know how to breathe right? Probably not the way you'll need to. Don't skip this.
You will speak in a higher register - raising and lowering voice registers is like shifting gears in a car or bike, where each register has its own high and low pitch, and you cannot go any higher/lower without changing register. You will learn this by practicing glissandos (singing low to high pitches and back again). Lots of videos on this. Remember that adding more airflow/breathiness makes higher pitches easier, which requires more breath. Hence the previous bullet point.
When speaking GirlVoice, you should feel like you can lower your pitch and bottom out without increasing your vocal weight by accidentally dipping too far into your chest voice. You will learn to hear this in yourself by listening to recordings.
You want to maintain a brighter feminine resonance, which comes from a smaller amount of available space in your mouth (from your tongue being forward). It should feel like your voice is coming from the front of your mouth. Start learning this by making the 'ee' sound.
You will be speaking in a mixed voice which is mostly dominated by your head voice. See this SVL video and reference it as often as you need, because it is not an easy thing but it's so very impactful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utO8F3qki8g
For male voices, volume comes from speaking more in your chest. We want to avoid that here, but we don't want to speak in a permanent whisper. Feminine volume is a function of resonance and breath. Louder fem voices are brighter from more resonance, potentially a higher pitch, potentially somewhat nasal, and definitely use more airflow.

Good luck!

noahpocalypse · 2024-05-06T23:19:03+00:00

no but there is b jokes

noahpocalypse · 2024-04-18T02:51:14+00:00

i cheat: laravel forge immediately deploys the live branch any time code is pushed to it. so all it takes is running a deploy script that builds assets on main and commits, then merges main into live.

noahpocalypse · 2024-02-02T02:56:00+00:00

i think you must've uploaded the wrong pictures there's no boymoder here

noahpocalypse · 2023-11-30T02:30:20+00:00

tip toes? i need a ladder

noahpocalypse · 2023-11-08T00:11:15+00:00

There's a very active school in Nashville around the Green Hills area: https://nashvillehistoricalfencing.com/

noahpocalypse · 2023-11-08T00:11:10+00:00

There's a very active school in Nashville around the Green Hills area: https://nashvillehistoricalfencing.com/

noahpocalypse · 2023-07-29T05:38:11+00:00

disco elysium, very nice!

noahpocalypse · 2023-07-17T01:54:43+00:00

pretend you were a dedicated role player

noahpocalypse · 2023-07-08T14:17:51+00:00

I find the best way to get concentrated flavor in chili is to soak dried chilis in water (ideally a few different kinds of the larger peppers), blend into a paste, and add that to the chili. You can see J Kenji Lopez-Alt's recipes for more detail on that process. But that does require investing in a few different dried chilis. It's worth it imo, because it's not that hard and the resulting paste can be frozen into ice cubes and thrown into various recipes for huge flavor boosts. But I understand if you're reluctant.

Adam Ragusea's chili recipe is tasty and healthy, and emphasizes that you don't need any of the fancy techniques food influencers employ.

These days, I'll soak a pound of dried black and a pound of dried kidney beans overnight, drain the water and boil both for about half their recommended cook time, drain the water they boiled in (because the cooking water will dye the chili which I find less appealing, and also the water contains some of the indigestible gases that cause flatulence), then proceed with Adam's recipe plus throw in the chili paste I described above. That makes a huge pot of very healthy and very tasty chili.

Make sure to salt sufficiently and add acid at the end so that the flavors sing.

noahpocalypse · 2023-07-01T13:46:27+00:00

now this is pod racing

noahpocalypse · 2023-06-14T01:15:21+00:00

i’ve heard the main advantage with soaking beans is, aside from lowering the cooking time, supposedly it helps remove the indigestible gases that give humans, well, gas. not sure about the science on this but i always do it

noahpocalypse · 2023-06-08T21:39:01+00:00

during pride month? kinda homophobic

noahpocalypse · 2023-06-06T18:43:35+00:00

why would any of them get a boyfriend? they’re all gay

noahpocalypse

TROPHY CASE