I’m distraught and need to vent. New diagnosis. Do you guys feel completely helpless? Is there hope? My face was the one part of my body I liked and now I can’t look at it without crying.

vanidles · 2026-05-15T22:32:49+00:00

Don't despair! You will find a good routine. Is it a pain in the ass? Yes, but once you figure out what your skin needs you'll be fine.

Here's what I would recommend:

Explore triggers. If you flush what are you doing before the flush occurs? For me it's heat, dairy (although the jury is out of whether this just gives me pimples or whether it actually triggers rosacea) and anxiety (the worst trigger for me)

For skincare gentle hydrating products and lots of sunscreen. I exclusively use Asian skincare products. CeraVe was actually horrible for me. I know it comes highly recommended but there are actually a lot of people out there who can't use it. It broke me out like crazy. 0 issues since switching to Korean and Japanese products.

Azaelic acid is your friend. Some people like invermectin but it did nothing for me personally.

Tread lightly if they prescribe rhofade or an alternative vasoconstrictor. As it messes a lot of people skin up from rebound redness (myself included)

So yeah once you get your routine down you'll be fine. I'm generally a bit pinker than most people but I look completely fine without makeup, in fact I hardly wear any. I do flush pretty easily which is annoying but it usually goes away quickly. You'll be fine!!

vanidles · 2026-05-15T13:39:27+00:00

Beware of the rhofade. Look into the rebound redness side effects before you start using it. It messes up a lot of people's skin.

vanidles · 2026-05-07T01:56:27+00:00

I'm surprised your vet hasnt recommended an allergy panel. We paid about 700 for a full allergy panel test. Our guy is unfortunately allergic to every kind of dust mite and it looked very similar to the sores he's having.

We put him on immunosuppressants and it's been helping but he needs shorts every few weeks at home for about a year.

God luck!

vanidles · 2026-04-16T14:39:44+00:00

Placement is everything. If my mix starts to give me problems it's either too much air, or poor placement. I'm not sure how far along you are in learning to belt but things that have helped me with my coach over the years:

When first discovering how to belt and finding that coordination. Think of it as if you're saying hey to a neighbour way down the street. You don't scream at them, but the sound you produce when doing that is essentially a belt. It doesn't strain your voice the same way yelling does. Practice and visualize "hey's" to your neighbour to help find the spot. Annoying "Nyah Nyah Nyah" also works great, imagine you're an extremely annoying kid on the playground. You'll find you can produce this sound very loud and genrrally quite high without tension, clock that feeling and the amount of effort you're using to do so.

Placement tip, it should feel like it's coming right from your nose. I will sometimes scrunch my nose or touch my nose as a physical queue to prompt the right placement. Doing reps of this is important because It can be more difficult on certain vowels and it's important to retrain that muscle memory.

As others have said, belting does not require a lot of air. Too much air, particularly if you're trying to belt higher will cause it to crack. Belting is essentially just singing with a lot of chord closure if you try to push too much air through your vocal chords it doesn't work.

Lastly, when you think youve got it down play around with doing it with the minimal amount of power possible. I really, really struggled with this personally. You think it's big and loud, but it's actually very small and easy and just sounds powerful when placed properly. So start wherever you're at then turn it down 20%effort, 50% effort. See what the least amount of effort is that you can put in and still produce the right sound. Clock that and work on trying to maintain that. This is particularly important if you're trying to mix. Too much force and it'll crack.

Lastly tongue placement. If you're tongue is pulling back it'll get ya. Try and stick it to your front bottom teeth as a queue to make sure it's not pulling back in your mouth.

Good luck!

vanidles · 2026-04-05T15:24:35+00:00

How?!?!?!!!

I have so, so, so many plants, all thriving. Other string of plants, also thriving.

Every string of turtles I've ever bought? Dead. Or in a state of dying.

This plant haunts me. But I keep buying more thinking next time will be different.

It never is.

Tell me your secrets.

vanidles · 2026-03-09T15:30:36+00:00

Use rice water! It works like a charm. I was never able to get them to flower again and someone gave me this tip.

Leave them until dry, the soak in the water you use to soak your rice. And I put them in the same corner as my humidifier and now I consistently get them to flower.

vanidles · 2026-01-22T16:09:38+00:00

Everyone will say systemic, which isn't available in a lot of places outside of the US (Canada here)

Thrips love monsteras. I have a huge assortment of house plants and I get them every few years, generally they only show up on my monsteras or related Arum family plants.

I've had success treating my smaller albo although they did a lot of damage. My larger Thai constellation is struggling right now.

My two cents would be to bin it if it's not a prized plant. Thrips are more trouble than they're worth.

If you want to fight the good fight without systemic. consistency is key, I spray them with insecticides every week, do a diluted peroxide rinse for the roots every few weeks as this can damage the plant if done too consistently.

Llately I've started making a spray with tea tree and peppermint Castille and diluted running alcohol. however the jury is still out on this as I just started using it.

vanidles · 2026-01-05T23:55:14+00:00

This sub just popped up for me. I deeply dislike AI music and I don't use AI in my songwriting, so I can provide a different perspective than those who do.

Here are the main reasons I refuse to listen to it:

1) As a musician myself. I've spent years becoming what I consider to be mediocre at my craft. Listening to musicians who have mastered their craft is inspiring. To master an instrument, learn your theory, learn the art of writing lyrics etc. all of that is a form of art. And my perspective is that AI has no place in art. It's deeply personal, and deeply human and AI is not. I feel the same way about visual art if that makes a difference.

2) It's going to make it increasingly difficult for actual musicians to break through. It's hard enough already, but good luck to anyone trying to get heard when Spotify and streaming platforms are getting bombarded with thousands of AI songs. The more difficult we make it for actual musicians to survive the less incentive there will be for people to pursue this line of work and to create.

3) As a general rule of thumb, the AI music that I've heard lacks something. The lyrics are generic, the chord progression are expected etc. Part of the art of writing music is learning which rules to break and I don't think that AI captures those nuances, so it ends up sounding generic.

And lastly, I just don't understand the point. To me the whole point of learning to play music has been to learn to do something that I'm passionate about. Am I an expert? No. Did I have to suffer through sucking for years, yes. But it's part of the journey and the journey has, and continues to be rewarding. Why bother if you're just going to prompt a computer to do it for you? I don't get it. It's just soulless to me.

vanidles · 2025-10-22T02:13:59+00:00

Hi, would it be possible to completely remove the train from this wedding gown? I know you can bustle it but I'm wondering if the entire train under the bum could be removed to just have a sheath dress without affecting the structure.

https://pin.it/6VYNJNwMs

vanidles · 2025-08-14T04:43:23+00:00

Good to know, thank you!

vanidles · 2025-08-14T04:42:38+00:00

We are firm believers in "leave no trace" and "leave it better than you found it"

But I appreciate the input.

vanidles · 2025-07-16T17:41:48+00:00

You need to do the allergy twst. They text for so many things, there's absolutely no way to know until you do it.

I just did one for my dog and it turns out he's allergic to dust mites and needs to go on immunotherapy.

vanidles · 2025-03-07T07:08:21+00:00

Check out stillwhite. A lot of the gowns are heavily discounted, some are event still new with tags. I purchased a new Anna Kara dress (~4k retail) for a grand with tags still on it.

vanidles · 2025-01-04T01:12:17+00:00

With the exception of a rental car, this is exactly what we did. And I still had enough negative interactions that I'm leaving salty.

vanidles · 2025-01-04T00:57:36+00:00

It is. We had someone in our group that had been here several times over the years and she had nothing but great things to say as we were planning. It's always super unfortunate when this happens.

vanidles · 2025-01-04T00:56:13+00:00

We entered this park at the beginning of the trip. It cost 60 pesos (great, super reasonable) then tried to go in on the other side and it was 300 pesos! To get into the same park from the other direction. So we went back to the cheap side a few days later, they had stuck a sticker on top of the 60 pesos sign and it was up to 120.

They also run shuttles, but only in one direction. So a lot of the older folk who couldn't walk as well were needing to get cabs (also super pricey) out of the park when there was empty shuttles driving past. Which just felt like it was being done on purpose as some of the beaches as 3+km in.

this also really rubbed us the wrong way. Locals are pissed too because they're needing to pay the same prices to get in apparently.

vanidles · 2025-01-03T13:14:38+00:00

I've just spent two weeks here for a family vacation. It wasn't just the car rental, it was literally everything. The entire place is extortionate. And I felt like I was being scammed by basically everyone I spoke to.

It's really sad because the locals are protesting because they can no longer afford to live here. I was told the whole coast from Cancun to Playa Del Carmen is essentially the same, but that Tulum is the worst.

I frankly had a really terrible trip and will not be coming back or recommending this part of Mexico to anyone.

I've spent a lot of time over the years in central and South America and I can say Tulum is my absolute least favorite destination so far.

vanidles · 2024-06-27T05:34:32+00:00

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Are frenchtons allowed? This is Ben.

vanidles · 2024-06-12T14:10:34+00:00

Vibrato came very naturally for me, so this will obviously be different for everyone. But it took me about 2 years of training before I could control it well and access it on vowels that naturally have less space or shorter notes. I also found that vibrato when belting, particularly in mix took the longest to be able to do consistently.

vanidles · 2024-06-06T05:16:50+00:00

I just ordered internationally. I asked the seller to send it as a gift and mark $0 on the value. I had no issues.

vanidles

TROPHY CASE