House of Nettles: #link

2024-10-24T07:29:53Z

Joey Fox wrote:

My 6 Favorite HEPA Filters & Air Cleaners

2. Classic Corsi-Rosenthal Box

The classic box fan CR-Box was invented during the COVID-19 pandemic and is THE most cost effective method to clean the air. They have been shown to be remarkably effective and outperforming most commercial HEPA filters on the market. It can also be scaled up as there have been many CR box builds where entire schools came together to provide one per classroom.
…

This article is legitimately helpful, but I'm mostly posting it because I find it extremely amusing that (at least as of a year ago) the best-in-class air filter by cost and among the best overall is literally just taping a bunch of filters to a box fan yourself. Hilarious and easy on your wallet! But what's even funnier is Joey's #1 recommendation:

Joey Fox wrote:

1. PC Fan Corsi-Rosenthal Box

The PC fan CR box was a recent invention to find a method to achieve high clean air delivery rates with very low noise. Noise is the greatest limitation of in-room air cleaners and PC fans are the best option to address it. There are no other air cleaners on the market that have the capability to supply 150 lps of clean air at 35 dBA. Nothing comes close.
…

The only thing better than than taping a bunch of filters to a box fan? Taping them to a bunch of PC fans instead! Granted the ones linked here are a little more sophisticated than that, but elsewhere on his site Joey presents one that absolutely is just fans and tape:

Joey Fox wrote:

The Mini PC Fan Corsi-Rosenthal Box

Mini PC Fan CR Box

…

2024-10-23T01:40:00Z

Hatkirby wrote:

Solving Puzzles Through Walls, and the No-Wizzies Snipe

On July 18th, I documented my Low% route, including a discovery I'd made. It is possible to snipe Hedges 2 while standing on the top of the mountain. The description of the trick included the following picture and caption:

The panel is completely invisible because it is blocked by the castle wall -- however, the wall has no collision so the panel is still solvable.

This statement is false.

It was an understandable assumption to make. There's no reason why that wall needed to have collision coded into it, since it wouldn't be occluding anything in normal gameplay. It's common for game developers to cut corners in places that don't really matter. But it remains an incorrect assumption.
…

I don't do speedrunning myself, but I find the act fascinating and delightful to watch and especially to learn about. There's an intrinsic human drive, distributed across the entire species, to fractally explore every aspect of the world we live in. It's what drives us to do science, it's what drives us to understand mathematical structures, and it's at least a part of why art speaks to us as strongly as it does. I find speedrunning to be a particularly pure expression of this drive, the progression from enjoying something to wanting to enjoy it to its fullest to diving so deep into it that it expands into a world of its own.

Hatkirby's writeup of the process of discovery and the fallout of one particular trick in The Witness is fascinating and at times hilarious. I recommend giving it a look if only to discover why specifically it's called the "No-Wizzies Snipe". I bet you won't be able to guess.

2024-10-21T07:45:52Z

Liz wrote:

10 (official) Years of Type 1

my festive cocktail… I promise it’s actually delicious (recipe at the bottom)

(cw: talk about death [specifically mine, theoretically])

As of today I have (officially) stayed alive with Type 1 diabetes for ten years¹. I’ve done a little bit of reading on the history of Type 1 treatment, one of the first acute conditions turned chronic through medical intervention (thank you, Drs. Banting, Macleod, and Best). The longer I live, the more “I would have died by now” milestones I pass, and the more I am reminded of how grateful I am for advances in diabetes treatment. I have passed the “I would have lived this long on a starvation diet” milestone. In a few years, I’ll probably make it past the “lethal atherosclerosis” line, then the “renal failure” line, assuming I retain access to current diabetes and other medical technology². I’ll probably also mostly avoid the non-lethal sequelae, the blindness and the amputations and the peripheral neuropathies. Apparently in a few years I’ll need to start taking statins even if my cholesterol is good, because diabetes often brings vascular complications. As good as diabetes technology is, I am, fundamentally, manually running one of the primary metabolic loops in the human body. It’s decidedly imperfect even when running at top performance.
…

It's really tough for me to read this post which is, to a substantial degree, about the hypothetical of my wife dying. But I think it's worth sharing both as a celebration of the fact that she is very much alive and as a meditation on what life is like with only the ongoing application of modern medical treatment between oneself and the void.

Also, I gotta say, I am pretty proud of that beverage. The flavors meld really well—I wanted to make sure the black sesame was still very much the primary note, which it absolutely is, while giving it a bit of richness with the scotch and cacao as well as a touch of liveliness with the amaretto and absinthe. I might actually seek out more black sesame ice cream to be able to make this for friends.

2024-10-17T07:58:21Z

Rebecca Davis wrote:

Why "coming out" still matters

The founders of the GLF intentionally echoed the rhetoric of Black Power (“power to the people”) and of North Vietnamese resistance (“liberation front”) to Western imperialism, even as they called out other “oppressed groups” for discriminating against queer people rather than finding solidarity with them. Visibility was a radical proposition for queer Americans in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In encouraging people to “come out,” the GLF advocated for the transformation of a culture that not only presumed heterosexuality but too often forced queer people to conform.
…

Shel Raphen wrote:

Community Roundup Week of 2024.10.06–11

I pass for cisgender perhaps 75% of the time. I have very good health insurance through my union, and in the near future I could get facial feminization surgery. I would easily pass and could go stealth and assimilate into heterosexuality. I could be inoffensive and demure, only quietly transsexual when relevant, and distance myself from the trans community that has supported me to where I am in my life today. My unusually high number of gay male friends could be attributed to being a faghag beloved by GBFs like I'm Grace of the eponymous Will & Grace. I could rename my blog to "The Millennial Chofetz Chaim" and edit and delete every post about being trans. I could make myself someone appealing to the lowest common denominator of men.

But is rejection of who I am really the path to happiness? Is the love of a man worth more than the gift I have been given by HaShem of being transsexual?
…

This post is by now a bit late for National Coming Out Day, but I did enjoy Dr. Davis's history of its observance and the political background of the concept of "coming out" and I particularly appreciated Shel's additions. She considers her experience specifically as a straight trans woman, the value of being out to her, and its value to the community. It feels a little silly to repost a link roundup, but this is definitely one worth reading!

2024-10-10T23:33:30Z

(🔞 the linked post is for adults only 🔞)

Cliff wrote:

Kink At Pride.

“Smile,” Tom reminded me. “You’re going to be famous.”

I looked up and saw people holding up their phones, filming us. “No…” I gasped. “…not on social media! We’ll be taken out of context!”

“The context, darling, is that everyone on 4chan and Twitter is going to know that you’re my little bitch boy.”

“It’s X now,” I grunted, and this time when he pounded into me so hard it felt like I couldn’t breathe, I deserved it.
…

Cliff's written a viciously funny piece of satirical erotic fiction sending up the discourse around the place of sexuality at pride. It's funny and it's hot and you should for sure check it out if that's your jam. I think if more entries in internet arguments were in the form of erotic fiction rather than angry microposts the world would be a much better place.

2024-10-10T08:25:46Z

tulip wrote:

my makeup philosophy

when i was younger, i was honestly pretty disinterested in makeup and fashion trends. i found it alienating; i did not fit in with what was popular among the youth of my assigned gender. and i think i knew that it was a futile effort to even attempt fitting in. no, i knew i was a little weirdo who felt infinitely more comfortable hiding behind a computer screen.

but there was one day where i was at the local drugstore, and i made a shortcut through the makeup section to get to the pharmacy. something caught my eye. it was a display of eyeshadow quads, all featuring different color palettes. and i stopped for a moment, curious about the color combinations. color theory was already a pretty big interest of mine at that point; i had been doing a ton of limited color palette drawing exercises, and the quads on display reminded me of the palettes i'd use for practice.
…

I really appreciate tulip's articulation of their approach to makeup as an art rather than an attempt to meet impossible beauty standards. I'm always compelled by ways to consciously produce art in places that aren't generally thought of as sites for art, and tulip has a particularly interesting perspective coming to makeup from a painting background. I haven't worn anything beyond lipstick and the occasional eyeliner in years, but this has inspired me to consider breaking out the eyeshadow palette again...

2024-10-09T02:14:33Z

Elizabeth Sandifer wrote:

America a Prophecy 1: Exegesis

This structure does not inherently preclude a sincere or substantive engagement with 9/11–it’s entirely normal for comedy to use its final reveal for brutal effect—a stunned, awkward laugh that makes use of the shock of a perspective shift. But that’s not what’s going on here. The revelation that Snuffy has been talking about 9/11 does not provide any incisive commentary on what has gone before—it is simply a sudden intrusion of grief into a context that had done little to suggest such a thing was coming.

Is this supposed to be funny? Certainly it in practice is funny, in that the strip is a ridiculous absurd thing. But this is a humor of bathos—one in which we laugh at the strip instead of with it. Indeed, it is funny only to the precise degree that it isn’t supposed to be. If the strip is read as insincere, with its punchline meant to be funny then it becomes a cruel and ghoulish thing. What is funny about it is its misapplied sincerity—the fact that it genuinely appears to be engaging in an act of public mourning and is getting it wrong, instead ending up weirdly and dissonantly tone deaf.
…

When I wasn't in high school, one of the most compelling English class assignments I ever got was to find an ad from a newspaper or magazine and do a close critical reading of it to develop a deeper understanding of the cultural context in which that ad was created, what its specific goals were, and how it aimed to achieve them. It was a blast, and one of the most influential projects for me in developing my critical eye towards the world around me.

In this post, Elizabeth Sandifer turns the same close reading techniques towards the installment of the newspaper comic Barney Google and Snuffy Smith published on the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, which takes a particularly bizarre approach to commemorating the event. 9/11 is already a notably strange cultural touchstone in the US, and so coming at it from such an odd angle suits the subject perfectly.

2024-10-06T09:09:37Z

Shel Raphen wrote:

Kol Tzedek Synagogue and Masks: A Call for Accountability

This was the last community space where I felt fully included. This was the last community space where I could meet a new person by chance, and not have my mask be a social barrier. In other community spaces, people do not try to socialize with me. Unmasked people avoid me so long as I am wearing a mask. I have conducted experiments. During times of low-transmission, I have experimented with taking my mask off in community events where people previously had ignored me despite my generally outgoing personality. Suddenly, everyone becomes very interested in talking to me. People welcome me to the space as if I am new. I tell people that we had actually met before—multiple times, in this same space. They ask where I had been this whole time. I tell them, right here, the whole time, wearing a mask. At the next event, I will put my mask back on, and those same people will go back to ignoring me when I greet them by name. Kol Tzedek was the only space where this was not an issue, because everyone was wearing a mask.

[...]

I wish we could have negotiated. I wish we could have agreed to compromises. I wish it was not just a venting session where fifty disabled people cried in our own ways and a middle-aged cis woman took notes with a blank facial expression. I remember at one point, she asked me why I do not simply attend virtual services. I am grateful for the existence of virtual services in this world, but to suggest that they are comparable to an in-person community space is a joke. If virtual services were just as good as in-person services, then why don't the able-bodied people just attend virtual services? Why did I donate hundreds of dollars to fundraise for an expensive new ADA-compliant building for the synagogue? Why would I give 5% of my annual income to a local synagogue just to attend virtual services? There are plenty of free online options I could have gone to instead.
…

Shel's essay about her former synagogue rescinding their mask requirement for services and in doing so effectively barring their disabled community members from full participation is painful to read, but it's also one of the best articulations I've seen of the grief and alienation of being disabled^[1] during a pandemic. This experience is particular to the Jewish community in Philadelphia, but at the same time it is one of a pattern of moral failures that have been happening since the pandemic began and people en masse started facing the immediate question: are you willing to sacrifice your comfort to give other people space to exist?

This is a rawly emotional post that slides towards despair at the end, and I do want to put back on that. I don't at all blame Shel for feeling that pain or for expressing it here, but—at this moment, distant from any specific instances of people I trusted catastrophically failing to stand up in solidarity—I want to juxtapose that despair with a note of hope. I continue meeting new people who are happy and even excited to have spaces where masks are required. The Emerald City Eggbugs whose founding principle is COVID-safe gatherings has nearly 40 members less than a week after it was announced. As much as people may wish themselves free of us and our problems, we are standing tall and if no one else will make space for us we will make space for each other.

Including the voluntary disability of wearing a mask. ↩︎

2024-10-03T05:14:56Z

Emily Dupree wrote:

The Invention of Memory

I think most people stabilized their warped sense of time by other means. Instead of accepting that the pandemic continued on, that we failed to contain it and so would need to incorporate its ongoing reality into the stories we tell ourselves about our own lives, they instead transformed the fantasy of after into their reality. After the pandemic, after the lockdowns, after our world ruptured. They were able to interrupt the prolonged uncertainty that the pandemic had brought to all of our lives by erecting a finish line just in time for them to run through it. And as they ran through it, celebrating the fictional end of an arduous journey, they simultaneously invented a new before. This is the invention of memory.
The Pandemic became something temporally contained, its crisp boundaries providing a psychic safeguard to any lingering anxieties around the vulnerability and interdependence of our bodies that only a virus could show us. No longer did it threaten to erupt in their everyday lives, forcing cancellations and illnesses and deaths. It was, officially, part of The Past. And from the safety of hindsight (even if only an illusion), people began telling and re-telling the story of The Pandemic in ways that strayed from how it all actually went down. It was a way to use memory as self-soothing.
…

This is an intense, touching piece on the way people's minds have been shaped by the pandemic, and the way that shape is in turn determined by their—our—failure en masse to handle the reality of the pandemic. It's another way of looking at the same issues I was driving at in COVID Denialism and Disability Justice, and I similarly found it helpful to bring myself some calm (if not closure) to the pain of seeing people act so heartlessly.