It’s been a year since we lost our dear friend to appendix cancer, so we are once again hosting a walk on Primal: Levithan in his honor, starting on Saturday the 10th at 10:00AM CST from Proof in Urqopacha (the memorial site for the Yok Huy), going through Tuliyollal, Sharlayan, Limsa, Ul'dah, Gridania, and finally ending in our Free Company house (Empyreum ward 10, plot 42), where a memorial of him stands. Please join us in our walk, or simply donate if you can.
i turned 30 this year. he died at 28. it’s so fucked. it’s so fucked!!!
he’s my big brother. how am i older than my big brother
anyway. the symptoms of a blood clot are variable but usually present as lower leg pain and swelling. it can be diagnonsed by a blood test and ECG. if you go to the hospital and they send you home but symptoms persist, go back. it can be treated. my brother’s blood clot travelled from his leg to his lungs and killed him a couple of days after the hospital sent him home with no tests.
of all my posts to get notes i’m not mad it’s this one but if i’d known i would have been more thorough.
blood clots are more likely if you spend a lot of time sitting down, like during a flight or a road trip. get up and move around every now and then.
leg pain is a big indicator, but so is shortness of breath or a lot of coughing. shortness of breath + sudden leg pain/swelling is cause for concern
the blood test they usually use to diagnose blood clots is called a D-Dimer. in most cases this is adequate but it’s not perfect. sometimes an ultrasound can be used to diagnose clots the D-dimer misses.
this is an uncommon issue, especially for anyone who is reasonably active. i didn’t mean to scare anyone, but the lack of awareness about blood clots is honestly insane to me. please listen to your body and trust yourself if you feel like something is wrong. if anyone in my family had known about this then we wouldn’t have let my brother leave the hospital.
“I can never get it tasting like my mom used to make” yeah, because your mom had a giant Costco-size bottle of a specific pre-mixed spice blend that was discontinued by its manufacturer in 1998 and spent your entire childhood putting it in every meal to use the stupid thing up faster – she doesn’t know how to replicate it any more than you do.
The tragedy of culinary nostalgia is that most of the time, the flavours of your childhood aren’t memories of lost secret recipes – they’re the irreplicable accidents of folks tossing whatever happened to be cheap and available into the pot, and there are no recipes to recover because the people doing the cooking never knew them.
I am reminded of this reddit post and update, from a person seeking to recreate a dish their mum used to make based on not much more than “chicken, peaches, and it was beige”.
I am a pretty competent cook, so don’t worry about that bit. I just want to know if this dish sounds familiar, so someone can fill me in on the parts I don’t remember. It’s a chicken dish made with flat chicken cutlets. I think she used to hammer them a bit with a kitchen mallet, dredge them in flour, and pan fry them in a little butter so they would brown nicely. The sauce is the part I am a little lost about. She used white wine (probably chardonnay) and sour cream, that part I am sure of. There were canned peaches too, which were slightly browned and served on top. I’m sure there was something more to it than that, any thoughts? The flavor was tangy, not particularly sweet except for the peaches, and the sauce was opaque and kind of a beige color. Does this sound like a dish you are aware of? While her food was great, her dishes were usually pretty simple. It is likely that this is not something she invented herself, but it might be something that she simplified. Does anyone know what this is or what it is called so I can look it up and try and get it right? She used to serve it with grilled zucchini brushed with garlic butter. Thank you. Edit – I am blown away with how helpful and kind you all have been. I have taken little hints from each of your posts and a lot of them have jogged my memory. I think some sort of composite from these suggestions will produce something close. I am going to try to make it when I have the chance, and I will update when I do. Thank you, reddit. <3
Update 6 days later:
My mom passed away a few years ago. I needed help trying to recreate a chicken recipe of hers that I have been craving, because I could only remember a few ingredients. You amazing people of r/recipes came through and gave me so many wonderful suggestions. With a mix of all your advice, I made it tonight. I was nervous as I was putting it together. I felt like there had to be something more to it, but I went with using just the ingredients I knew (as suggested by Ethril). I felt like there was something I was forgetting. Something about brown specks in the sauce. I went with it anyway, and figured I would know what to add at the end by taste. I took chicken cutlets and hammered them flat. Dredged in flour and sauteed in butter (high heat). I burned the butter a little. I remembered my mom saying that butter is the one thing that is ok to burn (as long as it is not smoking furiously) so I left it alone, and smiled at the memory. I was pleased to see the chicken brown to the color I remember. When I flipped the chicken I added the zucchini spears and browned those too. When the chicken was done (just a couple minutes) I set it aside and covered it in tinfoil to keep it warm, then turned the zucchini and browned the peaches in the same pan. It only took a few minutes to brown everything and when the zucchini and peaches were done I put them aside with the chicken. I deglazed the empty pan with chardonnay. My mom wasn’t a big wine person, so I went with the cheapest they had. I suddenly remembered that sound the wine would make when it hit the hot pan, a huge hiss. Mom used to tell me to step back before she poured it in, because it would splash a little. I felt like I was nine years old again. I added three big dollops of sour cream and dissolved it in the hot wine. I didn’t know what I was going to do next, this was all I had planned. Then I saw the little brown flecks come up. It was that burned butter! I just about cried. I tasted it, and suddenly in my mind I was standing in her kitchen as a kid watching her cook. This was it. It was that simple. I added a couple spoonfuls of the liquid from the canned peaches to take away a little of the wine’s tartness, and the sauce was perfect. Just like she used to make. Keep in mind that I am no food stylist, but I assure you that this tasted 10x better than it looks: http://i.imgur.com/Qgk6u.jpg The whole thing took less than 20 minutes to make. And I fucking nailed it. Thank you so, so much reddit! You brought me back, and I love you. The smell is still lingering in the house.
A cat is a small creature in the middle of the food chain that is fully aware that you are a very large thing that could stomp its head in at any moment and yet it chooses to rest its tiny little head on your leg for a nap and spreads out on the floor near you exposing its belly and its most sensitive organs. It brings dead mice and bugs to you to share food.
Don’t you get it? This tiny thing trusts you. It wants to help you too. It licks your leg thinking that it’s helping. It kneads on you to find comfort. It shares its body warmth with you in the cold and gives you your space in the heat. It hisses at other mammals it sees outside including other cats in an effort to protect its family.
Cats love you so so much. But they will keep trying to eat plastic.
the “fuck canon everything is made up do whatever you want forever” approach to fandom can be fun in small doses but i find that subscribing a little too hard to that attitude can lead to this belief that serious engagement with and analysis of a text is an act of no fun self-flagellation when that couldn’t be further from the truth. analysis is literally fun
I’ve not been able to stop crying for two hours, but it is tears of joy. I’ve waited so many years to see this news. 23 years I’ve waited. I cannot begin to describe what this means to the Huntington’s community.
One day I’ll write about what it’s like to grow up knowing you might have a terminal, incurable illness, and not be allowed to test yourself because “it’s such a serious decision” they don’t want it hanging over you until you’re an adult (as if it doesn’t hang over you as you witness a parent die, and know you’ve got 50% chance of inheriting the same illness–as do your siblings). One day, I will talk about how, in the fear of traumatising children with the knowledge they might be incurably, terminally ill, they also took away their right to decide over their bodies to a degree that is traumatising. One day.
But today I am going to cry. Because it’s over. Because no child will ever have to go through the same uncertainty, because at least they will know there is a treatment option available. A treatment option that one of my siblings might come to rely on. With all the shit things happening around us, my childhood hope and dream have been realised. That’s got to count for something.
paleontologists ruined spinosaurus when they decided it could fly
the funniest thing about this is that people still haven’t settled on how Spinosaurus would stand up (is it bipedal? quadrupedal? knuckle walking?) so part of this posing is probably them throwing their hands up and being like fuck it, just dangle the thing from the ceiling
palaeontologists do the same thing with ground sloths. they don’t know how it balanced on those whacky front feet (palm down? knuckling like a gorilla?), so instead they just pose it clutching a random tree
There is an aspect of animation that I haven’t heard folks talk about, and that is bidding. Bidding is when clients have an idea they want animated so they shop around various studios and get their asking prices before making a decision.
Here’s the problem with that:
Let’s say we have a company named Poob. Poob is a big name with lots of hype and attention around their products. For their latest release, Poob is looking for a 1.5 minute trailer done with 2D animation.
Studio A comes in and offers $150000 USD for the job. They have a lot of experience with beautifully animated trailers and this amount would not only cover basic needs for the artists, but allow them to put some money aside.
Studio B then comes in and offers $100000 USD. They had a good track record and this amount would still cover the basic needs for their artists (plus they need the work).
Then comes Studio C. Studio C is an up and coming studio who wants to flesh out their portfolio. They bid $85000 USD. This doesn’t cover the basic needs for the artists. Studio C is hoping that by making an impressive trailer, they will wow Poob so that the next time Poob is looking for work, Studio C can ask something closer to Studio B.
The problem? Poob doesn’t care about quality, they care about price. Poob picks Studio C and get back some of the most beautiful animation they’ve ever seen. For cheap. This is an added bonus for Poob and shows that they can ask for little and get a lot in return.
Later on, Poob comes back with another project, and Studio C bids for a higher price. Unfortunately, there’s a Studio D that has come in and bid for something lower. Poob, again, only cares about money. Poob goes with Studio D, leaving C without work.
This process happens again and again, keeping prices low for companies and wages even lower for the animation studios.
What can we do about this?
Well, as far as I know, only one boutique studio is unionized, and that’s just in the US. Boutique is the part of a studio where they handle short term projects, such as trailers, ads, and pitches. Usually, animation studios have their tv/theatrical departments separate from boutique since they have different timelines and needs.
On top of that, there are countless boutique studios around the world, many vying for the same jobs. Unless everyone suddenly agrees to do better across the board, you end up having to rely on stuff like federal funding and tax write offs to entice companies to pick your studio that’s asking for a higher price… Or just pick you in general. There are many videos about that as it affects all areas of the entertainment industry.
So that’s bidding and all your favorite studios participate in it. Just about every boutique studio does. It’s part of the system, and I hate it so so much.
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