BlindDeafRat
No bio...
User ID: 2868
Dyeing rye bread with malt or syrup to darken the color is quite common, and you can find it in a lot of rye bread recipes. Example with malt, it can also be used to counter the sourness found in a sourdough starter. Note, that the example is pure rye, but the color comes from the malt or syrup, rather than the flour.
Otherwise, as a home baker, I can see that the crust is way too soft to what I'd expect from rye, and in general, I don't see the appeal of buying pre-sliced bread.
If you have an oven, and some time, I'd recommend trying to make some rye bread, because it's incredibly easy. Here's a recipe for a pan bread, and here's one that has a more traditional round shape.
But otherwise, ideally this kind of false marketing would be legislated against, and I think the EU forces this to a degree, while the US doesn't care.
BlindDeafRat
1mo ago
That works well in Retail WoW, where the developers design around it. But what puzzles me the same mindset is found in people who play exclusively play Classic, a game that wasn't designed around this mindset.
BlindDeafRat
1mo ago
I haven't gotten any good recommendations.
It really really varies what you like. Personally the best place to find new music is on SoundCloud and basically see who the artists you like are listening to, because usually there's some overlap with what they do. And then just repeat until the end of time.
I also tend to search Desuarchive which is an archive site for 4chan's /mu/ board. 4chan itself is complete trash, but I've found a lot of nice recs by searching for a specific album and seeing what else is posted alongside it. But /mu/ has a certain taste, so it doesn't always match up.
Algorithms are hit or miss, I've had some great recs on YouTube and SoundCloud, but AI had been garbage.
BlindDeafRat
1mo ago
Is it time for all writers to start using git to be able to prove they really wrote something?
BlindDeafRat
1mo ago
Why not just get into bikepacking? It is basically what you're talking about but way better unless VR gets significantly better. Watch some videos of people cycling across the USA or Europe.
BlindDeafRat
1mo ago
I think one of the ways this could work is if it has some kind of base building elements on the vehicle itself. So during the travel you can upgrade or just customize the appearance of it.
There's a few survival games with this type of mechanic. Raft is one of them. Starfield also has customization of the player's ship.
Also, I'm pretty sure that Daggerfall also has elements you're talking about. It doesn't have the 3rd point I'm pretty sure, but it does have the rest.
BlindDeafRat
1mo ago
I'm pretty sure there's a ton of Barber shops (or male hairdressers) in Europe, at least in the places I've passed through, but mostly in places that have apartment buildings. Suburbs don't really have much of anything besides a restaurant or two.
But like malls or shopping areas tend to be surrounded by apartment buildings, which in turn are full of barber/hairdressers.
Otherwise I've never been to a barber, and usually go to a "female" hairdresser.
BlindDeafRat
1mo ago
Do you cook?
I really, really enjoy cooking as a hobby, and I love baking, so yes. I tend to cook at least 3 times a week, and bake twice, or more depending on what I make. I cook a lot with my partner too, and it's a lot easier to cook with two people.
I see two ways out of this. First way, develop an understanding of how to use ingredients flexibly across a variety of meals, knowing when and what ingredients to buy ahead of time, understand how food can be preserved. It's actually a pretty high bar, especially when you don't even realize these are skills you need, which I think is why I've bounced off learning to cook in the past. Second way, cook the same few things over and over. I'm guessing most people are actually doing this, but doesn't it get boring eating the same thing repeatedly?
I recommend looking into why certain recipes work, rather than just following them as a list. There's a lot of different kind of websites where some explain better why you should do certain things, rather than telling you do do them. I recommend Ethan Chlebowski, Adam Regusa, J. Kenji López-Alt, as well as the book On Food by Harold McGee.
What works well for me is saving all the recipes I make a in text file, then edit it to add or decrease portion sizes to reduce waste. I dislike wasting food or ingredients, so I tend to use up everything quite easily, but at most I only ever cook for two, this might be harder if you cook for more. This is especially useful for baking.
The real trick for solo cooking is to get into either freezing your meals, or making big stews/sauces you can just ladle on top some pasta or rice. One stew can last 4 or more days depending on the size of the pot, and there's a lot of stews that actually get better the next day. You can also for example make lasagna out of it, so one day you can eat pasta, the next make lasagna and eat that the day after too.
Ethan Chlebowski has great introduction videos where he breaks down ingredients down by the type of taste and aroma, which if you apply that to other recipes, will simplify them and help you understand why certain things are there.
Also a lot of recipes in the end are also quite similar, or at least if you stick to a particular cuisine type. I tend to stick with European food, and there's a lot of similarities, like a lot of overlap between French, Italian, Belgian stews. I'm sure the real pros would laugh at that though.
I'm guessing most people are actually doing this, but doesn't it get boring eating the same thing repeatedly?
I like to have some meals that I know are easy to make, and can make them during the week if I don't have a lot of time, or effort to spend on them. But it's also nice to try new recipes pretty much every weekend or potentially even during the week if I have time, and it's not too long.
so I wonder what are most people actually doing?
A lot of people buy premade meals. In the grocery store, there's often a whole isle solely dedicated to premade food that only has to be heated up to be ready.
BlindDeafRat
1mo ago
I would recommend BBJ or Judo if you're older than 30 as a hobby. Martial arts for self defense are overrated, and should be treated as a last, and absolute final solution only used after you've ran and are literally being fighting for your life.
Grappling is easier on your body long term, and sparring is more fun (personal preference obviously).
I agree with the other posters that MMA has pretty much won the sports category of martial arts, and a lot of these other martial arts can't compare, but also it's a lot rougher on your body to actually practice.
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
There's also The Sword of Truth. The author is a big fan of Ayn Rand.
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
A cafe at a skiing resort. The teas I've had after a skiing for an hour or two at those places were something I haven't been able to recreate myself.
Or a restaurant at a top of a mountain.
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
It's not just a masculine reading crisis, reading is down for everyone, however it is worse for men.
Most people (both men and women) already basically read something that's a level about the RR slop which is romantasy and thrillers.
Every single book you mention could be put into a literary fiction which is read by a minority of the minority who reads in the first place. I've read a lot, but I haven't read a single book of on that list, and so I'm curious if you have read them, and not for a school assignment, but pleasure out of your own free time.
As it is reading is basically somewhat of a dead hobby. Like there's obviously communities where reading is valued like in the rationalist adjacent communities like the Motte. But for the majority, reading is just not popular. This is a pure hypothetical, but I would guess that audiobooks will become more popular than actually reading books, which is a damn shame.
My and @GBRK's point I think is that more people should try to read, even if it's slop, just because reading is something that should have more people doing. There's a ton of great literary works that will never be read by the majority of people because they just don't care to read in the first place, let alone read demanding works, where as at least more would've watched classical movies.
Like I would easily recommend Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 to someone who doesn't read a lot, because it's not at all difficult to read and quite funny, and could serve as an introduction to a great author. But the fact is that most people will never read in the first place, but if they do, they would probably rather read some RR slop than that.
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
I don't have the patience to engage with them. I'm not competitive enough, nor do I think that I could even if I was.
Also I already spend too much time doing idle things when I should be doing thins that are more important.
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
The point is that it's not easily digestible enough when you're starting at a level where you don't read recreationally at all.
All over the internet you see how quickly people say "tl;dr" for any post that's over like three paragraphs. People don't read articles, only headlines. To take a lifting example, if you try to lift 100kg without any muscle training, you won't lift anything at all, or at least most you'll lift it for a few cms, drop it and become exhausted from that alone. And then you won't want to do it again for a while.
RoyalRoad stories are easy to consume, more appealing because they provides an escapist fantasy, and usually have contemporary themes and references. Once you get used to reading, once you can read a few chapters a week, and do that for a while you'll be able to start reading other things too.
You're seriously underestimating just how easy RoyalRoad is to read.
his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow; a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulders of his soiled blue coat; his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails; and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white.
This is an excerpt from Treasure Island. Commonly on RoyalRoad is that often character descriptions are rarely given, or if they are they're spare. Which speeds up visualization because you don't need to build the full image in your head. Now I'm good at visualization, and I can do it as fast as as I can read pretty much, but again, that's a skill that's built by doing. The prose is far more spare as well. The more I read this excerpt the more this is just way beyond average RoyalRoad.
How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house, and the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous kind of a creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in the middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and ditch was the worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.
Meanwhile for comparison from Primal Hunter Ch 6:
The tree was more than strong enough to take the hits, having barely taken any damage. With its circumference easily being large enough for 7-8 grown men to stand holding hands around it, he saw no scenario where it would be falling over. So, to sum it all up… if he had been alone, he would have gotten solo experience and TP, and no one would have gotten seriously hurt, though the fight would have taken longer. On top of that, Jake had an inherent unwillingness to ignore his own instincts and intuition. As most people would, he assumed. While he in his work-life before the system was very calculating, always taking an analytical and data-based approach, he also relied on his guts a lot. The same for tests in university. He trusted his intuition to an almost unhealthy degree.
There is a drastic difference between the two. I would bet that if you give the average kid the latter he'll read more of it than Treasure Island.
That's why I do think more people should be given slop to read. Babies aren't given hard meat to chew through to eat, they're given food that's easy to digest. And that's what more people need to consume before they can take on something more.
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
You're not baiting discussion and downvotes, you're just baiting getting banned all together. Which is what has happened.
I think you have a good point, and a it could lead to good discussion, that's why it's a shame you try to include stuff like that.
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
Despite the Motte's posters being primarily right wing, I still value it as someone who is left-leaning and read it regularly as a there's a number of posters whose opinion I find interesting. George_E_Hale is one example.
But there's also a a minority of posters, whom I won't name, not everyone I've blocked is like that. But as a whole there are certain posters who are predictably irritating, who skirt around the "Be Kind" rule as a suggestion by wording things differently despite essentially openly shitting on the outgroup. But because the site isn't very active as it is, and because their rule breaking isn't sufficient they're ignored by the mods.
Do I then leave this site because of these people? The "Be Kind" rule is probably the reason why I'm here. Despite this place being a hive of villainy, it's also the most polite and kind place to discuss politics that I've found (besides the aforementioned posters, whom I don't see anyway), there people don't instantly start shitting on the outgroup and making strawman posts out of them.
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
I fully agree with your point. But I think there's one additional aspect that's present in webfics that isn't found elsewhere, which the social aspect of webfic.
There's a lot of comments saying that there's more material written than you could read in a dozen lifetimes. Good material at that, and that's true. But the issue is that we are social creatures. I can read the original Journey to the West from which a lot of the modern day Xianxia tropes originate from, but if I want to discuss this work with others I'll have more luck if I learn Chinese or get into academia. Meanwhile I can go on WebToons right now and find some manhwa to read and then read the comments and see other people's perspectives, and discuss it with them. This is something that already exists with fiction that's marketed towards women. They see it on TikTok, they read it, discuss it, and then move on.
Overall, a large part of what people spend their time on is in some sense meant to be fill a social need. TikTok, Twitch, Youtube, Twitter/X, Reddit, Bluesky. People want to not just do things, but do them with others. You can discuss Worm right now very easily by going on Reddit or various Discord servers. And obviously you also have the comments on each new chapter on RoyalRoad.
And since chapters release weekly or biweekly on RoyalRoad, it's easy to make a habit of reading for a bit every few days. This is really what webfics are so good at. You cannot read Worm in one sitting, and instead it has to be something you do over time. In turn this creates a habit where you read more often. This is especially the case with ongoing stories where you'd come and check them once or twice a week. A lot of the things people do in their day to day lives are simply habits. If instead of scrolling TikTok, you check the stories you're following on RoyalRoad and read a chapter or two, that's already far more reading than you would've done normally, and that's also far easier to do than taking a book and reading a chapter or two from it instead.
Reading is a muscle that everyone on this site has already trained far beyond the average person, and it would be good for society if this became more common. And webfic is good specifically because it's easy to read, and there's a lot of it.
But also while a lot of webfic is slop, there is also a lot of really really good works. I believe that ultimately the great works of our time will most likely be webfics. Which is another reason to start reading them.
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
A better comparison would be pulp from the last century. Howard, Lovecraft, Ashton Smith.
But the issue is that those books aren't very contemporary. I've read Path of Dragons recently, it's complete slop, and I dropped it after 1.5 books, but during that I saw a ton of inspiration from video games like World of Warcraft, and other stories. And you know what, it's still fun to see those references to video games I've played and experienced, rather than just another 18th century world that's as disconnected from me as it could be. Meanwhile I've read a Clark Ashton Smith short story recently and the writing style was great, far better than you'd find on RoyalRoad, but also clearly set in a specific time period.
There is a reason why Urban Fantasy is so popular, people want to read what's familiar.
Fanfiction, and RR specifically is easier to read because you come in with certain expectations. For example when I start a Wormfanfic I know who all the characters are, and they or the world don't need to be introduced. The same goes for a lot of RoyalRoad stories that basically play off the same rough world building. System Apocalypse, Xianxia. They all reuse a lot of concepts. And in turn this allows the subversion of those existing concepts as well.
And as a comparison. I would also say that authors like Pynchon, are closer to modern webfic in terms of style than they are to those older stories. Which also speaks to how ahead his works are. Crying of Lot 49 feels more contemporary and could've been made in the last 20 years despite having been written in '66. It also shows just how influential Post-Modernism was, and that escaping it is impossible.
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
And at least speaking personally, I'm against DEI in general and for men in particular. But where does that leave us?
This is basically baiting angry comments on Reddit. You realize that using the word "DEI" will essentially label you as a chud and render the rest of your post irrelevant even if it was interesting beforehand?
You can try to edit and remove that and probably this too.
Yes, there's a certain risk that the Heinlens and Ayn Rands of the world will feed them masculinist fantasies incompatible with the feminist-egalitarian view of the world you might prefer to instill... but hey, at least that's better than whatever the TikTok algorithm would have done to them.
Like I fully agree with your main point, but the fact is that if you want to post on Reddit, you need to word it in a way that they will accept. I'm not surprised your post was removed personally. I don't go on /r/books, but I read /r/games, and the only places I see people mention DEI are at the bottom of the comments with 50 downvotes.
I imagine you read a lot, so I think your perspective is skewed by what counts as difficult. You are underestimating just how simple RoyalRoad is, and how that simplicity is very useful when you haven't been reading your whole life.
The first issue is that you're competing with TikTok, video games, and twitch streams. I can promise you that there is a gulf between Treasure Island and your average RoyalRoad story in terms of ease of reading.
And the second issue is that, or at least this is my perspective, is that it's fun to read books that are contemporary. I've read Count of Monte Cristo, and in it I clearly saw a lot of inspiration for what the modern WebFic world developed from. In many ways it's a proto webfic. And yet, I would say it's also much worse than modern web novels. Is it better than the average RR slop? Of course, is it as interesting to read as the above average RR stories? I don't think so.
Reading RoyalRoad stories is like eating popcorn. I'm a very fast reader, depending on the book, I can reach up to 400 WPM. I'm obviously an outlier, but the way I reached this is by just reading a lot of slop. Reading is a much a muscle as anything else, and you do develop it as long as you do it. Even if you read slop, you will get better at consuming slop more quickly.
I've started reading translated xianxia slop, then webfics like Worm, and now I've also read "highbrow" authors like Pynchon, and Burroughs. But I don't think I would've enjoyed them anywhere as much if I hadn't developed my ability to consume words on the lowbrow stories first.
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
Why couldn't you make it about the opposite? A mousy girl uses a One Wish Willow to date Chad that she's read about in all her romantasy slop and have her Disney Princess experience, and it turns out that actually being raped isn't as good as it seems even if he's the man of your dreams. Even better if she wishes a whole harem of attractive men loved her, and they kill each other to get to her.
Loser wishes they had a partner can easily be gender swapped.
As an aside. Do you think Bear was the villain or not?
Overall, while I see the connections with the gender war and Obsession, and I'm sure a lot of people will try and use them, I don't think that the movie itself is taking a stance of it.
I mean, Bear is a coward, that's really his defining characteristic, and while it's not a sin to be a coward, and it's something that men are judged by far more than women, overall, he's not an incel. By /r9k/ standards he's a normie. He has a job, friends, female friends at that, that he goes out with every week, a girl who likes him (that he doesn't know about), a job, his own inherited house. He is lost in life, and obsessed with his oneitis, but even when the girl he likes asks him if he has feelings for her, he says they're just friends. As an aside, the director said that Nikki would've gone out with him, had he been open with her.
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
I agree. I liked it from the start. But the fun part starts once you get to the part with the bear, which is pretty early on, I don't think it's more than like 20 chapters if that. And then it gets better from that.
There are certainly lulls in the beginning of the arcs while stuff is being set up, but the pay off is worth it.
BlindDeafRat
3mo ago
Ordering food can be cheaper if you use the apps and wait for a deal. But that's still something you do once in a while, not a an every day thing.
Not writing related, but after looking at a lot of fan art, it's quite easy to tell whether it's a male or female artist. There's a few tells, the main one probably being the way that women tend to put more attention into eyes, and especially hands. The more detailed the hands, the more likely the artist is female. Also the way they draw bodies, women tend to draw different things. For example when drawing "thick" women, a man will draw her with wide with a flat stomach, while a woman will include belly fat that's hanging off.
I don't read very many female writers, and is that the female writers I do read, tend to write in a very gendered fashion, something like josei, for example.
Like I don't think I could necessarily clock Bujold's writing as female. I don't think I could clock Harry Potter as having been written by a woman either, but the last time I read it I was a child, so maybe I'd notice it today.
Overall, I think it's very noticeable in art than and sometimes noticeable in writing. But it really depends on what is being written. Romantasy is written primarily by women, and so the tropes themselves are coded in a specific way, so even if a man would write according to the norms, would you be able to tell? I wouldn't, because I don't read the genre at all.
More options
Context Copy link