Links of Great Interest

Sugar in peanut butter??!!? Finally, at last, I understand all those mysterious references to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Though I should have guessed. Everyone I know who talks about American food mentions how hard it is to adjust to everything being so over-sweetened. (Got stepped on very smartly once when I mentioned that a hamburger bun was a bit sweet for my taste. “You should try the %!*&!# ones they give you in the US – they’re horrible”, they cry.)

Same here! I’ve always thought peanut butter has a slightly sweet tinge, which is why I don’t like it much (I like my sweet and salt/savoury to be separate). I never could fathom the idea of eating it with jam, though; it seemed hurl-worthy. But yeah, if it’s got sugar in …

Oddly enough, the mayo I had in the US was saltier and more edible than the gah-sweet stuff that gets served here. Go figure.

I understand all those mysterious references to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

I love a good PB&J, but I use unsweetened PB and low sugar strawberry jam on wheat toast. One of my favorite breakfasts.

RE: katz

Haha, I thought you were talking about Facebook.

They WEREN’T?

And yeah, things are WAY oversweetened here, unless you shell out. Played havoc when I really got ED-y, because ANY sweetness would trigger a complete freak out, so I pretty much would only eat vegetables and some grains, and freak out even harder if I ate “too much” of the grains. It was pretty unpleasant.

However, my friend gave me some of the awesome non-sweetened, peanuts-only peanut butter for me to take on my trip! 😀 I have the best friends.

…chocolate with peppers! I only discovered that recently, and OMG, sooooooo good. The best!

Mmm, might try roasting a pumpkin again for pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting.

Last time I did it I got almost a LOT of pumpkin puree. I just need t be ready to do a lot of baking at once once it’s done.

An alot of pumpkin puree, on the other hand, would be kind of gooey.

Do you like pumpkin muffins leftwingfox? I have a great recipe.

re the list his dislikes. It’s what it is. I have things (apart from mango) which I don’t care for.

I also like lots of foods people are afraid of. We, as a culture, take as commonplace things which other cultures won’t touch (I don’t know about now, but I know Chinese people who were aghast to discover Americans eat potatoes… they saw it as food only fit for pigs, Lots of people in Japan won’t go near cheese).

He doesn’t like spinach, ok. He has a laundry list of things, and is a picky eater. It’s ok.

Telling someone they are being unreasonable because you like things they don’t, is bullshit.

I happen to think one of the most abusive phrases in the culture is, “Oh, you’ve just never had, ‘x’ done right/good ‘x'”. Sorry. There is no “done right” for cooked spinach. There is no, “good” tequila. I can see that some tequilas are “better” than others. They still taste like lighter-fluid and piss. You can’t make that tasty to me. I don’t care how rarefied the source is, how carefully chosen the blue agave hearts were, how precisely the delicate fire of mesquite and creosote bush was maintained, nor the selection process for the mix of american and french oak for the casks which were so tenderely laid down in the hollowed out side of the southwestern slopes of a volcanic cinder-cone.

That just makes it a greater waste when you give it to me, because it’s still gonna taste like lighter-fluid and piss (why yes, having been a youth when the cult of tequila was taking root, I’ve had more than a few people press me to try, “the good stuff”).

In matters of taste there can be no dispute. There are other abusive overtones to this “project” but his saying, “I don’t like these foods” isn’t one of them.

/rant

TW I don’t actually know if this needs a trigger warning or not? Maybe rape? Is there a link somewhere that helps you figure out when you need TWs?

Thunderf00t exemplifies what’s happened to roughly half of the Internet Atheists: he’s convinced himself that he’s the smartest, most rational being around because he’s made a hobby out of refuting the most foolish and inane ideas out there, like creationism, and is now proceeding on the assumption that the mediocre level of thought needed to see through creationism is sufficient to tear down anything that does not happen to match his unchallenged predispositions.

Funny… first thing I said to the guy who first brought this to my attention – he shared a link of thunderf33t arguing that the first rule of war is divide and conquer, before going on to defend the maintenance of our divided state – was, “but we’re supposed to be the rational ones. Surely we’re better than this?” Oddly enough, he didn’t continue the conversation with me once he realised I was baffled by the anti-feminist rhetoric of thunderf00t et al rather than enraged by the pro-feminist rhetoric from the villainous PZ & co.
I think the problem is that they consider skepticism and rationality to be core to their being, rather than the tools they use to stop the core of their being from reaching ridiculous conclusions. It’s an overused cliche, overused especially by pseudoscientists, making it hard to use without falling prey to the negative connotations that have been infused into it, but we should be skeptical of our own skepticism before anything else. Using skepticism doesn’t mean we’re rational – we use it because we are so irrational, to guard against our own mistakes.
They completely misunderstand the point of skepticism, which is why they are failing so badly at it now that their assumptions about what is true are rubbing up against the walls of what actually is true, and are making truth’s nose light up with the buzzer going “BNAAAAARP!”
As Randal Munroe didn’t say, but almost did; “You don’t use [skepticism] to show that you’re right, you use [skepticism] to become right.” Even if that means turning away from the results you wanted.
Of course, having said all of this, more than enough atheists are skeptics at all. I once had a fellow atheist argue that I’m not a real atheist because I’m unwilling to say that I absolutely believe that the universe is devoid of gods – to him, an atheist is someone who knows that there is no god, which is a hilariously arrogant and irrational position to hold… presumably, this is why so many anti-atheist theists like to hold us to that definition.

He compared it to when a dude “finishes” after she told him to stop, saying that that wasn’t rape that was just “bad sex” he even had a chart with a literally blurred line separating rape from “bad sex”. Somegreybloke pointed out how that was obviously rape, no grey areas.

So, by “finishes” he means “keeps going until he’s done,” I guess? So, yeah, wow. Fuck you, oh he of the thunderous f33t, that’s absolutely rape. It wasn’t rape before she said to stop, at least, assuming it was consensual up to then, and there’s maybe an argument for a second’s grace while she’s saying stop, but afterwards it definitely is. It’s like when you’ve invited Salesman X into your house and he’s trying to sell you Wow-max brand doodads. He’s not trespassing, because you invited him in, but if you decide you don’t want to buy his Wow-max Dealietron9000 and ask him to leave, and he refuses to leave until you’ve bought the Dealietron 9000, then he’s trespassing, and you’re within your rights to kick him the fuck out of your home or call the fuzz and get them to do it for you because his license to operate within the bounds of your home has been revoked. Forget lego, may you step on your precious toy aeroplanes… and may any gods out there have mercy on me for invoking such a cruel curse. Forgive me, toy aeroplanes, forgive me.

WOw. O_o I am really starting to loathe thunderfoot. GAh. And that’s a little time for a lot of loathing to build, since I only heard about him 10 minutes ago.

Heh, you think you’ve got it bad? I heard about him… possibly 10 years ago (Holy fuck!? Time keeps freaking me out… am I an adult now? oO) his youtube account was one of my daily checked links, he was like a hero to me… although not since the whole “ground zero mosque” freakout era. He lost me when “science and reason for the win” was overruled by “xenophobia and privilege for the win.” It’s as if Batman took his cowl off one day, and it turns out that it was the Joker underneath all along! Blargh. On the plus side, I don’t put people on pedestals anymore, so there’s that.

You are so wrong – had fantastic cooked spinach last year – blanched & with butter & nutmeg added. It was lush – and that’s not something I’d ever though I’d say about spinach.

Er… heat… add heat to spinach.

Added to my notes; thanks so much SittieKitty!

Re cooked spinach, that was actually one of the few veggies I actually would eat as a kid, but only in “burgers florentine”, which were hamburger patties sandwiched around a cottage cheese, parsley and cooked spinach filling, then braised in a red-wine tomato and green pepper sauce. Mmmmmm.

See, for me, the food that just doesn’t no doesn’t ever no stop it stop asking no I haven’t changed thanks STOP is onions.

Yes, just onions.

Lots of foods I used to dislike I’ve started to like, or at least stopped loathing. Beets taste a lot better to me now. Once I hated hot foods. Lots of things really do get better the more you’re exposed to them.

Some things… don’t.

But I never really twigged to how awful and terrible our insistence of JUST TRY was until I heard it applied over and over again to my autistic nephews.

Now I start stewing anytime somebody starts with. No, punishing them for not enjoying something is not okay. Why would it be?