Lady with social anxiety here to confirm. Flirting is useless. Every time I’ve just given up and asked the dude to date after being extremely forward for a while and they’re always shocked 🤷🏼‍♀️ Once we get past that, it’s great.

Just a thought, but for your volunteer baking, could you reduce the number of eggshells overall by partially or fully substituting the eggs with flax eggs, egg replacer, or fruit mash such as applesauce or banana? That way, you only have your home eggshells to worry about. I do a lot of vegan baking, so if this is a path you’re curious about I’m more than happy to help if you give me an idea of what you’re making :D

Regarding the nightclub … the easiest way I’ve found to sort my feelings out on this was to imagine how hard I’d cringe if this skit was in my corporate-sponsored sexual harassment training. The answer is something around the level of crawl-in-a-hole-and-die rather than endure this skit, and I’m pretty sure “Director So and So is planning a company party and suggested a strip club. How would you respond?” was an actual scenario in one of the many I’ve had to sit through.

Definitely meat - I’ve been vegetarian for a very long time and vegan since COVID, and no plans of stopping anytime soon! Flying is a bit more difficult, but I work from home and when my work requires me to travel, I’m lucky that I have the ability to take a train, so I do that. I do like traveling occasionally, and for some of the places I want to go, I can’t realistically avoid flying.

If anyone here is interested in giving up or reducing meat intake but needs a little advice or extra support to get started, please let me know. I’m happy to share any knowledge and tips I can!

Love: weapon durability so long as it’s paired with weapon building and leveling systems. I like that I can’t ever take a weapon for granted and that I can’t hack and slash without thinking. I have Dark Cloud in mind as I’m writing this - it was easily my favorite weapons system I’ve ever played, and it always kept me on my toes. It’s a kind of stress I appreciate because I have some measure of control over it as long as I plan and slow down a little.

Hate: timed anything. Way too much pressure, and it pushes me back towards going faster and not thinking so I can beat the timer, which I don’t like. I especially hate it because I primarily play turn-based JRPGs to get away from having to worry about timing and to be able to play at my own pace. If I wanted to do time-sensitive stuff, I’d play an action game.

Yes, absolutely. It affirms that I’m not alone in my frustration and sadness. I like songs that have an upbeat or energetic feel alongside the dark lyrics though, it helps get me boppin’.

The part I’m really blown away by is that I just saw this final project in the intro to design class I teach from a group of international students earlier this spring. The project was to create a logo design and brand guidelines as a small team. The students can pick the business and whether it’s new or a rebrand, and this group went with social media all-in-one apps and made the justification that they are hugely popular in China, but nothing like that exists in the US. My favorite part is that the letter X was a HUGE part of the logo/branding, but they did not name it just “X” specifically for the reasons you listed - it’s not discoverable or unique in searches, the App Store, etc.

I feel like I’m being punk’d

Corporations: get your booty back into the office so it’s not empty
Also corporations: we’ve laid off your team in favor of AI, it was a tough but necessary choice due to costs
The empty office building: ???

I’ll start: avoid Hellman’s easily by making your own mayo. If the eggs squick you out, or you just want bonus points, I use this vegan garlic mayo recipe. It keeps for weeks and I don’t miss mayo at all. This requires a blender - any kind is fine.

Soap: someone near you makes bars of this that are better quality and sells them for roughly $5, I guarantee it. If not, making it is pretty straightforward as long as you follow instructions carefully and use established recipes. If you want to go custom, you can also use a lye calculator. This one requires an immersion blender.

Breyer’s/ice cream in general: Get yourself some xanthan gum for regular dairy, and add soy lecithin to your list if you want to do vegan ice creams. The xanthan gum inhibits ice crystals for a smooth and creamy texture, and helps with scoopability. Soy lecithin helps emulsify oil and water, so you can use it to bring up the fat content of soy or oat bases to be closer to a heavy cream. Requires a blender.

Gillette: get a safety razor. Mine’s a vintage lady Gillette I got off eBay. You will save so much money on blades it’s not even funny.

Lipton: your local grocery store might have loose leaf tea in the bulk section. If so, try that first. If not, check out Arbor Teas instead. Small business, fair trade, high quality stuff, and the packaging is completely compostable, making it an awesome zero waste choice.

Whoa - I’ve been reading this discussion and I went to look at what community it federated from, and I was really surprised to find it was Beehaw. I think this discussion has gotten very heated on both sides (which I understand, I’m vegan myself), but name calling doesn’t move the conversation forward. I notice you’re coming from kbin.social too - this is just a gentle reminder from a fellow kbin visitor to keep Beehaw’s community guidelines in mind as you’re visiting, and participate in debate with respect. I love the content and community here, and I would hate for our instance to be defederated from Beehaw because we’re not practicing awareness of the community we’re participating in and their guidelines.

I think I can get behind a few more days of this if it sears into any other rich, incompetent asshole’s brain out there a fear that their legacy will be as a laughingstock, not a genius engineering disruptor, if they ignore safety regulations.

Didn’t know I could be more upset about this argument but this rule really takes the ~~cake~~ sandwich. Though for this specific instance, I agree it’s a calzone.