Has anyone ever tried using that red grease—the kind used for lubricating heavy machinery or cannons in the US? I managed to get my hands on a small amount, and I've heard rumors that it can clear up psoriasis, though I have no clue how or if it actually works. If anyone here has experience with this, please let me know. It’s for my 9-year-old daughter; she’s been dealing with psoriasis, and for the last month, nothing the doctors prescribed seems to be making a dent. Thanks in advance!
So here's the deal: I want to start training some kind of martial art or combat sport, but I’m totally stuck on which one to pick. I’ve narrowed my list down to wrestling, Jiu-Jitsu, Aikido, and MMA. Personally, I’d prefer something where the fight doesn't just end up on the ground, but then again, I’ve heard that ground fighting is actually more effective than everything else, so now I’m second-guessing myself. Alright, let me hear some recommendations before I make my final call.👍
By the way, I’m mostly interested in stuff for self-defense, not really looking to get into any competitive tournament scenes.
Yeah... I think it was... but honestly, what’s even the point of having to register? It feels like a total waste of time just to see which idiot is taking pictures of me 😍
I’ve been seeing Dr. Miller for three years now, and I can tell you—this guy is top-tier. He’s incredibly gentle, which was my main reason for choosing him in the first place, and his rates are actually reasonable.🙂 🙂 🙂
Hey ladies! Does anyone know where I can get custom photo cakes made? I found the perfect one online, but I have no clue how to upload it here so you guys can actually see it.😕 Actually, Adonia posted a similar picture at the bottom of page 37 in this thread, so you can check that out to get an idea... I’m thinking about doing a timeline of our photos—starting from when we were little kids, all the way up to when we first met and started hanging out. I also heard you can just buy edible image transfers that you stick right onto a cake you've already made. If anyone has any tips or knows a good spot, let me know! Anyway, here is my attempt at uploading a photo of "my" cake, though I'm not holding my breath that it actually works.😳 😘
cosmicpuma15 said:The cheapest plot I ever saw was around $1,600 an acre... though it sold, obviously.
Thanks for the input. So, if I'm looking for some decent land right off a main road, I should probably budget somewhere between $3,200 and $4,300 per acre... Assuming you can even find anything like that out in the Midwest...
I just finished watching this movie yesterday and I was absolutely dying... honestly, I haven't laughed that hard since I saw Borat. It's actually insane what these guys do to themselves. Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, and the rest of the crew are legendary—they seriously made a masterpiece here.
What did you guys think? What was your favorite scene? Let me know!
Edward Newman77 said:I’ve been chewing on this idea for quite a while now—though I haven't quite managed to track down the hard data yet... Does anyone actually know what the current market rate is for walnut timber? How many years does it take for them to reach maturity? And what are we looking at for the price of saplings these days? ...
God. This is my first time posting on this forum, so sorry in advance if I mess anything up. This topic caught my eye, so I figured I'd jump in. I've been working in orchards for a few years now, and I have a walnut grove of my own. I've got 200 trees that are about 9 years old and another 300 that are 4 years old. I actually planted these back before there were any government grants or subsidies available for this kind of investment. I spaced the walnuts at 8x8 meters, though looking back, I probably could have gone even wider. I also planted some plum trees in between the walnuts. I plan to harvest those plums for about 15 years until they start competing with the walnuts for space, then I'll clear them out. Last year, I sold a few pounds of walnuts at $12/lb. It seems like small change at first, but it becomes pretty lucrative over time. A price of $12/lb is basically the floor for shelled walnuts on the market, but you can see prices climb as high as $20/lb. It doesn't take much math to see the potential. If 500 trees yield just 1 lb each, that’s 500 lbs times $12/lb, which comes out to $5833. Keep in mind, that's only after the tenth year—it gets way better than that later on. Even if you have a bad year and nothing grows, you still have the value of the timber. A cubic meter of walnut timber goes for about $850, and if you mill it into boards, you can get up to $1,000/m3. With 500 trees at $850 per cubic meter, you're looking at $425,000. I have a steady job, so I have plenty of patience to wait for the trees to mature and pay off. Those 500 trees are spread across about 3 acres.
Thanks so much for the help, I’m feeling a lot better about this now. Honestly, I was convinced it was way more dangerous than it actually is. If anyone else has any thoughts or advice, please feel free to chime in! 🙂
This is about my little brother, he’s only 9, and something absolutely terrifying happened... This past Sunday, I was visiting him in Little Rock when he was playing with a ball and it went over a fence—about 4.5 feet high. He chased after it, but as he was jumping over the fence, he slipped and landed really awkwardly right on his stomach. He let out this awful cry, and since he started vomiting later, we decided to rush him to the hospital in Indianapolis. It was in the evening; they did an initial exam and didn't find anything immediately, but they decided to keep him for observation just in case. During the night, he took a turn for the worse, vomited again, and they had to run a whole battery of tests—ultrasound, CT scans, blood work, you name it. Turns out his spleen was injured; it swelled up first and then eventually ruptured. He has internal bleeding spreading through his abdomen, so within half an hour, they scheduled surgery. They had to open him up and remove his spleen, and they ended up taking his appendix too because apparently, there was some inflammation making it too risky to leave it in. After the surgery, he spent a day in the ICU hooked up to IVs, catheters, and tubes. On Tuesday, they moved him to a regular ward, and he's finally starting to recover steadily.
He looked pretty rough right after the operation; it was honestly so intense that his little sister actually felt sick just looking at him. My parents were in tears constantly at first, my mom was a wreck, and I was doing my absolute best to keep it together...
Since I’m super close to him—I babysit him a lot and he loves playing games on my PC—I’ve been wondering: what is life actually like without those two organs? From what I've read online, the spleen and appendix play a role in protecting the body against diseases and bacteria by filtering out toxins. I'm worried he's going to get sick much more often now... He has already been vaccinated against Strep. Some people tell me it's no big deal and you can live perfectly fine without them. I'd really love to hear your thoughts...
Morgan Bishop4 said:Ugh, man... So you’ve basically gone ahead and defined "unlikable" as anyone brave enough to actually tell the truth. Look at me, 🙂 and honestly, whatever. It doesn't bother me one bit. But let's be real, people—myself included—just have this hardwired craving to hear something sweet about themselves, something to give them a little ego boost... even when we suspect deep down it’s total BS, our brains still process it as a win, and there’s really nothing you can do against basic biology... But seriously, what's your deal though?! Did you get absolutely shredded just for being honest for once?
Look, here's the deal... I just got fed up with someone making this incredibly banal, half-baked argument about something. My reaction was a little sharp, and then she turned it around on me, claiming I'm "unlikable" and "predictable"—which, okay, fine, if that's how you see me. After that, she kept coming at me with these constant jabs until I finally de-escalated by giving her an answer she actually liked. But I made sure to clarify that my original point was just my opinion, delivered with a healthy dose of irony, because I can't stand it when people act like they're hot stuff only to throw a tantrum over the smallest thing.
Whether that's the absolute truth or not isn't really the point right now.
Sometimes it feels like the scammers and the smooth talkers are the ones who get ahead. They seem way more popular, even though everyone knows they're lying to them straight to their faces.
I wanted to jump in here and share some personal insight from my experience competing in this year’s National Philosophy Championship. I think there are a few points already mentioned that really resonate with what I went through on the circuit.
First off, we have to ask ourselves: does a philosophy competition even make sense? If we’re going to hold one, what’s actually the best way to test a young person's grasp of the subject without turning it into a mindless memory test? The goal should be to spark genuine critical thinking and push them to actually develop their own unique ideas. Right now, though, the way these competitions are being run is a far cry from that ideal. Honestly, the current setup is pretty absurd—it’s not just ineffective, it’s actively counterproductive.
First, you’re handed a list of terms you’re expected to have mastered beforehand. You’ve got to grind through the assigned reading just to wrap your head around five additional concepts they throw at you last minute. Here’s the kicker: you have exactly 30 minutes to write out all ten definitions. It essentially turns into a high-stakes memory test where you’re just praying nobody else has faster handwriting than you. I mean, what kind of "intellectual depth" can you actually demonstrate when you only have three minutes to explain complex philosophical ideas like freedom, existentialism, or the philosophy of history? It isn't a test of how much you understand philosophy; it’s a glorified speed-writing competition. You’d think this would be the most objective part of the exam—the part with fixed criteria that your answers actually need to meet. But nope. Different professors grade different terms, so your scores are all over the place. To make matters worse, there’s zero transparency. You can't even see how they graded individual concepts because the professors just scribble everything down on their own private grading sheets.
Regarding the essay portion, I honestly feel like we aren't being given nearly enough time. Trying to brainstorm a concept, map out the content, and build a solid structure for a high-quality philosophy paper in just 90 minutes feels impossible—especially when you consider that students at the National Philosophy Olympiad get four full hours to work. Then there’s the issue of grading subjectivity, which we've already debated on this forum. It makes zero sense that one grader can give an essay a 6 while another gives that exact same paper a 36 out of 50. When those kinds of massive discrepancies happen, the essay gets sent for a third reading, which then results in some arbitrary score—say, a 10. Then they take the average of that 10 and the 36, leaving the student with a final grade of 8. It begs the question: if the process is inherently subjective anyway, why are we tossing out a grader's opinion just because it doesn't align with the other two? Wouldn't it be much more logical and fair to have every single essay read three times and simply take the arithmetic mean of all three scores?
I also have to mention the absolute nonsense on this year’s reading list. We’ve got one piece by Nietzsche—which is actually decent enough—but then there are two by Heidegger. Seriously?! I know there are people out there who worship the ground he walks on and swear his work is the absolute pinnacle of philosophy, but honestly? Aside from the fact that I find his whole "truth-setting-itself-through-art" shtick to be a massive distraction from what actually matters, I think most people would agree that he's just way too dense for someone just starting their journey into philosophy. He's definitely not exactly "inspiring" material for a beginner.
Honestly, the absolute worst part about the philosophy competition wasn't even the exams—it was the total lack of organization. It was amateur hour from start to finish. They were being stingy with everything, down to the literal sheets of paper. We spent five hours there without so much as a glass of water, let alone a sandwich or a soda. Then there was the complete chaos regarding the rules. Nobody realized until the last minute that you were actually allowed to write your essay in a foreign language using a dictionary. Because of that oversight, at the national level here in the States, they wouldn't let us use a dictionary for the one-hour essay, yet at the international Olympiad, where you get four hours, it’s perfectly fine. Talk about inconsistent. But the icing on the cake? The grading and the results. The math was just straight-up broken. I saw someone's score published as 16.5 + 22 = 48.5 on the official list. Are you kidding me? On top of that, the results were supposed to be out in 17 hours, but they didn't post anything until 9:00 PM. Then we had to wait until 9:00 AM the next morning just to see the list, and we didn't get the final scores after all the appeals until 2:00 PM while we were sitting on the bus heading home. At this point, I’m convinced one single person read all 44 essays by themselves. It would have been faster that way, and honestly, probably a lot fairer. Besides, it feels like one guy is basically running the whole show anyway.
To put it bluntly: it’s a total mess—chaotic, disjointed, and completely pointless. 👎
