January 17, 2025

• Brush: Stirling 24mm Synthetic
• Blade: Wilkinson Sword Classic (2)
• Lather: Chicago Grooming Co. - Caoba - Soap
• Post Shave: Pinaud - Clubman - Aftershave
• Post Shave: Goodfellow & Co. - Face Lotion - Kelp & Sea Mineral

Whew, long day. Nice shave this morning, this time with a nice mild razor. I much prefer this razor the the Parker 22R that I used yesterday. Super smooth. Maybe not quite as efficient as the 22R, but the comfort is exponentially higher.

January 15, 2025 - Buena Vista Wetshaving Social Club

• Brush: Stirling 24mm Synthetic
• Razor: Parker 22R
• Blade: Wilkinson Sword Classic (1)
• Lather: Los Jabones de Joserra - Noir
• Post Shave: Pinaud - Clubman - Aftershave
• Post Shave: Goodfellow & Co. - Face Lotion - Kelp & Sea Mineral

New scent and artisan for me. I’ve heard good things about the scents from this guy. I didn’t have any trouble lathering this soap, but I did load the entire Smush. It was an ample amount of soap, but I can’t imagine using only half of the smush like some people! With hard water to boot!

Similarly to that other BVWSC member, I cut myself during this shave. I haven’t used this razor in years, and now I remember why. It’s all blade. I don’t blame the soap for my cut because it was obviously my mistake. I also got some weepers. I just don’t get along with aggressive razors, no matter how little pressure I use, etc. A DE blade just needs something to calm it down for me.

Nice unique scent! It reminds me a bit of Chiseled Face Vert Noir, but this one is better. Very Noir smells like fish food, and this one is more refined than that. Both are green in color.

Ah, thank you. I always get that mixed up. The doc on the phone did mention “secondary thingy”.

That’s very good to know, though. Bacterial doesn’t sound as contagious as viral, but I might be wrong about that aspect of it.

I’m cognizant of antibiotic resistant bacteria and feel like I did my due diligence by waiting so frickin’ long. I have some important work and travel stuff coming up immediately, so it was time to kick this thing if possible.

Thanks! This whole time has been pretty mild. Still working, etc. That’s probably why it’s so widespread here - everyone is going about their day with whatever virus.

January 14, 2025

• Brush: Maggard 24mm Tuxedo Synthetic
• Razor: Gillette Tech (Z-4)
• Blade: Derby Premium (3)
• Lather: House of Mammoth - You & I (Will Die) - Soap
• Post Shave: Noble Otter - The Night Before - Aftershave
• Post Shave: Goodfellow & Co. - Face Lotion - Kelp & Sea Mineral
• Post Shave: House of Mammoth/Declaration Grooming - Cerberus - Liniment

Pretty great, except this blade is pretty much done. I took a break from killing Caoba because that tub is now packed away in my suitcase for my trip to Atlanta for training. I also packed my envelope of soap from @[email protected] for use tomorrow. Woot!

You & I (Will Die) has really grown on me. Once I found out that the volatile hit up front was “floral” I found a new respect for it. Of my Mammoth tubs, of which I have 3, it’s my favorite. I still want a tub of Voices if Ben ever changes the label on it (which might happen now that Lather Talk has ended?).

I finally did a tele-health call today, since I’ve been sick on and off (more on than off) for well over a month now. The doctor on the phone was like “uh, yeah, usually we tell people to wait 10 days, so you’re well past that”. It was a super fast call, and I already have some antibiotics in me doing their thing. Yahoo!

Unfortunately I’m not up to speed with cameras anymore, but hopefully someone else can chime in.

Zoos is good. I have a bunch of them.

Buying a camera now is basically for one thing - having quick access to physical knobs and buttons to change settings on the fly. Same goes with being able to manually zoom quickly, or focus quickly on a particular object in the frame.

You can accomplish this sort of thing with a cell phone camera, but not quickly. By the time you’re done fussing around with it, the motorbike covered in ducks has sped off down the road.

I bought a Nikon D90 in Vietnam about 12 years ago. It was more expensive than it would have been in the US. Someone here might recommend a good camera, but either you won’t be able to find it locally, or it’ll be out of your budget. The D90 was already somewhat obsolete when I bought it, but damn did I get some really great pictures that I’ll cherish forever.

I recommend going to a local shop, preferably with a local friend. Try and touch stuff as much as you can.

Watch some videos on aperature, exposure, ISO, and what you can accomplish with those things. I generally prefer letting the camera pick ISO and exposure automatically, and having manual control of aperature. I found that gave me good control of getting the effects I wanted (short depth of field, for example).

It might be lower now, but depends on whose sending out the soap. A couple of our people pop in from time to time and don’t get a chance to nominate or vote.

January 13, 2025

• Brush: Maggard 24mm Tuxedo Synthetic
• Razor: Gillette Flat Bottom Tech
• Blade: Derby Premium (2)
• Lather: Chicago Grooming Co. - Caoba - Soap
• Post Shave: Summer Break Soaps - Woodshop - Aftershave
• Post Shave: Goodfellow & Co. - Face Lotion - Kelp & Sea Mineral
• Fragrance: Summer Break Soaps - Woodshop - EdP

Caoba is on the chopping block. I had nominated it for next months BVWSC, but I think it’s a good thing it didn’t win. I don’t know if there would have been enough to create ~7 smushes, unless I made them small (not an option, IMO).

Woodshop pairs well which makes sense since both scents are based on “wood”.

At press time, the researchers had reportedly petitioned Congress to appropriate $50 million for name tags

That’s only $.15 USD per name tag. Good deal!

January 12, 2025

• Brush: Maggard 24mm Tuxedo Synthetic
• Razor: Gillette Flat Bottom Tech
• Blade: Derby Premium (1)
• Lather: Chicago Grooming Co. - Caoba - Soap
• Post Shave: Chicago Grooming Co. - Frankie & Myrna - Aftershave
• Post Shave: Goodfellow & Co. - Face Lotion - Kelp & Sea Mineral

Back to DE’s after about a week of GEM. A lot of people prefer the FBT to a regular oval or triangle slotted tech, but I prefer the latter. The FBT is more aggressive, but to me it doesn’t improve the efficiency much, if at all.

I’m like most people and don’t like Derby blades, but this is a Derby Premium! It’s better than regular Derby, but still not a favorite.

It sounds like we agree, but I’m much less lawerly due to my lack of experience in that field.

Wow. W Bush was president (or Obama depending on month).

Edit: yep, W. Bush. Oct 6th 2008, so Obama hadn’t even been elected yet.

The creator of Lemmy is just one example. They remove a lot of content that isn’t hateful, just against their political ideology. I used that as an example of a private social media website which does a lot of censoring, even though the creators are sort of, somehow, outwardly against censoring? So everyone is human is my point.

The article in question is about hate speech, not political dissent. Hate speech is pretty widely moderated away on Lemmy, and I think a majority of people here are cool with that. Some here are arguing semantics which is fair. Censoring is censoring which is the definition of censoring. I’m in the camp that if someone online is threatening another person or group of people, that should be hidden/removed.

There’s a big difference between utterly insane tankie takes and hateful content.

Ouch. I just got an air fryer and was surprised to see how the heating element is just sorta tucked up right there waiting for someone to reach in at the wrong angle.

Did you touch the heating element or part of the basket?

Are you saying it should be required by law to have a comment regarding removal of content?

That’s the problem with the internet, really. You can’t punch these a-holes through your monitor or keyboard. The consequence here is moderation instead of physical violence. Removing these people from their platform is the punch in the nuts that they deserve. It’s still free speech because these are non-government websites.

Edit to make it less mean sounding.

I’m glad you asked because I’ve sort of been meaning to look into that.

I have 4 8TB drives that have ~64,000 hours (7.3 years) powered on.
I have 2 10TB drives that have ~51,000 hours (5.8 years) powered on.
I have 2 8TB drives that have ~16,800 hours (1.9 years) powered on.

Those 8 drives make up my ZFS pool. Eventually I want to ditch them all and create a new pool with fewer drives. I’m finding that 45TB is overkill, even when storing lots of media. The most data I’ve had is 20TB and it was a bit overwhelming to keep track of it all, even with the *arrs doing the work.

To rebuild it with 4 x 16TB drives, I’d have half as many drives, reducing power consumption. It’d cost about $1300. With double parity I’d have 27TB usable. That’s the downside to larger drives, having double parity costs more.

To rebuild it with 2 x 24TB drives, I’d have 1/4 as many drives, reducing power consumption even more. It’d cost about $960. I would only have single parity with that setup, and only 21TB usable.

Increasing to 3 x 24TB drives, the cost goes to $1437 with the only benefit being double parity. Increasing to 4*24TB gives double parity, 41TB, and costs almost $2k. That would be overkill.

Eventually I’ll have to decide which road to go down. I think I’d be comfortable with single parity, so 2 very large drives might be might be my next move, since my price per kWh is really high, around $.33.

Edit: one last option, and a really good one, is to keep the 10TB drives, ditch all of the 8TB drives, and add 2 more 10TB drives. That would only cost $400 and leave me with 4 x 10TB drives. Double parity would give me 17TB. I’ll have to keep an eye on things to make sure it doesn’t get full of junk, but I have a pretty good handle on that sort of thing now.