I’ve been getting into having a pdf of the various manuals for things around the house on my phone. I recently consulted the manuals for my fridge, a new dehumidifier and the lawn mower and it was pretty awesome not having to find and dig out a paper booklet each time. My phone is on me all the time plus I can get rid of the paper copies.

Yes, the first one is goofy but it did the whole “what would an actually average person do with superhero powers” shtick before it was cool, and managed to make it funny and pretty sweet too.

Maybe I should give buckwheat a try, or shredded latex. I’m probably due for a change but lately I haven’t been able to afford any sleep disruption.

Most of mine came from a vendor called Pure Beech that was exclusive to Bed, Bath and Beyond. They are the 100% modal sateen that seems to have been a consumer favorite that doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. I have another set from Bedsure in their 100% bamboo that has a similar feel though.

I use down feather pillows, they are easily customizable but they can go “flat” and hard in the middle of the night. Putting your head down on a freshly fluffed one is utterly sublime, though.

I have fallen in love with bamboo rayon pillowcases, (aka modal, aka tencel, aka lyocell). They can be extremely soft and smooth like silk but are much hardier, so you can wash them like normal laundry.

I’ll give you that it’s been longer than I realized since the base game came out, however, Beyond Earth came out 10 years ago (2014) and Alpha Centauri was 25 years ago.

They need me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That’s ok. I like to play music but guitar just isn’t that fun for me either. I have trouble remembering fingering and chords and it’s hard on my squishy delicate nerd fingers. The musical instruments I’ve been able to keep with and practice I did so because I just liked messing with them and making nice sounds. Did you make this post hoping people would encourage you to keep at it? You don’t have to keep at it if it’s not fun, you can sell the guitars to some local aspiring musician. What I would recommend is trying out some other instruments, maybe at a music store. Something drove you to try out guitar, maybe that creative spark just needs a piano, or a glockenspiel, or a zither or something else instead. Just… try before you buy next time.

Arenanet has been notoriously oblivious when it comes to what players want from housing. Here’s hoping they listened and let the community create places they feel like home in.

You can achieve the same thing with a metal spoon dipped in hot water, like after stirring a fresh cup of tea. It should be hot enough to hurt but not to burn/damage your skin. I’ve been doing this trick for ages and it works every time :)

I went grocery shopping and realized the music was all stuff I liked and recognized. I even knew the words 😭

The last few times I’ve found music I like via a method that was repeatable was searching through tags on Bandcamp. If I was listening to something I liked, I could look at the tags (electro, downtempo, big band etc) and click a few of those to find similar music. As far as a filter for quality, the number of followers for a page might be a decent metric because the genres are extremely precise and niche, and most of the biggest artists don’t self publish. There’s some amazing stuff on there to be found.

Haha it was a funny dynamic, we had a heavily good aligned party, I was the only one out on my own as “evil”. However her whole shtick, as was slowly revealed, was that she had ambitions to take down the leadership of the cult and then replace them with herself and those loyal to her. This meant that the party, who wanted to generally find non-violent means of dealing with conflict, aligned just fine with her own goals of not killing too many of her future minions. So she always acted in what she saw as the best interests of glorifying Her Chromatic Majesty, while still working with the party to stop the cult. Our DM peppered in more dragons and encounters with dragon magic than were in the official books I think, and we all tried to solve them through stealth, negotiation and avoidance. She hated to kill dragons, but if we had no choice but to fight then so be it. If they were too weak to kill us they were culled! She didn’t mind stopping the ritual to keep her from ascending because she believed Tiamat wouldn’t want the world to end, and just wanted as much treasure and followers as possible. So in the end the cult of the dragon queen became the Church of Dragonology, and her influence on the material plane had a net gain 😋

Lol my first character was a cleric of Tiamat. My DM and I worked out a blend of PHB domains so that I had appropriate cantrips, spell unlocks and CD’s. It was a lot of fun playing through the Rise of Tiamat with her, haha 🐉

Janelle Monae is fantastic, an all around great creative person. She’s been getting recognition for her acting at least.

Don’t know your other artists but I frickin love emancipator. I’ve listened to every album hundreds of times, not exaggerating. Have you heard Kinack? Not the same but if you like one you might like the other. I’ll have to check out your list when I can use my good speakers.

They could definitely do a fake out after a time skip, even the book does that haha.

You can call me paranoid, but the first thing I thought of when I heard about it was how excited the Nazis would have been to access a database like that when they came into power. Imagine knowing the names and addresses of whatever Undesirables you wanted to single out, and exactly what percentage of “impure” they were. Ethnic makeup information can also be used against you in things like gerrymandering congressional districts to hand select voters and disenfranchise minorities. It’s pretty safe to assume that once your genetic profile has been gathered by a private company, it’s vulnerable to all sorts of bad actors gaining access and using that information. Would you want the KKK or the Proud Boys knowing just what percentage black you are? No thanks.

I read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell recently and found it delightful and incredibly original. I haven’t heard anything about Piranesi, I’ll see if my library has it!

Nation by Terry Pratchett. It’s a beautiful and introspective book that has all of STP’s humor, humanity and insight but it’s completely self contained. I read it recently and wanted to read it again right away.