I was so confused lmao thanks for illuminating me. l Legit thought OP had some weirdass dungeon masters and was about to respond actually most don’t do that you just got a find the one for you lmao

Last week of 1997 I think (got a computer programmable barbie for xmas and somehow my older sister took this as “time to put her on the internet” lol). First thing she did was sign me up for AOL chat then put me in a “kid friendly” chat room (think there was a suggested list or smtg). Ended up being a roleplaying animals chat and…well it wasn’t just kids in there lol. Half of us were just typing “turns into a panda and rolls around” and others were typing “bear sits at bar and winks at panda”. We quickly exited that and she searched me a cat facts site and left me to it.

With the new found power of search I started looking up where we were blocked in whatever the current Tomb Raider was which led me to fanfic porn which led me to what’s 69 which actually led me to a couple different groups of older people who were very chill and “you shouldn’t be here”, but also gave me a lot of advice on sex ed (which was appreciated, my mom’s period talk was vague and conducted like I was in a war now lmao), keeping private on the internet and what’s an inappropriate conversation someone’s trying to have with me, saying no and I don’t have to talk to anyone who’s making me uncomfortable. Also taught me how to download music and safe practices. So thanks “perverts” of the 90s, I appreciated learning what reverse cowgirl was, no means no and how to download music for free so I could stop tape recording my favorites off the radio lol.

My cat feels he’s got to be invited in and demands I open the window so everyone and sundry can see me crap while he enjoys a nice breeze and wildlife voyeurism. Then while I’m mid-crap he decides we’re done here and if I don’t let him out prompto the whole house is gonna burn down.

Meanwhile if I don’t let him in he’s scratching up the door like he’s trying to call 911 for a murder. Honestly don’t know which is better but I guess my shits have gotten faster…

Ftr this wasn’t better when we lived alone and I’d leave the door open. He’d just stand at the entrance yowling like he was reporting a fire. I have been informed by family his shits smell worse than mine so idk what he was complaining about. Especially cause when he craps he immediately tries to vacate the premises like he just left a bomb and a quick sashay out will save him from the shrapnel.

Sometimes it’s just a passion project by crazy people. My town has a shack on a busy non-walkable intersection without even parking spaces that sells only angel figurines. Let me be clear, this isn’t general angel knickknacks, this isn’t specific saints, it’s angel figurines ONLY. You will find no bless this house signs. No Christmas tree toppers or ornaments. Not a single holiday decoration, religious or otherwise. You won’t even find Jesus on the cross.

Angel. Figurines. Only. I always assumed it was a front for something until my mom helped with some taxes for them. No, it’s just one crazy couple who are obsessed with the sanctity of the angel figurine. They feel very strongly about it and asking if they do garden angels now that spring’s coming up and you’d love to patronage them is apparently offensive enough for them to take their taxes elsewhere lol.

Being that person providing a better method halfway through a process. A cave person standing on top of another to cave art the ceiling? Halfway through I go “…You know you coulda just grabbed the log from outside, leaned it against the wall and climbed it”. Someone halfway through whittling a bowl? “Oh, yeah, I saw some coconuts on the beach they’d be perfect”.

I have the great hobby of Looking At Random Things, but the bad habit of assuming everyone else saw those things too so they must be doing what they’re doing for a reason lol. That all said I’m sure I’d be dead from dysentery within a week or smtg, they wouldn’t have to suffer me long.

No, I mostly read romance like said. I do read some male isekai, but I’m generally not a fan of the tropes in them. I’ll check it out though, thanks. And yep I know about the name swap with cmmd, I’ve just been reading it for literal years so I remember the first one better.

All are fine, just different cliches. Mostly nowadays I read manhwa since it’s easier to read on the phone, a series usually starts with a drop of 20 episodes and then releases weekly and usually at least the guys look kind of adult… (I mainly read trash romance, it’s desperate out here to get characters who don’t look like middle schoolers or something lol)

I mainly read manga when I want an actual story that isn’t just the same 50 plug and play tropes in a blender every time (ie think the mangas I follow right now are Frieren, Heroine Survival and Arte). Manhua I VERY rarely touch. They seem to have the worst machine translations and tbh I really dislike how they implement most of the tropes, just way too petty/childish/violent for me. Only manhua I read are Cheating Men Must Die and Shut Up, Evil Dragon.

One was very laid back and tried to take good care of everyone despite being retail and him being laid back. Got me the highest starting pay he could (corporate seriously fought him over 25¢ and he compromised with them for 10¢ instead of just giving up, was only like $12 extra a month with my hours, but hey that’s still money). He understood the metrics were bullshit and didn’t crawl up my ass about getting them done even when they kept going up and we got new metrics added. Ofc did my best to just to keep him from getting shit for it (corporate certainly didn’t believe in raises or rewards for meeting them), but I appreciated he never trickled down their bullshit and stress to me. When a supervisor kept being inappropriate (I have so many stories about this dude, but I’ll just say he was 40 trying to badger a 24yro subordinate into dating him via antagonizing the rest of us to peer pressure her into it and I did have an issue with him telling me he had tick bites/rash/whatever and start pulling up his shirt/literally down his pants even after I said NO I WON’T LOOK FOR HIM as some examples I’m a woman and he was a straight guy if that makes any difference though tbh don’t believe that was bros being bros behavior anyway cause he did it with the 20s me and not the 60s female coworker), this manager did speak to him multiple times and then help me get HR involved and I didn’t get put on his shifts anymore.

Other one was insurance and also went to bat for us about bullshit metrics and was very accommodating, like above and beyond accommodating (during covid new person got hired for wfh and then came out with she didn’t have home Internet and manager did get the company to agree to help her out with that, yeah it was ridiculous, but this manager just went beyond like that for everyone). She’d talk to me about problems like I was a person too. I like processes and a lot of times in healthcare at entry/you’re the lowest worker on the team it’s just a disorganized mess (this place our “processes” were photocopies of past employees notes of “idk it just worked” or “someone told me to do it this way and I don’t know why and there’s no updates to the department about changes that affect anyone not managers so I’m assuming it works even if this item keeps reappearing as rejected in my queue”). Any questions I had she’d answer or go find the answers for me, if I discovered anything wrong about our processes or to streamline them she’d listen to me and help me refine if needed before implementing. She let me write guides for the department on this stuff which I super appreciated (meant I didn’t have to keep fixing other employees work, the amount of stuff that would go through on our end as solved and then come back rejected I had to figure out my first couple months was insane). To explain this a previous job we were using a program no one understood, we just had a binder with steps. Anytime anything changed in the program or someone did something wrong no one knew what to do we’d have to get a manager in there who was NOT good with computers so no one could do work with that program half the shift until he either found some convoluted work around to make the numbers add up that looked like fraud and then send a manager email to his managers about it or he’d admit defeat and all our other managers would have a five minute go at it and then just write an email about it and we never talked about it again lol (we’d have months where we just had to add or subtract numbers to arrive at the right inventory until I assume IT somehow fixed it). I actually sat down and figured out that program (with the power of googling the manual and reading it cause we didn’t even have that!!!), wrote a more current comprehensive guide with both how the program works for our needs (in case anything changed again so people knew WHAT each function specifically did) and step-by-steps for our daily use AND appropriate correction steps for mistakes, he read it over, greenlit it, I started typing it up for the employee drive— nah nvm he doesn’t like change, scrap it. He did this to me CONSTANTLY and fought me on stuff as basic as “it’s 20XX, why are we managing our inventory and machines with a system of 8 clipboards”, he just did NOT believe processes could have evolved since 1970 or that anyone not a manager was enough of a person to contribute (he did this to everyone below manager, not just me). So I really, really appreciated the hell out of this other manager when I said hey handing out photocopies of notes from employees who knows how long ago is inefficient and I got to the bottom of some of this stuff, can we make a process to give everyone, she was on board, an active participant, actually followed through and didn’t backtrack on it because the world peaked in 1970 and non-managers can’t have functioning brains, they show up and do as told.

Last one I’ll list tbf wasn’t the greatest, like he was a great guy, but not so great with non-performing employees (which tbf we had such high turnover company wide we were always struggling for a fill with at least 1/3rd our positions for various reasons, so I could kind of understand, you need a body to show up for shit pay at a job you have to touch poop, there is very little asking for more than that is going to get you beyond people refusing to show up to your site again as a floater). But this job was also very disorganized and he answered all my questions, when I brought up stuff he’d bring it up at the mandatory monthly meeting (this wasn’t crazy stuff, it was like if you get poop on something please make sure to clean it, we will no longer be putting feeding bibs in the same drawer we keep the toilet cleaning rags, etc). He also didn’t demand I use my car for pt transport (I was not hired to do this, it was a “fun” thing I found out after I was hired I was expected to get people with walkers into my jeep and not get gas payment to take them around). Like that job was super shitty (figuratively and literally), but he’d hear me out and see what he could do within reason (not cause he didn’t want to do more, but like said low pay super shitty job we couldn’t even retain employees at). Unfortunately, but understandable, he left and we got in a new manager who did the usual “I have worked at better jobs, everything the past manager did is wrong cause I need to show I was a good hire, instead of getting permanent hires and upping patient care we need to focus on how artistically the towels are folded and make an office area I can exclude you all from by stealing employee equipment so when MY managers come in I look like I run an upscale hotel and not a hospice home”. (Fr one of my coworkers just enjoyed folding laundry artistically from tiktok tutorials and this manager decided first we need to be folding them like the gdamn country flag off that and then when she moved to artistic hotel folds with a fan ruffle we needed to store all our towels that you know were regularly used for cleaning piss and shit and stored in an employee closet to that).

More of a rant about my bad managers, but the bar has honestly been in hell for me so all these managers stuck out. They treated me as a person and they wanted me to succeed, they supported me wanting our department to succeed which is honestly the rarest fucking shit I ever see. We have such bad training in my field at my level (idk might also be bad at higher levels, I’m just not there) and I’ve had a lot of managers not want anyone to do the job right for various reasons I really appreciate when they let the team all help each other up. Maybe a person doesn’t take that in, but the insurance one I had another coworker like me and holy fuck it was amazing with my manager facilitating. By the time I left between us we’d figured out most stuff and written guides so onboarding was SO MUCH EASIER. We saw 0 compensation for this and tbh it frustratingly tanked our numbers for metrics cause we’d solve stuff first try instead of needing three goes at it (which counted as three metrics), but gdamn it felt rewarding to know we’d solved an issue and trained the department on it so a patient didn’t have to get their care delayed or downgraded (when I started if you couldn’t get something passed through you’d do 2-3 days of meds until you hoped someone figured it out, absolutely insane) until something changed again. Like both of us spent literal HOURS on the phone working these things out which isn’t how it should be, but getting them down to 20min processes was amazing and I take pride in that.

Honestly feels like their only mistake was not making it roomba sized with an outer mini railing that would keep the roomba from falling off AND they could hang decorations from it. Really didn’t think about how they could multipurpose this.

ETA I retract somewhat, they could be total mavericks and get a long extension for their vacuum and then tape it to an RC car. Is it a lot of extra work? Yes. Would it be amazingly fun? Also yes. Especially if you hook up catnip spreader basket on the back (though maybe that’s unsafe, probably don’t encourage your cat to weed and balance beam).

If I read something my brain stores keywords/phrases to it anywhere from 30min to years. Sounds super normal (I think, least for 30min), but this has served me really well in two areas.

1. Tests. As long as it’s a knowledge test and not a skill test I can skim read right before (even if it’s like 100 pages and I didn’t learn any of it before) and pass (for multiple choice grade is usually in the 90s, write-in is more 80s). Only professional place I use this outside of school is the bullshit PowerPoint “training” at work that makes you take a test at the end… (I don’t work an office job, idk might be more useful there)
2. Online message chats. Great for looking stuff up like birthdays or preferences or someone told me something specific a year ago and now wants to talk about it in-depth and I have to go refresh on the exact health conditions of their dog while they’re grieving to me (I mean I could ask for a refresher, but when a friend is needing a comforting ear I’d rather just search it up quick while they type instead of making them back track their narrative which when you feel upset feels really alone someone can’t be right there in the moment with you off the bat, just a small way to care for my friends). Mainly though I do text DND and it’s amazing there lol. Had an unintentional tpk and offered a restart with memories (deus exmachina literally time rewind) which my group was into. I’m like shit we’ve been running this campaign for years, how am I going to remember the exact fight setups, initial NPC reactions, etc. I had a very specific search phrase for every event memory logged and made the whole thing a breeze to re-do literal years of content. And tbh I think I enjoyed it even more than my players cause I’d go back and reread their early murderhobo days and then get to freshly compare it to their evolved anarchist present (…I mean they were still murderhobos, but brought a tear to my eye to compare they’d learned some principles and loyalty lol).

My cat is in this picture and the only thing missing is the top of a flight of stairs lmao

Was the most weirdly aggressively Pepsi only area I’ve ever been in haha now I try to make sure we grab him a six pack when we go anywhere new juuuust in case. Haven’t run into the situation a second time fortunately lol

Lol my brother is a coke guy. Took him out for his birthday and he’s in the bathroom when server came over for drink orders. My brother usually interrogates them if it’s real coke which seems kind of over the top so I just said “do you have actual coke?” and got a yes so ordered it for him. He sits down and I’m like I made sure it was coke for you! He takes a sip— it’s Pepsi lmao.

Still not as funny as the time we were on vacation in a Pepsi area. Couldn’t even find coke in the gas stations. We visit a ye olde touristy shopping center done up like the 1950s. Coke paraphernalia everywhere. I’m like great we can finally get you a coke! Go in a store, all the coolers are coke aesthetic, he’s excited. —It’s all Pepsi.

It’s hard up out there lmao. (I understand the frustration though, did once have a meltdown after a lot of driving because I couldn’t get tea anywhere that wasn’t a cheap grocery store teabag at best lol just want good tea before doing another 8hrs straight driving. Ended up angrily making my own in the parking lot like a madwoman lmfao)

Echoing move to SNW. It has a higher budget than older Trek and follows the current trend of “mini-series” storytelling. Older Trek follows older TV rules (wanted 26 eps to a season so a lot of filler to make it so). DS9 would be my other rec with a heavy caveat that if you’re not feeling an ep skip it and look it up on memory alpha later, particularly for the first season. As it goes on it gets more into the long form storytelling you’d expect with today’s shows, but first few seasons can be a bit rough and there can be a long time between plots being revisited (but when they are they make it count). TNG, Voyager and TOS are mainly monster/problem of the week (Voyager kind of weakly straddles longform and episodic leaning heavily towards episodic). Out of them I’d recommend TNG outside of the first two seasons (first season is TOS scifi tales encore, second season I actually like a lot and has some good eps, but general like is a minority opinion and cast gets retooled in third season anyway).

If you don’t mind kids shows also recommend Prodigy (kinda like a Trek ATLA imo).

I don’t think that has never not been a thing… Read memoirs/letters from earlier times and you’ll see plenty of it too. The big shift was probably admitting the children don’t yearn for the mines, but we seem to be heading back that way (eta: in the USA anyway I won’t paint other countries with our fuckery lol).

Oof I feel bad for his partner had no idea he was in pairs from the way he’s been talked/meme’d about…

Most Olympic athletes are young and wear fashion athletic clothes donated by endorsers who help pay them. In addition in the shooting category you’re (as I understand it) allowed a certain amount of tech to help you out. This man is older, didn’t wear the endorsed fashion clothes or the tech and won gold silver so he feels like a rare “every man” win in the Olympics. He is not an “every man” (believe he’s a decorated military and police man in his country), but a lot more people can relate to him winning gold silver than a 14 year old who’s been training for this since diapers in a fashion house outfit.

“After approaching the coelacanth to encourage it to move between two cameras positioned on a custom-made stand, the team turned on the lights. “At this depth, some think that there is no light,” says Ballesta. “There is [very] nice light. It’s tiny, it’s soft, but there is still light. So, it’s important to not use too much artificial light. It’s like driving in a car at night. If you put your lights on full, you see just in front of the car, and all the rest is dark. If you switch off your lights – and there is a little bit of moon – suddenly you see everything: the road, the mountains, the forest. It’s the same when you’re deep.””

For anyone else wondering.

This is the one I bought. It works pretty well and has controls for each half so I can just heat one side if I want to address aches on that side or both if I’m trying to warm up quick. Haven’t run it through the wash yet so I’m not sure how it holds up there. Otherwise for pets (since I have a cat) their claws don’t get stuck on it, but they may cause threads to get pulled out (I haven’t had this happen a lot, but I figure if you have big dogs or something you’ll see a lot more threads pulled out; I have a miniature pincher sized cat so small dogs I assume wouldn’t cause too much wear and tear). It heats up pretty fast too, I think it only takes about ~2-3 minutes and once it’s heated up you don’t feel the lumps from the wires inside.

King size heating blanket. Wrap myself up like a burrito after work and I’m in heaven. Just wish I’d done it sooner, my last place didn’t keep heat in well, but I felt like spending $100~ on a blanket was crazy and was stacking multiple cheap ones to not freeze in my own home.