I actually really like this. It teaches your cat that legs are a resting spot. (Or maybe you don’t want them to learn that, since it can lead to Feline Paralysis in Humans.)

Depends on the kind of home and how “handy” you feel yourself to be. There are a lot of minor things around the home which can save you boatloads of money (and be faster to deal with) if you do them yourself.

Tools:

• A multi-bit ratcheting screwdriver. It’s my #1 go-to for assorted small fixes. Wirecutter recently recommended the Megapro 211R2C36RD, for what that’s worth.
• Multi-tool. Another good “it’s not the best at anything, but I use it for everything”.
• Adjustable wrench and/or pliers. Good for tightening nuts, holding things tight, bending, and other small tasks.
• Sponge mop. One of the ones with a little handle to help squeeze it out. Great for cleaning floors without killing your back.
• Speaking of which, a good-quality hard plastic bucket. Look for something in the 10-15 liter range. Dirty water, clean water, road salt, supplies, anything which is easy to carry.
• If you are comfortable with power tools, a good quality cordless drill can be a huge help as well.
• If you’re comfortable doing your own minor electrical repairs, one of those little outlet checker tools. Saves a ton of time.
• Good quality measuring tools, like a measuring tape and/or bubble level. These needn’t kill the budget, but are handy to have.

Comfort:

• I am a firm believer in ceiling fans as a great room cooler. Put one up and be amazed as the room feels comfortable at a range of temperatures.
• Similarly, a small room air circulator or pedestal fan can really help, especially if you’re doing some heavy work.
• If you don’t have good chairs for the table, I’m a personal fan of Ikea’s Bergmund.

Convenience:

• “Lazy susan” cabinet organizers. Game-changer for kitchen cabinets.
• Mr Clean abrasive cleaning pads. You can scrape off a lot of grime with these.

Lastly, for furniture and other things, unless you’re in a really small area, check various community marketplace kinds of sites. You can find a lot of critical stuff for less than MSRP, and non-critical stuff at a point that won’t break your budget.

I know people I could torment with this. I’m not going to, but God it would be funny.

A lot. Some of them were genuinely great. Some were way less so.

• To Kill a Mockingbird: Earns every bit of reputation it has. Should be shown twice.

• Teacher’s Pet: They showed this as a reward. I despised it. Seriously, it sticks in my head

• The outsiders: “Okay, I guess.” I remember feeling it was a decent bit of storytelling, but I was too detached from the themes and era to care. Honestly, it was probably too old for kids to identify with.

• When the Levees Broke: In retrospect, one of Lee’s weaker works. Nonetheless, it made a hell of an impact on us. We’d mostly seen helicopter’s-eye views of New Orleans. Getting down in with the people was a whole different view.

• Tuesdays with Morrie: Apparently it’s popular, but we all hated it. Felt it was sentimental slop.

• Brighton Beach Memoirs: Honestly don’t remember much. We mostly cared that, at the end, they actually showed the nude photo the lead character received. As kids, that was mind-blowing.

This is a little surprising to me because I read it on a daily basis and haven’t seen sign of the paywall yet. I don’t know if Ublock Origin is simply squashing that as well, or I’m somehow lucky.

If anything, Tahini - a separate spread common to the Middle East, made from sesame seeds - is vaguely closer to peanut butter.

This. Actually launching a community is hard. Launching a decentralized network of communities is damn hard.

I’ve been around for long enough to remember the internet before megasites like Reddit, when every community had their own forums and/or website. Specific mod for a specific game? Unique forum. Specific sub-community of a fandom, like a bunch of tech nerds analyzing the starships in Star Wars? Unique forum.

And like, I don’t deny that losing that hurt. Each site had its own unique little flavor of community, and the great centralization of the internet definitely steamrolled that flat in favor of mainstream appeal. But centralizing did also improve ease of discovery and access. Now we’re trying to build all of those little communities back in what - 2-3 years? In comparison to the 10+ they had to grow in before? It’s not going to be easy.

I mean, you can argue some semantics about “peaceful”.

What it is undeniable is that it prevented global powers from going directly to total war, resulting in a much diminished number of casualties (both soldiers and civilians) compared to the World Wars. Nothing since then, even if we summed up all the wars going on around the world at any given moment, rival the unthinkable numbers of dead who piled up those conflicts, nor - if I can speculate a bit - would they have rivaled another worldwide industrialized conflict.

But.

Does that actually mean the world is “more peaceful”?

One can argue that the undeniable reality that you are much less likely to be killed in a war between nations today means “Yes.” One can also argue that peace should not be measured by cold mathematics: That the continued existence of smaller-scale conflicts around the world, internal conflicts within countries, or deaths from non-national conflicts such as the ongoing gun violence epidemic in the US or deaths caused by polluting megacorporations mean it has not gotten “more peaceful”; the risks have just changed.

I suppose it depends on how you are analyzing all of this, in the end.

Just one note: I don’t know what the nature of your thesis is, but you might get more nuanced results by something like assigning each book in a pair a 1-5 score. Right now, an answer of “I like #1 better than #2” could mean a few things:

• #2 is just awful and I hate it.
• Both are really good, but #1 is just slightly better.
• #1 just slaps and nothing could compare to it.

Right? I try to stay away from it so a few unread pages can build up and I can devour them all at once, but I never manage to stay away for long…

Been following Jay for a few years now - he used to lurk the Worldbuilding community over on Reddit, so I ran into him a few times back before I migrated to Lemmy. Runaway is some really fantastic stuff, and the sheer effort of depth put into minor details of the world make it stand out. (Seriously, check for the small details of how the characters emote - it’s fascinating.)

At this point I only wish more of it would come out faster, but again given the sheer attention to detail and quality of art, I’m just delighted to have it at all!

Haha, holy shit. Somehow I had never connected that Piratesoftware was Maldavius. Yeah, that explains so, so very much of this entire SKG debacle.

Like, what kind of dictator are we talking here? Is this a Lord Vetinari benevolent dictator, or your typical generic slimeball autocrat?

Personally, I’d like to think that if they did become the latter, they’d be so far different from the person I love that I would break from them. Thoughtfulness, intelligence, and consideration aren’t usually things I see associated with dictators, you know? But people have an incredible capacity to isolate and put on different masks between their personal and professional lives…

In fairness, Microsoft certainly has tried to get the next closest thing with Bedrock. The hosting of server backends through their architecture via “realms” allows them to lock you out of a whole lot, and I still see people getting randomly banned because of their profanity filter.

But yes, if Realms shut down right now, there would always be Java (and even privately hosted Bedrock servers).

I really wish there was a good airsoft group nearby me, but it seems like the only ones who are close by don’t play on a schedule that works for me. It’s really frustrating.

I think it was the cost.

It was this. In fact, it was awkward all around. The dollar cost was high, you were stuck with the arena’s schedule and openings, you had to add in time for travel to the site and waiting to get in, going through the suit up… or you could just log onto Call of HaloField Tournament 3 and get a similar hit but with more animated explosions and stuff.

I remember towards the end a few companies sold consumer lasertag kits for home use. I think one of them even had a “rocket launcher” with a little radio thing in the “rocket” to register hits? But they were also super expensive, never cross-compatible so good luck making a big team, and if one broke you were SOL because they only came in big packs.

When it’s posts you agree with, it’s honest users. When it’s posts you disagree with, it’s astroturfing.

I joke, but unfortunately that seems to be the most common metric for a lot of people. If it’s a position “no one would really support” (in their view), then support for it must be astroturfed.

From what I understand, it’s less about chasing a market than wanting to be perceived as correcting the previously highly male-dominated writing scene.

Subjectively, a little informal discussion among writer & fan groups to me suggests that men who read fantasy tend to slowly but steadily acquire new materials, often from word-of-mouth among dedicated communities; women, by contrast, tend to latch on to a particular breakout series or author, with awareness often propagated by social media such as “Booktok”. This means that while both groups purchase in similar volumes, a book whose audience favors women can experience surges of popularity which make for prominent best-sellers over limited timeframes.

Admittedly, though, this is informal - so take that with a grain of salt.

The last few times this was brought up for discussion, one thing that many people mentioned - including quite a few who had interacted with publishers - was that publishers were strongly selecting for female authors. Some of this may have been in an effort to correct for lack of female presence in what was perceived as a male-dominated genre, some may have been trying to find the next wildly successful Rowling / Suzanne Collins / Sarah Maas / etc.

Several expressed that it was actually difficult to get a response as a male fantasy author, so this well-intentioned drive may have resulted now in some over correction bringing us to our current place.

I admit it’s not my favorite, but I do still love that it’s actually distinctive and has a specific “vibe”. You look at it and you know exactly when it’s from and what it’s about.

I can’t think of any ‘style’ in the last 20 years that has that.