Popped open the article to find out, and the answer is neither. The ‘milk’ is crystals collected by cutting open a particular kind of roach and extracting them from its brood sack.

There’s a phrase I didn’t know I’d be using today.

What about a 360deg camera, where the target person is yourself, and anyone else captured is merely incidental/background?

The point of having the system before you play is just letting everyone know what to expect on the G part of RPG so they can focus on the R and the P. It kills all momentum to stop and ask, ‘so what system do we want to use’ in the middle of the game. No system is perfect, but it cuts out a lot of work to just pick one and roll with it, homebrewing over the few holes that show up.

Having kids is always an act of selfishness. You don’t do it because you are trying to ‘gift’ life to the child. You do it because you think it will make you happy. Look at your reasons.

“me and my partner have wanted children since we were children” There’s your reason. You have the biological imperative. You want your genetics to continue.

" if a life is not worth living it must be an absolutely horrific and torterous experience." That’s life. ‘Worth’ is purely subjective. Objectively, life is worthless. If you have the right genetics and circumstances, you can ignore this fact, but it’s always there.

“If all of us liberal and educated folks stop having kids what will the world look like?” This is just the ideological version of the biological imperative, the idea of ‘my ideas must be passed down’ instead of ‘my genes.’ But it is based on faulty assumptions. It assumes your kids wouldn’t become fascists just because you aren’t. It assumes the children of members of a political party will automatically join the same one when they grow up. Why would you assume this? Do you have the same views as your parents? Grandparents?

If you want to have your kids, go ahead, but don’t delude yourself that it’s your gift to the leftist cause or to the child. It’s a way to scratch your biological itch to be a parent, just as much as masturbation and sex.

I attempted to hail a member of my clan, FOR THE GLORY OF THE EMPIRE!

Insert joke along the lines of ‘I don’t.’

More seriously, I’ve thought about this a bit. The simple answer is already seen in other responses: rural enough to escape crowds, close enough to urbanity to get good internet. The more perspicacious answer is overly complex: someplace where the weather is mild enough not to kill you if you lose your keys, and likely to stay that way despite climate change, mountainous enough to have nice views and avoid flooding, flat enough to build, sparse enough for land to be affordable, populous enough to be able to get the things I want without making a long trek, wooded enough to get the benefit of trees, bare enough to allow access, not too many racists or zealots, not too rich or poor of neighbors, neighbors not close enough to disturb me, but not so far that I couldn’t run over for something if needed, somewhere politically stable, somewhere I can work without a million-mile commute, where the soil doesn’t suck, where there’s a pleasant amount of rain and sun…

It’s not a small question.

I actively avoid shorts so most of what I watch is long form.

• Technology Connections - A guy needing out about household tech
• Unlearning Economics - a trained economist turned public edutainer who kept learning after Econ 101, unlike others who shall remain nameless
• Behind the Bastards - Chummy laughter about the worst people ever
• RPG with DBJ - RPG talk with a focus on creativity and exploring the opportunities afforded by the space of ‘limited only by your imagination’
• We’re in Hell - A guy looking at pieces of media and the ideology infused into them by culture
• Gresham College - lectures on widely ranging topics, presented by professors but targetting the layperson
• The Morbid Zoo - A cool gal doing analysis of movies, usually horror, but sometimes others, with an eye toward ideology and culture (Hellraiser, Smile, Twilight, PotC, etc.)
• Folding Ideas - More film analysis, but with a tack toward various criticisms
• Doctor Who - the old series are all on the tubes now. Not educational, but fun.

So, if you laid on a large enough block of it, you’d have the perfect shape to make a mold for a customized foam mattress?

I don’t think modern American political discourse is capable of the old style of revolt on a large scale. Old political movements were based on policy and rhetoric. Media has taken the place of rhetoric, and the majority of media serves to push toward one party or another rather than a real position on anything. Much of that media is based around the idea of negative partisanship (Vote for us because we aren’t Them.) rather than policy because there is so little policy space to play in when the choice is Right vs More Right. That is enough to get people to pick up a ballot, but generally not a weapon, when all of the institutional power has been focused on convincing people to do anything but. Team Red is (slightly ironically) anti-communist when it bothers to pretend to have an ideology. Team Blue is usually just anti-Team Red, which is why they can barely manage to get some semblance of support. And there is essentially no other option because of the voting system and the memories of the Cold War keep anything collectivist at bay for the time being. When you combine ‘Vote for change, don’t fight for it,’ and ‘Your options are An Unpolished Turd Promising You A Better Tomorrow (falsely) or A Polished Turd Promising You More of What You Got Yesterday (Truthfully),’ you get what you see now.

As it does in many other areas, the controversial nature of the discussion poisons the well on sources supporting either view. The days of ‘here’s a study saying…’ being a useful tactic in anything are kind of dead. Most discussions can have reliable-sounding sources to support contradictory points. It gets hard to find the truth about anything without engaging in in-depth meta-analysis, let alone in a place like a comments section under a webcomic.

Oh wow. I only have one crack in my backside.

This is absolutely the answer. If it isn’t funneling money away from actual value creation and into their pockets, it’s evil in the mind of the investors.

They often end up with bits of stuff stuck to them while they’re wet, like feathers, bedding, etc. Poop isn’t uncommon either. The same people who won’t buy salmon unless it has that freshly dyed pink color, and won’t buy potatoes if they aren’t universally convex, balk at the bits that remind them they come from a real place and aren’t just summoned into existence for their sake. Washing the eggs takes off the bits but also the ‘bloom’ which is the natural barrier to bacteria and the like. Hence, refrigeration.

Which Reddit thread did this meme come from again? I know I recognize it but can’t recall the origin.

Was not expecting to see Street-Fighter’s-Guile-as-a-magician quoted in this comment section… or at all really. He’s come a long way since Scam School, I guess.

Absolutely. I was an absolute loner for the better part of a decade. Then my depression just disappeared. I joined a community around a streamer and had loads of fun. Just find the intersection between your preferred subject (literary analysis, anime tiddies, etc.) and your preferred communication method. (Text forum, voice chat, real life meetings, etc.) You’ll find at least someone you can hang with, maybe more. Just go at it with openness and joy.

Honestly, I’m slightly surprised ‘tattoo printers’ haven’t become a thing for those little ‘formulaic’ tattoos. (Stars, hearts, bird silhouettes, etc.) People love getting inked up and I could see it making those sorts of tattoos absurdly fast, albeit probably much more intensely painful due to the speed.

I want to see Canada put out an open offer for immediate welcome, territoriship, and instant citizenship for any state along the border that votes to join Canada.

With how much of it felt like pure dice luck when I was interested, it ended up seeming like you’d be financially better off if you were gambling in a more direct way while also discussing lore for fun. At least you’d have a chance of coming out ahead.

Stress is the obvious answer. You won’t be able to guess what is causing it, so don’t start speculating. You can try to impress upon her that you are a safe outlet for that stress if you are able and willing to really be that for her, (Don’t just jump at it because you are curious. You might not like what comes from it, and it’s worse to pull back after the fact than to not offer at all.) or you can just be a source of stability while she works through it herself. Use your best judgement.