They actually do care believe it or not. When our city council was voting on municipal fiber we showed up to petition our conservative city council representative to vote in favor. Guess who also attended, a representative from our federal senator’s office. Oh man the look on his face when only 3 members of the public showed up, two of them major supporters of municipal broadband, and the third spoke up to agree with us. Mmmm priceless. The city council man and conservative rep were so damn flustered. The senator’s rep took notes the whole time and we got to talk to him one on one. These outreach events do way more than you would think, this is how they gauge what they can get away with. Don’t let them discourage you, show up and bitch!

Nope, just finished some scales and arpeggios and was moving on to some warm up pieces.

I am learning an instrument as an adult and my instructor commented “You’re so good at recognizing patterns.” That comment hit way harder than it had any right to.

OMG!!! I get to recommend Delicious in Dungeon!!! The show is a bit of a slow burn, but the early episodes set up the incredible world building and the basic plot points. Then as it starts churning it gets crazy. The story is strong enough on it’s own, but it’s animated by Studio Trigger so the anime is pure perfection.

I’m terribly sorry for your loss of mental health. Getting the vile shit of the internet directed art you as an adult is awful, can’t imagine how tough it is for a 16y/o.

Have you considered checking out your local Community College?

I am not sure what to call the genera but there is something so very consuming and soothing about Papers Please. It’s hard to describe how that game pokes just the right parts of my brain meat but it does. A major part of the game is learning patterns and picking out the pieces that are out of place and my goodness does my brain get a kick out of finding typos, inconsistent city locations, and mis-matching information between documents. I need to process an avalanche of information quickly but it doesn’t feel overwhelming, instead it is oddly soothing. The game is also short enough that I can binge and get to the end without ruining my life unlike something more open ended like Oxygen not Included.

For me it’s that I have to think less about my choices. I don’t have a ton of time anymore so if I pick a book I am not vibing with I can just return it and pick another in a matter of seconds. It’s led me to taking chances on books I normally wouldn’t read.

I love my local library because they’re keeping me sane on my work commute! I looove audiobooks and it’s so nice to be able to try so many and not have to worry about if I will like them because it’s all free!!!

There’s a reason why they’re my former employer. Upper management was discussing replacing our badges with the phone. We needed the phones to get into the building because that was where the covid protocol pass was kept and security checked. It was impressive how quickly they took advantage of the pandemic to make creepy breeches in privacy.

Preach. It wasn’t body cams but our company gave us all mandatory phones with custom location tracking software on them. It was done as part of their pandemic response. The phones were supposedly only tracking your location within a mile of the site and were only used for enforcing social distancing and infection tracking. Well when the return to office mandates came around, upper management was suddenly too informed about how much time we spent onsite. They swore up and down it wasn’t the phones and went to pretty absurd lengths to find some other metric to prove it.

Avenue 5 is a brilliant dark sci-fi comedy that I cannot stop thinking about. It’s basically a cruise ship in space but then things go wrong. The physics are actually sound which makes for some really fun and terrifying gags. It’s heavy on dark humor, but if you’re ok with that it’s such a fun ride. I am biased but I feel like this show is criminally underrated.

I try to buy local loose leaf.

If you are looking for a grocery store recommendations, I love Celestial Seasonings herbal teas. They have an amazing peppermint tea.

Porphyria’s Lover by Robert Browning just rolled around in my head for day after I first read it. It’s really dark but feels so completely human at the same time.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46313/porphyrias-lover

I am really happy that people are willing to consider how toxic that aggression is. It’s so engrained in our culture that it’s considered normal when a father threatens to have his gun out when first meeting his daughter’s partner. Nobody really thinks about the effects of this normalized violence.

I apologize but this will be kind of dark. As a father I know you are going to be desperate to protect her, but don’t wax poetic about dealing violence to anyone who would do her wrong. For example, don’t talk about beating her current boyfriend/girlfriend if they cross her. Girls are going to have shitty relationships because that’s a part of growing up. Don’t make her think talking to you about them is the nuclear option when she’s still trying to figure out what is acceptable and her boundaries. If she thinks you’ll go beat the shit out of any one who looks at her funny, she might not come to you with her problems until she is willing to accept her dad going to prison for a long time. Everyone is right about listening to her, but make sure she that she knows that you can be trusted. Listen, accept her decisions, work with her, and not to fly off of the handle. Best of luck new father, since you’re asking the right questions I think you are going to be fine.

Good on you for sticking by her while she was working it out. Changing medication is so hard and takes a while especially if you’re taking more than one kind. I am really happy you both got through it and that she found something better!

Take my meds- man I never thought I was that different on or off meds until the recent ADHD medication shortage combined with some personal issues last Fall made me fall apart. My poor SO was worried sick because I was losing my damn mind, turns out I do not mask well. I didn’t realize that being properly medicated is as much of a public service as a personal one. May your meds always be available and well balanced.

Heck yeah that last pizza sounds awesome! Haven’t used the “pizza” yeast but I have noticed a real difference with bread flour. The bread flour is a bit more elastic when shaping, it is easier to get to larger pies without tearing the dough. I have noticed that if you let it get too warm it gets really loose lol. I hope you enjoy your pizza journey, it’s a lot of trial and error. Tasty trial and error.

Hey that looks pretty dang good for a month in. Making pizza from scratch is tough. I had to make an extra dough ball for like the first 6 months because I would either tear the dough or it would fold over on the peal when I tried to launch it. It looks pretty nicely browned too so you’re off to a good start.