I think one of the biggest issues with BE attempting to follow in AC’s footsteps is that the factions were not distinct, and it felt extremely generic. BE’s factions were all similar, played similarly, and all had the same options for development and could all take the same evolutions. In AC, not only were the faction leaders ideologies revealed in quotes in the tech tree and secret projects, it was inescapable in the game mechanics. The reason I feel Stellaris is a closer sibling is that it managed to mimic something of how it felt to be an idealogical leader attempting to make sure your values and your goals for the future were the ones that were supreme. BE was “civ in space”.

Piano is way up there, not just because it’s mechanically simple to learn and understand (press button, note plays, always same note in same place) but because there are just massive amounts of resources to learn how to play. When I had more time, I had a lot of fun playing songs on a light up keyboard hooked up to a computer using Synthesia. I would download a song I wanted to learn (eg Moonlight Sonata), and the keys I needed to press would light up, so I would play the song bit by bit, building muscle memory. I was able to use a music sheet just to remind me of what my fingers already knew. Is it the “right way” to learn? Probably not but it’s fun and easy and that’s what I wanted.

We made the mistake of showing our two year old the “got your nose” thing. Now he will sometimes grab our noses, and he will “eat” them, or swap them with his, or throw them away, or make them smell his feet. Each time he thinks of a new thing to do with our “noses” it makes me laugh so I’m a part of the problem.

Yes, I get them as random texts sometimes from a website called Research-Polls. They direct me to some questions about certain ballot measures in the state my phone’s area code is from. I no longer live there but sometimes if the whim strikes me I’ll answer

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.

Not clicked but the most effective advertisement I’ve ever seen was a billboard on a highway from Georgia to Ohio. It was a dark color with obnoxiously bright pink lettering in a huge, bold, sans serif font that just said PEACHES Exit 318 and that was it. I was driving with my mother and we were ready for a snack so we stopped. It was a little farm stand with various produce and we bought a box of picked-that-day, sun ripe Georgia summer peaches and they were one the best goddamn things I’ve ever eaten. We almost turned around just to get more haha.

That’s how I learned the bottom tooth whistle! One of my bottom front teeth was a bit crooked and created a tiny gap at the top, and I learned to whistle through it. When I got my teeth straightened I lost the ability to do the invert whistle and some of my control but I can still do it well enough with the pursed lip method.

Ha! I haven’t heard of that, but maybe I should try to learn it just to know more ways. Not that I’m doing much with the ones I do know at the moment, lol

I can whistle in three different ways. The classic pursed lip whistle, a whistle using just the tip of my tongue and the roof of my mouth, not using my lips at all, and then another using the tops of my bottom teeth. I can make decent bird sounds using my bottom teeth, but I can do pretty much any tune I can think of with the pursed lip method. It has been relevant to my life exactly zero times, except to entertain myself.

This scenario would mean major negligence on their part, as they had been with Cloudflare for years. When it was clear their services were costing more than the business plan paid for, that’s when they should have been contacted with clear numbers and a sheepish admission that “unlimited” doesn’t actually mean unlimited. It certainly seems shady to me that they attempted to make it about a TOS violation, that there’s no public information about enterprise level and pricing, and that the second they said they were talking to a competitor they had their data purged. It sounds like a failed attempt at extortion to me.

I don’t think dishes and laundry are a socio-economic problem unless you’re implying all ADHD people should always be able to afford household help and assistance. Plenty of people with disabilities and challenges have to deal with chores as a function of being alive, including ADHD people. It’s a part of existence that your clothes will need washing, trash will need to be taken out, and I agree that not doing them is a bad thing. The timetable, the consequences of inaction, the associated stress, all of that can be variable and that is where flexibility should be given, but ffs ADHD people should and need to do chores too.

Divorce rate spiked in the US when no-fault divorce was finally introduced, and that is when that idea of “50% of marriages end in divorce” popped up. According to these stats it’s been roughly a third for the past 20 years. So about 66% of marriages go the distance in the US.

When I was in elementary school we would go to the scholastic book fair, and they had a lot of kids’ books that had audiobooks on cassette bundled with them. My parents got me my own player and I’d sit up in my room playing with blocks or dolls or whatever while listening to The Seven Chinese Brothers or Swimmy, that kind of thing. Some thirty years later my husband let me use his Audible account and I rediscovered the joy of listening to books while doing random stuff around the house.

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 🐉

Not everybody has a choice or an option, there are so many places in the US where the place you live absolutely necessitates the use of a car to do literally anything related to living your life. Living in places with actual transit infrastructure that allow independence from cars are sometimes too expensive or have high COL’s

You might have a local apiary too, sometimes small businesses aren’t really that visible online. You could look on Facebook but I found mine at our town’s annual street fair. You could try going to a nearby farmer’s market and see if anyone is selling honey there too.

The recipes I’m finding are all for a gallon or more at a time, do you think it’s worth doing a smaller test batch (like 1/2 gallon) or does it work better with the whole gallon?

Hmmm we have a local apiary, maybe I’ll try it too!

I don’t remember it ever being explicitly mentioned that they don’t have first hand battle experience, I guess it’s time for yet another rewatch 😋