This is one is genre specific, but Caesar 3. I love city builders and have played them for as long as they’ve existed. I’ve learned all the little tricks and systems of the ones I’ve played, exploiting esoteric mechanics and optimizing my little utopias and creating epic, sprawling empires that far exceed every metric asked of me. That said, Caesar 3 is a challenge I still relish after (oh wow, has it really been) 25 years. It’s the only city builder where the “peaceful” branch in the story is harder than the “wartime” scenarios. I revisited it recently wondering if I was just missing something back when I was younger, but nope. On the harder levels it asks you to sustain larger and larger populations with increasingly limited resources, and reaching the level of getting patrician housing (only achieved with sustained, stable access to literally every amenity) is extremely difficult but oh so satisfying. Every other city builder I’ve played, I barely have to think about every house becoming the top tier, but in Caesar 3 it’s impressive if even a single block achieves it. It stands out even now after so many new entrants into the genre. Hell, it’s still worth playing haha.

I’ve had to make the call on senior pets about four times now, and it’s tough. Sometimes it’s easier, when they’re in visible and obvious pain and sometimes it’s hard, when there’s no one thing you can point to. The lovely home vet who helped my last senior kitty pass said it helps to keep track of the good days and bad days. If your pet is affectionate, playful, can get excited, that’s a good day. If they hide, lie in quiet places and aren’t interested in things they usually love then that’s a bad day. When the majority of their days are bad days, it’s time.

I wouldn’t think your dog would have better care in a shelter, even if you’re feeling guilty about being away a lot. Maybe there’s a way to shift your schedule to have more time with your dog when he’s most active, or maybe there’s a local kid who wouldn’t mind hanging out with your dog on certain days. It’s worth exploring more options because a shelter will almost certainly be a worse experience for him.

The one I eat most often is overnight oats, just steel cut oats and whole milk with some fruit if I have it. Favorite to eat is probably bananas foster french toast made with home made brioche. Nothing like starting your day with a brown sugar, caramel and rum sauce haha.

Oh is that the term for it? I’ve been calling it “super smooth scrambled eggs” which doesn’t adequately describe the texture. Egg curds is pretty close but it’s almost like a creamed egg. So soft and fluffy, I like to add cream cheese into it while it’s cooking and serve it on toast with melty cheese and a bit of tomato salsa. Yum!

I appreciate the shout out to Guild Wars there. Aside from the opaque learning curve it’s one of the most player friendly live service games going.

Yeah Dreamfall was a much darker game in setting and themes, and I remember that while the protagonist tried some humor here and there it was just not as rewarding to interact with certain impractical things or be goofy like you could with April. April’s journal was also worth reading for some funny summaries of events, but Zoe’s was generally pretty dry and more pragmatic.

I still remember getting stuck on some underwater puzzle in Arcadia and dropping the game for a while before coming back and admitting defeat with a walkthrough guide. Definitely a game where you need to hang up your pride sometimes haha. I enjoyed both games, though Dreamfall was sadly missing some of the humor and silliness (it did try… a little). I have fond memories of the series though.

EV driving really shines in local trips, which is the majority of most people’s driving. My husband and I have solar panels and a plug in hybrid, so his commute to work every day is essentially free for us (aside from wear and tear). If you’re regularly driving long hauls then fully EV doesn’t seem to make sense yet, but for every day driving, the trade off of having cheaper daily trips with occasional higher expenses for long hauls probably still nets a lower cost per mile.

It basically describes the idea of a digital replicant though. Your body dies but you’d have a perfect copy of your consciousness to continue on without mortal constraints.

This is really well articulated and puts into words the reason I stopped playing. I was one of those non FPS players who really thrived on Sym and Moira and Mercy and I felt welcomed and appreciated when it first came out. I just had fun and that made me want to try to get better and kept me coming back. As they kept retooling things, especially with Sym 3.0, I felt they were deliberately pushing me and people like me out. Instead of having a fun, wild and playful team game for my friends to all have a good time in, it became just another FPS game.

A “crescent” moon 🥐

There are so many great tasting cheap wines! My favorite is about $16-18 or so but I’m perfectly happy with $4-8 wine too. I will agree though that there are some extremely interesting and complex flavors to be found in the high end stuff that I find very compelling, and can understand the appeal of, but I ain’t paying for it.

Women absolutely are penalized for showing emotion. Socially between friends there is a lot better support, and that is probably what you are thinking of. In a workplace environment though, there can be serious consequences for expressing anything other than congeniality. If you’re socially withdrawn you’re an ice queen, if you get angry (no matter how justifiable) you’re a bitch or a dragon lady. If you’re stressed and not perfectly composed you’re weak “unable to handle the pressure”. I get that men are subject to the same kind of judgments but there seems to be more leeway.

I agree with your feeling for the most part. White chocolate is not chocolate and does not belong in chocolate assortments or in the lofty company of actual chocolate. It’s a byproduct of chocolate making more than a chocolate itself. That being said, candy and sweets that are made with cocoa butter can be nice. I’m just not going to eat it when I want chocolate.

Flip flops or beach shoes, some kind of shade, and a HAT!

We have a credit card that gives 6% cash back on groceries, 3% on gas and some discounts on streaming services. It blows my mind that every few months I can cash out a $200 or so credit towards my balance. I needed to buy those things anyway and have autopay set to the full balance each month so it really is free money. So if you can get one, absolutely a credit card that gives cash back. The one I mentioned is Amex Blue Cash Preferred but there other options out there that give other bonuses, like 2% back on everything or 6% back on something up to a certain cap.

More and more people are shaking off the old expectations of women’s passivity and men’s aggressiveness. There’s still a ways to go but it’s not as radically rare as it would have been 30-40 years ago. I was the one who proposed to my husband and took the active role in wooing him, and I’ve told that story quite a bit and only had positive reactions. Amongst our friends, I’m the only one I know who took the lead like that, but there are a lot of personalities that vary dramatically from the classic gender binary relationship. I would say my husband is the kinder and more gentle of the two of us, and he’s a tender and loving parent. Our partnership has a lot of quirks and would probably only work for us, but what’s important is that it does work.

I’m also going to say that it’s good to have an idea of what you want in a relationship, but don’t let a fantasy get in the way of reality. What you daydream about might be attainable, but more likely you will need to compromise on some things, and dating and having relationship experiences will be lessons in what those things can be.

Seconding 9 Parchments and the Trine series. They are both by the same studio and they are beautiful games, they make sure every new scene is a tableau worthy of a screenshot with hyper saturated fanciful environments. The gameplay is fun, polished and goes by fast, in a good way.

Oh man, as a new-ish parent I’m starting to get those sudden out of the blue hugs and cuddles and they’re amazing. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that my kid would love me but it’s like an instant shot of dopamine every time.

I’m excited to see the progress of 3d printers becoming more user friendly, reliable and inexpensive. I’ve been keeping an eye on the development of consumer printing and there are so many types of materials to print with at higher and higher details with less troubleshooting needed. I’m thinking I’ll finally jump in this year but I’ve had very little time for hobbies lately.