For mac and cheese: medium shells, ditalini
For red sauce pasta: medium shells, rotini
For pasta alfredo: medium shells, fettuccine

So I guess you could say my favorite pasta is potato gnocchi

I’m a lifetime Windows user. I used to have to type run win3.exe on my first computer. I installed Linux mint on my new pc build a couple weeks ago and have been moving in and getting everything set up. Some people absolutely will make the change.

I’ve been making the switch on my own new PC, some programs I was concerned about can be run ok through Lutris. It’s been an adjustment but no regrets

Posted most of this in another thread but I’m glad to spread the word. I usually find things by searching what I want to buy and then adding “-amazon”, “-etsy”, or “-wayfair”.

Some general recs:

B&H Photo or Microcenter for anything electronic or computer related

Sweetwater for music stuff, there’s a lot of great small music stores, or marketplaces like Reverb

For clothes, if you have any clothes you already enjoy, go directly to their brand website. If you don’t, go to local secondhand shops and touch, handle and try on some clothes to see them in person. I’ve discovered some brands I like by finding something in a thrift store that was well made but not my size or preferred color.

For house DIY stuff, we order from a local building supply store, but there’s also hardwareandtools.com, 1stoplighting, Waysource, Lightbulbs.com, Timothy’s Toolbox etc.

For food items, local grocery stores often offer online shopping and delivery. If it’s a specialty item or imported the import companies sometimes have their own websites.

For super fast, need it now shipping, Target has a lot of the same things Amazon does and even does same day delivery for an extra fee for certain items.

For something hard to find you can’t find another site for, try Ebay.

I do business with all sorts of independent retailers and have only had good experiences with them. These are sites that I’ve personally bought from but there are a lot of smaller sites just trying to make a place for themselves on the internet

Ren faire folks LOVE stuff like that, you should absolutely see if you have one nearby. If you’re in the states, each state usually has one.

Don’t worry you’ll reread it again 😋

Part of the pros of it being so long is by the time you’re done you can start over again and it feels fresh hahs.

I was driving home from an event late at night on a highway. It was warm and my AC wasn’t working, and my eyes felt heavy. My blinks kept getting longer until I realized my eyes had been closed too long. I realized I was falling asleep at 65mph and opened up the windows and managed to wake myself up, but if the road had been any busier I could have killed someone, myself included.

38 hours, I was working on a creative project I was passionate about with a hard deadline. I worked on it basically non-stop the entire time, I don’t remember much of it though. I do remember that after about 30 hours I started seeing patterns on things, like the walls and ceiling were covered in shifting sliding wallpaper.

This absolutely tracks with my experience after having a kid. Suddenly I have little to no time to waste and so every hour I have to myself I feel that urgency and pressure to get as much done as possible. I’ve never had less free time or been so consistently productive as this last year. I think the demands are not so intense that I’m going to crash, but I do chafe against the limitations. I’m frustrated that I’m unable to excuse the time for my favorite leisure activities, and I miss video games. However I have gotten so many projects done, some things that have been sitting around for years, that I have to give myself a bit of credit for once.

You could take on some community volunteer work, get involved with a local group that’s doing work that aligns with your values and fill up your schedule with some hard commitments to do something worthwhile. I just volunteered for a committee in my town and it was way easier than I expected to get involved.

I read those books over and over again just to spend more time there. I still remember more details about the cultures, cities, and fashion in those books better than I could ever remember the plot. The magic and higher moral themes were very simplistic in comparison to other books but RJ really excelled at fleshing out a continent with diverse and unique peoples that made sense in that world.

In my experience it was like making new friends but more stressful.

Dating felt a lot like looking for a job, trying to find prospects, going out on job interviews but with a relationship at stake instead of employment. You start with this rough pretext of wanting to get to know each other, and you ask questions about things that are important to you, muddling through small talk. You try to be entertaining, showing your best self until you get invested enough in each other. It’s stressful but can also be exciting because when you find someone you get along with it can be exhilarating.

Then, if you know you like someone but are unsure about whether they reciprocate your insecurities go nuts. You live in two simultaneous imaginary universes where in one, things go well and you live happily ever after, in another they declare you unfit for their life goals and leave you hurting and back to the grind of searching. Then, if you get to it, there’s the comfortable period of having your relationship defined and developing on what is ostensibly a good path and you can relax more and show your “real” self. If both of you can tolerate each other at your worst, that can lead to a proper partnership which and should feel like hanging out with a best friend. Your partner becomes your go-to person to enjoy things with and consistent companion, which obviously can be really nice.

When your kid runs at you to give you the most enthusiastic hug of your life just because.

Haha, that pre-bed burst of energy where you get more done in an hour than you did most of the day, and then get to go lie in bed with your mind racing about everything you were going to do and will definitely do tomorrow instead of sleeping, and then feel guilty for not being able to stick to the schedule people are asking you to and that your life demands, yeah that shit is the best.

It’s been a struggle all of my life to live on a diurnal schedule, we are the cave guardians

Toxic Magic fuckery could fill this entire thread. Hell, just toxic blue deck fuckery could fill this entire thread.

I have an irrational dislike of her voice and the way she talks but nothing against her as a person or a professional.

I just bought a bunch of onesies and toddler clothes directly from Carter’s and the Children’s Place. They do seasonal sales and loyalty points so I actually got a better deal than on Amazon. Got the packages within 5 days each. I bought diapers from Target, they came in two days and I got a $20 giftcard as part of the deal. Next time you need something, try going directly to the brand’s website, or literally any other retailer. Amazon spams search results but they aren’t the only store on the internet.

Not necessarily, people don’t travel through time in Dune but they do see through time, and Spice specifically enables humans to see the past and future. I can theorize that actually traveling into the past is something only intelligent machines were able to facilitate. It could also be a situation where the high tech solution (lasers) has already been countered (shields) so the low tech solution (swords) becomes the better weapon. It could also be by a mutual agreement, or simply lost tech.

Yep, for just about everything you get on Amazon there are alternatives. You just go to the supplier that sells the thing you need instead. Amazon hasn’t had real 2 day shipping in a long time. If you really need that “everything store” experience, Ebay, Target and Walmart all have decent online marketplaces but might as well use the smaller stores. What’s keeping you on Amazon? It sure as hell isn’t its search, and tons of sites offer free, fast shipping. I have to assume it’s habit.