Christ, do you understand how big this could be if anyone would let it? (they won’t)

Even a ton of “more environmentally friendly” textiles are as bad if not somehow worse than their already destructive counterparts. I ran the numbers once in an argument and a recyclable shopping bag requires a little over 70 uses just to break even with the comparable pollution it took to make it, but most people who even use them throw them out after less than 20.

God, I wish it said anything about how resilient it is as clothing in comparison to regular leather. I’ve known about the making of lab-grown ghost hearts and stuff through a similar method for a while now, but this never even occurred to me. I know next to nothing about bacteria, clearly.

Sadly, there’s still too much money in doing anything else, I’d bet. So many companies put too much effort into PR, greenwashing and general slavery to want to move over, and this would affect more industries than one.

I know there is one man out there who has friends he talks to and also perhaps a therapist. Same as women. That guy? That semi-theoretical guy is hot. That guy knows how to communicate like you wouldn’t believe.

Otherwise known as: “what if everyone’s abusive ex ran the government?”

I was just thinking the same thing. More than the usual amount of love went into that one, and most people probably wouldn’t even stop to notice. The subtle fade-out at the top. That is some pleasing vomit.

Ok. Mini-rant because I can’t contain myself atm. Do you wanna know a badly-kept secret? I’ve been making art on and off for 29 years. My ass wishes I could draw too. A ton of artists wish they could draw.

Talent will only give you a leg up, and mainly just at the beginning. The rest, all of us have to struggle for and I’m quite sure very few of us appreciate having to do so. And no matter how good they get, there is always something they have no idea how to do yet or they have some idol whose style they envy more than their own. Or they’re the type that only hates what they make because they’re the one who made it.

Van Gogh had a painter friend named Gauguin, and they were both jealous of each other. There is no magical point that one hits where you feel like you’re Good Enough. The best you can aim for is the kind of steady improvement you don’t even notice happening except on a scale of years, and the confidence to acknowledge those improvements instead of hyper-focusing on every way it isn’t what you saw in your head (it never is).

Go get a pencil or your ipad or whatever. Youtube is by far your biggest friend. Go look up videos about how to actually see what’s in front of you instead of what your brain insists must logically be there. USE REFERENCE. Trace a photo over and over, then immediately try the same thing freehand – this one is super useful, because a lot of drawing is also muscle memory. Break things down into simple shapes and then build on those. Use the open space between objects if you need to, to trick yourself into drawing something complex without getting lost in intimidating structural details.

When you’ve got those down, move onto perspective and composition. Cry a little if you have to, then get back to it. Because now you’re able to do whole backgrounds. People? Do tons of deliberately imprecise gesture drawings. Give your OC a terrifying robot head, a pillow for a torso, and springs for limbs. But go get. Your pencil. And be ok with drawing at first like everyone thinks they draw.

Barring that, my second choice is singing.

Ideally, global warming, but it would be fair to view that as pointless when dissipating the extra CO2 doesn’t necessarily return the trees and the problem would degrade again in a couple hundred years. You’d have to introduce a new fuel source that is sought after, clean, and eternal. Which would be two wishes.

So you have to define it as both of your options, since the loss of either worsens the other. Turn the whole environment back to where it was in the 1200s, overrun the streets with bears, see if I care. It’ll give 'em something to do. Especially the Amazonian avocado farmers.

The part where the ecosystem is in collapse?

I’ll admit, there have been multiple times recently I’ve started to wonder if he’s somehow a pod person. And he’s…certainly one to speak, as a national representative.

But as much as it irks me, I’d rather admit to common ground than find myself sacrificing my own morals on the basis that I don’t like who said it.

Turkish has a spelling error. Adım is supposed to have a dotless i, forcing his last name to be pronounced like “ruddle.” He should have stayed in regular school a bit longer if he’s going to be bending the rules of grammar like that.

That said, Swedish is the clear winner here for making magic Hitler’s middle name Gus, and because it makes a lot of in-world sense to use with a Latin translation when every spell also uses Latin. An extra bit of world building, since they logically should have been learning it.

In that case, I also choose NZ 802 years ago.

In general, or just in red states? Cross-referencing LGBT politicians with their states’ historical political leanings, an openly LGBT politician has been elected or reelected while their state was considered republican a total of 96 times. The lead is actually a three-way split between Florida, Georgia, and Arizona, each with a total of 9.

So. Less than it perhaps should. Way more than you’d think.

When I get deeply emotionally attached to my data analyst, I might care if they’re moonlighting on the side. Sex, work or not, is still an emotional topic for most of the human race and it’s not new knowledge to anyone.

Enough that it would not naturally occur to me that “please do not engage in prostitution while we’re together” needs to be said out loud. I will casually ask if you’re monogamous and if you say yes, that’s how monogamy works.

Even aside from that, yeah, tbh, I would consider it good form to let your partner know you’re considering a new job regardless, just so they generally know what’s going on. If you have to hide it, maybe something is wrong.

I think we very much do understand it’s a problem and there is not a whole lot women can do about it that we aren’t already doing. The majority of feminists would love for men to see a fucking therapist. They keep fighting it tooth and nail, though.

They’ll either not open up at all for fear of being judged, or they’ll ONLY lean on the women in their life. The one or two women in their life, because in my anecdotal experience they don’t seem to stick around women they can’t sleep with.

You guys want and desperately need actual emotional support, but you seemingly refuse to support each other. When we tell you to so much as just give each other the compliments you’re looking for, it’s met with whining because the respondents want women to do it. Even though mainly the compliments we get are…also from women, and going along with this request puts us in harm’s way.

A lot of men are so beat to shit from such an early age that they can’t even put a name to a lot of emotions besides anger. Which causes them to be both unable to manage what they can barely explain, and to feel significantly uncomfortable (outmatched) in marriage counseling, watching their wife run circles around them.

But biting the bullet and improving on emotional literacy via counseling and/or self-study and deep reflection never seems to strike the fancy. Their date has to teach them. And they WILL be fighting every step of the way.

I would love to date someone who doesn’t define their entire existence through their job. That’s nearly the entire reason two out of my four relationships fell to pieces.

-I- didn’t give a shit. I met one of them when we were both homeless and said yes anyway. But if I made more money or they got laid off at any point, both of them would have a months-long binge drinking breakdown regardless of what I said.

You know you could just stop, right? That’s what’s incredibly frustrating about this for me. A lot of problems that are specific to men seem to be an issue of self-image, and are thus self-imposed, and you could just. Stop.

I can’t make anyone not pick me up by the throat, but any day you could just wake up and decide your paycheck doesn’t actually fucking matter and never date someone who thinks it does.

You could be excruciatingly nice to people for no reason instead of demanding women do it, work out what’s going on with you and tell people about it, and give them both barrels if they think a human being needing help is gay.

As much as I feel for men as a group, it’s the empathetic part that makes me want to hold them upside down and shake them till the sense falls out. Take. Care of each other. Fix the thing.

I warned my ex to be safe when the biology of it was just beginning to be understood back in March/April 2020, and his exact response was, “It’s not like I’m going to die.” He says, occupying every high risk category except “immunocompromised.”

So yeah, apparently.

Well, that makes them like the edge of a freezie pop. Those are dangerous.

I don’t think plastic would cut so well as it does in the article’s video, but maybe it’s not the only schematic.

Rewrite it for someone who doesn’t drink.

Same course it took the first time, only sped up by three years:

• Confront my “fiancee” about what the fuck his problem is, and make clear that if the relationship keeps going like this, there’s no point in keeping it.

He won’t care any more than he did the first time around. He was too pigheaded for that and he never believed I’d actually do it. But I would have given him an overt shot.

• A bit more mindful of the bc, perhaps.

• Take an ex-friend up on their romantic offer much more quickly. I wasn’t ready to jump back in at the time, but in my head I would now have been single for years.

He’d probably have the same reaction to this that he had last time — evaporating from my life completely — but I figure I might as well while we’re still talking and I’m not going to lose anything I haven’t already lost.

• Consider transportational/long-distance options in regards to the same college as before, as I am magically aware of one single existing career option that I’m actually passionate about instead of just performing for sustenance. Don’t drop out this time.

Also fight tooth and nail to take A/P like the requirements suggest is necessary. There is a fuck up either in their system or in the counselor’s brain.

• Call my dad/accept one of his calls.

He has an impossibly hard time not being abusive at pure random, and I don’t think there was ever any choice I could make that he wouldn’t find fault with. Telling him all the above may make him proud but probably not. But he kills himself next year and he turns out to be the parent that loved me.

• Persuade him about/do not dawdle on what little he leaves you in the will he never signs.

• Put your inheritance in the stock market where it belongs, not in “good people” who “really need the help” so they aren’t “legit starving bro” like you’re starving. Two legs bad.

• Cry substantially and more than once. The best baby kitty you will ever meet is at the helpless mercy of someone you don’t want to share a state with, much less “date” in order to care for her.

What do we do. She has no one else, so now she has no one. Do we have an obligation to pretend, in the hopes of taking the cat when we leave?

It’s not her bowl. She just turned into a bitch.

Ohhh man. This had me cackling. I mean, I feel bad for you, but it does speak to me in my soul.

The one I have now won’t even eat off a plate unless it’s wet food, where I’m guessing she’s too excited to care about the peasant presentation.

I found out about the whisker thing and handed her fresh kibble that way just to see, and she wouldn’t even touch it til I put it in her bowl for her.

It HAS to be in a bowl and it HAS to be full to overflowing, and she’d better not see any goddamn silver or she’ll beat me with a coat hanger. And then the bottom goes stale because her whiskers.

If we make them out of little bits of plastic, the answer is shockingly yes

They rarely eat pumpkin, calling it “squash”, and renaming squash to something else (summer squash or something?)

Admittedly, I and probably 70% of other Americans were formerly unaware that pumpkins are a variety of squash, making this paragraph surprisingly difficult for me to even parse. So that was an interesting and kind of fun experience.

If it helps, I have come to realize after thinking about it that I see any roundish variety, regardless of smoothness or color, as a pumpkin, regardless of its actual name. If it’s gourd-shaped (butternut/zucchini), it’s a squash.

The flavor is seasonal and therefore novel, you’re right about that. But tbf, indian food uses squash in general, which seems to extend to white/orange pumpkins, and we definitely have Indian-Americans. Ditto Hispanic. It is eaten more often than the two holidays, just not by white people.

For the useless naming difference, as always, any beef with America can more factually be blamed on the Europeans. Specifically, the French.