The Stand (by King), The Stormlight Archive (by Brandon Sanderson), and The Player Of Games by Ian M. Banks are excellent.

I also liked Yesteryear by Caro Burke, but it gave off similar vibes to the video game called “Omori” and the nonfiction book called Educated by Tara Westover. All three are not happy stories, lol.

I’m currently reading through the Stormlight Archive series and I’m currently waiting on copies of the third book to become available at the library. It can’t come soon enough!

Edit: I’ve also read through a number of books on diseases and Ebola just before the current outbreak happened. If you like virology and that sort of thing, lmk :)

If you have 100k saved in liquid cash, you definitely need to be investing that in broad scale index funds. Keeping it liquid means inflation is going to be eating away at your money over time, which is really not good. The whole market is pretty out of balance due to AI, but it’s better to get in now rather than trying to wait and see. You have time to recover from market crashes, just don’t panic sell if the market crashes.

If financial stuff isn’t your thing, you can also save for retirement in prefabbed vehicles called Target-Date Funds. These are kinda annoying as they have a decent amount of fees, but you basically set a retirement goal date, and they will automatically rebalance more and more conservatively over time. However, you are at a bit of a disadvantage if you start at 43. I’d recommend saving aggressively if you can afford to.

Renting vs buying is always a thing, and it highly depends where you live. Having money for a down payment is good, but I’d consider what 100k invested right now would do for you until you are 80 vs what a house would do for you instead. 40 years of interest could be better than a significant debt load, even with several market crashes.

Fwiw, if you don’t have a spouse or kids, I don’t really see much value in a house. Rent a cheap one bed and laugh all the way to the bank when a water pipe breaks and you don’t have to cover 75k in water damage.

I got a Motorola Stylus 5g 2024 for $250. There’s probably newer now, but it’s a decent device with a headphone jack, large battery, SD card slot, and a stylus. It feels similarly decent to my Z fold 4, which was surprising. I thought it would be laggy.

Looks cool! I hope they release a slider, someday. I miss my 00s era slider.

You should have seen my face the first time I learned he was actually married.

There really is someone for everyone, as impossible as that sounds.

I don’t take 30 minutes, but I do shave my body.

Hopefully not an open pit mine, they’re terrible for the environment. But otherwise, yes, and I would absolutely wish it on my worst enemy. GDP would go through the roof until the novelty of BDSM in the workplace wore off. xD

Gaming is a hobby, but just that. A hobby. We like to do other stuff like camping, skiing, hiking, etc.

It may be good to have an open discussion with your gf about doing other things, or a couple’s counselor. The latter might be easier if you are unsure about how to really talk about it.

I’ve had the opposite of this. Now, stuff that you used to get same day IRL now takes two weeks to deliver. But it’s no longer sold in stores, so you actually have to wait, lol.

If it’s in store, I’m too impatient to wait weeks for something to ship from overseas.

If it makes you feel better, virtually nobody is immune. The ADF and other anti-democratic organizations do this for their bread and butter. They slowly chip away at public sentiment over time, even if it takes decades to pass their extremely dumb shit.

Unflavored shredded wheat cereal with frozen berries, toast or vegetarian sausage, and quality tea.

In summer, I’ll sometimes swap the tea for a smoothie if it’s been hot.

I definitely would leave it up to them. It is a very long recovery to regrow that skin if they have regrets or issues later in life.

Someone hopped a nearly 6 foot tall by 4 feet deep construction barrier blocking both ends of an out of service escalator, with multiple pallets or replacement escalator stairs stacked all around it. (The elevator was in service right by the escalator)

Anyways, they predictably fell through the massive hole in the escalator and cut their shins to ribbons on the exposed stairs. They then got to the bottom of the train station platform and were bitching about their legs. Eventually, they hailed a police officer just to bitch and whine further about their gouged shins. The officer had the grace to just listen to the guy and not call him a dumb motherfucker for hopping the multiple tall plastic barriers and signs. I was just shaking my head in amazement until my train came.

They’re lucky that they didn’t fall the 30-45 feet down to the train platform by hopping the construction barrier either.

Wow, things really haven’t changed all that much, haha. Pretty sure you can get essentially that exact same design at outdoor stores.

Just out of curiosity, how?

Silksong and helldivers 2.

I wanna try MGSV, but it hasn’t gone on sale since the 70 buck remaster came out.

I love how dad jokes cross cultural lines :)

https://news.google.com/home

I still want to play MGSV, but it’s currently not on sale. My guess is because of the latest remaster.

Definitely would bike or bus something over 30m