Private servers with boosted rates can scratch that itch while severely reducing the grind. Every couple years I'll poke my head into one, level to endgame in like a week, do some raids, do some PVP, then completely forget it exists. Couple years later, rinse and repeat.
Like... a red state? We don't deserve him.
Everything with a laugh track. If your production has to lean on some peer pressure cue to trick my brain into thinking it's funny, it's not funny.
Laugh tracks are to comedy, as jump scares are to horror. From a psychological standpoint, it kinda works to get the desired response, but it's the lowest hanging fruit, and isn't necessary if the material isn't empty and half-assed in the first place.
This is 100% an unpopular opinion that in no way is meant to shit on the TON of people who love it, but...
Game of Thrones. I love medieval dark fantasy and some well written political intrigue. I've been told by so many people how much I would love GoT. The ingredients are all there.
But then I try to watch it, and get bored every time. Not really sure why - seems like a guaranteed hit... but the hook just never sinks in.
But we already have RL ad blockers.
Iirc the legal term is "vandalism". The stakes are higher, but the perk is that one user can block an ad for every user, so think of it as a community effort.
If you liked Skyrim, check out Enderal - it's a total conversion mod, but in Steam as it's own game. It's much more linear than Skyrim - the world still feels open, but it's much more dense, and it's scaled more like a traditional RPG, so if you wander off the intended path too far, you'll get your ass beat by mobs that are much higher level than you.
Side quests are meh, with a notable exception of the Rhalata line, which is kind of like a combo of thieves guild and dark brotherhood. Main quest line is fucking wild.
If you skip the vast majority of side quests, you might have an issue with scaling, since you'll be missing out on all that xp. If you run into that and don't want to do the quests, just use the command console to cheat some in.
Trump deserves a grave
Graves are to honor the dead. Trump deserves to have his corpse cast into the reservoir of the nearest outhouse and left to rot with the rest of the sewage.
Meh. This is up there with him saying "fuck". I don't really care if he knows a date off the top of his head - it's a non-issue.
I'm far more concerned about him shitting on the Constitution, turning the military and federal law enforcement on US citizens, metaphorically raping the economy, literally raping women, and his long list of actual crimes he's committed against the US.
He unleashes an actually-impactful scandal on daily basis: let's not get distracted by petty shit.
I have to be in an unusually confrontational mood to pull shit like this, but three or four times now when I've been bombarded by sales floor hawks, I motioned my hand at them like a Jedi mind trick and said "Adblock." mid-sentence in their pitch.
No eye contact, never stopped walking. So far it's got a 100% success rate in stopping the pitch instantly.
Looking more into this since posting, it appears the concepts I mentioned in the OP are WAY too specific, but I was able to find some articles for patterns to incorporate.
Stars/Mallow - opposition to evil / giver of life
Cross - centricity (closest I could find to represent the partnership the Ukrainian and US doctors). Will probably go for an upright cross vs diagonal just cuz that type of image is generally associated with medicine (not by Ukrainian embroidery specifically, but the medical vibe still fits in as a nice bonus)
Squares - Represents the 'earthly field' - thinking alternating iconography of the Ukranian Trident and those practice-specific things that I still need to follow up on; all encased in a square, also signifying that partnership.
Circles - continuity of life, again kinda thinking to use that to play into a medical theme.
Poppies - protection against evil (I can't tell if the ones in the bottom part of the image are poppies or something else, but that kind of art style is more what I'd be shooting for vs the one on top).
Oak Branches - strength/bravery, a nod to the front lines / the people this program is specifically seeking to bring treatment to.
I'm feeling better about actually going forward with this, especially if I can come up with a pattern that spells out a clear message to the people coming from that culture - vs just a bunch of random symbols slapped together into the embroidered equivalent of alphabet soup. Still hoping for insight though, so anyone in the know, please school me!
Look for local LGBT+ friendly gun ranges. Some of them offer classes geared specifically to that audience (probably the same material as any other course, just without the usual 'gun nut' crowd).
...speaking of, I need to follow up with the one in my area - I've been trying get some hours in as a volunteer, but they never replied to my email. Thanks for the reminder!!
Made this for a comment reply to another thread; thought y'all would enjoy it too! ^_^
Skip to the tldr if you don't want the novel explaining the reasoning.
A friend gifted me their old Razer Kraken headset a while ago. The leather Razer uses is some CHEAP shit, so the couple years in a closet leading up to it landing on my noggin left it in a state of deterioration that would sprinkle my head and ears with little bits of black leather.
The speakers are good though, and free is free, so no complaints: I hit it with some duct tape and peeled it off repeatedly until all the leather bits were freed up - the cloth layer underneath the leather is now the outermost layer, and no more black sprinkles all over, so yay.
Unfortunately the tape pulling on the ear cushions was a bit too much for whatever adhesive Razer uses to stick em on to their mounting plate, and they pretty much just pulled off. Also no biggie - replacements are pretty cheap on Amazon, so I got a set and lived happily ever after...
...but now I've got the old mounting plates (minus the cushions) and an idea.
So... I do a lot of gaming, wife watches a lot of TV. We do this in the same room, so I pretty much always have my headset on, which blocks most TV noises from getting to me, and most gaming noises from getting to her. Works great until she says something, and all I hear is muffled gibberish until I lift a speaker off my ear and hit her with "What?".
-----------TLDR---------------
My idea is to put... idk... something... on the mounting plate of the side facing her that's stable enough to keep the headphone in the correct position (and not pressing directly on my ear) but basically leaves the space completely open to the environment so that external sound coming from that side isn't muffled.
I'm thinking something like a plastic spiral hair tie, but with an inner diameter large enough to encircle my ear, and the spiral diameter roughly the same as the cussion, at least when its under tension against my head.
something like this:
...but ofc not just a cylindrical spring, but a donut shape. I kinda suck at photoshop, but you get the gist.
The spiral hair tie is the closest actual product I can think of to what I'm picturing, but those are far too small... ideas?
Best way to play this these days? I have a disk from the early 2000s, but iirc the last time I tried to use it, it just prompted an update that led to a blizzard launcher... idr if it wanted me to buy a new digital copy or what, but I ultimately decided it was more work than it's worth and gave up.
...these days I don't think I even have a CD drive lol.