Daggerfall is long as fuck (in universe, the adventure takes at least ten years.) The dungeons are massive serpentine mazes. Multiple guilds and factions, although they don’t feature overarching questlines - lots of radiant quests, but they never really feel boring.

It’s also fairly difficult - especially if you build a character without cheesing it with a guide. You need to be juggling multiple saves to prevent yourself being trapped in a certain death situation, mess up a quest, etc.

There’s a modern remake, Daggerfall Unity, which a lot of people say is a good way to play it nowadays. The original DOS version is quite playable through DOSBox though, and there’s lots of little quality of life tools that you can find online.

The Fog of War is a damn good documentary. I watched it in a college class about the Vietnam War, and that class absolutely radicalized me. There was zero reason for the US to be there.

When I had them, they were very sudden. I didn’t have auras or anything.

It was very odd. The first one I had I didn’t realize was a seizure - I was out working on a farm and woke up very confused and missing my glasses. It wasn’t until I had one in front of my ex husband, and woke up fighting firefighters, that I figured out what was going on.

So yeah, wouldn’t have warnings if I was driving. I’d honestly be happy to never drive again if I didn’t live in a place where that was impossible - I haven’t had one in years and think I figured out why I was having them, but it is scary knowing that there is some trigger that could hit me out of nowhere.

You are incorrect when it comes to the United Stares. There is a varying period of time you have to go without seizures, but you are not permanently barred from driving.

When I had seizures several years ago, I was told to wait for six months by the doctor. They didn’t report anything to any regulatory authority, it really just worked on the honor system. My seizures were controlled, and I drive regularly now.

It’s state by state. Some states don’t make physicians report, so there’s not necessarily enforcement. I waited the six months my state requires after my seizures, but there wasn’t really any mechanism by which a cop would have known if I hadn’t.

I really need things to be habeñero level at least. Sometimes I’ve gotten a grinder of dried ghost chiles to get things up to snuff.

I found out my mom had spent three decades of my life lying about who my biological father was.

She has always spun some romantic bullshit story about a specific guy. Like I’m talking there was a whole ass story of her life leading up to my conception that she liked to tell me. A pretty fucked up story - she was a teenager, this guy was in his early twenties. But still, a mostly normal and consensual story barring the statuary aspect, not at all shocking where we live. He knocks her up, chickens out immediately, dumps her, etc. There was even a cathartic story about her being a then abandoned pregnant Sonic carhop, discovering the guy as a customer and throwing fries at his face. She describes my eyes and hair as his.

I reach out to the guy as a teenager with help from family, who keep track of this guy throughout the years in case I’d want to ever make connection. I reach out, he denies that he’s my father. Well, sucks, but nothing too unexpected.

As a lark, I get genetics testing kit one year. It’s on Amazon prime (back when that was a good deal and back before I realized how problematic that giving my DNA to a random company.)

I take the test. A woman reaches out. My aunt. And she’s not the sister of my “father.”

My biological father was a different adult man (mid twenties) who raped a teenager he met at a party. Even told me to my face that he hadn’t been interested in her, but more in her older sister.

When I confronted her with this. It was a non reaction. It was “oh.” She’s told so many lies throughout her life, but this was finally the one she couldn’t bullshit her way out of. She lied to me for thirty years, and unlike any other lie she’s told, there‘s no “oh you’re just remembering it differently” or “I didn’t really mean that.”

The most difficult thing is that maybe it was traumatic for her. Maybe it was violent. I’ve met him twice, and neither experience was really pleasant. He has a history. Maybe she did block it out, repress it in that Freudian way and did convince herself that some guy she had a crush on and her had some secret little tryst. Realizing maybe the hell of my childhood had an explanation - that she was trying to punish me, that she hated me as a symbol of rape. Can I forgive her for that?

It’s just such a complicated and difficult thing to wrap my head around. Nothing about her as a person has ever made any sense.

How do you make the cheaper brown ones not super bitter?

The documentary Marjoe is a really good exploration of this. Former child preacher who stopped believing, and invites a documentary crew as he does a tour.

It’s in the public domain - they forget to register it, so you should be able to find the full movie online.

“Ledasha” is an urban legend. (with a nasty snack of racism)

(The yellow stitches are basting stitches, meant to hold the hexagons to the paper and will eventually be removed)

I paid about $2 for this stack of 10 t-shirts. (Avoid goodwill, go to the mom and pop places). None of these shirts were ever going to be used again. No one wants the t-shirt of a random church or police department, or a stained white t-shirt, or a high school football team.

Instead of buying fabric - buying something new which would encourage a retailer to buy something to replace it - I am repurposing these shirts into yarn (which I knit into rugs), patches for other clothing (which would otherwise need to be thrown away), reusable bags, or scrap quilts (which will mean that I can keep my thermostat lower in the winter).

These shirts are the kinds of things that would otherwise end up as textile waste, a pile of useless clothing in Ghana. “Reuse” in the second R in importance in “reduce, reuse, recycle.”

I think also that the ability to repair clothes instead of throwing them away is a huge part of the equation. I had an ex that would throw clothes away for missing a button. That is not particularly uncommon.

You can cut decals out of t-shirts and use them for appliqué!

There are, but if you get the little plastic thing of assorted needles you’ll be fine. Maybe $1 from Walmart.

I’d grab black cotton thread to start out with (“mercerized” is going to be the better stuff). For mending, it’s usually either about hiding your stitches so they aren’t seen at all, and it doesn’t matter, or picking something that matches what you’re fixing.

The thread that comes with kits is usually crappy polyester that will break if you look at it funny - it’s only really useful for “basting” (sewing something together temporarily to hold it in place while you do the more permanent sewing.) The other things in kits (pins, seam rippers, tiny scissors) are usually okay though.

Fixing buttons is a good project to practice on IMHO. Lots of clothes hide an extra button somewhere on a tag inside, but you can also get a nice plastic jar of mixed buttons at the dollar store usually.

Really, don’t overthink it. Even ugly stitches will hold stuff together if you put enough of them on.

Turning the gusset is actual witchcraft. I’ve made a cardigan, but never a sock.

A good trick is to thrift “by touch” - feeling for cotton or heavier materials. There are a lot of quality cotton XXL blood drive/college or work event t-shirts that no one will ever want. I’ve volunteered doing some sorting through donations for a homeless shelter before, and they weren’t lacking for those at all. It was more a lack of dress pants for job interviews that were needed.

Resellers are usually going for names and not necessarily quality from what I’ve noticed.

988 = 911

They want to arrest Obama and try him for treason. There’d be some bullshit reason he wouldn’t be allowed, probably wouldn’t be on the ballot at all in red states.

I’d love a return to pre-Digg exodus Reddit, or slashdot in its heyday. Hacker news scratched that itch for a while, some instances here seem close if not quite the same.

Lots more “check out this thing I made!”

Most states do require some comparative religion in high school history. I’ve taught it.

Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Abrahamic faiths were in the curriculum. What was really fascinating was having a high schooler that had no idea what Christianity was. I live in the Bible Belt!

But yeah, understanding things like the Five Pillars of Islam humanizes Muslims. Understanding why a classmate isn’t eating all day, knowing that Muslims are required to donate some to charity if they can…

I think even some of the quasi Christian groups should be covered, but that’s a lot dicier. I don’t know if JW kids’ parents would want them to learn about the Great Disappointment, or Mormon families would approve of discussing Jo Smith’s child brides… (much less that official Mormon theology was that Native Americans would turn white if converted, or the best outcome for black folks was being a servant in the afterlife)

The current administration is certainly forgetting those folks.