We live pretty frugally in comparison to our peers. Less than $30 a month in subscriptions, our utility bills are low, we eat out maybe once a month and every other meal is made at home. We thrift and get just about everything we can second hand from yard sales or friends. It used to be that we were putting aside money, now there’s less extra. We’re getting ready for worse, and planting fruit trees, learning gardening and canning, and reaching out to our neighbors.

Baguette from the grocery store, brie cheese and some berries. Sounds fancy but it’s easy, and aside from buying the things requires no effort. Tear off chunks of bread with your hands, slap a slice of room temp brie on it, eat. Then eat berries. Cherry tomatoes work too, just eat them whole. Great with a glass of wine if you’re having a Day, but cold water is nice too.

Been daydreaming about a city builder sim that realistically characterizes cars. No “magic parking”, no perfect drivers, with pollution mapping, traffic deaths, an average commute time per citizen as a statistic, that kind of thing.

I imagine it starting out exactly like Cities: Skylines, where you start building out your town with commercial and industrial and residential zones. As you lay out roads and utilities, the citizens keep demanding more parking and bigger roads. If you build them, your town becomes mostly parking lots and huge, dangerous roads. People complain about living near pollution, loud car noises, traffic deaths and commute times. Your town would have negative income from all of the building and maintenance costs and constantly be needing to be bailed out due to how expensive it all is.

The trick, then, would be not to listen to the complaints from car drivers. The only way to build your town where the budget is balanced properly is to increase density, utilize mixed use areas, and to build as few large roads and utility corridors as possible. The game wouldn’t tell you this outright, it would simply give you realistic price tags and maintenance costs compared to people moved and let the player problem solve and optimize.

There would be a robust palette of micromobility options, public transit, greenways and parks and pedestrian areas. Car access would be optional for building placement and based more on emergency vehicles or services. You could design your own streets with your desired configuration of bike paths, street cars, pedestrian walkways and green spaces and save templates to use elsewhere.

There would be lots of beautiful middle density building models, parks, and plazas, and a mode where you could rehabilitate an already developed car centric city.

If someone made this game I would be so happy and play it all the time, making a perfect transit utopia

My point is that if you want to win in a first-past-the-post voting system, if you can’t get everyone to vote for your candidate the next best thing is to stop your opposition from showing up. Common tactics are limiting who has access to polling places, purging people from voting rolls, adding barriers to registration, and sabotaging mail-in ballots, but you can also encourage apathy, purity testing or erode faith in the electoral system, all of which work to allow a party with a minority of supporters to win an election.

Friendly reminder that a common propaganda tactic is to discourage your opposition from voting

Yeah! Pizza dough is pretty easy, it’s basically flour, water, yeast, olive oil and time. A pizza pan is <$20. I’ve played with a lot of weird flavors and toppings and a white pizza is fantastic with apple slices, some ham and a drizzle of honey.

Here’s a recipe I found that seems similar to the one I like to make, but I’d skip the arugula

Apples are so good on a white pizza!

Cilantro, with the soapy gene. It tastes like soap, but eh, I kind of like it.

I know you said insulation is less of a concern but I gotta put in a good word for Baffin boots. Waterproof, with replaceable and removable insulated inner liners. The difference wearing those makes in snow is immediately perceptible, and they all have good traction too. I have bought used pairs and all but one set (my kid’s) still look pristine after multiple seasons.

Bogs also seems to be good quality, though I haven’t worn them myself. Their insulated rain boots have withstood an impressive amount of abuse from my kiddo.

If you have any quartz you can put it by your citrine and amethyst and they will all go nicely together by all being forms of quartz! You could also put some calcite by the amethyst, because amethyst likes to grow next to calcite (something Minecraft got right)

My Swiss friend got me converted to Kaegie chocolates, same concept as KitKat but so much more decadent!

Better off Ted is in the similar vein of Office Space in satirizing big corporations

Wow, how did Google find out something they gave to Google? I’m perplexed!

It’s a good wake up call though for anyone that thought that anything you give them is private

You want linen, but it’ll still be pricey. Might be able to find something second hand? Linen is capable of truly remarkable evaporative cooling and is amazing for getting rid of moisture and sweat

Okay yeah, that would be my guess as to what that is then. Honestly, not sure why it goes away for you, as my elastane/spandex blend clothes have just been relegated to the “house clothes” category now. I could be wrong but it looks just like it from what I can see.

Polyester does hold on to scents like crazy in my experience. If it’s not washing out try some isopropyl alcohol in a spray bottle and giving it a spritz. Different textiles all have different properties, but I almost always recommend natural fibers for most purposes.

Does the shirt’s fabric content tag mention spandex or elastane or any other stretch material in it? If it’s not 100% polyester and it’s any percentage of stretch fabric, I would say that is the elastic material breaking down and degrading. It can degrade from age, hard wear, washing in vinegar or harsh detergents, or putting it in the dryer at high heat. It’s also completely unnecessary in knit fabrics and I’ll give you three guesses why fast fashion brands like to throw it in everything they make (but I think you’ll only need one).

I keep coming back to it and catching more references and recurring characters. It’s very rewatchable!

I think as far as shows that I love and come back to, and that I keep thinking of and want to own on physical media:

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
She-Ra: Princesses of Power
The Good Place
The Addams Family (the black and white one)
Parks & Recreation
Star Trek TNG, Lower Decks, and Deep Space 9

Krita, definitely, though it’s still not as complete in capability it’s a much better analogue