MountingSuspicion

Honestly, as a queer person, I don't know if I'd be excited for a queer tour. There's enough queer oppression day to day. I don't know if I'd be excited to hear about it on vacation too. I'm a firm believer in everything being political, but I think it's ok and probably good to take a vacation from the news every once in a while. I don't tour slave plantations when I go to Disney despite knowing FL was a slave state (I don't go to Disney or FL anymore). I feel like it's ok just to want to be for a bit.

Good on you for going though. Glad to hear it was fun!

I'm neither, but ok.

My comment acknowledged that life can be hard, but admittedly assumed that a lot of stressors are outside the home. Plenty of stressors inside the home as well of course, but I was just mentioning what my first thoughts were. I passed absolutely no judgement in my comment, to my knowledge. Please feel free to let me know what part came off as judgmental. That was not my intention.

I'm not saying my life is difficult, but just because someone is not involved in drug use doesn't mean that they've had it easy.

Every table is different but I don't think this would fly at my table. It's a little metagamey to ask unless you have reason to believe they would, so if they were told in character to look away but maybe the players themselves forgot where it's not something the PCs would forget. It feels a little adversarial. Combat is often rough to begin with and imposing disadvantage for no reason other than it punishes them for taking cues from the DM seems like it's stretching it unnecessarily. But every table really is different and it may have been super fun for everyone, I don’t know.

I had a friend ask for recommendations for prebuilts. I found one that was under budget and over spec for their needs and sent them the info. They ended up going with an overbudget one with arguably worse specs (they didn't really need the specs I was suggesting but bang for buck it made sense and was still under budget) because it had all the lights that the seller could shove in it. No real judgement if that's your style and you have the money, but it just upset me to have spent time doing research for them only to have them ignore all of that because they failed to mention that lights were important.

Iit will likely be taken out of her estate unfortunately. What a great point. As if her son hasn't lost enough.

Both good points.

They say there's been a drop off in alcohol usage and sex too if I remember correctly, so I imagine it might all be tied to less partying, and sadly somewhat indicative of more social isolation.

Narcan was also so heavily discussed that even I thought about having some on me just in case, but honestly I'm not really in any positions where I'd need it, so getting it felt like it'd be more virtue signaling than actually helping anyone lol. But I'm sure if I thought it'd ever actually come in handy that I and other people I know would have made sure to have it. I imagine people who interact with people susceptible to overdose would feel similarly.

Not sure if this is a joke, but I'm sorry if you're legitimately struggling with this.

I was figuring job loss leading to less income, plus stay at home orders leading to less ability to meet/congregate with people supplying/using, plus change in supply lines possibly leading to difficulties acquiring or at least a rise in prices. That plus a decrease in possible other stressors, time for introspection, and time to get and stay clean without concern for other priorities seemed to make it a good time to try to quit. I'm not really involved in that so I don't know though. Just speculation. I know people who quit smoking and drinking, but that's obviously very different. That was mostly because they didn't smoke/drink alone so they were able to go a bit without and decided to keep it that way.

I'm surprised there wasn't a bigger drop during Covid.

I swear to god if they run Pete (which seems like he's gearing up for it) I will explode from sheer rage. Pete has nothing to offer but more of the same. I hate hearing people pretend like he has a chance. It's absolute delusion and is exactly the problem with all the other democrats. He is uninspiring and we will loose and it will be our fault.

Medicare for all who want it. Lmaoooooooooo. So upsetting. I've never heard a democrat say something more cringe and I watched Hillary say Pokémon go to the polls live.

Your main point that dropping out does not equate to being a bad candidate is valid though.

Honestly. It feels like they didn't even bother to focus group this. I don't know how execs didn't have an immediate understanding it was a bad idea, but even if for whatever reason they couldn't immediately tell, they didn't bother to check with anyone else. I don't know a single person who thought it made sense branding wise. They could've asked five people on the street and saved millions of dollars. Plus, I had HBO for a bit so they have my email (spam email), every once in a while I'd login and see emails from Max and think it's like a phishing scam because that's a pretty common name, but no, turns out they were just emails from HBO lol.

I couldn't agree more. Things might have turned out similarly regardless, but there's a non-zero chance that without it the patriot act, the second bush term, and the following collapse of civil liberties would not have occurred, or at least would have taken more time or a different path. Sometimes you see people say al-Qaeda won that day and though I don't think anyone really won, sine it and the aftermath were devastating worldwide, they certainly had some of their aims accomplished.

I try not to mention brands explicitly, but plenty of people seem to do that. I think a big issue is that brands have become verbs. People don't search for information, they google it. They don't buy things, they prime them. They don't watch generic TV they watch Netflix. I have a family member that calls all sneakers Nikes. I think branding has become "better" and marketers are making their brands an important part of the activity itself. It might just be a passive culture shift due to this difference.