If you’re going to insult me, at least do it properly, the term you’re looking for is “prima donna”

Italian for “first lady” the lead female singer in a theater company who would be given the prime roles. Because they were big draws at the box office, they got preferential treatment and could tend to be demanding.

Proper Italian pluralization would be “prime donne” but “pima donnas” is more commonly used in English.

2 bedrooms (one is an office that doubles as a guest room with a pull-out couch) 2½ baths

The two full baths are attached to the bedrooms and are pretty cramped with pretty cheap fittings, but they do the trick. The powder room is downstairs, it’s kind of an odd shape due to where it is in the house, and weirdly big but not in a way that makes it particularly more useable and still manages to feel a little cramped. No real counter space to speak of, or other storage options besides the cabinet under the sink. The master bedroom is weirdly huge, and the office is an ok size, but in both cases the way they’re laid out with doors and windows, outlets, etc. often leaves us wishing we had a couple more inches any time we think about rearranging or getting new furniture.

We could only afford this house because it was my mother in laws, she sold it too us for cheap when she moved in with her mother to take care of her.

My parents have 3 bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms, a powder room, and then I guess it might be called a ¾ bathroom in the basement. The master bath is pretty sweet with a whirlpool tub (albeit a fairly small one all things considered) 2 sinks, and a shower (the shower is nothing particularly special) and a TV.

The bathroom between the two other bedrooms is nothing too special, but has a nice-sized linen closet and pretty decent counter space.

The powder room is small, nothing too special there.

The basement bathroom has a sink, a weirdly huge linen close, and a shower stall, no tub.

The guy who originally owned the home was a landscaper who did a lot of business with a local builder so they tricked the house out for him. He ran his business from the home and we’re pretty sure that was the point of the basement bathroom, he could go in through the basement door and shower without tracking dirt through the house.

The master bedroom is huge, 2 walk-in closets, high ceilings, plenty of space for a king sized bed, a plethora of dressers, a couple small bookshelves, a desk, and a chaise with room to spare. The other 2 bedrooms are decent sized, nothing too special, with pretty huge closets.

It’s a pretty sweet house, I wouldn’t be surprised if my parents could get a cool million for it if they sold it now, the stars kind of aligned, they’d just inherited a bit of money, the market was right, and the original owner killed himself there, so they paid less than half of that probably about 15 years ago now.

The house we lived in before that had 3 bedrooms, none of which were particularly big, and one bathroom.

The apartment I was living in when I first moved out (to live with my then-girlfriend-now-wife, and a roommate) had 3 bedrooms that were oddly spacious. The master bedroom was pretty big, but again weirdly laid-out, with an en suite bathroom that was nothing too special, it had a pretty decent sized shower that was nothing too special, and there was a second bathroom by the two bedrooms with your typical shower/bathtub. The two other bedrooms were decent-size, our roommates technically had a walk-in closet that doubled as the utility closet for the water heater (and if I miss one thing about that apartment it was the water heater, you could practically brew tea with water from the faucet and it never seemed to run out, and since the apartment wasn’t all that big it was almost instant) one of those bedrooms started off as mine, because my wife and I had just recently started dating and I wanted to have my space in case things didn’t work out between us (we’d been friends for a good while before that and our plans to move in together had been in the works well before we started dating) but eventually it became her office/storage and additional living space.

Honestly I liked that apartment, I could probably still be living there pretty happily if they didn’t keep jacking the rent up. It was a first floor apartment with a washer and dryer and a decent little patio, my only major gripe was that the kitchen was tiny and there was no decent place to put any sort of dining table (at least not with how we used the space, we’d rather have a decent entertainment center setup and couches for entertaining) so we ate at the coffee table or on tray tables.

Sounds like you’re describing a maglite

Maglites are perfectly fine flashlights for most people, maybe a little heavy but sometimes that’s kind of the point (a lot of cops and security guards and such took to carrying them when their agencies started prohibiting nightsticks and batons, especially the bigger 4 or 6 cell models) for a long time they were basically the default flashlight, you had maglites, you had the big spotlight looking things that took a 6v battery, you had cheap plastic flashlights, and you had various small penlights and such (which were often mini maglites) and that was like 90% of what you’d ever encounter.

There’s a good chance if you go rooting around in your dad or grandfather’s car trunk, garage, basement, workshop, toolbox, etc. you’ll find a maglite or 3 kicking around somewhere. I know I keep one in my car for emergencies and I’ll probably inherit a half dozen more from my parents someday.

They still make them, pretty sure they switched over to LEDs (one of their selling points used to be they had a spare bulb stored in the tail cap) and I’m sure they’re still perfectly reliable and rugged, you can probably still find them at most of the places you’d think to go buy a flashlight, and a standard 2 D cell maglite still costs in the neighborhood of $20-$30.

But there are a bunch of flashlight nerds out there these days, who want really specific form factors, battery types, features, led color temperatures, etc. and they’d probably pooh-pooh the humble maglite.

I get it to an extent, I have flashlights I like better, but I’m not about to nerd out about them, and if you someone sent me out with instructions to buy them a flashlight with no other requirements listed, I’d probably buy a maglite and feel pretty confident that it’s going to be an acceptable flashlight.

Anvil firing

You get 2 anvils, stack them on top of each other, the bottom one upside down, pack some gunpowder between them, light it, run, and the top one shoots off into the air and eventually comes back down.

I’m sure it’s a blast (literally) but I’m not trying to looney tunes myself.

Historically hell has often been depicted as a rather cold place, away from the warmth of god’s love or what have you.

Anecdotally, 20 or so years ago, that’s what I remember being taught in CCD class when my parents were still making me go.

Dante’s Inferno (c. 1321) for example, depicts the 9th and deepest circle of hell as a large frozen lake. And many of the damned he encountered throughout the different circles are at least somewhat sympathetic, especially at the first level of where the inhabitants are by and large good people who just to not be Christians. (And to be clear, Dante often found himself at odds with the church, so his works don’t necessarily reflect official doctrine and were absolutely written to reflect his own agenda, that said a lot of our modern ideas about hell owe a lot to Dante’s depiction, and any actual mention of hell in the Bible is scarce to non-existent depending on how you interpret certain passages, so his version is just as valid as any other in my opinion)

So ignoring the technical problem of how it could actually be done, let’s assume we somehow did it, cut every cable, and somehow blocked every cell tower and satellite from somehow connecting to North Korea to the rest of the world.

For the average north korean citizen, probably nothing much changes, most of them don’t have much access to the internet to begin with.

For those who do, the elites, people in university, those government, military, etc. it will probably worry a bit.

For the elites who get to enjoy the internet as a luxury, probably not too much changes. I doubt that except for maybe the very top echelons of DPRK society, the Kim family for example (and maybe not even some of them,) anyone is getting totally unrestricted access to the global Internet. They’re probably limited to mostly a bunch of north korean-hosted websites, and unless they’re relying on data centers and such abroad (and they very well might be,) there’s not really much we can do to take them down unless we really want to go in and attack all of the internal Internet infrastructure.

It’s going to hamper their universities and such, sucks for them, probably no great loss for the world, the next big scientific break through probably wasn’t coming from the hermit kingdom anyway.

It will definitely hurt their ability to conduct espionage, cyber attacks and such, that goes both ways though and it also makes it harder for other countries to spy on them.

They will do their usual sabre-rattling in response, maybe even going a bit above and beyond their usual mostly empty gestures, but probably nothing that’s going to lead to any actual escalation p

I flip flop back and forth, I’m not totally sure if there’s a specific rhyme or reason to my choices, it may just come down to a subjective feeling about which I think sounds better in the sentence.

My wife is a dayta analyst, and she analyzes dahta.

So first of all, the US is big and diverse, if you hop in a car and drive from New York to LA without stopping, taking the fastest route, mostly on major highways, averaging out to something like 60+mph (about 100 km/h) you’re still going to be spending just about 2 days in the car.

And in between, you’re going to see a little bit of everything, mountain, plains, forest, farms, huge dense urban cities, towns small enough you can barely even call them a town, suburban sprawl, massive industrial facilities, you name it you’re going to see it.

Overall, if you live in an urban area, the situation may not be too bad, cities are somewhat walkable, there’s public transportation that will usually get you fairly close to where you need to go, there may even be protected bike lanes, etc. although the situation will vary wildly from one city to another.

It will even vary from one part of the city to another. You can have large sections of the city where there’s no real grocery stores or other places to get your basic necessities, and you’re pretty much limited to whatever you can get from corner stores, bodegas, convenience stores, etc. (mostly pre-packaged and processed foods, and if you’re lucky maybe a couple pieces of fresh fruit) and if you want anything more than that you’re probably looking at taking a few hours out of your day to walk a significant distance to a store or take public transit that may not go exactly where you need it, may be slow, expensive, or just a pain in the ass to deal with, etc.

Getting out into the suburbs, it’s again kind of a crapshoot. There are some walkable suburbs, with wonderful shopping options, there’s some that are a maze of residential developments and gated communities that come off of major roads with no sidewalks or even shoulders worth speaking of and you’re taking a significant gamble trying to walk anywhere from there. There may be little or no public transportation and if there is it may not be going anywhere you need to go, or be convenient to get onto

Personally, I live towards the rural end of the suburbs, about an hour or less from a major city depending on traffic.

Damn near everything I could ever want or need is within about a half hour drive, and most of I commonly need is covered within about 15 minutes.

If I don’t have a car though, my options drop off significantly. I’m looking at an hour walk one way to get to a grocery store, mostly along a long winding road with little or no shoulder and few streetlights. The only things I would really feel safe to walk to are 2 pizza shops, a small hardware store, a bar, a CVS, and gas station/convenience store, those last 2 are going to be about a half hour or longer walk, and along that winding road, but it’s a stretch that at least has a half decent shoulder and some lawns to walk on for most of the way.

If you have a bike, there’s a decent bike trail that will get you to some more shopping options, but it’s about an hour’s ride one way.

If you need to catch public transit, you’d have to walk about 2 hours to catch a bus, that line basically runs straight up and down a main road between the city and a larger, urban-ish town further out in the suburbs. There’s not many options to transfer to anywhere else along the way but there’s a lot along that route so if you can get to that bus most of your needs will be covered, but it doesn’t run super frequently and it’s not going to get you anywhere in a hurry.

Getting out into rural America, you have some small towns that are functionally self-contained, with their own grocery stores and other shopping options in-town within walking distance. Your options are limited but for the most part everything you really need is right there in town.

If you don’t work in town though, and often people in these areas don’t, they may be involved in farming, logging, oil/natural gas, construction, etc. and may work many miles from town, you’re pretty much screwed if you don’t have a car, or at least can count on carpooling with a coworker.

There’s other small towns where there just isn’t much of anything at all, maybe they have a gas station and a liquor store, and if you need anything else you’re SOL, in some cases you may be looking at an hour or more drive to get to anything else so you can forget about walking.

Regardless of where/what kind of area you find yourself in, transportation between cities is often going to be an issue. You can probably catch a Greyhound bus or maybe Amtrak or similar between most major cities, though you may have to get a little creative with figuring out your route, but if you’re trying to get to the smaller towns in between you may not have much luck.

There are, of course, nearly as many exceptions and special cases to everything I said as there are individual towns and cities.

Yeah, astonishingly if you don’t wander into the crowded center city areas that are packed with people and bars, things are a lot more subdued.

There’s something 1½ million people in the city, a lot of whom are watching the game, either at home, in a friends house, or at one of the 1300 or so bars in the city, all spread out over about 140 square miles. If you don’t go seeking out the craziness, it’s easy to not see it in person.

Not to mention all of the eagles fans in the surrounding suburbs.

And take a good look at your video, how much actual violence or destructiveness are you seeing there? I’m seeing mostly a big crowd of people milling around outside chanting and yelling at no one in particular. Creating a nuisance or impeding traffic? Sure, hardly a riot or anything of the sort though.

You have, being generous, maybe a couple thousand people (I’m pretty sure I’ve seen more people turn out to ride in the Philly naked bike ride) gathering around city hall, a major landmark located in the very heart of the city, and doing what? yelling? Maybe 2% of a city where “go birds” passes as a greeting, wandering around outside being a bit rowdy.

As a philly native, I will say that the vast majority of philly fans are more reasonable levels of passionate, I’ve never personally been around anyone getting violent over a game, at worst just a lot of yelling and cursing directed at no one in particular.

But yeah, our worst fans definitely have a way of going the extra mile into the heart of crazytown.

Philly has a tough image and we’re proud of it and embrace it, but a lot of assholes don’t understand that being tough doesn’t mean being needlessly violent, offensive, and destructive.

Personally, I like the lunatics here that climb light poles and think of the city greasing them up as a challenge, that’s the kind of crazy fan I want to represent my city.

I’m also bald, but even before I started shaving my head and had long hair I wore a lot of hats. Still helped keep the sun off me and I tend to run kind of hot so it helped keep sweaty hair out of my face.

I have a couple hats similar to those kicking around, they mostly get used when I’m camping, hiking, etc.

My main every day summer hats are a panama straw fedora, a linen flat cap, and very occasionally a trucker cap that I mostly use as my fishing hat.

I also have a straw cowboy hat that I only bust out occasionally, when I’m both feeling a little silly and I’m gonna be out in direct sun for a long time, like out in the middle of a lake on my kayak. It looks a little goofy, I’m certainly no cowboy, but it’s practically like walking around with a shade umbrella on my head.

I tend to run pretty hot and sweaty, so when the sun isn’t a concern, I often wear a bandana to keep sweat out of my face.

My wife has a very big, floppy hat she wears at the beach sometimes, looks like straw but is actually some sort of recycled plastic.

My mom would not be able to wear a hat during the summer obviously heat would stay in and she would get too hot.

I think you’re starting from a faulty assumption here.

In general, it’s often wise to wear a hat in the summer and can help you feel cooler providing a little bit of portable shade, and helps keep the sun out of your eyes and off your face/neck/ears/shoulders.

It’s just about finding the right hat, something lightweight, breathable, and preferably lighter in color (to reflect the sun’s rays instead of absorbing them) and maybe with a wider brim.

Straw hats are a fairly traditional option, something like a panama hat (actually made from palms, also made in Ecuador and not panama BTW) is a classic option, but this is 2024 so there’s lots of moisture wicking synthetic material options out there as well. For other natural materials, linen is also a good choice, certain types and weaves of cotton can be pretty light and breathable, and honestly even some lighter weight wool hats aren’t too bad.

Take a look at people who work or spend a lot of time outdoors in warmer climates, you’ll see a lot of people wearing hats or cultures where people traditionally wore a lot of hats even if they’ve fallen out of style. Baseball caps, visors, cowboy hats, fedoras, pith helmets, beater hats, various types of headscarves, big floppy sun hats, bucket hats, asian conical hats, sombreros, etc.

I wear hats pretty much year-round. The hats I like in the summer are different from my winter hats, but it’s pretty rare that I go out without some kind of hat, and when I forget to grab one on my way out the door, I feel less comfortable for it.

I’m just curious what your interpretation of yellow laces is. I’m not a punk but am vaguely aware of lace codes, and every list I see online has yellow as anti-racist, but I know it varied a bit from place to place.

The house behind my parents has had a string of terrible tenants. Loud assholes, people who let their dogs run loose, people with unruly kids, etc.

Otherwise a pretty decent neighborhood.

There was a younger dude living there for a while, kept kind of weird hours, but my parents never thought much of that, figured he was going to school, working night shift somewhere, etc. Mostly kept to himself, never bothered my parents in any way, always dressed professionally, etc.

He was probably the best neighbor my parents ever had in that house.

Then one day cops raided the place, turns out he’d been dealing a lot of drugs out of there and had a punch bowl full of cocaine sitting out on the kitchen counter.

Some of the other neighbors apparently had noticed some pretty sketchy characters coming and going from the house, they must have entered from the front door though, because my parents never really noticed anyone.

My parents would still take the drug dealer over pretty much anyone else that’s lived there.

Couldn’t tell you how many I had as a little kid, but I’ve probably gone through about 2-3 a year since I was about 16

One time I treated myself to a pair of Oakley’s i found an an REI garage sale, thinking maybe more expensive sunglasses would hold up better or I’d keep better track of them.

They got dropped and stepped on within about a week

Shave it all off

I’m bald

I do go to get my beard trimmed occasionally though, I just describe what I’m looking for- I like the length, just kind of square it up a bit and make it look neat, and fade in my sideburns.

It helps that I do a decent enough job of keeping it trimmed on my own, I just go in a handful of times a year before weddings and other fancy events when I need to look particularly nice

2010s into the early 20s had a bit of a folksy thing going for a while with Mumford and sons and some other similar bands, the sea shanty kick a lot of people went on during covid, etc.

Dubstep also happened somewhere around the 2000s-2010s

Early 2000s had some people people were still surfing 3rd wave ska

This is probably just the circles I’ve been in but folk metal feels like it’s been going pretty strong for the last 10 years or so

I also think country has been having a weird moment since around 2000 or so, some of it good, most of it not.

Vaporwave came into existence somewhere and I feel like that’s just been kind of hanging around in the background present but largely unnoticed which I think is kind of the point

Not necessarily a genre onto its own, but mashups, remixes, covers, etc. I think have kind of become a surprisingly huge thing.

Going sci-fi, but I think I remember there being a thing in the altered carbon books that kind of relates to this.

In that series most people have a device implanted that can store their consciousness, it can be backed up, etc. if you die your consciousness can be uploaded to a new body, maybe a clone of your own, maybe another spare body no one was using. They get around long space flights by just sending the stored consciousness into a new body at the destination, prisoners can be uploaded to storage and their bodies used elsewhere, etc. and the only way to reliably kill someone is to destroy that device, and if they’re rich enough they may have a remote backup so even that isn’t a guarantee.

So murder victims are routinely uploaded into new bodies to testify at their own murder trials.

Catholics oppose this though, they believe that your soul is separate from your consciousness and can’t be stored in that device, backed up, etc. and so to respect their religious rights they can’t be popped into a new body to testify.

I imagine that necromancy would have the same and probably stronger opposition from a lot of religious people and we’d run into the same kind of legal issues.

You would not be the first to point out the Cartman parallels, it definitely crossed my mind while I was writing it out.

Clinically, no.

Do I have occasional feelings of sadness, anxiety, ennui, helplessness, despair, lack of motivation, etc, and do bad things happen in my life?

Yes, absolutely, that’s a part of being human.

Am I happy?

Well that’s a more complicated question than it may seem.

Am I totally satisfied with every aspect of my life and the world around me as it is now and where it seems to be going?

No, not by a longshot.

Is my situation “good enough” for now, does it seem like things will improve for me, do my good days outnumber the bad, am I overall enjoying life and looking forward to hopefully many more years of it, am I able to spend time with people I love, in places I want to be, doing things I like and want to do?

Overall, yes. Not that there isn’t plenty of room for things to improve for me and lots of things that I would change if I could but I can’t, but I’m getting enough of the things I want out of life that I can say that overall I’m happy.