I’ve started noticing birds, and worse, I’ve started recognizing them.

My favorite MMO is Guild Wars 2. While it certainly has grind available, it doesn’t require it to play the content. It genuinely respects your time and understands people have lives outside of gaming, and tries to give a lot of options for ways to progress so you can focus on content you enjoy. There’s a lot of communities, guilds and activities to do with others. You can join 5 guilds at once, if for instance you wanted to join a group of friends, a big guild that does events together, another one that does raids, another based on your identity or location etc.

It kind of throws you into the deep end when you start, and suffers from layers upon layers of developed complexity thanks to add-ons and content updates over the years, but for a certain type of person it will really click. It’s free to try so you might as well see if you like it.

As someone who is demi and married, it was a lot of hard work to find what I was looking for. It was not something I was able to achieve organically out meeting people via a hobby or something. The dating pool is shallow and small for aces, tiny if one is rural. I was determined and persistent because it was important to me, and it still took me about 6 years of consistent effort to find the right relationship for me. I do not blame anyone for just opting out of trying.

I see, I didn’t interpret that paragraph that way

This reminds me of Althea Chrome, the artist who made all of the knit accessories for Coraline.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NQCf8fjgoJQ&pp=0gcJCRsBo7VqN5tD

you deserve the full range of the human experience.

Please remember that if someone is sex repulsed or doesn’t feel sexual desire that this is a weird thing to say. There are so many things humans can experience, with varying degrees of joy and pleasure, sex is not in some special category of “required in order to be human”. From my perspective if someone hasn’t had a perfectly ripe mango they haven’t had the full range of human experience, but some people don’t like mangos.

I didn’t see anything in her posts that implied she wanted a higher libido or that she saw her lack of sexual desire as an issue in her day to day life. I did see her say she might like intimate human connection but that’s perfectly possible without sex. I think we might both be doing some projection, as yes I am sensitive to people who recommend seeing a doctor when someone describes what its like to be ace, but also you seem to assume having sex is a prerequisite to having an intimate relationship with someone.

It’s not.

Aces exist, there is nothing wrong with not feeling sexual desire or attraction. If it doesn’t upset her or effect her life in a way she doesn’t like then she doesn’t need medical intervention.

As someone who is demi and has lived many years at a time as essentially ace, it’s frustrating to hear people consistently downplay asexuality as a physical ailment. No, some people are just like this, it’s as valid an orientation as any other.

I haven’t watched much standup for a while but even I’ve heard of Hannah Gadsby, so they must be decently well known at this point.

Why do you fear Batman?

Well, unless you live in Africa, they’re an invasive species. Cats hunt and attack wildlife regardless of whether or not they are hungry, which was great for humans looking to keep mice out of the granary but not so great for songbirds in the modern era. They do immense harm to bird populations in general, but even if you don’t care about that, why would you let it:

Contract FIV
Get into fights with other animals or cats
Get hit by a car
Get ticks and other parasites
Eat poisonous plants or animals
Get wounded or eaten by predators

When on the other hand you could just keep it inside and make sure it has enrichment. If your cat really is miserable without the outdoors, catios are a thing. Cats are pets, not prisoners, and as animals that are not native to the majority of the places they end up in, they are dependent on their humans to keep them safe and out of nature’s way.

My favorite chocolate bar is any iteration of the Chuao s’mores bar. The graham cracker crumble texture and the bits of marshmallow are just all kinds of mouth happy, and the chocolate is rich and smooth. As far as enjoying the chocolate for the chocolate though, Noi Sirius traditional Icelandic dark chocolate is floral and fruity with a deep rich flavor and so silky. Single origin Madagascar or Ecuadorian chocolate is delightfully complex and full of interesting fruity undertones, it makes mainstream blended chocolate seem bland. All of the pretentious type of puffery people say about wines is actually self evident and true when it comes to single origin chocolate.

For something you can find at the grocery store and just chuck in your mouth, I enjoy Dove.

This is what I keep telling my family members who have fallen down the prepper rabbit hole. They keep buying the freeze dried food and bulk dry goods and water filtration things and I ask them “do you know your neighbors? Do you have a garden? Do you have your own well?”. They buy into the marketing hard but I don’t think they have any idea what it would actually be like to lose access to infrastructure.

By Droknar’s hammer, what a savings!

Been playing GW2 since beta, but haven’t been that active since I had my a baby. I’ve played thousands of hours, have over 40k AP, was even mildly famous in the community for a bit, but I just haven’t had the time for any games lately. It’s still my favorite though, I love the art, the music, the player centric design and how they really try to make a fun experience and not waste your time. I tried Star Trek Online because I heard they had screen writers from the shows writing some of the content, and had enough fun to max a couple of characters and upgrade a ship or two and then they raised the level cap on me and made it all obsolete. I quit. I have no patience to put up with that kind of crap. I’ve been spoiled by GW2’s design philosophy, and they’ve proved worthy of my trust and time. I recommend it to anyone looking for an MMO.

I was driving home from an event late at night on a highway. It was warm and my AC wasn’t working, and my eyes felt heavy. My blinks kept getting longer until I realized my eyes had been closed too long. I realized I was falling asleep at 65mph and opened up the windows and managed to wake myself up, but if the road had been any busier I could have killed someone, myself included.

38 hours, I was working on a creative project I was passionate about with a hard deadline. I worked on it basically non-stop the entire time, I don’t remember much of it though. I do remember that after about 30 hours I started seeing patterns on things, like the walls and ceiling were covered in shifting sliding wallpaper.

I read those books over and over again just to spend more time there. I still remember more details about the cultures, cities, and fashion in those books better than I could ever remember the plot. The magic and higher moral themes were very simplistic in comparison to other books but RJ really excelled at fleshing out a continent with diverse and unique peoples that made sense in that world.

In my experience it was like making new friends but more stressful.

Dating felt a lot like looking for a job, trying to find prospects, going out on job interviews but with a relationship at stake instead of employment. You start with this rough pretext of wanting to get to know each other, and you ask questions about things that are important to you, muddling through small talk. You try to be entertaining, showing your best self until you get invested enough in each other. It’s stressful but can also be exciting because when you find someone you get along with it can be exhilarating.

Then, if you know you like someone but are unsure about whether they reciprocate your insecurities go nuts. You live in two simultaneous imaginary universes where in one, things go well and you live happily ever after, in another they declare you unfit for their life goals and leave you hurting and back to the grind of searching. Then, if you get to it, there’s the comfortable period of having your relationship defined and developing on what is ostensibly a good path and you can relax more and show your “real” self. If both of you can tolerate each other at your worst, that can lead to a proper partnership which and should feel like hanging out with a best friend. Your partner becomes your go-to person to enjoy things with and consistent companion, which obviously can be really nice.

When your kid runs at you to give you the most enthusiastic hug of your life just because.