If it makes you feel any better noise is hard to compress so it costs Spotify more I imagine

Well, Nazuna is a vampire. Summer means less night time for going out.

This is basically what the shitty MAGA ladies at the grocery store do. No thanks, I'm not Christian.

I've got a thing for Welsh women. Specifically, Eve Myles, Torchwood of course but primarily Merrill in Dragon Age 2. So damn cute.

As a product of a rural town in SoCal, I can assure you there are VERY white, VERY racist places all over the west coast. I regularly had to deal with neonazis and white trash racists growing up. Still full of toxic bigots, I hate going out in public there. I wish I lived anywhere like what you described but even the big city near me is pretty rich, white, and conservative.

Volunteer work. I can't do anything for the folks in Minneapolis right now but I can invest that energy into protecting and supporting my own community so we're better prepared when they come for us.

Grew up wanting to be Vegeta, ended up Caulifla. Couldn't be happier!

I liked this show! Suzu is my favorite.

Yeah agreed! Where's the milk and butter and maybe some fresh dill?

Also I have strong opinions about trifold being better than just slopping that thing in half like a barbarian.

I really like Cure Dolly's approach though the videos are a bit difficult to understand with her accent and the quality which is why I linked the transcript, I find that more useful anyway personally. Her approach to the language really clicked for me though. That and the Kaishi 1.5k Anki deck for vocabulary has gotten me pretty far.

I think also immersion is super important. Once you learn the kana, you can jump right in to reading with some free, simple books for children at Tadoku and use jisho.org to look stuff up. It's slow work but very rewarding imo. I'm doing manga translations now for practice after working through some of those. I also watch anime and try to ignore the subtitles and listen for common phrases and whatnot as listening is a separate skill that needs to be trained.

One thing I actually think apps like Duolingo are good at is teaching the kana, which is usually the biggest hurdle most people seem to have in the beginning. I used Duolingo for that and it helped me at first but it does a bad job with everything else IMO, especially grammar. I'm sure there are other apps for teaching hiragana and katakana, or an Anki deck probably exists too if that's preferable.

I'm far from functional with the language but in the year I've been studying (honestly pretty lazily) I've improved a lot and I haven't spent a dime.

You could put it on the base for accessories

I play PbtA games, and those specifically tell you not to do too much work beforehand and "play to find out". As you say, I start with a few core ideas and touchstones. Then, when the players ask a question about the world, I often turn it around on them and say "you tell me. What do you think?" Sometimes I'll make them roll, sometimes not, but I'll always incorporate at least some and often all of what they give me. This gives the players more buy-in, I'm not just reading my bullshit to them; and also gives me a lot more jumping off points for later stuff. Way less work for me, players feel a sense of authorship, win-win imo.

Let's build a snowman!

Yeah I've been saying this for a while, Idiocracy would be much more preferable, and President Camacho would be better than any president since my parents were born at least. We're getting the George Orwell / Philip K Dick future, which is like the worst one.

I feel so bad for Shizuka. My brother was nonverbal and used a communication device so this episode fucked me up, that mother is a monster. I watched the last few episodes all at once to catch up and it's insane that this show can go from that hardcore hot springs episode to this one. Love this show.

I'm legitimately addicted to Umamusume Pretty Derby, which is a gacha game but I've been playing for many months and while you can give them money they don't really push it very hard. There's a surprising amount of depth.

I also like idlers, shout-out to Almost A Hero and the hilariously unhinged Crush Crush.

For a more traditional timewaster I also play a lot of Downwell.

Seriously the first season is one of my very few 10s on anilist. Just incredible execution. So excited for more.

Hey I apparently already own this game, lol. So many humble bundle mysteries in here. Guess I know what I'm playing next!