Is it something you do as a hobby/interest or for a living? Bc that sounds like a lot

Yes to both. I have always been interested in clothes and fashion since childhood (dolls and sewing and crafting etc) and I like getting the most value out of my money, which led me to thrift shops and buying second hand. Thrift shops and the quality of their items are highly variable but for some time I lived in a place that had multiple fantastic shops. I would rotate through them and grab high quality items that were not selling there and sell them online. I moved and don’t pick as much to sell anymore, but I still buy for my family and self.

Thrifting is sort of like gambling, except it costs time instead of money to “play”. You only pay after you “win” by finding the Awesome Thing. Sometimes you will strike out and not find anything, that’s normal. If you only look at one thrift shop once or twice you will likely not find anything, and you usually will find something other than what you were specifically looking for. However when you “win” and find something truly special and exciting, it can keep you going back to the hunt.

Men’s clothes are harder to thrift generally, because as a group, men are more careful consumers and will wear their clothes out instead of donating them. However it’s still perfectly possible to find good things. You already know to look for natural fibers, but did you know you can dye stained shirts in your washing machine with dye from most grocery stores? If you have a an otherwise good quality plain shirt but it has some discoloration, you can spend $5 on a bottle or box of dye, and either throw it in a big cookpot on the stove or run it through the hot wash cycle with anything else you want to be that color. There are also other places to thrift, like online second hand marketplaces (Ebay, Poshmark, Vinted, Thredup etc), Church fundraiser sales, and of course good old yard sales.

Honestly there is a tangible difference in clothing made of synthetics. Like, literally, you can feel the difference. I thrift a lot, and am a clothing and textile snob, and through many years of groping fabric I’ve become able to identify cotton, silk, wool, rayon etc just by touch. In my experience textile labels seem to be accurate as long as they are present. The really shady manufacturers will not put a label on or will call polyester/acetate/acrylic some other name to pretend it’s fancier than it is. If something says it is 100% cotton I personally have never found it to be otherwise. There are methods to test, for instance burning a scrap and looking at the residue or using bleach on protein fabrics (wool/silk). Most often when I misidentify something though, I check the label and it’s like 2% elastane which is frustrating because that stuff wears out and is completely unnecessary in knit fabrics.

Anyway, my recommendation is to avoid feeding the fast fashion industry as much as possible, and thrift or get second hand as much as you can. Those heavyweight 100% cotton T-shirts from the 90s or early zeroes are made of way better quality materials anyway.

That’s just sci-fi. Star Wars is a fantasy set in space

Orrrr you know, people who just don’t have that much libido and are otherwise content. Or literally anyone in a happy partnership but on the asexual spectrum. Or mature people who have longer refractory periods. Or people with busy schedules who are too tired during the work week. Etc etc etc.

I genuinely appreciated being able to do a round trip for under $100 all in including train tickets. Like you I had my own backpack, snacks, water and wore extra clothes. Going to miss those deals.

God is a story just like Narnia is a story. God doesn’t want anything of you any more than Aslan does, or Batman, or Gandalf. You can take what strength you want from characters in stories, but that’s all that any god has ever been.

There is no separate “divine” part of you that is “higher” or needs to defeat some “animal” part of you. You are an animal. You are a humble part of a 4+ billion year history of the Earth and one of many living organisms. All that makes you special is that you have more control over your environment than many.

I think you’re right that the Big Bang is a kind of dumb theory, that’s entirely based on a relatively flimsy assumption that the speed of light is constant and red shift must mean expansion, but it conveniently allows deists and other spiritual folks to point a finger at some deity or other and so it persists. I am not an expert though and I recognize it might be the best theory we have right now, but again to try to say that a storybook character is real because of it is silly.

If you’re in the US it would be worth talking to your town and town’s planning board then. It would be up to the town planning board whether or not that was an acceptable use of that specific land in that specific area. A developer would only buy that land if they knew they would get a build permit. You can attend a meeting and there’s usually a time slot for a public input session on the agenda and you can bring that up. If you’re not in the US I’m not sure how it works but it might be similar.

Very often the fields that those solar panels are covering are land fills or polluted sites that would be unsuitable for any kind of building or agriculture due to contamination. Utility grade solar often seeks out land that is already disturbed and unsuitable for other purposes because it’s cheap.

Covering parking lots with solar panels doesn’t make them any less horrible, we should all be aiming towards as little wasted space as possible. Which means no parking lots.

Do you have a link to the map you like?

So where are all the “I did that” stickers on the gas pumps with his face?

I remember the violinist one when that came out, and watched some of the videos. He made terrible choices for songs to play that would be nonsensical unmelodious noise if listened to in a second or two of passing by. If someone on the street just hears a disconnected sequence of unrelated notes they’re not going to stop unless they are specifically looking out to be entertained. I’m sure he’s an incredible musician but musician and busker are different skills. A good busker can be a mediocre musician but play catchy, immediately compelling or memorable songs that are recognizable and instantly understood, and have a distinctive stage/street presence.

I was so frustrated by the implication that because he made a pittance that “people don’t know good quality” etc. No, he was just terrible at busking. Honestly he was lucky that he pulled even that much doing it for the first time. What do you honestly think is more attention getting, Violin Partita No. 2 in D Minor played by some white dude in a ball cap or a keytar wielding bear playing a cover of Watermelon Sugar with his whole heart and soul?

Jellyfin. Just use that instead of Plex/streaming! Except it keeps using 100% of my server’s cpu while idling, and oh wait, you wanted to access it anywhere outside of your LAN? Here’s a 10 page document of technical instructions to keep your computer from becoming part of a Russian botnet

Geneva Convenience attacks leftists and progressives more than anyone else I see on my feed.

We just went through this too. I was honest and told him kitty was old and hurting, and that he was going to die and we were going to miss him. I told him to pet him and snuggle him and to say goodbye because he would be gone soon, and we wouldn’t see him again. I told him about death being the end of a life but I don’t think it entirely sank in. Kiddo asked a few times afterwards where the kitty was, and I reminded him that he died. I got an “oh” and sometimes “I miss [kitty]”, to which I respond with “me too” and sharing a happy memory. Definitely explain what is happening.

On another note, there are services which will come to your house for pet euthanasia. It makes it a much more peaceful experience for the pet, because they are comfortable and relaxed. I highly recommend looking for a local service like that, search “at home pet euthanasia” for your area.

Try a used Dell Precision series from the past 6 years. That should be roughly in that price point and will probably be an old business cast off with either decent integrated graphics or a real graphics card depending on how patient you are about waiting for a good deal. They are solidly made with aluminum cases and made to take a beating. I have a Precision I bought used from 2012 that’s still going, and just got another from 2020 for about $230 usd with shipping. Mind you this is a US perspective and I don’t know much about international markets.

Geneva Convenience is basically synonymous with constantly attacking anyone even mildly progressive. Essentially they are so far on the other end of the horseshoe they’re doing the same work as the far right.

Do you know what is prompting the “attacks”? Is grandma doing something that scares her or that she thinks is aggressive? If grandma is going in for a kiss and kiddo doesn’t feel comfortable or safe with that she might lash out. Scratching her is unacceptable but I wonder if she thinks it’s defensive. You probably can tell the difference between clumsiness and aggression at that age and if it’s purposeful then I would talk to grandma about watching for nonverbal cues of nonconsent.

As far as the scratching, every kid is different, but what worked for our kid was showing that his actions hurt and upset us. At that age, rather than disciplining or doing a time out when he hit me, I tried to show the effect his behavior had on me in his own language. When he hit me, I would do my best impression of what he would do when he was hurt. So basically, I pretended to cry, and if that didn’t take I would shy away and avoid his hands. It shocked him to realize he could make the big person sad and upset and he didn’t want me to be sad, which led to genuine apologies. I would stop when he did something conciliatory, like say “sorry” in sign language, offer me an object or try to hug or pat me. As he gets older I adapt to his level of sophistication, so now I do things differently, but when he was one to two it seemed to help him conceptualize that we were also humans with feelings.

I want to like my jellyfin server but it has a bad habit of using 100% of my CPU while idling, and I still haven’t figured out a fix yet

Ok so you do mean to offend people then. Have fun with that, I’ll just be over here enjoying things on their own merits despite your whole thing going on over there.

This is a very narrow and limited way of seeing music. Music can be created for a purpose and a setting but once it’s out there it has no boundaries beyond what you impose upon it. Somewhere Over the Rainbow was written for the Wizard of Oz but it’s not like the only way to enjoy it is in a movie theatre. Certainly, music can be more or less appropriate for certain activities and moods, listening to EDM to fall asleep might be self defeating. However, music made for games can evoke all sorts of mental states and people are free to find appropriate settings and uses outside of them to enjoy it.