I was in this boat all while living in a major city during peak pandemic. I was even the designated errand runner and grocery-getter while mask mandates were still all over the place and never caught it.

3 years later and we’ve moved to an isolated rural farmhouse with no neighbors and few interactions with other people at all end then I get it lol

Whole family is stuck in a made up reality where my birth father isn’t an abusive sociopath and excuse his actions by circling the wagons. I was able to see the truth and get out, but my siblings are all stuck in the cycle of abuse and likely won’t ever leave.

I don’t understand the confusion. The question reads perfectly normal to me unless if it was changed?

I suggest just finding whatever used kits are for sale near you and picking one you like within your budget, but definitely try to get at least: kick drum, snare, hi-hat and one cymbal; that will be plenty to get started. Drum kits are modular so if you get really lucky and find an amazing set that someone just wants to get out of their garage but feels a bit overwhelming to look at: just buy it and use the few pieces you need to start, then you’ll have stuff to grow into if you like it. Honestly if you have the space for a kit and your housemates have the patience to hear the horrible sounds you’ll be making, that is like 90% of the hurdle to learning to play drums lol

You’ll want to watch some videos or read up on how to tune drums and make them sound better. Sound is subjective so there is no right or wrong way to tune and dampen things IMO: I used to use wadded up paper towels and duct tape as a kid. Just mess with it until it sounds good to you.

How you learn is up to you, but my suggestion is to find what is fun. If it isn’t fun then you may not stick with it. Drumming requires a lot of awkward coordination that doesn’t come naturally to most people, so it will take some time to establish basic muscle memory. If you have a friend who wants to learn an instrument then get together and jam! It will sound absolutely horrible but if you both suck then it will be fun and you’ll learn pretty quick. If you can afford a teacher then they will have their own ways of teaching that may or may not work for you, and there are a million resources and videos online now so I’m sure you can find something that is your speed. Good luck!

I subscribed for a few months but I kept getting the feeling that it is a mostly white/male space with little effort to branch out from that. I like most of the creators on there, and there are some great BIPOC creators if you search for them, but the “front page” and all of their advertising appears to be almost exclusively white dudes talking science/history. Feels a little icky

The last film of the new trilogy as a whole. I’ve watched it three times now and I can not for the life of me remember the plot. There was a dagger thing and then Palpatine is in the end on a spooky crane and then they kiss and it’s weird. That’s seriously everything I can remember off the top of my head.

I wish the lower weapon skills in Morrowind didn’t outright miss and make an unsatisfying “swish” sound. Maybe just reduce the damage or something, the early game is so rough because of this.

You are thinking about making salmon and I expect to be given most, if not all, of it. For this reason, I will not be eating my own food to save room. Also I want to sleep outside tonight even though I can see it is stormy and raining.

Later that night: WTF let me in! Can’t you see it’s raining out here!?

Some further evidence from playing just now. My friend was sailing the ship and the wind was at our backs, he had to take a phone call so I took over and the moment I sat down the wind abruptly spun around 180 degrees and is blowing in my face. Aaaaaaaaaa

Oh I know about tacking and do that as much as I can, but still find it curious that the wind is always the exact opposite of my intended course lol

Yeah daggerfall is the exception to the starting prisoner trope

Figured I would try another take at a common answer. Correct!

Not the 3rd or 4th time you were a prisoner, but the 2nd.

PHP really is such a forgiving language and easy to understand and get in to. My favorite part is that every time I have a seemingly very niche and specific use-case, there is a function that just does that thing perfectly and is already included in the base library.

You said it and I’ll reaffirm: the documentation and online library of SO questions/answers is absolutely priceless. Most of the older versions are still compatible with the latest version, so upgrading is simple and usually just means there are more features you can use now.

I tried it but wound up feeling the same way I do about the many nazi shows they used to play on History channel. I understand we should be wary of the villains of our past, but devoting hours of time laughing and talking about them seems disingenuous to the many many others who suffered from their actions.

And that would be great, but Americans don’t have even a remotely close concept of how this works. You may as well be speaking a foreign language to them because our reality is so incredibly far away from this alternative way of living.

I probably should have put /s or something but it isn’t necessarily sarcasm. While my above comment isn’t my take, it is the mindset of most folks in the US (can’t speak for Canada). It isn’t like they are inconvenienced by driving cars, they think it is great. The downsides of car culture have been slowly eroding all of us from the inside like a parasite we don’t know we have. Trying to convince this very realistic F150 owner that they don’t need a car, and that there could theoretically exist a world in which they can walk and shop smaller and deal with the weather like the rest of the world is not going to be an easy task because it is a universe away from their current reality, worldview and identity.

My intention isn’t to be all “doomer” about this, I really do hope we fix things here. But hard work isn’t going to be enough and I guess that is where I’m going with this. To fix America’s landscape/infrastructure we need radical revolution levels of change and there are several, imo, higher priority things to do before we even get to those items. I don’t blame folks for just up and leaving if they have the means. I plan to and my life and my family’s life will be better for it. Universal healthcare, free/affordable tuition, walkable living spaces that feel like home, schools that don’t have to do active shooter drills, safety for LGBTQIA+ people, reasonable laws and fewer fascist neighbors: all of these things exist already in places around the world. NJB moved because he could and is shitting on the US because frankly it deserves it and maybe the shock treatment will wake up a few minds to their reality. Is he an asshole? Maybe, but he isn’t wrong.

That’s the issue though: it isn’t that way and in order to convince folks that they actually want it you have to overcome my snarky roleplay. This is the attitudes of most American suburbanites. They won’t want a car-free life because they can’t even conceive of what that would look like, it is an entirely foreign concept

You may just be a bit more on the introverted side of the spectrum and that’s normal. There are social expectations that we should “have lots of friends” and that college is a time to meet and hang out with people and do crazy stuff to think back on when we are in our 40s. I think those sentiments were created a few generations back when the cost of college wasn’t necessarily a concern. But even you, who managed to do it so far without debt, had to think about the cost as a big factor and it impacted how you attended. Surprise! A bunch of young adults trying to get an education while being stressed about a potentially life-altering amount of debt and an uncertain future aren’t really in the best place to be social and have fun. My point is don’t blame yourself; the system is kind of fucked right now.

If you get your degree that’s great, you’ll have access to more doors in life and hopefully that means more free time to devote to things you already know you like and maybe some stuff you’ve yet to find out you like. If you feel like you want more friends, there are social clubs, discord servers, and meetups in towns/cities you can look into to find folks who are more or less aligned with your interests rather than your education level. There is still a lot about life you’ve yet to see and I think a not-so-great college experience won’t be something you think about even a year after graduation.

I have an F150 with a small bed in the back, heated seats and working AC. I can drive 15-20 minutes to the big-box or local grocery store rain-or-shine and load up my truck bed so I can feel like I’m actually getting some use out of it and grab a latte from Starbucks on the way back in like an hour and a half total. I’ll get home, backup into the driveway and unload into the freezer in the garage and the fridge/pantry in the kitchen. Done.

“Yes but imagine if you could walk to the grocery store and have nice things to look at! Imagine spaces that feel comfortable and inviting, small cafes on the corner and people out and about instead of just a bunch of cars.”

So what am I walking for? I just want to get groceries and get home why would I deliberately take longer to do a chore? And where do I put all my stuff after checkout? They have those locks on the carts now so you can’t even take them outside of the parking lot, do I like bring a duffel bag or something? What if it is raining? I’m not sure where I put that umbrella I bought 10 years ago for my vacation. And snow? Forget it, the plows push all that muddy ice up onto the sidewalk, I could never even make it out of the house.