I’m not particularly into anime either, but I thought that “The Devil Is A Part-Timer” and “One Punch Man” were really funny and clever.

Excel for Dummies 2023

“Ape alone… weak. Apes together…. strong”

So no, it’s baked-in the DNA of how we survive. We group to fight threats. Early days, that threat is protection from hostile wildlife like bears.

You scale that to a modern civilization - and you have groups of people fighting for resources, food, money, opportunities, land, etc. Sometimes they’re gangs. Sometimes they’re entire countries. Sometimes they’re groups of allied countries.

And heck, you see it in stupidly small scales too. “Coke v Pepsi”, “N64 v PlayStation”, “Rock Fans v Disco Fans”.

Sunni and Shia believe 98% of the same stuff. But the bit they don’t agree on pushes fringe lunatics to terrorism, war, ethnic cleansing, etc.

Same deal with Protestants and Catholics.

The only thing could make us drop “us versus them” mentality is a giant alien force more violent and sick than anything you can imagine.

Then maybe, humanity will be the “us” finally.

I’m not making a philosophical or physiological distinction.

I’m making a semantic and etymological one.

Nature, as its defined in the English language, is used to describe things that aren’t human creations.

Sometimes it’s used to describe things that, even if manipulated by humans, is distinct from an artificial, chemical or industrial process. Like “natural remedies”. Sometimes it’s just a marketing term, “natural flavors” in a soda brand.

Humans categorically can’t be nature - because we use the word “nature” specifically to distinguish our own creations from the rest of the world.

A human can choose to live in nature, meaning they’re living in a place that is plurality not man-made. An cabin in an unplanned forest, versus Midtown Manhattan. But even then, the human is the not-nature thing. They’re only surrounded by it.

Nature - by definition, are things found in the physical world that aren’t human creations.

Modern homes require electricity, clean running water, modern insulation, glass, smoke detectors, town governments oversight, corporate resources, insurance, etc. All of these things are human creations.

Man-made is similar to hand-made. Both are distinct from machine-made.

Nature is a bit of a spectrum. Something being handmade is closer to natural than something from a factory. Still, neither are natural.

I mean, I won’t have much leftover after paying off my condo. I live in a very expensive city.

Plus, you never know what you need money for down the line. Maybe my heating will need replacement. Maybe I lose my job. Maybe a family member will need professional care, like a home attendant. Or maybe I’ll take another vacation next year. Who knows.

$500K is not a crazy amount of money. It’s certainly enough to dramatically improve my life. But not enough for me to stop working, or buy stupid things - or anything like that

Probably pay off the condo. Maybe do some upgrades.

Travel with my wife somewhere for a 2 week long vacation.

Throw the rest in savings.

At some point, he deserves a lifetime achievement award from the academy.

Hard to say.

Maybe Louis CK before all that stuff. Twice actually. He was nice, and a bit shy each time.

I met a lot of other comics. Hannibal Burress, Judah Freidlander, Jim Jeffries were all favorites. All seem very genuine.

For musicians, I guess Victor Wooten is the most famous. That was really magical. He was exactly as I hoped, dude is a natural teacher.

Actors… I ran into Adam Scott (Parks and Rec, Severance) when I was quite drunk (and on a date) many years back. We were both in line at a speakeasy ramen restaurant at like 11PM.

I don’t think I met any politicians or other kinds of famous folks.

Whats it say in the employee handbook regarding time off?

It’s not the manager’s job to decide if someone’s personal obligations are necessary or not. It’s their job to assure there is coverage and the work is complete.

If the employee is abusing the shift-change timeoff policy, that is a different story.

If the manager is the owner, it may be a good idea for your wife to freshen her resume.

I recommend downloading Discord to join an English Language Learning server.

The voice chat rooms allow you to speak with real people to improve your listening comprehension. The text chat rooms will improve your reading and writing.

There are many native speakers there that enjoy helping, myself included. It’s not “gamelike”, but nothing is better than talking to real people - I’m sure you’ll find value in it.

New Game Plus starts you in the same place, same face and family - but you now have dwarfism. Every aspect of life will be that much more challenging. Everything from dating, transportation, even securing an accessible living space.

I have an older brother by 4-5 years.

We didn’t really get along when we were young. Fought over things - games, TV remote, CD player, etc.

But when he left for college, we grew closer. He still lived nearby, and my folks encouraged us hanging out. It was sort of an escape. Home life wasn’t great, and he and his friends were fun. He was around for a lot of my pivotal life moments. When I finally got to college, I moved in with him as roommates. Worked well.

We’re friends, basically. We have very different personalities - but we understand each other very well.

Now we live in different cities, hours apart. He’s married with a kid. I’m married and childfree. We see each other a few times a year. We text and call regularly.

I guess in this sense, I’m quite lucky.

When a relationship ends, you’re watching something die. You will have to grieve, like you do for any death. Not just grieving for the end of the relationship, but grieving for all the lost opportunities.  The trips you haven’t taken together, things you haven’t said to each other, the family you never make together.

Unfortunately, it sucks.

These things take time to process, understand, learn from, and eventually move forward with.

You need to adjust to a new normal. And that new normal should be busy. Schedule regular gym visits, classes, language learning, book club, cooking, guitar time, whatever. Productive routine is important and it will help stabilize you.

Sometimes, the pain you feel will be greater than you built in resources for dealing with pain. This is when you add professional counseling to healing regiment. Please sing feel too proud for therapy. Even online therapy companies like BetterHelp are a great resource.

Go out of your comfort zone and say yes to being with people. Invited for after-work drinks, or a birthday party you don’t really care about… go anyways. You don’t have to talk to them about the breakup, just being around others will help you feel less alone.

Also, do a little house cleaning. Rearrange some furniture, get some new clothes, change the rug - something so what you see marks a clear before and a clear after. Take a vacation if you have some PTO and resources. You don’t have to spend any money or go anywhere. Just go to a park and chill on a bench. Relax a few minutes a day.

At a certain point, will be looking forward to tomorrows more than you look back at yesterdays. It could be weeks, months, but it’ll be a sign you’re ready to date.



Yeah - some of the places in DDD he visits are amongst the best, and definitely deserves the extra attention. I know some local spots that have his picture. He’s got great taste.

I do wish his own restaurants are better. But they’re not the worst, but far from good. The best thing I can say is that they can accommodate large groups which is hard to find in Boston. It’s inoffensive enough if you’re getting a burger and fries.

Well that makes sense. It’s easy to gain millions of followers when you own Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. You just advertise to those users. Same reason that Google+ got 200 million users at it’s height. The trick is keeping them engaged and being better than the alternatives.

Maybe not the last time, but the last time I remember stumbling into a new genre. Mdou Moctor completely blew me away. Nigerian psychedelic rock meets folk and blues in such a unique and beautiful way.

Incredible musicianship, catchy songwriting, really easy to get lost in the music. It’s not something I ever sought out, it was just mentioned in a Reddit thread.

Eddie Redmayne somehow managed to act well through the terrible script. Only redeeming part of the movie.

During the pandemic, I started a Fiverr account doing music for rock bottom prices. That’s pretty much it. Took about 4-5 days for the first gig to come in.

Once I got some good reviews under my belt, more people got interested - and I raised prices to match demand.

At some point, I started getting repeat customers who’d want to do bulk deals off-Fiverr and we started negotiating. Sometimes they’d recommend friends to come to you. There’s a lot of singers out there who have vague ideas they want to see it come to life. There’s a lot of bands out there who need songwriting support. All sorts of different projects, really. It’s pretty constant.

All kinds, but mostly working in hard rock, industrial, electronic music.

I make a small income from commercial music for videogames, web series, advertisements, as well as ghostwriting and production. Here is an example of a more recent gaming project.

I have a few albums on Spotify of my personal music - collaborating with a singer friend.

Been writing music for… close to 20 years. I use Bitwig as my DAW of choice but used to be on trackers (Renoise) for a good chunk of it. Also a lot of experience in Logic, Pro Tools, Sony Acid (when that was a thing).