u/GWindborn

I'm personally on Team Chub, but they don't seem to be very consistent with her look these days.

This came up in the weekly thread earlier, but it's not the first time - a red tag mentioned an apparently left-wing political commentator and I had no idea who he was. A few weeks ago there was another instance of a red tag calling out a left wing commentator (Hasan?) who I've never heard of with some fringe beliefs that I guess the right takes as what everyone on the left thinks. Other blue tags jumped in to say that they have no idea who he is or what he stands for either. Then you have right wing political influencers like Kirk (who I genuinely couldn't have picked out of a lineup until he was all over the news), then a slew of others - Shapiro, Pool, Walsh, Owens, Carlson.. It at least feels like the right is much more interested in these people than anyone on the left is, and they even seem to know more about the supposedly left-wing ones than most of the left.

Why do you think so many of the mainline political influencers are on the right? If you do listen to them, why? And do you let them influence your thoughts or beliefs? Where and how often do you listen to them?

I'd also be interested in hearing from other blues but that might be tricky given the rules. Just everyone do your best to play nice :)

Edit: Okay I'm feeling a lot better now in a very short amount of time, thanks all. I think I was over-worrying about the implications of a girl sleeping on a bare mattress (by choice!) surrounded by "stuff" LOL. I think I'd seen another post somewhere of a parent appalled at a kid sleeping on a bare mattress and it made me a little self conscious about it.

Reposting with more line breaks to satisfy an overzealous auto-mod!

Not looking for judgement here, just asking if anyone else's kids are similar. Our daughter is 9 and loves her "stuff", so when left to her own devices she will create a little nest for herself in bed. She's done it as long as she has been able to. I lovingly call her a little gremlin.

She gets frustrated with the fitted sheets on her bed because she keeps pulling them off in the night somehow, so she ends up on a bare mattress wrapped in a quilt using a stuffie as a pillow because she knocked her actual pillow on the floor, plus she's surrounded by a dozen or more other stuffies she's collected over the years, a big jug of colored beads that she uses to make jewelry, a bunch of others stuffies, maybe an open bag of chips she brought into her room, a water bottle, a squishy toy, a pad of paper and markers/colored pencils scattered beside her.. Like she's a little packrat living in a nest.

It's not as though she doesn't have places for these things! She just uses her bed as a work station for making art and bracelets and stuff, which she absolutely adores doing and is absurdly talented at, and she will nest into all of these things to sleep at night. It's weird behavior for sure but it's not hurting anything.

Does anyone else's kids do this? I feel so on edge that someone will see her like this for whatever reason and judge us for letting her do it when she is perfectly happy and content this way..

This is less a cry for help and more of a cautionary tale. I had my DS a year and a half ago, things are going great. I've had GERD for decades but it's been mostly better post-surgery. Last night I made the mistake of grabbing a snack too close to bed time of stuff I knew I shouldn't have eaten - a small bag of Chili Cheese Fritos. It was just one of those tiny ones that go in lunch boxes. No big deal, right? NEVER AGAIN. I sleep on my side or stomach (I know, not the best but I do it naturally in the night regardless of how I fall asleep) and about 1:30 this morning I had a huge GERD attack that left me gasping and spitting up mouthfuls of acid. ARGH it was the WORST! I take daily antacids too, but I've been doing famotidine lately just because we had it on hand, but Omeprazole is better for GERD symptoms. It took the better part of an hour to rinse the burning and taste out of my mouth and throat, get the Tums to kick in, and get comfortable, then even more time to actually fall back to sleep after all that nonsense. Plus I had to be up before 6am to get ready for work. Now I feel like I got hit by a truck and my throat still burns a little and I'm exhausted here at my desk procrastinating actually getting started. LESSON LEARNED.

My wife does pet sitting independently. It started with family and friends and then friends of friends and now she's advertising on Facebook that she's available. She doesn't work through any of the apps, she makes $25+ here and there for drop-ins, $100+ for overnight stays, etc. She might make a few thousand dollars over the course of a year but less than $10k. Realistically, does the government care? Or will they even notice come tax time? This is all cash and Venmo/Paypal payments. How do you even log that? What should we do going forward?

My daughter lost something important at the house and we have ripped the building apart looking for it. It's the pen to her drawing tablet, I've already bought a replacement but there's nowhere this thing could be, she said she set it down for a second and now it has vanished without a trace. It's been days now and we keep looking for the original. The tablet is effectively useless without it and she's a really talented little artist so her losing it was really distressing.

It reminded me of two other similar incidents - YEARS ago, she lost a toy magic wand from an obscure little UK show called "Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom" (or obscure to us in the US since I don't think it comes on normal TV). She was probably about 3 and we were watching the show and she was playing with it, and it slid under the sofa and - as far as I can tell - slipped into another dimension. I immediately got on the floor to get it and it was simply gone. Vanished without a trace. We tore the room apart. My wife and I both watched it happen with our own eyes. In her hand, under the couch, gone without a trace. 5+ years later, it shows up in her room. Zero explanation. We're absolutely flummoxed.

Another one is the dome to the ceiling light in our master bathroom. I took it off to replace a light bulb and set it in a basket of laundry to keep it cushioned and safe. Realized I was out of bulbs that were a proper strength for that bathroom, so it stayed down for a couple days. Got the right power bulbs, put them in, went to get the dome.. yep, gone. Wife has no memory of moving it. It has been almost a decade and it's never turned up. That light fixture is still domeless. A soccer ball sized glass dome doesn't just disappear.

Does anyone else's house also hold rifts to other dimensions where things slip out of our reality?

I'm on a \~9 year old gaming PC running a 1070 so doing the best I can here.. I have two different monitors of different size and brand but it's been fine up until the last 6 months or so. I'll game on the "main" monitor and occasionally click over into my secondary monitor for Discord or to look something up on the web or whatever and only just in the last few months the main screen will go black and freeze up for a few seconds, then show that there's no display connected, then correct itself. I can make it happen reliably if I go to certain websites with videos running in them (like the local news) or if certain ads pop up on some sites that play a video so I'm assuming it's something display related. Even when I close the offending page completely, once the cycle has started the main monitor will blink out every few minutes until I reboot. This has become a huge headache if I'm in the middle of something. Anything I can do here other than rebooting? Even just to determine what the actual issue is rather than just assuming. I know this PC is a little long in the tooth but I really can't afford anything else right now..

If it helps, I use Opera GX as my browser.

Running Win 11 Home, Inspiron 5680, i7-8700, GeForce GTX 1070, 16gb ram.. not sure what other information might be relevant.

I'm on a ~9 year old gaming PC running a 1070 so doing the best I can here.. I have two different monitors of different size and brand but it's been fine up until the last 6 months or so. I'll game on the "main" monitor and occasionally click over into my secondary monitor for Discord or to look something up on the web or whatever and only just in the last few months the main screen will go black and freeze up for a few seconds, then show that there's no display connected, then correct itself. I can make it happen reliably if I go to certain websites with videos running in them (like the local news) or if certain ads pop up on some sites that play a video so I'm assuming it's something display related. Even when I close the offending page completely, once the cycle has started the main monitor will blink out every few minutes until I reboot. This has become a huge headache if I'm in the middle of something. Anything I can do here other than rebooting? Even just to determine what the actual issue is rather than just assuming. I know this PC is a little long in the tooth but I really can't afford anything else right now..

If it helps, I use Opera GX as my browser.

Running Win 11 Home, Inspiron 5680, i7-8700, GeForce GTX 1070, 16gb ram.. not sure what other information might be relevant.

I'm on a ~9 year old gaming PC running a 1070 so doing the best I can here.. I have two different monitors of different size and brand but it's been fine up until the last 6 months or so. I'll game on the "main" monitor and occasionally click over into my secondary monitor for Discord or to look something up on the web or whatever and only just in the last few months the main screen will go black and freeze up for a few seconds, then show that there's no display connected, then correct itself. I can make it happen reliably if I go to certain websites with videos running in them (like the local news) or if certain ads pop up on some sites that play a video so I'm assuming it's something display related. Even when I close the offending page completely, once the cycle has started the main monitor will blink out every few minutes until I reboot. This has become a huge headache if I'm in the middle of something. Anything I can do here other than rebooting? Even just to determine what the actual issue is rather than just assuming. I know this PC is a little long in the tooth but I really can't afford anything else right now..

If it helps, I use Opera GX as my browser.

Running Win 11 Home, Inspiron 5680, i7-8700, GeForce GTX 1070, 16gb ram.. not sure what other information might be relevant.

https://trumpaccounts.gov for reference

My mother keeps bringing these up and on the surface, it doesn't seem like a bad deal. That said, I'm hopeless with money so there might be something I'm missing here. Have you set one up for your kids, or do you plan to? I don't have the cash to max it out yearly but I or a family member can definitely drop some seed money in and let it grow. Struggling to find a downside. Thoughts on these? Trying to leave the politics out of this one and keep it purely objective.

Edit: Should have clarified that we don't qualify for the $1k as my daughter is too old.

So here's the deal - I get a $300 yearly "wellness" budget from work that I never know what to do with. I bought a Pixel 3 and a pair of walking shoes last year and they're both in great shape. I wear my Pixel daily, zero complaints, so I don't really want to upgrade. I was considering getting an Oura ring but don't know what it would really tell me that my watch doesn't. Does anyone use the two in conjunction? I don't wear my watch to sleep for various reasons, but I might wear the ring just to get some insights. Thoughts?

I like complimenting people and generally being friendly to strangers, saying hello and good morning, etc, I feel like it goes a long way and can really turn someone's day around. I go into the office twice a week and sometimes I'll be making a coffee and a coworker or someone will come in and they just smell amazing. Would it be weird to voice that to them? Just a quick "Wow you smell really nice" or something. I know that's the entire point of perfumes but is that something that can and should be pointed out?

For some reference, I'm very happily married and have a daughter so I'm surrounded by nice smelling sprays and lotions and potions and all that, and I'm genuinely not trying to hit on anyone lol, I consider myself a very unthreatening guy who has always had female friends around. I just don't want to come across as some workplace weirdo and get a reputation for sniffing women in the break room.

Hope I'm not screwing myself over here by bringing it up LOL, karma might come back and kick my ass. I had surgery in March 2025 and I genuinely don't think I've had so much as a cold since then. I used to get sick a few times a year at least, but on the ADEK, Iron, Calcium, etc, I feel like my immune system is in peak form. Is it luck or am I just imagining it? Or are the supplements boosting it that much?

Do we start based on a prior playthrough, or will it be entirely fresh? This is my first of this kind of game so not sure how they normally work. Do you think it will be an entirely new cast or will our existing Z-teamers still be just as we left them?

Very aware of Cthulhu and his ilk from public consciousness and their inclusion in media and video games. Very into horror podcasts and the like (Magnus Archives, Old Gods of Appalachia, etc. I'm also a big fan of The Lovecraft Investigations, which kind of got me started on all this). I've recently started a Lovecraft journey through podcasts of people reading his works. I listened through At The Mountains of Madness as a standalone (I read it years back but am revisiting everything now) and I'm now starting the HorrorBabble podcast readings of Cthulhu mythos works.

Is it just me or is everyone in the Lovecraft world just terrified of everything? Maybe I'm being dense, but I feel like it would be like having a cryptid sighting or something, like running into Big Foot or the Mothman - I'd be freaked out for a bit and need some time to process, but I feel like a Lovecraft character experiencing the same thing would have a nervous breakdown and be institutionalized. Like the narrator in Mountains was just terrified of every strange carving and structure. I feel like I'd be more in awe and filled with excitement where he'd filled with terror and dread just looking at a mountain range. Granted I'm not very far in anything, but is it the pull of the old ones making people go insane, or is this Lovecraft's own instabilities bleeding into the page? I know he was a troubled man in a lot of ways, so I wonder if he assumed this is how everyone was and poured that into his characters?

(Also, if there are other horror podcasts you'd recommend that fit the general genre I'm down for a listen.)

I have a rough idea of the genre and lore just from video games and Cthulhu and Innsmouth and that sort of thing being in the zeitgeist. I had read "At the Mountains of Madness" previously and I'm re-listening to it as a free podcast. I'm pretty sure I went through "The Call of Cthulhu" a long time ago. I'm a fan of creepy/horror pods like The Magnus Archives, TANIS, The Lovecraft Investigations, etc. (I just binged through the Dungeon Crawler Carl series and need something new to fill the void.)

What's a good place to start, and what's a good listening order? If there are free podcast versions of things available, who are some of your favorites? I like the Mountains of Madness narrator I'm listening to but the audio balance is way off so I have to turn him way up, which makes the inevitable switch to commercials obnoxiously loud.

Arin was having a blast with the berry game. I was having a blast watching. The show is more about them having fun and the funny commentary than the game they're playing - to me, anyway. I don't think anybody tunes in because Arin is the world's greatest gamer, we tune in because we enjoy their personalities and their banter and the jokes that come out of the game's nonsense. I understand - "the algorithm".. I just wish they didn't have to jump from thing to thing to thing.