A mid-30s from New Zealand here. Out of my friends and family living in the country that I still keep in touch with, I can only think of 2 households that don’t currently own their home.

One of them was pretty undecided for a long time about where he wants to live and what career to pursue, so didn’t really settle down anywhere. He’s in a serious relationship now though so that might change.

The other one is my brother-in-law and his partner. They’re planning on purchasing a house at some point but it’s not a priority for them - they’re actually renting out our first house from us so they don’t need to worry about getting kicked out without warning or dealing with unpleasant landlords or any of those usual things. When they leave, we plan on selling the house instead of renting it out again. We only kept it to make sure they had a safe space to be themselves.

Out of the homeowners, there’s a quite a mixture of people. Some have come from privilege and got handed money from their parents. Others grew up in a lower socio-economic group and earned all of the initial deposit themselves. One guy has a single dad that’s never owned his own home and has relied on disability income for most of his adult life. My friend had a lot of trouble finishing his university degree and finding work, it was years before he landed his current job at a small store. They’re living together in a house he owns himself now, I thought that was pretty sweet.

New Zealand has had a housing problem problem for a while now, so whenever I think of owning/renting in general it’s usually with negative feelings and frustration. Thanks for giving me this moment to reflect on a more personal level, I think my friends are doing great.

Same here!

The reading out loud tip does worse than nothing for me. On multiple occasions, I’ve read something out loud to someone else and then had absolutely no idea what I just said. I focus so much on vocalizing the words that I’m diverting power away from the part of my brain that would be processing the meaning of them.

Similar thing for listening to the words without any visual aids - I’m just really not a verbally orientated person at all and do much better when reading/writing the information.

Not wasted! If she’s anything like me, the fact that the coffee is fancy is largely for herself. I can’t stand offering anyone in my house worse coffee than I would make for myself, unless they specifically prefer it that way. It just feels so wrong.

If you get any extra enjoyment out of the fanciness level, that’s just additional icing on the cake.

It’s not that exciting, but I’m working on a Pomodoro timer.

There are a lot of Pomodoro timer apps out there, but I still haven’t found one that has all the features I want, they’re always missing something or other. I’m sick of compromising, so I’m making my own. I’ve coded a Pomodoro timer before so I’ve got the general logic down, but my prior implementation is attached to something else and I want it as a standalone application. Thought this would be a good little project to learn godot with, especially since it will let me export it for mobile as well (in theory).

I hate doing UI stuff and most of this project is UI so… wish me luck.

I had absolutely no idea that menopause was something you could seek treatment for, or how much it can affect day-to-day life. Thank you for sharing.

Just realized my response might be considered negative, so I deleted it 🙏 sorry team

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Exactly this. Your brain gets absolutely blasted with a bunch of chemicals during childbirth and your memory of it becomes very hazy, especially the pain parts. This happens with or without pain management.

That looks amazing! I think the size is perfect.

I recently read all the discworld novels as well, but I took everyone’s advice about not reading them in release order and I really regretted it. I swapped to release order partway through and it was so much better.

I think it’s just that the outlines are inside/on the edge of the letters instead of outside

There isn’t really any indication of how often they buy her these things. It could just be once every couple of months, or when she’s had an especially bad day.

Length of video doesn’t factor into whether I watch it at all. If I decide to watch the video, I’ll either watch the whole thing, stop halfway, or just skip forwards to various points depending on how well it caught my interest.

What determines if I open it at all has more to do with who sent it to me, why they sent it to me, and what the title/thumbnail looks like.

The who: I don’t bother clicking on videos from most people. Usually I’m away from my pc at the time and don’t have headphones in so I really can’t be bothered. There are a couple of friends that have very consistently sent me hilarious or fascinating content though, and I will either watch those right away or save it to a watchlist for later. This is a very short and exclusive list.

The why: Context matters. I generally don’t bother watching videos that get sent to me without any sort of explanation - if it’s nothing but a link, it might as well be nothing. If the person sending it can’t even think of an emote or a couple of words to add to it, it’s probably not worth watching. In contrast, sometimes friends will send me a video to get my opinion on something, or to share their current special interest, or because it’s something they’ve made themselves. Those, I will always watch regardless of length. If my close friends are invested in it, I am too to some extent.

The what: If the video has a clickbait title/thumbnail, I’m not clicking it no matter how interesting it sounds.

I most cases, the decision is made long before I even notice the length of the video

It sounds like the centre wasn’t releasing the original artwork though. If they had just made copies of a curated portfolio available for a reasonable price it would’ve been a great fundraiser, but instead they were holding the originals hostage for $2200 AUD if I understand correctly.

Focus less on expressing yourself, and more on what makes her happy. This post is mostly about you - your feelings, and what you want. You’ve given us no information about your girlfriend, and I think that’s indicative of your current mindset. Flip it on its head, and make her feelings the focus instead of your own.

She’s not just your girlfriend, she’s her own, unique person - If you truly listen to her wants and needs and preferences instead of just taking generic advice about “girlfriends”, that’ll make her feel much more special than anything else you can do.

It depends on what you’re looking for.

If you’re happy with kind of shallow young adult fantasy vibes, go for it. The magic system / world-building / characters aren’t especially fleshed out, but they get the job done. The plot again isn’t especially noteworthy, but it was a pretty fun ride and easy to digest. Basically it’s very accessible fantasy, but somewhat mediocre.

If you’re really into classic high fantasy stuff, maybe give it a miss. It probably won’t hit the spot for you.

Regardless of whether you read the books or not, just… forget about the movie.

Background in animation and design sounds perfect for creating assets for streamers/vtubers. There always seems to be some demand for logos, “stingers” (animations that play between changing scenes), looping videos for idle screens (when the streamer isn’t on camera, such a “taking a break” scenes), and emotes. Take a look around vgen.co and see if those types of things might be up your alley.

Whenever I’m in a group of NTs, I typically just step back and observe. Seems to me that they talk a lot about other people in various ways - those that all or most of the people in the conversation know personally, famous people, and/or people that only the speaker knows and are informing the rest of the party about. This always seems to take up a surprising percentage of the conversations and sneak into other topics as well (e.g. If the topic is about painting a wall, some other person that painted a wall recently will get mentioned).

They also seem to talk about the weather (classic), traffic, the price of various items (petrol, milk, taxis, electricity, etc), any local events, TV shows/movies, and restaurants a lot. But all of it at a very superficial level, no one seems interested in doing deep dives into any particular topic or even being very specific about anything. Any and all information is typically anecdotal with no one being inclined to research further into anything being said, just the fact that it was said by someone seems to be enough.

My general impression is that their goal is to fill up the air with inconsequential words. That seems to tick the “being social and maintaining friends” goal for them, and any sort of information gained (e.g. Restaurant recommendations or life updates on a friend) is secondary.

I think there’s one that comes through my neighborhood. I’ve never actually seen it, just heard it, and it never seems to… actually stop. When I was a kid, the ice cream trucks would stop and play their music for a while so people had time to grab their money and run outside. This one just seems to play a few bars of a song as it drives through, makes me wonder if it’s actually an ice cream truck at all.

This is different to a pomo timer but yeah those work great