Worx

I was doing some building work in my house yesterday and I slowly lost my temper over about 40 minutes but FOR SOME REASON I didn't stop just stop working for the day. Now I have to remove and replace an entire section of my wall because of the damage I caused. It had all just been painted too 😭

I've had a lot of meltdowns and burnouts recently, but I haven't lost my temper like this in years. For me, that's the real symptom of how badly I need a break. I'm not too upset with myself because I know that I would never normally act like this, but I'm still very ashamed. I needed to get this off my chest but I don't want to talk about it to anyone I know.

The moral of the story is that sometimes cheap supplies are shit, and plasterboard walls also suck. I've lived in a stone house most of my life, so it was really surprising to see how easily I could break a wall

As a non-American, I'm very confused by this. If it's a town, it's not rural by definition. Because, you-know, it's urban.

Also, could we get a definition of town vs small town. Do you not have the concept of a village? (Village in the UK would be a settlement with a population of a couple of thousand, with usually a pub, local shop, maybe a post office and primary school if you're lucky).

Or is it mostly customer service? I like books

Our old printer has finally died and I'm coming with little to no knowledge of what to buy next. Our old printer was HP which required proprietary software to use the scanner and also ran the software on startup which all feels a little icky. Everything I've read about HP lately (as well as the quality of this printer TBH) makes me never want to buy from them again.

Just need something cheap and cheerful to print a couple of invoices a month that doesn't connect to the Internet or have AI or whatever other fancy but (for me) unnecessary features printers are doing now.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions :)

All of my IRL friendships are based around activities - we play games together, we volunteer together, etc. When someone moves away and we try to keep the friendship going, it always just sputters out after a few weeks or months. It just seems to devolve into small-talk / catch-ups that neither of us are really interested in (I don't mind small-talk too much, but it can't be 100% of any meaningful relationship).

So: What is the point of a long-distance friendship for two people who have no plans to live locally again? What am I missing?

EDIT: I have close conversations in person that are deep and meaningful, just very rarely over text. Maybe I ought to phone or video call once in a while..

If the remap is better in every way, why wasn't it just made like that in the factory? What am I missing?

Although the TARDIS is technically a time machine, for most episodes the Doctor could rock up in a bus and it wouldn't change anything.

The most obvious answer for me is Blink, with the conversation on the DVD Easter egg. Very cool use of time travel, and seeing it come together is brilliant.

I'll also add Waters of Mars. It's not really got any time travel in, but I feel like the foreknowledge which shapes the plot just about counts.

What are your favourites and why?

An option for me to buy a house has come up very suddenly and it seemed like a good idea at first - but I look at a mortgage and think "that's 15 years I'll spend paying back, at absolute minimum. Probably more like 25 years" - how can I possibly plan that far in advance?

So, how did you feel about getting a mortgage and seeing such a serious commitment stretch so far into the future? I'm mainly talking about the emotional side of things rather than financial

Having diverse worlds and representing different types of people is a good thing. For something like skin colour, sexuality or gender it's very easy to just say that your character posseses those qualities because it doesn't necessarily change much about them. However, how do people feel about playing NPCs who are neurodivergent?

The main example I'm thinking of is someone with Down syndrome. I don't have that lived experience to draw from because I don't have Down syndrome, but I also feel that these people (like all people) can be valuable members of society and I don't like to see them excluded. Therefore, I would want to see them in my fantasy worlds too. The problem is, I worry I'd mainly be falling back on stereotypes in a potentially harmful and offensive way.

EDIT: I would especially like other neurodivergent people to chime in, of course. Personally I really like to see representation for my neurodivergence in D&D and other literature, but also it can really upset me when it's done badly and it's worse than nothing at all

Let's say that it's scientifically proven that ghosts exist. Would they then stop being supernatural and become natural, thus making it impossible to ever have proof of the supernatural?

I really love sci-fi novels and I read a lot of books. I read 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson a while back and that book is particularly interesting to me. Rather than each chapter advancing the narrative of the story, there were occasional breaks where a chapter would have a list of semi-random words which just gave the vibe of what's happening, or some history of a scene, or a recipe for how to build an asteroid.

There's another book that I have heard of but neglected to write the name down, where the reader of the book is a character within the book, and the narrator speaks directly to you (but not a choose-your-adventure style book).

All of this got me interested in finding other books, preferably sci-fi or maybe fantasy, where the concept of being a book is played with and new ideas are tried. Any recommendations?