PostiveNoise

Spain is kind of nice, based on your list. I’ve been considering it.

Good chicken! What a pretty and fancy chicken…

I suggest you ask an AI, like Deep Seek, that can give you a bunch of info for your exact situation. e.g. mention what country you are coming from, and ask for a list of options based on what you want the process to be like, ideally. Then ask follow up questions as needed.

And if it’s not obvious, don’t tell the AI personal stuff like your name. They shouldn’t upload anything from your conversation, but it’s best to be safe, in case they upload data anyway.

People like to chat and vent about relationship stuff, and coming up with new wacky terms to describe the stuff is fun.

Maybe your relationship with a hot cat-girl you really liked was, um, problematic:

'At first, Miso love-bombed (💣) you into oblivion—showing up at your door with dead birds (gifts?), kneading your thighs while whispering “You’re my favorite human… for now.” But soon, the breadcrumbing (🥪) began: “Let’s chase lasers together… but not this weekend. Or ever, probably.” When you tried to leave, she hoovered (🚁) you back with a dramatic, tear-streaked “I licked your sweater and now it smells like me—you can’t go.” Classic situationship purgatory.

Then came the zombieing (🧟)—after a month of silence, she slid into your DMs with “Did you delete my number, or…?” followed by future faking (⏱️): “We should get a tiny apartment with 100% sunbeam coverage.” (Spoiler: She never signed a lease.) You were clearly benched, her backup human for nights her other “kittens” were busy. The slow fade was brutal: replies dwindling from novels (“I dreamt about you…”) to single letters (“k.”). Just when you moved on? Paperclipping. A 4 AM “pspsps” text. You blocked her… or so you thought.

THE ENDING YOU DESERVE: One year later, you’re at a café—happy, healed, dating a nice dog girl who fetches your coffee instead of your sanity. Then… a flicker of ears at the window. Miso. Her eyes widen. You brace for chaos—but she just drops a crumpled note (“Sorry I broke your PS5. And your heart.”) and darts away. The dog girl growls. You laugh, toss the note, and order a croissant. Finally free.’

(Lesson: Never let a cat girl gaslight, gatekeep, and girlboss you into emotional ruin. Unless her apology comes with a new PS5. Then maybe consider it.) 🎮🐈⬛💔

Unless you have specific, Jason Momoa-type goals in mind

Lets just call it what it is. Aquaman. If you goal is become Aquaman, you should focus on largely aquatic gym tasks, such as lifting extra heavy weights deep underwater, swimming (lots) of laps, and defeating gigantic sea monsters. This is the quickest path to eventually become Aquaman (well, at least in some ways. There can be only one True Aquaman, but you can strive for it).

Massive ongoing improvements in AI, and hopefully less massive but still impressive improvements in humanoid robots. Both of these will actually happen, unlike a lot of stuff that I and many others would LIKE to have happen.

Similar to the early Blizzard approach in some ways. A focus on delivering a vibe done to a very high level of quality and visual coolness, while leaving risky innovation in game mechanics to others.

Mud Pies incoming!

Right around the year 2000, pretty much as soon as the internet was developed and early internet porn influenced lots of people.

When they pass you in the hall at work, it’s like you are invisible to them. Never any eye contact or acknowledgement that you exist, except for them not actually walking right into you.

I had a coworker who did this to me (and a fair amount of other people at work). She was young and pretty and had this approach to any guys a fair amount older than her. I wasn’t trying to date her or even interact with her in any personal way…she just seemed to preemptively turn on her ‘you are invisible’ field to the many people she was not interested in. It was a bit odd, but effective.

Since you have 5 speakers, one of them should be the center speaker, which is focused on dialog. Some Denon receivers have a ‘dialog level adjust’ or ‘center level adjust’ setting that you can turn on and then turn up the dialog level. If you don’t have that setting the solution is to try to turn up the center speaker (or turn down all the other speakers) some way, such as using a mixer or some such (may require some research for specifics).

Based on your interest in being an ethical person, it seems like this situation could work out very well. It’s totally possible to get the place set up so that you rent out a nice, very livable space for a tenant that is less expensive and/or nicer than other options they might have, and you will likely be a considerate landlord, which would make you and your tenants happy and comfortable with the situation.

Being a landlord is not inherently evil, nor is it inherently a complicated and frustrating existence. In fact, the world could probably use a lot more nice, considerate landlords. You could be one of them!

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I’d give a separate extra upvote for the cat participating, if I could!

ok. I too am now imagining dinosaur hookers, and it’s not even the weekend yet. RARHH!

There were probably professions that long predate history, and any of those are a bit hard to prove. There were ‘shaman’ in pre-history, and good shaman were quite possibly supported by their communities. There may also have been things like dedicated cooks. Trading sex for food however, is clearly hundreds of thousands if not millions of years old, so it’s hard to argue that other professions came before it.

People do talk about this. At least, they do in the game industry. It’s well known that when an independent studio gets bought (usually by a publisher they have been working for), this often results in the studio closing down a number of years later unless they crank out hit-after-hit. Of course, sometimes that doesn’t happen and the studio gets more stability and more financial support, now that they are part of a larger company.

In regards to the people who sell their studio (founders), it’s important to keep in mind that for most of these people, selling their studio while the studio is fairly popular results in life-changing wealth. Maybe selling the studio and becoming rich by doing so was not their original goal, but it should be no surprise that studio founders can be very tempted to sell the studio (at the right price). Owning an independent studio can be a gigantic amount of stress, and a huge financial reward that also allows the founder to simply get rid of all the headaches and stress is nothing to sneeze at.

Everyone who works at an independent studio knows the risks involved (to their own job eventually, if the studio is sold), and they often have mixed thoughts on what the founders are doing, but they don’t all demonize the studio owners, since they would be tempted by the same potential rewards if they owned the studio.