I have a few from playing with friends a few years back. But my favorite is when I accidentally made a dick castle.

Generally my method of building castles is finding a nice big hill or cliff, plopping a few towers along the top, and then connecting them up with a big wall. If it was big enough, it’d be an open court yard in the middle. But in this case, it was just a long hallway connecting 3 towers, with the main tower overlooking a sheer cliff face into the plains below. Majestic, glorious, the perfect spot.

My friend had been heckling me about how the shape was a little phallic, but I scoffed at his observations. After a week of building this thing, and finally getting the roof done over the hallway connecting the towers, my friend made a map. And I could deny it no longer. I spent a week constructing a giant cock n balls, with the head threateningly pointed at the village to the east. The map remained proudly displayed in the entryway to our shared base just south of my castle. To a 15 year old, this was peak comedy.

Later my friend burned it down. I still bring up this betrayal to him sometimes.

It’s gotten a lot better. I’ve been getting back in to the game with some friends of mine lately. We do encounter bots every now and then, but one of two things happen. Either it’s a single bot that’s kicked pretty quickly, or a few bots join at once and we just queue up for another server. Either way, it doesn’t happen that often and we can still have a good time playing in pubs. If you play community servers, bots are basically non-existent. Definitely worth giving it another shot if you’re at all interested in playing again, the new summer update just dropped a few days ago!

Definitely glasses. I tried contacts when I was younger. It took the eye doctor about 15 minutes to put on my trial set of contacts for me and I was very concerned about how the hell we were going to get them back out. I tried to put them in by myself in the mornings before school for about a week and couldn’t get them in once. So I gave up.

Shame, because I feel like I look better without my glasses. But oh well

Much better. I’ve seen maybe 2 bots in the past month or so and they were kicked pretty quickly

Pretty great actually! I just signed the offer letter for a new job and will turn in my notice at my current job later today. I’ve also been reconnecting with some old friends and was able connect some of them back with each other too. I stayed up a little late playing some games with them last night. It was great hearing everyone goofing around together again, it almost felt llike no time had passed at all

It depends. During the work week, I’m awake before I’ve developed an appetite and settle for a banana and a coffee. Specifically cold brew espresso with a splash of whole milk and a scoop of chocolate flavored whey protein powder.

On the weekends though, I wait until 10 or 11 before I eat so I can savor a bigger meal. Typically bacon, eggs, and some diced red potatoes all cooked in the same cast iron pan. If I’m feeling frisky, I might whip up some French toast or pancakes as a side.

My friends and I have been getting back into Team Fortress 2. Still tons of fun after all these years, especially the jump maps

Congrats! That’s a huge step.

Alcoholism kind of runs in my family. Frankly, alcohol caused enough problems in my life long before I ever had a single sip of it myself which turned me off from drinking for a very long time. I’ve occasionally drank as an adult, but recently a close family member went through some serious health problems because of alcohol and it was just the final straw for me. I don’t know exactly how long it’s been since I’ve had a drink, but it’s been a few months and I just don’t have any desire to change that right now.

I never had problems controlling my own drinking, but I don’t want to risk going down a bad path by turning it into a habit. Seeing the people I love get affected by this poison just makes me question why it’s such an acceptable substance to abuse in our society.

In the meat industry, animal suffering is not the goal. The goal is to deliver as much product (food in this case) to the consumer as cheaply as possible. Animal suffering is a byproduct of this because on a large enough scale, both the consumer and the capitalists running the slaughterhouses are far enough removed from the animals that they don’t have to confront the moral questions of what they’re putting these animals through.

I agree that it’s still a disgusting practice, but it’s not the same thing as deliberately harming animals for your own amusement. In the meat industry, some people can hand-wave those moral concerns away by saying to themselves “at least the animals died for something good: to feed countless families”. Whether you agree with that reasoning or not (which, for the record, I do not), that same person can’t use that excuse in the case of these monkeys. It’s just pointless suffering for the amusement of a handful of psychopaths.

Reading through Attached by Amir Levine, recommended to me by my therapist. It talks about different types of people’s ability to form attachments and relationships with others. I’ve definitely learned a lot about myself so far and I’m only halfway through.

Any MOBA really, particularly League of Legends. A number of my friends played these obsessively, but I could just never get into it. I’ve sat in on quite a few Discord calls with people playing this game and I gotta say, not once did anyone ever sound like they were having fun. I’m not sure what it is, but it just seems like the genre attracts toxicity like no other, especially when playing with strangers. On the occasions I tried them myself, the gameplay just wasn’t engaging enough for me to want to put in the tremendous amount of time necessary to become somewhat decent at the game.

For me it’s Skyrim. Streets of Whiterun, Masser, Jerral Mountains, Under an Ancient Sun, so many tracks that just instantly transport me back to the world I was immersed in throughout most of high school. They bring a sense of peace that comes from exploring in a simpler time.

Fedora with KDE. I ditched Windows about 4 years ago and never looked back. I bounced between a few different distros, but I’ve been using Fedora in recent months (switched once version 36 was released) and I think I’ll stick with it for a while. It’s been a great experience and gaming has been pretty painless so far, the only exceptions being games with easy anti-cheat as it doesn’t always play nice with Linux users.