That tracks with my experience. I visited Japan but knew minimal Japanese (pretty much just 有り難う御座います) and everyone was very friendly and helpful, and seemed pleased the limit of my Japanese was at least something polite.

I feel like one difference is a friendly Mandarin speaker would be less likely to try to correct me if I made a mistake and more likely to try to just interpret what I’m trying to say. I wonder if some of that comes from the possibility of misunderstandings from a tonal language.

I’m a Mandarin learner and there are some things in Mandarin that feel really intuitive for me, and other things that I really struggle to wrap my head around.

Tones are tricky but when speaking I’ve found I can really rely heavily on context to get me through a lot of it. Culturally Mandarin speakers are pretty forgiving, most of them just seem excited I’m giving it my best shot. Not sure if it’s the same for Japanese speakers.

If the answer is anything other than Long John Silvers then you don’t have enough game to get beyond the first date.

Most religions tend to involve a deity that is either alive, resurrected, or concepts like death don’t really apply to them.

Tiamat in ancient Mesopotamian faith is sort of a creator deity, though her death is responsible for creation. The storm god Marduk kills her, splits her corpse in two with one half being the sky, the other the Earth and her tears the source of the Tigris and Euphrates. Tiamat’s spouse and general Qingu is also killed by Marduk and his blood is used in the creation of mankind. So in a sense Marduk is more of the creation deity here who is very much alive.

But you can’t really get anything from a dead god so there isn’t much record of people worshipping Tiamat, at least not quite like they did Marduk.

It makes sense really, why would I pray or present offerings to something that can’t listen when there’s plenty of living deities whose favor I could try to earn to bring rain to my crops or give me healthy sons?

I’ve been eyeing a Cordoba C9 or Yamaha GC12C for awhile. Kind of figure I’d save it to treat myself, celebrate a promotion or something.

I thought about getting something more affordable like you’ve described just to scratch the itch, and maybe that’d be better than depriving myself this long. But I guess having a luxury to look forward to has a positive psychological effect on me.

Depending on the model you probably got a great deal on that Takamine too

Buy a classical guitar.

I’ve been eyeing them for about ten years now but I don’t play enough guitar to justify the cost just yet. At some point I’ll probably just wake up one morning and buy one and play it plenty and wonder why I waited so long.

I can’t believe they just put the source code out there like this

It bothers me maybe once a week to think that I’ll probably never go to space.

It’s actually amazing how quickly it killed my usage of the site. I deleted my account years ago but still lurked every now and then. Now I literally can’t go back, I won’t download the app and the new site layout is pretty much unusable for me.

Late 2000s but close!

I stuck it out with old.reddit for awhile. I deleted my account because too I would get halfway through writing a reply to things and say “nah not worth it”.

But without old reddit I won’t even bother lurking.

Reddit became sort of unusable. The community has changed a lot and I felt like I didn’t really know the site anymore.

I originally wasn’t going to find a replacement and spent a few years without one, but I found myself lurking Lemmy more and more so I made an account. Not sure if it will stick though.

Figuring out what to do when a friend needs money.

If you asked me when I was younger I think I would have either said I won’t loan friends money at all in order to preserve the friendship, or maybe something more altruistic like that I wouldn’t loan someone money, just give it to them. I had an idealistic view of what my adult friendships would look like where they either don’t end up in bad situations, or if they do it’s because they make bad choices and the consequences are their own.

But as an adult I have had friends who needed money I can’t afford to just give away, but if I don’t help them then they may lose their home. Often the amount they’ve asked for isn’t the end of it, after all if I cover one month of someone’s rent that doesn’t necessarily mean their circumstances have improved over the course of a month.

I’ve had to set boundaries, accept losses and say no to people I care about who need my help much more than I ever thought I would.

She was my friend’s cousin, we met my freshman year in high school and just hit it off right away.

Dated until junior year and broke up, which in high school felt like an eternity.

It was an immature sort of love between two very young people who were both years away from even beginning to figure out who they really were. We grew in completely different directions and our inexperience made us both pretty bad partners at times. But it was still love nonetheless, and the first time I had experienced it.

I actually can’t tell if the whole “this is urgent you need to hurry” in an open world game is a new trend or not but I see it everywhere too.

Earliest I can think of is Skyrim. Everything was a big emergency. Finish one quest and the character dialogue was like “Another dragon attack! You need to get to this next quest right away! Hurry!”. But it’s supposed to be game designed for screwing around. I can’t help but feel it’s influenced this trend.

Playing Oblivion re-mastered I’m realizing Oblivion wasn’t this way. The stakes were high but much more of the dialogue was like “Ready yourself, take the time you need, and we’ll talk next steps”. There’s important stuff to handle but exploring dungeons was treated as you getting prepared to handle the big bad.

Impending dragon attacks in Skyrim, missing son in Fallout 4, turning into a mindflayer in Bg3. These feel urgent, not conducive to exploration and meeting everyone and crafting potions and shopping for deals on weapons.

All that being said I had the same problem in Bg3. Didn’t long rest enough in the beginning because of it.

Ayy you got the reference!

I started because I wanted to grow Thai holy basil which I was struggling to find in stores, extended to different varieties of kind of pricey hot peppers, then a few flowers to keep it looking nice. I’ve had a few bad seasons over the years that made me almost quit but at this point it would feel weird to not have a garden to take care of.

The maintenance can occasionally be a pain but it’s sometimes nice to have a good reason to get up early. It only becomes too much work if I get greedy and take on too many plants at once. I try to keep it to a small and manageable amount, and choose plants that don’t require a lot of care.

Going for a walk is an essential activity for me to reset. Riding my bike has a similar effect. I’ve started leaving my phone at home.

Reading as well. Something light-hearted if I’m seeking joy.

I have a small garden on my balcony. It’s not successful right now but it’s enjoyable to watch something green grow.

So far:

Work, during which I’m kind of procrastinating.

Tonight my wife will be at the gym so I might finish a garden project.

Then dinner and tidying up.

Followed by video games and then bed.

I’d reckon my day will be about 30% what I want to do which is just slightly above my usual average.

Replaying Bg3 makes me realize how pointless poisons are most of the time.

Anyone beefy who I might like to debuff or DOT is inexplicably immune to poison, blindness or falling asleep. Not even just bosses, feels like anyone I can’t kill in two rounds with Lae’zel is immune to these poisons I lovingly made.

Some elixirs are cool though.

Rimworld

Stellaris

FTL: Faster Than Light

Crusader Kings 3

XCOM: Enemy Within

Honorable mentions:

No Man’s Sky, Baldur’s Gate 3, Dwarf Fortress, Skyrim, Fallout: New Vegas.