Yup, and likely not the recent past, say ten years plus

I mean, that’s kinda how it works when playing 1 on 1 with no audience and one player misses moving into check, and the opponent misses too.

And there’s plenty of people that play with no check at all. You don’t have to announce it, it’s on the player to detect and counter.

I prefer check being absent in casual, friendly games unless they’re so friendly that you’re also notifying the other player of missed opportunities or mistakes. Which is, imo, the optimum way to play with friends that aren’t at the same skill level, or are very closely matched to the point that the game is going to drag on when there’s limited time to play.

Absolutely the hardest part was the shrinking. Most of the damage, I had access to both sides of the panel. Which means you can use a hammer and a block thing called a dolly. But you have to hold the dolly on one side and hammer on the other. Which is awkward as hell. It’s slow work, or was for me; I suppose a pro can go faster. And you have to be careful because if you overdo it, you can end up hardening the metal and end up with cracks.

All the videos and tutorials say to practice on some scrap sheet metal, but I didn’t have any, so it was trial by fire.

This was back in the summer, but my left shoulder is still being pissy about the positions I was in to reach the dolly to the middle of the roof and still see what I was hitting with the hammer.

Tbh though, it was much simpler than I thought. There’s plenty of good tutorials out there,and the concepts aren’t complicated at all, it’s the skill that’s fiddly and detailed.

Body work on my car.

I’m poor as fuck and had tree branches fuck me up. Decided I’m not willing to deal with the bullshit of finding a new one, especially with all the bullshit privacy invasion on top of buying the damn thing.

So, I borrowed tools, looked shit up, and while the car isn’t fully dent free or anything, it was good enough to replace windows and you have to get close to see the warping that’s left.

Took my crippled ass damn near two weeks because I could only work maybe a half hour, 45 minutes at a go once or twice a day. And I wasn’t working fast.

While it was much simpler than I thought it would be, those auto body pros deserve their damn pay. Shit is hard physically. Just replacing the side mirror had my back cramping and spasming for hours after, even with meds. And that was the easiest job involved.

Dunno that I learned enough to exactly say it’s a true skill, since it really only applies to my car, and the kind of damage done, but the parts of the frame that were bent are back in line, and the dents that needed shrinking are damn near invisible, which I’m proud as fuck of.

The painting sucks though lol. Couldn’t get a good sprayer on loan, and the one I could get was a bitch about not giving an even coat. The blending is not great. Visible from even a dozen feet away. A few drips too. But I ain’t worried about that with a car that’s damn near twenty years old.

Dunno what the hell I would have done without good neighbors and friends loaning me the gear. No way could I have afforded rental for the air compressor after the supplies cost, parts, and glass. Came out to a few hundred all told, but the estimate was damn near 1.2k

It isn’t an either/or proposition. There’s multiple ways to both have a viewing and keep a body from getting deep into decomposition, and there’s really no issues with the face automatically becoming grotesque. It really isn’t an every time thing. It isn’t even a majority of the time, when the body is kept cool enough. Pinning isn’t the only option for keeping a mouth closed either.

People have done in home wakes way longer than the funerary industry has existed. There’s plenty of options available.

I don’t actually make our bed, neither my wife or I do.

That being said, it isn’t a waste of time in and of itself. Making a bed gives you a chance to inspect the sheets, which has multiple benefits. It also means that you’ll be making the bottom sheet (whether it be a fitted sheet or a regular sheet folded into place old school) smooth and positioned well.

That pretty much means that the job isn’t a waste.

Now, it could be argued that you can gain all of the benefits by just straightening everything up before you go to bed, and that’s true usually. The question is if we’ll not only do the job right, but be in a state of mind to notice everything well. A lot of people, by the time they’re ready to go to bed, don’t have the internal resources to ensure that everything is good to go.

You ever hear the term hospital corners? It’s a way of making a bed. It ensures that the person using the bed has a smooth surface, free of skin irritating folds. For an ambulatory patient, the benefit of that is minor. But for someone that’s in a hospital bed for prolonged times, or that have skin durability issues, or can’t communicate discomfort, a well made bed is a necessity.

This translates to situations outside of a clinical setting, just with less consequences should the bedding fail to be smooth. But not zero consequences. Minor as it may be, skin irritation from wrinkled and folded sections of bedding can be severe enough to increase the risk of skin infections. Not a huge risk increase, but it’s there.

The process of making the bed also reduces any shed skin, or detritus carried into the bed, which means reduced food sources for anything undesirable. That means an overall reduction in allergens and irritants that can be a problem if you aren’t changing sheets daily. It won’t remove as much as changing sheets, but you’d be amazed how much is in your sheets after even one night of sleep.

Anything along those lines also carries the possibility of decreasing quality of sleep, which is already a problem millions of people deal with.

Now, we change our sheets often enough to minimize any of those issues, and I run a pass of the vacuum via the furniture/upholstery thingy regularly between changes. Any of the drawbacks to unmade sheets go away under those conditions because they’ll get changed again before any buildup can reach problematic levels. Add in the willingness to smooth the sheets out before climbing in, and adjusting the fitted sheet for smoothness works as well.

But, there’s a secondary benefit the making the bed that isn’t about the bed or sleep.

We humans are strange sometimes. Our minds and brains pull some fuckery on us. For one, habits are easy to break, but hard to build. It’s easier to break a small habit than a large one, particularly when tired.

But of more importance is how people in general deal with visual order vs visual disorder. A “mess” tends to shift human behavior in comparison to a neat area. As an example, if you have a perfectly clean table, people coming along are less likely to leave a mess. But if the table already has objects just sitting there, they’re more likely to also leave something.

That proclivity occurs in our homes as much as anywhere else. Having a bed made up looks neater than one that is unmade. This can lead to other forms of mess that can cascade into a household wide situation where people, out of nothing but subconscious perception, are more likely to let messes build up.

I can’t find the study I’m pulling that from to link to. Not even sure it’s available online. So I’m not going to throw out percentages of people leaving more things on an already littered table, but it was high enough when I read it years ago that it stuck in my memory as being very high.

Making a bed perfectly isn’t necessary. It doesn’t even have to be fully made. But it isn’t a waste of time at all, much less a complete waste. And, again, I don’t actually make my bed and haven’t for decades.

What I do is straighten things up. Untangle sheets and blankets, smooth things out and leave the top bedding in an easy to reach position if I need to crash hard and fast (which is not unusual when my disabilities and medications are a factor).

Plenty, actually. Any intro to philosophy text will cover the basics. This is the first one that came up via ddg search. and it covers the essential stuff. Add in some critical thinking, and you’re good to go

To wax philosophic requires that one first wax on and wax off inside the self. This means that philosophy at its core is the journey of the self, both in relation to perceived reality, and in perceived self. Like the karate kid, it takes practice to build up good kata, which builds muscle, and muscle memory.

In terms of the love of thought, and the practice of thinking, when one explores how to think, you develop mental muscles. When you do that practice, you develop the ability to apply the tools of thought without thinking! It becomes automatic to question the self and the world.

That question quest gives one perspectives. Those perspectives may or may not be concrete, or even useful in and of themselves. They do, however, tend to allow you to explore a concept aloud (or in writing) in a dynamic way, without the need to stop and ponder.

Koan are a kata for the mind. As are thought experiments, meditation, reading, writing, and even casual conversation.

It requires thinking and metathinking, though. You have to seek understanding of your own thoughts as much as any concepts you might wax on

The goddess of grief

This is why I’ll never buy anything Nintendo again. They’ve made too much of a habit of fucking over people.

'Sokay my little homie, I see your external rigidity and soft insides. You matter, little guy, you matter to me

Lavender candy

Well, tbh, we don’t bother with it at all now. There’s not enough kids doing it to merit the expense or effort involved (and it ain’t like either are high enough to matter, which shows how bad Halloween has gotten).

But, yeah, back when kids still did it, who cares about costumes? Halloween isn’t dressupday. There’s other traditions involved, including kids running around and having fun just for the sake of the fun itself.

Besides, who am I to determine whether or not someone needs a costume? They might not be able to afford one. They might have some weird religious thing about masks or whatever. They might have some medical issue that prevents a costume. They might have had a costume, but something happened to it. I don’t know why they’re not wearing one. But if they show up at my door, they’re celebrating Halloween. They’re taking part in not only a community activity, but a very human activity. That’s worth some candy by itself.

Shit, I’ve given candy to adults that rolled up and said trick or treat because it isn’t only about kids. I’ve handed extra candy to adults and kids that asked with the explanation there was someone that couldn’t make it. IDGAF if it’s true or not, it isn’t about me.

I fucking miss Halloween the way it used to be. You’d think in this bumfuck nowhere semi rural town, we’d still have people out and about. But no, we haven’t had a single visitor on Halloween since covid. Even before that, it was two or three the entire night and had been for years.

There was so much fun in putting on a Halloween playlist, or movies, or whatever and waiting to see or hear someone coming. Even if I didn’t dress up myself, it was fun to see everyone out and enjoying the night. Hell, back when I was still in physical therapy, on a bloody walker, I was in the living room ready to go. Hopped up on pain meds, but still.

I’m envious that you live somewhere it’s still a big thing, costumes or not.

I got into a bit of drama back in the late nineties.

I knew a guy that had goats. One of them died, and I requested the remains to deflesh and use the bones.

I also had a bunch of supplies left behind by an ex that was into making their own clothing.

I set up a nice little scene in the front yard with the goat bones laid out in a pentagram made with lights making the lines glow. The cloth got draped over wire frames to roughly resemble robed human figures. So it basically looked like an animal sacrifice. Wasn’t even that good tbh, I didn’t have enough wire to make things very stable, so shit would be falling over every time the wind picked up.

But, apparently, the church down the road had a problem with it. Complaints were made, got some nasty letters shoved in the mailbox, and the preacher dropped by to tell me my immortal soul was in danger, and that I was to take it all down.

I’m not fond of random assholes coming to my house for anything. I’m less fond of zealots. I’m even less fond of being essentially ordered to do much of anything at all, much less by some random asshole of a preacher. He was rather surprised that I would tell him to go fuck himself.

There were attempts to get cops to do something about it, which didn’t work because nothing was illegal. And a couple of assholes that didn’t know I’m an insomniac tried raiding the yard and fucking it up. They failed, I had a good laugh when they ran off, and that was pretty much that.

Real minor drama, overall.

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Dammit, and I just changed underwear!

Look, homie just tryin to make a dollar while competing against hardcore orc porn and hobbit scat fetish. Leave him alone

Afaik, only the ant bites. The others use them for flinging opponents or grappling with them.

Unlike me, I grapple so I can bite

You get me closer to god

First, this ain’t drama.

Second, I’m breaking my personal rule of not engaging with people just to be mean.

You are a whiny little fuck and need to grow up