but it doesn't disintegrate

Lmao, my little sailboat would like to have a word with you. Maybe it could, too, if I hadn't plastered it over with enough lacquer to make a latex sub's dreams come shooting out of their happy hole. The 'fiberglass-on-top-of-plywood' construction is an absolute bitch if any moisture makes its way to the plywood.

I am rural

This is a big factor. I think I doubled my time on the computer when I moved to an area with no true neighbors for miles.

I don't even think I'm an NPC. I'm more the part of the HUD that flashes 'press X' when other people get near interactable objects.

Well, I love D&D for it's ability to pull off dungeoneering (and even though I didn't like it the most, 4E was definitely the most streamlined, fight me), WoD because the books are so freaking amazing to read through (seriously, the little vignettes are bone-melting good in the core books), and shadowrun because it predicts well (super sad face right now), but none off them can hold a sock in terms of 'fun' to my favorite.

FATE. It's beautiful. From the very onset of character creation it gets the group working in a collaborative fashion to build a story. The way it handles action scenes is at the very soul off old anime and hero fiction where saying "I believe I can win!" and then changing the win condition by kicking over a scene prop to give you a beautiful bonus... I love it. Using your character's main description in an inventive way by twisting the meaning (and being encouraged to do so!) is just classic hand-holding-leading you to think creatively without explicitly guiding you to be more creative.

most of the citizens of DC will literally want to see Trump, Musk, and Vance’s heads on pikes

If things get bad enough, the military and those guarding the president may simply look the other way and let the mob storm the gates

I wish I could live in your fantasy world, mate, but it's never going to happen. The ideological divide has mutated beautifully into full-on trench warfare between camps of cheerleaders/fans. There are more than enough of the 'other' in positions that matter to make the machine's gears keep turning.

elementary school teachers could be among the first 5% of people to adopt a new super-inclusive type of brand new lefty language

Elementary school teachers are also more likely to crack down on any sort of insulting language in general. I remember when I was a kid in the 4th grade, our teacher would punish us for asking, "So?" So was short for 'So what?' At the time it was (sometimes properly, give me a break, Mrs. H) a way to insultingly say that someone else's statement was meaningless.

It wasn't because it was ableist, or anything else you could point a finger to except insulting, and teachers head that sort of interaction off early.

I think the part that threw me as a child was when the central tower area raised a platform when you raised the water level. The camera super focuses on the new hole, but I never saw it. Cue the endless frustration that I had to overcome by looking up a guide.

And the nader pin, though I'm sure that one isn't quite as life saving.

There are people paying obscene amounts of money for certain... subjects to be portrayed. I guarantee you the majority are not doing it for shock value. https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=pq0kqhhi344 Some of the pictures there are... problematic.

O.o

I want Orange, thanks.

A can of aerosol. Could be cleaning, could be disinfecting, could be scent only, could be insecticide.

That's a pretty shapely bag.