Yea, every format has sped up a ton, and unsurprisingly, bans have had to come faster too.

Nadu, Winged Wisdom was released in the summer and is already banned in the two formats it was nominally designed for (Modern and Commander).

Oh man, a decade? Yea, the power creep in the past 4-ish years has been more like a power flood, this card is playable, but far from OP

Some more egregious examples from recent memory: Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer The evoke elementals Sheoldred, the Apocalypse The One Ring

This is spot on.

I like making leather goods for friends and family. As soon as I made my first few things, my parents and (now ex) wife starting making comments about making it my side hustle, selling at fairs/farmer markets, etc.

I took a few steps down that road, but the business side of figuring out costs, meeting deadlines, etc., absolutely killed my passion for my hobby and I basically quit doing it for almost two years.

I’ve only just gotten back into it over the past few months, making some things for my friends and “charging” them something like a homemade painting or a six-pack of good beer and letting them know their wallet/purse/whatever will be done when it’s done.

I’m happy, they’re happy, and my day job continues to be my source of income, while my hobby is my escape and still feels good.

Others have already said to let go about everything being perfect, because there will be things outside of your control that you cannot account for, so I won’t harp on about that.

Instead, I recommend a little pre-trip prep at home to make the end of your trip a dream as well. Take some time to clean the house/apartment, do the dishes and laundry, make the bed.

There is nothing like coming home after a long trip, but coming home to a mess or chores after a (hopefully) amazing time is a terrible way to cap off your vacation, so do yourselves a favor and spend a couple hours on making home perfect before you leave.

$14/hour? Not likely, 20 states are still at the federal minimum of $7.25/hour, and only like 7 are at $14 or higher.

Lump that together with the massive stigma about hiring people who spent time in prison, the shit education and/or training most incarcerated people receive and they’ll be lucky to get two minimum wage jobs to barely squeak by.

The U.S. never abolished slavery, they just gave it a makeover and called it justice.

I recall seeing NPC faces a lot more in game than I saw my own PCs face, even with helmets hidden, but it’s very likely that is just confirmation bias on my part, since I invested nothing into the PC appearance, so nothing stuck.

But that doesn’t discount your point, and of all the games I could have named, BG3 is probably the worst example.

That’s a fair point, someone took the time to code those aspects of the game, and if it adds to your enjoyment and engagement with the game, more power to you, it’s just not for me.

Thanks for replying, it does give some context to why my friend enjoys those parts of the game.

My friend was shocked to hear I spent about 10 seconds in the character creator in BG3 and exactly 0 seconds concerned with dying my armor to match whatever theme.

I just don’t see the appeal, it’s not like I see the character’s face all the time, and I’m constantly swapping armor around for different situations.

I’d rather be playing the game than spending ages on making my character look a certain way just to never actually see them in game for more than a split second on screen during conversations.

Can we please start using this photo of him for every article?

This actually reminds me of an incident in high school.

One of the teachers was younger and pretty cool, and one day we were told there would be a substitute later that week, but the teacher wanted to help us mess with the sub, so instead of Literature class that day, we practiced humming at a super low volume to make the sub question their hearing, gracefully dropping pencils and books at opportune times, etc.

Well the day finally came, and sufficed to say we failed at being discreet and the sub got pretty pissed at us. The scheduled lesson was abandoned, and instead we were told to write a short essay about how we should behave in class and the lessons we should be focused on.

Well it was high school lit, so we were reading some books that had adult themes and things, and some of the kids wrote that we were learning how to identify prostitutes (some character had a different woman visit all the time) or how to murder or whatever.

The next week the teacher was back, and because of our shenanigans and the essay content, we heard that they basically had to fight to keep their job, and damn did we all feel like fucking idiots after that.

I still think about that teacher from time to time. I hope they’re doing ok.

I’m mean, would “Get to the choppa!” have been any better?

I thought Xcommunications might have potential, but it’s too long