We live pretty frugally in comparison to our peers. Less than $30 a month in subscriptions, our utility bills are low, we eat out maybe once a month and every other meal is made at home. We thrift and get just about everything we can second hand from yard sales or friends. It used to be that we were putting aside money, now there’s less extra. We’re getting ready for worse, and planting fruit trees, learning gardening and canning, and reaching out to our neighbors.
Been daydreaming about a city builder sim that realistically characterizes cars. No “magic parking”, no perfect drivers, with pollution mapping, traffic deaths, an average commute time per citizen as a statistic, that kind of thing.
I imagine it starting out exactly like Cities: Skylines, where you start building out your town with commercial and industrial and residential zones. As you lay out roads and utilities, the citizens keep demanding more parking and bigger roads. If you build them, your town becomes mostly parking lots and huge, dangerous roads. People complain about living near pollution, loud car noises, traffic deaths and commute times. Your town would have negative income from all of the building and maintenance costs and constantly be needing to be bailed out due to how expensive it all is.
The trick, then, would be not to listen to the complaints from car drivers. The only way to build your town where the budget is balanced properly is to increase density, utilize mixed use areas, and to build as few large roads and utility corridors as possible. The game wouldn’t tell you this outright, it would simply give you realistic price tags and maintenance costs compared to people moved and let the player problem solve and optimize.
There would be a robust palette of micromobility options, public transit, greenways and parks and pedestrian areas. Car access would be optional for building placement and based more on emergency vehicles or services. You could design your own streets with your desired configuration of bike paths, street cars, pedestrian walkways and green spaces and save templates to use elsewhere.
There would be lots of beautiful middle density building models, parks, and plazas, and a mode where you could rehabilitate an already developed car centric city.
If someone made this game I would be so happy and play it all the time, making a perfect transit utopia
Friendly reminder that a common propaganda tactic is to discourage your opposition from voting
Cilantro, with the soapy gene. It tastes like soap, but eh, I kind of like it.
I keep coming back to it and catching more references and recurring characters. It’s very rewatchable!
I think as far as shows that I love and come back to, and that I keep thinking of and want to own on physical media:
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
She-Ra: Princesses of Power
The Good Place
The Addams Family (the black and white one)
Parks & Recreation
Star Trek TNG, Lower Decks, and Deep Space 9
Strawberries are fantastic. I planted some last year and was really bummed that I didn’t get to eat a single one. Then this summer, we had wild strawberries ALL over thanks to the greedy critters pooping seeds all over. This year I finally got a handful of delicious, perfectly ripe berries and the critters ate the wild ones. Perennial, self-propagating, and delicious. What else could you want?
The way our urban design influences society and community, and how the loss of third spaces and the dominance of cars in Western society has led to the loneliness epidemic and influence bubbles. I would talk about the movement to reclaim main street and encourage “traditional development”, and how that leads to the micro-encounters that help people feel like they belong somewhere. How parks, plazas and pedestrian areas create third places where people can casually encounter diverse individuals and create friends and community connections. Also with a hearty side about public transportation and how efficient it is, and what a better neighbor a tram rail is than a road of similar passenger load. This speech is pretty much 30 seconds away from coming out of me during any conversation anyway and it’s a conscious effort to stop myself. Would be nice to let it out.
The books in that series all seemed to follow the same pattern of something weird, interesting and mysterious happening, having no idea what was going on, spending the whole book getting a slightly better picture of it only for something else totally incomprehensible to happen and the cycle started again. I wanted to like it but I got sick of the antics. Really interesting world though
Who says a collection has to be material or unused?
Pretty clothes, hats, jewelry, crystals and cool rocks, musical instruments, board games, video games, antique wooden puzzles, books, ice cream recipes, crafting supplies and good fabrics, vintage kitchen equipment and appliances, solid wood furniture, projects, skills, hobbies… everything is interesting and my house is a glorious mess full of fascinating things.
Depends on where you are. Where I am, we have little farm shops and bakeries that sell frozen pies that are the real deal. Unfortunately that’s very dependent on location but might be worth a look.
An ally would listen to feedback from the minority they claim to support… just sayin’
My opinion as a pragmatist and a woman: an engagement shouldn’t be a surprise. The formality of the proposal itself can be a surprise, but just like a birthday party it should be something expected and at the very least loosely discussed with the person. Asking “what kind of proposals do you like?” and figuring out if they want something public or private, or in front of friends or something small is really important. What kind of engagement ring should go in this discussion. She might hate diamonds, she might love them, she might have a metal allergy, she might have a stone that means a lot to her, she might hate rings with stones at all because they catch on things. You don’t know until you ask, and by asking you’re showing her the respect and that you value her opinion.
Yes but that’s not the cat people are usually referring to when they say "I have a cat I let outside "
Cats outside are an aggressive invasive species in every continent except Africa. I love them but they need to be kept inside, and neutered/spayed. Cats do fine indoors, even ones who have gotten used to going in and out. They may complain but with enrichment and regular play they will get over it. If not, then a catio is a good solution.
In places hostile to cars, it’s perfectly possible for delivery trucks and emergency vehicles to use streets intended for pedestrians. Trucks make deliveries at early hours before there are many people around, and emergency vehicles use sirens and drive at slower speeds. As far as general package delivery, people just use smaller scale methods.
OP mentions their age but not his. If this person is in their 20s, or even 30s, the story changes dramatically
If Narnia is real, the most important thing for all people is owning a wardrobe and keeping the hinges on it.