darkmarx

Taylor Swift, "You Belong With Me"?

It's like we're in a strange, speed run, crossover episode of the fall of Rome meets WW2 Germany. Once the AI and housing bubbles pop, elements of the great depression will be mixed in. That will be the final tipping point. People are protesting now, but many more are held back by needing to keep a job and a place to live. If a large percentage of the population - as in great depression level percentages - don't have those anymore... it's a terrifying prospect.

Lowering interest rates let's the bubbles continue, and worsen, while also cutting the safety net for when they do pop. This is the time to keep or slowly raise rates to deflate the bubble. Prop up single family home ownership, redduce landlords and rent gouging. Prevent company cross investment. Split large companies to soften the fall. Invest in energy infrastructure to ensure it doesn't fail next.

Economic policy is going to be what either saves or breaks us. Unfortunately, the current administration is running in the opposite direction of sensible solutions.

Stormlight Archive 5, Wind and Truth by Sanderson is 62h 48m on Audible. It's the longeest in the series.

Book 1, The Way of Kings, is the shortest at 45h 30m. So between 250 and 300 hours for the series so far.

I'd nominate him for one if he resigns.

I've had a few Samsung appliances. They are, by far, the worst appliances I've owned. I will not be buying another from them. If they want to make life more convenient, they need to make better devices, not shove screens, wifi, and AI into their crappy products.

Source?

I struggle with editing too much while writing too. Sometimes its not thinking of the right word, searching for it, getting distracted, then spending 30 minutes on Wikipedia. Other times its going back and editing previous paragraphs to make everything flow better. The only way I've been able to get around this is by writing long hand. Writing with pen on paper has forced me to get things down. Once I'm done, I'll type it and do my first round of revisions.

As for continuity, I'm an avid outliner. I keep a notebook, and if I come up with a plot line, I'll outline it. Sometimes it distracts from what I'm currently doing, but I don't think of it as a distraction since I'm still writing. I have multiple, fully-outlined stories that I can pull from if stuck or try to weave into whatever I'm currently working on. When I sit down to write, I know everything that will happen. Writing becomes more about figuring out who the characters are and how they will react to the situation they're in since the plot is already known to me.

When you take a break and struggle coming back, don't try to catch back up. You never will. Instead, just try to move forward, get traction. This is where long hand helps me. There is a disjointedness when I step away for a while and come back. But I allow it and smooth it out in revision.

I'm not saying it will solve all your problems. This is just what has helped me get over some of the difficult humps while writing while having ADHD.

Edit: Fixed typo

Former Navy nuke here... though I've been out for a while now and don't know if I'd still be considered an expert. Regardless, no, no it can't.

There is a line in The West Wing that comes to mind. "Indiana is voting for Richie (republican nominee). If there were someone less qualified than Richie, that's who Indiana would vote for."

Um... That's a drawing... there is no light.

Yes, leadership is to blame, but leaders are only leaders when people follow.

What ICE is doing is not a secret. No one, not a single person, is forced to join ICE. They choose to do so. Everyday when they show up to work, they reaffirm that choice. You're argument is we shouldn't blame the agents for choosing to break apart families, attack people for their race, or kidnap children because the ICE agent needed a job? Fuck that noise. If your personal ethos allows you to destroy other people's lives so you can have a paycheck, then you are morally bankrupt, and I absolutely will blame you for what's happening.

I'm with you. Professional sports have gone downhill. I used to be a diehard Denver Broncos fan. I had DirectTV specifically so I could get every NFL game. During football season, I'd watch every game I could. If I were to do that now, I'd need a number of different streaming services. Apart from that, I began watching less and less a few years ago when every other commercial, and every commentation, became about betting. Draft Kings, Fan Dual, MGM, and whatever else there was. It stopped being about watching the game and became more about gambling.

With baseball, they're digitally putting ads on the pitcher's mound. A couple years ago, they added advertising patches to the damn uniforms. It's disgusting. People don't play for a team anymore, they play for a brand.

Yet, even with all the additional ad revenue, ticket and concession prices have skyrocketed. It used to be that you could take a family of four to a game and not break the bank. Now, a single game is the cost of a full vacation. With four tickets, concession, and parking, you're paying at least $500. And that's without any sort of souvenirs. To make it worse, every team is wanting a new stadium and they are forcing the cities and states to pay for it through taxes. It's greed on top of greed on top of greed.

I can't stand watching professional sports anymore. On the plus side, I now have a lot more time to do other things that are a more fun and give a better sense of accomplishment than, "Hey, my team won."