Aw, but all my other bones are so low maintenance.

Mine is Magic: The Gathering, except I fully realize that I am pulling away from it and why.

The game sparked an immense amount of joy when I picked it up in high school. Now I barely recognize the game anymore. It doesn’t truly have an identity of its own and exists in this permanent state of limbo where 3rd party IPs are taking over the demand for new product and the rules are becoming so bloated that they can’t fit them on cards anymore.

This is such an “old man yelling at clouds” moment for me, because I heard just about every reason under the sun for why people quit the game when I was playing from power creep to changing art styles to just getting priced out of the hobby in general. I realize now that those people were not wrong, they were just not the target audience anymore. I am no longer a profitable demographic to pander to. I never buy packs anymore, and I’ve even stopped buying singles and I don’t attend tournaments or collect anymore, so why would Hasbro/WotC make products for me? Especially when there are deep pocketed whales out there who will pay top dollar for their favorite crossover set, no matter how silly or out of place it might seem.

I wish I could enjoy the game the way I used to, but I just can’t be bothered to hop back in when it doesn’t feel the same anymore.

It doesn’t matter to anybody who has already made up their mind to vote/not vote for him.

It matters that justice is done and that the system holds him accountable.

Guestbook, hit counter, a midi file playing in the background, and a dead hyperlink to another page of the same website.

Edit: omg I can’t believe I forgot about marquees. Do that too.

I used to use it way back when it first came out and I was a huge fan, but about the time Chrome was becoming a mainstream alternative I started to have a lot of difficulty with adblockers not working and webpages that refused to load on anything other than Internet Explorer or Chrome, so I switched.

Heard about some of the shady shit going down recently in the Googlesphere and decided it was time to switch back and I’m happy to report that everything runs smoothly again.

This flag is called “Thin Blue Line”, which is a pro-police symbol. The origin is from the thought that supposedly the only thing keeping peaceful society insulated from total anarchy is a “thin blue line”, or a small number of law enforcement officers who voluntarily put themselves between the two.

However, as noble as the origin sounds, the flag itself is only a modern artistic creation that can trace it’s actual creation to the counter-protest of the “Black Lives Matter” movement in support of the police (the ones who were the subject of accusations of racial bias and discrimination against blacks in America) and it often interpreted as a racist dogwhistle, supporting acts of police brutality, extrajudicial killings, and authoritarianism in general.

It’s a pretty right-wing affiliated symbol and you see it in conjunction with a lot of other conservative virtue signaling, iconography, and stereotypes.

I’ll commiserate with you on the fact that the healthcare system is totally broken. My Mom has had a problem with one of her leg nerves for over a year and a half now, and she has been going in to see specialists, getting told “this is what you have, here’s what we can do”, getting the prescription/treatment, having it not work at all, and then gets told to get back in line for another appointment with several weeks, if not months, of lead time. Even when she gets put on a priority list for when there are cancellations, there’s almost never a cancellation that let’s her get in earlier than her original appointment.

In her case, I’m not blaming the doctors. They are trying their best. I just don’t understand how it can take 1-2 months per visit, or even upwards of 6 months, and meanwhile she is in agonizing pain whenever she stands or walks too long.

Meanwhile, I just paid out $6k in dental bills this year alone because my regular dentist missed a cavity until it became bad enough that it required a root canal, but they tried to fill it first and it didn’t work, so then I had to pay for the botched filling procedure (partially covered by insurance), and a root canal that sadly doesn’t seem to have made the tooth any less sensitive, and copayment fees to other dental providers for second opinions because my tooth still hurts even after all they did to it and I want to know what else could do to help, and now I am looking at paying another $3000+ to have the tooth extracted and replaced with a prosthetic implant, which was an option in the first place but they encouraged me to try the fillings and the root canal to “save” the tooth first. Now, I’m trying to wait until January 1st to have my benefits reset so it softens the blow significantly, but until then I’m suffering with this zombie tooth rotting away in my mouth.

The healthcare system in America is fucking garbage and needs to be destroyed and rebuilt with a human-first mindset, not a for-profit mindset.

I hope you are able to get the treatment you deserve. Stay strong and stay positive.

What? This is simply not true. Yes, there was a dip in 2008, but the real estate market has since recovered and we are already well beyond what houses were valued at on average in 2008 and this time there’s no subprime lending bubble.

Buying real estate is still the #1 way for regular people to passively build wealth in America. It’s just getting a lot harder for average people who are not already on the ladder to take the first step due to prohibitively high costs, taxes, and interest rates.

Too many gold sinks at low level, not enough gold sinks at high level.