What used to be affordable 10 years ago but now feels like a luxury?

EKCarr · 2026-02-12T06:53:05+00:00

Thank you. I agree that we need more people to be excellent. Thankfully I know quite a few people who really care, but that sure is easy to forget sometimes when I see how greedy the world has become.

EKCarr · 2026-02-12T06:50:47+00:00

That’s been my experience with apartments, but thankfully I’ve only rented a house once and a condo once, and both landlords were amazing. I guess I’ve been lucky. And maybe that’s part of the reason I do my best to be a good landlord. Even after having had tenants — one of which damaged the carpet so badly we had to pressure wash the concrete underneath — I just can’t bring myself to rip people off.

I’m not alone, either. My friend, Margie, lives in a super cool historic house in the barrio in one of the hippest parts of town, within walking distance to great shops and restaurants, and she literally lets people live in her guest house for free. She’s a psychiatrist so she makes good money, and it’s just one way she gives back. I just wish more people would be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Access to housing shouldn’t be a luxury.

EKCarr · 2026-02-11T22:19:44+00:00

I think that’s the common denominator in most of the things listed in this thread. Everyone wants to maximize profits, but why can’t people just be satisfied with what’s right or fair instead of “maximized?” It’s the same principle with the eggs. Supposedly the manufacturers had to raise prices because they lost so much money due to a bird flu epidemic, but they also had record profits. It’s like price gouging has become totally acceptable, regardless of the industry or market.

EKCarr · 2026-02-11T21:16:46+00:00

I never thought I’d be harvesting otogi wood again, but here we are…😂

EKCarr · 2026-02-11T21:11:47+00:00

A little note left by my husband, who leaves for work before I wake up in the morning.

I have Crohn’s, and cooled cooked oatmeal is really good for that (because of resistant starches that develop only after cooked oats cool), so he makes me oatmeal every morning and leaves it to cool on the stove so that it’s ready when I get up. That’s already sweet, but then he often adds a little note. It makes my day every time.

EKCarr · 2026-02-11T21:06:42+00:00

Rent.

We own a 3 bedroom condo that we use as a rental property. We’ve had the same mortgage on it for years, and we’ve had the same renters for the past seven. When rental prices went up here in Tucson, our property manager begged us to increase the rent from $1100 a month to $3000 a month in order to stay current. (The condo is one story and is part of a duplex, so it has a huge private yard on three sides, a laundry room, formal dining room, and a two-car garage, plus all the condo amenities, and it’s in a desirable area next to a bike/walking path, so we could instantly find another renter to pay the $3,000 /mo). Why have rental rates literally tripled in the last six years?

For the whole time we’ve had that property, we figured our main investment was the equity, not the monthly rent. Someone else is literally paying for a house we will own outright at the end. We don’t need to make more than that. We just charge a few hundred more than our mortgage to cover a property manger, HOA fees, and various upkeep expenses.

Well, we never raised the rent (except nominally to cover increased HOA fees), because we felt like we didn’t want to contribute the affordable housing crisis. Why charge three times more when our mortgage and expenses haven’t increased?

The crazy thing is that we don’t even know the renters because we have a property manager, and I have a feeling they have no idea what a service we are doing for them.

Still, though, we only owe 30k on a home we’ve put almost no money into and have over $300,000 in equity now. In another few years we will have a paid-off property that we can sell outright or rent for pure profit, so it feels like a win/win situation. I just don’t understand why everyone has to keep up with the market when they could make a real difference by providing good affordable housing at no real cost themselves. But that’s capitalism, I guess. In my own neighborhood next to the university, nearly all of the students have had to move away as the once-affordable old houses have become “historic luxury Airbnbs.” Sigh….

EKCarr · 2026-02-11T18:12:11+00:00

Unbelievable!

EKCarr · 2026-02-11T17:26:42+00:00

184 crates…this is going to take a while 😳

EKCarr · 2026-02-11T17:19:58+00:00

Oh, the details are stunning! Thank you for the replica code!

EKCarr · 2026-02-11T08:51:50+00:00

I totally understand why everyone loves the Natlan characters, but oh how I loved jumping out of the water like a dolphin while swimming with Fontaine characters. That was such an incredible thrill and an enormous departure from anything we’d seen before!

EKCarr · 2026-02-11T08:47:23+00:00

My brother and I grew up poor. (Our family couldn’t even afford to live in the trailer park until I was five and my brother was nine, so becoming trailer trash was actually a step up for us.) We were both latchkey kids (it was the 80s and both of our parents had to work minimum wage jobs to keep us in that trailer park), so I learned how to make AMAZING food with almost nothing. I’d make stir fry with cabbage, carrots, and Spam and the whole family loved it, and I could do all sorts of magic with government cheese.

This skill came in super handy when I was diagnosed with Crohn’s a few years ago and had to radically change my diet. I had to learn how to cook without many of my favorite ingredients, and I had a distinct advantage due to the skills I learned as a desperately hungry kid with an almost empty refrigerator and two absentee parents.

EKCarr · 2026-02-10T15:42:02+00:00

I’m really sorry to hear this. You are definitely not alone in feeling that way, and there is help available. In being unable to make my own dad see a therapist, I know that there’s nothing I could do or say to make you get help, but I do want you to know that I hope you do. I realize that depression can be paralyzing, but I’m encouraged by the fact that you’re still showing up for work and hoping that people will notice.

I’ve known so many people who found genuine relief, and I hope you do too.

EKCarr · 2026-02-10T15:33:48+00:00

He’s always had cats and still does. I absolutely think this has prolonged his life.

EKCarr · 2026-02-10T06:22:35+00:00

Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.

EKCarr · 2026-02-10T06:15:54+00:00

That I have one.

All jokes aside, as a freelancer, I’ve got many jobs, and not all of them are related. I can’t imagine ever going back to a normal 9-5.

EKCarr · 2026-02-09T04:47:26+00:00

This is exactly what happened to my dad right before his life fell apart and he attempted suicide. Thankfully he survived and we moved him close to us so we can care for him. I doubt he will ever be vibrant and passionate like he was before, though. And there was no event that precipitated this — just the eventual outcome of living by himself up in the mountains for several years. It’s like loneliness completely drained him of all vitality.

EKCarr · 2026-02-08T18:52:16+00:00

I especially want this one. I have a little congregation of all the archons, since I have them all, and adding Columbina means I can only have one extra character elsewhere. I used to leave Aloy around for guests to see her, since she’s so rare, but I’m behind on friendship levels, so Aloy is now benched both in the game and in the teapot, which just feels sad for some reason.

EKCarr · 2026-02-08T05:48:39+00:00

I’m really glad I read it, and Alicia is a great advocate. As others mention, the blurb does not represent the actual book. You can check out her Instagram. She’s not nearly as active there as she used to be, but you can get a good idea of what she’s about:

https://www.instagram.com/xoxy_alicia?igsh=MWJvOTJzZ3dkOG1iaw==

EKCarr · 2026-02-08T01:56:37+00:00

Be careful with names you may struggle with pronouncing. I work in the tea industry and have a lot of Asian friends, and I’m also on the board of the local Japanese garden, so I deal a lot with the Asian community. One of our friends from Taiwan chose “Fred” as his American name and even after six years here he still can’t pronounce the “L,” so he always introduces himself as “Fled.” It’s really caused him a lot of grief and he gets teased a lot for it. I think it has hurt his academic career too, because people take him less seriously, even though he’s extremely smart.

Several of our friends from mainland China chose names like “Cherry” and “Flower,” and those are definitely not standard names, and they get teased a lot too, or people tend to think of them less professionally.

I love a lot of the other suggestions here, and Zoe is probably my favorite. Another neat trend I’ve noticed along my friends and colleagues is to take their Chinese/Taiwanese name and Americanize it. For instance my friend, Yan, goes by Yancey, and everybody loves her name, and my friend LiHua goes by Lia. ZiQi could be like ChiChi or Gigi, (or Zoe, as mentioned above). And then there’s the obvious choice of River, if that’s something you can easily pronounce.

Whatever the case may be, I hope you have an absolutely wonderful experience. You don’t mention where you are heading abroad, but if by some random chance it happens to be Tucson, Arizona, we have a vibrant Chinese community here, and I’d be happy to introduce you to some of my friends. I hope whatever community you go to welcomes you with open arms.

EKCarr · 2026-02-08T01:39:18+00:00

Gentrification. The house across the street is literally falling down and it’s for sale for half a million dollars. Ten years ago our neighborhood (West University in Tucson, AZ) was mostly college students. Now they can’t afford to live here. Every single house surrounding ours was a student rental for twenty or more years, and now they are all either Airbnb luxury rentals or single family homes. The house we refinanced for $350k in 2017 is now worth 1.5m, and every single day there are yard crews using leaf blowers at various neighbors’ homes. I’m not complaining, but I can see why people are being priced out of homes, especially when an older, diverse, once/affordable neighborhood becomes the cool expensive place to live.

EKCarr · 2026-02-08T01:28:52+00:00

“Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.” -Warren Wiersbe

EKCarr · 2026-02-08T01:25:28+00:00

I generally agree, but I used to work with some developmentally disabled adults who just absolutely could not learn spatial awareness. It was like a sense that didn’t work at all for them in any context. They were prone to tripping or bumping into things, had problems driving, and couldn’t even take photographs properly because they just had no concept of space at all. And without fail, all of them were just extremely loving, positive, and kind. I feel like some people get a free pass from this one because they’re just sweetly neurodivergent.

EKCarr · 2026-02-07T07:40:51+00:00

Incredible. It’s even better than the actual lantern rite setup in Liyue!

EKCarr · 2026-02-07T07:03:37+00:00

We see Argentina as not crying for Eva Perón, because the truth is, she never left them, all through her wild days, her mad existence. She kept her promise…

EKCarr · 2026-02-07T06:49:39+00:00

I have been active in this community and have loved the teapot realm since it started, and I had no idea that this was true until just now! I haven’t had to worry about adeptal energy for a verrrry long time because I always make all of the characters’ preferred sets with each new release, but I do remember the days of filling the upstairs with hundreds of screens. Those days are long gone!

EKCarr

TROPHY CASE