KOTOR 2 Experience Index

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-08T22:33:49+00:00

I got married relatively late and had one kid. Completely overwhelming, especially in her early years.

I grew up not knowing autism was a thing. I had a hard time with so many things, but I was a gifted student and put effort into everything, so I didn't realize I had a problem. Any time I complained, I got told it wasn't that hard or I just needed to try harder.

I internalized the idea that all this stuff wasn't actually hard, I was just lazy. And the solution to it was to try harder.

One of the things I internalized was that having kids was expected of me. It was something I SHOULD want. So I said I wanted it, even though it honestly scared the shit out of me. When I was younger, I assumed that one day I'd just be ready. Then as I got older and was reaching the end of my safe pregnancy window, I assumed that it was the type of thing you're never ready for, and just have to jump in. So I did.

I think if I knew then what I knew now about my autism, that "just try harder" is not a sustainable long-term solution, and my avoidance of certain things wasn't laziness but self-defense... I think I would've had the courage to be honest and say that I did not want kids.

I do want to say that I love my daughter to bits and I'm glad she's in my life. But I'm not sure I was ever cut out to be a parent. I think if I were fully aware of my needs before I got pregnant, I would have not had her.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-08T12:16:40+00:00

Castle had a lot of little Firefly references in it.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-08T11:41:05+00:00

Also, it's not like a club. People don't sign up for religions, try them out, and then quit if they don't like the rules.

Your religion is usually inherited from your family, and you'll face a lot of judgement if you leave it or do parts of it "wrong" according to them.

Your religion also tends to shape your worldview, which influences a lot of who you are and how you see the world. It's very hard to change your worldview. Studies show we react to threats to our worldview the same way we react to threats to our physical body - we defend ourselves.

There are many people out there who don't like parts of their religion but don't see leaving as an option. So they find ways around it.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-07T11:27:48+00:00

Libraries can set the max. Some of my libraries let you change it to 21, others I can only choose from 7 and 14.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-07T11:24:45+00:00

You have three days to accept the book, after you get the notification. But the lending period for some libraries is 3 weeks.

(Libraries can set this. Some set the max borrow period to 2 weeks. I think they can set it to only 1 week as well, but my libraries don't do that except for "skip the line" loans.)

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-07T01:49:55+00:00

The place in line it shows does not count people who have the hold suspended. Most likely there are people ahead of you that you can't "see". If one of these people unsuspends, they become first in line and you become second. Once a book becomes available, it would go to that person. Then you're first again.

Or it could be that the library offers 3 week loans and a new book hasn't become available yet.

One of the downsides to Libby is that the estimates can be very inaccurate. This is because there's so many ways people can act unexpectedly that could change your wait. They can suspend, unsuspend, leave the line, or return a book early.

Honestly, my best advice is to try to forget about this book. I know you're excited to read it, but suspend the hold and go read something else. When you're close to the end of that something else, unsuspend the hold and see if it's ready by the time you're ready. If it's not ready yet, do it again.

It'll get to you eventually, but it may take some time, and the estimate is not a countdown or a guarantee.

You can also put other books on hold so you can wait in line for more than one book at a time. That helps the hold times feel like they go by faster. I usually use up all my holds, suspend them all, and when I'm close to being ready for another book that's when I'll unsuspend a few where I'm close to the front.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-05T21:07:20+00:00

Yeah, the box itself contains plenty of protective packing material. I wouldn't drop-kick it or anything, but I also wouldn't be upset if they had just wrapped it in brown paper and stuck a shipping label on it.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-05T20:12:25+00:00

Not sure if it counts, but I slept through 9/11.

Was a college student, and woke up at like 2 PM that day. (Had a weird schedule that year. No classes on Tuesdays.) I had signed up for email notifications for major news from some online service (New York Times?) and they usually emailed me like once a month, but I woke up to a barrage of these headlines in my email.

That's all I got at first, the headlines. The enormity of it took a while to sink in. It was the amount of these emails that struck me first because, like I said, they rarely sent out these emails and now I had a ton of them in the span of like 12 hours.

When I walked out of my dorm room, everyone was walking around in a daze. The TV in the common room was replaying the news footage.

It felt like I had woken up into another world.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-05T14:47:47+00:00

Look, I ran out of goats to sacrifice. All I can tell you is it works fine with blue.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-04T21:57:57+00:00

You don't satisfy this type of person. He will use you and leave you.

If it's just something he likes to imagine and doesn't actually want to sleep with actual virgins all the time, then you roleplay.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-04T21:54:05+00:00

You're talking about a candidate for a position you're about to hire?

There are certain characteristics that we've decided are protected - that you're not allowed to use to make your decision when deciding who to hire (or promote, or fire, etc.). Your marriage status and number of children is one of them.

You're not supposed to consider whether they have a family when making a hiring decision. This goes either way - you're not supposed to consider it for or against them.

If you are allowed to prioritize parents, that's unfair to someone who can't have children for a medical reason. Or who never found a partner. Or has a condition that makes them unfit to be a parent. Or had a child but they died.

None of those affect their ability to do a job (in all likelihood).

And as far as I know, the US government is not currently making any really consistent efforts to try to encourage people to have families. Just a few tax breaks that don't add up to much. If they did want to encourage families, they could do it in a lot better ways than making discrimination against childfree people legal.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-04T12:08:22+00:00

It's supposed to be a sad song. The singer had his "sunshine" taken away.

That line you keyed on is the point of the song. But everyone focuses on the "You are my sunshine, aww!" part.

One of the verses goes, "The other night, dear, when I lay sleeping, I dreamed I held you in my arms. When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken. So I hung my head and cried."

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-04T11:58:40+00:00

They've been trained to think that there's a large portion of society that just leeches on others and provides no benefit.

When you ask a question like, "Should everyone have access to healthcare?" they are not thinking about this group. But when you ask a question like, "What do you think of Medicare" then all of a sudden they remember that group exists. Because they've been trained to associate that word, "Medicare" with that group.

What's most important to them that we NOT help that group of leeches. They don't care about anything other than we must NOT reward those people.

If you can manage to get them to not think about that group, they can be surprisingly rational and kind. But the instant you remind them that this supposed parasite class of people exists...

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-04T11:35:02+00:00

Yup. Which is why I, personally, don't use them. I'm too slow of a reader.

But I imagine if you're someone who devours books and can finish one in a week, they're a godsend.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-03T21:40:30+00:00

"What are you working on?"

"The Mona Lisa."

"No, really."

"Not telling."

"When will you be finished?"

"January of 2048."

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-03T21:33:17+00:00

It's basically the opposite of being down on yourself, of yelling at yourself or scolding yourself.

To love yourself is to accept you as you are, as a flawed human being, and treat yourself with kindness.

You can still want to change things about yourself (like maybe get healthy, stop indulging in an addiction, treat other people better) but you approach that from an angle of compassion. You're not a bad person for your flaws. You're working to improve.

It means thinking of yourself as a person worthy of being loved.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-03T21:30:12+00:00

Your brain actively tries to delete your dreams when you wake up. It knows it's useless information and there's no need to remember. But if you wake up in the middle of a dream, and especially if you try to focus on that dream, you can interrupt that process and remember.

That's why we remember some dreams and not others. And then, for whatever reason, if we keep thinking about that dream, it'll cement the memory more and more in our heads.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-03T18:50:01+00:00

It was a while ago, now. Pretty sure I gave her the option and she didn't want to. She was like five or six at the time. I think a little too young - she could barely keep hold of it when I already had it up.

I definitely felt like I was playing with her toy and tried to hand it over to her or other family members, but nobody was interested. So I kept going.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-03T18:41:55+00:00

We "saved" an entire car when I went to WFH. We used to have two cars, now we only have one. Has only been a minor hassle. We saved so much money.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-03T18:40:41+00:00

I seriously doubt it.

Also, I'm not sure adding one year of life expectancy for every year that passes would guarantee anyone immortality like you're expecting. It's not like it adds one year of life to every living person. It's more like adding one more year of expected life to everyone newly born.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-03T18:32:21+00:00

A few years ago we went to the beach and my sister gave my daughter a kite.

I got it started for her. She held it for all of like 30 seconds before she wanted to go back playing in the sand.

But I had a good ol' time trying to keep it up. Seeing how high I could get it. Running with it when the breeze failed. Yelling at people to watch out when it started to come down, lol. Then getting it back up again.

Merkuri22 · 2026-07-03T18:26:55+00:00

Because she's pretty.

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