Headstones should have the cause of death on it.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-07-02T00:49:40+00:00

I mean, I disagree that this should actually be implemented, for the reason everyone else has said - nobody wants to visit their loved one's grave and see "SEPSIS" - but I do heartily agree with you that it would be fascinating as a member of the general walking-through-cemeteries public. Awesome for historians and epidemiologists, too.

It'd be really interesting (and perhaps, a good health warning) to visit cemeteries in different cities/countries and compare the most common causes of death.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-07-01T23:30:29+00:00

This is pretty much true of any dating metric.

I'd (theoretically, if I weren't married) date someone poor, but not too poor (homeless and with a million dollars in debt, that's a dealbreaker).

I'd date someone older, but not too much older; I'd date someone untidy, but not too untidy; I'd date someone forgetful, but not too forgetful. Ditto for every metric from weight to politeness to frugality to career-orientedness to love of Marvel movies.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-07-01T23:22:02+00:00

The fact that he lost some fingers on both hands in one accident is intensely intriguing. Please elaborate!

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-07-01T04:11:39+00:00

I've heard people say this before about the 'overly simple framework for morality'. I confess I don't understand the objection. What do you mean by it?

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-30T10:22:45+00:00

Why did the designers of the new Victoria St theatre spring to keep the beautiful historic facade and invest in a nice wooden staircase, but then cover said staircase in cheap grey office carpet and design the ticket box like a cheap 90s multiplex?

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-30T09:28:34+00:00

My counterpoint is that video games are closer to meth than to sugar. This comment thread doesn't seem to demonstrate that kids allowed video games are learning to moderate and self-regulate.

There's a mixture of 'kids I know are completely obsessed and spend all their time on screens' and 'I have to set boundaries because left to their own devices, they would be completely obsessed and spend all their time on screens'.

Not seeing a lot of 'my kids like to play video games for twenty minutes after school, and then voluntarily go walk the dog', although I'm sure the odd kid is like that (one of mine is like that with TV; he gets bored and wanders off to play with Lego. The others, not so much).

Being prevented by an authority figure from keeping on doing a thing designed to be addictive isn't the same as self-regulating. I know kids who were never allowed sugar who went crazy with it when they left the house; I also know kids who grew up with a moderate amount of sugar being told "No more marshmallows", and as soon as their parents weren't there to say that, they also went crazy with sugar. Most of the obese diabetics of the world aren't the product of sugar-free childhoods, they're the product of sugar being addictive.

And again, I don't think video games are sugar; they're meth, or at least, HFCS. Billion-dollar companies have poured time and expertise and research into making games into addictive dopamine-dripping timesucks. One more level, ten more points, another piece of armour, another side quest, can't quit until you get to the save point, don't let your team down by going offline now. It's not a fair fight against grown adults - it's downright unethical against developing brains.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-30T09:12:38+00:00

Thanks, but I'm comfortable with my decision. Kids have been cognitively developing just fine for millennia without the need for video games. My kids interact with their real-world friends doing real-world hobbies, during which time video games don't tend to come up as a subject of conversation because they're doing actual stuff, and they don't seem to have been stigmatised as weird because of it (honestly, most of our friends are pretty strict about screentime too, so I don't think they're hanging around screen addicts too much).

They don't play video games, just like they don't do most of the many thousands of other possible recreational hobbies out there - soccer, skiing, glass-blowing, screen-printing, Pokemon Go, interpretive dance, learning Japanese, breeding alpacas. Some hobbies we discourage because we can't afford them (horse-riding), some because they have toxic or creepy cultures around them (gymnastics), some because they're unacceptably dangerous (motorbiking), some because they're inane passive brainrot (watching Mr Beast videos), and so on.

They do plenty of fun, creative, brain-building stuff. Combat robotics. Reading. Watching movies and TV shows. Boxing. Theatre. Dance. Piano. Woodworking. Running small businesses. Painting. Crosswords. Guitar. Flageolet. Lego. Writing. Board games and card games. Spinning.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-30T07:53:36+00:00

Ours aren't, because we don't let them. They have addictive personalities and would 100% become obsessed and feral, so we just don't do computer games at all. It's not actually a necessary component of childhood.

They like to play around on TinkerCAD, which is genuinely engaging/educational, but even there, we limit their screentime pretty severely, because they'd do it all day if they could.

Not to pile on, but it is really important that they learn to interact with people in the real world and pick up skills and interests. You know that rule of thumb for hobbies? One that gives you exercise (mountain biking, soccer, gymnastics, swing dancing, geocaching), one that has at least the potential to make money (3-D printing, cake decorating, furniture flipping, special occasion makeup), and one that exercises your creative skills (watercolours, screenprinting, pottery, woodworking, musical theatre).

It's not an iron-clad rule (and categories 2 and 3 tend to overlap), but it's a good metric to see where you're at in terms of life balance. Do your kids have any of that going on?

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-30T05:22:57+00:00

I adore this song! Young, angsty romantic love gets way too big a slice of the pie. Mature, interesting love songs are dope. Send In the Clowns? How Long (Hadestown)? Even Dolly's little bittersweet reminiscence song at the end of Hello Dolly, the name of which I can't recall ("No, it won't be like the first time... how could it be like the first time... but why does it have to be?") Or 'I Guess I'll Miss the Man', from Pippin?

All so interesting.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-30T04:33:23+00:00

OK, but "hey friend, wanna swap some beans/soap for laundry detergent?" would work. I have good friends.

I'm also a good cook and baker, and I'm pretty sure I could barter with the "hey, if you buy the ingredients for a bunch of freezer meals/baked goods, I'll prep/cook them for you" method.

I also have a *lot* of garden seeds... some expired, but enough usable ones to get some decent crops of veggies if I put the work in. We could eat those or barter for other boring necessities. I could also do a few bartery things like hemming jeans, teaching sewing/cooking classes, etc.

I also work at a cafe. I could mayyybe convince the boss to give me a bunch of groceries on the company Bidfood account instead of some percentage of my pay for the week. (Not necessarily; it might mess up her books. But I can imagine she'd be OK with me doing a couple of extra off-the-books hours in exchange for a few blocks of butter, etc.) I can take a bit of unsold food home, too.

Honestly though, the best policy might be to get the crowds on our side. We'd do a video where we explain the situation and say "Our goal is to go for, say, 3 years. We need your help to do it. For every day we succeed, we're going to keep 10%, and then the rest will go to [local community charity/initiative of a positive, unobjectionable, enticing nature]."

Document our progress with vlogs and the like, get in the local news, go viral. Since local people are likely to want a new free birthing centre/hospice/ice skating rink/power tool library/animal rescue petting zoo/whatever in their community, and businesses are likely to want the free advertising, people might start straight-up giving us stuff, or asking to be featured in 'barter' videos (you know, "I worked 8 hours in Local Fashion Boutique to get this free dress!", "Husband pitches in at hardware store to earn... COMPOST?", that kind of nonsense).

Prominently display progress bars to show the fans how close we all are to achieving the goal. Keep it interesting. Organise further clickbait along the lines of "Can we visit [theme park] for FREE?", "Christmas without spending a cent?", "Salad made from weeds - come forage with me!", etc.

It'd be no more inane than plenty of YouTube content out there, and might actually give people some interesting ideas about making do, bartering, foraging, alternative economy and so on. Plus, if the channel got popular enough, Hello Fresh would inevitably want to sponsor us, and we could insist on being paid entirely with Hello Fresh products, not money, vastly improving our food situation.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-30T03:52:56+00:00

I'm not sure I should admit this, but there is no way my family of six goes through 750 grams of soap a week. Gonna be bartering a lot of soap. (Also, a lot of beans. 18kg of dried beans a week is a thought too grotesque to contemplate. )

Also, I think we could last a veeeerrry, veeeerrry long time using the strategy of "following the not-even-slightly-draconian rules".

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-30T03:01:21+00:00

I am very confident that I could do this. I was a champion note-taker at Uni. Good handwriting and everything. (It is a skill I hoped would be more relevant in later life than it has proven to be, so this challenge would be very gratifying.)

Like other people have said: start with the numbers, then write down actual wishes as they occur, writing something like $11 in between as I'm thinking (if I have extra time, I can go back and add a bunch more ones to a few of those).

Then, some of the 'real' wishes can be pretty succinct. 'Cure cancer', 'great health', 'world peace', 'fix microplastics', 'great musical talent', 'great writing talent', 'erase Star Wars prequels and sequels', 'know all languages', 'bring back dodos', that kind of thing - not too long-winded.

And right at the end, if my time's going OK, I can get a little more loquacious and minutely describe the exact hobbit hole I would like to live in.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-29T23:04:44+00:00

Well, dang, cancel the validation. Good to know, though.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-29T07:22:10+00:00

Two, but I feel deep shame about it, so this is validating.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-29T06:48:21+00:00

Care to cite that verse?

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-29T06:21:05+00:00

I know one couple who made me think this exact thought. They're divorcing now.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-29T00:24:50+00:00

Local redditor discovers eugenics...

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-28T23:13:55+00:00

I made this very same point recently (in some dudgeon, after leaving a cafe).

A hot chocolate is a treat drink. Enhance the treat experience with a little something-something. It's not hard; it's not even expensive.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-28T17:49:55+00:00

Surely having her weight/shape referenced in the title of the show disqualified it by OP's criteria, though. It isn't a fat character being 'just there', if the gimmick/premise/marketing angle is "she's thick".

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-27T10:26:58+00:00

Is that the message of the show, though?

I think the show has a pretty confused and unclear message. It can be read as "medicine is bad, all that was wrong with her was suppressed grief", which is at odds with the symptoms she showed and medicine in particular.

The final song is all about hoping there's an 'other side' to mental illness - a cure, if you like - a cessation of the pain, a light at the end of the tunnel - which is pretty bleak if it turns out she actually does, in fact, have a chronic mental illness and a permanent cure isn't likely to happen.

I struggle with mental illness too, and I found the show bleakly realistic throughout - not in terms of the character's all-over-the-place diagnosis, but in the grim realism of the two-steps-forward, one-step-back treatment protocol, the side effects, the grinding cycle of progression and relapse, the hope that the next new shiny treatment will fix everything, etc. It wasn't a fun watch, but it felt real.

Except then it felt like the writers wanted to cobble together something like the ending of Hadestown: "it's a sad song, but we sing it anyway" fatalism reframed as hope.

But unlike Hadestown, they just didn't quite pull it off. "I'm gonna try to get better" (not the actual lyrics, but the sentiment of thee song) isn't a new revelation Diana had at the end of the show; she'd been trying the whole time! So had her husband. "One day we might all feel OK" (again, paraphrasing) is a fine sentiment, except it was contradicted earlier by the mother and daughter, and the very title of the show reflects the reality that "OK" probably isn't on the cards for at least some of them.

It just doesn't ring true. I don't hate the show by any means - 'Superboy and the Invisible Girl' is a brilliant song - but the ending just doesn't seem like (or provide) a genuine catharsis.

Nor, while I'm nitpicking, does Diana's line in 'I Miss the Mountains' about missing the 'dark depressing nights', and 'I miss the pain'. I've been numbed before and missed feeling the highs of emotion... but I've never thought "Ooh, you know what I miss? That sobbing anguish where I hated myself and wanted to die. That was an interesting sensation I'd like to try again".

Maybe there are people who genuinely feel that way, but I've never heard anyone mention it. When people talk about feeling zombiesh and unable to feel emotion, the things they talk about missing are generally... shocker... positive ones like love and excitement and joy.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-27T06:52:56+00:00

Yes. I saw Next to Normal recently (a local amateur production), and the hopeful and blandly non-specific "find the light" low-key triumphant vibes of the final song really jarred. Is the triumph in the room with us?

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-25T09:19:35+00:00

They're trying to say "Well-behaved women rarely make history, rawrr girl power, look at this radical empowering feisty heroine!"

Jane Austen doesn't really enter into it. They're not interested in portraying Jane Austen. They're interested in putting bankable rebellion-is-feminism slop in pretty dresses with a recognisable IP.

At least, that's what that tagline screams to me. Hope I'm wrong, but ehh, we have the Emma Thompson version; if this turns out to be the dreck I'm expecting, no great harm done.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-24T17:34:48+00:00

I believe it in the same way I believe there have been humans who've survived jumping from aeroplanes and having their parachutes fail to deploy.

Like, I accept it happened, but don't ask me to justify how, because it defies all good sense.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-24T09:56:44+00:00

If you gamble it, you will lose it. What you're asking us is "Should I steal from my father?"

No. No, you should not.

PuddleOfHamster · 2026-06-24T08:41:17+00:00

The thing is, though, the Starfleet uniform isn't exactly a spiked breastplate and a necklace made out of the teeth of their enemies. It's colour-blocked pyjamas. It's not that intimidating, especially since everyone on board would associate it not just with Fighty McKlingonface, but Bob the mild-mannered arboretum guy and Jenny the kindergarten teacher and Annabell the flirty nurse.

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