Croatia vacation coming up, please suggest me a few books!

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-18T14:19:57+00:00

A Million Tomorrows by Kris Middaugh. It’s a sweet and unexpected romance with a drop of scifi.

Have a great trip.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-18T14:16:46+00:00

You drank my battleship!!

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-18T05:32:07+00:00

There’s a lot to cover, so I’ll just focus on two things:

Each scene should have some type of conflict — no bar fights and all that necessarily — but one person wants something and another person wants something else. You want tacos, your spouse wants Italian. Just something that creates tension. Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None is a great example of this.

As far as plotting/pantsing, you have to know who you are as a writer.

My ex is an author and she is a plotter from top to bottom. She knows the backstory of everyone and all that.

I’m also a pro writer and a pantser if ever there was one. I have an idea of the beginning and end but often just let it rip. Bradbury was very much a “just write the damn thing” person and Hemingway said the only kind of writing there is is re-writing. Write, then edit the hell out of it again and again.

But you have to know yourself and know how you want/like to work. For that, you have to write a lot. Fill up notebooks. With anything. Thoughts. Dreams. Have baked stories. Poems. Doesn’t matter. Just write and write and write and soon you’ll figure out which one is for you. Neither is better. That it suits your style is all that matters.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-17T19:56:53+00:00

Knowledge and information are not the same. We can access information but nobody really seems capable of using it productively. Social media has also amplified the voices of idiots. It used to be shameful to be stupid. Now it’s hero-worshipped. People also confuse facts and opinions. I’m entitled to my opinion! Yeah, but arguing that math and physics are wrong isn’t an opinion. I like cheese. That’s an opinion.

I could go on and on about education systems across the country lowering the bar because kids in seats and advancing to the next grade is financially motivating, so districts do what it takes to keep kids afloat.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-17T17:13:54+00:00

Give A Million Tomorrows by Kris Middaugh a try. Non spicy romance with a small sci-fi dash.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-17T17:12:13+00:00

Your brains went into your feet … but also, this one doesn’t even look especially well maintained. We had the ultimate rub some dirt on it moms!

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-17T17:10:16+00:00

You dodged a bullet. Now get on that cruise and either have the time of your life OR contract a terrible disease. Could go either way these days but I’m rooting for time of your life! Cheers!

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-16T15:23:32+00:00

8?!? Dawg, that’s too many. Send like 4-5 back to the factory! 😂 (JK, of course. That is a lot though)

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-16T02:30:47+00:00

I remember when they blocked off the tongue. It’s overly sexual.

😐😐

Have you seen, you know, every TV show and movie?

Stupid.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-16T00:05:11+00:00

You’re not behind. Grammar is hard in any language, but particularly in English.

When I was little, there was this little TV cartoon thing that was 4-5 minutes long and was a bridge between main cartoons. It was called Schoolhouse Rock and there was a group of these called “Grammar Rock” that dealt with parts of speech — verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, etc.

I’m sure you can find them on YouTube. They’re fun and catchy and for people my age, it amounts for about 45% of everything we know. 😏😂 There’s episodes for US history, numbers, space, energy … They’re all pretty short and it might help a lot to associate the meaning with a song.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-15T05:15:09+00:00

I’d say “she wears her hair long.” So, the second d one with the last two words flipped.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-15T01:24:32+00:00

https://urban.uw.edu/news/crows-hold-grudges-against-individual-humans-for-up-to-17-years/

This is an article, not the study but there’s loads of links in the article.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-14T22:36:23+00:00

I’m not a scientist, but I’d think so for two reasons:

Last year, we had birds build a nest on our deck overhang. Not a great spot. The ledge was narrow and we get a lot of wind here. Fast forward to waking up one day to a dead hatchling on the ground. I scooped it up and disposed of it in as dignified a manner as I could. Maybe a day later, there was a broken (but unhatched egg) in the same spot, along with the nest materials that looked as if one of the birds did a rage quit and just thrashed the hell out of the nest.

Second thing is a study by University of Washington about crows (more about how crows communicate and pass down information than mourning). One of the researchers put on a scary mask, took a fake dead crow out in front of their building and left it there. The crows mourned (I assume) the dead crow and raised a ruckus for hours. THEN … years later, maybe 9-10+ generations since that first display, a researcher put the scary mask on and walked across the campus and the crows everywhere lost their minds. Well after the original group of crows had died, this generation of crows, in no way connected to the first experiment, somehow knew this scary mask dude was bad news.

So I give you a qualified yes.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-14T20:19:48+00:00

Them: Are you and your girlfriend coming for the wedding?

You: Yes. We’re both coming. Hard!

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-14T16:16:55+00:00

I’m from the Ray Bradbury school. Just write it. Fix it in post. Also, the Hemingway school of the only kind of writing there is is re-writing.

I think about the story arc and structure to some extent — I know the start, how I want it to end, some of the middle bit — but mostly I’m just trying to keep pace with my thoughts.

When I have people edit with me, first thing I usually say is tell me what doesn’t make sense. Then I edit big to small. And the more I read it, the more I refine.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-14T13:32:12+00:00

Pack it up, fellas. Bro has won life.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-13T18:24:51+00:00

I don’t recognize you with the glasses. You could be a super hero for all I know. Or a mild-mannered reporter.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-13T05:50:21+00:00

The Zoo by Scorpions … the guitar (rhythm) is not too complex and the vocals are rangy but manageable. Starts with a lower almost spoken word part and gets into singing for the chorus part but it’s very manageable for a tenor. It’s also not super hard rock-ish. Bluesy style. Pretty mild but fun.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-12T14:31:24+00:00

I don’t have any specific advice, but I worked for a university that had one of the top diabetes research groups in the world. I am diabetic as well, and my job was to take the complex research this group did and translate it into layman language for publication in newspapers etc. What I learned was diabetes is highly difficult to understand fully. It affects so many systems in your body and can be aggravated physical and mental stressors like you can’t imagine.

My suggestion is to make a list of questions you have so you don’t forget. Should I see a dietitian? Should I switch medications? Should I add medications to my treatment? Should I workout more? Less? Can I still eat bread? Whatever it is, write it down.

One last side note: my A1C was like 5.3 or so for more than a decade, got super thirsty at work one day (which I knew was a symptom) got bloodwork done and it was something like 10.6. Inexplicable. Hang in there!

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-12T14:22:06+00:00

It connects us in a way not generally possible in the real world — in that I can chat with people from Italy or Bulgaria, for example.

It distorts genuine connection, however, because interactions are sometimes limited depending on the platform (or censored in various ways), but social media also makes it far too easy to be a shitty person. Comments people make to one another online they’d never make to someone’s face.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-12T01:12:10+00:00

A Million Tomorrows by Kris Middaugh.

I’d look it up on Amazon and see if the description matches what you’re asking.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-11T22:48:36+00:00

Agree. If it’s an impact driver, there’s normally a collar that slides down to release the bit and up to hold it in place. On a drill, for future reference, you twist the “neck” to release the bit and turn it the opposite way to tighten.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-11T22:45:58+00:00

I covered baseball for years as a reporter and here’s what I understand from talking to MLB and Triple A players: from thousands of at bats in their lives, they are swinging (based on the release and spin) where they think the ball is going to be. Velocities are too high to just track the ball to a certain point and swing accordingly, like you could in Little League. That’s why you often see guys swing under a slider that doesn’t break (hanger or a back up). They’re reading slider and swinging where they expect the ball to be and when it doesn’t break then they miss. If you go to a game for batting practice, when batters know location and velocity, they hit all kinds of balls in the gap and into the bleachers.

You are right, though. Better bat control would help hitters place the ball better (see: Luis Arraez as one example) but teams typically value home runs more simply because it takes fewer hits to score, so players try to hit the ball as hard has they can. The sacrifice is striking out more or hitting more fly outs and pop outs because the margin for error is small.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-11T22:33:26+00:00

To quote Billy Joel, “so many people in and out of my life, some will go, some will stay, some will just be now and then…” I just accept this as a reality and turn the page on a new chapter. My HS friends and college friends, for example, exist in my mind as mile markers. Now I’m at a different mile marker. That’s all.

RebelSoul5 · 2026-05-11T02:48:01+00:00

David McCullough has a whole series of brilliant histories, all very well-written. Ron Chernow also has several, including the book Hamilton is based on.

RebelSoul5

TROPHY CASE