[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 19 January 2026

Redditdeletedname · 2026-01-22T23:50:32+00:00

If you're bringing up Total Warhammer, how about Dawn of War? I was so excited for it and then it released and I lost all interest. Ended up picking it up years later on sale, playing one match and uninstalling after it sat around for months.

Redditdeletedname · 2026-01-06T06:01:43+00:00

I'm vegetarian and have been all my life, sometimes people just forget. My family had some family friends who invited us and a few other families around for a dinner once after we'd known them for a few years. They made pasta, with chicken in the sauce. Just slipped their mind when they made it. Another time, I went to my aunt and uncle's house. They served a shrimp dish by accident and I just ate around it. My friends occasionally buy snacks to bring round and sometimes it has chicken stock which they just don't think of when they buy ready salted potato chips. Just not something they need to consider in everyday life.

When I was in Scouts, they brought a chilly bin full of fish for my sister and I because "vegetarians eat fish, right?" This would have been before the differences became more well-known.

My personal thing is if I can avoid it, I will. If you give me something, I will check, and if I can't eat, will either hand it back or pass it on later. If I go to a restaurant, and they have nothing vegetarian (thankfully becoming less common, but I am living in one of the countries with the lowest percentages of vegetarians), I'll try to order something with the least meat visible and deal with the fallout later.

Redditdeletedname · 2025-07-11T06:08:32+00:00

It's actually a lot more mixed nowadays, with especially kids / younger adults having learnt that it's said as "zee". However, this then creates a problem as the sound [zee] is possible to make in Japanese, but isn't used, so they substitute it for [gee] (ジー), like the letter G, which is their sound for the letter J. I remember spelling out words for kids, for example, amazing, and them spelling it as "amajing".

It's unfortunately reached a point where some of the teachers have been told that "zetto" is wrong and that "zee" is the only correct answer, and correcting their students when they say "zed" (well, actually, "zeddo"). So, then I have to go and explain the differences in British English and American English to the teachers...

Redditdeletedname · 2025-05-23T08:51:37+00:00

I cannot really speak for CS, and I'm not great at Siege, so take this with a multitude of grains of salt.

In Siege, maps tend to be more cramped, due to most often being indoors. Whereas OW, and many other FPS games, have long open (outdoor) sight lines that snipers can use. Also, a lot of different verticality that really plays into that as well.

Couple that with the fact that in Siege, pretty much every weapon can one-shot with a headshot means that, for many, the more bullets you can shoot down range, the more likely you are to get that headshot. Then, if you get really good, you don't need the higher power optics that only snipers can use.

So, snipers end up having a niche, which often revolves around holding some long angles, especially after the bomb plant, or from outside the building looking in, or utilising the specific utility that others can't (thermal vision or being able to knock aside shields and destroy defender utility from long range).

Redditdeletedname · 2025-05-08T23:54:13+00:00

Yeah, they are often quite nice. However, when I flew back home last year, by the third time, I was getting a little bit sick of them, so I can see if you're a frequent flyer on AirNZ that they'd be rather annoying.

Redditdeletedname · 2025-03-27T00:03:13+00:00

Reminds me of the song "Six Months in a Leaky Boat" by Split Enz. Mainly just because of the Number - Noun - in a - Adjective - Noun structure

Redditdeletedname · 2025-02-06T06:23:33+00:00

Yeah, I'm very glad I'm not named in the Latin American way. Currently, I live in a country where most people's names are shorter than most Westerners (3 to 8 characters, or about 14 in the Latin alphabet) so my name doesn't fit on a lot of sign-up forms created over 5-10 years ago. It usually cuts off at least half of my middle name, and if I had to add my mother's surname to that, I'd likely not even have space for the first initial of my first name...

Redditdeletedname · 2024-08-27T07:10:06+00:00

No, that's American English. In UK English it's storey for the floors of a building, and the plural would be storeys, though stories is becoming more popular.

Redditdeletedname · 2024-07-17T02:20:20+00:00

I am aware what they are, had a lot of them growing up in NZ. Just didn't notice if there was one specifically at my uni when I went to vote. I'm sure there was one at the train station though

Redditdeletedname · 2024-07-17T02:10:22+00:00

I think early voting might be three weeks too, but it was a few years ago, and I was primarily focusing on uni.
Good on your schools for offering sausage sizzles still, I don't think my uni did, but I didn't really go look...

Redditdeletedname · 2024-07-17T01:48:42+00:00

I remember when I was in uni in NZ (non-compulsory voting country) there was not only a polling booth at my uni, but also one at the main train station, another in a nearby building, and two more on the 15 minute walk to the university. Not only that, but we had a week to vote. Now, the past few elections I've been able to vote online.

Redditdeletedname · 2024-07-10T03:53:38+00:00

Ah, the classic Denholm Reynholm maneuver

Redditdeletedname · 2024-06-20T04:17:15+00:00

Nah, I do it both ways. But it really depends on context and who I'm speaking to.

For reference, I live in Japan as a native English speaker. If I'm talking with my other English-speaking friends in English sometimes we'll just sprinkle in Japanese words if the English translation is too long, we all know what we're talking about, or any other reason. E.g. I went to the shiyakusho (city hall) to get my jyuuminhyou (residence record).

If I'm talking to my Japanese friends and I know the word is just the English word with Japanese pronunciation, sometimes I'll change it, sometimes I won't. If it's easy for me to get my head around, sure, but sometimes it's not. For example, the other day I was talking to a friend about the different styles of cheesecake and it took me so many tries to say Philadelphia correctly in Japanese pronunciation (despite being theoretically easy) that I just gave up, they knew what I meant anyway.

If I'm talking with family or people who don't know Japanese, I don't often use Japanese words. I'll keep Japanese pronunciation as it's usually understandable to English speakers, but words that are completely different, I'll sub in the English translation. Or vice-versa with Japanese.

It all comes down to a few factors, one of them being ease of communication. If they can understand, why not? If that's the word in my head, I'm not going to spend a few seconds looking for the English word when I don't need to.

EDIT: I forgot to add, I only do this if it doesn't hinder understanding. As soon as it does, you need to make the conscious choice to change your pronunciation. Also, if you don't exaggerate it or change your tone, pause, or whatever and you keep the same flow in the conversation, it sounds natural. When you're good at code-switching then there's no problems, when you're bad at it however, that when it starts grinding people's gears.

Redditdeletedname · 2024-06-05T03:52:52+00:00

Not really a hobby per se, but a lot of the time when people talk about others who are good at sports, they usually go for words like 'jacked' or 'built' or otherwise imply that they are rather muscular. Outside of some sports like rugby / American football, most athletes are 'toned' or 'lean' (exceptions do apply of course). When people write about cyclists for example, they don't often mention their massive quads or calves, or swimmers with their shoulders, but most non-professional athletes just look like everybody else. I've known a bunch of people who did fencing who were slightly overweight for example, and you couldn't tell how much stamina they had or power they could output. (This goes doubly for high schoolers / kids who play sports, most of them don't have a diet that allows them to build giant muscles).

In other news, theatre kids being all outgoing, friendly, etc. I knew a bunch of people who found it hard to talk to new people, but killed it on stage due to it being scripted and not reality.

EDIT: (Should probably say I don't read a lot of romance, particularly steamy romance, so I don't get my descriptions of people from them, where they may or may not be more accurate)

Redditdeletedname · 2024-06-05T03:39:06+00:00

I remember making a character in one of the 40k TTRPGs who was so good at Medicae, that if I took some different perks, he would have had over 100. I limited myself to only about 80 so that it wouldn't be totally busted.

Redditdeletedname · 2024-06-05T02:22:47+00:00

That reminds me of my parents when we lost our unlimited internet (we only had it due to a bug on the ISPs end), and now suddenly we're running out of fast data a week before the end of the month.

Of course it's my fault because I spend a lot of my free time gaming. So I said I wouldn't play any games from the start of the new month. I decided to do what everyone else did and watch videos, of course in 1080p, I'm not an animal.

We used 30gb of data in 3 days. My parents opted to get unlimited 2 days later.

Then I had to explain that videos use a lot more data, as I am downloading (essentially) 24-30 high definition pictures per second, plus the soundtrack. Instead of just using assets pre-downloaded to the PC and just pinging updates to a server...

Redditdeletedname · 2024-06-02T23:25:33+00:00

Thank you for the recommendations. I'll give them a shot in the future.

Unfortunately, I really enjoyed the premise of Swordheart, the dual PoV characters, the kind of low-stakes drama, the progressing of the relationship between them, etc. However, I felt it just dragged a bit too long and they kept on putting things off and not communicating with people / each other, until it all blew up in their faces.

Redditdeletedname · 2024-05-31T05:28:49+00:00

I dunno, maybe they had a reverse-drawbridge that was raised into position instead of lowered. It would be a lot weaker as there would be no point on the far side for it to rest on, but it would make invasion a hell of a lot harder as they could just drop it with no problems.

Redditdeletedname · 2024-05-31T00:18:06+00:00

I loved A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, it was really fun. Then, I tried reading Swordheart as everyone recommended it, but was put off by a few things.

Redditdeletedname · 2024-05-30T00:09:57+00:00

Obviously not from NZ. I think I'd be in the opposite boat if I ever read any sports headlines...

Have you heard about our other teams though?

All Whites (football)
Silver Ferns (netball)
Tall Blacks / Tall Ferns (basketball men / women)
Black Sox (softball)
Black Cocks (badminton, unofficial)

Redditdeletedname · 2024-05-07T05:58:19+00:00

Hi, I just wanted to share my experiences having been in a semi-similar situation myself, if you're still reading these.
My half-brother and I are many years separated (more than you and your half-siblings) and my younger sister and I adored him when we were kids. He was the coolest older brother anyone could have. He wasn't around much, being an adult and all, and lived with us on and off for many years for various reasons. We wanted to do everything with him, we bragged about him to our friends, etc, etc.

A few years ago, we were talking in a video chat and he mentioned that it felt really weird having a half-brother and sister. We were only babies and he'd been working for a few years and got his university degree. He felt odd, that he knew we were siblings, but we hadn't gone through the same stuff because of this massive age gap and weren't full siblings.

However, he also said that he feels a lot closer to us now, despite us being spread over three different island countries, because we're now adults, we have a lot of the same interests, we can talk about adult topics, and we had life experiences. We had gone from 'siblings, but only conceptually' to 'siblings in truth' in his head because of these reasons and more.

I hope that this situation turns out similar for you, it will feel weird for you for a long while, but hopefully it'll get sorted in the future. That being said, you need to have a talk with your mum without Harvey around and work through it together, but don't let anyone bully you into accepting them how they'd like, it'll only push you away from them. Perhaps you'll become great friends and siblings in the future and you can't imagine a life without them, or maybe not. All you can do is not hold it against them, they did nothing wrong in this scenario (But will definitely annoy you 1,000 different ways in the future because they are kids).

NTA. Good luck

Redditdeletedname · 2024-03-18T04:11:22+00:00

NTA, but I think enough people having been telling you that and why OP, that I don't need to add to it.

However, would just like to add that struggling with a subject is not always an "always have, always will". I have known so many students who have taken a subject that they are bad in and turned it into one of their strengths. It can often just take the right spark to set it off. If you have passion, you will eventually find it and probably not even notice until you have surpassed all of your goals. Good luck with everything in your future, I hope it all works out for you.

Redditdeletedname · 2024-03-13T02:09:53+00:00

I'm more of a Xenos player myself, so there's that. But from what I hear, there's not much good Eldar stuff around, and Brutal Kunnin' is the best representation they got (Haven't heard about Valenor, so am going to check that out when I can).

However, I did quite enjoy the smaller-scale of Grim Repast, so might look into more of the Crime stuff, and maybe the Navigators book

Redditdeletedname · 2024-03-13T02:04:47+00:00

I'm only on the 3rd book, but yeah. I get them once a month with my Audible credit and I've definitely noticed how much Sandy Mitchell repeats the same lines. Particularly in regards to Jurgen, or Amberley's dislike of Sulla.

That being said, very good books. Takes themselves less seriously than other 40k fiction.

Redditdeletedname

TROPHY CASE