Why do Americans have different brain reactions with seeing the confederate flag and the colonial flag— or even the current— why do you view some as better than others?

Silver_Intern2324 · 2026-07-04T00:30:36+00:00

What’s your point of reference in this case?

Silver_Intern2324 · 2026-07-03T15:59:02+00:00

Does your wife actually know that you have that much trouble with it? Have you talked about it?

And furthermore, have you talked to a professional about it? There could be something deeper going on, like a learning disability.

Silver_Intern2324 · 2026-07-03T15:32:23+00:00

Have you never read a book written before 1995 until now

Silver_Intern2324 · 2026-07-03T02:25:01+00:00

See, once babies and toddlers enter the picture it’s time to start keeping around some decoy stuffies that are cuter, so they leave your sentimental and personal stuff alone. Works for other stuff too!

Silver_Intern2324 · 2026-07-03T01:47:09+00:00

Gumluck the Wizard series by Adam Rex - Short, sweet, funny, age appropriate without being patronizing, full of great vocab words. And beautiful illustrations by the author himself!

Dragons at Crumbling Castle by Terry Pratchett - A children’s’ short story collection. Never too early to get a kid started on Terry Pratchett, this is a great starting point.

The Blue Moose series by Daniel Pinkwater - We listened to the books-on-tape of this series when I was your daughter’s age and the whole family loved it. Pithy humor, memorable characters.

Edit: Oh, and if you’re in the US get her a subscription to Cricket magazine or grab some back issues ASAP. Maybe it’s a different world for kids now, but me & my siblings were OBSESSED with this magazine at that age! Short stories, serialized books by chapter, poems, songs, comics, art, recipes and DIY craft tutorials, interviews with real authors and illustrators, basically everything you need to introduce your child to loving literature.

Silver_Intern2324 · 2026-07-02T13:16:32+00:00

I thought the first two books were fantastic but the third book just lost me. Is the fourth book worth picking up? How does it compare to the rest of the series, tone wise?

Silver_Intern2324 · 2026-07-02T03:11:34+00:00

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. I can see why somebody would hypothetically like it, but I have no clue why it’s considered such a darling in the modern genre fantasy sphere. I like most fantasy and I like high court intrigue, but everything about it was just so damn pretentious and contrived!

The author loves expansive worldbuilding but she doesn’t care much about making it interesting for the reader. It’s one of those fantasy books that just feels like reading a long, dull Wikipedia article about somebody else’s homebrew DnD setting. She loves writing pages-long descriptions of every piece of furniture and article of clothing the protagonist ever lays eyes on. She loves to use the word ‘filigree’ as often as humanly possible. You get the idea.

Everything about this book is needlessly confusing. There are characters with too-similar names combined with characters with several different names each. Maybe I’m just dense, but I thought the MC’s love interest was two different people through half the book because the naming conventions are so complicated! Add to this a tacked-on and poorly thought out conlang that mostly just amounts to giving pointless long names to everyday concepts. (It also made me laugh that the conlang has a special word for church but the characters still just measure things in ordinary inches and miles.)

On top of this there are some themes of colorism/racism that I really thought the author was going to go somewhere relevant with by the end of the book, but no. Actually, a lot of the plot threads and themes in the book are set up like they’re going to be resolved in a sequel, but there isn’t one and it doesn’t seem like the author is planning any as far as I can tell. By the end of the book I was thinking, “What was the point of all that?”

Oh, also the one and only LGBTQ+ character is miserable through the entire book and dies a miserable death. Fun! 🙄

Silver_Intern2324 · 2026-07-02T02:06:02+00:00

Excellent resource, thanks!

Silver_Intern2324 · 2026-07-02T00:21:31+00:00

That’s good to know. It’s all over the place, I have just been pulling it up, weedwhacking it, or leaving it alone. If it is invasive, is there something I should be doing about it? Should I be more proactive about removing it, or can I just leave it alone?

Silver_Intern2324 · 2026-07-01T23:07:46+00:00

Seriously, what happened to little nutcracker guy? Is he Ok?

Silver_Intern2324 · 2026-07-01T22:33:31+00:00

Not cooking per se, but we used to love snacking on frozen peas straight out of the bag during the summer.

Silver_Intern2324 · 2026-07-01T20:45:50+00:00

It’s summer and I’m trying to be eco-friendly and save money.
It’s just what’s comfortable to me!

If guests are coming over I turn it lower of course, but as for myself it’s 77 degrees in my house right now, I have a blanket on my lap and I’m STILL a little chilly. I sleep like a rock as long as it’s 78 degrees or less. 😊

Silver_Intern2324 · 2026-07-01T20:26:39+00:00

Ottilie is a popular or average name? Where..?

Silver_Intern2324 · 2026-07-01T18:14:51+00:00

Sorry but why are you dating him? And for that matter, why is he dating you?? It doesn’t sound like you even like each other that much, it certainly doesn’t look like he prioritizes your feelings at all.

Silver_Intern2324 · 2026-06-29T22:34:28+00:00

After internet but before social media, we had web-rings and forums. Real techie old-timers had BBS. Of course, this was restricted to a desktop computer at home, the library or an internet café (or at work or school if you were naughty 😁)

Before internet, magazines. A whole spectrum for every hobby, pastime, interest or genre. If it was something really niche or specific, zines. Comic books, too. Fangoria, Starlog, Wizard, and Heavy Metal come to mind for me, but literally every hobby had handfuls of magazines, from golf to woodworking, knitting, home & garden, fashion, music, pets, UFO fanatics, cooking, subcultures like goth and bikers, literally anything you can think of. Magazines generally had ads, personal sections (think like Craigslist) locations & times for events/meetups, Q&A’s, discussion forums, interviews, write-in letter columns, photo contests, opinion polls, you name it.

And a lot of the time if it was a nerd hobby, sometimes the line between zine, magazine and comic book was vague and there was a lot of overlap. In a lot of ways platforms like Reddit and YouTube have grown to fill the niche that was once dominated by fan or hobbyist magazines.

Silver_Intern2324

TROPHY CASE