I love this:

try to realize that life is happening to you right now, not something you’re preparing for.

That’s an idea that I fight with all of the time, as I have a tendency to live for the future rather than the present.

This was a long, but a super interesting read! I had heard about aphantasia, and I knew that I had some form of it. I can recall a flash of an image, but I can’t sustain anything. I’ve always had trouble recognizing faces unless I knew the person well. And I can’t recall my past well. I can recall photographs better, which I think is similar to the face recognition thing, where it’s an image that’s built up over repeated viewings.

Another interesting thing mentioned was the person who always had music playing in their head. I always have something playing in mine, even if it’s a snippet that’s on loop. I don’t know that I really could “hear” a complete song from start to finish, though.

Give me an old timey diving suit!

We would need Moriarty to help get us out!

That sucks about your friend. Did you ever ask that girl out on a date or anything? Two years is a long time, I hope you had made a move at some point.

This could also be the baader-meinhof phenomenon (also known as the frequency illusion)

Has anyone here played Marvel Rivals? I was a big fan of Overwatch, but Marvel (and comics in general) doesn’t do much for me. Would it be worth playing? Or is the big draw that it’s Marvel characters and a large active player base?

Also, you may find a local store or boutique that sells quirky items. One popular brand that they’ll often carry is Fred, they make lots of ridiculous items. Other brands that I’ve found over the years are Larissa Loden, and Blue Q

Ah, thank you! I don’t know how I missed that meme!

Depending on the audience, there are cute little plush things, Giant Microbes, which have a line of sexual transmitted diseases. If you get one for an SO, they can say, “13esq gave me chlamydia for Christmas…”

Other good joke gifts can come from any inside joke that you may have with your SO, so these are very situational. At one point, I had joked that my SO was a sugar mama because she was paying for something expensive for us. I later got her a t-shirt for a candy called Sugar Mama.

On one date, we were the only ones dining at an outside patio at a nicer Italian restaurant. We had ordered wood fire pizzas. Anyway, a very large rat came to visit the patio, and we had joked about it at the time, even naming the rat. I later gave her an ornament of a felt rat holding a pizza slice (which is apparently a thing).

I can’t think of any others right now, but I love giving little joke gifts to people along with real ones.

What’s the opposite of the False Consensus Effect, where you feel like no one probably agrees with you?

Thanks for doing this! I’ve really enjoyed the early comics so far!

There was something about the way “shattered” was said that reminded me of the band at Chuck E Cheese’s. There must have been a song, or one of the animatronics must have had a similar voice… I have no idea, but that was always my strong association

I’d also be interesting in knowing if people have in-unit laundry. Being in an apartment complex where there’s 3 washers for around 50 people, it’s not feasible to wash towels after every use. That also sounds very wasteful!

I shower every other day, and change the towels after a couple of weeks. The schedule is based on when they can get washed (laundry gets done every two weeks for clothes, and so it’s based on the availability of doing extra loads), or at the first sign of a smell or stain.

Bedding gets changed on a monthly basis for the same reasons, again, unless there’s a smell or stain.

Euphorbia is a highly diverse plant genus, comprising some 5,000 currently accepted taxa.