Game of Tones is one of my favorite episodes of the whole show but I don’t think I’d call it underrated. I feel like it’s pretty constantly mentioned when talking about sad episodes.

Sea shanties just hit different, especially when sung by native speakers.

I didn’t want to go into all factors that lead to this observation because that would take too long and require more research on my part. Fear of retaliation (and desire for power) is more an explanation of at least why members of his own party won’t criticize him.

This doesn’t answer your question but is more of an interesting observation that fits your question. It seems bar for political leaders’ mistakes has gotten so low over the pass few decades.

In the early 90s then VP Dan Quayle misspelled potato (though apparently not 100% his fault) and he was labeled an idiot by the entire country. Bush had a lot of funny Bushisms but most are either weird, poorly worded, malapropisms, or a mix of all three.

Then you have Trump. And while there are definitely people who think he’s an idiot, it doesn’t seem as widespread of a belief as it was for Quayle or Bush. I think part of it is because Trump is far more sensitive to criticism than any president we’ve seen so he’ll go after people who say anything negative about him. But I’m sure there are other reasons as well (ex: politicized news channels, social media, technology etc)

Had a 5 cheese Stromboli. Nothing was wrong with it but I did find out my lactose intolerance had advanced from stomachaches and gas to full on diarrhea.

Thanks for the tip. I had thought of doing Home Assistant to automate things like lights but I use the Echo for other stuff too (like reminders and weather). I guess I’ll just wait for the open source tech to catch up.

How disheartening. I knew going in that there would be privacy issues but I figured for the service it was fine. I also figure my phone is always listening anyway.

As someone with limited mobility, my echo has been really nice to control my smart devices like lights and TV with just my voice.

Are there good alternatives or should I just accept things as they are?

Thanks Lance Murdock!

Wasn’t aware you could mod a Kindle. What does doing this do?

Does anyone know if using Calibre will be affected by this change?

Back in the day, I let my younger brother and cousins play GTA Vice City in my room. They never played the story but would enter cheats and compete to see who could get the most stars and survive the longest. They were 5-7 years old haha. In retrospect, not a good move on my end but I was only about 15.

Unless you play competitive online team games. Then your stress and anxiety go up even higher.

I swap between my speakers, headphones and IEMs. Good way to keep your ears from feeling too hot (from headphones) or fatigued (from IEMs). For most listening I use speakers but if there are other people around, I’ll use my headphones since they’re more comfortable and sound better than my IEMs.

But I want a peanut

I think part of the problem is that people see the same grammatical mistakes repeatedly and think it’s normal; especially since it seems most of the written content people consume is written by the average person and not edited (TikTok, YouTube, Instagram etc). So they honestly don’t know what’s proper or not.

For example, I’ve seen multiple YouTube shorts in which people pluralized words by adding " 's" to them. Someone I met recently thought the same too.

Not sure if there’s a solution since grammar and spelling aren’t things people care about. Can’t force people to have better written content if their viewers don’t care or know any better.

One gift I’ve been giving out that’s pretty popular is an automatic foam soap dispenser. It’s a nice little quality of life improvement and since you add water to the soap to make it foamy, soap lasts a lot longer too.

There are a bunch on Amazon. I would find one that you like the look of and make sure it charges with USB C.

Sorry, should have been clearer. The chia pet was inside too. Well, at least the pot was. I didn’t really want to stick my hand in to see if the seeds were there too; on account of the dead lizard

Bob Ross head chia pet. I really wanted it so I opened the box to make sure the pot was inside. Found a dead lizard instead. Store employee had to properly dispose of the whole thing.

Here’s a full list of crossplay Xbox and PC games. I figure if it’s on the pc, there’s a good chance it could be played on the steam deck as well.

Notable mentions in there that I’ve played and enjoyed are Destiny 2, Overwatch 2, Remnant 2, Left4Dead 2, (I’m seeing a pattern here), and Deep Rock Galactic.

Portal 2 has a very fun co-op story mode. In fact, I’d recommend the solo story mode for both Portal 1 and 2 as well. One of my favorite video game stories ever.

I haven’t played them myself but I believe both It Takes Two and A Way Out were designed to be played in co-op only so both their stories should be good.