The framing of linking suffering to a personal failing is a mistake. No one “deserves” to be homeless or to go hungry. You can be an asshole, or even a criminal, and you still deserve to have your basic needs met. Maybe you won’t be an asshole if you’re not hungry and can receive mental health care.
I think I’d still say it’s a white movie. It’s about masculinity, consumerism, and class which are universal challenges, but it looks at them through the lens of how they impact white men.
Watership Down and Gremlins.
Also, the Bunyip song from Dot and the Kangaroo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXikpns1bog
I moved and had to switch about 4 years ago. I really considered driving 2+ hours back to my old barber.
I’m happy with my new barber, but switching was really uncomfortable.
I have two strategies for barbers, one is to bring in photos. I’ve been told I look like Seth Rogen, so I looked through a bunch of his photos to find a haircut I liked. That way I had a decent idea what I’d look like with that haircut.
The second is to never switch barbers. It’s nice to have someone who recognizes my preferences on the whole experience.
I’m a bit of a coffee snob. I make pour over coffee daily, have a fancy grinder, and am particular about buying locally roasted coffee sourced from certain regions. My wife is a tea person and never drinks coffee. I’m at most mildly disappointed that we don’t share my love for coffee. I would definitely be more into coffee as a hobby if it was an interest we shared, so it might even be a blessing in disguise.
I don’t care at all about anyone else’s level of interest in coffee.
I’ve heard that Athletic is good, but I haven’t tried it. Hard disagree about Heineken NA.
NA (non alcoholic) beer.
I enjoy beer, even the macro-brewery styles. Every NA beer I’ve tried is the dishwater tasting worst example of beer. I don’t get it. There are so many better NA options.
I don’t believe so.
If every product was made with the highest standards of materials and craft, then all of the products would be more expensive. A competitive free market is meant to allow a wider variety of consumers access to products that suit their individual needs, and price is a huge part of those needs.
I do think it’s unethical to charge too much for products that aren’t well made and that it’s a failing of capitalism that it’s not just allowed, but encouraged.
I can be a hobby dilettante, so there’s a lot I could list.
Technology and personal computers is probably the biggest one. I used to work in IT and as a hobby had a few computers at home running different flavors of linux for different purposes. I was a big technology enthusiast in general. These days I maintain a basic level of knowledge and awareness because I feel like I have to. I would happily give it all up if I could.
I also follow Magic the Gathering developments despite not buying cards in decades and it’s been about a year since I played Arena (the free online version of MTG). The rules and card interactions are still really interesting, but I just can’t be bothered to play. I’ve thought more than once about applying to be a judge for MTG tournaments.
I have read the original trilogy. They’re very different from Annihilation and it can be a little jarring. I really enjoyed them, and would easily recommend the whole series.
I feel like I need to reread the trilogy to try the fourth book.
Martian Time-Slip by Philip K Dick - PKD is always pretty weird, but I found this one especially so. Time travel experiments by unlikable characters that involves abusing schizophrenic and autistic children.
Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie - First of the Imperial Radch series. Told from the perspective of an intelligence that’s truly different than ours (even though it is ostensibly human). It made a lot of waves for having genderless characters, but that only scratches the surface of how strangely the narrator relates to the humans they’re dealing with.
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer - First of the Southern Reach series. A group of 4 unnamed individuals go to investigate a reality distorting phenomenon and reality gets heavily distorted. This one declares right up front that it’s going to get strange and does exactly that.
This probably isn’t what you’re talking about, but I miss the old Trackman Marble mice. I had a Trackman Marble FX that I used for years until I finally upgraded to USB.
Mostly a Steam controller. It works in almost every application or game.
I’ve also got a trackball for the few cases where the controller doesn’t work. I don’t use it very often because I don’t think there’s a comfortable way to use it on the couch without using a lapdesk or something.
Quentin Tarantino is a pretty good director. Not great, not terrible, just pretty good.
About the same.
It depends a lot on the topic. For topics that are polarizing and those where I know I disagree with the popular sentiment, I’m more lenient with downvotes. But it’s always at least a yellow flag to have a lot of downvotes.
I don’t think I have anything to recommend that isn’t a fairly common home tool in the U.S.
Nice sets of metric and imperial wrenches, and at least one adjustable crescent wrench. You’ll use the wrenches all the time, and at a basic level you can get away with just an adjustable crescent wrench. Fixed wrenches are much nicer to use, and it’s super useful to be able to use a fixed wrench and the adjustable wrench for those bolts where neither end is fixed.
A flat pry bar. It’s definitely not necessary, but I find them really helpful. It’s much easier to remove nails than the claw on a hammer, and it’s really helpful for applying leverage in a variety of situations.
A circular saw, chop saw, or table saw. A powered saw is another extremely helpful tool, but you don’t need all three of these. Most people should pick one and I’d prioritize them for in this order.
Random orbit sander. Sanding by hand takes forever and it just sucks. If you use it even once it will have been worth the purchase.
Battery powered shop lights, from whatever brand you’ve bought power tools from. Having a handful of lights you can move to anyplace you need them is really helpful. I think every tool maker these days also makes something like this, just buy the ones you already have batteries for.
Shopvac. Immensely helpful for cleaning up the dust and crap created whenever you working on the house. You can integrate them into most of your power tools (might need some adapters) so that you’re working cleaner, and you won’t burn it out like you could with a household vacuum.