BougieBirdie

I used to have really bad chicken-scratch printing and I wanted to improve.

The exercise that really stuck out for me was to find a font I liked in a book on calligraphy and started practicing the alphabet.

Before I started practicing, I didn’t pay much attention to how I was forming a letter, I’d just draw it - and it would look messy. Once you start looking at each letter as a discrete number of strokes you start paying attention to the small parts and the whole looks much better.

If you’re really lucky, you’ll find a guide with arrows showing which way to draw each stroke. Super helpful. Note that this font uses a fountain pen, so it’ll look different with a standard ballpoint:

So does this mean that the “Second Breakfast” contingent of the Fellowship can be stored in one Hobnibble? Seems apt.

If you don’t know what specific shows you want to watch, you could try going to the streaming services’ website. Hidden away at the bottom of the page will probably be an About or FAQ that might let you take a peek at some titles.

I think by design the only way to see the full catalogue is to subscribe. Lots of them have free trials, but it’s still a pretty lame way to do business.

I hate this, thank you.

One thing I try to avoid when I’m writing is when two words repeat. Kind of like your example “the thing is is that.” If I catch myself writing it, I try to rearrange the sentence.

Although a pretty extreme example tickles me: “The cookie he had had had had no effect on his appetite.”

I’ve been living in apartments all my life and I’ve got to tell you: loud neighbours isn’t a racial thing

I always hear people talking about how beef is so cheap and I wonder how that could be when it costs twice as much as pork in my grocery store. I never thought about subsidies in other countries.

You’ll probably enjoy this

“Divisive” might not have been the right word here. I just meant that it can add to the confusion :)

The factory must grow!

The 2 or sometimes characterized 2S refers to the Two-Spirit community.

I’m realizing now this may only be a thing in my part of the world, which may go to show that an overly inclusive acronym is actually divisive.

I have a couple different opinions on the order of the letters. Normally, I’d say that order doesn’t matter because it’s a collective, and the order comes from the point that communities merged together. For instance, there were originally alliances of Lesbians and Gays in the 70’s, but Trans often wasn’t considered its own thing until sometime in the 90’s. And since Queer was originally used as a slur, it didn’t make sense to add it until even later when sentiment had changed.

So usually what you see happening is more letters getting added on to the end at the point of adoption. However, and I just learned this today, the government of Canada today is now using 2SLGBTQI+ as their official acronym. This breaks convention for a couple of reasons, in that Two-Spirit is represented with ‘2S’, which means that it now has precedence and more symbols than the other communities in the group.

They say this is to represent that the Two Spirit community would be the historically oldest group in the collective. I’m not sure if I really believe that though, since these labels are about human sexuality, and that’s been around as long as there have been humans. There was no ‘first’ sexual or gender minority in my opinion. This feels more like a do-nothing feelgood thing where a government that’s failed to do right by its indigenous people pats itself on its back for being inclusive. Which doesn’t mean I’m not happy to see it, it just also feels jarring and weird, and I doubt that the acronym will actually see much practical use when people are talking to each other.

Hello, I’m one of those queer people.

For my two cents, I find in conversations it’s easiest to refer to it as the “queer community” or “gay community.” If I’m feeling an acronym, the first one I reach for is LGBT. And that’s me speaking as one of those q+ folks.

Now for me, I prefer to use Queer because it’s sort of an umbrella term. For instance, all lesbians are queer, but not all queer people are lesbians. It’s also great for people who don’t like labels, because it doesn’t pigeonhole someone into a specific box.

The term “queer” has a little history behind it too. When I was in middle school, being called queer was like, the ultimate insult. It was used pejoratively, and it felt bad to hear it. Nowadays we’re reclaiming the word, and it loses its evilness. That all said, you can call people “queer,” but don’t call a person “a queer” or else you’re being insulting. It’s to be used like an adjective, not a noun.

For my money, this is the most inclusive flag without singling out a particular community.

Generally speaking, I don’t like an overly verbose acronym. It’s part of why I stop at LGBT or LGBTQ instead of going all the way to LGBTQ+, or as my government seems to want to say, LGBTQ2IA+. In my opinion, the effort to make the community more inclusive by adding more sub-communities to the acronym has the opposite effect.

When you swore fealty to a lord you were made to kiss the ring, so interpret that however you like

You’re going to love/hate 3D printer pens

You can pour a little paint down the drain, as a treat

I find a 5th-level cleric capable of casting 3rd-level spells and pay the fee. When I learned D&D in 3.5, that cost 150 gold coins

Coins weigh 1/50th of a pound so 150 coins weighs 3 pounds (1.36kg) and costs roughly $75k USD. I don’t think my healthcare covers magical means, so that’s probably out of pocket. I guess I’m cursed.

I might be getting wooshed because this is wordplay, but ‘bill’ in this context is used like ‘invoice’ or ‘expense’

Something like less than half of americans can afford a $1000 surprise expense.