Oh I improvise, and I never really plan meals beyond grabbing stuff at the shop. I try to use stuff up before it goes off, and am willing to eat stuff even when it’s past it’s best. When I have time I try to make stuff even just to freeze for later, but that’s hard with a packed schedule.

But it’s not easy, and sometimes I’m jealous of people who are satisfied with eating things repeatedly and eating to a routine. Since I love food, and love eating different things, I need to buy a good variety of fresh ingredients. But I’m disorganised and not good at going to market, visiting the butcher, etc. So we end up running out of food and just eating the same old things or stuff from the freezer. Or I buy too much when I go out, and then a week later the reblochon is stinking up the fridge, but I can’t make tartiflette until we eat the salmon which is now kinda out of date but I don’t have time to make a proper shellfish stock til the weekend…

Balancing “tasty food” + “limited waste” is easy if you work out a clear plan and stick to it. But either you have to do that once and give up on variety, or plan and organise every week and that’s well above my executive function level.

You don’t want to mess about with that democracy nonsense. We’ve had a monarchy that has worked decent for a millennium, and you want it replace it with some untested, newfangled system?

For a while, it was weirdly “Long Kiss Goodnight”. It was getting heavy rotation on TV during my high-school exams, and improbaly watched it 15 times over the few weeks I was meant to be studying.

But now, probably LOTR extended edition, which I’ve seen every year since it came out, at my friend’s annual birthday celebrations.

The things that we call accents are just collections and patterns of speech variation, usually regional or class-based. Each individual has their own minor variations, depending on their speech communities and life experience. So, you’re kinda right to hear them as a bunch of individual voices.

But if you’re interested in tuning back into accents, you can start learning / spotting the features that mark the difference. Do they pronounce an ‘R’ at the end of a word? Or just use a long vowel? Would they pronounce cot and caught the same?

Once you start noticing, its less about matching an accent to a stereotype, and more about understanding all the interesting ways that speech variation occurs.

I so miss feed veggie and/or bean burgers! Being served fake beef, or soya mince or something is awful. obviously some people prefer them, and they’re fully. entitled to their opinion, but beyond personal taste, I have had more success moving meat eaters to good food that happens to be vegan than I have convincing them weird substitutes are worth eating. Humous and falafel - yes please! Fake kebab meat with fake cheese sauce - 🤮

I’d happily watch some clips of all of your suggestions. But I don’t think it’s a great idea in reality. There’s a lot more to acting that just having a specific appearance. Watching Humphery Bogart’s take on the character of Indiana Jones would be awesome, but watching his face deepfaked over Harrison Ford would be meh, and watching a team of graphic artists attempt to recreate what they think would be an interesting Bogart performance might work, but also might be dull, or unimaginative.

What they’d probably need to do, is hire an actor to create the performance then cover his face up with cgi. In which case, I’d rather just watch the actual actor.

But a future where it’s easy for fans to create mash ups and fan fiction episodes sounds fun. And I’d happily watch those for fun.

The first image I clicked on started with “Daily - Make Bed” and I noped out of the whole thing. There’s cleaning that needs done regularly for health and there’s tasks that get more onerous the longer you leave them (like laundry). But I’ll never understand the obsession with making beds.

Maybe people have more complex bedding setups, but mostly I just have a duvet on top and fitted sheet below. What difference does it make to anyone if I lay the duvet out flat and smooth each day? I’m immediately going to move it around when I go to bed, and I spend almost no time in my bedroom when I’m not in my bed. It’s the equivalent of saying “Daily - Fold the end of the toilet paper into a neat triangle”. If anything, immediately covering your used bedsheets with a duvet is trapping in moisture. At least the German habit of hanging your duvet out to air each day serves a purpose!

True! Gorse everywhere! It was also that the bretons seem keen on having weird spouse effigies around the place. But to be fair, they mostly seem to be at roundabouts!

Looks kinda like Brittany

Except it mostly isn’t.

I also have difficulties sleeping, and if I don’t have access to my various strategies I can’t get to sleep because of over thinking, and waking frequently and immediately overthink and can’t get back to sleep.

My main ‘trick’ is finding the right audiobook and playing that as I go to sleep. It’s a bit of trial and error, to find something that works, but it gives me something to focus on as I try to fall asleep so I don’t think about my day or stress or start getting ideas for some project… And when I wake up in the middle of the night, I turn it back on and I fall back asleep in minutes.

Right book (or podcast or whatever) : for me it needs to be a story I know (so that I don’t care about hearing what happens next, and don’t get too confused if I miss sections by sleeping), not too distressing / dark (especially as I’m falling asleep I find violent descriptions can jar me awake), relaxing narration (no music or unexpected noises, nice voice, not too upbeat). Non fiction can also work really well.

Right method : what works for me is playing audiobook on an old phone that i keep under my pillow, with no other apps or WiFi, just the audiobook app and a redshift app (Twilight). To begin with I might listen to the book normally for a bit to get familiar, then I’ll gradually turn down the volume as I’m getting tired and as it gets quieter I have to keep still otherwise I can’t hear it over my rustling the bedsheets. If I feel like I’m too engaged and alert I adjust down the playback speed, so the Narrator gets slower and slower, and that usually makes me sleepier.

If you’re not used to it, I can imagine it taking a while to adjust, but it’s totally solved my issues, and now serves as a immediate sleep trigger for me. When I put on my book, I’m usually asleep within ten minutes. And it’s even faster at returning me to sleep in the middle of the night. And it’s something I’ve done now for years, so I’ve got loads more tips if anyone’s interested but this is already tldr…

I wonder if OP’s comments are often clarifications or even polite “thanks, I’ll try that!” kinda comments. Which are useful and appreciated, but aren’t adding a major new response and so less likely to be upvoted.

Also, people often up vote what they consider the “best” response to the question or issue of the post. And usually OP doesn’t provide the best response to their own post.

I sympathise! Meal planning, buying ingredients, realising you messed up and now half your vegetables have rotten, etc is a nightmare. I do envy people who can just get into a routine and eat the same stuff. But I defintely crave variety, and I feel like what I eat each day is probably two thirds of the joy I experience. I’d defintely go without hobbies, activities or possessions to eat slightly nicer food. Eating a nice meal with people you love feels like the pinacle of life experiences for me, and luckily it’s one you can do multiple times a day!