Scatterbrained and friendly optimist. Always happy to give my (unasked for) opinion :)
Pardon my rambling and broken English, I know I often sound like an alien trying to impersonate a human being.
Fun With A Pencil by Andrew Loomis.
https://archive.org/details/andrew-loomis-fun-with-a-pencil
It’s a fun book for beginners that mostly focuses on drawing characters.
It is an old book though, so it might contain some unpleasant caricatures further in.
I got an ugly scar on my pinky from a bullying incident at school when I was 12. It’s not like this was their intention, but it got out of hand and a door slammed hard on my finger.
I had to get rushed to the hospital, got stitches and a massive bandage for half a year.
The bullies never apologized and it got brushed off as an accident.
It’s a reminder of bad times during my teenage years and I still get sad when I look at it.
Same for me. I like drinking white jasmine tea, but the flavor becomes too bitter if you pour boiling water over the leaves. It’s better to drink at 80 or even 70 degrees (sorry, don’t know the F one).
I used to make tea for my coworkers back when we had a team room and got way into it. I had my own little kettle, all kinds of tea leaves, a weighing scale spoon and even a thermometer :)
I learned that pre-heating your kettle was important for black teas because boiling water would drop to 90 degrees or even less if you didn’t.
My job title is data engineer, but the organization I work at is small enough that it basically ranges from business intelligence to cloud engineering to data architecture to data science to whatever other thing is even slightly related to data :)
I’m a happy OpenSUSE user, but is there a mrs. Chad I can be instead? :)
I wouldn’t know about the hence part, but I always read it as “years from now”. A bit like the opposite from “years since”.
As for the other thing, it started out with deliberately engineered beings for specific tasks like the vacuumorph.
About a hundred years later the remaining people would create new humans with the specific goal of being able to survive the harsher environment of a ravaged earth. It was these that evolved further into different creatures.
It’s a pretty far fetched story either way, I just like it for the weird pictures :)
I posted a link in one of the other replies. You can read the whole thing there if you’re interested, there’s a timeline on page 20 if you just want a quick overview.
There’s a copy of it in the internet archive
It’s a speculative evolution book from 1990 about how mankind might evolve in the next 5 million years. Basically the premise is that due to climate change, new species of humans are engineered to survive in a more hostile world. And then it follows these new species and their further evolutions.
The creatures in the picture above are both descended from humans.
It’s weird, bleak and very far fetched.
A copy of Man after Man:
This is such a weird book. It has leech people, underwater people, blind psychic baby people, meat mountain people, etc.
First thing that came to my mind was this scene from Allo Allo :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1K8d9qXGnI
It’s a new one I made up when I joined Lemmy. Not sure how I exactly ended up with this but it’s the only one I made in over a decade. I like nicknames that sound like actual names but are still unique, and I wanted something that sounds nice and gender-neutral.
Anyway, my nicknames usually become part of my identity. So I’m as much Thelsim as I am <redacted> nowadays :)
I’m not one of those people who loves being a parent. You know the kind, the mom who loves having all the kids in the neighborhood over and cleans every mess with a big smile. I have two kids and they often drive me crazy. But I never regret having them.
They constantly fight with each other, whine that this or that is unfair, refuse to listen exactly when you’re in rush to get them to school, leave the entire house in a mess and in general manage to find new and inventive ways to make your day that little bit more challenging.
But they’re the sweetest and most wonderful thing to have happened to me at the same time. I love everything about them and couldn’t imagine my life without them. Even my eldest son, who is hitting puberty and can reach maximum sarcasm with even the smallest of expressions, shows so much care and affection when it comes down to it. I could go on and on about how wonderful they are, but I think you get the idea :)
The thing is though, as others have said, parenthood is a major investment of your time and energy. Your life will never be the same again, ever. So if you do decide to become a parent, accept your fate and make the best of it. Those wonderful child-free years are gone and will never come back again.
I don’t mean to sound very gloomy about it, but it’s just an inescapable fact if you want to try and be a good parent.
One thing that helped for me though, is find someone in a likewise position and share your burdens. I have a friend at work who has two kids of about the same age, and she goes through the same struggles as me. We always complain about our kids to each other, knowing that it’s just something you need to get off your chest once in a while. It’s usually about small stuff like a daughter exploding in the morning because she can’t find her pencil case, or some other minor drama. Our other coworkers always think that we hate being parents, and joke that our stories are probably responsible for a large part of the birth decline :)
But it feels so good to know that you’re not the only one struggling. So many parents like to put up this facade of being a perfect family, and it can make you feel like you’re doing something wrong. But everyone has struggles, it doesn’t make you a bad parent.
Sorry, I’m getting a bit off topic. It’s just that I have a lot of feelings about it, and it’s not always been easy. And if you decide to be a parent, it won’t be easy for you either. But if you’re willing to put in the effort, it’ll be worth it in the end. Just make sure you have someone to talk to, and don’t be too hard on yourself.
Basically any fantasy cartoon that featured a voyage or some kind of quest was a favorite when I was little.
Anachronox, but that’s never going to happen :(
That game ended on such a cliffhanger.
Samurai Jack, though not really from growing up… (Then again, when do we ever stop growing up? :)
It had great stories and beautiful artwork. But to an adult eye it was obvious that all those “robots” were there to keep it kid friendly.
All that oil was a clear stand-in for tons and tons of blood.
The introduction of CD-ROM was mind blowing for me. Encyclopedias, interactive storybooks, talking Carmen Sandiego?!
It felt so futuristic.
Yes! I loved the mind maze. I was never really good at it (English is not my native language), but it was always fun to play.
I would bother my parents afterwards with all the facts I had learned. They were indulging at first, but even the greatest of patience will run out eventually :)
Old episodes of MST3K. I don’t know what it is, but it’s really relaxing to watch. Puts me right to sleep if I watch it at night :)
I’m not saying this as criticism though, I love the show. It’s just that combination of old movies with bad sound and the fact that I don’t get a lot of the outdated jokes puts me in a very relaxed mood.
Brain goes …