A modern change in transportation?

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What would you change about modern society?

“Society” is a very complex and complicated topic to tackle even on the best of days, and asking about making a change to modern society (as a thought experiment) is not easy.

What part of the world are we looking at? What cultures would be impacted the most/least?

Personally, the idea of transportation is something that comes to mind when I think about society. The reasons? Well, for starters, in the United States, most of our major cities were built around the need for individual automotive transport. Cars, SUVs, and Trucks. Some of these major cities became so densely populated that traffic is incredibly bad and there are even large chunks of their populace that have never bothered to get their drivers license! Public transportation in those cities supplements their needs well enough.

Another thing to consider, that seems to come up as a repeat meme every week, is the sheer distance between the East Coast and West Coast. (The joke is that someone from Europe is in Florida, at Disney World, and they want to know when the park closes because they want to go to Los Angeles.) This calls to mind, for me, the increased need for individuals and families to own a vehicle if they live outside those major cities. Outside of New England/the East Coast area, the public transportation infrastructure just doesn’t support traveling between cities. Interstate and cross country travel almost always requires owning your own vehicle or catching a flight. Yes, there are buses and trains, but they’re not as commonly used, which is where I’m going with all of this.

Making cities more walkable/easier for non-motorized vehicle ground traffic is practically impossible at this point. So instead of focusing on that, looking toward interstate travel changes is what I had in mind.

The passenger train system of the United States has hundreds of stations covering 21,400 miles (34,000 km) of tracks, but the issue is that there are only a handful of tracks that cover East-West travel cross country, and only a handful that cover North-South (primarily along the coasts or in the eastern half of the country.) Where I live, I would have to travel a couple hundred miles South or Northeast by other means to reach one of the nearest stations, and those tracks then only run East-West. There is no track running North-South in my area, the nearest one is roughly 500 miles away to my East, or three times that distance West.

So, what would I change about modern society? There’s something I can’t quite put my finger on (yes I can, it’s the local and federal governments being in the pockets of the automotive giants) that is preventing the development of rail transit. My belief is that if we could develop solid rail transit between major cities, then things would be better. To be fair, I don’t know ALL the details, so it’s entirely possible I missed something, I’m not perfect, but I was definitely taking environmental and public health factors into account.

Also, if I’m being honest, I just REALLY want to ride a train once in my life without it costing an arm and a leg.

Listen while you work

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What do you listen to while you work?

It depends on the situation. Am I doing something that requires my brain to be active and thinking through things, or am I doing something mindless?

If I’m trying to actively think and process, I don’t usually listen to anything. If I need to tune out the background noise I’ll try wearing my earbuds and activate the noise cancelling feature. Admittedly, there was a period at work where I had built a playlist of Japanese music because I could trick my brain into not focusing on the lyrics since I can’t understand them, they’re just extra sound.

Doing mindless activities like driving on the interstate (I’m a lot more focused in town, promise) working out, or playing some kind of video game where I need to do some grinding for materials I’ll put on music and keep the volume low. Cooking and cleaning kind of fall in this category, too, now that I think about it.

Food for comfort

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What’s your go-to comfort food?

First off, what is “comfort food”? According to 15 seconds of research on the old Googles, it’s about consolation, nostalgia, and/or feeling sentimental.

On the thought of consolation, I don’t really feel like there is any that qualifies as comfort food because I usually just eat whatever I want regardless.

For nostalgia, though, that’s a different story.

Turkey legs from the Renaissance Festival were something we always looked forward to whenever my family went.

Funnel cakes with only a dusting of powdered sugar from one of the food stalls at the annual city parade and festival in my home town.

Those are probably the best examples I have, because they’re so heavily tied to those events in my memories, and I don’t get to eat them all too often these days.

Current favorite game

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Daily writing prompt
What’s your favorite game (card, board, video, etc.)? Why?
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I’ve brought it up a few times before, but the table top card game Magic: The Gathering is probably up there at the top of the list of my favorite games.

It’s easy to get into, although, in the long run, it’s also not exactly super affordable. I say that because you can buy a pre constructed deck (referred to as a precon) for a reasonable price, but if you want to expand your collection and have more than one deck or play multiple styles then you need to buy more and more cards.

All that being said, the main reason I enjoy the game so much is because of how many different ways there are to play. There are so many cards, with hundreds of new cards being added each year, which makes it possible to build and rebuild decks over and over again. The rules are relatively simple but there are a lot of different mechanics to choose from and play with/against. The simple approach is: draw cards, play lands/mana (kinda sorta like the Pokemon TCG, if you’re familiar), cast spells, and do things with those spells until you win. How you approach all of this can be determine by the cards you want to play. Some give you more draw power, others make it so you can reduce the random chance of draw what you need by just letting you search your deck for what you want (within reason), and some cards will activate effects or abilities that do a wide variety things to affect your opponents.

Through all of this, you can come up with very straightforward strategies to win, or you can develop convoluted plans that require several cards to even get your strategy off the ground. In that regard, it becomes almost like a puzzle. A puzzle against time and your opponents putting together their own puzzle. Get the right cards, do all the things. And yet, on top of the element of chance, there is also a certain amount of skill involved. Guessing what your opponent is planning, getting cards to offset their potential plans and protect yourself, remembering the cards in your deck versus what you think they might have in theirs. It can almost be like an incredibly complicated game of poker.

So many facets that can each make the game more interesting the more you choose to play. Unless you’re hyper competitive and build your deck for it, no game ever plays out the same as others.

Making delicious food

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What foods would you like to make?

So many things.

Cookies, cakes, brownies, ice cream.

Casseroles of so many kinds.

Pot roast and veggies, steak and potatoes.

Burgers with interesting toppings. Home made buns, too!

I really could go on and on about the many different foods I would like to make. The most important one right now is Red Beans and Rice, because I picked up most of the ingredients already. I think I’ll make that tomorrow.

I also really want to make pretzels and beer cheese dip because we’ve had a can of Guinness in the fridge for a while leftover from the time my roommate made something for St. Patrick’s Day back in March.

Honestly, I just need to get back in the kitchen a lot more often.

One of the age old questions: Dogs or cats?

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Dogs or cats?

I probably like cats more than dogs, as I primarily grew up with them, but I do like dogs as well.

The first cat I remember my family having was a female cat named Milo (I make the distinction because last year my Dad got a male puppy he named Milo) when I was growing up in Colorado. She was an indoor/outdoor cat, sweet and very independent. At some point we took in a kitten that was part of a litter that a friend’s mom had rescued. We named him Otis (as in The Adventures of Milo & Otis) but unfortunately he didn’t seem too bright. Where Milo had been with us for several years and was smart enough to always come back safely when she was let outside, Otis wasn’t with us very long as he never came back one day. We never learned what became of him.

Within the few years after my Mom passed away, my family had gotten two dogs, starting with the German Short Haired Pointer we named Greta (and my poor Grandma couldn’t get her name right, always calling her Gretchen). Then there was Sophie, who was very much another Otis. Very sweet, but not too bright.

Then there are the many dogs my Stepmom had rescued, and all the farm cats we had when we moved to South Dakota that became partly domesticated. All were named, but combined there were probably more than 30 over the years, and I don’t remember the majority of them (especially since we’ve had so many horses on top of all of that!)

I was originally going to keep this post short, but I couldn’t immediately decide one way or the other. I was then hoping that by the end of writing it I might reach a conclusive answer, but unfortunately I can’t pick one or the other. So, it’s both.

When time just slips away

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Which activities make you lose track of time?

I like to think that there are two categories of activities for this prompt: where time is completely ignored, or where I’m subconsciously aware but not actually paying enough attention to care.

The former category is easy enough. Video games, reading, and painting miniatures. I can really lose myself in those activities. There’s always a “just one more thing” or “after this I’ll check the clock” but I inevitably fail at least once to follow through. Next thing I know it’s 2:00AM on Wednesday and I have to be at work in six hours.

The latter category above will take just a tad of explanation to understand. If I happen to be listening to music while I’m painting miniatures I will sometimes become conscious of the fact that I’ve listened to a handful of songs and feel the need to check the time. Songs aren’t all the same length, but they do have durations. I’m not sure how accurate this is, but I loosely associate one song to being three minutes long (as an average across all music, and not necessarily an average of all songs on the current playlist.) So when I realize a handful of songs have gone by, I assume it’s probably been about 15 minutes. Similarly, when I’m binge watching something, I have a rough estimate of how long each episode is after cutting out intro/outro time, so when I realize I’ve just watched three episodes in a row, it’s probably been an hour.

On rare occasions, when I’m at work, I can run into a weird blend between the two categories. I have caught myself getting so engrossed in whatever I was doing that I miss a meeting by a few minutes (Outlook reminders sometimes pop in the background for some reason and on Windows 11 the flash on the taskbar is kind of subtle) or the next time I look at the clock it’s after quitting time. Listening to music doesn’t always help, either, because I usually use it to block out the noise from all the other people working around me.

I’ve got a lot of minis to paint, so maybe I’ll spend time getting lost in that activity soon.

Something bothering me

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What bothers you and why?

People who lack even a small amount of critical thinking skills bother me to no end when I have to work with them, and even more so in the age of social media where information is so rapidly spread that people eat it up without so much as a second thought.

There is nothing wrong with asking questions.

Let me repeat that.

There is nothing wrong with asking questions!

The problem comes from people who refuse to learn and just continue to ask questions expecting others to do ALL of the thinking for them.

People who believe in easily debunked misinformation or conspiracy theories are also part of this problem. However, the source of their lack of critical thinking is being too prideful to accept that they’re wrong, admit it, and change. Everyone else is wrong but them, and they only listen to the one source of information they agree with (but likely that source is the one that fed them the idea in the first place.) These people aren’t actually helping anyone.

Ask questions, get lots of answers, piece the information puzzle together with proven data from multiple sources that can independently corroborate one another. Now more than ever, THINK CRITICALLY!

Absolute Certainty

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List 10 things you know to be absolutely certain.

  • Change will always happen, just maybe not in ways you expect nor understand
  • We all have to eat
  • We all have to drink
  • We all die someday
  • The world has finite resources
  • The world has LESS resources today than it did 60 years ago
  • The person is smart, but people are dumb
  • Individually, we do not survive on our own
  • We can never truly be “perfect”
  • Time only moves in one direction

I’m sure there are some points that could be argued, conditions or considerations that could be applied, but I think anyone would be hard pressed to do so.

A life of adventure or security?

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Are you seeking security or adventure?

I think everyone wants security in their lives. It’s just a matter of how much, especially compared to the desire for adventure. There are also the added layers of emotional, physical, spiritual, and/or intellectual security or adventure.

Personally, I’m in the situation where I want to go places and try new things, but not without some measure of security. I don’t like the idea of trying to find a new job and figure out how to fit into whatever structure or dynamic is already in place just so I can be secure if I decide to adventure out of state.

Maybe I’ll figure out the right balance someday. Who knows?