The word spiel “schpiel” is of Yiddish origin. It comes from the Yiddish word shpil (שפּיל), which means “play” or “game” same as German.

Most of my Ukranian friends would not vote for him in an election, it’s a bit of an ‘open secret’ in the country that he’s seen as a wartime leader who would be expected to step aside in peacetime.

The more fantastical elements of lucid dreams are as clearly unreal as playing a videogame. You know you’re dreaming and can control it.

My problem has been more that I can’t remember if something mundane happened in a dream or reality. I’ve had and remembered entire conversations which turned out to be dreams when I referenced them to the person in question.

A lot of my dreams - lucid or not - are just me doing my daily stuff, fully in control of my actions but not the scenario I am in.

She divorced me. Apparently she had spent the last nine years waiting for my autistic traits to go away. Once she started to realise they were a part of me, she began secretly looking for her own place and then left without warning.

You ever drunk Baileys from a shoe?

I do 4x10 and it’s a joy - for me. I can work from home when I want and 10 hours flies by when you know you have a 3 day weekend to look forward to at the end. I’m definitely more focused and productive.

Problem solving in dreams can be hyper efficient. I once designed an entire web application in the short dreamstate between waking up to my alarm and the second ‘snooze’ alarm. Drew up the solution immediately and then went to work and built it over the course of a month. Mastering that would be so powerful for knowledge workers and artists alike.

I’ve tried the same with music but, while I can create music in my dreams I cannot yet recreate it awake.

Eight years. Moved away to another continent, they didn’t visit me and I was busy exploring my new life. See them once a year these days.

Forza and Rocket League

Just index fingers. And this actually means I hurt my second joint on the middle finger as it rubs where I tuck it under the controller. But I can’t unlearn this position now. I have a kind of callous there which is really painful - ordered a new controller but it made it worse so now I’m trying a super small controller instead.

What are you even vaguely good at or inspired to learn? You can sell online work on sites like fiverr - from singing for electronic musicians to use in their tracks to web design to drawing pictures, even composing chatGPT or midjourney prompts.

Don’t be afraid to fail. Take that first step and build on it to make a business out of it. The customers can be anywhere and if your work can be easily sold multiple times you stop exchanging your time for money and it has real profit potential.

First time Dresden got called a fancy neighbourhood since 1945

Same. I will potter around until 5 or 6 am and then hate myself as I have a meeting in the morning that I will either need to drag myself out of bed for or sleep until lunchtime and lose half the productive day.

“Release the hotdogs” they cry while furiously dismantling the furniture in your living room.

Interesting to see Pigs in Blankets here. We would have called those sausage rolls. Where I’m from Pigs in Blankets are sausages wrapped in bacon, not pastry.

Enslave the other three to build a farm and then eat them and wait for the greens to grow.

DMZ in the last iteration of CoD was the most fun game that I’ve played in a long time - despite the bugs.

Zombies mode in MW3 is also good fun but it irks that I paid money for this game and it’s buggier than DMZ which it’s evidently based on, and they’ve had a year to fix it.

If this game was a heist, the whole crew would have been arrested before they even met each other. Not only does it require registration of a 3rd party account to play but, once in the game, matchmaking doesn’t work leaving you to play the tutorial over and over.

The Baby Driver of heist games, except the driver is a real infant who can’t even reach the pedals or steering wheel.

We’re allowed to work desk jobs in unhealthy office buildings, eat junk food for lunch and stare at our phones for ‘relaxation’. If athletes want to burn brightly for a short time by using performance enhancing drugs then the only thing I would ask is that they are fully informed of the risks beforehand and know what they are letting themselves into.

Targeting the Pink Pound