TL;DR: it's important to be the best you that you can possibly be. Your journey may also help inspire others to do the same.

I recently learned that an old friend, whom I hadn't seen in a very long time, transitioned. Flawlessly. Passing. Confident. Content. They were a pretty boy before and a pretty girl now. I was, and still am, in awe of this change. But past the cosmetic side of this transition I was suddenly struck by everything else that went into it. Suddenly, my friend's looks took a back seat as I started to feel something else unexpected: inspiration.^1^

I didn't expect that kind of a personal impact, but I sat with it a while and watched my entire outlook zero-in on a very important question. The way I see it, this person took up the ultimate gnostic quest and challenged some very serious things about their life and identity. In the end, they arrived where they wanted to, rather than where they were expected to be. I've since learned more about what this really takes for a person and, frankly, it's clearly hard as fuck for a whole host of reasons. So, that caused me to reflect on my own life and choices. After all, if she put everything on the table and chose to fix what wasn't working, what choices should I be making?

In the year-plus that has passed I have taken efforts to reflect and double-check things. What assumptions are in play for my lifestyle and life trajectory? Am I taking myself for granted or do I have deeper questions, doubts, orientations, and biases that need exploration? What am I doing automatically versus what am I actively choosing to do? Am I being passive when life throws options at me? This whole new way of viewing things has caused me to make radical decisions for the better - something I wouldn't have done before.

So, yeah. You don't have to be a pro athelete, or some STEM wizard to be an inspiration. Just do your level best at being the best you that you can be.

1. Okay, I caught feelings too, which opened up a whole other level of self-understanding. Especially in retrospect from before the transition. This is a good thing.

With the rise in popularity of Anime like "Delicious in Dungeon" and "Campfire Cooking in Another World", I wouldn't be surprised if people are honestly giving a "cooking bard" character a shot. I'm intrigued myself, but am curious if the RaW for this bard college works in practice. Is anyone out there playing one of these?

So, on recommendation, I'm watching the 1995 Gundam Wing series and... wow, I kind of get it. There's a lot to love here, but there's a lot of quirks too.

I'm about a dozen or so episodes in and the dub is... rough. Performances are okay, but the plot and pacing are kind of wild and move along in fits and starts. I'm also 80% sure a lot is being lost in translation here, as the themes around self-sacrifice, rebellion, and "pacifism" don't exactly line up with the dialogue.

So the questions I have here are:

• Is it worth slogging through the rest of this series?
• Does the translation, or anything else, get better? Worse?
• What's the next series to stream after this?

Also, Oz really needs to invest in less-explosion-prone mobile suit tech.

I used to really enjoy sites like this. I know there's joke accounts on Twitter and other sites here and there, but I haven't seen anything lately that has the whole site as one big running gag.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q%26A_comedy_website

A Q&A website is a website where the site creators use the images of pop culture icons, historical figures, fictional characters, or even inanimate objects or abstract concepts to answer input from the site's visitors, usually in question/answer format. This format of website, most popular in the early 2000s, evolved from the much older Internet Oracle. The original progenitor of this type of site was the now-defunct Forum 2000. The Forum 2000 claimed to have run the site by means of artificial intelligence, and the personalities on the website were called SOMADs, or "State Of Mind Adjointness pairs". However, later Q&A sites usually dispensed with this pretense, with the most extreme example being Jerk Squad!, on which the administrators of the site provide many of the answers.

FTA:

Two Democratic legislators are introducing a bill on Wednesday aimed at Mr. Musk and the so-called Buffalo Billion project, in which the state spent $959 million to build and equip a plant that Mr. Musk’s company leases for $1 a year to operate a solar panel and auto component factory.

The bill would require an audit of the state subsidy deal to “identify waste, fraud and abuse committed by private parties to the contract.” It would determine whether the company, Tesla, was meeting job creation targets, making promised investments, paying enough rent and honoring job training commitments.

If Tesla was found to be not in compliance, the state could claw back state benefits, impose penalties or terminate contracts.

Some of you may remember this absolute diamond of insanity that was the "4-Day Time Cube." This was the go-to example of the internet as a universal amplifier for communication - for both the sane and insane alilke. It was there from nearly the start of the world-wide web, back in the 1990's. Alas, it ceased to be some time ago, but it still lives on in our hearts.

For the uninitiated: welcome. Read and join the rest of us that are "educated stupid."

Amateur documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7lWCqbgQnU