We had this giant orb weaver (yellow garden spider) living outside my wife’s office window at home for almost two months. We named her Shelob because of how surprisingly big she was, and I at least really enjoyed visiting her from inside until one day she was just gone.

Im actually really proud of the pictures I got with the sun backlighting her since it shows how translucent they are

Photo of said spider, spoilered in case folks don’t want to see it

We tend to leave spiders alone in the house, they don’t really bother anything and keep other bugs at bay. The exception is when I need to work somewhere they built webs, then the webs gotta go and for that I use the shop vac.

For the centipedes though we have an agreement, they can stay as long as we don’t see them. You start scurrying across the kitchen floor and I will step on you (though to be fair I think that’s true for anything that “scurries” in the same way a centipede does).

Here you go: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/us/politics/katie-zacharia-fired-press-secretary.html?unlocked_article_code=1.JFE.rbSv.gA3BELWW9yy

Just to put this out there, a Nabu Casa sub directly supports the development of HA. For me the remote connectivity is just a bonus (that I honestly don’t need since I could easily put it through a cloudflared tunnel or set it up through NGINX proxy manager.

Not that this isn’t cool, having more ways to use HA is always great. Personally I expose my garage doors as Apple Home devices through HA and so get buttons on CarPlay that generally work well (as long as I have any signal which isn’t always the case in the driveway).

For me at least this does track. I often get lost in video games or miss out on clues the should guide me to the solution. I think this can be partially attributed to hyper focus on one specific thing (the “I was supposed to go right” in your example) but also to to my mind wandering as I play (“gee, I wonder who voiced that character” or “oh that was a lot like that movie we watched last night, I meant to look up the plot on Wikipedia because I think I missed something”).

Honestly, this is a large reason I just don’t play a lot of games. I enjoy them generally but it takes so long to make progress and I get stuck in ways that friends don’t do it makes me feel dumb. It’s better now that I have medication to help but I still gravitate to “easy” or more casual games (I love the Two Point series of games, and the LEGO Star Wars games but many see them as childish or too easy).

There is a plumbing company in northern Virginia that is family owned. It was founded by Richard and is called Wacker Plumbing. Yes indeed his name is Dick Wacker.

The plastic is what is keeping it compressed, its vacuum sealed. You need a way to let air in so it can decompress.

So it is very dependent on your location with the exception of Federal jury duty which is pretty consistent. If you are out of state for school you can get an automatic exemption for that since I was selected in college once and didn’t need to show up.

I was called for county civil court a couple years ago. You get a letter with a phone number to call the night before to see if you need to show up. If you do then you park downtown/take the bus/etc and bring your letter (and usually a book or something else to do for the day). You sit in a large room with about 50-100 people where you get checked in by a clerk where you get a number (usually alphabetical by last name) . A judge comes in around 9am and tells everyone how important it is, thanks you for showing up and explains the process. We did have a handful of folks show up late due to issues with the light rail that morning which were allowed. The list of no shows was provided to the sheriff to issue fines after a certain point.

We then got a paper questionnaire to complete to help speed up voir dire and handed them in to the clerk, each had our juror selection number on it. Then you wait. The room had a small breakroom like area connected to it with tables, vending machines, and water fountains as well as restrooms for potential jurors to use throughout the day. We weren’t allowed to leave the room at all during this time.

After the attorneys finished reviewing papers we were called in groups of about 20 to walk to the courtroom for interviews. We were verbally asked at that point if there was a reason we could not serve for the case which was expected to take less than a week. Reasons were written down but no excuses were given at this point.

After the interview you went back and waited. At lunch you were permitted to leave for an hour and had to check in when you returned. Around 3pm they called numbers of who was selected and 2 alternates (I was the second alternate). Everyone else was dismissed and we were walked back to the courtroom to talk with the judge. He told us when to show up the following day and again thanked us for serving.

The pay for my state is only milage travelled and for the selection day and 3 days of trial was something like $25 total which didn’t even cover parking for me. It’s set by the state and there hasn’t been a push to update it. The judge did order lunch for all the jurors during the deliberation time (which was about an hour, I think so everyone could eat, I wasn’t in the deliberation room as an alternate but it was a really clear case).

We were told not to talk about the trial to anyone while it was ongoing. Even family or friends less it influence our judgement. Afterwards we were told it was up to us if we discussed it with anyone, we didn’t have to but were allowed. The attorneys both asked for some feedback on how they did which I provided to hopefully help them get better.

Honestly it depends on what you want your wallet to hold. I use a Ridge wallet (I had a knockoff for a while but treated myself to a forged carbon Ridge with blue inclusions that I really like the look of).

I only carry 4-5 cards though, and a couple folded bills in the cash strap. It goes in my front pocket because that’s just more comfortable and is a somewhat more secure place to keep a wallet (not perfect, but marginally harder to pickpocket than a butt pocket and less likely to just slip out while going about your day). It’s made of metal, carbon fiber, and some replaceable elastic bands. It protects against RFID skimming, and is overall about the size of a trifold wallet. I consider it a BIFL wallet because it fits my needs in a wallet, that style may not work for you though.

I will note that another way to look at it is by owning full shares of large companies you get to vote as a shareholder on how that company is run because you literally own a small slice of it. Sure, the handful of shares most retail investors own don’t make a difference compared to the shares owned by investment banks and ETFs, but if you want to put your money to work in more ways than just making more money, owning stocks is one way to do that at a principled level. It is also a way to buy into companies you do agree with, and again vote to keep them going in the direction you want them to go in. That said, a somewhat lower-risk way to do this is to look for socially aligned ETFs. There are many around that invest into companies with solid climate goals/records, good stances on human rights, investment into employee wellbeing, and tons more depending on what you care about. They aren’t likely to have the same returns as an index fund that tracks the S&P or NASDAQ, but it’s a more socially responsible way to invest with non-monetary returns.

Go through it, keep what is truly sir use and definitely try to sell or donate what you can, especially physical media since even without a lot of monetary value those are items that typically aren’t being made any more so are of a finite number. There are those of us that like collecting physical media and have the space to store and enjoy it so helping it get a second life is a better choice than just dumping it in a landfill to rot (almost literally) forever.

Otherwise the key is to relish the nostalgia of going through it but don’t let it color your decisions on what to keep too much. It’s okay to hold on to some things that truly matter to you just for sentimental reasons, but you shouldn’t try to keep it all. My wife and I each have a plastic tote in our basement of keepsakes, we try to limit sentimental things to just that one tote each to help keep it manageable.

I can certainly ask