Two reasons: Practical considerations (shared assets, certain legal protections, I’ve seen people get married for an easier go re: immigration in some cases, etc. Basically check your local laws); and ritualistic.

I find people often discount the importance of certain ritual practices in Western secular society, and for a lot of people ritual in general is a whole lot of fluff and nonsense. But having a ceremony to recognize a formal joining of two people, and by extension their families (to varying degrees), with the at least ostensible intent that you will live and die in partnership with that person, is a powerful thing. It’s a common ritual among multiple societies, with lots of variation and differences in exactly what it signifies, but the ubiquity speaks to that power IMO.

Don’t get me wrong - I think divorce is a good thing for when the partnership truly does not and cannot work, and people can live happily in lifelong unions without marriage - but for some folks, taking that vow in the eyes of your friends and family (and whatever deity concept you may have, if that’s your kink) is a very important and serious thing. Something changes, to some degree, when you take that oath.

It doesn’t have to be expensive - that it often is, IMO, is a function of capitalism infecting a beautiful thing more than anything else. You can have a wedding in someone’s backyard officiated by someone who paid $25 online for a certificate, with a small number of close friends and a potluck BBQ afterwards, and it would be just as valid and meaningful as a wedding that cost 100k (shit, IME the smaller one is actually more meaningful in a lot of cases). It’s the intent, ritual, and meaning participating parties place on it that’s important.

Not much of a gamer these days, but I love this format and what you are doing here. Keep it up!

I second mycoboutique, it is cute as fuck.

Well, the aroma is most pleasing. Who wouldn’t be curious to taste it?

Sometimes, I think about the fact that if I post something really useful here, our traffic’s still so comparatively small that it probably won’t come up in a search engine query.

But that’s the way I like it, baby - I don’t want to live forever.

So I’ve since quit, and I understand why even what I’m about to describe doesn’t exist anymore where I am, but right at the tail end of smoking indoors there were businesses/buildings doing totally walled off, wellish ventilated smoking areas. Those seemed ok to me, and when I (stupidly) took up smoking I was sad those were gone.

The only, and last, one I saw when I was a smoker was in an airport, which was an unexpected godsend because my fuck does it suck to be a smoker waiting for a flight.

(Yes, it’s a gross and deadly habit that’s also unhealthy and gross for the people around you and the employees who had to work in/clean such spaces, and it makes sense to have no smoking indoors).

adds to ‘Things to do on your last day to burn all bridges if you magically come into wealth’ wish list

45 and flight?

There’s a few people I know who use it for boilerplate templates for certain documents, who then of course go through it with a fine toothed comb to add relevant context and fix obvious nonsense.

I can only imagine there are others who aren’t as stringent with the output.

Heck, my primary use for a bit was custom text adventure games, but ChatGPT has a few weaknesses in that department (very, very conflict adverse for beating up bad guys, etc.). There’s probably ways to prompt engineer around these limitations, but a) there’s other, better suited AI tools for this use case, b) text adventure was a prolific genre for a bit, and a huge chunk made by actual humans can be found here - ifdb.org, c) real, actual humans still make them (if a little artsier and moody than I’d like most of the time), so eventually I stopped.

Did like the huge flexibility v. the parser available in most made by human text adventures, though.

AVAST, 'TIS A LOVELY SENTIMENT! THANK YE KINDLY, FELLOW SEADOG! ARRRRR

YAR MATEY, I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THE TRADE WINDS!

I have a soft spot for Crystal, in terms of the official series.

If we include rom hacks, Crystal Clear is great, and I’m really enjoying Pokemon Emerald Rogue these days.

Give this a shot maybe? I know there’s some other archive collections as well you could try digging into.

https://geocities.restorativland.org/