It may still be missing stuff from before the first person from your home instance joined the community which can make younger communities feel empty.

HEMA, though I haven’t found much time to practice lately so it’s becoming more of a sword collecting hobby.

You just want to make sure the meal you get from me via the other thread includes bacon, don’t you?

With a bit of luck I can reach one of my swords. If not, bash in the first one’s head with a skateboard or stab them with a pocket knife, then move a step and grab a sword. Maybe some armor if I can manage to get to the other room.

Edit: I tried it and could indeed reach a viking sword from where I’m sitting.

Granted. For the rest of your life, every well or similar water source will have its water turned into feces as soon as you come within 100m of it.

How did you figure out this was on the list?

Granted. Your selection has now been reduced to a list of a thousand very specific wishes. Any wish not on the list will be deducted from your remaining wishes without further effect.

I can offer a selection of board games and music of assorted genres on vinyl. If you’re lucky, I can conjure some food.

Depends on how they behave. If they get right up in my face and immediately tell me their whole life story how they’re sick and hungry and have twenty children to feed, I’m usually skeptical. On the other hand, if someone is polite and especially if they ask for food instead of money, I’m more inclined to help.

Overall, I’m happy to help those who really need it but I’ve had too many bad experiences with people who were in it out of greed more than necessity. Prime example, some time last year I was on my way home from a vacation and had to wait at the train station for a couple of minutes when a guy came up to me and asked me for money because he was hungry. I told him I had no cash with me but I could get him a sandwich from a nearby vending machine where I can pay with my credit card. On the way to the vending machine, he asked me if something from the bakery at the other end of the station would also be okay. That was already a bit weird but okay. I left my partner and my luggage at the platform and took him to the bakery. On the way there, he pointed out that there was an ATM where I could get cash for him which I refused, then at the bakery he asked me for two of the most expensive snack they had plus something to drink, a total of over 20€. Quite the difference between that and the 4€ sandwich I had initially agreed to. The whole situation was so uncomfortable, I can’t even remember what I got him in the end. And from the way he acted, I wouldn’t be surprised if he just threw away the food once I was out of sight and asked the next person for money.

It’s sad. There are so many people who ask for what they need and are genuinely happy when they get help and then there are greedy assholes like that guy. And because I usually can’t tell the difference at a glance, I’m often overly careful and don’t help even though I feel I should.

Explore stories with lower stakes that focus on different aspects of Star Wars. Not everything needs to be an epic galaxy-wide conflict that somehow includes ten OT characters as fanservice.

There are millions of planets, trillions of sentient beings, all with their own motivations and philosophies.

As controversial as Acolyte was, I really liked that it showed us force users that were neither Jedi nor Sith and how incapable the Jedi were of accepting that.

Hire Kai Patterson who did an amazing job fan-editing some of the shows into movies. He is of course still limited by the source material but especially his version of Ahsoka was a lot more enjoyable than the show.

They have been released multiple times. I‘ve had them on DVD for 15 years now.

Barely.

We can’t choose who we’re related to but we can absolutely choose not to talk to them ever again.

I trusted a family member.

They promised to let me rent the house I had grown up in until I have the money to buy it. At the beginning, I was still a university student with a part-time job so this quickly ate up my savings but I figured it was worth it. Then, about a year after I had finally finished university and had started working full time, they suddenly decided to set an ultimatum of about six months for me to buy the house or leave, even threatening to hire a gardener at my cost to make the property more attractive to buyers.

I pleaded, fought, tried to get a loan but of course without any savings as security, nobody would give me one. I had to move into an apartment, that’s smaller, older and more expensive than the house that had been my home for 23 years. While I’m not in debt, I still struggle to build up enough savings to get a loan for a home, even after eight years on a software engineer’s salary.

I’ve completely cut ties with that side of the family and I still occasionally have nightmares about the whole situation.

The Creator

Yellowjackets

Psych

Upvote: well written, adds something to the discussion

Downvote: low effort, hurtful or rage bait

I make a point of not using downvotes as an “I disagree” button. If an opinion is presented well, it may still add something to the discussion even if it doesn’t match my personal preferences.

It’s easy to think that the Middle East is chaotic because of what’s going on now but the region was at peace for over 500 years under Ottoman Rule.

No doubt on that point.

But the Ottoman Empire ended a solid 30 years before Israel got established. To prevent the problems the region has now, different choices would have been necessary after WW1, not just WW2. For the purpose of a “What happens if WW2 ends differently” thread, that chance has already passed. The British Mandate has been established and there are already enough Jewish immigrants to have caused the 1936-39 Arab revolt and hundreds of thousands of Jews have already fled Europe. The Axis winning WW2 would probably put even more pressure on the Allies to let Jewish refugees live in Palestine because sending them back to Europe is not just an unattractive option, it’s outright impossible.

Literally every problem in the Middle East stems from the Zionist colony established by the imperialists

The Middle East has had problems for thousands of years before the state of Israel got established. Its strategic location between Africa and Asia caused Palestine to be conquered by the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, European crusaders, Arabs again, Ottomans and the British Empire. Three major religions see Jerusalem as a sacred place and have fought wars over it.

Zionism is definitely a major reason for the problems we have in our timeline but assuming there would be no problems at all seems overly simplistic.

Also, the Axis winning the war does not guarantee that Israel won’t get established. There would still be hundreds of thousands of Jews who flee from Europe and need somewhere to live. The Axis, being the cause of the problem, wouldn’t be interested in solving it and the rest of the world has basically the same options as in our timeline.

The axis powers had no interest in the Middle East prior to 1939 and there’s no reason to believe they would start wars in the region if The Gulf Monarchies were willing to sell them oil.

I could very well see them trying to stay mostly neutral and selling oil to everyone. Profit is more important than ideology, especially if food and water are scarce. But even in real life, that hasn’t kept superpowers from finding excuses to attack oil-rich nations.

Thanks for the nice words. My approach was to avoid speculating too much about what might happen based on someone’s ideology and instead see which real life events can’t happen and extrapolate from there. This makes my answers equally plausible, no matter if the Axis powers stay fascist dictatorships or if they become more democratic over time, as long as overall alliances stay roughly the same.

Another thought is that American products and culture probably are popular partly because they were winners in World War 2.

Absolutely. American soldiers being stationed all over the world was fantastic PR. Being stationed long term, they brought along much of what they were used to in the USA. Those luxuries were traded with the locals and of course, if the locals wanted to be seen as fashionable, they just had to have those things.

On top of that, Jews fleeing from Europe would still need a place to live and there is a decent chance that the British would still give up Palestine to form Israel. Maybe a few years later and with a few details changed but overall not much of a difference.