In honor of starving artists everywhere, the topic for this thread is "scant".

• Feel free to open it up to interpretation as literal or loose as you'd like
• Whatever medium works best for you! Even though I labelled the thread as "visual", it would be great to see work from any writers or musicians if any would like to participate as well.
• Entry should be your own work
• Multiple entries are great if you feel inclined

@userexec won the last round of the Visual Weekly Activity. I don't want to steal the glory, but I also got ants in my pants. So this is an unofficial thread and hopefully userexec will chime in with a new official thread when they have time.

Edit: moved the user tag down so the main topic is more visible.

Since RuneScape (both RS3 and Old School) currently has a free month for those of us using Twitch Prime, is anyone here playing? I find that despite it being one of the best games I've ever played, I tend to drift away from OSRS after some time because it's so enveloped in that YouTuber meme culture that gives me a headache. So, to any players here, are you hanging out in a friendly clan chat or Discord server to escape that? Would we want to start our own?

Or, more generally, how do you deal with the toxic nature of the game's community?

You're home alone and watching TV. Yawning, you tilt your head to loosen up the knots in your neck and out of the corner of your eye see a dark, fast, blur. When you focus on that spot, you can't see anything, so you turn back and continue watching. It happens again during a blink, but as you turn your head you almost catch it. Another round of this and you are positive you aren't going crazy, so you blink but turn your head as you open your eyes.

Shout-out to Mozzribo for the idea. I hope this is inspiring enough to the writers out there! If anyone is interested in doing a prompt next week just say so in the comments. Thanks everyone!

{
  "author": "@json (Jason)",
  "message": "Hello, people of Tildes. This does seem like an excellent platform for discussion. I hope you enjoy my kinda bad joke."
}

@Jason was taken, so I had to drop the a and become a data format. I have used json as a username in many other places before, when available.

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My favorite genre right now is probably the slice of life genre. i've recently finished 3-Gatsu no Lion, and i gotta say for an anime about shougi it hit me hard i may or may not have teared up on a few occasions... my favorite from the genre though is probably Clannad: After Story, now this one really made me cry, they break the floodgates and keep rescheduling repairs. so i have to recommend those two if you're looking for great slice of life anime.

I'm interested in all responses, but if the answer is "well" or better and the following are factors that contributed to that sense of well-being, could you divulge your job industry, if applicable, and/or the Canadian city where you currently reside? (If privacy-minded or jealously guarding a secret utopia, province would suffice. Thank you.)

About me: besides the current political and lazy-to-anti-intellectual climate of the US, I'm pressingly concerned about global warming; after a dozen years of living in and around refreshing Seattle (compared to southern California), I had to give in and buy an air conditioner this summer. Anecdotally, it seems to be a trend.

Week six it is! This week we focus on another user-voted record: Postcards by Meadowlark.

Pulling @Gyrfalcon's original nomination:

I'm going to suggest Postcards by Meadowlark again. I'm not great at describing why music is good, so I will just leave the music video of the title track.

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the band, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Postcards. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and listen / comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.

I'm re-reading through some investment books right now and thought I'd throw one them out here with my thoughts and questions.

Investing and the Irrational Mind: Rethink Risk, Outwit Optimism, and Seize Opportunities Others Miss

by Robert Koppel

The title of this one intrigued me. Author Robert Koppel is a former investor/trader on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He covers a lot of research on what psychologists have discovered about biases and irrational thinking, particularly as it relates to investing and trading. He's also interviewed many other investors and offers his own observations from extensive experience.

He goes back and forth between having and investment plan and using intuition, which as it turns out are both tactics investors have used. I think the valuable part of this book is the way he ties in research by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and others on biases to what happens when we make good and not so good decisions in finance. An example of one of those common pitfalls:

We also experience a reflection effect whereby individuals make irrational choices to enter or exit an investment based on a subjective reference point determined by whether they have already experienced a gain or a loss. An example of this would be someone waiting for a “breakeven” price before exiting from an investment that is performing poorly rather than looking at the market objectively, without reference to the purchase price.

The book isn't so much an investment strategy but rather a good overview of what's involved in the process. As someone who has handled his own investments for years, I found that Koppel's book is realistic and practical, especially for those of us who've had to make those hard decisions on buying and selling, either for the long term or short term.

My own particular problem is watching things too closely and losing a sense of longer term movement. Investing And The Irrational Mind is a great tool for giving me pause and reflecting on the mistakes I've fallen into over the years.

Even as basic a rule as "cut your losses short" is hard to follow and really give me pause to think about issues I've held onto for too long as well as others that went on to go up and away. I've love to hear your thoughts.