Fifteen years ago I was back with my parents in a health crisis, with both mental and physical problems. My career had collapsed and I had declared bankruptcy.

While I was living there, my mother’s health failed due to COPD, and she was still addicted to cigarettes and wanting us to get them for her.

Her mental health deteriorated, and living there became hellos.

When I has first moved in, my life was in shambles and my sister was in a mental health crisis and getting a divorce.

My mom started sobbing that she had failed as a mother.

Within three years of that date she was dead because of cigarettes.

Since then I figured out my health situation (IBS and a complicating hernia) and started to sort out my mental health.

I met a woman (actually got my hernia operation at her insistence) and we own a home together. My sister sorted her shit out and rekindled her relationship with her estranged son. We have both gotten degrees. And my mom is sadly no longer here to see that we made it through.

So that was 15 years ago and I’m 51 now.

You never know what doors will open or close for you. Opportunities are not delivered evenly, and life is not fair.

But you can build a life in the moments given to you - what you do with your time, how you present yourself to the world, what you choose to learn - and this will bleed into the rest of your life.

Finally, once you have the resources, live alone or with others. Get out of that toxic situation, so that your family can be at arm’s length.

Find out who you are outside of that. I think you’ll learn a lot more about yourself and your parents with some distance.

Nobody expects to be toxic or mentally unstable. Maybe you’ll find some sympathy for them, maybe you’ll want to never return. Both are valid, and both might also leave you with regrets.

But they’re your choices to make, not theirs.

And I’ve never regretted being there with my mother until the end, even if there were bad times during it. She wasn’t always insane though, her conditions made things more difficult.

Find friends, if you haven’t. Leaning on my friends helped me through that time and I am due to join them now for some online D&D.

To build on a point, failure is a necessary step to success. You will almost never succeed without failing first. Take a deep breath and start to internalize that.

You don’t fail by failing. You fail by no longer trying.

People would probably accept deportations, sadly, but thought the warnings about concentration camps were overblown.

And in the Everglades, of all places. Barbaric, but also really fucking dumb.

Looks delicious! Now get some diastatic malt powder, use about a tablespoon per loaf.

I haven’t made the long version of that recipe yet, actually.

I’ve made the classic NYT no knead bread overnight but not this one.

I actually cracked my Dutch oven on my last loaf of bread, hence pizza.

No regrets, the new Dutch oven comes tomorrow.

Amazon unfortunately, but I’ve read that brewer’s supply stores sell it too.

Thank you! It was delicious, I recommend you try it!

To be honest the cast iron pizza is the one I started with and have been perfecting. I’ll be branching out from there.

As for the mashed potatoes technique, holy cow, saved to try sometime!

My recipe is for three pizzas, but I’m sure the ratios work out. Bread is bread, but the diastatic malt powder adds so much flavor, I really recommend getting some.

Surprisingly thin, I’ll compare next time.

I’d always used half the dough recipe per pizza, so couldn’t get them that thin until now.

Dough recipe is here:

https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/no-knead-bread/

One pizza uses a third of the dough.

I added 1 tablespoon diastatic malt powder, two tablespoons olive oil, garlic, and Italian seasoning to the dough.

Plenty of olive oil in the pan so that the crust will fry well.

On the dough, red pepper flakes, italian seasoning, parmesan, then generic jarred pizza sauce, mozz, pepperoni, and finally cheddar.

Baked at 550F for 15 minutes.

It may be the best pizza I’ve ever had, certainly the best I’ve made.

Bottom Crust:

Some people started calling it ‘shitter’, so call the posts shits.

“I just took a shit!”

“Good for you. I never want to see it.”

Being cis does nothing to influence your response here. A trans person would call them by the same name, see?

Call someone by the name you’re given, and if you’re unsure about pronouns, either use they/them or ask.

And as long as you act in good faith and are accepting and understanding, you’re doing well. I think this is the spirit of the question - you aren’t sure how to act and don’t want to offend.

Same as Al Queda Taliban operatives taking desk jobs in Afghanistan and hating their lives.

Be careful tearing down a system, you might need to live through the results of your actions.

Wuv, twoo wuv between these two.

Yeah, anything that has you speaking in game jargon in public should qualify.

One of my friends at a pizza place a few years ago: “I can’t believe I didn’t get to poison anyone last night.”

Me: “Dude, context! We are in public!”

I’m not surprised.

I was enjoying it, but it was trying to bring in too many threads all at once, including Watergate and the Nixon tapes.

It was a simple show about bringing down a crime lord, establish that and stretch out in the finale.

Instead it felt like it was trying to set up a ton of plotlines rather than just telling a story.

You are not the asshole. Maybe you could’ve been slightly more polite about it, but that’s honestly looking for a nitpick.

Assuming good faith, some people will need to be educated about these things before it becomes normal and comfortable for them, and unfortunately that education will be up to you more often than you’d like.

“Scholars”…