The “You’re choosing friends over family” thing is just a framing problem. OP didn’t change anything or make any choice. The family is still invited. The family members are the ones making the choice, and they chose prejudice over family.

My first thought was that this person needs to vett potential jobs better, but companies can be good at hiding these things. One issue I’ve found is that there’s nothing preventing retaliation against current employees who spill the beans. So people are rarely willing to badmouth their abusive bosses if they don’t know you.

We got a few games into Charterstone many years ago and had to drop it. We picked it up again and are having a good time. We are also enjoying Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast.

Yeah, I had to check the community because I believed it too.

I would be interested as well. My family was almost completely meat free for a month and a half. I have no taste for meat anymore, but my spouse craved it even more for a long time.

That’s exactly what it feels like. Cops aren’t required to be fair or pull over the fastest. If everybody around you is going 5-15 MPH over the speed limit and you’re going 10 over a cop can still pull you over, even if someone just blasted past you.

This is what makes the situation you describe so frustrating. If everyone is speeding you can be pulled over for not joining in. If you try to be in the middle of the pack you’ll likely be safe, but not necessarily. And if you get pulled over for something else, like a bad taillight or your kid made a face at the cop, a ticket for speeding is pretty likely.

One of my favorite mechanics is when you place tiles next to each other and the effectiveness of the tiles depends on what is next to them. Suburbia does this but almost goes too far in my opinion. It’s way too much to easily keep track of.

A game called Cité is my favorite for this because you share a border with your opponents and you can make deals out of it. “I’ll put my x2 multiplier on the border here if you give me one Cloth per turn.”

There’s a place only 10 minutes from me. I never would have known. Thanks for the link!

First thing I thought of too. This article seems like Schmidt propaganda.

Some of us feel it’s better to have fewer (or no) people in this world. If you ascribe to that philosophy then a declining birth rate from people choosing not to procreate is the most humane way to achieve that, with genocide and eugenics being obviously evil. I do believe things will be difficult for the aging population, and even more difficult for the young who are forced to care for them.

I have lived in a town dying from the exodus of young people. I was in 8th grade when the school became too small to maintain and my bus ride tripled in length, but I was suddenly in a class of 32 instead of 6. It is indeed sad, and it looks worse every time I visit. It’s like a person in hospice fading away. I do truly mourn for the history and culture that is lost. But I also personally believe the suffering humans inflict and endure outweighs what the universe will lose.