Front right, keys and lighter. Front left, cigs. Rear right, wallet. If I must carry my phone with me it’ll be probably in the front left pocket alongside the cigs.

Here in Curitiba it’s this church:

It’s constantly maintained and renovated, but the building is 287 years old, built in 1737. (For reference the city itself is 331yo.)

It’s kind of funny that people here don’t typically remember the name of that church, Igreja da Ordem (Church of the Order; the “order” in question are the Franciscans). Instead they remember the name of the square that the church faces, named after the church - o Largo da Ordem (lit. “Order Plaza”, but more like “the plaza of the church of the Order”).

Siegfrieda also liked to sleep on sinks, although she grew out of the habit:

yes it’s raining on this side of the house too.

“You can never be sure!” - cat logic.

Perhaps she associated bathtub = attention and feeling good afterwards? Cats do show some sort of weak “past cause, present effect” connection.

In Kika’s case I don’t have an idea, as the place changes from time to time. It used to be on the stairs, then on the sisal mat, now the box. It’s kind of annoying when I’m taking my morning yerba though, as I’m in the kitchen and she’s meowing constantly.

Kika (16?yo): she likes to be petted, but she’s wants to be petted in a very specific corner of the house - currently her cardboard box, but it changes over time. So she begs me “pet me, pet me!”, then as I move my hand to pet her she runs to the box, and keeps meowing. Until I go pet her in the cardboard box.

Siegfrieda (7?yo): I don’t know what’s weirder: looking at the rain and meowing at me as if saying “can’t you stop it?”, watching anime with me, or the “overly attached girlfriend” face that she does when someone is eating yoghurt.

I’ve done this once after seeing it in a Chinese recipe for chicken thighs, with Shaoxing wine. Apparently the alcohol does wonders to bring the flavour out of onions.

I think that either flaked corn or corn flakes could work really well for this. The process behind farinha de milho* is different from both (the maize is hulled, soaked, ground while wet, and dried over low fire), but as long as it’s something pre-cooked it should be fine. And as I mentioned in another comment, people make farofa even out of rolled oats.

*even in Portuguese alone the name is a bit messy, as it’s shared with the maize meal used for polenta. Most people specify the later as “fubá”, I’m used to specify the former as “farinha biju” (biju is the flakes).

This is the sort of thing that I love reading on the internet.

From a conlanger perspective I feel like the time reference could be split into four, to account time travel. For example: let’s say that both of us travelled to 3100, I remained there and you came back to 2024. Then you write me a letter, that I’m going to read as soon as we arrive in 3100, telling me about your experiences. You could use:

• your current date as reference - 3100 comes after 2024, so it’s future
• your personal experiences - you already experienced it, so it’s past
• my current date as reference - as I’m in 3100, it’s present
• my personal experiences - as I’m watching you experience it, it’s present

Any given language could pick any of those references to model their tense around, or many of them, or even none (plenty languages IRL lack grammatical tense). If only doing things from the PoV of the speaker (you), that means 6~9 tenses for what most languages have 2 (past and non-past) or 3 (past, present, future).

It is - the carb in it is typically fried yucca meal or maize meal*, but I’ve seen people doing it with breadcrumbs and even rolled oats. There’s a lot of freedom for the fillings too, although farofas made as side dish for meats tend to be simpler than the ones intended a as full meal.

Just as an example here’s my breakfast farofa. It’s enough for two people.

• a hard sausage, diced small
• 3 eggs, whisked with some salt and black pepper
• half onion, diced small
• a handful of maize meal (the amount is eyeballed)
• hot pepper sauce, veg oil, salt

1. Brown the sausage on a non-stick large pan or wok, using a bit of veg oil. Reserve some if you want.
2. Add onion, turn the fire to low, and let them cook until transparent.
3. Add whisked eggs. Scramble them with a silicone spatula; they’ll stick to the other fillings but that’s OK.
4. Add maize meal, salt, hot pepper sauce, and a bit more of veg oil if necessary. Mix it constantly. When the meal darkens just a bit, turn the fire off but keep mixing it (as the pan heat might otherwise burn it). Transfer to two bowls and, if you reserved some sausage, add it as “garnish”.

Now thinking, the salt here is also a nice example of using the same ingredient twice. You need to season the eggs and the meal separately.

*I’ll provide a pic because I don’t know how to call this type of cornmeal in English. It isn’t the same as polenta:

Adding the same ingredient twice, for two different roles. A few examples:

• Tomato sauce: a single tomato, diced small, to add near the end, to improve the texture.
• Curry: half of the onion gets grated and goes in the roux, with a bit of baking soda (so it melts down). The other half is diced larger, and gets added near the end as a plain veg. As a result I get a thicker and tastier curry.
• Farofa: whatever filling I’m adding (pork rinds, bacon, banana, scrambled eggs…), I reserve some bits to add near the end as garnish. It’s both more pleasing to look and it allows people to pick a bit more of the filling if they so desire.
• Breaded anything: seasoning goes both in the marinade and the flour / breadcrumbs.

There was a time that people prefixed my nickname with “Wiki-”, because apparently I stand out for knowing a bit about everything. I don’t quite agree with it but hey, at least it’s something nice.

My accent (when speaking Portuguese) also stands out, apparently. Outside my city people are quick to identify where I’m from; and yet in my own city people often ask me where I’m from.

In the second hypothesis it wouldn’t be self-inserting; it’s more like the author explaining something to the readers, outside the story.

I’ve never noticed this usage of the past tense in the appendix about Newspeak - you’re right, it does. And it’s also written in standard English, so interpreting it as written in a world after Oceania fell is viable.

And following this line of thought we could even interpret the main story as a narrative within another.

Another possibility is that the appendix is not written in-universe, and uses the past tense because it’s how people expect storytelling to be written in English, with Orwell speaking directly to the reader instead of Winston Smith.

This is not exactly what you’re asking for (media inside media), but it’s really close in spirit (nested narratives), and I really like it: a book written in Portuguese in the XIX century, called Noite na Taverna (Night in the Tavern).

The book has an overarching story of friends telling each other stories in a tavern, over booze; with all those nested stories being about love, despair, and death (it has a strong gothic vibe).

And, as each character tells the others a story, there’s always that fishy smell that the story might be actually bullshit; and other characters do raise some doubts about its in-universe veracity (like Bertram does to Solfieri). And you, as the reader, do the same - but in no moment you question the veracity of the overarching story, and you feel like you’re inside the tavern alongside the drunkards.

So it’s a lot like the author is toying with your suspension of disbelief - redirecting it from the overarching story to the nested stories, and as you doubt the later you get even more immersed into the former.

If I must use an example of media within media, then my choice would be “The Book” within Orwell’s 1984. I think that it’s a great piece because it shows Orwell’s views on politics and society, while still serving narrative and worldbuilding purpose - for Winston it’s a material proof of the Inner Party’s bullshit, for O’Brien it’s a tool of the Inner Party to sniff out dissidence. (Note: 1984 is extremely misrepresented nowadays, I’m aware, but I still like it.)

To prevent the empire would be more complicated than it looks like, since you got multiple rebellions and civil wars popping up as early as 135 BCE. They ultimately boiled down to

• plebeians and/or slaves pissed due to poor living conditions
• local peoples rebelling against Roman oppression
• some patrician family wanting a larger slice of the pie

And those are all problems that are damn hard to address without leading to plebeians being manipulated, local peoples being suppressed, and cutting down the power of the patricians by a central, strong government. That’s basically what Caesar tried to do, and Octavian achieved.

Accordingly to the USB inventor, he didn’t make it reversible right off the bat because it would need 2x more wires, circuits, and cost 2x more. So you probably [won’t be | weren’t]* able to convince him.

Perhaps a better approach is to tell him that they should be clearly asymmetric, to both touch and sight. Like HDMI connectors are.

*tense marking is fun in time travel.

Sorry, I know that this is a thread for people who dislike anime to voice their reasons, but do you mind some rec? Based on what you said, I feel like you’d enjoy Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood quite a bit:

• there’s a lot of substance in FMA:B in the theme, worldbuilding, character interactions.
• there are fight scenes but they never overstay their welcome. They don’t feel tiring like in Dragon Ball Z or similar.
• characters are relatable. For example, the two protags fuck it up big time, right at the start, and yet can you really blame them? You’d probably do the same in their situation.
• there’s practically no sexualisation of female characters. Arguably only one of the villains, but that’s done for characterisation and it would feel off otherwise, it isn’t there for fanservice.

[Note: I’m not recommending this to change your views or some crap like that, it’s just that as I was reading your list of issues I was thinking “true that… wait, FMA:B doesn’t do it!”]

Take care of your body. It’s only getting worse after that age, so you need to ensure that it doesn’t go too fast.

Take care of your mind. Culture yourself, have fun, rest properly, cut off from your social life people who cause you psychological harm.

Set your own values. It’s fine if you change them later on, but you need some way to ground your actions that is not “do what other people tell you to”.

Learn your limits. Some are higher, some are lower, than the average person; just don’t assume that you can handle vodka, work nonstop, or scale cliffs as well as someone else does. Stop punishing yourself for those limits being too low, and stop abusing the limits that are higher.

Learn how to budget. “Economise money” is easier said than done, I know; but once shit hits the fan, it’s best if you know which expenses you can cut, temporarily or permanently, as well as the impact of doing so in your life.

Find people whom you can rely on. Even if you’re an introvert, even if you hate dealing with people. Family, friends, you call it. And make sure that they can rely on you, it’s give-and-take.

I typically interpret it two ways:

• egregiously poor quality content, that does not contribute with a topic
• unpretentious content posted for the sake of fun and entertainment

Which is which depends on context.