Sounds to me like the kid is also having some feelings surrounding the breakup and subsequent remarriage that aren’t being addressed. Why does he want you to come too? Is he hoping it might bring you and his mom back together? Does he feel uncomfortable around the new stepdad, and wants you around because he’s more comfortable when you’re around? I think if you have a conversation with him as to why he’s asking for you to come too, it might influence how you approach the situation, or at least give you a better way to explain why you can’t come due to your own reasons.

I know this is a difficult decision on your part for how it affects you, but your son is also in a very vulnerable position right now, and needs both of his parents paying attention to him and the feelings he’s having, even if he doesn’t know how to express them directly. My parents broke up suddenly due to cheating when I was around the same age, and it was a traumatic time in my life because my parents both assumed I was old enough to “get it.” I wasn’t. Family is one of the main sources of stability in a young person’s life, and to have it fall out from beneath you isn’t something you get over on your own very easily.

Stage 2 generally means that the cancer hasn’t yet spread, except maybe to very nearby lymph nodes, meaning treatment can be very successful so long as its somewhere accessible by surgery and you don’t wait too long. Stage 2 treatment is very different from stage 4 treatment, but if you wait, that’s where it’ll get to.

Nobody was chained with 2 options. The options were chosen and rallied for by representatives picked by the people who actually thought about and participated in local government elections. (I’m dropping the metaphor, since it glosses over the process by which these 2 options came about in the first place)

I always liked the name Woodrow, but I hate the nickname Woody, so it’s a bit of a wash.

Yeah, that’s the family history of inbreeding that I was talking about - if you continuously have children within the family for multiple generations then the risk continues to rise so long as the trend continues. It’s generally only the risk of getting 2 copies of some familial recessive condition or other issues that arise from getting identical copies of genetic information from both parents, though, so breaking the chain and having a kid with someone outside of the family removes that risk; even if someone has a family history of inbreeding, it doesn’t put their potential children at risk so long as their partner isn’t related to them.

Inbreeding generally stops being a notable factor around 4th degree relation between parents. Even first cousins, 3rd degree relatives, only have about a 6% risk of an anomaly at birth when having a child together, compared to the 3% normal rate for all pregnancies. There’s likely been a LOT of inbreeding in any one person’s family history.

The nice thing is that once a new non-relative is added to the mix, the risks associated with past inbreeding largely go away; you only pass on 1 copy of your genes to your kid, so even if you’re personally affected by a family history of inbreeding giving you a bunch of identical copies, if your kid’s other parent isn’t related to you, their copies should be different from yours, and the kid will have 2 different copies just like anyone else, helping protect them from recessive familial conditions and the like.

Nah, it’s referring to the first space by grouping the first and second words, “Pig” and “And,” and then referring to the second space by grouping the second and third words, “And” and “Whistle.”

“Thank you I came in 30 seconds.”

I just want them to finish the beta 2D version of Rayman 2. I was so excited when I unlocked the demo for it at the end of Rayman 2, thinking it was a sneak preview for the next game, only be disappointed to learn it was the scrapped initial concept instead…

3D Rayman games are good, but they feel like a completely different series when compared to the bright, colorful world of Rayman 1. The newer 2D ones are closer, but still feel too different.

I think my teacher knew not to do a song with a horn solo; none of us actually bothered to learn the notes to the songs. The concert probably sounded marginally better without me.

In middle school I played the (French) horn, and one time I lost my mouthpiece right before a concert. I spent the entire thing just pretending to play my mouthpieceless instrument.

When you accidentally grab a blank slide and panic for a little bit.

That sucks, bud. I hope your future love makes their way to your living room eventually!

I dunno how you went about it, but I’ve given some pointers to friends who weren’t having any luck with online dating, and a lot of them were being too passive about it, basing their potential match choices mainly off of “vibes” and sending mostly generic opening messages - the quantity-over-quality approach.

While I was on the site, I spent hours a day going through every single person’s profile - looking it over to really get as best of an understanding of the person as I could - and if I took interest in a few points, I’d send a message personalized to them based on what I saw on their profile. I also made sure that my own profile was well fleshed out, filling every field with well thought out responses, and putting up pictures of me hanging out with friends and doing activities like cooking and going to an amusement park.

Some, though not all, of the people who followed my advice eventually found success through dating sites. If you haven’t tried all this, I’d suggest giving it a shot. If you have, sorry for being presumptuous, and I hope that you find who you’re looking for eventually.

They’re a company - their only purpose is to make money. They don’t hate emulation, they hate not making the absolute maximum amount of money they possibly can. Public use of emulation lowers their profits, while their own use of emulation helps increase their profits. It’s not some weird enigma or hypocrisy - money is the singular driving factor for every company; every action they take traces back to making more money. This is why we need much tighter regulation instead of trusting companies to “be reasonable” or “do the right thing.”

A buddy of mine got his first girlfriend in college after a family friend noticed that his single niece also liked manga and anime and introduced the two. I was very jealous of his attractive, nerdy girlfriend-turned-wife for several years until I finally got on a dating site and found love for myself.

I liked sneaking up on them and stabbing them before they even started getting up.

You absolutely don’t have to have a concrete, well-constructed opinion on everything, or even really anything, but if you plan to spread an opinion you have about something, you should make sure it’s concrete and well-constructed first.

I make Special K bars for get-togethers every once in awhile, and I sometimes get people who ask me if they’re healthy. I always tell them that nothing in them is even the slightest bit healthy except the Special K itself, and even that’s debatable.