Yeah, there’s plenty of VESA mounts that will allow you to rotate the monitor, move it up/down, side-to-side, and tilt it forwards and backwards as needed

As for ones that will automatically change the orientation that things are being displayed when you turn the monitor from portrait to landscape, if that’s what you’re looking for, that’s a tougher nut to crack, I’m sure they’re out there but they’re not common, or (last I checked) cheap. But changing the orientation is as simple as Ctrl+Alt+arrow key (I think some newer Intel display drivers have changed that, but I haven’t looked too far into that)

Honestly, your required specs are basically any monitor on the market at this point, you can rotate the display orientation of any monitor with settings baked into any OS you’re likely to be using

You probably won’t even need to spend $100 for a 60hz 1080p monitor

If you can’t find one with an adjustable stand that’s to your liking, just look for one that can use a VESA mount and get another stand for it, probably less than $50

You can probably get 3 monitors and stands for your budget and still have enough left over to grab lunch.

Unless you have some gaming, graphic design, etc. needs you haven’t disclosed, I don’t think it’s worth getting too hung up on this, even cheap monitors tend to last a pretty long time

Once in a while I get a notification that, for one reason or another, doesn’t actually bring me to the content it was supposed to link to and instead brings me to the main page of an app, and sometimes it’s difficult or impossible to find where the link was supposed to go

But going in through the notification history, the second try usually takes me where it was supposed to go

Yeah, personally I can probably just about dry shave against the grain with a piece of broken glass and splash on some acetone as aftershave and be none the worse for it, not too much in this world irritates my skin.

I figured it was worth mentioning it because I know it’s a concern for some people, but I’ve never had an issue with it personally with shaving or waxing.

Philly-area millennial.

Among friends and family around my age, I have probably around a dozen or so people or couples who own their homes, one of whom inherited it, and one who bought it from family for cheap

And many more than that who rent, live with their parents (who often but not always own their home) and a couple whose housing situations aren’t quite what you’d call secure but aren’t quite homeless either.

As for myself, I’m kind of caught in paperwork limbo living in a house that’s owned by my mother in law, that she’s agreed to sell to us and we’ve been given carte Blanche to do whatever we want with it, are responsible for repairs and maintenance, but actually getting shit together for a mortgage is being way more of a pain in the ass than it should for reasons I don’t really want to go into.

In my parent’s social circles, the vast majority own homes or have in some way secured some kind of long-term housing for themselves, like one who basically gets their apartment rent free by being some kind of property manager.

The pain really isn’t that bad

And at least for me, the worst parts of it are more on my sort of FUPA area, not so much on my dick and balls themselves, so for the service I get, it’s only like 3 patches around the edges that actually hurt. Might suck more if you’re planning to get more than that done, but I can’t really comment on that myself.

And again. It’s only for an instant with each rip and then it’s over, by the time you’ve flinched it’s already stopped hurting.

Get waxed, I’ve been doing it for a couple years now, worth it.

Hurts a bit when they pull it off, but not nearly as bad as you imagine, and it only hurts for an instant, not like it’s a pain that’s gonna linger around with you.

Smoother and longer-lasting than you could ever hope to manage with a razor, and no risk of cutting yourself

Depending on your skin, maybe you could have some issues with ingrown hairs, but I’m pretty sure if you’re prone to that you’re probably gonna have those issues shaving too.

My only complaint is the price, the place I’ve been going charges about $75 (+tip) for their “basic” service, which is just shaft and sack. I’m personally a really hairy dude and I feel like it would look weird for me to go beyond that and have bald patches on my crotch and ass crack, and I’m certainly not gonna spend the time and money for a full body waxing.

The full, most premium package to get all of you junk and butt waxed with all the extra goes up to something like $150 (+tip), and there’s a few options in-between so that you have a sense of the price range.

Which I do think is a pretty fair price for the service, but it’s also certainly not cheap. Personally I kind of justify it because I’ve known people who spend that much or more or haircuts about as often as I get it done, and i shave my head myself with a safety razor, so my haircut expenses are basically 0, so just kind of trading one grooming expense for another.

I usually go about a month and a half between waxings, first week or two there’s no noticeable hair regrowth, and by the 6th week I usually have about the required ¼ inch or so for waxing. Takes about a half hour for what I get done.

In some places it can be hard to find places that do it for dudes, and not all employees are trained or willing to do male waxing, so don’t ruin it for the rest of us, wash your ass and junk and don’t be a creep.

Normally 5-7 between my shirt and pants.

2 front and back pockets on my pants

The little watch pocket on jeans and such

One or two shirt pockets

Occasionally I wear cargo pants or shorts which adds 2+ more pockets

And if I’m wearing a jacket, that adds a few more. My most commonly worn jacket has 2 hip, 2 chest, and 2 inside pockets

And if I’m fishing, even I don’t know how many pockets are on my vest, pretty sure that adds a dozen or so

Wallet goes in my back left. Used to be my right but the way I sit that started to give me some sciatica issues no problem since I switched pockets. I also switched to a thinner wallet which probably helps as well but that came well after switching sides

Back right usually gets a bandana

Things move around between my front pockets a bit.

I usually carry a pocket knife and if it has a clip that gets clipped to the front right, no exceptions. If it doesn’t have a clip it could be in either front pocket, or possibly a belt pouch.

I usually have a pen on me and if my shirt doesn’t have a pocket that goes there as well.

I’ve been sporting a curly handlebar moustache for probably 15 years now, and if I’m wearing jeans or something else with a similar little watch/coin pocket, my tin of moustache wax goes there. Otherwise that tin goes into whichever pocket I find it’s rattling the least against whatever else is in that pocket.

Phone switches back and forth between my left and right front pocket, based mostly on which hand I was last using it with. If I was just aimlessly scrolling on my phone or texting someone I probably had it in my right hand so it goes in the front right. It occasionally also ends up in a jacket or shirt pocket.

If I was using it while I was doing something else, like maybe looking at a recipe while I was cooking it was probably in my left hand so it goes in that pocket.

If I have cargo pockets it sometimes ends up in one of those. One of my pairs of hiking pants has a pocket that fits it really nicely.

Keys generally get clipped to a belt loop on my right side, the case for my earbuds gets clipped on my left. Other times they end up in a jacket pocket or usually my front right pocket.

I usually carry a small notepad with me, like with the pen it preferably goes in a shirt pocket, otherwise it usually ends up in my right front, or if I have cargo pockets one of those.

This Is Just To Say
By William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Besides that, I have a book of poetry that I’m not going to share, but I will share the story of why I own it.

I work in 911 dispatch. We have a frequent caller, she actually doesn’t live in our area, but her mother and father do. This is what I’ve pieced together about them.

Her father is in a nursing home. She calls frequently for police or EMS to go out for him alleging all kinds of abuse and mistreatment. This isn’t a particularly nice nursing home, but cops have been there multiple times and haven’t found any issues with her father.

She’s very uncooperative with us when she calls, refuses to answer basically any questions, and when we or the police try to call her back to tell her the outcome or to get more information she basically never answers the phone.

A few times she has actually shown up at the nursing home, caused a scene, and had to be escorted off the premises. One time her father was hospitalized for something (not sure what, but I didn’t see any calls for us that would have matched up with him, so it probably wasn’t something too serious if they took the time to arrange non emergency transport) and she showed up at the hospital, was escorted out, and spent the next day or two pretty much camped out at some nearby fast food places)

Her mother has dementia, and is a frequent caller herself, she calls to complain about her caretakers and sometimes even gets into fights with them.

I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that the father checked himself into the nursing home to get away from his wife and daughter.

They both occasionally call for well-being checks on each other. The daughter usually because she took her mother’s insane ramblings at face value, and the mother usually because she hasn’t heard from the daughter in a while (or at least doesn’t remember hearing from her) and because of some vague concerns that she can never really explain, things like “I’m worried because of everything happening in [city where daughter lives]” but she can’t tell me what’s supposedly happening there and when I looked up the local news there I couldn’t find anything particularly noteworthy.

I’ve given the mother the direct phone number to the dispatch center that covers her daughter’s home multiple times (sometimes multiple times in the same night) so she can reach them directly, but she always calls 911 instead so I have to transfer her every time.

During one such transfer, she was rambling about her daughter, and she mentions that her daughter is a writer.

I of course had to search out what she had written.

At first, all I could find was some mentions of her contributing to some magazines and such, but couldn’t actually find any of her actual writing, but digging a little deeper I was able to find some stuff she did in college. A bunch of poetry, and it was all terrible and weird. I’d pull it up to share with my coworkers occasionally when she was blowing up our phones.

Then one day I went to do that and saw that she had written a book. I got a copy for myself and as Christmas presents for a couple of my favorite coworkers. It’s more of the same insane, rambling, nonsensical poetry.

I really only need 1 HDMI port on my TV- to connect my AV receiver to, everything else gets plugged into that receiver, it’s got about 8 HDMI ports.

Right now there’s 3 consoles, a pc, and a Chromecast hooked up to it, so I have ports to spare, and I haven’t had to use anything on my tv since I initially set it up and set the input to HDMI 1

It’s not necessarily feasible for everyone, it does take up a little more space in your entertainment center that not everyone has, but I also think it’s 100% worth it to at least have a decent set of speakers hooked up to your TV if you can find the space and budget to do so.

I work in 911 dispatch, understandably once in a while I get a caller who is just absolutely losing their mind over whatever is going on that they’re calling about

And sometimes pretty much the only thing I can do to grab my callers attention and bring them back around to listening to me is to just kind of repeat sir/ma’am until I get their attention they come back around to realizing I’m trying to talk to them.

If I can get their name, I use that instead and it’s more effective, but that’s not always a given.

Just sitting there in silence until they get their shit together on their own doesn’t work, and more likely they’re going to just hang up on me.

And repeating whatever question I need answered really just kind of goes in one ear and out the other while they continue going off.

Their name or sir/ma’am is punchier, it has a way of cutting through their panic and grabbing their attention saying “you are being addressed right now and the person addressing you needs your attention”

And I really wish we had a good, gender-neutral equivalent of that. It needs to be polite and professional, and maybe a bit authoritative-sounding, so something like “dude” obviously won’t cut it.

And I need it both for trans/non-binary people, and people whose gender just isn’t clear on the phone because they’re in a panic, calling from a potato, and/or just have a somewhat ambiguous voice.

Normally I just have to pick one and go with it, and they’ll either correct me (in some cases, choosing the wrong one might actually be more effective at grabbing their attention because astonishingly (/s) people don’t enjoy being misgendered and they jump at the opportunity to correct that) or they also just roll with it.

But I’d really like to avoid that if I can, and I haven’t really found a good option for it yet.

I usually find some excuse to stop by my parents’ once or twice a month. Often dropping the dog off for them to watch her.

We’ll hang around the house, chit chat, maybe have dinner.

We’ll go out to get dinner or something for birthdays, do holiday dinners and such. Occasionally go help each other move furniture or what have you.

A few times a year we get together with my sister and/or her husband to do something, and usually invite each other to our parties and such.

I don’t really see or talk to my extended family much beyond getting invited to weddings and such and seeing them at family holiday gatherings. I’m fine with that.

My wife goes to visit her mom a couple times a month, often she’s helping her with chores, sometimes her mom comes to our house to hang out.

Her dad lives a little further away, we probably see him about twice a year, usually spending a night on two at his place. We usually go out to get dinner, sometimes go into the city to see a show or do something else, hang around his place and watch movies.

I almost never see her brother or his wife, we have some wonky schedules that often don’t align. When I make it to her family holiday things, it’s usually them, her mom, and her grandmother. We mostly watch stuff on tv, sometimes play uno, and eat dinner.

Yeah but the materials you have to work with are a little limited. At least around me, Walmart doesn’t carry much in the way of stuff like lumber, pipe, or other building materials, and there’s gonna be some gaps in the tools available, I don’t think most Walmarts carry welders around me, and even if they do you certainly wouldn’t be able to get the gases you need for MIG/TIG welding there, and you might want that if you, for example, need to repair those steel shutters.

And most Walmarts around me actually don’t carry guns.

And you can’t grow too much food on a parking lot, you can try to work with containers and potting soil of course, but odds are a school is gonna have more land you can easily convert to a food plot or maybe even the plumbing parts to get some kind of hydroponics system going.

“Secure” as in “fortify it against zombies and potentially other threats”

Or as in “I can get to it and lay some sort of claim to it”

Because if it’s the former, we probably need to put some restrictions on the scenario. That’s really the hard part of this and we’re just assuming we can do it, and your best bet is probably to secure as big of an area as possible. A city, a country, a whole hemisphere, or hell, the entire world or the solar system if we’re being really silly.

If we’re going with the latter, where we find a building or property of some kind and call “dibs” and the rest of it is up to us

I think a tech school is a pretty good bet, at least thinking of my local tech schools.

They have some fully stocked workshops with pretty much any tools and materials you could need- carpentry, plumbing, automotive, electrical, etc.

Maybe some kind of medical program, so probably a decent amount of meds and first aid equipment, in addition to whatever is in the nurse’s office.

A culinary program, so you have a well equipped kitchen and probably a decent amount of food on-hand.

Maybe it even has some sort of agricultural program with some farming equipment, maybe even some ready-to-go planted crops and possibly livestock.

Most schools are fairly secure with limited entrances and locking doors often they have backup generators and maybe even solar these days (odds are any school with a decent electrical program at least has a few solar panels kicking around somewhere) and you have the tools and maybe the materials there to further fortify it as needed.

And it probably has some pretty beefy fire suppression systems since you have teenagers playing with welders and industrial stoves/ovens.

Some college campuses might be as good or better for the same reasons, with the added benefits of there probably being some purpose-made living quarters, but they’re usually less compact, which has its plusses and minuses, more land to grow crops and such but harder to secure.

And if the apocalypse hits while school is in session, you have a bunch of young, hopefully reasonably-healthy people already on-hand to do some of the hard work if like me you’re not quite as spry as you used to be.

YMMV depending on where exactly you go, but the place I usually go to has a trans employee who usually works the front desk and sometimes bartends

And one band that performs there pretty regularly has a trans singer. Most of the bands and such they book there keep their clothes on, she was the exception.

And I think this says a lot, because she was up on stage performing for a couple hours, I probably walked right by her about six times before I noticed that she had a penis, and the only reason I did was because the rest of the band fucked off for a few minutes to get a drink or something and she stayed up on stage singing for a while and I finally realized that the deep voice that had been singing was coming from her

So you really quickly stop taking notice of people’s genitals there. That’s all that I’ve personally noticed but there very well might have been tons more and I just didn’t notice. Definitely no shortage of other LGBQ folks around there though.

Also nude beaches

This particular resort is, luckily, close enough to me that I could go there for a day trip, or maybe even an afternoon or evening if I were so-inclined. It’s a bit out of the way but I’ve definitely driven further for worse reasons

Something to consider is that a lot of bath houses and such are gender-separated. For some, that may make it more comfortable, but for others I feel like it may not quite get them to confront all of their anxieties.

It may be easier for some people to ease into it from something like that (also to that end a lot of, but not all, nudist resorts and beaches are clothing-optional except for certain times/places/activities, so you can ease into it at your own pace,) but when possible I think it’s worth trying to rip the bandaid off all at once.

I never really had any major body image issues, don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of things I would like to change about how I look, and I’m certainly no sex symbol by a long shot, but I’ve always been pretty comfortable in my own skin.

But what little problem I did have pretty much evaporated when I decided to try out a nudist resort.

I think if you spend a day walking around naked people, you pretty quickly get some perspective. Most of the people at a nudist resort aren’t exactly the kind of people you particularly want to see naked.

Fat, skinny, stretch marks, scars, weird lumps and bumps, piercings, tattoos, pale, tan (though certain there are more heavily-tanned people that average,) dicks, balls, tits, and asses of all shapes, sizes, and configurations, little kids, people who look like they’re old enough to remember when dirt was invented (though some of that might just be all the sun-exposure,) it’s all out there on display.

And none of it matters a bit. They’re just bodies, we all have them, and they’re all a little weird, and I think experiencing something like that in-person really drives it home in a way that just thinking and talking about it can’t really do justice.

I kind of ended up there on a whim. The year before I first went to one, I did our city’s naked bike ride with a couple friends (also a very body-positive experience, but understandably the crowd skews a bit younger and fitter because bike ride) and had a blast riding around in our underwear with them.

The next year we couldn’t make it because of our schedules, but in searching for other things to do we stumbled onto something happening at this resort that sounded fun, so we went for it, and enjoyed it. We’ve talked a couple other people into joining us and they’ve also had a great time once they get over the initial shock of being naked around other naked people.

Also what really sold me on it was when we first arrived, I got there a bit before my friends. It was one of those hot, humid days where the moment you step outside you’re immediately drenched in sweat and your clothes start sticking to you.

I had kind of figured I’d set my tent up first then take my clothes off so that I’d have somewhere to put them, but after barely getting my tent unpacked I was already drenched in sweat and feeling gross, and the lightbulb went off in my head "just take your clothes off dumbass) and so I did. I was dressed pretty appropriately for the weather, but even still that made a world of difference, so by the time my friends showed up I was already sold and walked over to greet them naked, which I think also helped to put them at ease with the situation.

911 dispatch, yeah, kind of important.

Wish I could do it for just fire and EMS, and not police, but that’s the way the system works, and the most interesting calls I get are for police I suppose.

In a more ideal world where people don’t have to work just to survive and make ends meet, I probably would still do it, just not on a full-time schedule. It’s one of those things that needs to get done but that absolutely not everyone is cut out for, so I think it’s important for those of us who can hack it to step up to the plate to do it.

As far as whether I’m proud of what I do, well I’m proud that I get to help people, I’m proud of the skills I have that allow me to do it well, but otherwise it’s just a job, I don’t brag about what I do (although I do have a ton of interesting stories from it that I like to share)

And since it is a full time gig and I have tons of things I’d rather be doing, I’m looking forward to hopefully being able to retire someday and never having to go into the office again.