If you zoom all the way in, you can see a few between those pillars at the end of the hall :)

I really love Jack Vance’s world building. His Gaean Reach setting gives an endless variety of cultures, customs and beliefs. And the Dying Earth novels formed the basis for magic system of DnD.

But the real treasure is in how he can let these worlds come alive with his descriptions. Often he would spend a whole paragraph describing something that will never be part of the story but manages to perfectly set the tone of the local atmosphere.

I grew with these books (thanks to my dad’s impressive personal SF library) and they’ve always managed to spark my imagination like no other book.

A small side note on that 30% ruling, it’s only for highly skilled workers, so there are some requirements to meet.
Also, you’d best not boast about it to your Dutch coworkers if you want to make friends over here :)

Since most games are often mentioned on the internet, I’m going to reach waaaaaaaay back to my childhood and mention Cartooners:

This was a game for kids to make their own cartoons. I spend so much time making all kinds of funny and weird stories. It was very basic, but it had me giggling every time.

I did the thing yesterday. It wasn’t my intention, and it was kind of incidental , but I’m so glad I did it in the end.
I can definitely recommend, just do the thing, you’ll thank yourself later.

The Netherlands is generally quite friendly towards (English speaking) immigrants and expats. Almost everyone speaks English and no one really bats an eye at a non-Dutch resident in most of the major western cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the Hague, etc.)
Housing is terrible though, prices are high and it’ll be hard to find something nice. One advantage for you (or any US resident), is that you’re exempt from the inburgering exam. Which means that you won’t have to learn the language and won’t be tested on your integration in Dutch society.

My partner is from abroad and they’ve experienced living here as quite pleasant. They weren’t exempt from the exam though (different non-EU nationality), which was a bit of a nuisance. But in general, reception was positive. They’ve been living here for over 16 years now.
But like most of Europe, we’ve got a far-right government right now, so there’s a lot of anti-immigration talk going round. Of course it’s only aimed at what they think are the “wrong” (Middle-Eastern and African) kind of people, so I doubt Americans would ever have to deal with it.

I got into Stardew Valley literally by accident. As in, I twisted my ankle during a winter vacation and got stuck indoors for a week while my family was having fun outside. All I had to entertain myself was my laptop and this farming game I recently bought on a whim.

I didn’t see the fun in it at first, but I liked the music and eventually the grind kind of clicked for me. Wake up, water plants, sell stuff, explore a bit, go to bed, repeat. It helped that my other choices for entertainment were a bit limited at the time :) But once the daily tasks become routine, you kind of zone out during that part and think ahead of what you want to do for the rest of the day. Maybe explore that cave a little more, or go fishing for that fish you need for the community center, etc.

But I can totally understand if it’s not your thing. I might not have enjoyed it so much if I wasn’t chair bound for an entire week with nothing else to do…
Erm…
That’s not the most glowing of endorsements when I write it out loud :)

What I’m trying to say is, for me it was a bit of a barrier to get through, but after that it’s such a cozy game to spend some time in. And it kind of has this nice reward cycle that makes me go “just one more day” a LOT of days :)

Taking a kayak out into one of the local waterways on an early morning. We have a few canals that run through a nature area on the outskirts of the city. Around that time no one is yet on the water and I can just glide peacefully past the water lilies and other plants. The silence is so soothing. Everything just seems to live and breathe all around me.

It’s great until about an hour later, when some of the locals use their motor boat to put-put-put down the canal, stinking up the place with their exhausts :P

It’s… *bellows in best matron voice* Richaaaard!

I don’t know if this can be darned, the threads are very very thin. I might give it a try if one of those holes becomes too big.
When I do, I’ll definitely use different colors. I like your idea :)

I have an old light green neck Buff made from bamboo fiber. It’s like three times the normal size so you have to wrap it multiple times around your neck which is great in cold weather.
And it’s so soft! I love wearing it the moment autumn turns cooler.
It’s getting a few holes so I hope it’ll still last a couple more years. They don’t sell this design anymore 😞

Pff, that’s clearly a frog 🙄

Though a frog is called a kikker, which is kind of funny I suppose :)

Something I like about the language is the homonyms.
Like pad means both toad and path, but then you have a voetpad (foot path/ foot toad), fietspad(cycling path/ bicycle toad) or a zebrapad (zebra crossing/ zebra toad).

The latter ones don’t exist, just to be clear :)

My partner stresses too much with work and I wish I could help more. But all I can do is give comfort and urge to at least let things go when at home.
Any practical advice is always brushed off, which I can understand. Sometimes you just need to vent and I don’t mind listening about what happened this time. I just hate seeing them like this, it does make me worry a bit about their health.

PICO-8, though it’s more of an on-and-off again project of trying to teach myself to program again.
But I like the limitations you have to work with, and even I can create some crude 8x8 sprites :)

Traffic lights were hand operated.
The small town where I grew up had one pedestrian traffic light for crossing the main road. There was a small brick shed next to that traffic light with no windows and a little door. When I was little I was convinced that was an operation’s center where someone worked to turn the lights red or green.
In reality it was a power substation for the neighborhood, but I was seriously convinced that behind that door was a man looking at a TV screen and operating the traffic light at the right moment.
When we went to a larger town nearby, where there were traffic lights without a convenient mysterious building nearby, I told myself that the traffic light people were most likely working under ground, peeping through the drains.

I… was good at making up answers for myself instead of just asking my parents.

Maps and compass. I like the reliability of finding my way no matter where I am. Plus it’s fun!
Especially the trick of using two landmarks to pinpoint my location on a map makes me feel like an old-fashioned navigator :)

This really creepy Czech Alice in Wonderland movie. It used stop motion with animal skeletons, fish heads, and tons of other things.

My mom put it on when I was little in an attempt to keep me occupied.
“Would you like to watch Alice in Wonderland, Thelsim?” She’d ask.
“Yea!” I would shout enthusiastically, thinking she meant the Disney movie.
Half an hour later I’m crying and hiding under the blankets.

I never did watch that movie again. Maybe it’s not so bad now, but the screenshots still make feel very queasy.

In Dutch it’s called a trouwring, which as a verb literally translates to wedding ring, but as a noun also to loyalty ring.
Which I find rather sweet.