Welcome back, and thanks for your kind words! I got our son on Hive, but only because he was interested in Splinterlands. Whatever it takes!

I never push Hive at anyone, either. My thinking of all this mostly was to formulate a good response to the growing subtext of "What happened to you? You used to be on Facebook all the time!"

I miss Ryze... he was a pretty good storyteller and marketer. He had a good grip on the realities of Hive... but I recall he ended up on the wrong side of the "Hive is so amazing it markets itself"

Yes, that's a pretty good approach... and it leaves other people to do the asking.

Well said. Along the lines of "explain the workings of planet Earth to an alien species," I always felt that the observation "so you kill people to show people that killing people is

Sometimes it feels like we are just running in place! There might be running faster, but we're not getting anywhere.

I think you have summed it up very well! I think humanity's love affair with the word "more" means that we have to put more into the same 24 hours we've always had. I am just not convinced that

Famous place! And I'm not even a surfer...

I think that system is too automated. I see too many cases of a person doing one sketchy thing and then get rewarded with a lifetime of downvotes, even months after having changed their act. I really don't

Oh Snook... you poor dear, and your mom. What an absolute horror story! Sending healing vibes and love to both of you!

It's "the morning after" and were decompressing a bit before the drive home. Full overload. But the event went pretty well, all in all, thanks!

Yes, and to call it health care is even a little ironic...

I'm in alignment with that, at least in terms of wanting to leave the world a better place as a result of my having been tfine! I'm less particular about it being as a result of "accomplishment"

Thank you @ewkaw, I appreciate it!

That sounds like a good definition to me! The strange thing about living in the USA is that this country is so big on "everything freedom," yet even the freedom here almost seems to be enforced

I'm definitely an advocate for engagement, and I do tend to reward worthy comments. Of course, this approach only works if you have enough HP to give about a 0.03 upvote or greater, so it doesn't just

Ah yes, I grew up mowing with one of those as a kid... and would mow people's lawns for pocket money. If we had a smaller place, I'd probably use one... but a rough guess is that a 14-inch mower like that

You are unfortunately right, the elephant does win again. And because this elephant is so large, there is no serious competitors where you could move your business to, instead.

Staying there definitely becomes a little less of a viable proposition every year. Sadly, the choice often seems to be between make a lot of sales and hand over most of your profits, or go out on your

Sometimes it seems like they had a great master plan! Make their venue cheap and effective for the small seller until they became the 500 lb gorilla in the room, at which point they could keep raising