That part about the cloth wiring crumbling really hit home. I had a buddy, Mike, who bought this little 1950s ranch near Gainesville. He was just swapping out a light switch, nothing major, and when he pulled the old box out, the cloth insulation literally turned to dust in his hands. He ended up having to rewire the whole living room because every time he touched a wire, the insulation just fell off. Took him a whole weekend, and he said the worst part was crawling through the crawlspace where it was about a hundred degrees and full of spider webs. He told me he finally just cut the power to the whole house and ran all new Romex, learned the hard way that you can't trust any old wiring in those Florida bungalows.

Plotting blind is a bold move for sure.

Ah man, yeah I've actually tried that myself. Put a couple big ferns in my living room and the echo definitely dropped off. It's not gonna fix a bad setup but it helps if you've got that hollow sound bouncing around.

Notices the same pattern with people buying fancy cookware but never learning the basics, just skip the noise.

We tried the one picker thing once and it backfired hard. Our guy picked the same game three weeks in a row because he was too lazy to learn anything new. Ended up with people just not showing up. The three options before people arrive is the only system that works for my group, keeps the debate short. Forced vote with a timer if they cant decide.