Cat.

For twice the price of already exorbitant prices.

I work for an AI company that’s dying out. We’re trying to charge companies $30k a year and upwards for basically chatgpt plus a few shoddily built integrations. You can build the same things we’re doing with Zapier, at around $35 a month. The management are baffled as to why we’re not closing any of our deals, and it’s SO obvious to me - we’re too fucking expensive and there’s nothing unique with our service.

I mean… It’s kind of a good idea. Ride that 'so fucked it’s cool ’ wave. Can’t wait to watch influencers invest yet again.

No. I did that once (as a middle class person too proud to accept daddy’s help) and it was fucking awful. I lasted 8 months before I had to consult Bank of Dad, which I’m pretty impressed by, but everything about it sucked. I would steal loaves of bread from bakeries at 4am, as they’d leave them outside to cool. I’d go to late night chippies and make up stories about being on a great adventure for charity so they’d give me free chips, I’d buy my clothes from a market that sold soiled and ripped clothing donated from fast fashion stores, and I’d hand sew them back to acceptability so I could wear them. We’d dumpster dive, forage, and beg, and it still wasn’t enough. Rent started going on credit cards, I discovered new addictions I couldn’t afford just to cope with the pain of no heating, shitty food, and a general feeling of desperation. And I had a fucking safety net, I was nowhere near the suffering of most people at this kind of poverty line.

Elon is a rich prick. I got a momentary taste of poverty and it was fucking awful. He would have caved in a day.

Steal from them

Oh yeah, the condescending “please unplug me when done!” signs near the toaster… or trying to use the hot tub and having to read pages of stuff just to get in some warm water. We stayed at one once that made us add conditioning tablets to the hot tub at a certain time each day. Nah, this is your house, you fucking take care of it, I just want to use it.

On the flip side, the ukulele community is so open and friendly, helped me stick with a hobby I sucked at to begin with, and now I’ve released actual music!

The excitement when you get a monocot though…

Actually I use it as a starting point for fungi. Seek will usually get me to the genus, and from there I can cross reference various books to narrow it down. Hell, sometimes it’ll give me an exact match, and then I just have to perform a yes or no ID with my field guides. That being said, I mostly end up with no, I’m shit scared of all amanitas and most mushrooms just aren’t tasty enough to warrant the effort.

Airbnb is expensive. It also is often awkward, I always seem to get places where the owner wants to give me a tour of the place when I show up. Checkout time is always a massive stress, trying to figure out where the outside bin is, how to start the dishwasher, and remembering to return all the furniture to it’s original position, lest we break a rule and lose our deposit. You don’t get mini bars or room service or daily housekeeping, and you have no idea if the host is secretly keeping tabs on you somehow. It’s just so much more work to stay at an Airbnb than a hotel, with none of the cost benefits as a trade off.

The other week we stayed at a Hilton and I checked in and out without speaking to a soul (via the app). It’s a no brainer at this point.

But then how much time have you saved not having to receipt the receipts.

And the non kitten fellows! We wanted a third cat after adopting two kittens years ago. We were so over the erratic nature combined with the roll the dice luck of whether they were floor pissers, plant eaters, etc, so we decided to look for adult cats. The only one the shelter had was this mongy manky stray who was estimated to be 5 years old. When we went in the adoption room with her, she looked at us and did a massive wet shit that made us all evacuate the room. Her adoption photos make her look mangy, aloof, old, dirty, and distant, not to mention smelly.

Later, when the poo particles had settled, we went back in and picked her up. She sank into my arms and I just knew… I cried and couldn’t bear to let her go.

Four years on, her shaggy fur has became soft, her distant eyes started slow blinking and showing emotion, her little frame filled out and she became an absolute hellhound for dinner time. When you walk in the door, no matter who you are (literally, you could be a burglar), she will run up to you and do this silent meow asking to be picked up. When you hold her, she purrs so much her body shakes and she drools until her face is dripping. She will climb into bed and play little spoon at night, and she loves laps all times of the day.

We’ve had her 4 years and she no longer does wet shits, but is the same loving cat that melted when someone held her and showed her love. She converted me to older cats.

Oh darn and I was just about to

That was a great read!

Omg yes the ear protection. I never paid attention to the warnings, it was just a loud club on a random Thursday after all. I was too young to realize the compounding effect. Even now I look back and feel like my partying and exposure to loud fun was mild, yet here I am with partial hearing loss and a portable white noise generator.

I absolutely feel the same. Notice how you had to point out you’re left leaning? That just shows how militant and aggressive Lemmy can be that you have to state that just in case.

I like Lemmy, I just wish it was a little less stubborn (and I say that as a left leaning person).

They have a whole process for that, some emails were REALLY problematic

Fun fact: I got to access to his email through my job once. It’s insane the amount of dumb fuckery people will email. One person had cc’d his email on a whole thread of emails stalking some woman.

Working titles of Twiglet and Sassy Anne. Hubs likes the latter, mainly so he can call her Sass-quatch.