That’s because none of it (the good stuff) was accurate and we are all very sad about that…

So we need to eat the rich is what you said.

I’m on board.

Don’t correct me. I’m not listening anymore.

I haven’t had quite that interaction, but I’m equally blasé about it. It’s literally just part of life.

“In the past year have you had thoughts of suicide?”

broad gesture if you haven’t you probably aren’t paying attention… but I’m apathetic, not active. Not that it would matter because when I was actively suicidal it took 6 fucking months to be seen by you chucklefucks…

They always get that concerned face and I have to reassure -them-… like no it’s fine this is just normal for me…? I live with chronic pain, I live with chronic poor-ness, it’s just chronic life (and not the fun drug kind, even). I’m not into it, but I’m not actively thinking about doing anything about it, either. Doesn’t mean I want to be resuscitated if shit happens, tho… and I don’t… (any more chronic issues would be probably one too many, and then I’d get active…) I even know exactly what probably painless method I’d go with, because suffering is dumb. And it’s something I can act on quite literally any time I want with zero effort on my part other than going to the store, so that I’m still here is a great sign!

My current doc (Va changes my doctors every couple years) was the absolute first, out of dozens of people I’ve told that to, who was like “ummm… that’s actively bad… so what is your mental health plan? (Told her I don’t have one, other than suck it up) I’m going to give you an open-ended referral to some outside groups who may be more able to help you, especially on short notice… I get why you don’t trust our mental health… so if you ever want that, just send me a message and I’ll put in the referral for you. Also here’s a list of non-profits that aren’t directly affiliated who may be better suited to help you…”

Fwiw, whatever it is in your life that causes these things, I hope they stay at or below active-planning level. If you ever want someone totally random to vent to, my DMs are open, and I’ll reply with commiseration rather than gaslighting you about things not being that bad, because… well I get how pointless that would be 😜

I’ve had a ton of people asking if I’m going to keep bees as part of my homestead, and I have to explain that while somewhat useful, they aren’t native and so I don’t want them. Only way I’d be willing to keep honey bees is if they are completely contained in my greenhouses, and frankly that’s a lot of work I’m not willing to do.

People tend to get confused until I tell them about the dozens of native bees and other pollinators that are struggling to maintain populations in the region… I want to encourage those to hang out by my crops. They need a lot less from me, and are significantly more useful because they belong there.

I’m like this with soy. It tastes fancy. It’s the only milk I get when I get a coffee from somewhere. It’s not the same making my own tho so I use whole milk for that.

Blindsight is awesome. I was so pumped he made his works freely available.

Have you read the rifters trilogy? It has a mildly odd voice, imho, but overall a great series.

You might have just invented community service volunteering…?

Are the tracking systems for those massive telescopes sophisticated enough to track objects by designation, or do they still require coordinates? Like I know they have tracking for earths rotation but I can’t even imagine needing to look up the info to set sights on some body for the allotted view time, however many days that would be done for (I assume it’s a set of long precise numbers, far too long to easily memorize)

A dam or pipe about to burst often drips from the same spot for a while prior to fully rupturing.

Just a fun unrelated fact.

You can try at least once! For science!

I use a pihole when I’m home, and ghostery browser for link handling when I’m out. It’s incredibly basic so not great for a primary browser, but has Adblock and tracking protection, plus auto-declines cookies, so great for link handling. (I could set up a vpn but I’m incredibly lazy)

I don’t think ghostery browser is still maintained, but because it uses the same lists as their Firefox extension, it still works like a charm.

Also if you want to keep using Firefox, you can try the ghostery extension as well, assuming you are on android where that’s an option (I’m not which is why I use the browser)

Sure, but honestly who gives a flying fuck?

I’m going to watch it anyway, so there.

But as a brain cleanse, try little Emma. It’s not amazing, but it’s cute as hell. Itty bitty humans smaller than sentient racist livestock.

Tolerance is a social contract. A pact.

We, socially, tolerate people who don’t violate the social pact. As long as they aren’t hurting anyone. Hurting anyone violates the pact.

The social pact is one of goodwill and non-harm, regardless of impact.

If you can’t keep to that pact, you forget any claim to tolerance because you, yourself, are not holding up the ideals of tolerance. Which include race, creed, religion, whatever, pick a (normal person) thing and we are ok with it!

We let our governments get away with breaking the pact, but… if we didn’t it would be a lot easier to enforce overall…

And we’d all be better off.

They looked cute at the time 🤷🏻 and I didn’t know they would be that bad… I knew they were temporary, though…

I got 5 dermal anchors back when I was 18. They have been nothing but problems. I’m down to 3, 2 having been ripped out this past year… I’ll let the other three reject whenever they decide to do so (I’ve been preventing rejection for almost 20 years and I’m tired of it). I’d have to pay to get them removed, which I’m not doing.

Don’t get dermal anchors.

I felt that way about blitzball in final fantasy 10 (I think). Never finished the actual game.

The trick I’ve found over years of people-Ing as the person working is to always end with a statement that can either be turned back with ”you too!” without being awkward, or warrants something other than an autopilot response.

Thanks for stopping in, have a great night

Enjoy your meal and if you need anything just let me/us know

Don’t forget to tell your friends about us, and have a great day

Etc.

That way it’s totally fine for them to autopilot the pleasantries and they won’t feel cringey after.

I reuse passwords quite intentionally. It reduces memory use.

Does the account have any saved personal info (other than email)? No? Continue.

Was the account used for credit card info? No? Continue.

Do I care about the account in some way? No, plus no to all of the above? Don’t care, use an easy to remember password and don’t bother saving it to my overly bloated password manager.

It absolutely causes problems with some cloudflare sites because that email/password combo was compromised decades back, but I usually have no intention of accessing the account again when I use it so I don’t actually care. It’s their problem at that point, and I never use legit info for any of it anyway (I have a spam email I use for these things, never with my own name or info, because they don’t fucking need it)

I read this to my partner on a car ride (like a live audiobook with slightly more mistakes!). They never played wow but I did for several years as a holy priest, raid leader, and guild/raid main healer (vanilla and just over two expansions, stopped playing in probs 2008/9)… but all the same they found it to be an interesting read/listen, as did I.

Makes me want to hunt down a private server, but I think those days of social gaming are well and truly behind me at this point, especially since it’s so far from what I knew by now…

Thanks for posting it! I love these long reads!