Yoooo, you’re singing my song - GNU Terry Pratchett, love his writing so much.

And thank you; that’s very true, and it’s good to be reminded from time to time.

I changed companies recently and the new place is very “camera on”… I find it freaking exhausting…

Nice, kudos to you - I’m one of the only people in my city still wearing a mask, and I get a lot of scowls from the idiots who just want to sweep the whole thing under the rug and pretend like it never happened.

Keep doing you; thanks for looking out!

There’s a special place in hell, for people who mistreat the animals that trust them

Three weeks ago, I totally would have… Apollo was life! Now, I don’t think anything could lure me back…

With Spez’s comments about how Reddit has all this data, and “we’re not going to just give that away for free”, I think anyone left on that platform is going to get sold so hard to anyone with two nickels to rub together, that they will effectively have zero privacy or anonymity… no thanks, Spez.

Could just be propaganda, but this claims that they’re marching towards Russia again:

https://kyivindependent.com/national-resistance-center-wagner-convoys-head-to-russia-after-fatal-crash/

Wikipedia is one of the few online orgs that I donate to every year. Even if I can only throw a couple of bucks their way, I usually try to gift at least $20 or something.

I started off in the late 1980’s in a mid-sized midwestern city… I was smoking cigarettes, a lot of pot, drinking and carousing with the same friends that I’d had since high school, but I was in my second year of college. I was getting decent grades, but I was really distracted and having some drama with bad girlfriends.

Two weeks after my 21st birthday, I left for Southern California - I had a parent out there, and I ended up staying for 16 years. I stopped smoking basically the minute I got there, spent a lot of time driving around a new city and thinking… and basically came to the realization that since nobody there knew who I had been before, I could approach social situations without the baggage of all those previous decisions that I’d made with my old circle of friends. I was less of a “pleaser”, less of a doormat, and less afraid to speak my mind - and my new friends responded positively to it, so I was encouraged to cultivate that. It helped me be more decisive and independent, and gave me a foundation for everything that followed.

I finished an associate’s degree, got a black belt in a martial art and taught for about six years, and met the woman who is now my wife. We got married, traveled to other countries together in Europe and Central America, quit our jobs to live on a horse ranch, and eventually moved BACK to that same midwestern city to start a family.

I wish I could say that since we moved back, I’ve never felt like the person I was before - but I have to confess that I feel like being back here HAS eroded some of that confidence, like I couldn’t hack it out West and ended up back here after all.

I know it’s not true, but San Diego is where I became the person I wanted to be. Back here is where I had been the person before that. They say “you can’t go home again” - I submit that you CAN, but that maybe you shouldn’t.

Oh lord, are we back to beans again?

They’ll clutch at anything they think they might be able to use to piss off their constituents, won’t they?

“They’re coming for you gas stoves, citizen! Where will it end? What will you cook food for your family on?! Pic up a ‘don’t step on the gas’ ballcap for only $49.99, and go get ‘em!”