Aww thanks for checking in! We ended up cancelling last minute and booking a random flight in the opposite direction, to Omaha NE. We’d never been and it seemed like a good time. I ended up getting a duck butt tattoo, and we rescheduled his. His appt just happened and he was good all 5 hours of it!

We also explored the coast a little and got to see the devastation first hand, houses completely wrecked, timber everywhere, whole neighborhoods ruined. Got some cool shark teeth tho!

Omg yes. So much technicality too. Like, I just put a tampon in, these things are expensive.

Done, sorry. Btw how are your shits?

Reading history books for greater context. Shit always finds a new flavor of fucked, apparently.

And drinking a boatload.

Show it, don’t say it. Til then, stay scared.

My what?

“I keep taking more from them and they don’t like it?!”

Hate is the cost of squeezing those extra dollars. Extra profit isn’t free, they’re lowering another game slider for it, and that slider is how much your customers support your actions. They’re only still around as a customer because all the other options have been bought out or run out of business.

Wedding rings were there to show who was married and who was available. Once you wanted to get married, you just found a friendly person who didn’t have a ring, and then you asked if they’d marry you. I mean, that IS what happens I suppose, but my 8 year old brain played it out like someone asking a nice stranger for the time.

I have a successful store through Amazon Merch program (the one all these shirts are sold through) and there is some serious shit about what is and is not allowed to be sold. Each shirt is sent through an approval process that is first automated, and then any that fail will go to manual review. They base the automatic review process off the text (anything from the description or title of the shirt to the additional bullet points that help the shirt sell). The filters are based on their own list of banned phrases, a database of trademarked stuff, and some arbitrary rules. A classic one was when someone trademarked the words “hot sauce” and Amazon took down anything that used those two words in sequence. If you have a flagged word or phrase, manual review happens, and this typically means a human will look through your whole catalog of products as part of the review. And usually, you get a max of like two warnings before they remove your store. And the appeals process is non existent - all the email responses are automated. Then there’s this fun part - the terms of selling on the Merch program say that profits are only realized 60 days after the shirt sells, and that termination is immediate. Basically, they keep the last 60 days of profits from your account. So, they have this really volatile review process with no clear guidelines, no way to appeal, and a flaky TOS that allows them to skim 60 days of profits from each account they terminate. Type in “orca” with your Amazon search to see all shirts in the program (I guess it’s some kind of dev passcode?).

I had a friend lose $20k of profit from this nice little loophole. Amazon really have a nice racket going on.

So I guess all this to say I’m not surprised they’re doing it.

Absolutely, the only difference from sovcits is that the bogeyman we believe in is real - it’s the insurance companies and billionaires.

That’s not a reason to deny claims for cancer treatment. If fraud is their worry, have a fraud team to investigate, don’t cut off coverage when your life saving operation runs an hour past the allotted time.

I met him in the woods and he said he wanted to dig the world’s deepest dirt hole.

A ukulele, box of wine, old junky necklace, and two quarters and credit card with a Very Difficult hacking rating.

That’s part of the fun!

Absolutely this. I am jealous each time I recommend it to someone who hasn’t played it yet.

We have muffins and crumpets. Muffins are like little bready patty cake things, kinda dusty on the outside. Crumpets are the ones with all the holes in that kinda feel rubbery to the touch. Both are stinkin delicious.

Mortgage and three cats (plus a clingy stray and three chickens outside). Luckily the husband has a good job so we’re ok.

I always try to live my life imagining this all being a memory to my elderly future self, and thinking about how I’d be reacting to it. Am I feeling strong pride or regret about my choices? Is there something that feels like it matters right now that will totally be forgettable in the grand scheme? It really helps me when I encounter difficult decisions, and it’s how I realized that I need some time to realign myself with the things that bring me joy.

Best of luck to you, I have a sense (knowing nothing about you) that elderly you is SO freaking pumped that you’re doing this.

Congratulations! I am working out my notice period of my job right now, I am taking December to regroup and will begin job hunting in January. It feels so liberating!

As a Brit we were always taught to gently disturb leaf piles before jumping in them or throwing them into the fire, just in case hedgehogs were in there. The habit has stuck, although I now just rake our leaves up onto the mulched beds and leave them. The chickens will then pull them apart and consume any living thing unfortunate enough to live there.

Ocean by John Butler. It aligns the cells of my brain.

I also put as many of these as I could on a playlist. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3yDebBDknLyG84c1eXpPsR?si=eATYV2-rSearyeSfyG54QA&pt=96da93b318a3101e151bd6dbb9abc944&pi=rDJ3vjrBRUe-i