My sincerest condolences. These little guys touch us so deeply, but they are destined to break our hearts with their short life spans. As you get older, those 15 year increments (sometimes less) add up to a lot of heartbreak, and I’ve know many people who have sworn off having any more pets, because as much as they truly, deeply love them, the loss is too hard for some to take. Personally, I think it is far more than worth it.

18 years ago, we were adopted by a big Tomcat, who was the king of the cul-de-sac. He tried out a few other families, but really loved my son, so he chose us. After a short probationary period, we were fully approved, and he moved his gorgeous Siamese girlfriend (of course she was, Jake had game), and their three kittens in.

No humans were consulted in any of these decisions.

I did the math back then, and knew that a time would come when we would lose them in a fairly short period of time, and that’s what’s happened over the last 3 years. One by one, they’ve left us, starting with Jake. He’d lived an adventurous life, getting drowned once, shot twice, wildly hallucinating after eating a lizard, having the only white on his body, the tip of his tail, bitten off in a raccoon fight, and surviving many fights with lesser neighborhood stray cats. He used every one of his nine lives, and borrowed a few from some of our other more timid cats. He was a true force of nature, and all our other cats looked up to him like the King he was.

Especially to Charlie, his son. To find Charlie, all you had to do was find Jake, and Charlie was probably right beside him, laying in the exact same position. We knew when Jake went, Charlie would be heartbroken, and he was. He would walk through the house at night, calling for Jake, and that broke the human hearts.

Maggie, Jake’s Siamese girlfriend, was my closest companion. Siamese often bond to one person, and she chose me, sleeping next to my head most nights. Losing her was really tough for me.

There is only one left, roly poly little Chloe. When I first saw her as a kitten, I remarked at how perfectly round she was, and predicted she’d be the healthiest of them all, and she has been. We took her to the vet only a couple of times, and that was just because we thought we should. She never seemed to get sick. Today she’s blind and arthritic, and maybe a little senile. She spends her days sleeping on the couch next to my wife, and when she wants a drink, she puts a paw on my wife’s arm, and she’ll hold a little dish for her to drink from. At 18 1/2 years old, any day could be her last, so we’re treating her like a Queen, the last one standing from Jake’s beautiful little cat family that gave us so much joy.

Most immigrants are escaping governmental policies brought about by meddling by Western nations. We cause the problems, then get pissed off when the people from the countries we’ve destroyed try to go somewhere better to live.

If we helped those countries, instead of abusing and exploiting them, those people wouldn’t have a reason to leave and come here.

I was at a harvest party once. We all sat around a long table, trimmed weed, told jokes, and smoked a MASSIVE amount of weed. It was pretty fun. Yeah right, it was AWESOME!

Did you have the other kid rubbed out? You can’t just let that go. He goes off to America as an exchange student, and never returns.

Fully agree. I’m okay with being mellow vs being a sweaty, non-stop talker.

Primitive Technology: One guy, wearing only a pair of shorts, no music, no narration, just bird and forest sounds, as he creates shelters and items from the forest around him using prehistoric technology.

He started by building various types of shelters, then got into making pottery, bricks, and roof tiles, using clay from a nearby stream.

Currently, he’s working on fire technology, creating hotter and hotter fires first to fire his clay objects to make them durable, and then to smelt iton.

Where does he get the metal? He harvested “iron bacteria” from the creek, and dried it fired it, and collected the tiny iron “prills”. When he had enough, he went through a series of experiments to make his fire hot enough to melt the prills, and forge it into a tiny, rough, triangular knife.

Today, there are lots of copycats, mostly building elaborate shelters, but this guy is the OG. I mostly watch musical and political content, but Primitive Technology is the only channel I watch as soon as a new video drops. When the apocalypse arrives, I’ll be ready.

Edit: Ever see someone start a fire by spinning a stick between his palms? This guy does it in almost every episode.

Better that the shitheads think it’s operational. Let them lose sleep over what’s coming.

And since Rand Paul has a justifiable case of Imposters Syndrome, he knows it’s true, and is desperately trying to cover it by destroying Fauci, instead working on improving his own weirdness.

He was also instrumental in gaining control of AIDS, and creating medications that allow those with HIV to relatively normal lives.

This on my radar now, I’ll be tracking this closer.

What about the David Hogg “firing?” That seemed like a clear case of ejecting a popular progressive.

My favorite Mamdani quote:

“For far too long, our party has seen its job as managing decline instead of delivering material change for working people.”

I love it when they spend enormous amounts of money, and lose anyway.

Getting real tired of getting bossed around by people who don’t even pay into the system, then use that system to extract money from the rest of us.

Sue them so hard.

No, it hasn’t. The government lies.

For the rest of the world, it’s just NORMAL.

If they haven’t been trapped by a ridiculous car deal, then theyll be trapped in any number of another Money Traps that have been deliberately engineered into society: Health Care, College Tuition, Student Loans, Rent, Gambling Apps, Expensive Consumer Crap, Streaming Platforms, Luxury Phones, etc. Probably several simultaneously.

The entire point is to make us spend every penny before we die, and not leave any sort of inheritance to give the next generation a leg up. And if we get to the end of our lives with a little nest egg left, they know you’ll get sick, and they’ll get to drain every last penny.

Funny thing how my grandma died in the care center, the month before her money was set to run out, after a lifetime of her and my grandpa carefully investing and saving. They took it all.

Well, that’s a lawsuit.

This is why Election Reform, with the objective of taking money out of politics, is essential. Right now, it takes massive money to win a campaign, so politicians have no choice but to beg for more, and make promises in exchange. That leaves the workers on the outside.

But if money is taken out completely, everyone becomes electorally equal, and the only election currency is every American Citizen’s single vote. That makes the rich guy’s vote no more powerful than anyone else’s, and politicians will be forced to work for the people who have the most votes, and the wealthy will be the smallest voting demographic, whose needs are less important to candidates.

Of course it was, but it was MUCH more difficult for them. It is disingenuous to pretend that Citizens United didn’t exacerbate an already bad situation.

In reality, there were two historical moments that changed the timeline: 1) RFK’s assassination, which allowed Nixon to become president and took us down the Dark Republican path that led to MAGA, and 2) The 1974 Tax Code re-write, that first baked Trickle Down Economics into the tax code, created the Oligarch class, and gave them the disposable money to fund political manipulation.