I’d missed having a cat around since having to rehome Clovis ahead of moving into my van three years ago. The cat in the house I’m living in took a bit to warm up to me, but I now have rather the opposite problem. Literally a minute after waking up today, she hopped onto the bed and proceeded to stay here for 10½ hours.

As any proper cat does, she vehemently dislikes my laptop and finds her positioning invalid without at least one paw able to tap my trackpad if not taking up most of the keyboard with her front half. And she is not a fan of being moved, nor is she receptive to gentle nudging, nor does she care if I leave the room to hang out downstairs … I return to the room, and there she is, right where I left her.

Last night was an unexpected bonfire with two of the other people involved in the commune project, one of whom I’d not yet met and the other being the woman who vacated my room and once spent a night in my van checking my electrical system.

We all got along like a house on fire, giving each other shit immediately after meeting the new guy. Much drinking and smoking ensues, and apparently the woman and I were going at each other enough verbally that one remark was “Jesus, why don’t you two just fuck already?” (Answer: She’s smitten with her girlfriend of a few months, and apparently the night in my van was actually a test to see if I respected boundaries well ahead of the housing offer. We had a fair amount of time to ourselves as the other two headed off to the garage.)

So, things proceed apace. They’re going to a pagan camping event next weekend that I can’t afford, so although I was invited, it’s not doable given the issues my ex caused by stealing $300 in September. But I’m in Arizona for my dad’s memorial the following week anyway, so I could use a quiet weekend first instead of going into full-on burner mode and flying out three days later.

It’s cool to know that the people I’m going to be around are exactly the sorts of people I’d pick if I had a choice. When Ra went inside at one point, I mentioned that I felt really lucky to have been invited to join, and the guy said, “She’s always on the lookout for her people, and she never chooses wrong.” That’s a serious skill.

I certainly can’t complain that life is boring.

Meta and Google seem totally fine with other people creating things while they get all the profit. “Reach” means very little sans traffic.

Full-serve was largely gone by the late '80s (even Oregon became Mini-serve; gas got pumped, but no windshield cleaning and checking on fluids). When I’d visit my grandparents, they’d always go to the one remaining gas station in town with full-serve as an option, and I thought it odd that they had someone do it for them. But the tech wasn’t ready yet to take card payments at pumps, so there was a (somewhat long) window where it was self-serve but still on the honor system, with laws specifically geared toward drive-offs.

“Pain at the pump” enjoyed its moment in the limelight (and was quickly overused) when “pay at the pump” was being widely rolled out and gas prices were surging to absurd levels like $1.39. (Before that, you pumped your gas, then went inside and paid.)

UNFTR is definitely must-watch to my mind. Kinda paints the Omar “raid” in a different light.

Fixed. The UPI story is better anyway.

One of them died from the brain injury, so it counts.

As of today, “the one that kills people” can soberly be rejoined with “which one?”

On a cloud-free day with ideal sun angles, that’s a theoretical max of 60MWh/day. Just to be conservative, let’s go with half that on average over the year. That’s ~11TWh/year. Yeah, that should handle a couple of large amusement parks.

All the files I deal with are CS6 files. Can’t speak to CC compatibility, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they made intentional breaking changes to file formats. This is Adobe we’re talking about, after all. Any inconvenience they can profit from will be seized.

I do so little image manipulation these days that it’s sort of a nonissue. I tried the GIMP years ago, and the interface was too much to bother trying to learn. PS works fine for my extant files.

If on Windows, add these two lines to the hosts file (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc):

127.0.0.1 practivate.adobe.com

127.0.0.1 activate.adobe.com

FISH HUNT!

I still have CS6 for those rare occasions that I need to open an InDesign file or a PSD. I was not going to get on board with a subscription, and CS6 still works fine.

He is, indeed. Hence the 18% figure cited in the story. Rules for thee, but not for me.

Seems a safe rule of thumb is that two stories and detached is not a starter home.

Read or don’t read. You’re not adding anything to the conversation by demanding a different source. If you want to dig one up and share it, by all means!

A lot of excellent points here. Sadly, it all sounds a bit too familiar, especially:

I don’t enjoy my field any more because the field is gone. Assuming that there’s still something there is a mistake. That feeling you have isn’t a frustration with changes to your chosen field. It’s nostalgia for a field that disappeared overnight.

/r/unexpectedmitchhedberg

The pigs eat sausages, which is dark, as noted in an article on “animal cannibalism in the world of Richard Scarry.” And as we have noted before, there appear to be subtle class divisions, with pigs doing a disproportionate amount of the dirty labor.

I can’t help but wonder if this is Scarry getting in a jab at Animal Farm.