I had to put down my 14yr cat yesterday, feel you bud. Been crying by myself ever since. Try to have someone who can support you if you can.

Had some leftover rice, mapp tofu, and a couple pieces of general tao. Always nice to have Chinese food with a bit of a kick to it.

Great job, and good luck! It might be hard and take some time to get back into the swing of things, but take it day by day, moment to moment and things won’t seem so tough.

Finally started graduate school and seems pretty okay so far. Haven’t been able to connect much to my cohort, but a bit closer with my actual area. I’m not too down about that given I’m trying to treat this as a job than as school, and have always been shy and anxious (though not so much anymore). It’ll just be something that comes naturally over time I hope as my nerves settle down a bit and Im able to meet more people in the department and in my classes.

Trying to learn Python then leapfrog from that to do more advanced analyses with AI. Good and bad, good as it seems to give me a bit of an edge on my cohort (not to validate my worth on my status to others) but bad as I didn’t really expect to be doing this so early and no one has any real resources to learn. So it’s up to myself to figure it out.

Only since I came back from shopping today has she been more receptive to laying in my lap (apparently got into a fight with my other cat while I was out)… but she’s been enjoying her little spot on top of the freezer. I’m glad she’s comfortable in our new place, but I will miss the days where she’d cuddle in my lap until she fell asleep. 😿

So bit of a stretch recommendation but I can never turn down a chance to recommend this author.

If you like the general idea of an author exploring what-if premise of people living (like how the Fallout vaults are given specific scenarios to live in), you might like Ted Chiang’s short stories. For example, “Hell is the Absence of God” explores what life might be like if angels (heaven and hell) were real but come into societies like tornadoes or hurricanes due to their supernatural power (think tornado chasers). There’s world building in it to realistically support the premise of the story (e.g. support groups for those affected) and is generally really thoughtful.

Again, very much a stretch to Fallout vaults, but really deserving of a read if you are more interested into exploring the realism in a world built around certain premises.

I think it comes down to your level of analysis, or how you define relations. Having been living off $30-40k income for most of my life, I can definitely get the sentiment of the large differences between that and someone making $100k (even $60k), or at least someone living a working class vs middle class lifestyle. But that also goes for someone making $0-10k to $30-40k. Either way, the salience of financial insecurity hits a lot harder for someone with less existing cash.

That said, I also get the sentiment of the nil difference between working and middle class versus the ultra rich who generate huge swaths of passive income and can basically can dictate whether or not the lower classes have enough for rent. Why bother fight against each other when there’s a much larger and casual target.

In a more nuanced answer, for solidarity sake we do need to recognize our similarities to work together for a better system. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore our differences and privileges either. We should work towards achieving core necessities for all even at the cost of our own privileges (i.e. an opposite tragedy of the commons: those with some threshold excess contribute to the pond). Determining that threshold is another question, with both absolute and relative poverty thresholds with their own criticisms. And not to say that no class hierarchies will form either, technically skilled and heavily laborious jobs should be rewarded, and people will always try to skim a little off the top to get ahead of their own benefit. But in recognizing our differences, we recognize a need to monitor ourselves for the benefit of everyone.

Well I stand corrected, the newer one is definitely a tribute to the old commercial considering it seems to have been a bit beloved. Except the newer one is also beloved by white brothers and sisters everywhere.

I’d chalk it up to common marketing strategies based on family around the holidays.

That said, I really hope the one you’re talking about didn’t have the same sexual tension between the brother and sister. “I can excuse incest but I draw the line at pedophilia”

https://youtu.be/CKgKPGBa9EQ?si=JH7qla5miBDBAi5p, there’s a shorter version but I think this is the one I saw last time I was in the South

Does the Folgers Christmas commercial show what white brother/sister dynamics are really like?

“I don’t care who the IRS sends, I’M NOT PAYING TAXES”