Pancake is the definition of "If I fits, I sits." Poor dumb goober tries to fit into everything.
Alt text: an image macro / meme of a still from Futurama. Fry is looking upwards with determination on a backdrop of the city at night. The text says "I have no date, a two-liter bottle of shasta and my all-rush mix tape. Let's rock."
Hello Lally! I'm pleased to report that my peppers are mostly going strong, and wife was able to make the most delicious enchilada sauce with poblanos, cayennes, and anaheims mixed in. It was so rewarding to get to eat something made from scratch that was covered in sauce (also made from scratch!) from stuff I grew myself! Unfortunately, some have succumbed to what appears to be blossom end rot, but I've saved a lot of egg shells and am going to get to work on that. Even more unfortunate, my bell pepper plant seems to have shirked its mortal coil. I'm not sure if it was due to the heat or lack of watering, but I came out one day and it was gone. Pour one out for my bell pepper, that thing lived a few years and survived a move. Life is but a dream, we shall have more peppers <3
I'm not 100% what's going on with my pumpkins, but the remaining two that haven't succumbed to the heat are doing great. One has really taken off and is making friends with my asparagus fern I saved from Kroger last year. However, it seems that with both, the male flowers open up but I never see the female do her thing, so I haven't been able to pollinate them. But, like I say every time I post these updates, I'm just along for the ride and am having fun on my balcony. But a teeny pumpkin would be neat!
Herbs are looking pretty good! My two potted mint plants are still kicking ass, though that's not really anything to shake a stick at lol they grow like weeds. The oregano got a little heat damaged, but it's not in direct sunlight for very long now that I've moved it. Rosemary's looking good too, nothing much to say there. Can't say the same about her baby though, that kid's the end of the world (ba-dum-tiss). My basil is a bit meh, but it's just a starter, and I've heard they're not necessarily intended to last long, so I'm not too caught up in that.
I'm pleased that the kale and microgreens I sowed are doing well too. Most of the things I planted from seed didn't last due to the heat, due to me being an amateur and doing it outside, but I'm able to add fresh kale and who-knows-what to salads and wraps, and that's awesome. I also have one catnip that managed to make it, and one day it could be a huge catnip bush like its older sibling. That one's just a starter plant, but it's really taken off, and my cats love it. I decorate the kitchen with the flowers :)
![Jesse Welles - Let it Be Me [American folk]](https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/d9fce2be-67d0-41eb-a5bc-b3cf9a787c74.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Babe wake up, new Jesse Welles just dropped.
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There is promise in the morning
There is power in the blood
folks drink it for the feeling
I just drink jus because
I do what John Denver tells me
I wanna do right, don’t let anyone fail me
Let it be me
And only me
Let it be me
And only me
Let it be me and only me
Who fails me
Alt text: a 50s style illustration of three skeleton mobsters wielding Tommy guns bursting into a room with several people inside posted on a website. The skeletons are wearing classic mob attire, trench coats, fedoras, ties. A user is replying, "Bones Malone and the spooky boys." Another user replies, "RATTLE 'EM BOYS! with a caption making an onomatopoeia of the 'unsettling rattling noises of three skeletons' ".
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Alt text for some stupid meme can be challenging lol
I'm so happy and so so proud for you RadioRat!!!! I know how difficult it is to take that first step, and I am so happy to read that you're feeling joy ❤️
Yeah I gotta keep moving
Keep moving on
Almost every night, something ain't right
But I can't tell what's wrong
Gonna vent some. Long week, it's not Friday yet, stupid coworkers, stupid customers, managers who don't care about standard operating procedure, ahhh.
A man was not meant to sit in front of a computer monitor for nine hours a day.
Update: thank goodness I have the ability to take a bath. I was whining earlier, but I am very privileged. This is my affirmation.
Oh snap, thanks for catching that! I edited the title.
As a cleverly written and somewhat complex personal story, Infinite shines. It’s got compelling characters that make you care, and then it puts those characters through the wringer in their search for contentment.
That's a great point I hadn't considered, and can't believe I hadn't. Rapture felt like its own character to the story in a way that Colombia never really did, but it's undeniable how well-done the characterization between them was.
Then why even comment? I'm sorry, I don't understand. Have a good day!
As McLuhan put it, “the medium is the message” and video games inherently work better through a synthesis of gameplay and story, without one dominating over the other. Games that lean too far in one direction or the other (Metal Gear Solid’s interminably long cut-scenes for instance) take you too far out of the gaming medium and too far into other, more detached mediums.
Absolutely banger take, I agree completely. Games have a difficult needle to thread, unlike a book or movie that can be strictly narrative-based, a video game has to somehow give the player enough agency while taking it away to allow the story to progress. And now I have DND on the mind again.
I'm reminded of a comment my older brother made about Final Fantasy X, all those years ago. He described it as basically playing a movie. Go figure, I liked the cutscenes!
That's great! I remember myself enjoying the gameplay a lot, and it ran surprisingly well on my PC at the time. Any thoughts beyond that, anything about the article specifically? The article isn't over here saying, "This award-winning game was bad!" it's more so trying to take a closer look at the story and themes of the game as a whole from a 2024 perspective and how our current world can reflect them. Though to be fair (tm), it is definitely meant to be a click-bait article that's part of a greater "Spicey Takes" section.
Thought this was a fun article to read, wanted to share. I think it's interesting that as societal and political views at large shift in the 2020s, it's good to go back and reevaluate how narratives are portrayed even as recently as 2015.
FTA:
>The crucible of how the game treats its profundity is in the relation between its white Founders faction, which is in power, and its rebellious Vox Populi, who are attempting to liberate the oppressed racial and political classes of Columbia. The player stands between these two forces, doing tasks for each in turn, eventually learning that both are insufficient in creating a good reality. As Chris Franklin highlighted in a recent video, this is a common refrain in projects that Levine has worked on: putting the player in the position of a mediating force between two extremes. The player can feel pulled, and compelled, toward different directions while ultimately being forced down a particular path. Playing as a character who is terminally in the middle of the road allows us to point fingers at any insufficiencies we see in the world around us — as King put it, “gamers like to feel smart,” and seeing the gaps of logic in the various worldviews on display can make us feel like clever social analysts. A player uses magic in their left hand while holding a gun in their right hand in a screenshot from BioShock Infinite.
>From the vantage of 2024, it seems that one of the key problems of Infinite’s view from nowhere is infinity itself. No matter your viewpoint, Infinite seems to present you with some ideas that might align with your vision of the world and others that might challenge you. This is probably an admirable goal — art can give us perspectives on the world that we don’t yet understand, and that’s one of the many ways that creative expression can change us.
>If there’s an issue here that generates the endless debates about whether Infinite is good, it’s that the game does not provoke us with a particular person’s, group’s, or ideology’s perspective. Instead, it just confronts us with the idea that many different ways of existing in the world are real, and any of them taken to their logical extreme will exclude all others. What produces the “both sides” problems of Infinite is a problem of imagination. Infinite is a universe of plural worlds, and if any of them takes over fully, everything goes bad.
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Full disclosure, I was disappointed in the majority of the replies this got when I first posted it, and as a knee-jerk reaction I took it down. But I encourage you to at least read the quotes.
Welp, guess that saves me from posting an image of a pepper with blossom end rot! I was wondering what was getting to my anaheims.
egg shells
So what you're saying is, I have to have breakfast for dinner tonight, one of my favorite things? Well darn, anything for my garden I suppose. Honey, we're making breakfast sandwiches! ;)
Alt text: a close up image of a juvenile leopard gecko. There is a wooden stick to the left of him and a glass jar in the background. Underneath him is a bed of dirt and mulch.
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When I come in to check on him, he walks right up to the door of his tank! I guess he knows I'm the food-giver, lol.
I remember my mom always getting Sharks, but they seemed to always fail after a couple of years.
This breaks my fucking heart.
I was in and out of children's hospitals from birth to legal adulthood. The fact that these children and their parents are being forced to feel fear, hopelessness, rage, on top of all the fear and stress they must feel, just fucking God dammit I don't know how I'm supposed to stop drinking in 2024 man God Almighty
explosions in the sky
Good band! Saw 'em live in Oxford, MS way back when.
Thanks for the reminder Lally :) I highly recommend a Thunder Vest for your animals if they're afraid of loud noises in general. One of our cats, Pancake, always runs and hides when he hears loud booming noises (thunder, fireworks), but if we have his Thunder Shirt on in time he will come out a lot quicker. And sometimes he doesn't hide at all! Promise I'm not a hidden marketing rep for this company, but it's the name brand I know lol.
Another thing I've read is that dogs pick up on the actions of their owners, so some people throw goofy little dance parties with their dogs so they understand there's nothing to be afraid of.
Alt text: A meme created from a still from the movie Jaws, where the asshole mayor is arguing with Chief Brody about closing the beach. The macro text says "For Christ's sake, tomorrow's the fourth of July!"
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I know what I'm watching tonight 🦈
Beryl is now the earliest storm to reach Category 5 on record. It’s a terrifying preview of what the season could bring.
Relevant portion of interview here.
“I think it’s a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition? When people ask that question, it’s completely legitimate — of both candidates.”
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Of course she's quick to "both-sides" the night, but that's politics for you. If she's saying this during an interview, I can only speculate on what's going on behind closed doors. The wagons are not closing around the Biden campaign.
The court has given itself nearly unlimited power over the administrative state, putting everything from environmental protections to workers’ rights at risk.
My wife and ai keep talking about this. We plan to flee our deep south red state, but it fills us with survivor's guilt knowing we have the means to do so, and so so many just do not.
Will watch later, but can you briefly summarize so wife and I aren't freaking out until then? :(
Please be nice, he is very awkward. Sometimes he gets lost in the kitchen and cries, and we have to help him lol.
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Alt text: An image of a small black cat looking at the camera. He is making biscuits in his cat bed located beside a wooden crate of records.
"Whatever NASA does is going to send a strong signal to the space industry."
>Alejandro Otero, owner of the Naples, Florida, home struck by the debris, was not home when part of a battery pack from the International Space Station crashed through his home on March 8. His son Daniel, 19, was home but escaped injury. NASA has confirmed the 1.6-pound object, made of the metal alloy Inconel, was part of a battery pack jettisoned from the space station in 2021.
>An attorney for the Otero family, Mica Nguyen Worthy, told Ars that she has asked NASA for "in excess of $80,000" for non-insured property damage loss, business interruption damages, emotional and mental anguish damages, and the costs for assistance from third parties.
>"We intentionally kept it very reasonable because we did not want it to appear to NASA that my clients are seeking a windfall," Worthy said.
Seems reasonable to me. If I accidentally caused damages to someone's home, I'd certainly be held liable. But, I'm just some guy.
The troubling corporate pullback on Pride Month, briefly explained.
Alt text: An image of our moon against a black starless sky. It is in the waxing gibbous phase, and you are able to see about fifty-five percent of the celestial body.
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Think I'm getting the hang of this thing! Shot with my Canon Rebel T7 and a 300mm lens, ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/125 shutter speed.
trev likes godzilla @beehaw.org "Up to the Twentieth Century, reality was everything humans could touch, smell, see, and hear. Since the initial publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one-millionth of reality." -Bucky Fuller