I can be on a different continent opening a can of tuna, yet my cat will still be next to me in a jiffy with his “you gonna finish that” look

“Because I’m not poor! I got all the water I need from food”.

My boomer dad, constantly suffering from health issues because of poor hydration. Does not help that the only liquids he consumes are beer and wine.

After my mother passed, I spent more time with my father than before, just because I thought it was the right thing to do (and my siblings really did not care that much). I realized why I did not have a lot if contact before, he us a classic toxic boomer narcissist.

Spending more time with him did not mean that we grieved my mother’s loss as a family, it was just him monopolizing the grief and needing an audience wallow in self pity. I had no say in any aspect of the funeral, he did not listen to anything I said, he never even once asked how I was, and when I talked about stuff from my life (because someone else asked), he started talking over me, making the conversation about him again. Classic narcissist parent playbook.

At some point i was fed up, and told him as much, which of course did not go over well. Complete disbelief, he acted as if I had insulted him, yelling, accusations of being ungrateful, all the bells and whistles. Not a single thought that this behaviour might have been wrong. I just left and cut contact. After a week or so he wrote me what I think was meant as an apology. What he “apologized” for was that because of his greatness, he was always the center of attention which of course emphasized my insignificance, which he can see made me feel bad. It was so grotesque that I burst out in manic laughter, my wife was seriously worried.

The good thing about this, it made me slowly unwrap what I now realize is a lot of childhood drama (which I thought was normal), and understand why my siblings basically don’t want anything to do with him. Still struggling to take the step to seek professional therapy (which I know I need), but I already feel better starting to understand that how my father treated me was not because I am worthless, but because he was a really bad dad.

But that’s additional value! Seriously, they Factor the price of NaOH into their cost efficiency estimation, yes, they use the retail price of NaOH to offset the sodium cost, and only by that are comparable to synthetic aviation fuel. This is beyond ridiculous.

The latest season of Black Mirror had an Episode just like this.

As someone who travelled to the ZS for work (under different Visas(… Not really shocked. The shit some CBP officers pulled during immigration at the airport. “What do you mean, you are here to work, don’t we have Americans to do the job?”, " Why do we invited Europeans to America to speak at an American conference?", “You’re here because a Swiss company bought an American company? This can’t be right.”

And this was mostly in California. During Obama. I can only imagine how these interaction would go now, when those notjubs feel encouraged by their leader and on the right side of history.

Not going back there for a long time.

It would in a properly free market. But late stage capitalism’s goal is monopolization, because it maximises profit. Or to quote Marx: “Monopoly is the inevitable end of competition, which engenders it by a continual negation of itself.”

And this is exactly what Steinbeck is describing here: “you buy food from us, at our prices, or nothing at all. We’d rather destroy our product than to sell lower.” And they can do this because no one has access to the products, or the means of production (e. g. the land to grow produce).

And this is where we are today with Amazon, Nestle, Walmart and so on. They don’t have any real competition anymore.

Dude, you have some tiny ass washing machines.

Additional day 3: be overjoyed that you can just replicate your basic needs, so you now can work less (or not at all). All that free time! Think of all the projects xou could do!

Start by replicating junk food and beer and sloth around until the evening of Day 29, panic, make plans for some way to big Project for Day 30. Day 30 replicate stuff you need for the project. Before properly starting, realize you forgot to buy replicate some crucial stuff but home depot is now closed you’ve already used the replicas quota, be discouraged, overwhelmed, give up, promise “next month is going to be different!”.

Add gorgonzola or some other blue cheese, had one like that recently, and though I absolutely loathe Hawaii pizza, the pear and blue cheese combo blew me away.

Tried this with streaming from the cable box, and it did not work really well. Upgraded to a Pi 4, which now runs a full Kodi MediaCenter and is connected via Gigabit Ethernet to the cablebox. I use a Logitech harmony with an IR USB dongle, which was a bit clunky to get to work because it’s old, there’s probably much easier Bluetooth solutions available, or you can just use your phone as remote. All in all I fiddled around an afternoon to get the whole thing to work, there’s tons of how tos on the web.

Wouldn’t that be “hundreds of a thouseand”?

What better way to demonstrate international simultaneous television broadcasting than with an annual song competition? It’s quite literally the only reason why I turn on my telly anymore.

Oh, they are talking about ESC!

The only thing I hate about it is the fact that it can get quite political,

Awww, not really.

Seriously, ESC is the least political show on whole of television, they are trying to avoid anything controversial as much as they can, just look at how they handled that Dutch singer who fell from grace. There was zero discussion or mentioning, he was just cut from the show.

People on the Internet and people going to the box offices are very different demographics.

Classic narcissist trait. Complete and funnily honest bewilderment at how it is possible that some people don’t love and admire then. My dad who is estranged from the whole family (because of that) was one level below the C suite at a huge corporation. Treated everyone like shit, surprised Pikachu face when one by one the family abandoned him. I guess it takes to be such a psychopath to make it that far on the corporate ladder.

That’s why I call my cat a guide cat. He guides me to lolll around on the couch for 22h a day

I feel that. My dad sold my childhood home after my mother’s passing and moved out a few years ago. I had not lived there for 25 years or so, but three of my cats were buried in the yard because I lived in rentals during that time. The last walkthrough through the house was of course emotional, but strolling through the yard past the trees where I put the little furballs to rest really hit me.

I second that. I travel a lot for work, sometimes a bit obscure places (as in not touristic destinations), and I always try to find the odd tap room or micro brewery. It’s often hit or miss, but stumbling upon the rare gem every once in a while always feels really good. Bonus points if the head brewer is there and it’s a slow day so they have time to chat beer and brewing. And even in the well known areas, it’s fun to sift through the touristy hipster “more-show-than-anything” places to finally arrive at one which has said vibe. Had a week in Portland, OR, and visited about a dozen or so places, and from the over marketed polished hip joint with mediocre beer to the “here’s a bar and some stools thrown into the brewery hall” with absolutely stunning brews it had everything.

I don’t like Mondays from the Boomtown Rats.

Mind, when I first heard it my English was not that good so I really only got the Chorus about not liking Mondays (and who does, eh?). Dismissed the “shoot the whole day down” as an idiom for something which I did not know.

Then at some point much later I realized it’s actually a school shooting.

Nucular, it’s pronounced nucular.