May his staph be golden.

Caesar. [To the Soothsayer] The ides of March are come.

Soothsayer. Ay, Caesar; but not gone.

Good. The other day there was a wildfire near me and I literally couldn't read statements from the fire crew without making either a Twitter or Facebook account. Every news station, community org, and even the national park service uses one or the other. This is despite the fact they have websites, which apparently only host long term data. Fucking sucks.

Toxic megacolon. Sounds like a metal band.

"The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember [literally anything that's free of plastic]."

I worked there during this time, and this pretty much confirms what everyone feared when the merger was announced. Part of me wants to read this book, but I know it will make me really mad.

Just a little anecdote, we had a meeting shortly after where Frank Pierce told us that major changes would basically happen over Morhaime's dead body. So when he left (and Pierce also) it was clear that it was over.

Milk powder. Also it's mostly palm oil, which is very destructively farmed.

It's an interesting article, I couldn't help but think of how "Pirate Speak" really comes from Robert Newton's acting in a famous Disney movie. So while it predates big tech's debasement of culture it's still a "top down" artifact, in a way. I guess you could say it came from a creative decision of an artist (Newton adapting his native accent) and initially caught on for good fun rather than for profit. So far less cynical than the radioactive shit getting pumped out now, if for no other reason than in the 1950s Disney hadn't figured that shit out yet.

When I was in elementary school I entered the bathroom and some other boy was standing with his back against the wall, facing the urinals, with his pants down and his dick out. When he saw me he said, "No wait! I can make it!"

He then started to piss. He apparently was pissing as forcefully as he could, trying to "make it". As his stream started it went all over the floor in front of him, then crept up the wall, splashing all over the pipes and the bottom of the urinal. Finally he got, at best, one drop of piss into the urinal at which point his stream retreated and he re-sprayed everything a second time.

"YEAH!" he said. "YEAH!", in victory. Then he left.

It's been like forty years and I still remember this. I have five memories from elementary school and this is one of them.

Not a huge fan of snakes. It's not to phobia levels, but I get a huge adrenaline rush when I see one, even if a fraction of a second later my forebrain identifies it as harmless. I love being in nature, so it's just something I have to deal with.

I've had several rattlesnake encounters and it's at least one guaranteed nightmare every time. The dream is always the same: I'm standing somewhere at dusk, often barefoot. Under a nearby, low object I see a rattlesnake. Then I see another to the side. Then another behind me. Then I realize they are everywhere.

I really hate ticks, so I appreciate their rodent killing service. But if we never ran into each other again that would suit me fine.

At AAA studios you can pour your heart and craft into creating something beautiful along with hundreds of other wonderful colleagues, for years, only to have it ruined by management who literally doesn't give af. Not only do they not play games, or even like games, they are proud of this fact in a sort of, "sell me this pen" type of way. These people always existed but the "financialization" of the industry means they are everywhere now. Even one of these people in the wrong place can be poison, and they are everywhere. This mutated organelle has made the entire studio system too neoplastic to perform its primary function.

It's like training for years as a chef, slaving away in a hot kitchen for the big opening, then having the owner (who hasn't cooked in decades) insist you serve your food in the toilet because "hey it's porcelain, it's the same as fine china". Then when the restaurant bombs you get fired and he gets a huge bonus because he's a genius cost cutter and you couldn't sell his vision. Nobody cares that you made the best bisque of your life when its served in a toilet. How many times can that happen before you say, "fuck it"?

Well for me it was ten years. Not laid off, but just couldn't take it anymore. I could probably get another job with my resume, but I just can't bring myself to apply again. Through a little planning and extremely good luck I'm not really under any pressure. Makes me feel like a fool because a lot of people work worse jobs, but then I remember how sad and angry I was all the time. When I look at job postings those feelings return. The problem is I still like it and want to do it. I feel forced out because I care about making good stuff instead of just "line go up". I would take a huge pay cut to work on a team that had the "magic" again.

I really hate shit like the first quote because willows are incredible trees. They've also been super useful to humanity for tens of thousands of years, from everything from baskets to aspirin. You can chop off a willow branch and stick it in the ground and it grows a new tree. Try that with oak (although oaks are also cool).

Whoever wrote that knows nothing about trees. They just thought, "bendy weak not-bendy stronk." Oh not a modern, commercial timber species, must suck. Drives me nuts they pretend to be "men of the land" then say some stupid bullshit like that. It doesn't make them sound hard. A stone age man could make a fishing net out of that willow that would feed his family for a year. Fuck outta here.

Reminds me of a Reddit post a while ago where someone was claiming ten thousand people were crushed by tanks and hosed down the sewer at Tiananmen Square. Ten thousand.

Even entertaining the notion that is true, picture ten thousand human bodies. Can you image the sewer infrastructure required to handle that much crushed matter?

That must be why communists invest so much in infrastructure. Here in the good old USA we stick with undersized sewer pipe that's thirty years past its useful life for reasons of freedom and safety. When it can't even handle storm water we know we're safe from hosing.

Actually I saw the ticks first, the welts didn't appear until the next day. Not my photos but basically exactly like the pictures here: https://medauth2.mdedge.com/dermatology/article/253551/infectious-diseases/vesicular-eruption-secondary-bites-larval-amblyomma

Hmm, interesting question. I would say social media but it's toxic for so many other reasons. Perhaps an online virtual assistant? Or maybe charge yourself a monthly or weekly fee into some account until you complete the task? Since it's purely for yourself, whatever act "costs" you should be enough. A friend of mine was a huge proponent of making physical lists at the beginning of each day. He would then move any uncompleted tasks to the next day's list, and the act of physically writing it was enough for him. He insisted it be on actual paper. This guy was super accomplished so it must have done something for him.

I also work well under deadlines but perform horribly without them. Upon reflection I realized a lot of my motivation is related to not disappointing others and/or embarrassing myself. Neglecting personal projects makes me feel like shit, but it's missing the public humiliation factor so it won't get me moving. A possible solution is to create deadlines for yourself and share them with people who will hold you accountable, or to whom you at least feel accountable. I also try to imagine how I will feel in a week, month, or year down the road when I still haven't done THE THING, and realize that it's only going to get worse the longer I go. This isn't 100% successful but it does work sometimes.

This isn't that rare. It is half the reason people hire personal trainers. The military also uses this technique, by framing failures as letting down your comrades rather than yourself.

This is a tricky thing to balance because using negativity and self criticism can become destructive. My grandma used to have a coal burning stove for heat. She said it was awful because too little coal and it would go out and was really hard to re-light. But too much coal and it would explode and blow coal dust all over their little house. I feel like self hate is kind of like that oven. Unfortunately nothing else has ever truly worked for me.

Also, I should add, one thought that brought me some self-forgiveness was the evolutionary roots of laziness. If you think about it, as an organism, if you're well fed and in a good location your best bet is to chill under a shade tree until something comes up. As humans we are kind of cursed with extra simulation cores in our brain that can constantly iterate every single permutation of the future, and that leads to anxiety, but laziness is actually a virtue from an evolutionary perspective. So cut yourself some slack now and then.

The couple of times I had to do this I was in a bathroom stall by myself, and I had to put the jar through a little hatch in the wall. There was one of those little liquid crystal fishtank thermometers on the jar, and I couldn't flush the toilet, but beyond that nothing crazy. I don't think you get actively meatgazed unless it's the military or the test is for something really serious.

For me this was Stone Butch Blues.

Sorry, I know. I'm just mentioning that your joke is actually MORE cogent than the alternative, which is artists and producers in North Carolina who are feeding their families by inventing this bizarre "maximum effort" they must pretend is warranted for this ridiculous contraption.

I guarantee this involved getting CAD files and shit like that from Tesla, painstakingly creating a game asset, and going through multiple rounds of reviews and edits to "honor" the look of the cyber truck, for both the shape and surface appearance. Probably a few times someone heard, "Elon played the patch last night and he loooooves it, but yadda yadda."

At least that's how it was when we had to add a Motorola Razr to a movie with talking cows.