He's just a baby!

I guess it's time

Bonus holiday joy via my stepmom: Percy is ready to open some presents

Let’s take care of each other today.

Realized I was spiraling because I wasn't sticking to my "take it one day at a time" rule. Something that's kept me at a pretty even keel the last year or two has been not thinking more than about 24 hours ahead at any given moment. The chaos engine is just too volatile right now for that.

This is beautiful

This is legitimately the wildest business and job market I've ever experienced. The instability and uncertainty and chaotic swings - even inside the businesses themselves - are truly next level. But it's the new normal.

Some adorable character writing on the new season of Midsomer Murders.

He's just a baby!

Watching a lot of financial advice videos these days and reminded a big reason I hate it is because it always leads me to think about the 401ks I had to burn down to pay for health insurance in my 20s and 30s and think how much those would actually be worth now if I had lived in a real country

Nothing baffles me more than seeing people who bankrupted their former companies just go on to... Found more companies.

Exactly that

All right: back to work, Hurley.

Going to be struggling with this painful hangover all day. Telling myself I just freed up $800/mo in recurring payments, but man it hurt to see all that cash come in and immediately go out again. Guess I better finish this book 😆

I'm in startup world now and can't imagine asking people for amounts of money startups ask for. But what I keep forgetting is there's no actual horrible thing that happens if biz goes under that's using investor capital. Risk is baked into model. If it doesn't work, folks move on to next venture

It's legitimately an entirely other world that each and every one of us is subsidizing at every level.

I about lost my mind when a celebrity was like "yeah my 10M house had lost value and clearly wasn't a good investment anymore, so I just gave it back to the bank." He just... Walked away. It's not working class people tanking markets.

One of the many painful rich person vs working class person "hacks" I discovered a few years back is that rich people just... Don't pay their debts. They default on mortgages all the time. Credit card debt, etc. When you can pay for everything in cash, your credit score doesn't matter. So why pay?

An important note.

One thing I do for job is create LinkedIn ads (it's a real channel for many cos!). Was going through feed looking for creative examples; had to remind myself that only ads I would ever see were ads tailored to someone w/my job title. Was never going to see what people I'm marketing to will see

A wild deerfox has appeared. 'Tis the season #DogsInAntlers

Catching up on Emily in Paris, the modern Sex in the City, and like that show, I can only take it in small doses. All of this relationship drama is exhausting 😆. I would never get anything done.

The next project is cleaning out the basement. I wonder at what point I just rent a small dumpster 😆

Yup, this is the "good" credit rate. There's no one regulating the buses out here, and shit's getting even wilder

As someone who had a 3.5% interest rate on my credit card in 2007, the current 27% interest rate just blows my fucking mind.

EXACTLY. We were always perfectly aware of what she wanted 😂

People are out here proudly announcing that they intend be authors and that they have no interest in writing, that they deserve a large-audience of readers but they themselves only read to extract from the actual artists they plan to usurp. Baby, the cogs have learned to TALK. Wild times.

We had a dog who we are 100% sure understood every single word we said. We never wanted to train her on the buttons because we suspected we'd get nothing but sass constantly we got enough sass from her without that 😆

This how they did in my team in Jan. They kept them long enough to train bots, then fired them. I'm currently surviving doing work of 4 people, at breakneck pace. If you wonder why I have clear eyed view of where we are with LLMs, this is why. I was ground 0 www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/i-was-forc...

Reading that most Americans say they need $233,000 a year to feel financially comfortable. Makes me feel a lot less crazy for what I feel is an actual middle class salary these days. Inflation, low wages, no safety net, 27% credit card interest rates, housing costs, have mopped the floor w/Americans

Fascinated to discover that my package was out for delivery on the FedEx truck at 4:56am today but back at the delivery hub at 8pm.

Found this cursed object while thrifting this weekend.

Dog tax

This how they did in my team in Jan. They kept them long enough to train bots, then fired them. I'm currently surviving doing work of 4 people, at breakneck pace. If you wonder why I have clear eyed view of where we are with LLMs, this is why. I was ground 0 www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/i-was-forc...

Guess I'm going to have to watch the gay hockey show. 😆

Love it.

He's in House of Guinness on Netflix!

at this point there's a whole other conversation to be had in the creative industries about how the perspective of even the most astute cultural consultant will not absolve *you* from having to seek, learn, & develop a strong culturally foundational base or else shut up about that part of the work.

I find the Granchester guy kind of insufferable in Grantchester, but he'd had a real glow up by House of Guinness. A lot of that is just him playing a more confident and complex character, I suspect. The vicar bores me to tears.

Thank Christ

FINALLY fell into my head what "Stay away from my daughter!!" line in Stranger Things was hearkening back to, for me, and it was Joyce in Buffy, with an ax, yelling at Spike, "You get the hell away from my daughter!" Google failed me on that one. Finally came gurgling up from my head just now 😆

That tracks.

The Alpha Writer's Workshop for Teens is a wonderful part of our community, and a good candidate for your year-end gift-giving! alphawritersworkshop.org/donate/

I have a 2007 Mazda CX7 and just realized that means it's nearly 20 years old. I had to stop and think about that for way too long, because that just did not even seem possible.

My parents were shocked to discover how much I was bullied when they found out many years later. "Why didn't you say something?" they said, and I'm like, "Because you'd have told me to just suck it up. So I sucked it up." They couldn't argue with that.

Hot damn

I don’t know who needs to hear this but here goes: In high school my art teacher told me I didn’t know how to draw because cartooning wasn’t real art. I have wanted to be in The New Yorker Magazine since I was 19. I’m 53 and this happened yesterday:

Listened to great NPR segment about Gen Alpha and meme culture. They did what so few news orgs do and actually interviewed a bunch of teens and made that the core of the segment, and it was extremely refreshing. Adults like to endlessly handwring and bloviate but they can just, you know... ASK 😆