This is Michu, he used to live next door to me. He would be outside all the time, even in the freezing cold. Sometimes I’d hear him meowing at the neighbor’s back door to come back in, but nobody would answer. I’d hear the little guy calling out, and nobody would even be home. Sometimes I’d find him curled up on my deck chairs, so I started leaving blankets on them for cold nights. Eventually he started approaching me when I sat outside. We’d chill on the step and watch nature together.

But then a few months ago, he stopped coming. He stopped appearing entirely. When I talked to the neighbors, I learned that he’d contracted a UTI and had died. (Apparently it only takes a few hours for a swollen urethra to kill a male cat.)

Now, I don’t know how much his outdoors lifestyle contributed to his acquisition of a UTI (since they can occur in indoor cats as well, and search engine enshittification is making my search for hard data impossible.) However, I imagine that if Michu had been inside, his people might have noticed he wasn’t healthy.

Honestly, I’m not a vet and I’ve never had a cat, so I don’t feel qualified to tell people how to take care of theirs. This thread just reminded me of how I miss this little guy. He was around 4 years old and still had a lot of love to give. I was just lucky enough to receive some of it.

RIP, Michu ❤️

I’m glad you had the foresight to keep yourself safe, but unfortunately not everybody is as observant or skilled in critical thinking as you are. We all started from ignorance, and no matter how well-learned a person is, they can’t possibly know everything. The least we can do is remind ourselves that we’re imperfect too, and have some compassion for those that are just discovering things that we have already learned.

I’ve noticed that too. For a while, Lemmy users denounced bringing old Reddit baggage to this site. There was a sense of “we are not Reddit, we can form our own culture, without the old toxicity of Reddit.” I think a lot of us still believe that, but the recent months have brought waves of Redd-fugees that don’t know and haven’t adapted to that difference yet.

There’s a substantial number of Lemmy users who reflexively downvote anything that even mentions the word “vegan,” regardless of the context, tone, or point of a comment. You got downvoted, I’m gonna get downvoted, and it just goes to show that even in such a seemingly leftist space, the spirit of “reflexively dismiss anything I disagree with” is alive and well.

ONE STROKE, 99 cuts!

Like shaving with an old razor blade.

I unironically love this and can’t stop laughing. It’s like the “technically correct” of dog drawings.

It’s kinda early to make that call for the younger generations, don’t you think? Imagine if the legacy of Boomers was tied to what they did in their youth. We’d know them as little more than peace-talking hippies (on one end), to consumerist yuppies (on the other end.) In the decades since their 20s, Boomers have solidified a very different self image. Now, nearing the end of their influence (at least, I fucking hope so), their legacy is basically sealed.

In turn, the current generation of youngin’s still has many, many years to make a name for themselves. We have to wait and see until the kids even younger than them grow up, because as the people who will be around longer than the rest of us, they will be the ones choosing what the rest of our legacies are.

I pay for an emby share personally.

I read this as “enby share” and thought, “Is that like a queer polyamorous social group? If so, I want in.”

(BTW I use emby share to pirate too, so no need to explain. My brain just expects the word “enby” first.)

Chatbots, as they currently exist, are extremely concerning, especially in regards to their use by children and teenagers. Chatbots have neither ethics nor rational thought, and as such they can’t tell right from wrong, nor true from false. Meanwhile, kids and teens are still learning what’s reality and what isn’t, meaning that a realistic, ever-confident bot without any ethical or logical understanding can easily lead them astray. There’s already been one kid who killed himself because a realistic chatbot goaded him on.

That’s already happening today, without any human oversight or guidance over the specific content on LLMs. But that may not be the case forever - consider that if AI chatbots are already that influential, how long until companies find a way to get their own products promoted by them?

Advertisers study the fine art of manipulation, they know the power of a personal story or recommendation from a friend. Until now, if they wanted that, they’ve had to either create a product/experience that generates word-of-mouth praise, or else incentivize people to generate such praise (ie “influencers.”) But now, there’s this technology that is able to fake being someone’s friend, that plenty of people will trust wholeheartedly. That’s a system that’s ripe for corruption. Add in that Republicans are trying to ban the regulation of AI and it becomes clear - this technology will be abused. I’d even go so far as to say that it was intended to be used to manipulate people all along.

I don’t know about that, I’ll be fine until someone with no comprehension of “right of way” nearly kills me. Those moments usually create a string of angry swears that would make a sailor proud.

I feel you. I have to keep reminding myself that a lot of my anxiety isn’t mine - it’s my mom’s. I just inherited the behaviors that she picked up, that in turn were created in reaction to my (long-gone) toxic grandfather’s abuse.

Generational trauma probably lurks behind all of us, deeprooted and insidious, propping up maladaptive behaviors that go unexamined simply because they are considered “normal” in our families.

My sapphic brain wasn’t tuned to understand that quote properly at first. Instead of seeing an insult, I thought, “Wow, that sounds like a busy, but amazing, morning.”

Epidurals, in which labor pain is reduced, are expected to remain outside coverage under the proposals.

So what, pain relief is an optional upcharge, like choosing to add avocado to your sandwich?

Don’t get me wrong, I’d be ecstatic if the US went this far to help new parents, but fuck whoever decided that it’s acceptable to omit epidurals from the covered costs.

Lord of the Flies. Good thing they were caught, they were just about to murder a kid.

Funny, all the things you said that offended Reddit sound like reasons to celebrate having you here.

I worked at a hardware store that had hired security at the doors, to check receipts. One day, a customer was leaving when the theft detectors beeped. One of the security guards requested to see his receipt, but he ignored her. So she asked him a second time.

That customer kept walking out. He then complained to the security company that employed the security guard, claiming harassment.

Next day, that security guard was fired.

Which is how I learned that airports aren’t the only places that spend a ridiculous amount of money on pure security theater. Apparently the guards had been instructed to ask for a receipt once, and accept it if the customer ignores them, even if the alarms go off. I can understand not wanting someone to follow a customer out of the store, but that is a weak-ass bluff right there.

BONUS STORY! In that same store, someone was stealing tons of high-quality equipment. There was a guy who worked the lot, which meant that among other things, the outdoor trash bins were his responsibility. They were brought in during closing time, then back out the next morning.

Apparently this guy used that as his cover, over the course of several months, to sneak thousands of dollars worth of product out of the store. He knew where security cameras were (and weren’t), and he knew nobody would question him dragging trash bins around. So he hid items on the bottoms of the bins, covered the top with a trash bag, and brought them outside. He’d then move them to an area where the cameras couldn’t see and retrieve the items. Eventually loss prevention noticed something was fishy and caught him, but he’d gotten away with it for quite a while until then.

Reddit bans itself from my VPN, so I guess we had a mutual break-up.

Time to hang out in North Dakota with the birds.

zero click internet

I went to look this up and DuckDuckGo automatically provided an AI-generated answer at the top of the page, before all the search results. I’m not quite sure what the word is for the odd way I’m feeling now. Probably some obscure term that only exists in another language.

Or general insomnia, aggravated by the anxiety of living under a rising fascist regime.