There was even a pig that got convicted in, like, 1700s France or something.

Freshman year of college, my friends group had to explain how stuff works to a member. She’d just gotten her first boyfriend and really needed The Talk.

My mom handled things by just leaving out a copy of “What’s Happening to My Body?”, but then again, I was a very bookish child.

My aunts’ grandparents came from Poland. Their parents spoke Polish in the house. They were raised with a whole close-knit gaggle of cousins, also with Polish grandparents and parents. The old country wasn’t that long ago for them. They’ve visited.

Me, eh. My dad married someone from Appalachia and I grew up away from his family. I haven’t heard Polish spoken outside of my great-grandaunt’a funeral. I like pierogi, kielbasa, and sauerkraut because they remind me of my dad. He’d cook them when he was feeling nostalgic.

I have looked into claiming Polish citizenship through descent (mostly because an EU passport would be comforting what with USA politics), but my folks came over too early for that.

I moved over to Podcast Addict from BeyondPod. I’m pretty happy here.

I finally blocked my mom’s phone number earlier this month. It’s only taken me 7 years since she blew up at me in a way she couldn’t/wouldn’t take back.

It can be a slow journey and you might question it as you go, but it’s worthwhile. And more people than you might expect are estranged from their families. I used to worry that my IRL acquaintances and friends would judge me for it, but nope.

The main service my period tracker provides is a notification telling me “hey, it’s PMS time. If you’re emo it’s ok, it’s probably just hormones and not the real end of the world. You’re also likely to hyperfixate on something. Pull out your knitting a fixate on that, instead of risking fixating on something someone said off-handedly a decade ago that now makes you cry”.

(The message is user-configurable. Mine doesn’t say that verbatum, but that’s the gist.)

I’m happy with the built-in privacy, muchly because I’m using it on a work computer so I have no expectation of real privacy anyway.

And fair.

I’ve moved to Vivaldi recently and it’s been refreshingly not-suck.

Thanks :)

I didn’t think I could go back to not having a backup camera, heated side mirrors, and that feature that detects when your wheels are slipping and makes adjustments so you still go the way your steering wheel indicates.

Airbags and ABS are non-negotiable.

The other day I saw a mid-90s shitbox in the parking lot and it made me so hopeful for my 2008 car. Like, that’s a sign my car has at least 10 more years in it.

Partner and I once test drove a car that had “passed” a something something-point inspection at the dealer. As partner turns onto the highway he realizes it doesn’t have a rear-view mirror. We were not impressed with that dealership. (Partner later said that when he got in he made sure the mirrors were adjusted, but his brain didn’t clock that there wasn’t a rear-view mirror until he had to use it. TBF, the missing mirror wasn’t pointed the wrong way.)

Same dealership tried to badmouth my Prius in order to get it as a trade-in. Partner had introduced me as his roommate and driver, which made it even weirder.

Yeah, I’m in the same boat. I’m crossing my fingers that it doesn’t suck. At least I have no contact.

I’m on Mint Mobile and they’ve not disappointed me yet. TBF, I have minimal expectations.

Same thing over on education. US government entities down to the local level have to comply with WCAG 2.1 by April 2026 iorc, with some exceptions for content created before the cutoff. The exceptions aren’t clearly defined which is causing me a bit of a headache.

I mean, I’d love for all of our legacy documents and images to magically get image descriptions and quality OCR, but the archives have a terabyte of images and PDFs. It doesn’t help that the ruling uses “archives” to mean “legacy stuff unlikely to be used” and we use “archives” to mean “stuff about the history of the college, which students are encouraged to consult”.

Anyways, I’m all for accessibility. It’s good. I’m just borrowing worries from tomorrow about implementation.

I just had the thought that some of our documents are handwritten in ye olde handwriting. That will be the biggest pain in the neck to transcribe. (Shout-out to Transkribus for making it suck less, but it’ll still need to be proofread). I worry that we’ll scan and post fewer of our documents going forward if we have to provide a transcription when we post them.

I, for one, am extremely inconvenienced by not toggling “blind” or “vision impaired” mode in my OS or browser. The existance of a high contrast mode also offends me. The thought that websites might be navigable using speech readers keeps me up at night.

That’s effectively what I had as an undergrad and it was lovely. Wednesdays were (mostly) reserved for labs, so if you weren’t taking chemistry or another class with a lab, you had Wednesdays to sleep in. I rather miss that.

One thing I know about violins is that they’re smaller than cellos. Cellos are what, 4 feet long? That tardigrade is like 1mm big or something, much smaller than a cello. Therefore, it’s holding a violin. Or maybe a bowed mountain dulcimer. /kidding

I’m out of the loop. Could someone please explain like I’m a 5 year old that knows just enough Linux to be dangerous?

I was just as alert after the first 3 alerts as after the 8th. The additional alerts didn’t tell me anything new, they just gave me alarm fatigue.

And yes, it was bad. Roads were flooded. Buildings were flooded. People were evacuated. People died.

I finally went in and did this a couple weeks ago. We were under flash flood advisory and every time the end timestamp was updated, we got another “severe” alert. I didn’t need 8 very loud alerts going off over the course of a quiet evening at home.