So my daughter got me a pinktoe tarantula for Christmas! I’ve been watching this thing all day. Fed it a cricket last night and then transferred to its new enclosure when it was done. It’s mostly been hiding behind some bark since last night, but now it’s making a little web at the top of the cage!

It’s too young to determine the gender right now but I’m hoping it turns out to be female. They live up to 12 years while males only live for maybe four if you’re lucky.

It’s a bizarre thing but it’s one of the most thoughtful xmas gifts I’ve ever gotten 🥲

Working in the city you see a lot of homeless people begging for change at busy intersections. Some people avoid eye contact at all costs and practically peel out the split second the traffic light turns green, some people empathize and hand over a couple bucks when they can.

I posted about this a few weeks ago but man Warp Terminal is a godsend. I know there’s plenty of debate around using AI for writing or generating silly little images, but Warp integrates it into the terminal SO WELL!

I’ve been dealing with a lot of issues with the Surface Linux kernel over the last few updates because it broke so many things on Debian 12. One update couldn’t load the filesystem right, the next one broke wired connections and only WiFi worked, then the next update broke WiFi and only wired connections worked.

I’m still skeptical about the drone sightings around the country but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued 👀

I like Neil deGrasse Tyson’s tongue in cheek comment on whether or not they’re aliens:

“I can’t claim to know the motives of aliens…but of all the places to show up on earth, they pick New Jersey‽”

I’m just not sure aliens would comply with FAA lighting requirements like these drones do though 😆

I get in at least a few hours of TikTok brainrot every week. It reminds me of Vine for the obvious reasons, only with a bunch of ads, sponsored posts and about the same amount of viral misinformation as Facebook: a metric fuckton. And as a bonus, both collect a nauseating amount of data from whatever devices you’ve installed them on.

But they’re entertaining.

I’m a broken record about this but ever since Twitter went to shit I’ve become pretty comfortable joining new social networks on a whim and deleting my account out of the blue if I get bored or fed up. There are just too many options out there. I’ve built my home base on Micro.blog because of its die-hard indie web roots; just about everything else is for doomscrolling and shitposting as far as I’m concerned.

That said, I fully support the TikTok ban - as long as Meta gets...

I’ve never been a big gamer aside from cute Nintendo stuff. When Skyrim came out (what, like 12 or 13 years ago?) the most powerful hardware in my house was a 2011 MacBook Pro.

Everyone was obsessed so I found a… not so legit copy with a janky Wine wrapper so I could play it on OS X, albeit with all the graphics settings turned way down. It was super buggy but I still made it pretty far before I eventually gave up and forgot about it.

Finally picked up a legit copy for the Switch all these years later and it’s still such a good game!

I know the Switch is pretty underpowered compared to other modern consoles but this is a million times better than the first time I played it. Makes me want to revisit Oblivion now too. I don’t even know if they have anything new in the series...

What are the rules? Do you have to choose between a travel log or daily journal entries? Or should you focus more on essays explaining your personal philosophies on life and the universe?

There’s been a lot of buzz about swarms of drones over New Jersey. The government’s initial response was that they pose no threat and they don’t belong to our military or any foreign adversaries.

I have this delusion where I feel like everyone should be happy all the time. That’s what I was chasing the better part of a decade ago when I was battling with addiction and it’s the illusion I put on every day as a salesguy.

It’s not polite to tell people what you really think or how you really feel. At least not in rural America. It’s easier to pretend like you’re always happy and nothing ever goes wrong. Social media is excellent at amplifying this.

It’s pretty good at rage baiting and pitting us against each other too, but it’s mostly a place where you only show the best parts of yourself. Your best camera angle, the highlights of your vacation, the new promotion you just got.

It’s easy to forget that life has phases and cycles. Everything comes and goes in waves.

It’s okay to be pissed off sometimes, or depressed, or...

It dawned on me today that the kind of people who criticize others for “living in an echo chamber” online are the kind of people who think everything should be ridiculed by anyone who disagrees, whether it’s right or wrong. The kind of people who bend first amendment rights to support knowingly spreading misinformation because wE hAvE fReE sPeEcH.