That's a spicy meat-a-ball.

In all fairness, it was yesterday. But still.

Howdy "relative" neighbor.

I'm also in the southeastern USA and I've driven by the peach more times than I care to count.

Is failing. Has failed. Same difference I suppose.

A broken clock is right twice a day. At least that's a saying in my part of the world.

There's already a term for this, it's called moonlighting.

Every full-time salaried job I've ever had prohibits moonlighting, and specifically calls it out in the employment contract I've had to sign when starting the job.

Having said that, I am unemployed directly and entirely because of Donald Trump. Although I have no plans to return to work in the immediate future (because I was privileged enough to be in a position where I was able to save for a rainy day like this), when I return to work I am considering doing this.

As long as I'm making my deadlines and producing quality work, my employer should not give a crap whether I have other jobs. Period. I've spent my entire career so far working with bosses that tell me I'm family, but treat me like dirt and discard me at the very first sign of an economic downturn. They are all the same. So, when you treat people like disposable cogs, don't be surprised when and if those cogs fit a variety of different machines.

I'm skeptical.

A lot of the people whose minds are supposedly "changing" or who are allegedly "beginning to leave" have the memory of a goldfish and the emotional capacity of a fire ant, in my experience.

It's anecdotal, but the people I know of who voted for Trump in 2024 did so with full knowledge that Trump is truly awful on a personal level and that the GOP is doing terribly undemocratic things across the board from top to bottom.

They willfully and joyfully admit these things. So long as they feel like they are "winning", they don't care. So long as the schools aren't allowed to put litter boxes in the classrooms for kids to use, everything else is acceptable. Think about gas and egg prices. This time last year, it was all Biden's fault. January 2025 comes along and suddenly, those same voices understand that the president doesn't control the prices of those things, and actually it's bird flu and the wider economic conditions worldwide causing price hikes in the USA.

And those are things that actually affected everyday voters. The Epstein client list has virtually no bearing on the vast majority of our lives, one way or the other. It IS the distraction for the goldfish and fire ants of the world who will move along to the next ankle as soon as a new threat is presented to them.

I'm sure it's performative. I would not be surprised if the plan is to add some other reprehensible stuff to the final bill so that Democrats have to approve the terrible stuff simply to get the cuts canceled or they have to vote against it and be labeled as anti-Medicaid. Because it seems so often, that is the way it goes whenever Republicans appear to maybe be doing something good for the common folk.

Oh, that's awful.

My uncle also had very few allies left in this world, he was just the embodiment of an asshole to pretty much everyone. My dad and aunt were the only people that would even bother to try to communicate with him. Fortunate in some way, they'd talked on the phone the day before my uncle passed, and he agreed to let my dad stop by to drop off some food the next day. Meaning, he'd been dead less than 24 hours before my dad found his body. Otherwise, it very well could have been weeks or longer.

But the house? Total loss. My uncle had become a trash hoarder. Fueled by depression, but also by his beliefs that the government was tracking him (and would go through his trash if he were to set it outside). My dad and my cousin tried to locate some family memorabilia like photos and things, but they gave up. The house was literally bulldozed and the remnants hauled away, it was in such bad shape inside and out.

Welcome to mental illness. Many people are perfectly functional, yet still deeply sick.

I had an uncle like this. He definitely held it together okay-ish (though that's up for debate) for most of his life. But the conspiracy bullshit was a consist sign that he was not well.

And then when his wife passed, he also lost his ability to be functional, so the sickness took over entirely, eventually even took over his body. Nobody could help, not even his children.

Nah, USB DeezNuts

My current "provider" is an NP. I like her, she's personable and does the basic stuff well enough. I can understand having her do the basic annual physical type stuff for relatively young and healthy people.

But, for one of my recent visits, they scheduled me with a doctor instead (dunno why), and the experience was honestly almost night and day for the better. Granted, the way my health insurance works (ugh USA), the NP visits only ever cost me a flat amount, perhaps $45 for the copay. The doctor's visit cost me the $45 copay, plus additional coinsurance down the line that I got billed a couple of months later because the clinic apparently charges two different rates depending on whether you see a doctor or not, I guess?

On the one hand, I didn't like it that much when it came out. It's not that I hated it or hated on it, just wasn't my thing. Mario games were far superior platforming experience all around, in my opinion.

Graphics for the time and platform were great. If you weren't there at the time and your frame of reference is modern (32-bit or later) graphics, of course they suck. But that's hardly fair or objective, when it comes to understanding why they were well-regarded AT THAT TIME.

But, I'll add this: A number of my friends' kids were introduced to 8-bit and 16-bit games first, in lieu of exposing them to toxic modern phone/tablet games. And the SNES Donkey Kong game(s) were/are amongst the games that the kids enjoyed and played the most. So, there's something to that, if you ask me.

It came as a huge surprise for me, but wool blankets are surprisingly comfortable in hot weather.

I'm hot natured and I cannot get good sleep when it's hot. Sometimes even a cotton sheet is just too much for me. But, somehow, a wool blanket is noticeably cooler feeling to me when I'm hot. I don't understand it, yet I'm not the only one who has experienced it.

I also like the weight of a wool blanket. Something about that is quite calming. Obviously, they're also great in the cold seasons, too.

And I'm guessing enough boomers DID subscribe for years to make it worth it, if my anecdotal experience is anything close to normal.

I barely made it through the great recession.

At one point, I was down to my last $500 USD which didn't even cover the rent coming up due in days, most of my calories were coming from fruits and veggies I was literally collecting from the wild, looking at eviction, and with no job prospects when I was so desperate that I begrudgingly accepted the worst job of my entire life (so far).

I fought my way into a better job and career over the years, but continued to live like a dude who was only a month or two away from homelessness. I did not take extravagant vacations, wear high end clothes, drive a flashy car, own an expensive home, eat fancy meals, buy lots of "toys". Aside from electronics, almost everything I owned was second hand or gifted to me. People constantly made judgemental comments about my lifestyle, clothes, car, and so on.

By the end of 2024, I was almost at the point of feeling financially secure in life, considering making some big upgrades to my lifestyle.

Then in 2025, I got laid off after more than a decade from a company that religiously referred to its employees as family. No warning. In fact, up until that point, all we were hearing was lies (ex: we're doing okay financially, we planned for this sort of thing, etc). I had 10 years of top scores on evaluations, 10 years of impeccable project work, 10 years of raving reviews from my peers. And yet, when the least little bit of financial difficulty reared its ugly head, I was cut in the first round of layoffs.

Fortunately for me, I sacrificed and lived quite frugally over the years, so I just don't give a shit about the job market right now. I'd love to have a job, I feel like I'm basically living off of money that could be my retirement, but at the end of the day fuck Trump and the flailing Trump economy. If I have to go 10 years without a job, it's going to suck, but I've got this.

On the other hand, I feel horrified for many of my coworkers who got laid off at the same time, and for the majority of people in general who have lost their jobs because of Trump and his sycophants. Most of them either didn't get a chance to prepare or didn't have the foresight to prepare the way I was privileged enough to do.

No wonder the bull didn't carrot all.

I bought a handful of cheap / deep discount games during the Summer Sale this year.

One I wasn't sure about was BIOTA. Turns out it's been more fun than I expected for such a simplistic game.

I've also been playing Blasphemous. I really like Metroidvanias but these "souls like" style games are irritating to me. Still, it was cheap and I can appreciate the aesthetic.

I'm looking forward to having more time to play these games, as of yet, it's been like 20 minutes here, 30 minutes a few days later, so it's hard to make much progress and enjoy them with such limited time to dive in.

I told my neighbor's dog she was a good girl so she went back home, picked a giant bouquet of daffodils, and then personally delivered them to me at work that afternoon.

And if you posted that story on certain social media sites, you'd get thousands of upvotes and fawning comments from people who seemingly believe your fake as shit story.

So I support this image, because it feels like a nice, polite degree of mockery on this trend. And at least it's not as dangerous for the critters as sticking poisonous flowers into the mouth of the family pet for social media clout.

In my part of the world, there are at least a dozen+ culinary and/or medicinal mushrooms that are distinctive and easy to identify (even by casuals like me). These don't really have any dangerous look-a-likes that also grow in the same area. I stick to those and those alone. Granted, even at 12 or so species that I can ID, that's probably like a tiny fraction of the number of different species that exist in this area.