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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 9th, 2023

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  • It took a few years to fine-tune the exact amount, sometimes he’d finish the bowl too early and whine the next morning, sometimes there’d be too much leftover and he’d whine because he wanted a fresh bowl. I finally landed on the exact amount where he always has enough when he wants it, but there’s never any extra. It’s second nature by now so I don’t remember the exact amount, but it’s somewhere just over half a cup of dry food.


  • It might differ depending on the cat’s personality, but I feed my cat a full serving once a day in the morning, and that’s it. He nibbles on it throughout the day whenever he wants, and by the next morning the bowl is empty. No whining or begging, thankfully, since he does a surprisingly good job of pacing himself.

    He’s pretty old now, so we’ve got a good routine going, but I know some cats just won’t accept this and need their meals to be separate and eaten in one sitting.





  • Sure, let’s pretend that the majority and defacto default religion of the country has had it really rough while exercising their dominance over all our other religions. As a Jew, I totally remember making fun of my Christian friends for celebrating Christmas. Oh right! I got that backwards, it was the Christians who relentlessly bullied me for not being like them. But of course it’s everyone else’s fault and the Christians have been persecuted for……wait, how exactly have they been persecuted? No examples from before the year 1600 are allowed, thanks.

    Let’s just keep in mind who he’s defending:

    Harlow was convictedin August 2023 of federal civil rights offenses for her role in the October 2020 invasion and blockade of the Washington Surgi-Clinic. Along with other anti-abortion activists, Harlow used force and physical obstruction to execute the blockade, according to the Department of Justice. She was sentenced to 24 months in prison Source


  • Yeah I really tried to engage with some of them before the election, and it was impossible to break through the snark and the disingenuous/naive arguments they were spouting. I would also love to have an earnest conversation with someone who withheld their vote, but based on how how they explained themselves at the time, I’d doubt there’s a ton of critical thinking going on. Which kind of makes sense at least for Palestinian Americans whose families are being slaughtered. For them the raw emotions are justified, and I can’t fault them for not voting, even if it was ultimately against their interest. But they’re the only group I’ll give a pass.



  • The umbrella is such an underrated skill. My manager is the best buffer between me and the C-suite, and I appreciate it immensely. She doesn’t involve me in any of the company’s internal political crap unless it directly impacts me. She filters out all the bullshit and protects me from our bosses getting in the way of the work.

    Some of her other excellent managerial qualities: she doesn’t cold call me (we’re remote), she doesn’t schedule unnecessary meetings, she has zero contact after COB, and she trusts me to get my shit done during the day, on my own, with absolutely no micro-managing. Some weeks I don’t need to interact with her at all, even though she’s a fun person I never mind chatting with. She’s the best manager.

    It all boils down to mutual respect. Respect leads to trust, trust leads to teamwork and a healthy work environment.


  • I wish this was all true, I really do. But there is a time and a place to be calm. This is not that time, and this is not that place.

    These systems are supposed to have COOP plans (Continuity of Operations), but not all of them do. Systems are supposed to have some degree of backups, but I can tell you from experience that this is almost never the case in any meaningful way.

    I’ve spoken to a number of feds who said their work disappeared overnight. They didn’t choose to comply, and didn’t have sufficient backups in place because of a lack of resources. Their manager or an administrative assistant somewhere most likely went on a deletion spree, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

    Sometimes when this stuff is gone, it’s really gone. And we have every right to be furious about it.

    100% agree about the media incentives, but sometimes outrage is not only warranted, but essential.


  • To clarify, this is because the arbitrary deadline for feds to accept the “offer” is Thursday, and there are a lot of frightened people out there who think this might be their best option. I’ve spoken to a number of federal employees about this, and none of them are convinced there’s any reason OPM will actually honor the severance pay promised in the email, so they’re just going to wait to be fired and potentially lose out on a ton of severance pay. I think that’s the right call though, at least for those who can afford it.

    There was no legal foundation for this “fork,” but agencies can’t reject it since it came from their HR overlords. All the communications about this “offer” have been extremely vague with no specific instructions, guidance, or guarantees. I’m willing to bet they’ll renege on the deal (why wouldn’t they?) and everyone will have to wait and see what the Supreme Court ultimately says about it months after the damage has already been done and careers and livelihoods have been ruined.



  • Perfectly. I’ve never encountered a codec my Apple TV couldn’t play smooth as butter. Been watching a lot of AV1 anime lately, never needs to transcode. I use Infuse Player for its Dolby Vision support, because that’s the only format the native Jellyfin app has trouble with, but Infuse is also just a really solid app in general, and for me is the perfect way to consume my Jellyfin server. But the native Jellyfin app is also solid, and there are some other players which would definitely meet your needs (MrMC for example is very good, but not as polished as Infuse).



  • I was responding to the comment above (and lots of other chatter like this), which said “people voted for Musk” which is just not true. And like you said, the people don’t vote for the cabinet, they vote for the person who nominates cabinet members. It’s useful to point out because these distinctions have real-world consequences. Musk is a what’s called a “Special Government Employee,” which is an unelected position.



  • It’s just common decency to call people what they want to be called. If you pronounce someone’s last name wrong or don’t use their preferred nickname (not all Davids like to be called Dave, for example), they’ll correct you and then it’s part of our social contract that you’ll do your best to get it right in the future. The pronouns in email IDs was a super helpful reminder, and they’ve only been gone a minute but I’ve already gotten some pronouns wrong for colleagues I didn’t know that well, and I feel terrible about it. If those labels had stayed, I wouldn’t have made such a simple mistake.

    This shit might seem trivial, but it has real impacts on real people on a daily basis.


  • I don’t want to be pedantic, but okay I will. Musk wasn’t on any ballot. Not a single person voted for an individual named Elon Musk. It wasn’t an option. Enough people voted for Trump and Vance for them to win, but they were the only two on the ballot. It may seem like a distinction without a difference, because Musk functionally has an insane amount of power and influence, but that power was delegated to him by the person that people actually voted for, which is how our government works. People might have voted for Trump hoping he would use Musk in this way, but they still only voted for Trump.

    I feel silly writing all that out, but these kinds of distinctions matter imo.


  • For sure, that makes sense. This company just seems to be conflating quite a bit. Is it AI? No. Are they using a Large Language Model? Kind of. It seems like they put a whole bunch of chemical, soil, and market/tastes metrics into a GPT model, and ran it to fine-tune their process. So, sure, that’s cool, but this all just seems like a silly gimmick. I’d be shocked if this wine was anything special, but then again I’m incredibly suspicious of anyone who slaps an AI label on their product, so who knows.