Current status: Five minutes from my new house, outside a brewery, surrounded by trees in 66 degree weather as the sun sets, finishing a flight of lobster rolls and an autumn beer. Unsure how winter's gonna go, but this right now is fucking great

An adult turkey and five or so juveniles strolling through the grass and trees behind a house

Met some new neighbors outside our new house today

Our black cat looking out a window at a roadrunner in our backyard

One of the neighborhood roadrunners discovered that we have a backyard turtle, and the cat in turn discovered roadrunners

I wonder why I read that in the Carl "hhhhey, I'm Batman too!" cadence

Whenever these LLM guys say they think AGI/artificial superintelligence is in the works it's like hearing someone say that their next toaster is going to break the land speed record

I almost woke up my wife laughing at Pulled Dork. Definitely sending this to her to see in the morning

If Gen Z really wants to dunk on millennials, they should learn about Foursquare and go around saying stuff like, "I hear you're the mayor of this Panera Bread."

Thinking of splitting up my politics/current events follows and my friendly follows into two accounts so that I can keep up with the latter without every other post evoking Professor Farnsworth saying, "I don't want to live on this planet anymore." Anyone else found a better approach?

Haha, I remember that. Everyone assumed it was based on the date/time of the first moon landing

I don't think ours is big enough to do it himself yet, but one of our dogs alternately tries to play with him and to police him, and together they can be... formidable

I came home and heard the story while the dog sat there doing the stereotypical sad guilty dog pose. It was the first time she'd actually looked guilty in the almost 10 years we've had her

Oh, yeah, I was just reminded of why he probably stopped climbing into the tree. The other day our 11yo Italian Greyhound mix grabbed him by the leg in there and together they pulled the whole thing over and into my wife

Oh yeah, I totally forgot the tree getting toppled, probably because I wasn't home for it. We got the current ornament balls on sale and are treating them as disposable, but those anchors might be nice for next year!

My last cat was almost 16 when he encountered his first Christmas tree so the 6-month-old has been a very different experience

He might have finally gotten bored of climbing up the interior branches of the artificial tree. I've had to rearrange a few things underneath so he doesn't perch on wrapped boxes and collapse them.

Kitten's first Christmas: we didn't put any of our usual ornaments on the tree except the topper. Wife has shared reference photos of where the cheapo shatter-prof balls are, so we can find the hangers and tops when they're separated. We've had to super glue 2 back together so far and rehang 3 more.

Then it hit me: The big success of the US right over the last decade or so, helped by a cadre of centrists, is convincing a lot of people that the Democratic Party is whoever you think is the most radical, most annoying person on the internet. Therefore, voting Republican is a vote against them.
3/x

Being the author of this lede on a Smashing Pumpkins newswire

An exterior light fixture mounted on a tan stucco wall is covered with an unsightly mess of spider webs, as well as assorted small insects and detritus stuck in those webs

Unsung benefits of living in the desert: the outdoor lights decorate themselves for Halloween, if you're patient

A meme in the Star Trek TNG Darmok format. Picard to Dathon: "So you're saying that as a meme format becomes overused, people will make ever more abstract representations of it?" Dathon: "Garak, across the table" Picard: "Even if it becomes incomprehensible to outsiders?" Darmok: "Garak, with a knowing grin"

Source: www.reddit.com/r/startrekme...

The Dems can and should be the party of gun owners who don't make it their personality and are comfortable having reasonable regulations imposed on themselves

Maybe I'm out of my mind, but I do think that the Democratic Party should lean hard into the "responsible gun ownership" thing. It's one of many issues they've basically ceded to the GOP, who has then taken it to an absurd extreme.

They are, thanks! Though we still get the occasional tiny whiff of skunk from a spot on the one's face/ears where we couldn't safely clean

men have two ways of dealing with something embarrassing that happened years ago:

- only thinking about it at night right before they fall asleep, and reliving the embarrassment as a personal failure (normal, healthy)

- turning into a Weird Online Guy about it (bad, unhealthy)

It’s sad that we’ve never had a Joker film that’s accurate to his portrayal in the original source material: a man who gets away after the Batmobile loses a wheel

Just fine! What takes you to Malmö?

Sup!

It appears that my high school's most famous alum is still Jack Handey (as in SNL's "Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey").

The Doxie is home and convalescing, and the greyhound had a professional skunk bath this morning (after 2 peroxide/baking soda/dish soap baths at 2 this morning), so at least everyone's ok, frazzled human nerves notwithstanding

... our 10-year-old Italian greyhound decided to take a brave stand against a skunk who infiltrated our backyard and got sprayed in the face twice for her trouble. We're still airing out the house 18 hours later. It's been a hell of a couple of days.