Boston area writer, artist, and explorer.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • It’s okay. I still peruse reddit sometimes because the subs here aren’t sufficient enough. Also, reddit has more variety. Lemmy is a bit too political. Like /c/news seems to only post political stuff. And it’s mostly liberal leaning (which I am), but too liberal occasionally. People hate nazis here but curiously, they also hate Israel. I’m looking for more communities that are less intense and charged. Stuff about crafting, plant rearing, literature, etc. The other big fediverse site, Mastodon, has a similar prevalence of charged stuff, but I’ve found a bit more silly things both on my own and with suggestions over there. I suppose I could start some new communities here but I’m doubtful I have the fortitude to make them get increased traction.


  • I feel like people forget about this. Hamas wants their constituents to die. They want to put their weaponry and bases inside hospitals and places of worship because they know IDF will have to seize or attack them and making them look bad for damaging health facilities and mosques. I am pro-Palestine and pro-Israel, but I notice there’s a lack of nuance too often in the pro-Palestine movement. I know most Gazans are not involved in Hamas. But few realize that most Israeli citizens are uninterested in destroying Gaza. Israel’s military and executive leadership has made poor decisions. But this does not necessarily equate to the country at large being genocidal.



  • This thread has already mentioned a lot of artists I was already going to mention…and I’ll add a semi-recent one for me, Scott Adams. I started reading Dilbert while I was still learning to read and my exposure to it helped me recover from my literacy anxiety (which I sometimes still have to an extent). I’ve mentioned a bit of my associations of it in previous posts but to recap, my mom worked at another “Baby Bell” company, Nynex, later Bell Atlantic then Verizon, (like Scott who worked at Pacific Bell and Dilbert and friends who worked at an unnamed company implied to be in the telecom sector) I liked the simplistic designs a lot, as well as the introduction of new vocabulary. I soon started making my own comic strips. Scott Adams’ views on race, medicine, politics and several other subjects are perplexing. If I could logically follow them, I’d be offended. My dad’s high school experience was diminished by segregation apologists during Boston bussing mandates of the 1970s when they would protest at school campuses. The fact that Adams was on board with such a stupid practice in that infamous vlog is upsetting. Then again, Adams is a contrarian so I can’t be sure if he sincerely feels that way, especially since he tweeted something afterwards saying “I’m not actually bothered by black people. I am actually just annoyed by white people who advocate for black people” (paraphrase). Maybe it’s a true clarification or maybe he’s just trying to walk back his statements. He needs help. There’s probably something traumatic in his life that made him snap. Off hand, I know his wife filed for divorce from him and his stepson died of an overdose, and he may still be mourning in a strange way. Still, if I see Dilbert merch at a secondhand shop or in the library, I’d gladly take them out. I will not subscribe to his new pay-walled comic, but if his distributors and publishers ever decide to re-sign their contracts with him and start printing new Dilbert books again, I may buy them. Anecdotally print publishers seem to do more vetting than web publishers, so I’d hope that if they ever reunite he’d be in the right headspace. Anyway, great comic, troubled person. Hope the guy gets some help.



  • Sometimes I wonder if he became pedophilic because of his sad life. Between losing family in the Holocaust and losing more family and friends in the Tate/LaBianca murders by the Manson family, he must felt like his life was out of control. But it’s easy to control teenaged girls into having sex with you. Or maybe the genocide and murders he experienced had nothing to do with his sins. But it’s something I think about occasionally. I’ve seen only a couple of his movies so far but I notice some themes from his life, like the death of babies or babies being evil, and I feel like it’s some personal allegory.


  • There was this asshole who wanted to buy my grandparents’ house after they both died. He’d text my sister, brother, dad, maybe even my mom. Fortunately not me. It’s so insidious because he probably got all the info from my grandfather’s obituary. He just needed our names and town and then could look up the phone numbers on those “people search” sites or phone books. The house hadn’t even been put on sale yet, and we were not the executors. What kind of sicko reads the obits so they can buy a house? And doesn’t even bother to go through a realtor or attend an open house when the time comes. The gall of some people is unbelievable. I’m glad my uncle gave it to one of the first families that formally offered after attending the open house.



  • I laughed aloud when I first saw that episode of SpongeBob “Selling Out,” where Karl takes over the Krusty Krab and he threatens Squidward with Human Resources. The Human resources guy isn’t a human, nor are any of the employees, yet they have HR anyway. But still, HR guy is scary and another reason the crew lives their work lives in fear. As cheap as Mr. Krabs is as a manager, he always let Squidward and SpongeBob express themselves in their own personalities. Human resources sometimes tries to squash your individuality.







  • Well, my aunt kinda, but she’s mostly just following along with her husband (her most recent and current husbands have both sealed themselves off during my lifetime and I’ve never had an “uncle” relationship with either of them). She hardly has her own opinions anymore. I think both her husband and daughter had to get Covid vaccines for work and school, so I don’t know what they did. I hope my cousin has a mind of her own and went to get her vaccines with her sisters, but who knows. I feel like the husband might have some forged paperwork saying he’s vaccinated or he’s claiming a religious exemption (hahaha, he’s not devout, I mean he is Catholic but the Vatican and USCCB both said to get vaccinated). Same thing with this family friend of ours. Her daughters got her into vaccine hesitation. She doesn’t seem to feel as strongly about it as the daughters but still didn’t get the Covid shots last I heard, though her husband did. The older daughter had a kid who’s probably a kindergartner now, but she’s insisted she wasn’t going to get him vaccinated (specifically MMR) as a baby because that’s bad for development or something. She said he would eventually get vaccinated but not until he started school, which is probably around now but I don’t know if he’s vaccinated yet. She has another kid now too and I imagine she’s giving her the same approach. The younger daughter has a baby now too and is probably doing the same thing. Worse about the younger daughter is she is a nurse. Both the daughters are in their thirties and I grew up admiring them. I’m the oldest sibling so I always look to those somewhat older than me as guides for my near future. But now I realize how off-base they are from what I aspire to be.



  • I’m going to innocently guess it’s because the tips are small parts put under duress and with more use, the looser they become and just… Fall off? And then they aren’t seen on the ground of the station because people drive over them and they get scattered or smashed on the street. Of course I’m still learning to drive (in my mid-twenties) and my family members who are licensed are more often the ones who get work done on our cars. I also live in a state were self-pumping isn’t that common.