Not even solely relegated to old people, either, unless the fediverse thinks 30-40 is old. We had one woman come by our shit little dollar store about 20 minutes after we'd closed. So, long enough for us to start counting out, cleaning, etc., but not long enough to go home yet.

Noticed the door was locked. Noticed those of us not still busy were hanging out and chatting while we waited, surreptitiously watching this person. Visibly read the store hours. Tried the lock again.

Started prying open the door while we all stared in horror, ended up breaking it, then threw a whole fit to boot because we couldn't sell her anything with all the tills in the back room and we kept trying to kick her out for some reason.

She wasn't even high. She was just that entitled, because very often for suburban moms, the rules don't apply if you don't let them.

Fable does this too. At least the third one. I'd married a beggar with the honest intention of lifting up one of my kingdom's most socially aware instead of settling for some brainless, peacocking noble, and all he did with his time on the throne was become a national embarrassment on the same old street corner.

So. Remembering the existence of this "Henry VIII" achievement that I'd thought I was never gonna bother getting. I took my beloved beggar-king down to the treasury, positioned him at the very top of the overflowing pile of gold he always seemed to forget we had, and shot him in the head. And then I started thinking about that achievement.

There were a lot of NPCs that really did bug me.

And one unusually eloquent zombie who apparently showed up one day and refuses to explain himself to anyone.

But I audibly laughed. Brilliant. Thank you for this.

But the boxes were taken to the dumpster, yes? With time saved, even? Someone in a managerial position would rather hire, train, and pay a devoted garbage person instead of three adorably unpaid raccoons?

My problem is my cat likes me too much. She's such a big fan of me that she'll accept things from me that she turns her nose up at if anyone else offers, and this list accidentally includes things like cornbread and orange juice.

Cats are so famous in their hatred of citrus that it's commonly used and marketed as a cat repellent. This fucker is over here voluntarily drinking my orange juice purely because she saw me drinking it and she wants to be like me.

I'm honestly pretty sure I could just hand feed her medicine at this point and it wouldn't even be a fight.

Bro that dog sacrificed itself to horrors it barely understood in order to save the life of an infant, and you're just gonna proudly announce you're dead inside.

Since I feel the sudden urge to vent, I've never forgotten staying at this one homeless shelter several years ago.

We found out much later after the place was shut down that they'd actually been receiving more than adequate donations the entire time, but the staff was just taking it all home with them and telling us that there was no food to give. They could do one or sometimes two meals, but never much, never more, and not dependably from day to. They had none.

So obviously we believed them and since this was just...the position we were in, I was taking the money I was technically required by agreement to save for a place and using it to buy food for myself and anywhere from 1 to 4 of the other residents.

One of them was Gabriel, who came in with the clothes on his back and a guitar. Gabriel was religious, but one of the painfully few who put the kindness part first and he was very sweet and tended to be walked on for it and to become depressed for being taken advantage of.

When he took his guitar around looking for gigs, I went with him for moral support. When one of those was a church, I sat in with the flock even though the related trauma makes my skin crawl. When winter drew close, I bought him what I still think was a pretty snazzy jacket.

I split a meal almost daily for months, because I'm not going to see anyone hungry when I can afford it, even though none of us could really afford it and doing so was imperiling my future. When he found out the fiance he doted on was banging his best friend while he himself was homeless, guess who was there to cry on immediately.

I don't regret any of those, to be very clear. I'd grudgingly do it again, because people matter more. But to think to check up on him some years after we parted and find him thanking god for looking after him during that time was a direct slap in the face. Over a decade later, it still stings.

Of course it would be god. Looking after each other like sentient, suffering beings, that's god's doing, personally stepping in to work his mysterious ways. I only take the blame for the bad shit.

I don't understand how people do this, to be honest. Do you know how spicy food works? The receptor it triggers in your mouth is TRPV1, which does handle heat regulation and sensitivity, but it's also a pain receptor. Like, selectively removing it to treat the pain caused by bone cancer kind of receptor.

The kind of heat that sets it off is heat above 109F/43C, in addition to things like scorpion venom. Presumably it comes through as heat. Everyone tells me it feels hot. I don't get "heat." I get what is clearly agony in one of the most innervated areas of the body, and science backed me up on this.

Y'all are addicted to licking the curling iron and I'm the weird one

I am really dreading the devastation I know this El Niño will bring. As the situation deteriorates, it makes me wonder how I can be most helpful at a time like this. Do I keep trying to pursue my research career or devote even more of my time to warning the public?

“It’s as if the human race has received a terminal medical diagnosis and knows there is a cure, but has consciously decided not to save itself.“
—Prof Lesley Hughes

When a patient receives a likely terminal diagnoses with one obtainable cure, they typically do everything in their power to get to it unless that means leaving themselves or others permanently destitute. Their coming death is very close. So is the only way out.

The cause in both these statements is that global warming will NEVER be an immediate threat. Humans are wired for immediacy, and if the threat is not a right now thing, they switch to ignoring and adapting. Our psychology is wired to try to address the tiger and to adapt to what is unfortunately continual environmental collapse.

Those who understand we literally cannot do that and that a great many of us will die are not equipped to handle that information without simply sinking into increasingly immobile despair, because...what the fuck can I do about it?

I already eat little, don't even own a car, my worst offense is having internet but it's necessary for work. My other options are to become homeless again or Amish.

People in many countries are suffering greatly already from natural events that have been kicked up to 20. All I can do is watch. And I do. But more and more as someone who has a large stomach for suffering, even I'm beginning to evaluate what good it's doing me, as a civilian, to watch.

I can't help, or I would have. Whatever's going to happen to me in the future is unavoidable. My choices then are between Despair and Not Despair. This is why the masses won't pay attention. They don't have the bandwidth for the entire planet.

The politicians, however, have no excuse for this, and had we less tendency to shut our eyes and stomp our feet and more biological ability to plan in long term, they would be on pikes in the 00's.

I'm opening up a rival called "social media." Already, we're on everyone's lips, set to have a userbase spanning half the web.

I still remember one of my parents telling me "the good die young" after a friend's funeral. I was the same age as the deceased...

For anyone genuinely wondering, this is a preauricular pit -- a birth defect that could rarely signal other, bigger issues but which is usually harmless by itself. It's just a random opening, it doesn't even connect to anything.