My employer offered me a modest severance package, and set my last day to be the first working day of the month, meaning my health care benefits are valid for almost a full month after my last day.

Tell me you’re American without telling me you’re American

Close, but not quite. One thing I notice a lot around here (Lemmy/fediverse) that suggests many users are elder millennials or older, is the frequent use of 2 spaces after a period. I don’t really notice as much of that in other online communities.

My current phone game is ∞ Loop. Just a simple puzzle-type game.

I also like a variety of solitaire card games, but the app I used to like has become quite enshittified, and I haven’t found a good replacement.

My oldest is pretty cuddly, but only on his terms, so I’m always excited to curl up on the couch or in bed and enjoy some snuggle time. If I have the energy, I might do some play time with the wand toy or some clicker training with their favorite treats. If I’m feeling more lazy, just tossing treats… They love chasing them!

I think they’ll let you know what they want. I definitely feel you on the urge to go over the top with spoiling them, but what they probably appreciate most is just having you back. I’ve come to realize that most of my efforts to spoil my cats are more about me than they are about the cats.

Ahh, going to the Google news webpage on my phone does give me quite different results compared to when I swipe left from my phone’s home screen.

I feel ya. Currently trying to figure out how to get out of upcoming holiday travels since dragging them along won’t be an option.

I guess I also look forward to the extra affection they give me when I return, and usually try to plan for a “decompression” day (or at least half day) as soon as I return so that I can take full advantage.

I have gradually set up cameras all throughout my home so that I can peek in on them whenever I feel like it. I also just avoid leaving for extended periods and/or drag them along with me.

Interesting. I mindlessly swipe over to the news feed on my Pixel more than I’d like to admit, and it only gives me horoscope type stuff very rarely… Definitely not frequently enough for me to bother trying to block it. I wonder why you’re seeing so much more of it?

I’ve been using whatbox as my seed box for nearly 10 years now. I’m on their USD 15/month plan, and they’ve upgraded my storage & bandwidth twice now in that time without increasing my costs.

Can anyone recommend some stable general purpose instances that federate with dbzer0? I believe lemmy.world defederated, as the link doesn’t work for me. I had a kbin account, but that seems to be dead, and I’d like to minimize the number of accounts I have to use to access things.

I use shampoo maybe once per month, usually only when necessary to remove products such as bleach/dye. Just rinsing it with water is usually enough, but when my hair starts feeling more greasy (maybe once per week), I just use conditioner to help loosen up the dirt. If you’re curious, look up “cowashing” and “no poo” for more information.

My cat likes to scratch on this weird vinyl/fake leather chair that I have. I’ve tried covering it in tape, and he still scratches it. One day, I realized that whenever he scratches it, he almost immediately turns to look at me, so I started to wonder if he might be doing it for attention. On top of that, as soon as I tell him “no”, he usually walks over to me, looking for attention. It took a lot of patience, but since the chair was already ruined, I decided to try just totally ignoring him whenever he scratched the chair, and giving him positive attention when he scratched on his post. Somehow, it actually worked!

Another suggestion would be to put a scratching post as close as possible to the couch corners as possible, and when you do catch her scratching the couch, very calmly reposition her to the post. Praise her for using the post, completely ignore her for scratching the couch.

I know you mentioned that she has a cat tree nearby, but the geometry of the couch might be giving her a better stretch, she may like the material better, and/or she may be looking for a way to better claim the couch as part of her territory, as a scratching is also an important way that they leave their sent on things.

https://www.jacksongalaxy.com/blogs/news/how-to-stop-your-cats-from-scratching-furniture

Wait, what? My cat only spoons with me when I lay on my left side, so of course I prefer laying on my left side now. Does he know something I don’t??

• A seed box (Whatbox). I’m paying USD 15/month, and they’ve actually upgraded my storage and bandwidth twice now without any price increases. I think I’ve been using that for roughly 10 years now. At this point, it’s cheaper than any single streaming service, while allowing me access to basically every TV show and movie ever produced, and I can easily share my library with friends via Plex. Now that I have *aars, it’s very little effort to keep up with my favorite shows.
• Whatever the YouTube music thing is called now. I signed up when it was brand new, and while I occasionally consider going back to piracy for music, it’s just not worth the effort for me these days, but I am extremely opposed to ads.
• Amazon Prime. I should probably cancel, but I don’t have a car and definitely utilize the same day delivery quite often.
• Housing. Do mortgage payments & HOA fees count as subscriptions? Lol. I definitely get a lot of value out of housing, and appreciate the fact that I don’t have to wonder if my landlord is going to renew my lease each year.

Sorry, lol, that was definitely not my intention! I’ve definitely heard about the “no tattoos” thing before, especially for those following Judaism, but I’d never read the relevant text before, so it definitely surprised me. I may have to ask my sister about it, since that’s definitely her area of study.

Reading through various translations, the first part seems to say "don’t cut/gash your body in honor/memory/mourning of the dead, but most of the translations leave it somewhat ambiguous (at least to me) as to whether it means “don’t tattoo yourself in honor/memory/mourning of the dead” or just, “don’t tattoo yourself at all”. Also, it sounds as though cutting/gashing yourself for other reasons is isn’t breaking any rules.

Figured out how to DM you.

Edit: figured out how to DM OP

I’m pretty sure we have blackberry jam, but I’m not much of a jam person, so I can’t say so from personal experience. Although if we have the berries, I can’t see why we wouldn’t also have the jam. Looks like blackcurrants is probably what you were thinking of, although they’re technically available in the US now.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackcurrant_production_in_the_United_States

That sounds quite terrifying! I’m in a pretty urban environment, so I don’t think there’s any bears hanging out on my usual routes, only coyotes, but I will keep that in mind whenever I venture out of the city.