If anyone did this in front of me I would smack them in the mouth.

Catzilla. Truly a loaf incarnate.

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A mild cigar.

With due respect, it is time to go outside.

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All hail. I was very, very young to this.

Relatable. You know how it is when your sleeves get wet and they kinda stick to your wrists or flop around getting other stuff stuck to them… ugh.

My first night in my freshman dorm, I played this on the upright piano. Excellent decision. Pro tip to the young geeks: nothing waters the flowers like suicidal ideation wrapped in a veneer of artistic integrity. I can’t even sing for shit, that’s how well it works.

Individual data points like “I take pilates”, “I work nights and weekends”, and “I live in Smalltown, ST” might not mean anything on their own, but if you can connect this data to a single person, then realize there’s only one pilates studio in Smalltown, then look up their hours and notice there’s only one day class on weekdays, you can make a reasonable guess as to a regular time when a person is away from home. This is called data brokerage.

This is a comically contrived example; the real danger is in the association of countless data points spread across millions of correlated identities. It’s not just your data, it’s the association of your data with that of your friends and family. Most people are constantly streaming their location, purchases, beliefs, and affiliations out to anyone who cares enough to look. Bad actors may collate their data and use it to take advantage of them, and the only move they have is to ask for prohibitive legislation. As if we don’t already have prohibitive legislation.

Anonymity is expensive, inconvenient, and fragile, but it’s the only mechanism that protects individuals from the information economy, which I would put right next to ecology in terms of critical 21st-22nd century social problems. It also helps us resist censorship, but that’s a different essay.

He cannot protec
Nor can he attac
But he is a little hat

And Jesus said, “verily, I say unto you, know thy audience.”

There are people who think they understand olives but have never tasted kalamatas. Sad but true. Great post OP; you made me get up to eat.

>we’ve been no contact with my family on and off
>why doesn’t my family want to connect with me

“Going no contact” ends relationships. I’ve noticed a lot of people will defend “going no contact” as a normal and healthy relationship tool because they’ve done it, erected massive walls of pain and mistrust in core relationships, and need the support of others with similar blockades to defend the disastrous results. I’ve seen it recommended as a response to bad table manners. The problem is you’re inflicting a death on someone while refusing them permission to grieve. There is a void in their life where a person used to be, but they can’t even come to terms with that and move on because the person might come back. It is the strongest possible ultimatum. Now, boundaries are healthy, and if a relationship is giving you more pain than support, it’s your prerogative to end it; that’s what “going no contact” usually does. If someone lets you back into their life after you’ve done that, you shouldn’t assume that they’ve forgotten what it was like to live without you.

Rembrandt’s lighting is magical. He grabs your focus without force. It’s a little less dramatic but no less important in my favorite Rembrandt, The Apostle Paul.

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Alright this is the most neurotic thing I’ve ever written but the lizard primary->accent color map is

'((light . dark)
  (medium . dark)
  (dark . medium))

and at first I thought it would be more symmetrical if either the light lizards had medium accents or the medium lizards had light accents, but then I noticed that the outline is always dark, which lets the outline act as both the background and either the primary or accent color for every possible lizard configuration, adding depth. We don’t have time to bring color theory into this but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this piece is inexplicably sepia toned, which raises further questions such as “what is wrong with me” and “how am I going to put this piece in my dining room without having to defend the 1960’s?”

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Hell yes. Sic semper pingues porcos.