For a brief moment in time, nana never felt more alive.

Is there a name for this video artifact effect in this image? I’d love to see a bunch of this.

It reminds me of the early 2000’s digital satellite television. Any time the signal got blocked a bit by the weather, the on-screen content would do this. Very trippy. Later on when cable tv in my area switched to digital, I noticed it happening there, too, but nowhere near as often as in satellite. Now that over the air is all digital where I live, however, I almost never see this happening anymore. I guess it’s not a thing that happens as much with modern encoding formats.

Howdy “relative” neighbor.

I’m also in the southeastern USA and I’ve driven by the peach more times than I care to count.

A broken clock is right twice a day. At least that’s a saying in my part of the world.

I’m sure it’s performative. I would not be surprised if the plan is to add some other reprehensible stuff to the final bill so that Democrats have to approve the terrible stuff simply to get the cuts canceled or they have to vote against it and be labeled as anti-Medicaid. Because it seems so often, that is the way it goes whenever Republicans appear to maybe be doing something good for the common folk.

Oh, that’s awful.

My uncle also had very few allies left in this world, he was just the embodiment of an asshole to pretty much everyone. My dad and aunt were the only people that would even bother to try to communicate with him. Fortunate in some way, they’d talked on the phone the day before my uncle passed, and he agreed to let my dad stop by to drop off some food the next day. Meaning, he’d been dead less than 24 hours before my dad found his body. Otherwise, it very well could have been weeks or longer.

But the house? Total loss. My uncle had become a trash hoarder. Fueled by depression, but also by his beliefs that the government was tracking him (and would go through his trash if he were to set it outside). My dad and my cousin tried to locate some family memorabilia like photos and things, but they gave up. The house was literally bulldozed and the remnants hauled away, it was in such bad shape inside and out.

Welcome to mental illness. Many people are perfectly functional, yet still deeply sick.

I had an uncle like this. He definitely held it together okay-ish (though that’s up for debate) for most of his life. But the conspiracy bullshit was a consist sign that he was not well.

And then when his wife passed, he also lost his ability to be functional, so the sickness took over entirely, eventually even took over his body. Nobody could help, not even his children.

Nah, USB DeezNuts

My current “provider” is an NP. I like her, she’s personable and does the basic stuff well enough. I can understand having her do the basic annual physical type stuff for relatively young and healthy people.

But, for one of my recent visits, they scheduled me with a doctor instead (dunno why), and the experience was honestly almost night and day for the better. Granted, the way my health insurance works (ugh USA), the NP visits only ever cost me a flat amount, perhaps $45 for the copay. The doctor’s visit cost me the $45 copay, plus additional coinsurance down the line that I got billed a couple of months later because the clinic apparently charges two different rates depending on whether you see a doctor or not, I guess?

On the one hand, I didn’t like it that much when it came out. It’s not that I hated it or hated on it, just wasn’t my thing. Mario games were far superior platforming experience all around, in my opinion.

Graphics for the time and platform were great. If you weren’t there at the time and your frame of reference is modern (32-bit or later) graphics, of course they suck. But that’s hardly fair or objective, when it comes to understanding why they were well-regarded AT THAT TIME.

But, I’ll add this: A number of my friends’ kids were introduced to 8-bit and 16-bit games first, in lieu of exposing them to toxic modern phone/tablet games. And the SNES Donkey Kong game(s) were/are amongst the games that the kids enjoyed and played the most. So, there’s something to that, if you ask me.

I barely made it through the great recession.

At one point, I was down to my last $500 USD which didn’t even cover the rent coming up due in days, most of my calories were coming from fruits and veggies I was literally collecting from the wild, looking at eviction, and with no job prospects when I was so desperate that I begrudgingly accepted the worst job of my entire life (so far).

I fought my way into a better job and career over the years, but continued to live like a dude who was only a month or two away from homelessness. I did not take extravagant vacations, wear high end clothes, drive a flashy car, own an expensive home, eat fancy meals, buy lots of “toys”. Aside from electronics, almost everything I owned was second hand or gifted to me. People constantly made judgemental comments about my lifestyle, clothes, car, and so on.

By the end of 2024, I was almost at the point of feeling financially secure in life, considering making some big upgrades to my lifestyle.

Then in 2025, I got laid off after more than a decade from a company that religiously referred to its employees as family. No warning. In fact, up until that point, all we were hearing was lies (ex: we’re doing okay financially, we planned for this sort of thing, etc). I had 10 years of top scores on evaluations, 10 years of impeccable project work, 10 years of raving reviews from my peers. And yet, when the least little bit of financial difficulty reared its ugly head, I was cut in the first round of layoffs.

Fortunately for me, I sacrificed and lived quite frugally over the years, so I just don’t give a shit about the job market right now. I’d love to have a job, I feel like I’m basically living off of money that could be my retirement, but at the end of the day fuck Trump and the flailing Trump economy. If I have to go 10 years without a job, it’s going to suck, but I’ve got this.

On the other hand, I feel horrified for many of my coworkers who got laid off at the same time, and for the majority of people in general who have lost their jobs because of Trump and his sycophants. Most of them either didn’t get a chance to prepare or didn’t have the foresight to prepare the way I was privileged enough to do.

I bought a handful of cheap / deep discount games during the Summer Sale this year.

One I wasn’t sure about was BIOTA. Turns out it’s been more fun than I expected for such a simplistic game.

I’ve also been playing Blasphemous. I really like Metroidvanias but these “souls like” style games are irritating to me. Still, it was cheap and I can appreciate the aesthetic.

I’m looking forward to having more time to play these games, as of yet, it’s been like 20 minutes here, 30 minutes a few days later, so it’s hard to make much progress and enjoy them with such limited time to dive in.