When I was younger I fell for two - baggy jeans and llamas.

I remember in 5th grade I tried to joke about llamas with one kid and show him the llama song (because he loved llamas) and he said I was just copying him. In hindsight fuck you Hans, you didn’t invent llamas, you were just copying others too, you tool!

Baggy pants were regrettable too…

Got one after the craze had died down and they’re surprisingly fun - just a good quality desk toy

How does that make sense? How does putting a “Download PDF” button on their site with no restrictions make this a “me” problem?

They definitely weren’t monitoring the one at a time rule… I downloaded the file and now have it forever

I was looking for resources for a custom LLM and noticed they had a ton of copyrighted books and wondered to myself how the heck that was legal

I guess this answers that

I like to picture just a constant purring sound

I have a four, but most are from instances I’ve moved away from.

Started on Beehaw but when they started defederating from everyone I made a programming.dev account.

Also created a personal instance, but it was too heavy for my NAS to be worth it.

Finally, an Mbin account recently because the communism stuff from the main developers seems to be pretty contentious right now and I want to explore alternatives while I’m still happy with Lemmy. If some “event” happens and I find the need to move somewhere else its good to have an alternative in the pocket

I spend less than an hour a day, usually. I end up scrolling past a lot of the posts because they don’t interest me and are more long form content, but I like to catch up on the memes and cats

I actually disagree on this one. The show made such bizarre choices and had unrealistic scenarios, it took me out of the story. I actually read the book because I was watching the series and was so confused by some of the story beats that I was convinced the book would explain the reasoning behind them.

Ended up just being mad at the series for not following the book more closely. The changes to the Prophet are just wild - taking a pedophile and making him a protagonist is just a poor choice, from my perspective… Even if you write out the pedophilia why you gotta make him have an army of kids?

One thing that always stuck out to me about the book is the introduction of certain editions. The author writes about himself researching the history of the country the story takes place in and describes it as real, saying he took his son to a museum with Inigo’s sword and everything.

I was Googling furiously when I read it because I was so confused. I was astounded that the place (and people) was “real”. It took a bit of research to find that the author just does this bit and hasn’t let it go since he wrote the book

I’m still so charmed that he tricked me. It made reading the book that much sillier, for me

I appreciate you being aware of the impact at least, it’s all I can really ask. I hope you can find some way to limit the cat’s impact on the environment, like perhaps a bell on their collar

And I’m glad you put food out for the birds. I do the same and I find such joy in watching them, they’re truly beautiful :)

Okay, so your arguments are:

1. I haven’t heard it’s a problem, so it must not be
2. The breed is common and people aren’t going to stop getting them so I may as well get another

(1) Is, hopefully, very obviously subjective. Just because you haven’t seen a news article about it does not mean it’s a problem. And unfortunately, being a couple thousand years old does not come close to the massive amount of time it took the ecosystems to get this way. By Earth’s history standards, these cats have been there for a blink of an eye.

(2) Is never a good excuse to do anything. It’s group think and it’s a massive problem in society. I may as well justify owning slaves because “other people aren’t going to stop”. You surely see how nothing will change if everyone thinks that way.

I’m very glad to gear you neuter the cat at least. It’s at least helping combat the issue a bit.

I just want to make the world a better place, that’s all. I’m not trying to attack or shame you, I just want to save the birds (and cats) :(

If they’re meant to be outdoors then don’t feed and shelter them. That’s giving them an unfair competitive advantage against both their prey and other predators. Every rodent a house cat kills is a rodent that another predator doesn’t get. It leads to overpopulation and the eradication of their natural prey. In nature, if a predator’s prey is over-hunted without human intervention, then predators die off and the populations correct themselves (predators die off or move until the equilibrium is reached again). This cannot happen if you feed the animals when food becomes scarce and heal them (veterinarian) when they are injured. You are interceding in natural processes.

If it’s animal abuse then it’s very simple: don’t get the animal. No one is forcing you to get a cat (or Husky). If you can’t care for an animal responsibly then don’t get one at all. If you find one in the wild don’t interact with it, and let it be wild - don’t further damage the environment (more than we already have) so you can pet a cat once in a while.

I realize you aren’t going to change your mind, you seem pretty dug in. So I implore you to at least ensure the animal is spayed or neutered, and to consider not getting a new cat once the current one has passed on. Please, it’s just better for everyone involved.

Okay, if not for your own cat’s safety then do it for the good of the environment.

House cats are non-native species who are subsidized by humans feeding them. Thus they can kill purely for pleasure and often do. Every year, house cats kill billions of birds (and rodents) and it’s an ecological nightmare that is putting massive pressure on wildlife.

Please, just don’t do it. It’s unnecessary. You can create a stimulating environment inside and if you cannot then you shouldn’t get a cat.

• Domestic cats and their impacts on biodiversity: A blind spot in the application of nature conservation law
• The small home ranges and large local ecological impacts of pet cats

I really like the concept, and I see a store on their list that I’ve been to several times recently. Really makes me realize how addicted to buying books online I’ve become, rather than going in person.

My toxic trait is that I want to keep every book I ever read …

Really surprised nobody has mentioned Better World Books yet. Good selection of books, most of the used books seem to be former library books, and they (at least claim) to donate books to charity with every purchase.

You can get really cool books for really cheap with their bargain bin sales too.

I’ve also tried ThriftBooks but I got too many bad copies - one book, Lord of the Flies, which was owned by a high schooler and had writing on every single page of the book and another book which clearly had urine of some kind on it judging by how obsessed my cat was with the yellow stain on the spine. Their edition picker is also terrible, very similar to the way Amazon handles their options to where different editions are all smashed into one page.

Well yes, but also no. You can’t reproduce a book because that violates copyrights.

Open source in this context just means that nobody owns the book, you can reproduce it however many times you want, and distribute it where you want as long as you include the original license in the reproduction (MIT license).

Also, there’s a bit of a colloquial understanding that others are able to contribute or fork the original source material.

Definitely make your own, if you can stomach the time. You can buy molds online for a cheap initial investment, then just water down some fruit juice.

You can also use real fruit if you don’t mind a chunkier texture and own a food processor already.

Cheap popsicles. Relatively low calories (<100 depending on the brand), take a while to eat, and are extremely cheap.

If you make your own you can drive the price and Calories even lower and drive the flavor way up.

Side note: I just learned “popsicle” is the brand name and not a term for the food. Kind of like saying Kleenex instead of tissue. I had no idea, I’ve just always called them popsicles.