Similarly, in the last few of her 20 years of life, my kitty picked up a new ”requirements” on how we slept. It started with her wanting to be in my arms, and she’d paw at me during the night until I woke up and wrapped my arms around her. Given her inability to communicate her desires, it took a couple weeks of significantly disrupted sleep to learn that’s what she wanted!

That continued but she also began pawing for things such as: 1) lifting the blanket so she could go under it, 2) laying on my back so she could rest her head on my hip, and 3) rolling to face her. The last was the funniest as she developed it only in her final two years. She just couldn’t bear me facing away from her even while I slept!

I lost so much sleep meeting that cat’s needs, lol. And it was worth every second of it.

Personally, I didn’t find this to be true. But I think the lifetime spent before the goodbye was worth all of the pain, as awful as it is. The hello to a new kitten was sweet and helped me think less frequently about the pain, but it wasn’t nearly equal to the pain of losing the old one.

That said, the girl I lost was without a doubt my soul pet. We spent 20 years together and losing her tore a hole in both my heart and soul. And yet I wouldn’t give up a single day I had with her if it would lessen the pain I have felt over the last 7 months since losing her.

I adopted a sweet new kitten about 3 months in and I am so glad I did. She’s wonderful and I think there’s a chance I got lucky and will have two soul pets in my life. But the joy of meeting her and getting to build a new relationship only makes me think less frequently of the pain of my loss, not feel it any less.

I’m sorry for your loss <3

• Fear of not having enough money to make it.
• Discomfort in seeing balances drop after years of saving; a lot of FIRE (Financial Independence/Retiring Early) folks get so into accumulating wealth that the transition into actually depleting that money can be terrifying.
• Identity tied up in work (as another commenter said). Not knowing what to do with your time once you retire. Not having hobbies or a social life outside of work.
• Having high ongoing expenses, like children in college.
• Inability to retire; not having enough. This is obviously the most common scenario. Most people (at least speaking from a US-centric view) are in this boat. Depending on source, I’m seeing median bank account balances of $5-20k for people in the 50–65 range, and median retirement balances around $100k in the 50–59 age range. That’s not enough for anyone to comfortably retire, and pensions or other sources of income are becoming exceedingly rare.

In your heart I think you know the answer or you wouldn’t be posting here like this. No, it’s not normal or healthy. That person is not a friend, and he seems dangerous to be around (maybe not for physical reasons but definitely for mental reasons).

Continue to be secretive and distance yourself from him; that’s not asshole behavior, that’s self-preservation. I hope you are able to separate yourself and get free from this person and in time find actual friends who care and support you for who you are.

Aww, she’s so cute! That’s the company I’ve been looking at so it’s nice to hear a personal experience not from their website!

May I ask what company you used for that?

I’m on medical leave from work and made a list of low-energy things I could do while recovering from surgery, and making a memory photo book is on that list! I’m also thinking about getting a customized stuffed animal that looks like my girl. It’s so hard to lose them.

Thank you for being there for them. I had to put down my soul pet, my cat of 20 years, in October. First time losing my pet as opposed to the family’s. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. Thankfully I was seeing a counselor who helped me through the worst of it and I’m so grateful to her. She cried too, and it touched me that she could empathize so deeply with what I was feeling.

When I talked about losing my kitty on here, someone said the sweetest thing that will always stay with me, “May her sunspot never move and may she rest in play.”

Being a cat person, I don’t know how relevant the sunspot part would be to a dog, but I feel like “rest in play” is such a lovely way to think about any pet’s passing.

Happy birthday!

Can you explain what you mean? Because I think we’re reading a very different meaning into it.

I read it as clever wordplay to acknowledge that one’s anecdote is not the same as data (by putting “data” in place of “dote” in ‘anecdote’ due to the similar sound). Considering that “argument from anecdote” is literally considered a type of fallacy, highlighting that one’s own experience is not scientifically rigorous enough to be considered data seems to be in alignment with general thinking on the matter.

Then again I’ve just learned that in 2020 the OED actually published “anecdata” literally as a facetious/disparaging plural of “anecdote,” so perhaps that’s why you take issue with the quote?

Plural of anecdote isn’t anecdata

I love this. Thank you.

I agree with most of what you said, but you are severely overestimating the cost of t-shirts at Walmart. They start at $4 for plain or $7 for graphic tees from what I can tell. Even band tees and things like Mickey Mouse are in the $9–14 range based on a cursory glance on their site.

Everyone who uses it will contribute to the dilution. It’s not like 1:1000 dilution from a single person’s shower becomes 1:100 if 10 people use it or 1:1 for a thousand. No, they each will use large amounts of water that dilute it down.

People don’t pour their soap down the sink (at least not for any normal uses); they use a small amount which gets washed away with a lot more water.

I’d suggest finding what concentration things are dangerous at and whether they break down organically or not. Then you can aim to keep your product below that concentration if you can so even if someone did pour it down the drain it wouldn’t be harmful. And if you confirm it will break down, you know you aren’t contributing to long-term build up either.

Yeah, that’s on OP. The article is actually titled, “Understanding Aggregate Trends for Apple Intelligence Using Differential Privacy.”

Tell me you didn’t read the article without telling me you didn’t read the article.

The entire thing is explaining how they are upholding privacy to do this training.

1. It’s opt-in only (if you don’t choose to share analytics, nothing is collected).
2. They use differential privacy (adding noise so they get trends, not individual data).
3. They developed a new method to train on text patterns without collecting actual messages or emails from devices. (link to research on arXiv)

The problem is with receipts on thermal paper, not those printed with normal ink, so [edit: many some] receipts are not an issue any more.

If you want to tell the difference, you could try applying heat (like a hair dryer or iron) over the receipts and see which ones change color (usually turning grey or black where heated).

Once you find a few, you’ll likely get a feel for which ones are likely to be thermal paper just by looking and you can practice extra care with those. (Tip: they are usually the ones that appear a bit glossy.)

I have a friend with one but haven’t talked with her about it much.

I think a strong use case you may not have considered is women’s tiny or nonexistent pockets. Having a phone small enough to securely fit in a pocket while still having a large screen phone definitely has its appeal.

They can appear green because of the plant growth, but don’t produce the green color themselves.

The idea that vaccines cause autism and therefore we shouldn’t give vaccines inherently implies that autism is a worse scenario than any of the diseases vaccines protect against. We have a measles epidemic killing children, and people would still prefer to not vaccinate because of a fear of autism.

If people think having a dead child is better than having an autistic child, that doesn’t bode well for autistic folks.