I’m sorry. Just wanted to give you a virtual hug if you’d like one.

Ugh, yours sounds even worse than ours.

We just elected a centre-right party that needed to go into coalition with our most right-wing party, who are libertarians, and our most populist party. They finally formed yesterday and now we have a government that is going to destroy the environment and decimate social services.

Remarkably, the letter’s signees include Ilya Sutskever, the company’s chief scientist and a member of its board, who has been blamed for coordinating the boardroom coup against Altman in the first place.

I am so confused.

I was a bit offended by tourists doing that mmhmm thing until I found out that it’s considered polite in the US.

I was interpreting it as “yes I know you are thankful to me, and so you should be! By the way, I’m an oaf.”

“c’est moi,” meaning, “it’s me who thanks you.”

Ah so that’s what that means. I thought I was mishearing. That’s pretty close to what I was brought up with, “it’s my pleasure” (meaning it’s me who is pleased to be helping).

The informal/vernacular in my country (NZ) is “sweet as” which puzzles most visitors, or sometimes “it’s all good”.

That’s such a cool idea!

That sounds hard.

Do you meditate at all?.Sometimes it can help reset the critical inner voice.

That’s so cool that you’re doing NaNoWriMo! I’ve always felt too daunted by lack of plot. Let us know how it goes!

Ah that explains it. Thanks!

I thought they had already done it. I got the notification months ago.

The top result is already out. Obviously the John Oliver fans got their wish and Pūteketeke won. Thousands of them had to be disqualified for cheating, though.

We are all waiting now to see who is in second. Fingers crossed for the Fairy Tern, New Zealand’s most endangered bird!

I’ve never used twitter in my life, still have a vague interest in what Musk is doing to it though.

That tracks.

Pretty sure Elon Musk railed against bots on twitter despite having been proven to have used bots on twitter to manipulate opinion himself.

I’m so sorry.

Apart from my illness support group, I’m only on fediverse social media now, and only via web browser. It’s a breath of fresh air.

I’m realising there are subtle ways that enshittification constrains and shapes actual conversations between us.

Outside is in my top 5. It really holds up.

The accoustic version of Dead Man Walking with just Bowie and Reeves Gabrels is probably one of my all time favourites.

We are “social animals” though. It’s normal for the social animals to attempt to regulate what each other does and how they treat others in the group.

You see this in apes, elephants, whales, etc.

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Realistically, the climate catastrophe is going to mean earth supports a much smaller population of humans, which will hopefully adapt to the changed conditions.

I’m not sure what form that will take, but my guess is they will probably shrink in stature due to diet and have some adaptations for breathing less oxygen-rich air.