Disco Rats
Internet round-up for the week of March 6, 2023
Guys. GUYS.
I know I said I was going to quit talking about the weather, but...it’s raining again. IT’S RAINING. AGAIN.
WHY.
It’s so dark outside!! And it is making me extremely sleepy!!
Apparently, we’re getting another one of these Atmospheric Rivers. (That’s a gifted NYT link, you’re safe to click). And there’s another one coming next week!! Nothing enrages me more than opening the weather app and seeing rainclouds for the next 7 days.
Just look at the amount of snow this gal has gotten in Tahoe:
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I lived in the Midwest for TWELVE YEARS and I’ve never seen anything like this!! It’s ENOUGH SLICES!!
I spent the majority of this week working on a sitcom pilot I’ve been jostling around in my head for a few years based on my time working in IT (mostly focused on Groupon). It’s been a lot of fun and really easy to write because it’s about people and scenarios I know very well. Of course, it’s all a bit exaggerated (it is art, after all), but I’m having a good time doing it, which is kind of the point, I guess! I can’t wait to finish it up — if I don’t get distracted and start another project (oops), I might have it done by the end of next week!
As usual, I’ve otherwise had plenty of time online this week, so here’s what I’ve gathered up for ya:
Rat City, Bitch. Rat, Rat City, Bitch
Last night I was mindlessly scrolling through TikTok when I came upon a gift from the algorithm gods: a livestream of rats eating trash on the street in Queens.
It was amazing.
People would traipse through unknowingly, then see the rats, and leap out of the way. One person started through, saw the rats, and turned back toward the camera with an “omg what is wrong with you” look on their face that made me laugh out loud.
I mean, look at these boys. It’s a rat buffet!
Annoyingly, the streamer kept talking about calling the city to get them “taken care of” instead of allowing the rats to feast. But he also admitted to feeding them?? “To bring awareness,” he said. I wonder if it’s to bring awareness to subscribing to his TikTok and buying him little coins and things on the livestream. 🧐 He also mentioned that this was Day 86. And yet, somehow, he hadn’t given any of the rats names?? Wild. I complained.
I started commenting names for them, like Regina, Geoffrey, and Jason Mouserulo (he fell off a box) and then the streamer acknowledged it and started playing Mambo No. 5 to name the rats and someone bought a disco ball for the livestream and I just — I’ve never been happier.
IT’S A RAT PARTY, BABY!!
I wish these rats were out 24/7 because I would have this ratstream playing constantly.
In other Rat News™ Chuck E. Cheese (yes, that’s Charles Entertainment Cheese) is still programmed by floppy disks. I find it hysterical that the chain is being cagey (heh) about discussing their antiquated tech.
I’m Being Personally Attacked
AND IT’S BY ONE OF MY FAVORITE GAMES!! How dare?!
What does this have to do with anything?? Well, just check out this description from simscommunity.info:
When you go to work, there’s a chance that the company is going through “restructuring”. Meaning that there’s going to be lay-offs. You may be able to do just fine – working a little extra hard during that period.
If you do get laid off, we added some interesting options afterwards. If you have friends, they might come in to check on you. There’s also some other features when searching for jobs after just being laid off.
WHY DO I NEED TO SIMULATE A LAYOFF?!
The whole idea behind playing The Sims is that I can create a fun life different from the one I actually live in! A life where I am a vampire and a famous stand-up comedian (which I practiced in my mirror), can visit a celebrity’s mansion and use their bathtub without recourse, and can just put a book in the mail to a publisher after writing it in one day without sleeping and then go to bed at 9am and wake up 8 hours later to 1300 Simoleons in my bank account!!
Also lol at the idea that working harder during company restructuring would save you from layoffs. Not if your Sim CEO “overhired” during the pandemic!!
Ice, Ice Baby
Are any of y’all making fancy ice (another gifted NYT link from yours truly 😊)?? I can’t get enough of the ice tray restock videos on TikTok. This seems like a cheap way to have expensive-feeling things but I can’t help but think it’s actually pricey to buy a zillion silicon trays and fruits and herbs and things?? Has anyone tried this? Is it worth it? Do I need fancy ice???
Good Reads
This week’s read is from
, a medieval satire site here on Substack, and is extremely funny.
El*n M*sk
Sorry, I can’t avoid talking about him this week.
For starters, I’d like to continue our discussion of Medieval Times™ with this newsworthy announcement: Mr. Musk is planning to build his own city in Texas! According to that article from CNN, “…Elon Musk and his companies have reportedly been acquiring thousands of acres of land in Texas with the hope of starting a town where his employees could live and work.”
This, from Mister “We need to end the ‘lords and peasants’ system of blue checks on Twitter”? I suppose the idea now is to end “lords and peasants” systems online and have it in real life instead. Who doesn’t want to live in tenement housing designed by a guy who hawks self-driving cars that run over kids and spontaneously combust?
NOTE: companies that you work for should not also control your housing. Can you imagine? Consider the situation I’m in now — it’s bad enough getting laid off and losing your income and health insurance (fortunately for me, my husband’s company offers it). Imagine losing your housing, too? Your CEO (lord) makes poor hiring decisions and needs to cut salaries (peasants) to please the investors (king), and you lose basically everything?? No. I don’t like it.
But that’s the least of his problems this week.
Monday, Twitter suffered a massive API outage. As I suspected, it’s been confirmed that things broke when they were trying to make changes to lock down the API to paying customers only. Elon claimed this is because “the stack is brittle” and “needs a complete rewrite.”
For the non-engineers out there — you’ll note in the linked article above that some engineers complain about “tech debt”. This is a very normal thing in large codebases, because cleaning up an existing codebase is time-intensive and therefore, costly. Rewriting it from scratch would be nearly impossible. So, most tech companies end up building features on top of features without looking back. Tech debt, while annoying, is common. If you can fix something small while working on something else, you’ll probably do it. But otherwise, you’re focused on moving forward — and the way to do that is to properly test your code changes. When you have appropriate lead time and a team of experienced engineers who can test and check each other’s work, these types of things won’t happen. But if you fire everyone who “doesn’t write enough code” or “makes too much money”, well … 🤷🏼♀️
Then, Elon got into a very embarrassing (for him) online spat with a disabled (now former?) employee, who, it turns out, is a very cool person.
And it seems like he’s getting a little paranoid. Also this and this.
Sigh. I remember the days when I was enthralled by watching him shoot his car into space. Now I wish he’d been strapped into the driver’s seat.
Please just give me my fun social media site back. Please?
The (E)x Factor
From the outside (now), big tech looks like it’s having a big meltdown.
I’ve seen multiple complaints from Google employees that their total compensation has actually gone down this year. Y’all laid off 12,000 people and you can’t continue to pay the ones you kept at their same rate?? Bro.
Plus, Meta’s planning another round of layoffs.
This thread says it all: They’re peeling away perks and making a secure career choice seem much less so. I guess the plan is to use AI?
You heard it here first, folks!!! Truly dreading going back in to tech at this point.
Randomly Selected Animal Cutie
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I am usually not a tiny dog person but I love this little guy!! I just wanna scoop him up and put him in my pocket*!
*Not available in women’s clothing.
That’s it from me this week! Hope you have a great weekend. Wish me good weather again sometime soon!
K
Verily!