Dominant Queen

Internet round-up for the week of October 9, 2023

Well. We made it to Chicago. All of our things are here (and intact, as far as we can tell thus far), which is…good.

What’s not so great is that when we got to our new apartment, we discovered that it had not been repainted since the last tenants moved out. Or cleaned. AT. ALL.

It is…very, very dirty. We are cleaning as we go, and our landlord agreed to give us $200 (🙄), but it’s really slowed down the “We made it! Let’s unpack and get settled into our new home!” vibe.

Right now, I’m tethered to my iPhone hotspot with a singular bar of 5G service. I have more than 300 unread emails, which I’d love to get to, but we don’t have a computer with an ethernet port available (that doesn’t also need a monitor, keyboard, and mouse) to plug in to the wall to set up the internet, and we can’t find our router, so…yeah. Don’t get me started.

ALSO our first morning back we woke up to two parking tickets because I forgot what day it was and I thought it was Thursday even though it was Wednesday and when I realized it was street cleaning I Googled to see what time it started and the internet said 9 and it WASN’T 9 it was 7 so when we went out at 8:45 to move the car we already had a ticket PLUS our license plate was expired because we haven’t lived here in a year so we got a ticket for that too. I called to try to renew it (was literally planning on handling this the next day) and they told me I had to buy an entirely new license plate so we just ended up going to the DMV and getting one (I was in and out in under 20 minutes, so no complaints there).

The upside here is that now the ticketed license plate no longer exists, so good luck getting your $120, city! Except for the $60 “late fee” I had to pay to get a new city sticker bc I wasn’t going all the way to the City Clerk just to argue that I lived out of state for the last year. Kind of a wash, I guess.

It has been a RIDE.

Anyway the last three days can basically be summed up by this newly released picture of Existential Crisis Ben Affleck™.

Free me from this mortal coil

On a positive note — I did get to go to my favorite Target, which is nice, because I just waltzed right in and got everything I needed. It’s a 20 min drive now instead of 5 min, but I can cope. The parking lot has plenty of spots and there isn’t a 2 hour line to check out.

Overall, the time change hasn’t been too bothersome, surprisingly? I think it’s because we slowly traveled across the zones and got up earlier over the course of a couple of days?? Either that or it’s stress & anxiety and eventually we’re going to completely crash and sleep for 48 hours straight. Who knows.

Anyway, once I get my shit back up and running I have a lot to do, like leave reviews for four separate Hampton Inns. One of them had an 11AM checkout and a woman was literally going door to door knocking for housekeeping at 9:30?? We’re in West Des Moines for chrissake. Y’all aren’t even full!! Let a bitch wake up! Everybody needs to calm tf down.

I’ve unfortunately not had enough time to be online because of *gestures* all this and it’s really making me insane. I need INTERNET. The farthest I’ve gotten lately is sitting down on the couch while we’re eating dinner and watching Instagram stories for 20 min before crashing.

DESPITE EVERYTHING, I’ve got the tiniest little pile of things for ya this week:

Who Approved This Product?

Watch like, the first minute or so of this video:

@julesterpakMeta’s AI personas are here. Buckle up

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

I…do not understand what the point of this is other than for some celebrities to get millions of dollars from Meta (Yes, THIS Meta. The one that doesn’t have enough money to keep all their employees).

Here’s a couple articles on the topic: one from Creative Bloq titled “Meta's AI chatbots are a dystopian nightmare”, and one from The Gamer titled “Meta's AI Chatbots Are Leading Us Down A Dark Path.”

This seems dangerous to me for a number of reasons: teenagers giving personal and intimate information to Meta via a chatbot, stalkers thinking they’ve “been messaging with” one of these “people”, then attacking one of the celebrities because they “thought” they were friends. Plus — just the idea of giving your likeness to a company for people to say whatever they want to it?? This ain’t it.

Good Reads

The Washington Post had some important reporting this week (paywalled):

I am SO obsessed with Skelly.

@saramcelhaneyMa’am this is a Wegmans 😩 #fall #fallthings #skeleton #spooky #jeep

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

I have a small apartment, but I need one. They better not retire it before I get a yard to put a Skelly in. I want to put a Santa hat on it for Christmas! I want to give it bunny ears for Easter! I want to arrange its bony hands for Nose Picking Day!

Can someone please get me one and store it carefully for however long it takes for me to buy a house (fine print on this contract: I am a Millennial so this may be longer than my lifetime)?

And here’s some fun internet drama from the week — all starting with this viral video:

@equanaaa#hebrokeyallendofstory #fontainesoysterhouse #oysters

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

First off, I seem to be in the minority here — but if you take me on a date, I will eat what I want. I have gone to the movies with a man and had three hot dogs. I have, in my younger and higher metabolism days, eaten a 20 piece Chicken McNugget alone. I have eaten an entire Taco Bell Party Pack. Take me to dinner at your own risk.

ANYWAY — after this went viral, Miles Klee did a piece for Rolling Stone (paywalled, of course) interviewing the restaurant manager.

“I’ve had two ladies order six dozen [oysters] each,” she says. “That’s not even the cherry on top — they were drinking white Russians. I didn’t know how to personally feel about that. I was just like, this is insane to me, but okay.”

LET WOMEN EAT.

Speaking of which:

Randomly Selected Animal Cutie

Y’all know I wasn’t about to sleep on the winner of FAT BEAR WEEK!!

👑 SHE THICC 👑

All hail Grazer!! Look at this gal. She is beauty, she is grace, she is “one of the best anglers at Brooks River,” according to her bio.

She often preemptively confronts and attacks much larger bears—even large and dominant adult males—in order to ensure her cubs are safe. Her behavior produced benefits beyond the protection of her cubs. In summer 2023, many other bears remembered her reputation and Grazer maintained a high level of dominance even though she was single. For example, a large adult male, 151 Walker, regularly avoided her approach.

We stan a dominant queen!!!

I aspire to this level of other members of my species avoiding me because they’re intimidated. Maybe I need to wolf down some salmon.

That’s all from me this week. I’m off to keep cleaning this apartment and try to get actual internet going today so AT&T stops texting me about my data usage. Plus maybe next week we’ll actually be mostly set up? Maybe? Please.
K