InvalidName2

And I'm guessing enough boomers DID subscribe for years to make it worth it, if my anecdotal experience is anything close to normal.

I barely made it through the great recession.

At one point, I was down to my last $500 USD which didn't even cover the rent coming up due in days, most of my calories were coming from fruits and veggies I was literally collecting from the wild, looking at eviction, and with no job prospects when I was so desperate that I begrudgingly accepted the worst job of my entire life (so far).

I fought my way into a better job and career over the years, but continued to live like a dude who was only a month or two away from homelessness. I did not take extravagant vacations, wear high end clothes, drive a flashy car, own an expensive home, eat fancy meals, buy lots of "toys". Aside from electronics, almost everything I owned was second hand or gifted to me. People constantly made judgemental comments about my lifestyle, clothes, car, and so on.

By the end of 2024, I was almost at the point of feeling financially secure in life, considering making some big upgrades to my lifestyle.

Then in 2025, I got laid off after more than a decade from a company that religiously referred to its employees as family. No warning. In fact, up until that point, all we were hearing was lies (ex: we're doing okay financially, we planned for this sort of thing, etc). I had 10 years of top scores on evaluations, 10 years of impeccable project work, 10 years of raving reviews from my peers. And yet, when the least little bit of financial difficulty reared its ugly head, I was cut in the first round of layoffs.

Fortunately for me, I sacrificed and lived quite frugally over the years, so I just don't give a shit about the job market right now. I'd love to have a job, I feel like I'm basically living off of money that could be my retirement, but at the end of the day fuck Trump and the flailing Trump economy. If I have to go 10 years without a job, it's going to suck, but I've got this.

On the other hand, I feel horrified for many of my coworkers who got laid off at the same time, and for the majority of people in general who have lost their jobs because of Trump and his sycophants. Most of them either didn't get a chance to prepare or didn't have the foresight to prepare the way I was privileged enough to do.

No wonder the bull didn't carrot all.

I bought a handful of cheap / deep discount games during the Summer Sale this year.

One I wasn't sure about was BIOTA. Turns out it's been more fun than I expected for such a simplistic game.

I've also been playing Blasphemous. I really like Metroidvanias but these "souls like" style games are irritating to me. Still, it was cheap and I can appreciate the aesthetic.

I'm looking forward to having more time to play these games, as of yet, it's been like 20 minutes here, 30 minutes a few days later, so it's hard to make much progress and enjoy them with such limited time to dive in.

I told my neighbor's dog she was a good girl so she went back home, picked a giant bouquet of daffodils, and then personally delivered them to me at work that afternoon.

And if you posted that story on certain social media sites, you'd get thousands of upvotes and fawning comments from people who seemingly believe your fake as shit story.

So I support this image, because it feels like a nice, polite degree of mockery on this trend. And at least it's not as dangerous for the critters as sticking poisonous flowers into the mouth of the family pet for social media clout.

In my part of the world, there are at least a dozen+ culinary and/or medicinal mushrooms that are distinctive and easy to identify (even by casuals like me). These don't really have any dangerous look-a-likes that also grow in the same area. I stick to those and those alone. Granted, even at 12 or so species that I can ID, that's probably like a tiny fraction of the number of different species that exist in this area.