Man I love this time of year - out of the grim misery of winter, lots of birds being noisy, stuff getting green again, no freezing my ass off getting up in the morning or getting out of the shower. It's so nice.
Man that Moroccan earthquake sounds horrible. Having been through the Christchurch ones, any time there's news of a big quake now I get the heebie jeebies, and just feel so awful for the people suffering through it. Especially in countries like Morocco and Turkey, where building standards aren't good.
We paid off the mortgage yesterday! I don't mean to gloat (especially when the cost of living and interest rates are making things so tough for many at the moment) - we're not telling anyone in real life though, so I just wanted to let some of my excitement out, even if anonymously.
I'm 38, and the only family help was a $5000 loan from the in-laws which we paid back within a year. We bought really young (didn't feel like it at the time, but it was - early/mid 20s), so benefited from much lower prices and interest rates (though the first rate we had was 7.5%, that's also the highest one we had). That first place got earthquaked though and we had to start again from scratch, so it wasn't all smooth sailing.
The house is old and tired, and there's a lot of deferred maintenance (no curtains match anywhere, the carpet is shit, and we still have single glazing), so that'll take up the savings for a good long while. But man, it feels like a weight has been lifted.
Such a great effort! They're really cool wee creatures.
I love cats. But I also love birds, so our two kitties are indoor-only cats and they're happy as. They have company, warmth, food on demand, and are much safer. Just yesterday I saw a cat that had been hit by a car, and it was quite a horrible sight. I hope it didn't suffer long. Its injuries were very, very unpleasant to see.
I don't really care about the main reason noted in the article (visiting cats and poop), for me it's more about protecting birdlife, and the safety of the cats themselves. I'd fully support a curfew for cats, like some states in Aus have. And mandatory microchipping and desexing.
Got my Bill Bailey tickets, pretty decent seats too.
It was brilliant seeing him a couple years ago, it was one of the first large events I went to after lockdown times. Nice to have him back so soon.
Good to see. I hope it continues to slowly decrease or flatline, and stay there for a long time to give incomes a chance to catch up. I own my house (with a small mortgage), so that's not said out of "envy" or whatever other mild insult often gets thrown at potential FHBs. It's simply wrong that something as essential as shelter has been turned into a commodity driven to ridiculous prices purely by greed.
The novelty of winter has worn off, and I would like to be warm now please.
Yes!! The Dune movies are the only big movies I've been excited about in a loooong time. Between the crappy nostalgia remakes (which never live up to the originals) and the endless superhero franchise churn, the theatre experience has been quite dire for far too long.
I love that Villeneuve is bringing the craft of movie-making back to blockbuster movies, and doubly so that he's done it with the Dune stories. And he's done them justice so far, both the material and with the beauty of the cinematography.
Yeah, I've been using it for a few weeks now and it seems to be growing steadily. I joined on lemmy.world at random because I didn't really understand how it all works at the start. But that instance and the NZ one seem pretty good, there's some good discussion and few dickheads.
It's not as big as The Other Place of course, but it's gaining popularity slowly. And tbh, I wouldn't really want it to be massive - I like the slower pace, and it seems more welcoming being a smaller community.
I totally agree with you. Genuine participation > growth for the sake of growth.
(Long-time reddit user, and former IRC (and ICQ!) user here too)
Man, the news about Efeso Collins is sad. I hope his family heard about it before it hit the news. Pretty disrespectful reporting if not.