I love the arch so much. What a wonderful garden you have.

Hello Lally! I’m pleased to report that my peppers are mostly going strong, and wife was able to make the most delicious enchilada sauce with poblanos, cayennes, and anaheims mixed in. It was so rewarding to get to eat something made from scratch that was covered in sauce (also made from scratch!) from stuff I grew myself! Unfortunately, some have succumbed to what appears to be blossom end rot, but I’ve saved a lot of egg shells and am going to get to work on that. Even more unfortunate, my bell pepper plant seems to have shirked its mortal coil. I’m not sure if it was due to the heat or lack of watering, but I came out one day and it was gone. Pour one out for my bell pepper, that thing lived a few years and survived a move. Life is but a dream, we shall have more peppers <3

I’m not 100% what’s going on with my pumpkins, but the remaining two that haven’t succumbed to the heat are doing great. One has really taken off and is making friends with my asparagus fern I saved from Kroger last year. However, it seems that with both, the male flowers open up but I never see the female do her thing, so I haven’t been able to pollinate them. But, like I say every time I post these updates, I’m just along for the ride and am having fun on my balcony. But a teeny pumpkin would be neat!

Herbs are looking pretty good! My two potted mint plants are still kicking ass, though that’s not really anything to shake a stick at lol they grow like weeds. The oregano got a little heat damaged, but it’s not in direct sunlight for very long now that I’ve moved it. Rosemary’s looking good too, nothing much to say there. Can’t say the same about her baby though, that kid’s the end of the world (ba-dum-tiss). My basil is a bit meh, but it’s just a starter, and I’ve heard they’re not necessarily intended to last long, so I’m not too caught up in that.

I’m pleased that the kale and microgreens I sowed are doing well too. Most of the things I planted from seed didn’t last due to the heat, due to me being an amateur and doing it outside, but I’m able to add fresh kale and who-knows-what to salads and wraps, and that’s awesome. I also have one catnip that managed to make it, and one day it could be a huge catnip bush like its older sibling. That one’s just a starter plant, but it’s really taken off, and my cats love it. I decorate the kitchen with the flowers :)

Oh snap, thanks for catching that! I edited the title.

As a cleverly written and somewhat complex personal story, Infinite shines. It’s got compelling characters that make you care, and then it puts those characters through the wringer in their search for contentment.

That’s a great point I hadn’t considered, and can’t believe I hadn’t. Rapture felt like its own character to the story in a way that Colombia never really did, but it’s undeniable how well-done the characterization between them was.

Then why even comment? I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Have a good day!

As McLuhan put it, “the medium is the message” and video games inherently work better through a synthesis of gameplay and story, without one dominating over the other. Games that lean too far in one direction or the other (Metal Gear Solid’s interminably long cut-scenes for instance) take you too far out of the gaming medium and too far into other, more detached mediums.

Absolutely banger take, I agree completely. Games have a difficult needle to thread, unlike a book or movie that can be strictly narrative-based, a video game has to somehow give the player enough agency while taking it away to allow the story to progress. And now I have DND on the mind again.

I’m reminded of a comment my older brother made about Final Fantasy X, all those years ago. He described it as basically playing a movie. Go figure, I liked the cutscenes!

<3 I appreciate you.

That’s great! I remember myself enjoying the gameplay a lot, and it ran surprisingly well on my PC at the time. Any thoughts beyond that, anything about the article specifically? The article isn’t over here saying, “This award-winning game was bad!” it’s more so trying to take a closer look at the story and themes of the game as a whole from a 2024 perspective and how our current world can reflect them. Though to be fair ™, it is definitely meant to be a click-bait article that’s part of a greater “Spicey Takes” section.

Welp, guess that saves me from posting an image of a pepper with blossom end rot! I was wondering what was getting to my anaheims.

egg shells

So what you’re saying is, I have to have breakfast for dinner tonight, one of my favorite things? Well darn, anything for my garden I suppose. Honey, we’re making breakfast sandwiches! ;)

This breaks my fucking heart.

I was in and out of children’s hospitals from birth to legal adulthood. The fact that these children and their parents are being forced to feel fear, hopelessness, rage, on top of all the fear and stress they must feel, just fucking God dammit I don’t know how I’m supposed to stop drinking in 2024 man God Almighty

Sweet or unsweet? Lemon or no? Choose wisely, traveler.

I plant garlic during the fall for this reason! Fresh garlic chives on my ramen with an egg, yes yes :D

Alt text: an image of various peppers (and one tomato) on a small wooden plate. There are small green peppers, small red peppers, a large curved cayenne, a small bell pepper, and two medium sized green peppers, either anaheim or poblano I don’t know I’d have to check. The red peppers are starting to dry.

I done grew me a garden on my balcony ma! This isn’t all I’ve harvested this season either, wife has turned my cayennes into a hot sauce already, and the red peppers you see here were turned into a hot-paste-base… thing! And my tomato plant keeps giving me fat and juicy bois every week or so. Nothing crazy, just a big red one on my balcony for wife to cut up and enjoy. I personally hate them, but c’est la vest and an alligator chest, as they say.

There’s catnip and pumpkins and sunflowers I’ve grown from seed, and mint and basil and, man, I love having this little garden out there so much :)

Faaaantastic! This actually could be pretty dope.

BRB, loading my shotgun with birdshot.

Hm I need a shotgun.

Brian Jacques, of Redwall fame. I feel so lucky to have grown up on such a lovely collection of adventure stories. I have such fond memories of my mom surprising me with a new book. I picked one up the other day and read a snippet, and it was just as lovely as it ever was.

In the 1980s, Jacques worked as a milkman, on a round which included the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind.[1] He got to know the children there, and volunteered to read to them. However, he became dissatisfied with the state of children’s literature, with too much adolescent angst, and began to write stories for them. So that the visually impaired children would be able to picture the scenes he was writing for them, he developed a highly descriptive style, emphasizing sound, smell, taste, gravity, balance, temperature, touch, and kinesthetics.[6] From these short stories and reading sessions emerged Redwall, an 800-page handwritten manuscript.[7] -wikipedia

Guy was a saint, simple as.

Southern balcony gardener reporting in with mostly-positive results! Some of the plants I grew from seed are doing well, including my kale, micogreens, sunflowers, catnip, and even a few pumpkins! The kale and microgreens are looking great, though I need to harvest more to prevent crowding (right?), so I’ve actually started to add the microgreens into my lunches! I think I’ll make a baby kale salad today as well.

Unfortunately, I’ve lost most of the pumpkin sprouts due to this heat and my own inexperience, but(!) I never had high hopes for container pumpkins on a balcony in the South. It’s just a fun thing to try, and maybe the few I have will flower again and let me help pollinate.

That brings me to my real passion, peppers! My cayennes have been doing swimmingly, and I’ve been able to harvest enough for wife to make our own brand of hot sauce. It’s pretty cool seeing a finished product this early in the summer! I’m excited for more to come in, especially my jalapenos and ghost peppers so we can make it kick a little harder. I actually found a hot dragon roll pepper that had ripened way sooner than expected, and Bees, I am happy to report that a glass of milk was almost necessary to help with the heat!

That’s it for now :) here’s a picture of a sunflower that I grew.

Much love to y’all <3

I have no doubts about that either, myself. Though even if such an abomination of a doppelganger were to exist, and it seems that these companies are hellbent on making it so, it would be worse for the reasons you described previously: prolonging and molesting the grieving process that human beings have evolved to go through. All in the name of a dollar. I apologize for being so bitter about this (this bitterness is not directed at you, frog), but this entire "AI’ phenomenon fucking disgusts and repulses me so much I want to scream.

We have a box of old recipe cards from my grandmother that my wife cherishes. My parents gifted them to her because out of all their daughter-in-laws, she is the one that loves to cook and explore recipes the most. I just can’t imagine someone wanting something like that in a sterile technological aspect like an “AI-powered” app.

“But Trev, what if you used an LLM to generate summaries-” no, fuck off (he said to the hypothetical techbro in his ear).

The platformer was pretty decent. I remember the intro cutscene scaring me as a kid, lol.

I’m not sure what the purpose of this comment is. Sharks are insurmountably important for the oceanic ecosystem and the historic methods of research and development are really interesting. You have a greater chance of drowning at the beach, no question.