We have a set of papier mâché ornaments depicting the twelve days of Christmas. I've learned to wait until Christmas Eve or even Christmas morning to put them on the tree because we also have cats who will knock them off and chase them around. They found the box over a week ago and I spent nearly an hour finding the four ornaments they'd hidden in different rooms. Fortunately, they have survived more than 20 years, unlike more breakable ornaments.

I think we've agreed on whose pillow this really is, hooman.

@vaurora As a software developer, my work-from-home wardrobe consists mainly of dark sweatpants that can be mistaken for slacks if seen briefly, and lots of cheap polo shirts. The hard part is whether I put in the bathroom effort to shave.

Happy #caturday. The cat trap ... sorry, I meant laundry basket ... is working perfectly. Now I just need one for my laundry.

They want to be in my office all day while I work, but they are quite happy to stay off my desk. Of course having a futon helps.

@TemplailloAhi @law_geek We have an orange girl. She has a *very* strong opinion about meal time. Lunch must be served no later than 11:30. Dinner is at 5pm. Since I work from home, those aren't difficult. If lunch conflicts with a meeting, I just serve it early. It's breakfast at 6am that's a pain.

Because I work from home, she knows where to find me. She and our tortie spend most of the day in my office on workdays. Thankfully, they both have favorite spots to sleep that aren't on my desk.

@cstross I love books that are just simple enough to be enjoyed on the first reading, but with enough depth and complexity to reward the second time through.

Hooman. There is new person. Not sure I like him. Did he bring foods?

Happy #caturday

This is the interloper she's been complaining about.

Happy #caturday ? I hope so. This one has had her nose out of joint for the last two days. There's been some territorial marking.

@cstross I normally avoid sharing my thoughts on how AI might be misused in the probably scant hope that some of my imagined scenarios will never happen. However, this story holds the faint glimmer of hope that someone will attempt to train a filter to recognize one side or the other in this mess. Whichever side succeeds will benefit us, the non-grifting humans and AIs. I'm trying to ignore the arms race as the other side escalates by training the grift-bots to fool the filters.

If this is going to be a happy #caturday, I have to use my opposable thumbs to drive to the store to get more cat food now.

@arclight Just be sure to give credit where it's due. It's likely that the system was explicitly designed for surface lots and curbside parking. Then the city parking enforcement and the vendor's sales dept did a deal that did involve any technical vetting. Just a guess.

@falken @batist3 @pluralistic This is yet another example of regulatory capture.

You can't see me. #caturday

@noctuaminervae There are three kinds of Outlook users:

1) People who work for employers that use a Microsoft infrastructure.
2) People who used what came pre-installed when they bought their computer.
3) I've got no explanation for why there's a third category.

Many adult adoptees were brought to the US as children, and adopted by parents who were themselves US citizens, but the adoptees were not granted US citizenship. Most of them were never informed that they weren't granted citizenship and now face possible deportation for something that is obviously not their fault. Often the countries they originally came from no longer recognize them as citizens either, so they have been made stateless.

https://www.adopteesforjustice.org/federal-legislation

#adoptees, #AdopteeVoices, #NAAM

Today is Adoptee Remembrance Day. If you aren't an adoptee, you almost
certainly didn't know that.

https://adopteeremembranceday.com/founder/

It was created in 2020 by Pamela Karanova as a time to remember adoptees lost
to suicide, abuse, neglect, and other problems steming from reliquishment and
adoption such as addiction.

Adoptees are approximately 4x more likely to attempt suicide than the general
population:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3784288/

That's on par with the rate for LGBTQ+ young people, according to the Trevor
Project, which aims to help LGBTQ+ youths:

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/article/facts-about-lgbtq-youth-suicide/

It's also higher than the suicide rate among veterans, although comparing the
rate of attempted suicide by adoptees to actual suicide by veterans is not an
even comparison:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10031829/

There are, and should be, organizations dedicated to helping those groups
with a higher suicide rate. There is an awareness on the part of the general
public that they are at higher risk. No such assistance or public awareness
exists for adoptees.

Anyone working in the adoption industry, directly or indirectly, has a moral
responsibility to know this and to do something about it. I have yet to hear
of any who publicly acknowledge it. It's very rare that they do anything to
make adoptive parents aware of it.

Paul Sunderland is an addiction psychotherapist. He didn't start out to study
the effects of adoption. He noticed that adoptees are over-represented in
treatment and sought to understand why. His lecture on Adoption & Addiction
is well worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e0-SsmOUJI&t=211s

@stevendbrewer Hold that thought for a while. We're about to begin National Adoption Awareness Month here in the US. To the extent that there is any attention given to it in the press and any awareness of it by the general public, it portrays adoption as so obviously good that there's no reason to ever question that assumption. I'll be sharing quite a bit here that challenges that societal narrative. I'm not a lone dissenting voice either. The entire structure of adoption makes it incredibly difficult for many adoptees, perhaps even the majority of adoptees, to have a grounded confidence in our own worth.

#NAAM #NAAM2025 #adoptee #AdopteeVoices

@kateiacy @StaceyCornelius Animal shelters will usually take pet supplies too.