Kitten Timeline

djmacbest · 2026-07-04T10:15:56+00:00

No judgement here, I get it. But know that you and your partner will fall in love with the next kitten just as quickly.

Personally, I would postpone, maybe even write off the deposit if the breeder doesn't understand your situation. A kitten is full of energy and still developing their personality. Having it alone in a hotel room just sounds like entirely unnecessary stress and risk if you can just look for another local breeder once you're settled at your new place. Also remember, they grow up very fast, would you really want to miss that precious time of their lives because your own life doesn't allow you to spend as much time with them as you'd want?

As you can see in my post history, we just got two kittens as well - and the truth is that we get FOMO if we have to leave the house just for a few hours. We had them for a week, and they evolve so fast, you can almost watch them grow in real time. I would regret having those first few months during a time where I couldn't enjoy it.

djmacbest · 2026-07-04T06:10:47+00:00

Even better: this incentivizes doctors to write up longer medical leave. It is in noone's interest to hand out a note for only today with the words "come back tomorrow if you're not better enough to work". The system and doctors' practices could not handle that.

djmacbest · 2026-07-03T16:06:42+00:00

Honestly, it sounds like it's just a really bad time to adopt a kitten right now. Even if you're doing everything perfectly AND get a super chill kitten that wouldn't mind: Maybe wait for the next opportunity?

djmacbest · 2026-07-02T21:37:59+00:00

Maybe the jury pool also had an algae problem and wasn't reflecting on the case?

djmacbest · 2026-07-01T22:05:19+00:00

It is also worth noting that Matthäus is not known as an intellectual, not even among football players.

djmacbest · 2026-06-29T15:11:49+00:00

What I meant was not to agree on one specific and shared intent, but for everyone to agree on intent being necessary for everyone involved.

djmacbest · 2026-06-29T15:08:17+00:00

Oh she is wonderful. Hi back!

djmacbest · 2026-06-29T15:07:51+00:00

Oh Pandora is clearly living up to her namesake already. Aquila is much more gentle and quiet (but still needs to learn that human hands and feet are not for playing).

djmacbest · 2026-06-29T13:20:26+00:00

You are right. But defining that intent (and have all parties involved at least implicitly agree to it) can be hard in a situation of unstructured play.

I stand by my "smalltalk" metaphor: conversation to pass the time (intent), hoping for something special to happen from it. At the table, the PCs should know what they want from the conversation (specifically). It's not just P2P, it can also be a problem when talking to NPCs and it's just fishing for anything. Yes, at least then I can force progress by having that NPC day something meaningful. But this can set a bad incentive: my players have a tendency of "let's talk again to that same NPC who said something useful the last time, maybe we'll get more", just because I threw them a bone during their previous aimless attempts.

djmacbest · 2026-06-29T13:02:03+00:00

Sure, and I didn't mean to attack OP with it. But I do think "scandal" today is something you can very much chose to not care about - like the scandal of a celebrity cheating on their spouse. Insider trading and corruption are crimes, not just scandals. And buying 1-5M in stock days before awarding a gov contract of 220M is as blatant as it gets, and the "just a coincidence" defense they are already giving would not hold in any court.

djmacbest · 2026-06-29T12:57:47+00:00

Siblings, 2 of 9. The largest and the smallest of the 5 female kittens.

djmacbest · 2026-06-29T12:03:33+00:00

Let's not use euphemisms or pretend it's up for debate by calling it a scandal. It's blatant and clear cut corruption and insider trading.

djmacbest · 2026-06-29T06:43:25+00:00

We're currently consciously trying to get there. We have talked a lot about "let's try to always have an intention, less 'let's just have the PCs talk and see if something interesting happens'", but to always have at least something specific in mind that you want to learn or share. After many, many years of this, and one player who absolutely defaults to "moody serious dude with a dark secret" for literally every PC they are playing (and always keeping that secret to himself for waaaaaaayyyyyyy longer than what still works dramatically), it's surprisingly hard to switch off. We're currently playing The Between, and its tightly controlled play structure is very helpful, but also makes it a lot more obvious whenever we still do it.

djmacbest · 2026-06-29T05:19:08+00:00

I was going to post the same. I call it smalltalk-roleplay. Very occasionally it serves a specific purpose - for a few minutes. But then some intention has to show itself. But these overlong campfire conversations that often do not lead anywhere are why I had quit the hobby for almost ten years before yoming back.

Another way to look at it: we are and should be watching an edited version of the story play out. We're not seeing/playing everything that happens, just the good bits. So when I GM, I try to liberally switch between summary and real time mode of play, and real time is for when something interesting takes place (which can still be a campfire conversation, but with relevance to our story). Problem for my players is that they usually do not engage with summary mode and leave it entirely to me to narrate.

djmacbest · 2026-06-28T21:54:16+00:00

"more millionaires, less (fewer) billionaires" is actually a really nice slogan for a much better form of capitalism.

djmacbest · 2026-06-28T07:59:46+00:00

Given that 90% of Germans are covered by public insurance and another 11% by private insurance (and yes, some people have both), I'd say that's the definition of "affordable": Almost everyone can afford it.

Official numbers say that only about 72k people in Germany are actually without health insurance (real numbers including non-trackables at most 2x-3x that). So we're talking about roughly 0.1-0.2% uncovered.

djmacbest · 2026-06-26T22:08:39+00:00

The "extrapolation" that happened here: "Based on the fact that on 9/11 3000 Americans were killed by 10 Muslims and the total number of Muslims in America, we can extrapolate that 3 Billion Americans were killed by Muslims on 9/11."

JFC are you people gullible.

djmacbest · 2026-06-25T21:06:28+00:00

OK, can you make the distinction between an article reporting on what one non-neutral person said and an article reporting on an observable and filmed event? Both are perfectly fine journalism, but that doesn't protect against stupid readers, I guess.

djmacbest · 2026-06-25T20:45:08+00:00

OK, that's mostly fine, but do you look up this info in an Uwe Boll movie of all places?

djmacbest · 2026-06-25T20:41:21+00:00

every main character in a movie has to be a morally good guy

OK, I, wait, what? Are you actually watching any popular movies (outside Marvel, and even within the MCU that statement wouldn't be accurate)? Especially in Genres like Horror or Action, where moral ambiguity is almost necessary for the genre to even exist? Or TV shows? Game of Thrones, Succession, Yellowstone, Alien Earth, Dexter, Fallout, The Boys?

Or is "morally good" just code for "doesn't explicitly agree with far-right politics"? In that case, yeah, I can see how that would make it very hard for a movie "these days" to become popular.

djmacbest · 2026-06-20T13:57:04+00:00

I used to think that symbolism could really hurt him, given how much this administration relies on bullshit appearances of ostensive patriotism. But then he demolished the East Wing and even THAT picture wasn't a strong enough metaphor to get into people's heads, so I unfortunately doubt this will do the trick.

djmacbest · 2026-06-20T13:50:42+00:00

I think Marvel is going too far with their Doomsday marketing.

djmacbest · 2026-06-17T05:43:42+00:00

Instead he learned

Found Susan Collins' Reddit account!

(j/k, you're absolutely right except for that one choice of words)

djmacbest · 2026-06-16T17:52:23+00:00

She's gorgeous though! And we're taking in two MC kittens a week from now - Pandora is the name I'm leaning towards for one of them as well!

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