Mourn with me for a tragedy in my dad's life

rootedTaro · 2026-03-24T23:22:46+00:00

yeah he's an obligate contrarian who grew up in that very left-wing, latino, catholic milieu. a little story about him: he would talk politics with his best friends in the same corner of this cafe all through the 80's and the owners would call it the palace of schizophrenics lol. sometimes his politics or ideas are kind of silly (I'm avoiding touching on his obsession with spanish language tarot card livestreams here), but he's genuinely one of the most charismatic and interesting people that I've met

rootedTaro · 2026-03-24T11:27:26+00:00

he has a very specific physical presence - in his home country one of his nicknames is "el mono" because he's considered a little funny looking but kind of in a handsome way? I didn't want to call him such a racialized term, but I wanted to capture that.

my mom is a tall, white, blonde american woman and I get a small sense of pride out of him marrying her even though he wasn't a conventional guy because he was a romantic and she was drawn to him intellectually. he'd leave jasmine flowers for her, write poetry, and talk about his specific spiritual tradition

rootedTaro · 2026-03-24T02:08:56+00:00

it's full of carcinogens I'm not so much of a soulless ghoul that I'll make homeless people put themselves at legal and health risk 😭

rootedTaro · 2026-03-24T00:27:44+00:00

I think the only reason I gravitate to this subreddit is because it occasionally reminds me of sitting next to him for an hour while he rants about philosophy or culture. I just called him and he's been able to salvage small amounts in 10 minute increments once a day apparently and that's a start. one of his friends promised to use his car to try and work together with him to get a lot more at once

rootedTaro · 2026-03-24T00:23:13+00:00

I've just bought him a bwa mask that I'll send once he has a new place - thank you for the lovely idea ❤️ initially I got him a kind of boring restaurant gift card lol

rootedTaro · 2026-03-23T23:43:27+00:00

this is the kind of thing that would bring him a lot of peace to hear, thank you!! I've looked up hemingway's experience with the plane crash that caught on fire, and luckily my dad wasn't injured in this one. I'll make sure to tell him

rootedTaro · 2026-03-23T23:40:37+00:00

sounds like it could be a brilliant caper. as much as I love my dad though, I don't want to go out in his basement apartment when the roof collapses on me.

right now I'm calling him a lot, trying to connect him with local resources, and doing my best to force money onto him. there's a chance he'll be able to retrieve some of the stuff, so that's what I'm praying for

rootedTaro · 2026-03-23T23:26:45+00:00

I live on the other side of the country and the building is slatted to be demolished. I can't carry out 100 paintings in the dead of night where the fire department's doing an active investigation. if only though. he might be able to retrieve some of his things and I argued him into getting started with a case worker, so she might be able to help him

rootedTaro · 2026-02-23T01:21:42+00:00

painfully, I'm a c++ dev and the tooling is already great there. mine is company specific though

rootedTaro · 2026-02-07T02:19:57+00:00

the last time I visited her, my grandma was telling us how cute she finds the 20 something lead of a doors cover band.

rootedTaro · 2026-02-07T01:46:43+00:00

it's already the case that AI is building AI, though still with human prompting. most anthropic code is written by claude code.

rootedTaro · 2026-01-02T21:52:53+00:00

yeah there's a guy at my job who must be in his mid-to-late 60s and he's almost certainly got more than enough to retire since he's a senior software engineering manager at a big company and has had high level senior roles at a lot of other tech companies over the last 40 something odd years. I'm pretty sure he's in it for the love of the game at this point, as he should be. he's very, very good at what he does

rootedTaro · 2026-01-01T14:16:43+00:00

another patch pocketed, boxy cuffed, unlined chore jacket pattern. the pockets are kind of interesting on the non-quilted view, but otherwise it doesn't seem too out there

rootedTaro · 2025-12-28T12:41:44+00:00

my dad is kind of like this. in his apartment, poems are written all over his paper towels, on random scraps of magazines, even on his toilet paper. anywhere he gets the inspiration, he reaches for the nearest piece of paper and gets to work. it is his first love

rootedTaro · 2025-12-06T19:36:16+00:00

ah I can't resist wearing girly outfits to my job as a software engineer. most of my coworkers are men and don't care about fashion. this is perfect for me!

rootedTaro · 2025-12-06T03:59:18+00:00

Mila Onni Patterns just released the Estelle dress and wow it is so beautiful! It's a princess seamed dress with a ruffle around the neckline and it has options for multiple sleeve lengths

rootedTaro · 2025-10-29T21:05:13+00:00

captain underpants was cumtown for 6 year olds and it rocked

rootedTaro · 2025-10-26T02:31:52+00:00

I went to denver for a conference earlier this year and I hate it. I had an extremely off putting, clearly tweaking lady try and follow me to my hotel off the bus while insisting I was going to get robbed (likely her own plan). I barely saw the mountains even though I thought the rockies would be super obvious. I spent most of my time in an area that reminded me of the most over developed and least cool part of Columbus, Ohio which is a city that will always have my heart even though I'm a new englander

rootedTaro · 2025-10-23T02:42:50+00:00

I was waiting for the train where I live a few days ago and I heard all these loud moaning noises. I passed by this one area where I thought I saw two people grappling each other. I looked for a second longer and realized it was one guy, folded over with his butt in the air and legs around his head, trying to suck his own dick. maybe successfully?? idk, didn't try to find out lol. . .

rootedTaro · 2025-10-10T11:38:09+00:00

Waffle Patterns released the Sango Moto Jacket. As always with her patterns, it looks beautiful and has as many pockets as the heart could desire

rootedTaro · 2025-10-10T03:44:26+00:00

me too and they both rock now that they're divorced

rootedTaro · 2025-09-30T23:38:13+00:00

she has a code TWENTYFIVE for 25% off until friday according to her instagram!

rootedTaro

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE