Lauren

Do you want me to respond to these 24 questions or do you want a screenshot of my client saying "We couldn't do this without you; you're a lifesaver." Be honest.

Just spent 2,000 words writing about how great I am at work. I feel like I should just be able to say "I saved the client half a million dollars and they constantly lavish me with praise" followed by a 😎 👑 emoji but I gotta assign myself a 5-point scale rating instead I guess.

One of my expectations on my performance review is to push AI on my client who doesn't want it and now I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to create a house of cards where I look like I'm making viable suggestions but ensuring I only pitch things that will fail. Great use of my time.

caught a head cold on the plane visiting my parents and i have to go back to work tomorrow and i just want to recover from the trip and my illness but instead i have to write my annual performance review. anyway, i'm feeling very sorry for myself, but i've got pho and we'll make it to the weekend.

Being old is regularly: ah i have stumbled across this quirky new song from what must be a niche little band waiting to be discovered which [checks] came out 8 years ago and has been streamed 47 million times

Oh, thank you so much for the clarification! Apologies for the confusion.

Apologies, I wanted to confirm: you say "What we don’t want to see: Original/unpublished work" but also "Stories should be previously unpublished." I might be having a massive reading comprehension issue, but which would you prefer?

I mean, am I always in a great mood these days? No. Am I eating the right things and drinking enough water? Also no. But am I *financially* secure and emotionally stable now that I'm in my forties? Again, that's a big no but listen...

Autistic people enjoy parallel play? Well, first of all it's called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Having some of the most thoroughly redacted thoughts of my life.

Now more than ever I’m convinced losing Anthony Bourdain meant we lost probably the biggest person on tv who advocated for the wonders of meeting new people and calling anyone online who hated learning new cultures the children they were, ruthlessly to the camera.

Alright, managed to get my mom hooked on Murderbot; tonight we're watching Sinners; I might be able to slip in The Lighthouse before I leave. Parental cultural enrichment is underway.

"make good financial decisions" being the bedrock of every charity fundraiser is so key. love to see you walking the walk.

Yellow lab laying with her face on the ground between her front paws. Her face is full of wrinkles and she's raising an eyebrow disdainfully at the camera.

The same yellow lab laying on a double-stack of brown dog beds. She is asleep with her face hanging off the edge.

This absolute princess. This utter goof. This complete pat of butter. (Her name is Kiwi.)

I'm visiting my parents. They are so overstimulating. My mother narrates her internal monologue nonstop. They often talk OVER each other. How the fuck did I acclimate to this as a kid. I remember my friends being like, "wow your family is loud" and me being like, "we're just Italian."

why does dinner always have to "make sense". why can't i just eat 3 disparate items with completely separate flavor profiles.

Not YET. We're still in 'seconds to midnight', which is still wild to my brain after growing up with 'minutes to midnight'.

At this point, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is gonna have to invent whole new units of time to maintain their "closer to midnight" metaphor

🧵 up and down

I do not like this gen AI
I do not like what it implies
I do not want it in my art
I do not think it makes you smart
I do not want it in my games
I do not like its goals and aims
I do not want it in my books
I do not like the way it looks
I do not like it, I don't care
I do not want it anywhere

Hi. I'm the only child. I have to take care of myself, because no one else will.

I'm already seeing content on my feed that runs up against this from strangers and I'm trying to make my first question: who is this person and what do they gain from using outrage bait. We're gonna ask ourselves, "what do they gain by keeping me angry at the wrong person," right.

We're not gonna contribute to antisemitism and Islamophobia, right. We're gonna remember that there's army reservists who fucking hated being in the Gulf but who feel trapped in active duty for class-war reasons, right. Nobody's a hero and nobody's an enemy, we're all just people. Right?

Staring at my fellow millennials so hard lasers might explode from my eyes: we're not gonna do that thing where we paint a whole type of person with the same brush, right. We learned from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, right.

David Lynch saying ‘One day, the sadness will end. But I don’t think today’s the day.’

Just learned that an old friend placed bets on a prediction market site wagering for the assassination of Iranian political leaders and I am so fucking yucked out right now.

Picture of Marjane Satrapi alongside a quote from her. The quote reads: The world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same... - Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French graphic novelist

Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.

about to get way more antisemitic AND way more islamophobic simultaneously. very cool

The world could be such a nice place if we allowed it. It's all so goddamn unnecessary. There's no need for any of it. It's so beautiful here. It should be so cool to be alive

Aw, man!! Perhaps some purple ceramic trivets are in your future to compensate?