Thank you for these links. I’m looking over them. Hopefully I can implement some and see what happens.

And I’m very aware she wouldn’t know better. It’s just difficult to get her to recognize boundaries. She always wants to play or get in your business. And I understand. She’s curious and I’m a lot more interesting than her toys.

But my issue is that while we’re teaching her those boundaries, I have pretty much nowhere to go in the apartment to escape in the meantime. Just like she wants places to hide when she wants to be alone, I need that too. I get home from shouting matches with angry people in my industry to be pounced on for a while. I don’t often have it in me to engage. I just want to be alone for a bit to recharge.

On the relationship front: probably not the place for it, but other than the cat situation, things are very good. I think we’re both too stubborn for our own good sometimes, and that’s part of what happened here.

I’ve never been a primary caretaker for a cat, so my experience is limited. That was a big part of why I was worried about getting a kitten. I’ve only been around adult cats, and most of them are chill.

Our apartment explicitly forbids the kind of advanced catifying I see online. She has scratching posts with perches, several repurposed cardboard boxes, and a bed we made out of a box and blankets. She uses all of them, and we made sure they were connected to give her an improvised play area/home base. I hope it’s enough, or at least a start.

She was separated young, I believe. She was a stray at 8 weeks old, and was possibly separated several days before being found. I don’t doubt that’s playing a role. She’s very needy. I mean, when she isn’t being hyper, she demands pets for 45 minutes or more at a time, and she’ll nip your hands if you don’t provide them. She used to jump on my face to wake me up at night for more attention. Only me though, not my partner.

I’m going to talk to my therapist next month before I consider all my options. It’s just been a struggle lately. It’s like having an autodestructive toddler with claws.

Cat tax:

Yeah, I really wanted to get an adult or senior cat if we were going to get one. I’ve had limited exposure to caring for cats, and kittens are challenging.

She actually tolerates her carrier, but our apartment doesn’t have enough space for a large dog crate so we could put food and water in there with her if she needs it.

I’m going to mull over whether or not I can hang on that long. I’m not optimistic considering how tough 3 months was. That said, we’re going to make sure she goes to a good home no matter what. She’s a good cat and someone with more experience and a better environment would no doubt love her.

I’ve used OnlyOffice (FOSS, really modern) and Softmaker Office, which is a proprietary German alternative with native Linux support. It also has the best docx compatibility of the Microsoft alternatives.

On the Nintendo page for it, it says the motion controlled games require a joycon, but those games are disabled for online play. Maybe there will be an option to disable them for local play too?

I’m glad you like it, but I’m just going to point out that Yahoo, which the AOL privacy policy page refers to, has probably the single most invasive email policy of any major provider.

Yahoo analyzes and stores all communications content, including email content from incoming and outgoing mail. This allows us to deliver, personalize and develop relevant features, content, advertising and Services.

They allude to telemetry, and use additional tracking even when not signed in. I hate saying this, but even Google has a better privacy policy.

That’s kind of the point for a lot of us who opt to pay for an email. When email is free, it’s because your data is the product.

When I was a little kid, maybe 5 years old, my family lived in this old house that used to be a Civil War hospital during a few battles.

All kinds of weird shit happened there, but one event stands out.

I was sleeping between my parents in their bed on the second floor. I woke up. It was late and very dark.

I looked to my right and saw the curtains blowing in. The windows were painted shut. I watched as the curtains start to slide off the wall. It looked like someone was holding them up. I shit you not. Like I could see feet just underneath the bottom.

The curtains moved to the foot of the bed, and fell.

I don’t remember seeing this, but my parents swear I told them that when the curtains fell, a woman with a yellow dress and no eyes had been holding them up, and that she stood at the foot of the bed for a while.

The curtains, according to my parents, we’re in fact on the floor at the foot of the bed. I can’t vouch for that though because I was a kid and frankly, don’t remember.

My best non-supernatural explanation is that I had sleep paralysis that night and hallucinated much of what I saw. I’ve had it chronically since, so it’s possible.

I don’t know though. It’s one of those things I think about late at night when I have too much free time. What the fuck did I see?

Good point! That’s an option for most email providers, and that’s fine for most applications. I just like using a desktop client, but if you don’t, then that’s not even a factor for Tutanota.

I personally like Mailfence. But the others aren’t bad alternatives either.

Fastmail is Australia-based, so it’s a privacy nightmare. If you’re okay with that, it’s cheap and works. You get a lot of storage for what you pay.

Tutanota is a German option, but you have to use their email client. They use a custom encryption protocol instead of your typical PGP. They’re good, but at the end of the day I like my third party email client.

Mailfence is Belgian and only has infrastructure in Belgium. So they don’t even respond to court orders outside that jurisdiction. They offer PGP. Also support IMAPS, etc, so you can use your own email client.

I don’t like ProtonMail, and I know this is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t like them. They have been busted giving client data to law enforcement without a warrant, they don’t encrypt the email subject line, they still log IPs like every other service, and they received a ton of venture capital funding. I fully expect their enshittification to happen soon.

Posteo and mailbox(.)org are also options. Never used them so I can’t vouch. I hear good things about both though.

And if you’re in Europe or have your own domain, Infomaniak offers a suite comparable to Google’s at a competitive price. I haven’t used it either but it could be good.