Finally got a phoenix palm taken out of our courtyard. Was ridiculous, crazy how they sneak up on you.

Next stop outdoor Hue lighting

I'm up early after being divebombed by my fattest cat since 5am. Had a social event last night, fortunately one of the better ones of the season with a good group of friends.

Tonight we are having a dinner to welcome the new neighbours in our building. They are Brazilian and we saw they bought a nice bbq with them so we all offered to pay for the meat if they'd show us how it's done. Really looking forward to that.

We have, but not specifically because of the cost of living. More that we had an expensive holiday, and now need to focus on savings again. So I've been pretty insistent that we cut the thoughtless spending and the treats, at least for the rest of the year and then can re-assess.

Most of this has manifested in food budget. I've limited us to $15 a day each max on food spending, and that includes going out for dinner or work drinks. So if I'm going to get a few wines on friday night that's a couple of days of making sure lunch comes from the grocery budget. So on that front I'm cooking up a weeks worth of curry or rice and beans or doing a roast if it's on special.

I grow spinach/broc in winter and tomato/kale in summer which takes the edge off veggie shopping prices.

My nearest Pizza Hut has always been one of the good ones, so their $5.50 ham and cheese pizza is excellent value. If I wannt pig out I'll grab one of those and put Baby Ray's or hot sauce on it.

Petrol is a non-issue for us as we both live in our CBD close to our offices and drive a hybrid anyway. We spend like, 20 bucks a month on gas.

Feuerzone tickets, worth every penny

I'd been putting up with shitty FM transmitters the whole time.

That's brutal

Yesterday I discovered, after nearly 4 years in our house, that the showerhead has a heavy massage option.

Last week I'd mentioned to my sweetie that I'd like to look at adding a new shower system to the long term list of Things To Buy. We're currently in scrimp and save mode after a month-long Europe trip in August. I went to a Rammstein concert in Poland and halfway through I realised I was at the end of my headbanging days - the incredible shower system in our hotel and a very firm mattress was the difference between walking out the next morning or what felt like would be the rest of my life in a wheelchair.

So I'd resolved to get a new shower system, wasn't going to have the money for a while, and then just made my discovery. So I'm feeling like a million bucks this morning, and saving a thousand or so too.

It's funny how a lot of people seem to assume that it's more or less a forgone conclusion!

It's interesting, because I've read several times over the years that one of the strongest predictors for an election isn't just counting up who people say they'll vote for but rather who they think will win.

Everyone I talk to seems to think a National coalition will win, regardless of their political leanings. I certainly do because of this, even though though polling suggests it's far from a forgone conclusion. Elections can be so much about a general mood of the country on the day.

The idea is that the city will build upwards, rather than outwards

Yeah an absolute bolt from the blue, how can New Zealand ever prepare for the sudden and unprecedented invasion of multistory buildings.

Saw a comment on my local councils post of someone worried that the Tauranga CBD would look like Shanghai in a fews years "at the rate they're going".

Some of the most popular, picturesque tourist spots and residential locales in the world make NZs "high density" plans look laughably wastaful in comparison, and people are still tearing their hair out about it.

The idea is that the city will build upwards, rather than outwards

Yeah an absolute bolt from the blue, how can New Zealand ever prepare for the sudden and unprecedented invasion of multistory buildings.

Saw a comment on my local councils post of someone worried that the Tauranga CBD would look like Shanghai in a fews years "at the rate they're going".

Some of the most popular, picturesque tourist spots and residential locales in the world make NZs "high density" plans look laughably wasteful in comparison, and people are still tearing their hair out about it.

That would be huge

I went to check my lemmy on my browser and it was just jacked full of meme pages amd subreddit clones that I'd blocked on my mobile client

If you're happy to pay whatever it costs to host then there's no other disadvantage to this.

The only thing I can think of is if you somehow end up at odds with an admin of a big instance and they defederate your instance. Or perhaps in the future major instances decide to only federate with instances of a certain size, for some as of now unpredictable reason

That's because standards changed

Just donate if you want to support your server.

Awards are special actions reserved for people who pay, that don't improve the platform anyway. It's enshittification.

Complain about things.

Unless it's something you can keep lighthearted, and maybe make a point with in a funny way. But just bitterly bitching about something in your life is probably the worst (normal) thing you can do. That or treat service staff badly.

He's a great developer and a shitty producer. When he's in charge of his own projects there's nobody holding him accountable and it just spirals into madness and then halfway through when all the hard and fun work of really designing the game is complete, and all that's left is the boring business of production and finishing the damn thing, he just ADHDs off into the distance chasing the next cool idea/design challenge

Somehow he's able to keep funding that arrangement, so it hasn't changed.

The winner of the cube game got to be the "god" of Peters next game which was an MMO-like thing. Only after he won his prize the studio kind of forgot about it and just moved on so he never really won anything

There's a really good piece about it but I don't recommend reading it, it's just frustrating and predictablely shitty behaviour

No not yet, there's no synchronous multiplayer on Switch

On this subject, my personal definition for millennial is someone in the age bracket where they had to teach themselves how to use windows as a kid

I don't think it's in its final form.

It's obvious that brands and influencers were offered the chance to be pre-verified and, while I haven't seen direct evidence myself, the word is that they could get some kind of FB/insta promotional discounts by being there to post on day 0 with a witty canned line about how great it was to be on threads

So when the app opened to the masses, they don't have to follow anybody or wait for their friends before it had "value". They open it up and there are a bunch of brands and "personalites" making it looking like it's already alive and the place to be

The other stuff will probably come later... although there's the chance that they're going after tiktoks model of "we know what you want"

Rotating gifs all over every homepage