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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • I was chilling on the couch watching tv when my roommate came home. She left her purse on the kitchen counter, then came to join me on the couch. I realized after she sat down that I was thirsty, and I’d missed my opportunity to ask her to grab something for me when she was in the kitchen. So I sent a text to her phone, which was still in her purse on the kitchen counter.

    She groaned, then got up to check her message:

    “Hey, since you’re up anyway, can you grab me a soda from the fridge?”





  • I really like that poem “Ozymandias”, by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The point of it is: no matter what kind of outsized impact you have on the world when you’re alive, eventually no trace of you will remain, and everything you ever were and everything you’ve ever done will be forgotten.

    It’s a heavy, depressing message, but I find it to be oddly freeing. If nothing you do will matter in the very long run, then you’re free to do whatever you want. Maybe you decide that you don’t care about the people 25,000 years from now and focus instead on the people in your life right now. Maybe you make it your goal to make their lives better.

    You could succumb to depression and fall into a pit of despair and heavy drug use… but if nothing matters, why not spend your time making other people’s lives better instead? It feels good to make other people feel good.



  • I read an article several years ago that was arguing that blackberry plants should be classed as carnivores. The idea sounds absolutely absurd, but the more you squint at it, the more sense it makes. Blackberry bushes grow incredibly dense thickets of brambles, and those brambles snag and don’t let go easily. Shepherds in areas with blackberry bushes often have to rescue sheep that eat the blackberries and get stuck in the brambles. If they don’t get rescued, they’ll eventually die and decompose, thus adding a bunch of nitrogen and other useful chemicals to the soil which cause the plant to become larger and healthier.

    So while they don’t actively kill creatures like the venus fly trap or pitcher plants, they do grow in a way that can trap and kill animals, and they benefit hugely from the nutrients those animals provide.