Is it still a thing?

My boyfriend's mother has been on a video call at our table for every meal we've eaten since we moved in together thirteen months ago. Not most meals, every single one. The phone goes up at about half seven and she stays for the whole thing.

It started because she'd just had a hip replacement and was on her own, and he wanted to keep an eye on her while he ate, which was completely fair at the time. That was February last year. The hip healed months ago and she does a pilates class on Wednesdays now, so she is objectively fine.

At home he props the phone against the salt grinder so she can see both of us. She has views on how we're sitting. She once told him his shoulders looked tense and asked whether I'd been stressing him out.

What I hadn't quite reckoned with is that it isn't only at home. We went out tonight, to a place round the corner that we both like, and he had the phone propped against the napkin holder before we'd even ordered. Other tables could hear her. A waitress had to reach around it to put my plate down.

Then she said "oh, is that a restaurant one again," and then said to him, not to me, "you're not eating properly, are you."

Afterwards I said as evenly as I could manage that I'd like to eat one meal a week without his mum there, and he said "she's not there, she's on a screen."

THIRTEEN MONTHS. Four hundred odd meals and she has been at every single one of them.

I was taking a morning walk here in Florida and saw a sign warning about gators in a pond right next to the public trail!

I literally stood there for 2 minutes staring at a gator near the water thinking it was a fake plastic statue... until it blinked at me. Meanwhile, local Floridians were casually jogging past it listening to music like it was a squirrel! 😭

As a New Yorker, I am terrified. Do they jump?! Do they run fast?! What is the actual local rule here... do I run or just ignore them? 🥺

A new viral social media trend in New York City involves residents tagging Mayor Zohran Mamdani directly to report local city problems. The city's response times have been remarkably fast, leading to same-day pothole repairs, a dangerous playground hazard fixed after a letter was received, and temporary water fountains installed in Prospect Park ahead of an upcoming heatwave. City Hall has embraced the trend with the message that no problem is too small to fix.

If you want Microsoft Teams to keep showing you as Online while you're away from your computer, there’s a simple trick:

1. Create a new meeting with only yourself in it.
2. Join the meeting. Your status will change to Busy.
3. Manually change your status back to Online.
4. Leave the meeting running.

As long as you remain in the meeting, Teams will keep displaying you as Online, even if you're not touching your computer.

Other people can't see that you're sitting in an empty meeting. To them, you simply appear Online, and they can still call or message you normally.

Edit: Guys... Obviously, don't put the meeting on your calendar. Just create it and join it directly.

This has never made much sense to me. If you write a book/movie/TV show/whatever, you're ultimately writing it for the rest of the world. If you're gonna get mad that they're not enjoying it the specific way you want them to, why bother?

1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ultimately did not like writing so many Sherlock Holmes stories, hated how popular it was, mocked fans for writing fan letters, and tried to kill off the character to end the series, but reluctantly walked it back at the insistence of his publisher.

2. Anne Rice went so far as to attempt to sue fanfic writers who wrote fanfic about her Vampire Chronicles characters despite fanfic being free and making no money off her work. She also savagely replied to reviewers, even positive reviewers, online if she disagreed with their ultimately interpretative views.

3. Annie Proulx, who wrote the short story Brokeback Mountain, was so bothered by people writing letters expressing sadness that Jack and Ennis didn't get a happy ending, despite them saying they enjoyed the book and the story intentionally going for tragic emotions, which is what they were expressing, that she said she wished she never wrote it in the first place!

Shoutout to my lashes and eyebrows for holding on so far, may they never leave me 😭

Edit: OMG YOU GUYS. Thank you so much for your warm welcome. I love, love, love this wholesome little spot of Internet 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

I did a netrunner build cuz I heard of how overpowered it is and I do admit it is insanely op but it’s so boring, like yeah it’s strong but I’m not having fun then I play

Been thinking about this for a few days on if this is better to the current animal industry as sounds good but then thought about if this is the end product of this evolution of this(meat pig) and the animals in between what we have currently(modern day pig) to this (meat pig) would be worth the end product but idk i wanna here yalls opinions on this and couldn’t think of a better subreddit

Edit:clarification because i just put this and that

Video credited to @mamakbagol on Instagram.