Something about human intelligence enables a lot of disappointing behavior… Animals will always seem so much more innocent to me, and so their misfortune will always seem more unjust.

That said, I’m glad Maru is no longer suffering. Hope his mom is doing okay.

Tangentially related memory: In the early nineties, my grandparents took my sister and me to their favorite Cracker Barrel (and we went to a lot of Cracker Barrels with them), somewhere in or around Pennsylvania.

It was more or less the same, notably bigger, and right when you walked in, there was a big, old busted barrel, with a plaque that claimed this to be the cracker barrel for which the chain was named. It had several broken planks, and if you looked inside, you could see chewed-open boxes of crackers… And as soon as you looked, a mouse would zip out of the cracker box so fast it’d make you jump, and everybody in the gift shop would laugh their asses off.

Then they let you in on the joke, and the cashier showed you they press a button behind the counter that triggers the mechanical mouse, and you join the in-group of people in the gift shop waiting for the next unsuspecting victim to walk through the front door.

Excitebike, too! The built-in level editor was really amazing.

Would have made all of Disney and Universal’s IP buy-ups over the last decade+ a lot more interesting.

Oh, so Hertz has gotten wise to… every online platform that exists: Outsourcing all responsibility for their user-hostile bullshit to some vague “system” that cannot be held accountable.

I’m so sorry but the advertised cost has doubled because… Computer says so! No, sir, there’s nothing I can do, sir, you see it’s the system.

And you can’t go anywhere else, because everyone else is doing it (or soon will be) too!