Andrew Tarantola

There's the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (icamiami.org). Admission is free if you want to check out a diverse collection of modern works.

In the meantime, I’m taking some “me time” to recenter, catch up on my reading, and play a metric shit-ton of Monster Hunter Wilds. My DMs are open if you’ve got work opportunities to share, need a hand hunting Arkvelds, or just want to chat.

My writing days are not over, mind you. My existing copywriting and ghostwriting clients aren’t going anywhere, and I’ve got a new project starting up in April (which I may or may not be able to eventually talk about, depending on how the NDAs shake out).

I am so, so fucking fed up of being treated like a disposable cog in a content mill. I deserve more than to spend my days rehashing press releases and pretending that counts as reporting news.

I’m exhausted from having my decade-plus of experience ignored and my continued employment based solely on how many words I can output in a month.

As for me, this is likely the end of my time in tech media. I’m tired of being turned down for roles because outlets only want to hire “industry insiders” willing to sell out their credibility for access like Gurman or Swisher.

That’s not to say my immediate supervisors and co-workers were anything less than fantastic. Shout out to Luke Larsen, Jacob Roach, Monica White, and Fionna Agomuoh!

I have never witnessed a senior management team so blithely hollow out its own newsroom. They did it with the same vim and vigor as a carrion crow excavating a dead deer’s stomach cavity.

After declining management’s offer to work for the site full time -- but as a freelancer, with no medical benefits or 401k, while earning less than I made as an entry-level editorial assistant for Gawker in 2010 -- today is my last day with Digital Trends. Thank Christ.

No hood
No airbags
No gods
No masters

I've been bingeing Suits and just spent the entire first season thinking they somehow got Joe Thomas from Inbetweeners to play the Mike Ross role.

a dog pouting on a couch with her back to the camera.

Someone didn't get a bite of hotdog and is now Very Upset

Would that mean the Githyanki a race of monotremes, like echidnas and platypuses? Lae'zel does have hair after all.

he's a complete asshole, but he's my complete asshole.

a black dog with white socks and chest, laying on a blue carpet with her tail wagging furiously as she looks into the camera

Ichigo Ichie, aka "the Sweet Lady of indeterminate origin and age" I found abandoned and underweight on the side of a rural highway. She is an absolute joy but suffers from severe anxiety and has abandonment issues. I don't know who abused, neglected, and threw her away, but I will find and end them

a black cat sitting on a couch in front of a window

"Baby Boy" Blink was the only survivor of his litter which had contracted Feline panleukopenia (distemper). You will not meet a cat more affectionate or better at hiding in plain sight.

An orange tabby cat sitting on a blue carpet in front of a hideously upholstered couch, looking directly into the camera

Tacocat, aka "the orange menace" aka "ow, fuck you, stop biting me," was born feral and orphaned when his mother was hit by a car.

Just realized that each one of my pets have their own tragic origin stories.

This was, of course, presented as a positive, done for those groups own good. They also went and genocided an entire alien civilization because they refused to convert to the protagonists' vegan lifestyle.

Fuck Aer-Kijyr and every other Nazi-ass sci-fi writer. May they die of untreated syphilis.

I ran into this exact issue when I naively read the Space Force series. In the seventh book, the protagonists suddenly restructured their social hierarchy, relegating gays, the disabled and other "undesirables" to third class citizenship and prevented them from holding any form of political power.

Being a freelancer is wild. Every day I wake up to a new panic attack as to whether the current company's clownshow COO decides that today is the day that I lose my job or not.

As a tenant, why the hell would you have to dig a trench under any circumstances?

Have my fingers crossed that I get a call back on the part time bar back position at my local casino that I applied for, in case you're wondering how my time in tech media is going.

every day it gets harder and harder to even pretend to keep up appearances

Love to strap a $3500 screen to the front of my head so I can watch a basketball game that looks like I was sitting in the $10 nosebleeds.

Interesting, of the half dozen houses in my neighborhood that flew Trump/Pence "Finish the Wall" flags for most of 2024, all but one have removed them since the inauguration. Not seeing anyone wearing Trump branded clothes or red hats in town either (pop 2500, county votes overwhelmingly GOP).

Lawmakers in South Korea climbing over fences

Lawmakers in America stopping because a security guard said “nah”

How does that work? I thought you only get Workspace integration (Gemini AI in Gmail, Sheets, Docs, etc) if you have access to Gemini Advanced which requires a $20/month Google One subscription?

You can also turn it off that integration in the admin console under Gemini > service status.

weird how this keeps happening

It was absolute fucking bedlam. People were stripping shelves like it was the opening days of Covid and Black Friday all rolled into one.

Walmart. Ran. Out. of. Shopping. Carts.