When Instagram knows you’ve gotten laid off, you get fed all kinds of build-your-business, achieve-financial-freedom content that will make you feel like you are years behind and dumb as a rock.
It can make also you feel extraordinarily inadequate and an enormous failure. Like, how pathetic am I if I can’t afford the price tag for this influencer’s course that’s going to teach me how to make money?
So, to celebrate getting through my first quarter as an actual official legitimate small business owner (!) I am here to tell you, of course, that everyone is lying to you. And, thankfully, I have tailored my algorithm to show me fewer scammy influencers and more “straight to the comments” content.
Also, shoutout to my clients, who are the best.
#entrepreneur #smallbusiness #marketing
This one’s for everybody who was horrified when I said I not only mentioned on @hinge that I have a cat, but also said that anybody who was allergic should swipe left. #catdad #catsofinstagram #rescuecat #blackcat #catlady
Freyja has an appetite for destruction (and for making it adorable). And no, we don’t let her near the fireplace anymore. Mostly because of the time there was soot there and she decided to roll in it. She is currently seeking sponsorships from toilet paper brands. #rescuecat #catsofinstagram #catstagram #adoptdontshop
If you know me well, you know that moving to the suburbs was not easy for me as a lifelong City Person. So I tried to look for the silver linings to offset the frustration of, say, the fact that I now have to drive 10 minutes if I want to buy toothpaste.
One of them: finally having enough light and space to make an embarrassing number of tropical houseplants grow really, really big. I can confirm this is one of the underhyped perks.
#houseplants #indoorjungle
Thank you, @caro , for so neatly summing up PRECISELY what I have been trying to get at with this entire project. Bam. 💥
🎙️ New @likemepod episode via link in bio.
#likemepod #creatorburnout #influencerlife
I finally visited RACCOON ISLAND!
If you’re in Miami, you can book a tour on @getyourguide from a local provider, and then kayak to an island in Biscayne Bay that’s inexplicably home to a raccoon colony. And let’s just say I did not want to leave, which should not be a surprise to any of you who know me IRL.
Our @soflowateradventures tour guides also knew a ton about other local plant and animal species, and while they didn’t know how the raccoons ended up there (no one does) they could tell us about how the island, nominally called Sandspur Island, was originally built from landfill that was left over from the construction of Miami. So it’s all a very peculiar blend of nature and human intervention, and at least on the surface everyone seems to get along. I mean, how could you NOT get along with those cute little hands?
#raccoons #raccoonisland #miami #raccoonsofinstagram #raccoonlove
Spring has sprung! It’s lovely outside! Surely my adorable Freyja will want to go for a little stroll in her baby bjorn while we hear the birds sing and bask in the sunshine? We’ll be like a pair of Disney princesses!
(Reality: she screamed so much that a neighbor walked out of their house worried that there was a cat in distress, turned back around and took her home after less than 5 minutes.)
But shoutout to @voyager_harness (not sponsored btw) for the extra level of protection to keep Freyja safe in her bjorn.
This experiment brought to you by @hummingbirdshq ’s #nationalpetday #partnership challenge. No compensation changed hands, but if we’re on the subject of hands, Freyja drew some blood from mine. #philadelphiahummingbirds
Well, after today’s overflowing feline emotions we will absolutely never be separating Freyja and Hela again.
We were traveling last week and had a sitter take care of Minerva and Freyja (and Becky) but had Hela staying at a (wonderful) pet boarding facility so that the sitter didn’t have to worry about Minerva trying to pick fights with her. Minerva will pick a fight with just about anyone, but Hela is the only one too nervous and shy to stand up for herself. Related, she is also new to Prozac and we thought she could use a more watchful eye.
We didn’t really think Freyja and Hela would care about being apart from one another. Boy were we wrong.
Our little @catcafebk -sourced rescue family never fails to surprise us.
#catsofinstagram #rescuecats #adoptdontshop #catlady #catstagram
Sora (from @openai ) was generative AI’s first big novelty failure: something initially shiny and sensational that turned out to have zero utility or lasting power. Users got bored with it fast. It turns out that people have limits to what AI-generated entertainment they actually find appealing.
I mention in this video that the “AI is why your energy bills are high” assertion we’re hearing everywhere from TikTok to the campaign trail is actually not quite that simple. Text queries on ChatGPT or Claude use quite a bit less energy than, say, sending an email, and far less than watching YouTube. You can read more about that here: /sites/johnkoetsier/2025/12/03/new-data-ai-is-almost-green-compared-to-netflix-zoom-youtube/
Text-to-video content really *is* a big energy sap, at least for now, and that gets costly for the companies that build it. It probably won’t always be that way. But if we learned anything from it, it’s that a video of a raccoon invasion in your home is only funny if it actually happened.
Anyway, enjoy Freyja. (BTW, she really was wearing a tutu and a bunny hoodie. She now runs away when she sees the bunny hoodie.)
#technews #openai #chatgpt #generativeai #sora
This is my first SXSW since 2019, and my first since my late ADHD diagnosis. Learning that I have ADHD explained a lot about why I get so overstimulated in extremely social work environments (like conferences) and why I end up grabbing free margaritas to calm down my racing mind. And then before you know it it’s 3AM and my friends and I are getting kicked out of the Barbarian Group party at the Mohawk and we start chasing the Karaoke RV down Sixth Street.
I decided to do things a little differently this year, and so here you go — as part of @hummingbirdshq ’s #drinkoutfitbook challenge.
The drink: @drinktejastonic
The outfit: all @onequince !
The book: @lindsay.scola ’s extremely on-point “AI for ADHD”
#partnership #philadelphiahummingbirds #adhd adhdwomen
Confessions of an overthinker who works in tech: I have been trying for years to convince people that they should take political candidates’ views on tech policy into account when they vote. I’ve cautioned them that alignment on the issues doesn’t fall on an easy left-right axis. I’ve been told to my face that “other issues are so much more important.”
…aaaaand it turns out they start listening not when they hear about how outdated our privacy laws are but rather when their electricity bills go up or when there’s a datacenter getting built nearby.
(I should probably use this as a learning experience. We are still going to wind up with dumb laws.)
#techpolicy #womenintech #complaintdepartment
