Not sure if youre only asking Americans, but in case this is for everyone:

I’m doing pretty well.
Could probably scrape by for a year if my wife and I both lost our jobs.

Mainly lucked into success:
My boss from a summer job when I was in college knew the boss of an internship I was applying for, and put in a good word for me.
They hired me upon graduation, but went under shortly after, however a large company was on a hiring spree right at that time and I landed a job there with a hefty pay bump.
Then I got laid off there right as a local startup was on a hiring spree to increase their valuation because they were looking to be acquired by a major high-tech company, and they hired me, again with a hefty pay bump.
They got acquired, and I started working on a team based on San Francisco. Because wages here were so much lower than the bay area, they were throwing raises at me because it was pennies to them.
I’ve been there for over 10 years.

As long as AI doesn’t make my job redundant, I’ll be good for the foreseeable future.

It’s hard to find a very of any variety that isn’t a raving douche

Naw I want it for my kid, glow in the dark and all, and I don’t wanna pay a fortune for it 😭

It looks like it is out of print, I’m hoping that I still have it on a box somewhere, because it’s selling online for stupid prices.

Oh shit, I googled for what I could remember and I found it:

A very scary jack-o’-lantern

Reading this little pumpkin shaped glow in the dark book about a witch. My whimsy levels went through the roof.

I wish I could remember what the book was called

I don’t, but I should.
I don’t because my fear of donating to a fraudulent/ineffective organization aligns with my laziness regarding figuring out the best causes and procrastinating in making a budget.

Fear, procrastination, and laziness, together forming the perfect storm of neurodive inaction.

Fear of death

Has a pocket full of horses, fucks the shit out of bears
Threw a knife into heaven, can kill with a stare

I second someone else suggestion: the murderbot diaries. It’s great.
Most of the books people here are recommending are fairly lengthy, but you can get through the first murderbot book in a dedicated evening.

Each of the novels is more detached than the last - it’s great but probably not for someone just starting their journey into fiction

Coconuts

I wish I could be so unfettered

Yeah I knew they weren’t plants but it made the analogy easier to pretend they were 😅
They have plant-ey vibes

They were all like “let’s get the Calvin cycle up in this house, lets light it up!” And so they did, and the atmosphere caught fire

Very cool!

It reminds me of my fav, The Oxygen Catastrophy, where basically a plant did something new and caused the earth to freeze. In this case, by converting methane to carbon dioxide, a much weaker greenhouse gas.

I like it!
I kind of feel like “locomotive” itself is a niche so this is more like a collapse of a niche rather than a mass extinction, but I love the analogies

That’s my fav too.
“The Oxygen Catastrophy” is just such a cool name.

• Also some upstart bacteria just start pumping out poison that kills almost everything (oxygen)
• Causes the ocean to rust
• Causes the atmosphere to catch on fire
• then causes the earth to turn to a snowball

Fuckin metal

I’m judging you, as I said I would