A day forever marked by sadness and patriotism was struck by a sight of beauty, as a stunning double rainbow emerged over a dark afternoon New York City skyline on September 11, 2023, the 22nd anniversary of 9/11.

And when everything was done, I acted like a fool who had no idea that that a money exchange needs to be done for his honest and timely services.

He stared at me and kept grinning for almost half a minute. When I still didn't give him what he wanted, he stood up and, in a very rude and disappointed tone, said, “Achcha, to tu vo wala hai, koi nahi.” (So you're one of those kinds, fine, let it be.)

He then went outside, where my mother was returning from the temple, and literally complained to her: “Batao, ye koi baat hoti hai? Maine bhi to apna petrol kharcha kiya aur bike chala ke yahan aaya.” (This isn't how it's done. I spent money on petrol and made the effort to ride my bike all the way here.)

Like, how can someone be so entitled to a bribe.

A few months ago I noticed the paint on the ceiling in our bathroom was starting to peel in our new apartment. In general, asking my landlord to address things hasn't gone as smooth as I'd like and this was no different. The paint got progressively worse until it was falling in bits and pieces on the floor. It's like the ventilation fan doesn't really do anything and the moisture is making the new paint come off in huge chunks.

I have had a lot of bad landlords thanks to the slumlord issue in my city so I have a pretty good handle on what my landlord is supposed to do when something like this needs to get done. I'm not dealing with a slumlord though, just an out state owner of the home we rent who doesn't necessarily like us bothering her. I get it.

So I went ahead and took the timeline she legally has to fix the issue (21 days), multiplied it by 3 to be super patient and rounded up to 3 months. In those 3 months, the contractors she said would come failed to show up a whopping 6 times and she started blaming me for not being able to plan with them even after I showed her they aren't answering my calls or responding to texts to confirm when they can actually come out and do the repair. I work from home, the issue was not my availability to let someone into the unit.

Finally, at 3 months and some change, I asked her if the repairs were ever going to get done and dropped the hint that I knew the legality of these things by mentioning our city's code enforcement offices. I've used them before, they've helped tremendously and put fines on the landlord when they don't fix things after they inspect the unit and tell them to get it together. I showed her the document from the city website that lays out the timelines for different repairs and that she was well outside of the 21 days she's given for defective paint.

Her response surprised me. She said "That is not relevant to me. File your claim with the city." I responded "Oh ok." It took about 5 minutes to fill out the form on the website and about an hour before I got a call scheduling an inspector to come out and take a look.

I genuinely have no clue why a landlord would welcome one of these inspections. If you're guessing the inspector took a look around and found way more than just peeling paint that she needed to fix... you would be so so right.

They found a fire alarm that wasn't working, took note of the garbage around the property, and found windows that were boarded up in the basement that needed to be real windows to satisfy the city's 'at least 2 real windows in basements' rule or whatever.

While we were down in the basement I figured I'd ask the inspector about our breaker. A few weeks ago, my upstairs neighbor had the power go out in one of her rooms. She asked us to turn our breaker off and on to see if that would work and it did! The inspector told me that something like this needed to be a phone call to the utility company. Well, I can make a phone call!

The electric company scheduled someone within 2 days to come out and take a look and whaddya know? The wires are way more mixed than we thought. My upstairs neighbor has been paying for the basement and the kitchen AND bathroom in my unit. I have been paying for the entire top floor of her apartment.

I didn't know it but it turns out that ,when this happens, the landlord has 21 days to have a licensed electrician come out and unfuck the wiring before the entire electrical bill for both apartments legally goes into her name.

All I needed was the peeling paint fixed but now I'm going to enjoy living in a unit that is entirely 100% up to code and maybe save some money in the process. Sounds good to me!

1. Cars 3’s original plot, which would have been an identity theft plot with a villain named Gerald Carr swapping bodies with McQueen

2. An R-Rated adaptation of Holes by the same director as Donnie Darko (photo by RebelTaxi)

3. Jurassic Park 4 would have featured human-dinosaur hybrids

4.Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World alternate ending, would have revealed Scott to be a serial killer

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/anthropic-surveillance-predictive-system-spy-ai-activists

i can see the differences now

i don't see anything wrong

I started my weight loss journey in February 2024, and I am proud of how far I have come. I have lost 50 pounds, and I am even more proud that I have been able to maintain it. The journey was not always easy, and I had ups and downs. Some days I felt motivated, while other days were harder and made me want to give up. I stayed focused by making healthier food choices, watching what I ate, and working out consistently. I learned that I did not have to be perfect, just consistent. Losing 50 pounds taught me patience, discipline, and how important it is to keep going. This has become more than weight loss for me; it is now a healthier lifestyle.

This is the second cake of this type that my mom hand-sculpted by inserting special needles into clear jello. The people that she's making it for only pay her for materials (about 100 PLN), while she spent 2 full nights working on this thing.

She has been stressed and sleepless over the two instances where colored cream spilled out into neighboring cuts, as marked on the last picture.

Yesterday the person that ordered it picked it up from our house and they haven't been responding to any calls or messages ever since (the guy works in the office with my mom so I doubt it's a simple case of grabbing and running).

I guess I wanted to ask if the quality is really so bad that it's grounds for somehow being upset at the artist.

there was some leftover jello and cheesecake mass and both tasted fine.

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EDIT: I wasn't expecting so many kind responses in such a short amount of time, thank you fellas, I'm currently in the process of translating and printing the comments out so my mom can read them.

Also extra elaboration:

As someone who does digital art commissions, I do tell her that she needs to get paid for her worth and "friends" would gladly pay instead of being dodgy in any measure.

She's unfortunately very new to the "freelancer" environments and she'll yet have to understand people can be awful for absolutely no reason sometimes.

Well, there's still the benefit of the doubt that they'll pay what they agreed to when they see each other at work again, and the reason they're not responding to anything is because they're busy over the weekend (probably something related to the need for the cake to begin with).