an old roman aqueduct

the russian blue genetics scattered across europe since 2014 they tend to get amber colored eyes and the silver hair is finely mixed with the silver

this building is covered in netting. i suppose maybe inside they have fish. the seagulls are very populous here. some kitties gettng some morning sun in front

the view towards the source of the golden horn. quite clean water all things considered. well, i think technically it is a fjord, not a river. so its agean seawater

the morning fishing on the bridge over golden horn, and a recycling collector guy. across the road from the hostel i stayed at was a place that paid for these giant bales brought in by guys like this.

many minarets and a ginormous mosque

of course a kitty

a cat feeding station. the one thing i like about this place.

the big mosque next to taksim square, istanbul thought i should take some photos to remind myself i never want to come back to this shithole country

so, after a bad experience with booking.com's helpdesk, trying to get my mistakenly booked flight for 1 august istanbul to bishkek two days ago, i gave up. i decided to have another go at it, and they pretended i wasn't sending messages to them. the fucking ui clearly was showing that they acknowledged i sent a message. outright fraud. just why? a full 30 days booking ahead of time. lol, they are doing like budget airlines now. price is the same but standard things that used to be included are now extra fees. being able to cancel, you have to pay like 30 euros extra

one more day stuck in istanbul. this place is an absolute shithole. dirty, banks charge 8% for withdrawals, prices of everything are the same as what you pay in croatia, except shittier quality. plastic bitches everywhere with nose jobs and boob jobs, the air is bad. there are nice people here but they are practically all from west asia, the turks are mercenaries. fortunately i will be in tbilisi tomorrow. my only regret in all of this is that i didn't move sooner. that i didn't buy a ticket to tblisi instead of istanbul. i had no idea how bad it would be.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/air-force-engineer-accused-cutting-down-ai-cameras-becomes-unlikely-hero-raises-thousands fuckin legend

in the hype for AI, the one thing i have seen is building "customer service" systems that are actually about stopping customers from getting service. oh, you made a mistake on your booking. yes we can give you a credit to make that haopen. just wade through a week of chatting with a robot programmed to keep you hoping while never escalating to the authority to deliver. AI is not replacing jobs in helpdesk. they are replacing helpdesk with distraction while the clock ticks past the SLA.

well, i might be in luck. on upwork someone is looking for someone to build an app with solana using rust and anchor. i did a little training with it back in 2022, but the borrow checker was a nightmare. and they were telling me "don't use macros" and the problem was a lot easier with macros doing type coercion, stuff i wouldn't normally do in Go because it requires unsafe and reflection, something i've never been keen on doing because it can break. if i need to convert a byte slice into a slice of 64 bit integers i will just use ... shit it's been a while actually, i might be getting rusty. ahaha. anyway, the thing is, it looks like there isn't a lot of people out there certainly not on upwork who can do this and i know i can ramp up to it in a matter of a few days. having a proper contract means i will be able to plant myself in tbilisi for a month or so and rent a little apartment short term and make lots of cash and be able to do the move to bishkek comfortably. i'd rather be doing nostr or bitcoin stuff but nobody seems to be looking for anyone. so, solana it is. lol.

i have my travel to tbilisi sorted. looking forward to getting out of istanbul. i have to stay an extra day though. ugh.

little boy fell from 4 storeys, a bit over a week ago. i am letting him out but he can't walk on his front left foot properly. baby from a female wild cat living on the roof. the things his siblings do at this height is crazy. but because he is a sickie, he is getting used to people. so he might become the hostel lap cat.