“All the riches of these lands are mine, all of Gastown is MINE!” Scabrous Scrotus, yeah, sounds about right.

*When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age.In middle age I was assured greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked."

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley.

That’s what I immediately thought of, for me this opening sets the tone of the whole book.

Scientist here, a lot of my job is writing texts with references to other literature of the field, or reviewing such texts (or PowerPoints). Main screen has the document open, the other is actually in portrait format and has gazillions of open pdfs on it that are relevant to whatever I’m working on. I had to get this setup for working from home because productivity dropped immensely with only one screen.

I’ve seen those in the US not too long ago, too.

This so much. I have a three days a week home Office deal, and I did Not, We, Fr for some time and it sucked. Monday I just could not find a proper start for the workday, which in the end translated to doing more work in the evening. Same on fridays, where I just did not find a proper cut to end the work day. So bad it even went into Saturday mornings. Now I do Tu-Th as home Office days, which works amazingly.

I’m pretty sure my Dad’s cat is really a glutton.

I am thoroughly confused, isn’t “Dudette” a term that’s used for female Dudes? Or “her Dudeness” if you aren’t into that whole brevity thing.

To be really inclusive, I would also use the term for female dogs, like, “Hey, dogs and…”. Yeah, no,.sorry, I’ll show myself out.

Schnutzeplotzepfnitzekatz!

Guess the language…

Part of my work is to evaluate proposals for research topics and their funding, and as soon as “AI” is mentioned, I’m already annoyed. In the vast majority of cases, justifiably so. It’s a buzzword to make things sound cutting edge and very rarely carries any meaning or actually adds anything to the research proposal. A few years ago the buzzword was “machine learning”, and before that “big data”, same story. Those however quickly either went away, or people started to use those properly. With AI, I’m unfortunately not seeing that.

You can buy alcohol at Disney?! With everything being so prude about drinking in public in the US, this completely amazes me.

Or whenever using your credit card online. The pro version would be that it turns off functions successively depending on your BAC. At some point the only unblocked function would be to call a cab to go home.

“Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”

We had quite the discussion at work about this very scene (I am loosely related to OSHA stuff), at some point people might think of deliberately having work “accidents” so the employer has to pay for superior replacement parts. And then have an advantage on the job market because of this. Same could go for sports.

I guess technologically, we are very close, but might need to work on the whole ethics part a bit more?

Having said that, I would not mind some advanced Kiroshis to replace my screwed up eyeballs.

Whenever someone brings up that argument (windmills are ugly), which is quite a controversial topic in the country I live in, I take them to the open pit coal mines of the area. Those are really ugly.

I do understand the argument that the intermittent shadows the rotating blades may cast on residential areas are annoying.

Put a smile to my face to see so many cats (and dogs) involved.

When I get up and do my morning business on the toilet, the cat comes and rolls around on the bath mat in front of my ear scratches and cuddles included. Turning on the bidet (yes, hidden flex) is the audible clue that business is concluded, he gets up, wait patiently in the door frame while I start brushing my teeth. I then walk downstairs (while brushing my teeth), cat as added tripping hazard on every step. He again waits patiently while I start the coffee maker, and only when I open the door of the cat food and treats cabinet, he starts being agitated until I put food in the bowl and put it down for him. And then there’s always this glance back, blinking before he digs in, and this very moment is my treasure for the day.

I started with a Santoku brought from a business trip to Japan, don’t think it was a special brand. It was 50 EUR (that was almost 15 years ago), but for me that’s how I got into it. Now I am lucky enough to have a friend who’s a blacksmith to get custom made knives.

I usually recommend the Haiku Chroma series as entry level, or if you are looking for a western style chef’s knife, I’d go with a Wusthoff classic. Both are a bit more than 100 EUR, so I’d always recommend to go to a shop and get a feel for them and what works best for you. Important thing is western or Japanese style handle (shaped vs. round), and a length and weight you feel comfortable with.

That switch flipped a few years ago. Unfortunately it only did so after my mother passed away, but I suddenly realised that I don’t need my dad’s approval in my life. And that he’s a toxic narcissist which I don’t have to like or have in my life. Understanding that, I could unravel a lot of crap from my childhood, which helps understanding some things that are wrong with me today. I guess the switch that flips when you understand that your parents don’t necessarily need to be good for you is a really important one.

A really nice kitchen knife. I use it daily and it makes cooking so much more fun, which translates into eating less junk food and take out, saving a ton of money and being more healthy.