Recently finished Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Much of the novel is a real slow burner, but the third act hit me right in the feels. I can’t stop thinking about the author’s wonderful misdirection, which caught me by surprise.

Similar in Ireland. Had my kids’ passport applications co-signed by their school receptionist.

For running, get thin gloves that keep out the wind chill. Your body will heat itself up, including your hands, so all you look for is decent wind protection. I did some trail running in down to -10C, and thin running gloves were sufficient.

If you want bells and whistles, get gloves with reflective elements. In winter, chances are you’ll spend some time running in the dark.

Didn’t the European commission recently declare that Twitter had become too irrelevant to regulate?

From what I’ve read, the two times Trump won, many Democrats felt that they were denied this choice, which left them disillusioned, and they didn’t vote. I don’t think that’s the main reason for Trump’s victory, but what you touched on was definitely a factor in the Democrats’ loss.

I don’t live in the US, so my views are probably biased by our anti-Trump media hype, so even though I agree with most of your points, I’d leave two open for discussion:

If incels think that women hated them before, just wait, his incel base of voters are going to be enemy number one with women from all walks of life.

I was under the impression that Republicans are not looking for love from women, but their total subjugation. Women don’t need to love them (perhaps they can, only in Stockholm syndrome mode), but they have to obey. I don’t think incels will be disappointed.

For the rest of us, just laugh. We’ve been through 4 years of this idiot before.

I said this twice before, and I was always wrong, so take this with a huge boulder of sand. But I don’t think he’ll last four years (unless they do a Weekend at Bernies), so part of the 4 years will be with that weird cross-dresser, and I have absolutely no idea what to expect from him.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Great post! I was thinking about it the other day. I have a Citizen wrist watch from the 60s from my grandfather. It looks like new and functions well (mainly because of its self-winding mechanism). I also have a high-end Garmin watch, which from my personal experience lasts about 2 years, so I decided to start treating modern watches like the junk they are: get the cheapest possible that still has the features I want, because I’d be replacing it in two years’ time anyway.

I also have an old mechanical typewriter. The drum doesn’t move on the A key, so I’m used to hit the space bar whenever I type an “a”. It moves the drum slightly more, which is something I always notice when I read pages typed on other typewriters. And don’t get me started on the font. No computer can recreate the idiosyncrasies of a good typewriter.

Damn, now I got all nostalgic again. If you excuse me, I’ll be in the attic, hammering away on my Consul…

I once went to a proctologist who had a “This too shall pass” plaque on his desk. I decided to trust him, there and then.

Ads. I’ve been online since the age of Gopher. I’ve gone through every kind of ad or a pop-up you can throw at me. Even though I use an adblock, even without it I can subconsciously filter out ads so well that they won’t bother me.

Everyone is talking about taping, but the real MVP is baby wipes.

I keep Owen locked in the basement. He keeps the fire burning.

Steam owen. Haven’t reheated my food un the microwave ever since.

The Canon didn’t. That’s where my assumption of a green laser came in. When I aimed the camera directly at the embassy, I got a white screen; when I aimed it a little to the side, I saw a green dot on the screen. This is a bit of a stretch, though. It could have been an optical artifact, with the sun behind me, and me wearing polarized glasses.

This is just pure speculation, but I think the firmware on the camera refuses to take pictures when its GPS detects it to be in a restricted area. That’s how higher-end drones work. At the same spot where I detected my interference, a DJI drone would refuse to take off. Drone no-fly areas are well documented (and advertisef), though, so it was easy to check against those.

Professional: Self-driving trailers are already a thing. They are not legal on public roads, but they work just fine in warehouses and yards. The way it works, a dolly is hooked up to the front of the trailer, and the yard master just instructs it where to go and park, and forgets about it. Thanks to the trailer sensors, the trailer is also able to navigate around fairly heavy yard traffic, which is far more complex than linear traffic on roads. The EU is being lobbied to allow the trailers on the roads. The EU is also being lobbied to increase the max length of a tractor-trailer from 27m to 50m. The new road trains are also using these autonomous engines and steering directly on trailers. We estimate that by 2035, we’ll start seeing a drastic reduction of demand for truck drivers.

Hobby: This is unconfirmed, just an odd thing I started noticing. In some places, in particular around US embassies, modern cameras are blocked from taking photos, and older models are being interfered with through green lasers. I noticed the latter when I tested with the first gen Gopro Hero and a 15 years old Canon. Need to dig out my film camera to see whether it has any impact there.

First who popped into my mind was Friday Jones from Robert A. Heinlein’s Friday.

For post-nut clarity. A genuine reason why my problem solving skills improve when I work from home.

HoMM is a turn-based strategy game, not RPG (with the notable exception of HoMM IV where you had real hero development). That said, there was a genre of RPG’s, which used to be very popular in the 80s and 90s, and which all but disappeared. Those were party-based first-person RPG’s with turn based (or close to it) combat. Popularized by Wizardry, and followed by Might and Magic, they inspired other series like the Ishar Trilogy. Other games employed real-time combat, but slow enough or pausable, to mimic turn-based. Popular series were Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore, Dungeon Master, and others. Nowadays, I occasionally see one of these games from independent projects, but it seems that the golden age of this sub-genre has passed.

Don’t know how the law is worded, but you won’t find plastic straws in physical shops or restaurants, and all juice boxes come with paper straws. I don’t have any issues buying plastic straws, both regular-size and for boxed juices, from Amazon.