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.

This is a perfectly valid reason to like Ubuntu, and it mirrors my own reason for preferring Mint: familiarity with an OS UI. In my case, Mint Cinnamon is the closest I could find to the Win98 user interface. Back in the old days I also had Ubuntu, but then they switched to the Unity UI and I changed to Lubuntu. That went to the pits a few years ago, so I moved on to Mint. Just like you, I also have a preference for the UI, and I suspect that very many people choose a distro based on their UI preferences. That’s the beauty of Linux: plenty of options for everyone.

One of my team members is based in the US, and he told me after the election: “The media told us all about how bad Trump was. But nobody ever told us how good Kamala was.” I guess voting only for the lesser evil has its limits.

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.

You are absolutely correct that I’m seeing the news, and the social media posts. I don’t feel either offer an accurate representation of the candidates. The legacy media seems to be focusing on the campaigns, not the actual proposed policies of the candidates (apart of some “sky is falling” clickbaits). Social media is pure hyperbole: Trump wears makeup and his running mate an eyeliner; Harris has a weird laugh, etc.

Within context of my voting, I make the effort to explore the parties’ previous performance, and read their election manifestos. I didn’t actually bother to find the election manifestos of the two main candidates, so I don’t feel that I’m well informed to make a good voting decision. I can go by the candidates’ previous record. When Trump was President, the sky didn’t fall, his presidency didn’t affect things in my country, just some people were better off and some worse off. When Harris was the VP, same thing applied. Much of criticism towards Trump, especially his mental capacity, can be applied to the current Biden presidency, and I somehow fail to see anything catastrophic happening.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some fundamental differences between the proposed policies of Trump and Harris. However, I can’t see them when casually perusing both legacy news and social media. Or, better to say, I don’t feel I can trust either. To get an accurate picture, I’d need to do proper research, and I can’t be arsed with that. I don’t think either candidate’s win will affect me significantly enough to force me to do my research and campaign on-line for one or the other.

Believe it or not, but the US is not the centre of the universe. I genuinely have no idea what policies either candidate is proposing, and the occasional descriptions such as “literal Nazi” or “real Antichrist” aren’t really informative. I’m much more interested in which of my local parties would most likely decrease housimg prices, build better public transport infrastructure or finance more equitable social welfare support. Neither US candidate will have any effect on those, apart from perhaps a few more American immigrants on our shores. So, I really don’t feel competent to speak about American politics, and I doubt Greta is any more competent. It would be an insult to Americans to presume that they need foreigners to tell them how to vote.

Breaking: I also refuse to endorse either candidate. That’s because I’m not American, and I know shite about American politics. I do trust, however, that Americans can make up their minds without any foreigners telling them what to do.

Most likely answer is that they do it for the same reason as Facebook not sorting their feed by date: they want users to fully rely on their algorithm. My completely uneducated guess is that they want to feed their users older videos where they don’t pay out as much to their creators as they do for new videos.

In two days, I’ll hit 4.5 years of daily running. Can confirm. Things get easier when you do them every day (within reason).

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

We have access cards to unlock the office doors; this is tracked. Everyone is required to be in the office for a certain amount of days per month, and a monthly report is always generated. I found when the fewest people are coming (nobody on my floor), and that’s when I come in, given that my entire team are digital nomads, so I’d communicate with them via Slack anyway.

I’m on hybrid, but my entire team is all over the world, so I’m just as alone in the office as at home. The only difference is that in the office I’m bound by the train schedule, so I can’t take out of hours calls. My coworkers and manager keep petitioning HR to let me work from home full time.

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.