ArtieShaw

I enjoy how Germans were like, "fuck you (W)oden, we're calling it mid-week. We'll keep the rest."

Yep. Conventioneering! Except you get to learn about talc processing and talk to sales reps who are really big into talc processing.

Night trains are amazing. It's basically a mobile hotel room that's a little cramped, but spits you out in another country at 7:00am.

You may be woken by someone yelling something in Romanian at 2:00am when the train stops. And you may be woken for passport control at 3:00am, so try not to be naked when that happens. (Lessons learned)

Some snacks, a bottle of wine, and a good time. Night train!

When I was a kid, a neighbor was shot in his garage. There were definitely two stories that went around the neighborhood. One said suicide and the other said "cleaning his gun." One of those was repeated when kids were around. The other when they thought no one was listening.

Years back, I read was a very odd story about the Korean belief that falling asleep in a closed room with a running fan would result in death. This also seems to be a cover story for suicide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death

manipulation and guilt around money when I was younger

I feel that. I don't count pennies around friends, but I probably have a net positive of $5 from taking quarters from unreturned carts at Aldi. No regrets.

I will give you my cart for free if you ask nicely, but a loose cart is fair game in my book.

Also -The original post is a parody account.

I wonder how widespread this idea is. Last x-mas my MIL reacted really weirdly when I mentioned that I was reading letters by Pliny the Younger. I know that she's exposed to a wide variety of crazy that supplements her own crazy, but I never expected Pliny of all things to be something that would set her off.

She seems to have a set of rules.

1. Old things must be true.
2. Unless we don't like them for reasons.
3. Then they must be fake and there's a very good explanation.

I guess that's another reason to be thankful I skipped out on x-mas this year.

Pliny's letters describing the eruption, which he personally survived (but his uncle rather famously did not) are well worth reading. In addition to the fascinating glimpse at history, Pliny was very weird about sharing his own story in addition to his uncle's. Very human.

It's a weird petrochemical fluid and some straws. You dip the straw and can blow a bubble that hardens on contact with the air. They come in colors.

They're not much fun, and have been disappointing children for decades.

That takes me back to a club I was in during the '80s. The instructor had a space heater that looked a lot like this. Basically a horizontal tube with an open flame that she used to heat her garage. She did an safety demonstration by dropping a paper towel into the flame, so we 6-year-olds would know what happens when you go near the heater. You burn, children. You burn. Effective.

I found leather working to be relatively easy and fun. I guess it depends on what your goals are. I'm planning to get back into it during the holiday break.

Cutting, gluing, and sewing are the basics. After that, you can get into fun stuff like dying and embossing.

And compared to what nice finished leather sells for, it's cheap.

The AeroPress is pretty good! Very portable, so that was my daily thing when I had to work in an office.

At home I have a small Chemex, which is basically a nicely designed pour over with a complicated filter. I like it a little better than the Aero and it's a bit less fussy.

If I'm on the road, Casey's is my go to. I think I just like their machines.

hotel and meal vouchers

In the US? Not in the past decade. I usually get a link to an app that's like shitty Expedia for local hotels. You can race to compete for rooms with other stranded passengers while your partner tries to re-book the flight for the next day. "I'm sorry - all flights are full until next Tuesday. We can put you on standby, but there's a list of people ahead of you."

This probably goes hand in hand with the trend of providing sleepable bench seating in airports. For awhile they were doing the anti-homeless park bench design. You'll have to fight your fellow passengers for space, but it's better than the floor at DIA or ORD.

masks in the cabin aren’t designed to keep you awake. They’re just designed to keep you alive.

In that situation I'm perfectly fine with that. More than perfectly fine, in fact. Sounds like a feature I'd pay extra for (don't tell United).