OmegaMouse

Nowadays I don't really have any authors or book series like this. As I kid I used to get really excited for a new Series of Unfortunate Events or Alex Rider book. For a while I kept my eye on Adrian Tchaikovsky, but lately I've found some of his novels to be hit or miss.

The only book release I'm currently looking forward to is Brigands & Breadknives in the Legends & Lattes series by Travis Baldree. The other two books have been cosy and wholesome, and it's become a little tradition of mine to read these books around Christmas.

I've always found the concept of wabi-sabi quite fascinating and I'd love to find out a bit more. Are there any books that explore this concept? Something quite approachable would be good.

https://www.youtube.com/@ChillDudeExplains

A video from this channel popped up on my feed the other day. The topic seemed interesting, but after about the 3rd or 4th point something felt off. He constantly uses similes to draw very odd comparisons. The phrase 'it's like' comes up very often. This is exactly how I've seen LLMs talk.

Is it just me, or am I right about this? No one in the youtube comments seems to have mentioned it.

I've had a Gaggia Classic for a few years and over the last few months I've been having issues with the flow from the group head.

I think it might be an issue with the solenoid valve. There was some guidance I saw online about flicking rapidly from the group head to the steam wand, as this forces water through and clears any blockages. And yes this does seem to work - if I rapidly flick the switches the water suddenly flows a lot faster from the group head. But it's not a permanent fix.

I've descaled it several times. Is there something else I can do, or does the valve need replacing?

Do dogs sometimes recall a time a few years back where they failed to catch a frisbee?

Often people will ask me to share my Amazon wishlist for birthdays/christmas. It's pretty convenient for them, and it'll mean I'm getting something I'm genuinely after.

However I'm trying to avoid Amazon going forward. Are there any websites you'd recommend that allow you to share a wishlist which collates links from other sites?

Gift vouchers can be nice presents, but if you think about it, you're paying for the opportunity to lock in your money forcing the recipient to shop at that particular company. And more often than not, the recipient will then spent a little more than the value of the voucher in order to use it all. If you'd given them money instead, the outcome would have been the same, but this way the company gets your cash in advance. I have to hand it to whoever came up with the idea, it's a capitalist's wet dream!

And pre-orders (I'm specifically thinking of videogames here), this did make sense once upon a time when you were buying a physical copy that may have had limited stocks. But nowadays for digital pre-orders... what's the point? You're putting your trust in the company that the game will be polished from the start. At least with something like a Kickstarter, you're helping to fund development of the game. But here what exactly do you get out of it? Maybe some additional pre-order cosmetics that'll you use once? The concept is bizarre to me.

Initially I was thinking 'ah this is a bit pretentious', but I soon found it quite charming, and the production quality/shot compositions really impressed me!