Chris Arnade wrote a delightful little story from Japan after a few not so great experiences, and it’s great, you should read it, but what really got me nodding was when at the end he meets a young couple at the airport and they start telling him about the cool places they’ll see in Tokyo, and
I wanted to tell them though, slow down, stop trying to maximize your experience by checking off a list and maximize your experience by letting stuff happen naturally, and connecting with people.
It may be a matter of age because a few decades ago I was that young couple, solo edition, but, as the solo became a 2+3, slowed down by necessity, and lo and behold the best experiences on trips were not the ones we planned but the ones we got while looking for a restroom in Richmond for a just-out-of-diapers toddler, let’s say.
So yes, it’s a cliche. Slow down. Take it all in. Don’t overthink and overplan. But do think and plan. Everything in moderation: another good cliche. But you know what? It’s true! Even more so when the young’uns are under pressure to deliver that perfect shareable shot.
One of the biggest culture shocks international visitors have when coming to the US — myself from 15 years ago included — is the tipping culture. Sure, I would round up the bill to save myself from carrying coins, or if I was feeling particularly generous leave a small bill or two, but it was neither expected nor required back home. So I cheered when DC voters passed Initiative 82 which would eliminate the “special” minimum wage for tipped workers — a whooping $5.05 per hour — as a step towards one day abolishing tipping altogether. Of course, some people are not happy about the consequences.
An update on room-temperature superconductivity from Derek Lowe:
I am guardedly optimistic at this point. […] This is by far the most believable shot at room-temperature-and-pressure superconductivity the world has seen so far, and the coming days and weeks are going to be extremely damned interesting.
Hurray for interesting times.
If you want my eyes to glaze over while reading your cold email — provided it even made it through SpamSieve — please make sure to:
As obscure public intellectuals go, Rao is fairly well known online, but every day, somebody’s born who’s never seen The Flintstones, and the man does have a knack for packaging phenomena both permanent and ephemeral into digestible mental models which you can use again and again. Sure, you could check out his official New Reader guide — and there is some match between that and the list below — but doesn’t a bespoke list on an even more obscure personal blog make it more adventurous?
Enjoy the multiple branching rabbit holes!
Finished reading: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard 📚
Nuggets of brilliance floating in a slurry of overwrought prose that at times made it a slog to read. Still, remarkable. Any similarity to Walden is superficial, so check it out even if you, like me, abhor Waldenponding.
🗃️ I am unreasonably enthusiastic about @chrisaldrich’s index card journal, having forgotten my Hobonichi Techo at work and spending this weekend noteless. Index cards seem to be as senility-proof as it gets. The article itself is brief, but the comments add some color.
And in what’s turned into a weekend ritual, I have tweaked the blog template some more. Per Jason Becker’s recommendation, the Archive page now only has titled posts. Cleaning those up will be a task for another weekend.
My dad is visiting from Serbia, and maybe I am getting old and less tolerant, or maybe not seeing him for two years has made me more sensitive to how he does things, but I have been noticing more and more an unusual tendency of his which I imagine to be the consequence of his post-WW2 1950s Yugoslavian childhood.
There is the habit to save everything: every scrap piece of lint, every empty container, every cardboard box. This, I can understand. We don’t necessarily have the space to set aside every octagonal glass jar or a quirky spice container he encounters — and I cannot begin to imagine the packing process for his flight back — but these are at least pretty and/or may have a future use.
But then there was a pile of broken kinder surprise toys waiting to be mended with a glue that will inevitably be more expensive than all the trinkets combined. Or the shattered $15 IKEA picture frame The frame in question is the RIBBA, which I am absolutely positive had cost less than the current $15 and had a glass front instead of the current plastic one. So it goes…, “because do you know how much this would have cost back home”. Or, back home, a bottle of white wine received as a gift from someone decades ago and saved for a special occasion only to turn to vinegar. And in parallel, the urge to never, ever use anything up to its last bit.
Chocolate? Leave last few squares in the foil until they turn white and inedible. Pot of coffee? Drink until there are about to fingers left, keep at room temperature overnight, then pour down the drain. Dinner? Purposefully eat around the best bits, then whether or not you are full place them in a glass container — preferably one you salvaged from the recycle bin — and leave in the deepest, darkest reaches of the refrigerator until other family members start wondering about the funny smell.
So to my list of standard Latin phrases I should add Ne quid nimis — nothing in excess — even when the excess is in saving.
While responding to a tweet I realized that an essential emoji was missing from the ever-expanding collection: one for RSS feeds. Come on, people, it’s not difficult.
