If you haven’t grown up drinking it, coconut water tastes a bit funky the first time you try it. The first time I tried it, it was kind of funky and I didn’t care much for it. The second time I tried coconut water was after hiking several miles in high heat, sunshine, and high humidity, it still tasted a bit funky. It tasted exactly the same actually, but this time, being quite dehydrated and nearing heat exhaustion, it tasted fucking amazing. Now I love that sweet coconut water umami, so much better than Gatorade or any other sports drink.

If I encountered someone I thought was bullshitting me about some Gen alpha Internet micro genre, I’d probably just roll with it too while admiring the improv.

The Beach Boys album Pet Sounds. It’s old, but timeless. It’s not like any other Beach Boys album and probably the only Beach Boys album I have listened to repeatedly from beginning to end. Each song hits a little differently depending on where you are in life. It is the album I listen to when I’m feeling melancholy and I want to feel a little bit more okay about feeling that way by staring into the void instead of looking away. The mix of hope, joy, sadness, and existential dread are intense.

Maybe that’s an E, but the rest isn’t text, it’s sheet music. It’s a shame it’s cropped because, although I’ve seen a bunch of example of illuminated texts, I’ve not often seen such embellishments on sheet music.

Yep, you caught me, I forgot to mention the very obvious detail that you shouldn’t repeat paths that you’ve already taken unless your back tracking take a new branch. But also, mazes and city grids are two very different topological spaces, so not really applicable anyway.

Think it through. That doesn’t really have any bearing. You follow a wall and turn right whenever you have the option. You’ll exit the loop the same way you came in and continue through the rest of the maze.

“Any corner will do, from there just keep making right turns. It may not be the optimal path, but it will get you out of the maze.”

A bee headbutting you is not necessarily an agressive act, could be just investigatory on the part of the bee. I’ve walked into the heart of a flowering shrub covered in hungry bees, during which they either ignored me or headbutted me. As long as “defending the hive” isn’t part of the bee interaction, they are usually very chill but remain very curious. I’m still careful when the headbutts happen because accidents happen and a confused bee tangled in hair may still sting. But I have also gently untangled a bee or two without anyone getting hurt.

Even when defending the hive, bees seem to prefer as little direct agression as possible. I’ve stepped into a clearing and suddenly found myself way too close to a wild bee hive and got stung exactly once by a bee that got tangled in my hair as I fled the approaching swarm.

I’ve also gotten a solitary wasp tangled in my hair, near no hive or any flowers, and gotten stung 3 times on one knuckle as thanks for setting them free. The bees have taught me to treat them with compassion and respect. The wasps have taught me to react with murder and extreme violence before they are even aware of me.

Both are pollinators though. So despite the animosity, I don’t go out of my way to wage war against wasps the way I do mosquitoes.

If you smell shit everywhere you go, check your shoes.

I personally don’t mind the reposts. What does offend me are the lies in the title text claiming ownership and originality.

Cite the deep magic to me witch. I 'member.

They’re admitting how dull they are.

It wasn’t supposed to “go” anywhere. It’s a Tarantino film, so it’s really more a meta movie about movies than most. The plot doesn’t really matter. It’s a movie about a particular time in Hollywood shot in the style of movie and TV Westerns that were very big in Hollywood, until they weren’t, just like the protagonist and his stunt double. The whole film is shot like a Western. The title is a play on the title of another popular western. Like most Westerns, and indeed most of the west (the desolate desert cliche), on it’s surface it’s a “whole lot of nothing”. The heart of most Westerns aren’t really about the plot; it’s the grit, the anti-heros, the everyday villains, the scenery, etc.

This new movie sounds interesting, but only because I liked the character of Cliff. This doesn’t seem like a movie suited to a sequel without being boring. Cliff in a C3PO costume, a Spy movie, or some other idom feels like it would just cheapen the whole thing.

What’s funny to me (and I know it’s just meant to illustrate, not be perfect) is that the static in your example immediately jumps out to me as somehow not quite right too, just like the elements you pointed out in the AI slop image. Like I’ve spent so much time in my youth in the presence of the cosmic microwave background as seen through CRTs that I can sense its randomness and noise characteristics. I can’t usually say why fake TV static looks wrong, but it always jumps out as wrong almost immediately. I’ve seen the same issue in lots of newer movies and shows set in the era of analog television, always immediately pulls me out of the story.

Tasker can still automate almost all of this for you.

I setup some tasker automations so that I can leave my phone entirely in my pocket. When my phone connects to my car Bluetooth it: turns up media volume, sets the phone to “do not disturb”, opens and starts playing the last music player I was using (podcast, Spotify, Plexamp, or your media player of choice. Notably mine never switches to things that play video by default), initiates lockdown on my phone in case of fascists, etc. If I want to navigate somewhere or choose something different to listen to, that is something I start before I start the car. I get all my navigation cues via voice guidance, but the quality of that guidance can suffer from vagueness in general and confusion specifically in the midst of construction. I used to have it automatically read text messages aloud, but between reaction emojis, photos, gifs, and links that became super annoying. You can also setup an auto-reply to incoming texts that just say, “I’m driving and I’ll get back to you later.” That turned out to be annoying to, so I just silence them all. When my phone disconnects from my car Bluetooth, tasker sets everything back to the way it was before with the exception of lockdown mode.

Using voice commands kind of requires relaxing your privacy requirements, so I left those options out of this discussion.

Don’t worry. Time is a flat circle. What is old, is new again. Smart glasses will get smaller and more discreet packages and the kids will forget the original chunky look that meant “potential invasion of privacy”. I like what I like and I’m content to remain true to that until the merry-go-round of fashion comes back around again. Sometimes I may hop on a new trend and take the ride a bit, but it’s always my choice. Nostalgia is often used as a derogatory term by trendy/edgy people to feel superior about picking some style that is new to them. That fashion is almost always someone else’s “nostalgia”. Fashion is all just picking and choosing which spot on the nostalgia merry-go-round feels right for us in this moment.

From the article:

The choice is a striking departure from the unwritten Hollywood rule of characters in historical epics employing British accents — from The Ten Commandments to Ben-Hur to Gladiator to HBO’s Rome. Obviously, The Odyssey characters speaking the various dialects of Homeric Greek, Attic and Hellenistic Koine wouldn’t make for a very accessible film. But the modern British accent is traditionally considered universally pleasing and “just foreign enough” to convey a timeless quality (even though it’s only existed in its current form for 250 years or so).

The trope is so consistent and familiar that even fantasy shows set in other worlds, like Game of Thrones, use British accents. In perhaps the most amusing example of Brit bias, the English accent was used in HBO’s 1980s-set Chernobyl rather than subjecting viewers to five hours of Russian accents (the limited series’ director, Johan Renck, rather bluntly explained, “[The Russian] accent on film is tremendously stupid”).

It’s never to late to relearn a suboptimal skill you thought you knew. I believe I found this site several decades after being taught the standard shoe lace knot and a child. That one ALWAYS needed a second knot to keep my laces tied. Now I tie either the two loop knot “bunny ears” or Ian’s Secure Shoelace knot. Both are balanced so the knots always stays tied and both can be pulled apart and undone with a simple tug at both free ends of the shoelace. Haven’t tied my laces the way my parents taught me ever since.

I did that, but on the ride to school.

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Hmm…just a box.