The price increases seem to have had some impact. But it is very minimal, as the article mentions (a 6% drop from 2009 to 2024)...

Yeah, and of course the superficial stuff is easy to grasp, like one character is lazy, or the other more of a dreamer who achieves nothing. But you feel like there are things going over your head.

At the moment I'm reading Dead Souls by Gogol. I've been at it for a while. It's a bit heavy for a summer read, but I'm enjoying it somewhat. It's fun to see all the colorful characters that come across, but I have the idea a lot is going over my head as I'm not that familiar with the Russia of that time. It's sad quite a bit is missing of the second part.

Only about 70 pages left. The next book will definitely be something lighter...

They are pretty versatile, especially if they are homemade. But my go-to's are a smokey bbq sauce or sriracha mayo

To everyone enjoying their Gouda abroad, the milk industry has a huge role in the land subsidence and peat oxidation in the western and northern Netherlands.

I do it with ublock origin. It prevents the paywall from loading.

Just turn off javascript for the domain.

Is this still a boring dystopia? This is pretty neat. Dystopian, yes, but neat.

Oh, this is my 3rd Japanese novel I'm reading, so I'm only just getting started. But I'll be sure to keep posting here.

I wanted to dive deeper in specific topics this year, rather than jumping from one topic to the next. The coming months I want to read mostly contemporary Japanese literature, which is still a very broad topic of course. Right now I'm reading No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, a short novel about a troubled man who fails to connect to others. Currently halfway and ian incredibly bleak view on human relationships and interaction.

What would be the financial angle here?

I've just watched Brazil, a dystopian scifi from the 80s. The visuals were great, and I love the genre, but I wasn't really feeling it. I just couldn't really care about the characters.