Fast fashion. At least I hope it does? It's such a wasteful abomination that we don't need right now.

I've been on long flights where I wished there had been designated seating for introverts. But then I considered the implications of packing all the extroverts together in one place nearby and thought better of it.

As a GenX, I would prefer seeing them made into some sort of public space? We are losing a lot of that, at least where I live. Indoor space in particular.

This was a struggle for me going from hobbyist programmer to working at a company. I tried to tone it down. Really. But eventually I got "promoted" to having my own office with a suspiciously thick door. Hmm…

In Putin's Russia, even the chips defect.

So jealous… I think where I live, a doubling of the cycling population would be like "Oh hey look, there's another guy!"

The first time I met the dad of the woman I would eventually marry was when I flew out to have Christmas with them. He was a big-shot lawyer, and I was a little scared of the guy. Not gonna lie.

I thought I gotta bring him a gift. But what? I had very little money, having just graduated. What could I get lawyer dad that wouldn't seem tacky? I went to a book shop and got around to the true crime section. He's a lawyer right? Maybe he likes true crime? So I read a few back covers and found one that looked sort of interesting. It was about a murder on a college campus, but looked like the investigation had lots of twists and turns with a big trial at the end? Would he like it?

Anyway, I meet him and give him the book and he sort of tosses it aside and grills me, as expected. I kind of shrank in the chair, but my to-be-wife and her siblings said I did okay.

Now fast-forward several weeks. I'm back home and get an email from her dad. Oh boy! What did I do? But he's like, "I just finished the book. It was set at the college where I got my law degree. I even knew one of the profs who's a character in it! How did you know?!?" I didn't. "It was so nostalgic. The author mentioned landmarks, some of which aren't even around anymore. But I remember. That was the best book I've read in years! I couldn't put it down!"

We were all good after that.

I think about this sort of thing from time to time, and every time I come to the same conclusion that manufacturers of bulk goods need to take more responsibility for the entire life cycle of their products. They're getting a free ride with municipalities stuck footing the bill for recycling plastics, and have zero incentive to solve the problem.

Let's say the city sent all the recyclables to some regional warehousing facility where they would get sorted by barcode according to manufacturer. Then the companies would be charged for storage and would have strong incentive to come collect their property before it really starts to pile up.

Initially, they will no doubt gripe about it, but in the long term, it may be a win-win in that if say Coca-Cola realizes it can get all its bottles back, it could switch to a more reusable design that could reduce bottling costs?

She grew up in Japan. All her friends are Japanese. Her life experience is of Japanese society and culture. She's been through it all. What is she if not Japanese? Get over it.

I am part Japanese myself and the language is literally my mother tongue, but when I go to Japan to visit family, I always feel alienated because I don't look the part. Don't get me wrong. People are very polite to foreigners, but you will always be a foreigner. Even when I spent a year at a Japanese elementary school, I felt this persistent sense of not belonging.

But maybe things are starting to change? I admittedly have not been back in a couple of decades. I hope so.

a catastrophic potato explosion

…or a bombe de terre, if you will.

I imagine you're probably talking more about content, but you've uncovered a pet peeve of mine having more to do with the structure of web pages.

The original vision of html was to have this beautiful format that flows text and graphics elegantly over whatever space you give it. I remember thinking this is great! One day we will have pocket-sized displays and the web is already future-proofed to work seamlessly in that world.

Then fast-forward to smart phones. By now, web pages were so rigidly formatted that they had to design special mobile versions of every site.

I can only think of 2 downsides to our bidet:

• Ours attaches to a regular toilet, and it does make it harder to clean particularly around the jet mechanism. Someone needs to invent a bidet for cleaning bidets.
• Going anyplace without one now makes me hate life.