Weeknotes 2023 W29:
Norr

Quick bits:

• Having canvas (as opposed to leather) shoes is great because they’re so easy to wash. The bike grease that ended up on them is still difficult to get off, but maybe that is what makes them look cool.

• I attended a BBQ with friends where all drinks were non-alcoholic and all food was vegetarian. I like this as a default.

• I picked up Duolingo for no particular reason. We’ll see where I get with it. It’s quite slow and I wonder whether I might not just pick up books to read in foreign languages instead (hard mode).

• My inbox is down to 24 emails. This is mostly good news, but unfortunately many of those emails are dating back from, erm, 2022.

• I skipped CSD (Christopher Street Day a.k.a. Berlin Pride) and instead helped a friend put furniture together. A distinctly better way to spend time!

I don’t share my photos often, but this one I liked in particular:

Unfortunately, I by accident did not take the photo in RAW and the compression artifacts are quite visible. It turns out that on the iPhone camera app, you have to enable RAW every single time you open the app. Why?!

Here’s one more photo — a much more colorful one:

On the back of my mind remains the question of where I want to live, whether I want to remain in Berlin or not.

I’ve now been in Berlin for ten years, which is the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere. It gets boring at times, and I’m lacking a sense of adventure, of being outside of my comfort zone.

But if not Berlin, where else would I live? That’s a question with no answer just yet. Somewhere that’s fairly easy to settle in and build a social network, where I can work, where healthcare is decent, and where language is not a barrier. I’m not sure what those locations would be.

I finished a short story: Norr. Go read it. It’ll take you about 8 minutes.

This is the longest short story I’ve written so far, clocking in just under 2000 words. It is also the most emotional, and, in some ways, the most personal story I’ve written — though it superficially doesn’t look like it.

Let me know what you think?

Entertainment:

• Barbie is a great movie and you should go watch it. No spoilers; it’s just great. (The theatre had issues with the sound system and not all channels were playing, unfortunately.) This is the second movie I saw since the start of the pandemic (the first one was Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse — see Week­notes 2023 W26: Brighton), and I’m inspired to go to the theatre more often.

• I’m nearing the end of the System Shock remake. I’m done with the Engineering level, if that means anything to you. This is not an easy game — despite playing on easy, arguably.

Links:

• Vocal Fry (Dr Geoff Lindsey): This is the most well-informed and most nuanced take on vocal fry I’ve ever seen.

• ‘They’re Outsmarting Us’: Birds Build Nests From Anti-Bird Spikes: Fantastic.

• The Terrifying Solution To The Fermi Paradox (Hello Future Me): Yikes.

• End in sight for AIDS? (Jon Cooper): Fantastic news!

• 300 Times a Day (Rands in Repose): A good write-up on the new version of Bear and how it got things right.