RhaenysBee

I’m sorry about the broken AC I had a similar issue with a heater last autumn, the bit responsible for the communication between the thermostat and the unit broke, so they installed a new thermostat. It was obscenely expensive for such a small thing, but what can you do? :/ :/ Hope the new remote fixes your AC issues! I’m considering getting an affordable, small mobile cooler for my bedroom but mobile coolers seem to be neither small not particularly affordable.

Oh absolutely. And experience. Everybody is selling an eXpErIenCe. But why not a still and unsweetened one? The only sensible celebrity beverage enterprise to my mind is Jason Momoa’s aluminum bottled water. But even the celebrity booze brands are far far better than celebrity sodas. On another note, I had a doctor’s appointment today and wasn’t sure I could have breakfast, so I bought a hEalThY granola bar in an organic store to have on the way home. So I’m on my way home, I’m on the phone with my dad who’s filling me in on the freshest, crispiest family drama, it’s 33C, I’m getting a headache from the drama and the heat, wtf is wrong? Oh right, I should eat. I take out the granola bar, I take a bite, I want to puke. It tastes like dry sweet sugary stuffy sweetness. I check the ingredients. Date paste. I check the nutritional info, 30g sugar per 100g. I check the mass of the bar, 55g. I had two bites (about half the bar), which still puts me at nearly a tablespoon of sugar. hEaLtHy my ass. So threw it out and went home and ate an entire box of blueberries, which were at least cold and refreshing. I hate bars. Protein bars, granola bars, oat bars, all bars. Except chocolate bars, at least thosr are honest.

What is with all the celebrities coming out with soda drink brands? Katy Perry has a soda brand, Blake Lively has a soda brand, Sasha Pieterse has a soda brand. Girlfriend, a soda brand of all things? Carbonated, sweet, processed. I know you are trying to make us all believe it’s somehow hEalThy and made of cLeAn ingredients and sold in recyclable packages, kudos for that, but let’s be honest, how healthy is a sugary carbonated drink really?and anyway, girlfriend, aren’t ya all looking 30 years old for decades because you drink so much WATER? And then you sell the rest of us sweetened soda? Come on.

Is The Dead Don’t Hurt available for streaming in the UK/US? Google says it is/will be, but it’s still debuting at EU film festivals so I’m not sure. (And I dont want to pay for VPN to access it before I’m sure) And yes, I need to watch another Western by a self proclaimed polymath actor, which is potentially a waste of time.

Yep, pretty and charming which helped him get his way with Slughorn (and many others too). Hermione’s physical appearance represented that brains, courage and character are more inportant than beauty and glam. That said she did have an ugly duckling to swan moment in book 4, when she had Madam Pomfrey shrink her teeth and glammed up for the yule ball and people nOtiCeD her. And there was Fleur who was strikingly beautiful and struggled with the stereotype that beautiful people are shallow and unintelligent (which coincidentally came from Hermione as much as from Mrs Weasley and Ginny) and the book made a point of showing a couple times that Fleur was brave, smart and had strong values like anybody else. In fact Harry Potter explored quite a few stereotypes about appearance and intelligence/character, book 4 when puberty hit the character was perhaps the main stage for this, but it certainly stretched into book 5-6 as we explored the budding romantic lives of the trio. But I digress…

In what world, Harry Potter? That’s hardly accurate. Snape, Dobby, Mad Eye Moody jump to mind first, then Gellert Grindelwalrd, the Black sisters, Barty Crouch Junior, etc. Bill Weasley also jumps to mind. As does Sauron, Darth Vader - and Dorian Grey. Power corrupts and stories like to showcase that with the visual as well.

Nah. Unpopular opinion, but I didn’t like Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort.

I’m going to a wedding at the weekend. The only available accommodation is at a mini nostalgia train station there’s no breakfast either. I guess I hope that I can take that mini nostalgia train to somewhere that serves food. Should be interesting.

I encourage you to indulge that desire, I have an emerald green velvet sofa myself it’s a 3 seater but on the smaller side and definitely not a sprawl-out comfort piece because it’s chesterfield style. But I’m taking this sofa to the grave with me, it’s my sofa love, if I ever get an L shaped sofa, this one will live on in my home office room, because my green velvet sofa and I are for life. Anyway, I hear you about the neutral mural and agree. Thank you for the advice

I went to see Horizon. The cinema experience overall was horrible. At the same time, I desperately wanted to like this movie. So the circumstances,by and large, evened out. The cinematography, the music, the ensemble cast, all first class, amazing. There are even some strong characters and puzzle pieces of story. There are strong messages, there are powerful shots, dialogue, sequences. There are fair bits of tension and storytelling. Overall the storylines could be going in the right direction. Of course, this is not something we can tell, even after 3 hours of joint pain in a movie theatre seat. And this is the main issue. Even if the overall story happens to be good (and mind you, I have some solid concerns about that as well), the 25 years too old format and business model are its ultimate doom. In the age of binge watching, instant gratification and short form content attention span, sitting in the movie theater for 12 hours over several years to see a story conclude is just not something many people have the patience and drive. I dont know how much Kevin Costner is going to lose on this, but it’s probably going to be a pricy lesson. I also dont know who stole from who and who inspired who, but Taylor Sheridan is the better writer and 1883 is the better story. That said, Kevin Costner is a legend and I will drag my ass to the movies in August too, just I support is misguided passion project.

Well false alarm. I finished The Man Between, I feel absolutely no desire to explore further works of the author. The cover doesn’t -literally- lie when it says it’s a page turner or it’s read in one breathless sitting. Because you do keep turning the pages breathlessly until you are 90% through and still absolutely nothing happened. Then it plummets into non-prime time cable network pulp for the last 40ish pages. Frustrating, disappointing and mediocre.

I’m trying to pick a neutral green forest/tree theme wall mural for my kitchen (its open plan, steam, etc wont get to the mural, there isn’t any piping running in this wall, etc). anybody have any experience with wallpaper/wall murals? What works, what fails? I don’t want to go too neutral, but I also don’t want to hate the color/pattern in a few months. Maybe I should go more neutral than I think because the pattern will stand out anyway. But it also has to tie in my green sofa in the other end of this open space.

Yay! Where are you traveling? And fingers crossed for the dissertation to be approved. Are you going to defend it after the committee’s feedback or js that step already behind you? I never know the doctorate process. Oh thank you, though there are certainly aspects I’m neglecting and compulsively shutting down every opportunity to date that life throws my way . I guess that’s something i should talk about in therapy That sounds like a pretty good phase you two are in! And yeah I totally get being happy to get a couple ours of solitude, just introvert things oh I should, last time I was in Slo was a school ski trip 20 years ago My mom went there for work a few weeks ago and kept prompting me to accompany her, but it coincided with my busiest work weeks. I’m taking a couple weeks off in August and have some weekend trips planned for the autumn. And why shouldn’t Slo be one of those?

I feel personally attacked. https://imgur.com/a/K7GwIE7 wtf is this? We will easily hit 40…

I had to go back and check what were the last things I shared here. Well I have very little to add, which happens when you work evenings and weekends for months. But that’s over now and we are back with a couple English language reads I read The Casual Vacancy and absolutely loved every last bit of it. Amazing characters and atmosphere, powerful message, even more powerful human psychology, brilliant, dynamic, vibrant storytelling. I know it’s sort of a love and hate novel with mixed reviews, but it was very much my cup of tea and felt the same kind of connection to the story and characters as I did with Long Way Down, which was my favorite book for over 10 years. I’m obsessed and I don’t dare spoiling the experience with BBC the adaptation. I listened to Permanent Record and really liked it. I’m sure the algorithms reported this already, but it was also the amazon algorithm that recommended it. Lately I’ve consumed a lot of biography type series and listens (I’m slowly becoming my grandmother) and also international scandal stories (I loved Bad Blood by John Carreyrou, The Dropout, Inventing Anna, etc) and AI related books, so it makes sense. Anyway, it was dynamic, interesting, if at times dragging a little. I remember that innocent early internet era Snowden describes in the first few chapters and the book definitely switched on my nostalgia button. It was solid listen. I also listened to An African History of Africa. So this one was on the one hand amazingly insightful and full of new knowledge, mostly vibrant, sometimes sad and gorey. On the other hand I did struggle with the amount of information and the wideness of the scope which made it difficult for me to follow at times. That said, I highly recommend it to fill in gaps in one’s (very) loose net of knowledge of the continent and zoom in on lovely cultural back stories of long lost African Empires. I’m currently reading The Man Between, which is the same writer inserted into the real thing premise as the Hawthorn and Horowitz series by Anthony Horowitz or the tv series Castle (which I’m coincidentally rewatching simultaneously), but this time the real thing isn’t police work, but James Bond esque espionage. So far I’m undecided, and I half hope I don’t get hooked because boy o boy getting hold of English paperbacks is a costly and complicated journey since brexit and the closing of book depository.

I’ve been doing an AI basics course for work, caught up on the last two webinars and practice sheets yesterday. I do have to say I don’t work with a lot of data and even if there are ideas and an initiative to become more data driven, it’s still a tiny portion of the scope. That said, my experience is still positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably meh. The only useful way I can utilize it is that it translates to English faster than I do and I don’t have to correct the end result too much. If I tell it to put together a learning program outline, the end result is what a uni student or intern might come up with, in other words, nice but inadequate. I’m both more impressed and inspired by pinterest book/vacation/recipe recommendations than chatgpt’s. And image generation which i tried yesterday for the first time was a complete flop. We used a free version so I’m sure that pro dall-e and pro midjourney are more sophisticated but I could not prompt either of them to alter facial features, detail background, zoom in or out (my trial images were corgi in a field and myself in a london coffee shop, neither got anywhere near to what I wanted). I suppose the point would be creating exactly or near exactly what I have in my mind. And for that, I’m just not impressed, sorry. And I may regret this when AI enslaves us in a few decades, but to me the thing still appears way too stupid for world domination. but perhaps I will see more use of it once we start using internal AI for actual data we actually work with and not trying to get fat corgies to frolick farther into the background of an image.

Well I can’t wait for these videos to be made about us in a hundred years. I hope the laminated eyebrows and taking muted zoom calls to the loo while sipping hydrogenated protein water from a nOnToXiC stanley cup are featured. because really, it’s not just the victorians, we are all mad here. Especially from the outsode.

So how is the traveling coming along? Hope you have slower weeks and better work life balance now that school is out. Dissertation news? I had three brutal months of being drowned in work. The last 6 weeks were particularly rough. Now I’m finally resurfacing back to real life from the autopilot mode and a healthy-ish routine. I did get a raise and I’m a lot more comfortable with my income now. I’m still doing the exercise thing, I will try to up my swimming to twice a week for the summer, we will see how that goes. I’m also doing physio therapy for my scoliosis, which is pricy but great. HUGE CONGRATS on moving and enjoying a two person household! Such a lovely milestone And how is it working out for you, adjustment period still on? Milk in the right place and toilet paper roll on the right side and the rest? Any vacation plans for you two?

Yeah 45-50ish depending on which side of the bed the exchange rate got out of in the morning. last time I checked it was under 20 cents… inflation? Nah, just shameless greed Well people never change or learn, do they? Full circle back to babies being dosed up with poppy in early 1900s.

I guess I could have printed it at the office. Well… this happens every time I think I’m going to save money on something, end up paying as much or more. (€25 for this bloody pdf)

I’m traumatized. How much does it cost to print 50 pages in color at your local print shop?

I finished Bridgerton season 3. I must say the second part of the season exceeded my expectations and surprised/impressed me. Never in my life anticipated that after the trainwreck of the first four episodes. The show did redeem itself in a lot of ways (and didn’t in a lot of other ways) but evened itself out to a solid 5/10. I do think season 2 irritated me more, though the memory has faded. either way, I’m not mad I finished it and it was a perfectly adequate background for ironing and physiotherapy. things I liked Things i didnt like

If one more app reminds me to vote in the EU parliament elections, I’m deleting it. Mate, you are an app, stay the f out of my citizenship, stay the f out of politics, and above all, don’t tell me what to do, I’m an adult, I will vote if I want. For crying out loud what’s next, it will tell me who to vote for or zip my hand if I don’t vote. Doesn’t top the undetachable plastic bottle caps, but boy I’m annoyed.

Well, I’ve been meaning to share my swimming journey. I used to swim in middle school, nothing serious just practice twice a week, local amateur competitions for swimming pool ice cream and the sheer joy of being in the water. After what stretched into an inexplicable 17 year gap I started swimming again in January. The first time went like, let’s do 500m in one go without warmup because hey I used to swim in middle school. Yeah. Right. I could not lift my arms for the rest of the day and since I was stupid enough to do this the day before getting blood work, it also blew my results and my liver enzymes were out of the roof (they went right back down in 6 day when we repeated the test, they are fine). So for these reasons, the second time went like, let’s do 150m, take a 10 minute break and let’s do 150m again. Which is a joke, it’s like 10 minutes in the pool, it’s kindergarten swim practice. Never mind. We will take it slow, and work it up to 1000m (which is still less than half my middle school swim capabilities), no matter how much time it takes, that much I should be able to do at least. Third time, 200, break, 200. Then 250 break 250, 300 break 300, etc. when I was I getting really f’ingbored and annoyed with the breaks, I skipped them and switched swim styles to force myself to slow down (I’m significantly slower in anything that’s not breast stroke). So I started doing 500 breast, 150 back, 150 breast (I hate free style and my arms are still way to weak for butterfly, which I used to love too) and built from there. For the past two weeks I’ve been steadily doing 1000m split 6:4 between breast and back. I will do two more weeks maintaining this and then we are onto 750 breast and 500 back. I love swimming, it makes me feel liberated, powerful and at peace. anyway, this long and tedious ramble is trying to say that fitness can be build (back) up no matter how small you have to start (And yes I know my 1000 m swim goal is minuscule compared to people who go from couch to half marathons in a year. Good for them, but my little 1000m goal is my little success that makes me proud and happy and takes me back to a part of myself I used to love and that’s what counts). Yay?