jrgaston

You can live just fine without tv. Better, in fact. Read books -- they are a lot more interesting.

Requiring a driver to navigate a touchscreen while driving is a needless distraction. Bring back buttons and knobs, things you can feel without looking, things that don’t move with every app refresh.

Now if only VW would resume bringing small cars to North America. I’ve owned a few VWs, I liked them, but I don’t want a big car, much less an ugh truck, but that seems all they offer any more. I suppose the market has spoken.

We get lots of hummers on Vancouver Island and, I swear, when their feeder is empty they send an emissary to find me, buzzing around my head, saying feed me! Feed me!

In British Columbia my local health authority texts me to inform me my covid and flu vaccines are available. And both are free. Of course it is cost effective for the province as it is cheaper to give vaccines than treat sick people in hospital.

The trail I followed for the TMB was not difficult, though difficulty depends on the trail you choose plus how much you want to cover in a day. I had good hiking boots, poles, rain gear, and a not-too-big pack with water, food, and clothing. I did not camp.

Interesting article, and it brings back a lot of memories.

I've done three alpine hikes: the Tour du Mont Blanc, the Haute Route, and the Dolomites. The Dolomites were my favorite, for both the scenery (though all are spectacular) and for the quality of the mountain inns where we stayed each night. We spent one night at Rifugio Cinque Torri, which is not far from those rock towers in the story.

I took a lot of photos while hiking and while carrying the camera equipment was a bother, I am so glad I did as I can re-visit the trip, photo by photo.

All three hikes are highly recommended.

It’s not just Colorado. Used to live in rural northern California and digging a $25k well (typical price I was quoted) came with no guarantee that water would be found.

It's not a dslr replacement, what a weird claim. My Nikons and Fujis are so much nicer to hold, to adjust, to shoot. But for a phone camera the s.w is ok. More adjustable than the iPhone app. I like the controls, the current settings text, and built in help text.

Only knock so far is it runs hot: never seen an overheating warning ever on my iPhone 14pro. Now i get one every ten or fifteen minutes when using Indigo.

That so many do not see why vaccines are needed is a serious problem.

Check out Lightroom.

It's but one data point, so don't draw any conclusions, but my Canadian household's news consumption is unchanged. We get lots of news from the CBC, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the Guardian, and the NY Times. Oh, and there's a local tv channel that has pretty good local (Vancouver Island) news.

A scam? Really?

I taught AP along with non-AP chemistry for a number of years and I think the AP program is a good fit for those students who plan on going to university, especially those interested in the sciences. In two semesters we covered almost the full range of chemistry topics (only organic was slighted) and the students came out well prepared for college chemistry.

The value in an AP course, to my mind, is not the AP exam. It's that the class has the depth and the pace of a college class. Even those who barely passed my course knew a lot more chem than those in the non-AP class.

A wonderfully written piece.

It’s not a lie if you believe it. - George Costanza

You might want to check your units. BC is a bit bigger than Texas, but not 3x.

Obsidian is a great product, thank you! And the optional Sync service works beautifully to keep my files synched between Windows, iPhone, and iPad.

I owned one, a great car. Spacious and great visibility. Classic clean Ital design. Had Bosch fuel injection so it met air pollution rules and ran beautifully.

Opened the iTunes store an hour ago, searched "Handel", went to albums, but could not open any album. So yeah, it was down.

Agreed. I've subscribed to many a magazine in my long life. The New Yorker is the last one standing as it is excellent from cover to cover.

Can't speak for the US but next door in Canada there are waiting lists for EVs. Second-hand EVs sell very well, too. We feel lucky we bought a second-hand, short range EV several years ago and it does almost all of our driving tasks. Haven't visited a gas station in a long time.

Nice, but why not just put an image-stabilized telephoto on a camera? I've lenses for my Fujis and Nikons that do the same as the Canon binoculars---and it _is_ cool when you see stabilization in action---plus you can take pictures.

Not all teaching stories are sad.

I was lucky. I taught high school in northern California for almost a decade and it was a lovely job. Sure, the work expands to fill your nights and weekends, and part of every summer vacation I worked on improving my lesson plans, but it was an enjoyable job with good students, great fellow teachers, a supportive administration, a wonderfully diverse and accepting student body, and only the occasional annoying parent.

Benefits were decent, pay was decent, and psychological rewards were tremendous. It was far more rewarding than the previous fifteen years I spent in software development. I felt I developed software not because the world needed it but just so some rich guy could get a little richer and maybe a bit of that richness would filter down to me. Not an inspiring reason to get up in the morning.

I could tell right away I had an impact on my students, introducing them to new areas of knowledge (in my case it was chemistry). My goals were to be a role model; for them to know what kinds of questions chemistry addressed; and for them to just maybe fall in love with science a little bit. I had no illusions they were going to grow up to be chemists.

I would have remained a teacher if I hadn't decided to leave the US. I am fortunate to have left before COVID because teaching online sounds really hard.

Just my 2 cents.

Spot on: "Codifying bribery into law as lobbying and superpacs doesn't make it not bribery"

Run flat tires are expensive, heavy, and hard riding. On the other hand, they don't go flat. I recently had a flat in my VW and I missed having my old Mini's run flats. Sometimes you just aren't in a place where you want to change a tire.

I like reader mode but lately I'll send an article to pocket (which cleans it up a lot) then I print it to a pdf which is saved in a folder in Dropbox and which is synched with my Kobo Elipsa, and with the Elipsa I can mark the articles up with its stylus. (Writing this out makes it sound a bit complicated which I guess it is.)

Canadian-American here. From what I've observed of Canada I'd expect the law will be narrowly defined and the penalties weak and rarely applied. Plus, the courts are slow as can be so I wouldn't expect an unleashing of prosecutions (though I realize this isn't a defense of a bad law). The US, in my experience, is far more severe in its criminal penalties for all kinds of things. In Canada, you wait years for trial (not in jail, you're out free) and then get a slap on the wrist.

It's a shame to see the low sales numbers but I can't say I'm surprised. I read about a book per week but most people I know read maybe a few books per year, if that.

Seems to me that for a lot of people, maybe the majority, the government already has all your tax data and you shouldn't need to file, only accept the government's numbers. I am in the opposite situation, especially as I have to file in two countries. Not living in the US doesn't give you a pass on filing US taxes. I get to buy two different versions of TurboTax :-( We don't worry much about a US audit (some say the IRS is starved for funding by anti-tax politicos?) whereas in our other country they quickly catch even the smallest error.

Another reason I've never regretted leaving Texas.

De Botton's "The News: A User's Manual," inspired me to cut back on my news consumption. The blow-by-blow of the news isn't particularly enlightening.

De Botton's other books are worth a look, too.

I can't comment on the technical challenges here but I sure can express sympathy with the students and teachers. I used to teach AP Chemistry, a very challenging course, like all APs I guess. My first reaction was they're still giving the exams? The security around the exams is usually so tight.

Well, I always told my students that even if you didn't do well on the spring AP exam at least you got credit for the course (AP students got a gpa bump at my school), learned a lot of wonderful chemistry, and you got a good taste of what a college course is like.