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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • I went to a party that lasted all weekend. We weren’t drinking or anything else, so I want to emphasize I did all this to myself, completely sober:

    We were tossing lightsticks back and forth in the dark; I was barefoot. I leaped up to catch a lightstick; when I came down, my right foot landed fully on some kind of spiny, prickly, thorny plant, and I got a bunch of the pointy spiny bits embedded into the sole of my foot. This was particularly ironic, as I had made a point of pointing out the plant to everyone else earlier and telling them to avoid it.

    The toilet backed up and I had to clear it with a plunger that had a broken handle. I cleared the toilet, and also managed to flay about a fifth of the skin off the palm of my right hand.

    I slipped on the stairs and wrenched my back pretty badly. The dog ran underfoot and I sprained my left ankle. Something else happened, I don’t even remember what, and I injured my right hip.

    The worst part was that I had driven myself and a group of friends to this party, which meant I had to be the one who drove us back: my car had a manual transmission and no one else knew how to drive stick. So envision this:

    My right foot, with the spikes still in it, was used for the gas and the brake. My left foot, with the sprained ankle, had to delicately balance the clutch as we drove up and down these narrow back hills. There was no way to balance my weight on my injured right hip, so every movement on the gas or clutch put some torque on the hip - as well as twisting my injured back. And I had to shift with my right hand wrapped like a mummy’s, but the shifting pressure was still on the part of my hand with the flap of skin. And the roads just kept jostling every single injury I had.

    It was an incredibly, insanely painful drive home. And it was still one of the best parties I’ve ever been to.




  • Serious Trouble, by the further hosts of (and essentially a continuation of) All the President’s Lawyers.

    Nocturne, by Vanessa Lowe. A podcast about the night, and things that happen during the night. Favorite episodes: Night ways about what ancient people use to do at night and how archeology and anthropology are changing their perceptions; Finding the Void about a guy who lived inside a mall; On the North Face about a guy who got lost while climbing Mount Shasta; What’s Would You Do about the fear of night.

    I usually check in on The Daily like once a week to see if anything interesting has been covered.

    And This Week in Virology, which I got into during the pandemic. Usually the weekly update on Friday on what contagious diseases are currently circulating, and about half the time their Sunday episode.



  • The cheapest one is apparently in the town next door. It’s a 3 bedroom, 1 bath, 984 square foot single family home built in 1955, on a third-of-an-acre lot with no HOA.

    All the pictures are of the outside only, so I’m assuming the inside is pure shit. However, I also have to assume it’s some kind of liveable shit, because the places that aren’t liveable generally have to list as “0 bedrooms”.

    It’s $60,000, in south/central New Jersey. Or $665 per month, which includes 30 year mortgage as well as property taxes.












  • While I agree, let’s not pretend like this is limited just to Tesla. My feed lately has had numerous stories of crazy FSD taxis as well.

    I also have to say that one of my concerns with FSD is the deterioration in people’s driving skills and their awareness of their car’s abilities (especially as those change over time). Leaving aside all the wisecracks about people’s normal abilities or not paying attention anyway, let’s take a snowstorm. FSD can’t drive in it, so you’re left with regular human drivers going manual in their cars. But they haven’t actually driven themselves in a while, so they’ve forgotten some of the lessons they learned like how to apply the brakes differently in ice and snow, they don’t know where the corners of their car are, they’re driving entirely too fast and - because their FSD car was compensating for mechanical issues - they’re not aware that their tires are near-bald and the brakes are iffy.

    Thing is, I know this is something that’s going to happen. I just don’t know how we can mitigate the risks.