"why does restaurant food taste better than food cooked at home"

The cook does not care if you live or die and uses salt and butter accordingly

Fun book, hopefully fun movie!

I told you we’d be back

graphic of branching lifelines, with the path taken traced through it. past paths no longer in play are greyed out, possible future paths spread out like a network of roots in front

The future is a web of branching paths, and each choice opens up new possibilities as it closes others. This is as true for a civilization as it is for an individual. The more our collective intelligence can inform each choice, the better our chances of finding paths through to a beautiful future.

Andrius Kubilius, the European Commissioner for Defence Industry and Space:

“There are 450 million Europeans. We should not be crying out for 340 million Americans to defend us against 140 million Russians, who are not even able to defeat 38 million Ukrainians.

Having a cinnamon bun at 4850?

And in Paris, find your preferred cinema experience on seance.paris

honestly don’t get still being on twitter like i guess rebuilding is tough but the writing has been on the wall for years now and even putting aside the moral issue it’s just an insanely unpleasant place from the UI to the population

Me pointing to a starry night sky next to my telescope.

maybe humans should just look at the sky more often

I always felt that unmoderated capitalism is a breeding ground for zero-sum thinking and socio/psychopaths, but seeing it play out at this level is rough.

Occasional reminder that there’s no, “it’s too late, its over” for anthropogenic climate change. Every molecule of CO2 that doesn’t go into the atmosphere makes a difference. Preventing 0.1 degree of warming makes a difference. Every bit of climate resilience we build together makes a difference.

Three seagulls standing on a statue of a woman reaching for the winter sky

Looking ahead. May you all survive 2025 with your sanity and vigor intact.

Sigh. It wasn’t a nonevent BUT we took it seriously. It was a nonevent BECAUSE we took it seriously. Same dangerous attitude I’ve seen about ozone layer deterioration: if a major campaign of concerted action averted the problem, it must have been a fake problem. Not the correct lesson to draw!

Hotel bar charged me as Mr Vangonbogohut, which is impressive in the digital age of copy/paste and also generally the reason my handle is janvanwtf.

giving Bluesky another try