I've watched this Jacques Pépin video countless times and the ease with which he casually prepares the two styles of omelets in ~5 minutes and narrates the process amazes me every time. I still can't perfectly replicate the second "classic French omelet" style even after years of effort. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1XoCQm5JSQ&t=8s
If you're interested in baking, I imagine you already know of Claire Saffitz - but if not, she was previously at Bon Appétit and now has a great YouTube channel on desserts/baking that your description of things like "tacky" vs "sticky" etc being more directly/usefully explained in a video context.
And yes, I 100% agree that Kenji has been an amazing culinary content creator, researcher, and resource for years. Look at his recipes and insights on turkey/prime rib/etc for holiday meals, noodles, cookies, and more as a few outstanding examples. He reminds me a lot of many of the best things about Alton Brown and Jacques Pépin - a scientifically/analytically fussy approach to cooking and baking, but in the right ways - not in the "fussiness without usefulness" (or without useful explanation, at least) route that many chefs take.
I missed getting into Pokemon by a couple years, since it wasn't out until 1998. I was already playing MTG and Star Wars: CCG for a while by then, and didn't continue playing after ~2000. I similarly expected SW:CCG cards to grow in value more than MTG, especially with the prequels - but I think the production runs were significantly greater from the beginning and people had a long association with Star Wars figurines/toys/cards as collectibles being valuable before that. One interesting thing for SW:CCG is that the newer print runs can often now be more valuable than the older ones for SW:CCG, since each run saw fewer cards printed as the popularity dwindled.
Before the prequels, it was relatively easy to meet many of the Star Wars actors. I met Peter Mayhew and had him sign my Star Wars: CCG Chewbacca card at a comic convention. A lot of people seem to comment on what a nice person he was to meet, and I completely agree. David Prowse was less obviously likeable, but was also interesting to meet.
English is the most spoken second language in Spain, with ~35% of the population being able to speak it. Portugal is slightly worse at 27%, along with Ukraine (18%), Romania (31%), and Italy (34%). France (39%), Croatia (49%), Estonia (50%), Slovenia (59%), and Greece (51%) are all a bit higher. And then the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Austria, Luxembourg, and Switzerland are all between 60-70%+.
And although I wouldn't worry too much about language too much if your focus is primarily on work, Spanish is perhaps the easiest language to learn as an English speaker. You can achieve professional level fluency in 600 hours of study. Certainly with 80-100 hours of concentrated study and continued practice after that you can learn more than enough to get by in daily life.
Two big advantages with learning Spanish: 1) pronunciation is easy to learn and is the same for both written and spoken Spanish; 2) there are lots of cognates, so if your English vocabulary is good then you already know lots of Spanish words.
Spain is great, but for the purposes of picking a country for working remotely and having a longer runway, I would argue heavily for Mexico over Spain if you're picking a Spanish speaking country. The overall cost of living is low, internet access can be great depending on the area, you'll be on a similar timezone as the US, and services (cooking, laundry, babysitting, etc) are very inexpensive - leaving you with much more time to work (or to use your downtime more effectively than running errands/etc).
Your impressions are correct. While some violence is greatly exagerated to paint a picture (For instance, Chicago, St Louis, Baltimore, Washington are more violent than São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro), it still is MUCH safer in Europe or Sillicon Valley/New York.
You might be surprised by the ridiculously small amount of money it takes to lobby legislators in the US. I've seen various reports over the years that have shown amounts well below $50k effectively buying deciding votes on important issues. To me, that would have otherwise seemed like an amount that might be effective at a city or state level, but it's shocking to see that being true at a federal level. One recent example that was heavily reported on was the lobbying over net neutrality. ISPs contributed $1.5 million to 273 members of Congress to support overturning net neutrality - that's less than $5500 each on average.
That low number is not a coincidence. A PAC is limited to $5,000 per candidate per year. (I'm not sure how the number there is over $5,000; it may include individual donor money as well.)
The main influence of a PAC is not its money but its ability to be in the room. Registered lobbyists have much greater access. That's not about paying for it; it's about the fact that they are legally allowed to do so (you have to register if you meet with legislators frequently) and the fact that the legislators will agree to meet with them (they can take only so many meetings per day and tend to the people who talk to other powerful people).
The FEC rules prevent money from being used as a bribe. It's much too low for that. The organizations do donate, because they can, but it's the access that really gives them more influence than you have.
I played clarinet, piano, and guitar growing up, but before reading this I had no idea about the story of the relatively modern (i.e. post industrial revolution) invention of the saxophone. I never played jazz, but certainly appreciate it and this quote from the article really struck a chord with me, "Without jazz, what would music be? But without the sax, what would jazz be?"
I find it fascinating that many of these instruments did not exist in their modern forms until around the same period. Playing clarinet in school, I had never really considered that our instruments weren't necessarily the same as the ones a piece had been composed for.
* The development of airtight pads for the clarinet in 1812 allowed manufacturers to add more keys, culminating in the modern Boehm system in 1839. The earlier clarinets looked like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3NCGSvKHCQ
* Between around 1800-1850, the piano gained the cast iron plate, stronger steel wires, and the double escapement action. 88 keys weren't common until the latter part of the century. Earlier pianos (fortepianos) looked like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ef95BZfYcw
* Antonio de Torres is credited with developing the modern classical guitar starting in the 1850's. Steel string guitars were developed later, and were made commercially by Gibson and Martin starting in the 1920's.
I also played the clarinet in school, took piano lessons at home, and am currently learning guitar. Great choices!
I'm the same way, naturally preferring something like a 26-27 hour day with 17+ hours awake and 9+ hours of sleep. I'd be very interested to hear more about your experience, especially of bupropion helping - could you email me (in my profile)? I've found melatonin, doxylamine succinate, zolpidem, and alprazolam to each be somewhat helpful at times although they all have diminishing returns over time and seem to affect sleep quality.
My sleep history has been all over the map and at times I've also gone for the sleep aids. I've tried all of the meds you've listed and none have been particularly effective when I've really needed them.
You may want to look into Suvorexant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suvorexant). It's the one drug that I've found to be extremely effective without causing any sort of hangover in the morning. It really felt like a miracle drug as compared to things like zolpidem and antihistamines. YMMV but I'd say it's worth looking into if you're really struggling.
I should also mention that I've found a combination of exercise, time in the sun, and proper sleep hygiene to be the only viable long-term solution. But I do believe that sleep aids can be a useful bridge towards developing a consistent sleep schedule.
Based on my experience and people I know, everyone seems to react to every drug differently, and if you read studies, you will find assertions about what it does that contradict individual experience.
I found that 75 mg twice a day made me feel ready to wake in the morning like I basically never have been, but it also had intolerable side effects. Going back to 75 mg/day, halving it, is bearable, but also reverted my sleep pattern.
I am taking melatonin at the moment, because why not, but I don't notice much effect except an increase in dreaming (or remembering it).
Assuming it's is legal where you are, have you tried cannabis? No hangover like alcohol, small doses won't make you feel intoxicated, sleep is easier to achieve and the quality is great. It doesn't help everyone, but it's worth a shot if you haven't tried it. Depending on where you live, you may be able to order it online and have it delivered like anything else. I like edible gummies. Take 30-60 minutes before you want to sleep, easy to take, easy to divide into smaller doses, no smell.
My understanding with weed is that it reduces the amount of REM sleep you get. You may come up ahead over all with this tradeoff, but not ahead of someone who sleeps "normally".
>sleep is easier to achieve and the quality is great
It's easier to fall asleep sometimes, but I find sleep quality markedly worsened with cannabis, personally. I have to sleep an extra hour or two if I've consumed cannabis prior to sleep.
I was diagnosed with Delayed sleep phase disorder and have the same issue where sleep aids only work a few days at a time before stopping with diminishing returns everyday. Nothing but just letting myself sleep when my body wants to sleep has worked.
The relationship between a manager and his or her direct reports is often cited as the single biggest factor in determining job satisfaction. Try to make the relationship a good one, and hope that they do their part too.
With the benefit of hindsight in similar situations, I would suggest trying not to jump in too heavily on things (like taking sides in a technical debate, volunteering for specific projects, etc) until you understand your new manager's objectives and how they evaluate performance.
The corporate culture, and the reason why the new manager was brought in, both matter. If it's just because the old one moved on and a new one was hired, and there's a strong corporate culture, things will likely continue on pretty normally for you as a junior report. If they were brought on for another reason or it's a smaller company, you could be in for some dramatic changes.
In any case, read up on how to "manage up". Here's a few Harvard Business Review articles that should help, and then you can go from there:
You should be able to tell within a few months how things are going - if you aren't happy or aren't getting positive feedback from the new manager, start job hunting. At 1-2 years into your first job you are likely at a good point to start looking for a new position with a nice bump in salary anyway.
The study that showed 21% positive antibody results came from self-selected testing of people physically shopping at grocery and big-box stores. Unfortunately, that ultimately doesn't effectively represent the overall population of NYC at all. This was posted by the Head of Decision Intelligence at Google about the study a day after the "21%" headline was published: https://towardsdatascience.com/were-21-of-new-york-city-resi...
> Unfortunately, that ultimately doesn't effectively represent the overall population of NYC at all.
Yes, as the Google article points out, the study is probably an undercount. IIRC, the samples were taken from mid-day grocery shoppers. If so, this would push the real NYC IFR higher, possibly into the 2% range. And as the Diamond Princess has shown, the real IFR continues to climb for weeks, as the final ICU patients succumb.
This would make the ultimate costs of herd immunity higher.
Unless you really want to dive into building it for fun, check out the Sensibo Sky. If your unit is compatible, I think that's the way to go. I honestly think they're slightly overpriced for what they are, even on sale, but I've also bought 4 and have been very happy.
Basically you get all the control/features you want by app or API, based on the unit's thermostat and hygrometer. Remote control, scheduling, auto on/off based on your location if you want that, and the big thing for me: programmable event control with any settings (cool/dry/fan at X degrees and Y strength/angle).
I mostly use the temperature based on/off programability because that feels the most like a traditional central air to me. I usually do: "when temperature is >24C, turn unit on to cool 20C medium fan strength" and "when temperature is <23C, turn unit off".
How does Sensibo handle the state synchronization problem? I would happily pay for something that works, but throwing state-dependent IR codes into the void is a recipe for pain.
