Your first one reminds me of something that happened awhile back. I was at a donut shop staring out the window when a scruffy dude in a pickup truck slammed into a traffic light, tipping it over across the street.

Now as it happens, said donut shop was a watering hole for police officers (yes, the stereotype is real), and about a dozen buff uniforms trotted out within seconds. The guy climbed out of the truck and tried to light a cig and it fell out of his mouth as he saw them rushing up.

My favourite story like that is from my dad, who was WW2 vet. After the war, he wound up in Japan and attended a conference where someone stepped up to the podium and introduced himself as General McArthur’s Chief Advisor. Or at least he thought he did…

The word for advisor is komon. The word for asshole or anus is koumon. Basically, you just hold out the first o out slightly longer and it switches to the other word.

I used to have trouble with RPN calculators until I realized it’s better to think in Japanese.

For example, when I go:

3 enter 5 plus 2 divide

I’m thinking:

san to go tasi-te ni-de waru

It just feels more natural.

One time when I was a kid, we went on a long car trip and a thunderstorm approached. My dad said, “Don’t worry about the sound. It’s the light that kills you!” My Japanese mom was not cool with this. “No, it’s the sound. What are you talking about?” A fierce argument ensued.

So, the words for thunder and lightning in Japanese are kaminari and inazuma, respectively. But that’s not a perfect translation. kaminari means something like “peal of the gods”, and is the forceful, dangerous part. inazuma is basically just a light show.

English is the opposite. Thunder is just a sound, while lightning can kill you. To put it another way, in English, one word is light + electricity while the other is sound. In Japanese, one word is sound + electricity while the other is light.

Anyway, I was about to speak up when my big brother tugged my arm. “No. This is a popcorn moment. Don’t ruin it!”

You might want to have a look at musician ear plugs? They cost more than your generic drug store foam ones, but they have a filter in them that allows you to still hear vocals and what not when you’re on stage. I’ve used them in a variety of contexts outside of performing or attending a concert and they are nice to have. Mine came with a keychain holder, so I always have them on me.

Oh it’ll be a shit show, don’t worry. Imagine a car sold in the US that’s assembled in Mexico using parts manufactured in the US from metals mined in Canada, along with electronics from China. And that’s all within a single company’s supply chain. There will be tariffs on top of tariffs in the auto sector.

I got a book on folding origami boxes and have become moderately proficient at it. I thought to save some money this year, maybe I’ll just give everyone a box? But then it occurred to me something probably needs to go in the box to complete the gift? Doh!

It amazes me that Republicans can be supportive of what is a blatant tax grab by the federal government. Trump is basically saying "I’m going to add a federal sales tax on top of the majority of everything you buy to the tune of 25% or more. With China, a lot of that is manufactured consumer goods. But with Canada and Mexico, we’re talking food products, automobiles, natural resources needed by American industries, etc.

Oh I see. syncthing is more for keeping 2 directories synched between machines. I guess in a sense, it’s more of a Dropbox competitor while croc and sharr are for one-off file transfers. For awhile, I ran an owncloud server at work for internal use. It was pretty good for file synching, but required some port forwarding through the router. These solutions mentioned here seem to all have a public host somewhere to eliminate that need.

Definitely not wasabi. If I had guess, it was maybe some sort of chilli sauce with garlic undertones and some other spices I couldn’t identify. It was a thick goopy sauce with sort of a mayo-like consistency but with dark specks suspended in green.

It was years ago when I was waiting tables, but I worked at a sushi restaurant and in walks this woman with a large purse. When her food arrives, she produces a big green squeeze bottle from the purse and proceeds to squirt some sort of super pungent green sauce over everything. Like we’re talking right on the sushi!

I was actually inwardly a little amused by the whole thing and was speculating what it might be? She looked vaguely south asian? Anyway, I quickly realized the smell was going to bother other customers, so I politely asked if she might move to another table. It’s not one I usually gave to customers as it was near the kitchen with servers going back and forth a lot, but it was far enough away from the main dining area to keep the smell localized.

Well, then she blew up. Omg. I eventually had to call the manager who tried to talk to her in calming tones but with little success. And it fell on me again to escort her out. (I’m a pretty big guy, though kind of baby-faced and not very intimidating, but the manager was a small woman and I guess I was her best option?)

As I led her out, she started bitching that we shouldn’t use disposable chopsticks. I think she was just venting about anything at this point? I said well, bamboo is still a lot better than plastics. I told her if she wants a fresh pair to take home, she could have it. This seemed to catch her off guard and she accepted the chopsticks. I think somehow this was a “win” in her mind and she left with a smug expression. Never saw her again, thankfully.

No, that’s not the plan. This is the plan. In other words, Canada would extradite Netanyahu to The Hague for trial, at which point the US would send in troops to spring him.

Cool. I’ve been using croc lately to move files around, but this differs in that they are supplying temporary off-site storage so that the host doesn’t have to remain online.