Given the complexity of the American immigration process pretty much every naturalized citizen spends some time in a grey zone wrt paperwork—it’s basically designed such that even if you follow each step rigorously and there are no delays anywhere there will be some period where you’re “illegal.” Really Melania…

Nuts and gum, together at last!

I remember a lot of us not being okay with upvotes when they arrived, and I do think the critique of them is basically correct (I’d add that they’ve kind of degraded some of the originality of the comments and the feeling of discussion in some cases—someone can post a quote and everyone will love it, which…

Downvoters here are weird (I never downvote—I ignore, flag if it’s
bad enough to be flagged, or email the AVC if it’s really bad)—I started keeping track of downvotes at the Dissolve when I got a weirdly hostile response to a comment mentioning that I liked going to the theater because it was a break from various…

No, I use a hand-cranked one where you have to adjust the handle and screw for different grinds—just had to unscrew it a bit more than the instructions said.

Surlier critics

I was thinking a while back about how the nineties had a real gift for ugliness in illustration, but I’d collage aspect which really elevates this to the next level.

Los Angeles area, reasons of research—since I was from New England I found I actually assimilated well into Dutch culture (and had a blast in Norway), which a lot of expats find off-putting.

Earlier this week I actually thought I’d ran over someone but it was just two really bad potholes which kind of looked like a body and a head if you saw them from the right angle. Here’s how I came to that conclusion:

Finally figured out the setting on my coffee grinder to get a good grind for French press

Has anyone else ever had the thing where you wake up and you’re not hungover and you’re still a bit tipsy? That happened to me when I went to a party and then early the next morning had to catch a train for a meeting in Belgium—it was actually pretty wonderful, being mildly elated and going right to coffee/fresh day…

Nothing embarrassing but I’ve finally shaken off that “atrophied cosmonaut” feeling I’ve had since moving back from the Netherlands. Miss being able to have that feeling without going to a gym, though.

Finally finished The Fractal Geometry of Nature—I can see why it was so influential—even if you don’t get or work through all the math (I did as much as I felt like, which is why it took so long) Mandelbrot’s a pretty entertaining writer in an eccentric professor kind of way (the main body of the book ends with…

The Orb, Orbus Terrarum

I actually think Boston driving culture’s a consequence of the medieval layout—you have to move opportunistically because the city’s layout is less forgiving to drivers. You see similar driving in a lot of non-Germany (where people are absolute sticklers for the rules) Europe. And I have to admit someone in my family…

Salutations Nudeador,

As someone who also recently relocated to California I think people are kind of flakey here in general—as someone who relocated to California from Europe I find it’s hard to get a read on a lot of people because of the sort of incessant pleasantness. If someone was into me in the Netherlands (or in grumpier parts of…

It definitely did in the Netherlands, and though I’d guess a lot of that was tourism-related I’m not sure (I don’t think anyone is since it’s evidently hard to gather stats on johns).

In the Netherlands the consensus seems to be the tolerance/decriminalization approach was better than outright legalization (which happened in the early 2000s)—ironically legalization made prostitution very attractive for money-laundering (it’s a cash-only business and there was an uptick in demand after…

Early 2000s Mitsubishi Lancer—the Brad of cars