WTF-Beta

@daniel So I have an Instagram account dedicated to board games. Occasionally small board game companies send me games to play with the understanding that I’ll play the games and post about them. Because modern board games are a fairly niche hobby, it only takes a few thousand followers to become enough of an “influencer” for companies to partner with you. Larger accounts (many still under 10k followers but some of the super popular board gamers influencers that I follow have over 100k followers on instagram ) will be paid to make content about games, sometimes for social media or for Kickstarter campaigns. They get invited to try games before they are released and get lots of free product. And these folks definitely influence purchasing decisions amongst fellow board gamers so they are a huge part of a game company’s marketing budget. Every hobby has their own group of influencers. In niche hobbies they may only have a few thousand followers. But in areas like makeup and fashion they may have millions of views on TikTok. It’s a really bizarre landscape. There is a woman, I believe in China, who shows each product for 1-3 seconds before moving on to the next one. She’s a big deal - though I don’t really get why. But companies pay her to show their product, just for a moment.

I know someone who has become an influencer in the financial sector. Neither he nor his partner have zero credentials. The recommendations they make are legal, but very risky. I don’t really understand all the ins and outs but it amounts to leveraging everything you have to take loans and then investing that money. There is a name for it that I have forgotten. Again all legal. But their audience is folks like me - teachers and other middle class professionals who are doing fine but definitely are not wealthy. They charge people for their “course” and consultation fees. They are in the camp of “don’t let those financial advisors take your hard earned money - we can teach you how to do it yourselves”. I don’t know what that looks like if people start defaulting on those loans.

Ugh. Alberta. To be honest most of us are fine if they want to go - the problem is it cuts off BC. The separatists of Alberta are the same ilk as the carrot dictator’s base so…

I use AnyList for recipe management. I have been on the lookout for a good recipe app for literally decades and this ticks all the boxes for me. If you copy and paste ingredients as a block of text it separates them into individual things. There is a share function from blogs and recipe sites where it formats the recipe by just sending it to the app. (NYT Cooking plays SO well with it!). It allows you to sort and categorize and the search function is great. We use it to meal plan (and it tells us when we last cooked something - you can even have it suggest ideas based on how long it’s been). Once it’s in our meal plan I just click add to shopping list and it brings up all the ingredients for the week. I tick off the ones I need. If there are duplicates (one lemon in this recipe and two in that one) it will consolidate them to one list item. We have been using it for several years and they continue to add new features. There is a slimmed down free version but we pay the $15 (CAD) subscription to have all the features. Highly recommend!

Deep in the green, here. However, now I say grilling unless I mean BBQ (smoking). Maybe because Rob got really into BBQ for a bit so we changed our terminology to match? But chili has beans.

I do get Tangle but haven’t been reading it recently. I did read this - thanks for posting it.

@wtg said:

@Mik said:

Yeah, that sugar as the main ingredient throws me off.

Yea, the original Nutella also has sugar as #1. I love hazelnuts, and I know people love Nutella, but I've always found it to be way too sweet.

I made homemade Nutella when the kid was little. It was SO DELICIOUS. And of course I could lower the sugar content. Highly recommend.

I’m with Jon and Adagio. I much prefer reading on my Kobo (similar to Kindle, but not Amazon tied) to paper these days largely due to my eyesight. I tried reading on my iPad for years and my reading dropped significantly. Eventually realized that even though I turned off all notifications while reading just having the iPad in my hand messed with my focus. With my kobo I have the exact same focus as I do with physical books but I can actually see the print without eye strain. Also, I suffered from tendinitis for years (clarinetist hazard) and for a time holding a book open was painful. While that’s no longer the case it is nice to have that lighter Kobo rather than a heavy book.

All that said I love the idea of beautifully bound books in a physical library. But in practise I am down to a small barristers bookcase of books I keep for nostalgia.

I’m rereading Project Hail Mary. I’m enjoying it more the second time. It’s still not as good as The Martian, but pretty great! I’ll see the movie when it comes to streaming.

The photos the came back after the flyby yesterday are amazing. For what it’s worth, I’m ignoring every photo on social media and only trusting those directly from NASA. But they are pretty spectacular.

My favourite:
https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/art002e009288/

I turned on the livestream at about 11 this morning and have had it on all day. The fly by was fascinating! Can’t wait for the photos from Artemis.

I do check the comments before hand and sometimes I use the suggestions! I don’t use them all, based on what I know about our tastes, but I definitely check!

“It was the first time outside of the pandemic lockdown period that Canadian travel abroad outpaced ground trips to the U.S. since at least 1972, when Statistics Canada began keeping records, the agency said.
In January, 1.5 million Canadian residents returned from overseas, a jump of 10.6 per cent from the same month a year earlier. By contrast, the number of residents crossing back into Canada from the U.S. by automobile fell 26.3 per cent to 1.3 million over the same period.”

Excerpt From
“Canadians flock to overseas travel as U.S. boycott deepens”
Jason Kirby
The Globe and Mail
https://apple.news/AuXdbCJhETvqkGtwVTQmGeg

Canada Post is facing the same struggles. There have been multiple strikes over the past couple years because Canada Post employees want zero cuts in hours or jobs but it’s losing so much money. I am an advocate of keeping Canada Post because in rural Canada no one delivers mail to people except Canada Post because they are required to. That includes packages and official mail. So it is a necessary service. However, I don’t believe daily letter mail should be a requirement and a reduction in the number of post offices would make sense. They did eventually come to a settlement that Canada Post employees hated but they are still in operation.

We are going to Florence this summer and seeing the Vasari corridor is one of the things we have booked already!

The second season of The Pitt is what I look forward to watching every week. It is so excellent. We have been watching the new season of Shrinking, as well, though it isn’t as good as previous seasons. Still good, though! Unfortunately the new season of Hijack is terrible, and the new season of Paradise is only okay.

@andyd I have watched the Cumberbatch and Freeman Sherlock so many times! It’s excellent!

Thanks so much for the well wishes, all. Kiddo’s girlfriend has a very good friend who is epileptic, and one of his coworkers has a seizure disorder as well, so they at least have folks around them who know things. I’m hopeful the anti-seizure meds will work, and that there isn’t anything more horrible going on. I’m also very thankful for our medical system. While it hasn’t been perfect, so far the cost of this adventure has been $113 ($45x2 for ambulance, $23 for medication), so I’m grateful we don’t have to worry about the financial ramifications of a serious medical issue on top of everything else.

Not me. The kid. Just for context he’s 24 and lives with his girlfriend so she is his first line of support day to day but I’m still worried mom.

Three weeks ago he had a full blown seizure. Taken to hospital by ambulance. He realized that he had been having smaller seizures (focal seizures?) for months, but didn’t recognize what they were. CT scan came back clear. He has a neurologist appointment scheduled for April 6. On Tuesday he had a second seizure while waiting for his food at a local fast food place. Ambulance back to hospital. They gave him a prescription for anti-seizure meds before they discharged him after the second seizure which has made him feel a bit better about the situation.

Anyone have any experience here to share? I’m assuming epilepsy, but I have zero knowledge in this area.

I’m so sorry this is happening. Sending lots of positive thoughts your way for a full recovery for Mr WTG!

@ShiroKuro said in What happens to a car when…:

@Bernard said in What happens to a car when…:

automatic headlight hi-lo beam switching.

How does that work?

Hmmm… over the past two years I have noticed far more people leaving their high beams on until they are way closer than they should be, rendering me pretty much blind as the oncoming driver. Now I am wondering if those cars just have this new technology and they take too long (in my opinion) to see the oncoming car and switch?