Took a friend’s advice and abandoned my sadly gone-off sourdough culture. The new one has started very different in character to any of my previous cultures — not very bitter, quite fruity, and lots of bubbles. It might be due to this one being a lot wetter in consistency, whereas previous cultures were very thick.

It’s Ada Lovelace day, which is as good a day as any other to donate to the Ada Initiative.

Saw a book called “The Grammar of Rock”. Was disappointed to find it was not about actual rocks.

Theory: the tendency for baroque and classical pieces to be identified by numbers and designations can make them intimidating and inaccessible.

#TIL IE doesn’t upload csv files with text/* media type. Content-type cannot be trusted, the only way of telling if data is of a particular type is to see if it parses successfully.

I started the hundredpushups.com challenge last week. Unexpectedly, I found myself in the hardest of the three categories, but sailed through the week 1 without much of a problem. Just finished the first day of week 2 and OUCH this is getting more difficult now.

Turns out there’s a difference between actual rest and “not doing anything because you’re burnt out”. Won’t be making that mistake again (hopefully).

Diagnosis tip: both often involve not doing very much. Actual, voluntary rest feels good. Being burnt out feels bad.

Observation: when listing topics, the relative weights associated with relative order of items is highest at the ends

Roommate instructed me to “hold a banging party” in his absence. So far: cooked dumplings, played gurdy, read, listened to Breton accordion music #help #amidoingthisright

#TIL according to G translate, there’s only one . difference between “I am proud” and “I have chair”:

(Given, of course, that you leave out the accent on the ó. It’s not so funny if you spell it correctly) #icelandic

Opinions about icelandiconline.is as a place to learn Icelandic online? Been working through the lessons on-and-off over the past few weeks and, despite atrocious UI design and hilariously bad videography have found it adequate for a free resource. The fact that it’s completely in Icelandic is also nice.

Thoroughly impressed with the Loft hostel pub quiz. Science, history, geography, feminism and almost no movie questions. Recommended.

Protest songs, music, recordings from the Hong Kong protests: http://vojo.co/umbrellasongs via @OCLPHK

you won’t believe how much aubergine there is in a single aubergine

“[Whilst] rational actor models are, in themselves, morally blameless… …the use of such models to change the world is not morally neutral. Rational-actor models are metaphorical human constructions humanly imposed. They are not a feature of the world in itself. They can be used insightfully or not, fruitfully or not. How we choose to use them is not a “rational choice” as defined in the models. Not to understand this is truly irrational” — Lakoff & Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh