Everybody’s wrapped up in the climate / weather discussion, but the thing that surprised me a bit more was the difference in sunset / sunrise.

I was working on an international team (i.e. a bunch of Americans + one dude from France).

Back in those ancient times, video calls with everybody’s face included weren’t necessarily the standard, and even when we did them, everyone was typically in an office environment.

Anyway, one late afternoon (for us in the USA) we did a team video call and our French counterpart was sitting outdoors in his back yard and it was still light outside. Although we knew it was 10 p.m. where he lived, it looked closer to the amount of sunlight we’d typically see around 7 or maybe 8 p.m. here in mid-latitude US.

It was kind of interesting, because even in the height of summer at the very highest elevations, it’s going to be very dark here at 10 p.m.

If we’re bitching about Pixels, mine is allergic to my wireless charger.

The charger works just fine with my other wireless charging devices and my previous phone. It worked fine with the Pixel for the first few months.

Around maybe March or April, wireless charging with my charging pad stopped working. I’d check periodically and after software updates just to see if that fixed anything. No luck.

Then out of the blue, I set my phone on the charger last week and it is working again.

I’m certain it’s the phone that’s the issue, since like I said previous phone and all my other devices work flawlessly.

Really makes me think switching brands was an unfortunately bad idea.

That’s life living with a human garbage disposal. They will eat anything. They’ll acknowledge the five second rule only in so much as it’s their inside joke when they eat a chunk of cake that fell on the floor at least 20 minutes earlier and miraculously escaped the canine detection system. It’s bizarre having to justify throwing away 30 cents worth of cookies that were molded because “I would have still eaten them just not the moldy parts.” but that and similar conversations are being had regularly.

Type 2 runs rampant on both sides of my family. I’ve had symptoms since I was a kid, and have been tested almost every year as an adult. However, my test results have always been in the healthy range, so I guess I’m not diabetic, at least not yet.

It’s strange to read through the comments and see all the symptoms and recognize them in myself.

Granted, I think the only diagnostic tool most care providers in the USA look at is the A1C number. I’ve asked many questions over the years: could my symptoms be caused by something else, is it possible that A1C numbers might not be a reliable indicator for some people, and things like that. Basically get told not to worry about it.

Either way, I still get tested each year.

My nose is more sensitive than average to certain types of foul smells mostly in the poop and rotting organic material categories but also things like mouse / rodent urine, skunks, and cigarette smoke. Oh joy.

Mostly it makes me feel like I’m going crazy because I smell these things when nobody else seems to notice leading me to wonder if I’m just hallucinating the smell. But sometimes I put it to good use by being the early warning system of skunks in the area and sometimes I’m the first to notice when the milk is starting to go bad.

It is because this is how these things do be. QED.

On a trip to San Francisco, the quintessential “gay mecca” of the USA I was on a bus making my way over towards Haight area (then planning to go visit Castro street aka the actual gayest part of San Francisco) there were a group of men on the bus going on a bigoted rant specifically about homosexual men ruining the country and going to hell and all that fun stuff on the LGBTQ+ agenda.

Like, I’d expect to hear that kind of stuff in the middle of Oklahoma’s rural hellscape (sans the bus part). But in San Francisco of all places?