My experience in the UK was the gruyère was a bit bland as a cheese. But since moving to France that’s changed completely. Gruyère can be of widly different qualities and aged for different times for very different end flavours. The opposite is true of cheddar, which in Britain is a big spectrum of flavours and textures, but often in France is a pretty bland ‘burger cheese slice’ affair.

I’m not sure if they’re what you’re looking for, but their are various little mental exercises you can do depending on what your trying to achieve.

Relaxing visualisations - if I’m trying to sleep and I’m too worked up about something to relax, I close my eyes and visualise a peaceful scene, e.g. being on a warm tropical beach, the heat of the sun lulling me to sleep, the gentle lapping of the ocean… It doesn’t always put me immediately to sleep, but it helps get my brain out of the problem-solving stress mode.

Sensory engagement - if I’m feeling anxious and getting stuck in a panicky loop, I try to engage my senses. Notice four things around you that you can see, three you can hear, two that you can smell, and a texture you can touch (a stone wall, your jacket’s fabric). This works well because when I’m stressed my brain doesn’t want to be told to “calm down”, it’s trying to warn me of danger. So instead of forcing some relaxation, I engage my senses, checking my surroundings, and generally there is no danger, just the hubub of normal life. This reminds my lizard brain that although being worried about missing a deadline is stressful, I’m not in immediate physical danger and should calm tf down.

Sense of perspective - when we are in an emergency our sense of time shrinks so we only focus on the immediate problem. As we relax, we become better able to consider the larger future. This is great in a crisis, but also leads to dumb overreactions. So, if something goes wrong, and in the grand scheme of things it’s actually not a big deal, but to me right now it feels like the worst, I use this technique. I visualise my surroundings and then begin zooming out, viewing my self from above, seing the room and then the building, the pulling out like a map tool, seeing the area, the country, the globe. I sometimes continue, visualising the solar system and the milky way. After that, it feels a lot easier to shrug and accept that whatever embaressment or frustration felt like it was going to ruin my day is, in fact, just not that important.

Was hearing something from an English literature professor recently. He was arguing that we were on track to have a new cultural renaissance, because historically cultural transformations have come when the ‘guardians of culture’ (the tastesetters, the academy, etc) spend all their time in ever increasing arcane and self-referential debates. Then groups from outside of the cultural institutional power start doing something very new and vibrant and it ends up transforming cultural expression.

I guess the downside is that even ‘soon’ in this context could be 50 years, and it’s quite likely you won’t recognise or like what the new art when it emerges. Renaissance art is beautiful, but at the time it was seen as base and anti-intellectual, taking the abstract symbolism of medieval art and replacing it with “this statue of a guy looks reeeealllly like a irl guy doesn’t it!” Uhh, well done Michaelangelo, I can see a naked guy whenever I go to the baths, what does your ‘art’ say about his place is the cosmic order, his eternal destiny and the state of his soul?

Nothing surprising in there for me (although I’ve met some people who would benefit from reading it…) but then I started reading it from the perspective of self-talk.

I know I wouldn’t accuse someone with adhd of “always overreacting” and I’d never tell them "you’d have so much potential if you just try harder.” But I wonder how often I think that to myself, and how little good it does…

Had a quick search on Google scholar, lots of stuff comparing general rates of engagement with hobbies in different countries, especially linked to helping older people. Thiscompares some countries, and observes that both wealth and wealthy inequality lead to less engagement with hobbies (which is why the US is relatively low).

I found this one that discusses how covid impacted different types of hobbies in various countries, but I couldn’t see a quick table of hobby prevalence. Just comments about stuff like cooking being more affected by covid in anglophone and Hispanic countries.

It’s worth giving it a go! Here’s a recipe that bakes a foccacia at 200°. At worst it’ll be less than perfect, but it’ll definitely be edible!

It would be helpful to know what you’re baking? It might be cooking longer at lower temperature, but it might also be about adjusting the size (a larger cake is usually cooked at a lower temperature to allow the centre to cook before the outside over-browns).

While it’s absolutely true that baking is a strict formula, I don’t agree that not reaching a given temperature means it’s necessarily doomed. It might achieve a somewhat different outcome, but for a whole bunch of baked goods a lower or higher temperature with adjusted time will produce something perfectly acceptable.

As you say, most people have no idea what temperature their oven actually produces, or fail to adjust for the strength of fan assist or placement in the oven. Sometimes this leads to frustration and failure, but many delicious cookies have been baked with imprecission.

I’ve got some tiles on my keys and my earbud case. I’m mostly pretty good with my keys (thy have hook hy the front door), but for the occasional time I’ve need to find them in a rush and they aren’t where they should be the tile has been very helpful. The ear bud one I use multiple times a week, and before I had it I’d regularly waste hours searching through my clothes and bags looking for my headphones (only to find that they fallen off the table and were now in a shoe or something).

So, if you’re prone to misplacing stuff they’re amazing. But if you never lose stuff then I doubt they’ll be very helpful.

I might be a soyboy but at least I’m not fashy.

But don’t we have lots of insults for other categories of people? People call people soyboys, incels, tankies, fashy, bible thumper, nepo babies or basement dweller.

Aren’t those just the modern version of “jocks” and “limeys” (I went for those because I’m Scottish and British, you can mentally fill in the alternatives…)

I’ve not noticed that in particular yet. but it might be because I block accounts that don’t add constructively to the comments, so maybe I’m not seeing a lot of the worst behaviour.

I’d say, post as often as you can be bothered and make interesting content. I rarely pay attention to the username beside a post, so I’m unlikely to judge that it’s the same person who posts 99% of posts in a less popular community. But if I see lots of examples of posts on a topic, it’s easier for me to remember about it and think “I’ll post there”.

What interface/appnare you using? On boost its exactly the same process for upvotes or downvotes. I don’t think an extra step would make any difference, I don’t downvote very often and when I do it’s because I think it’s worth doing.

I feel like “going viral” partly covers that? When you make an offensive tweet before boarding a plane, and get turn off flight mode to realise the world has judged you and you’ve lost your job?

If you specifically mean how the Internet can misrepresented a country because most people online have never been to Montenegro or Bhutan, then it’s maybe just “bias”?

‘could care less’ instead of “couldn’t”. I know it’s just a regional / generational difference, I don’t really care about being a prescriptivist or that my way is more “logical”. Phrases and idioms can be stupid and counterintuitive. But that’s said, it bugs the living hell out of me, and I instantly think anyone using it is an ignorant dumbass.

All the time. I sometimes read my phone, sometimes play games, often I’m doing chores (cooking, cleaning etc). Pretty much the only time I watch something 100% is if I go to the cinema, but if I’m at home I can’t resist the distractions.

It also influences what I watch. I definitely prefer shows and films that don’t require constant attention, so subtitles or minimal dialogue are not ideal. If it’s a film that I really want to try and engage with as much as possible, I watch it first thing in the morning, as I’m still waking up. When my brain is still sluggish, just drinking a pot of coffee is enough to keep me busy while I watch. (and yeah, I’ve got adhd…)

I’m not defending corporate culture, and it’s bullshit. But if you’re in a job that requires thinking, not just physical labour, there is a fair amount of research that’s shows that people do significantly better work when they have intrinsic motivations than extrinsic (like money).

Even if you’re doing a job you would quite today if you didn’t need the money, there’s probably a bunch of intrinsic motivations that are there, even if they’re small compared to “need cash”. Maybe you care about your teammates and don’t want to let them down (at least that one guy, the rest are dicks), maybe you have a sense of pride in your competence and don’t want to produce shit (pity that management get in the way most of the time) , maybe you want the company do be successful (because otherwise you’d have to get naothe job).

If you find genuine motivations, even if you have to be circumspect in how you express them, it’ll be easier for your bosses to trust you. If someone is honestly and openly saying they’re only here for money, then I can infer that they will do the least possible work that won’t get them fired. So I’ll need to constantly be supervising them and checking their work because if I don’t they’ll cut corners and ruin everything. I can’t let the talk to clients or even other staff because they could be hugely negative about the company and cause problems. It’s just not worth it. From the c-suite perspective, they know that everyone saying how important work is and how much they believe in the company are full of shit.

It’s basically the opposite of addictive. Addictive stuff is easy, because it quickly becomes a “need” not just something you theoretically want to do but can’t really be bothered right now.

Even ‘fun’ stuff like TV shows, I can ‘want’ to catch up on shows, or finish the series I was loving, but if its down to choosing and making myself get round to it, I won’t. But when suddenly I get a hyper focus on some old show and I binge forty episodes in a weekend it’s ‘easy’. What’s hard is stopping, which I guess means I’m kinda in addict mode (until I overdo it and get board and abandon the watchthrough a few episodes from the end).

None. I don’t really understand who’s going around getting banned? Kids?