As a French, I've been eating speculoos like a few times per year, usually with coffee at some friends' who like them. And I never realized it was written with 2 o and I was thinking it was from Spain. Now I've learned something
+1 for the potluck dinners. I find much satisfaction in seeing my social circles merging.
Another lost art is keeping a contacts list and contacting them regularly. People used to have these lists on paper and then send cards at least once per year on birthdays/christmas/independence. With this being relegated to social media, your contacts often fall in the cracks of the quirks of tech companies.
Every year I make some (handmade) digital art and write a letter with it about our year, and then I email it (bcc’d) to all our friends, family, and other people we want to stay in touch with.
It’s not as tangible as a paper card but by being an email, people can just hit reply and answer. Every year a few dozen people write back to our card (out of maybe 350 recipients), and a lot of people have said that this is one of their favorite messages to get all year.
I think people can tell when you actually put time into something instead of just making a quick conventional card with platitudes. It’s helped us keep in touch with people from all over the place, across different continents, etc, who we might not stay in touch with so much otherwise.
Yep, I used to merge my circles often in the past, usually at restaurants and bars. I did not think about it otherwise though than optimizing my available time to target as many friends from different groups as possible.
But this also created a group of its own that I was coining together for regular Thursday craft beer night or occasionally having wine and beef together.
I stopped though, many years ago as when I started my own family, family and work consumed me too much to have regular night life and meetup exercising and my home was always my sanctum, I rarely invite people to my home. this is where i rest and only some inner circle has entrance there.
that inner circle was developed during last 20+ years and I don't find much space to expand this circle unless somebody new spends with me 20+ years having random access to my limited time.
And that's ok. having up to 5 close friends who you see and talk to regularly if you're 45+ is already enough. Random folk... can stay online. like here to share ideas and then bring them back home.
I actually stopped looking for new friends based on the interests.. I have enough in that gang to cover already. sharing interest related insights is where I use internet mostly.
one of the reasons why place like HN started becoming attractive again as after ditching FB, Discord and many other places with just noise instead of valuable insight and content only HN, lobsters and telnet/ssh BBSes become legitimate sources of idea sharing and tech progress.
other topics are covered fine for decades and when I'm randomly at bar sometimes (usually work delegations outside my own town) then I'm open for one evening conversation about any nonsense just to stay connected with the city folk, but no huge expectactions about phone sharing or another meeting.
I never share my social accounts connection with strangers. I stopped doing that.. it's just spam after all and like collecting f* pokemon cards instead of having meaningful relationship. One can't maintain relationship with 1000+ people so I dropped all that and keep online activities either socially anonymous or narrowed to under 100 people whom I at least remember I had a drink with, once.
You can also get custom-made jeans and T-shirts. They fit better, you can pick the fabric, you can choose details, plus tailors tend to be fun to chat with. I could spend a whole day browsing the local fabric market chosing fabric for my next shirt.
I find it baffling, but custom-made shirts are cheaper than off-the-shelf.
You can also learn to make your own tshirts. Sewing is a useful skill in general, and tshirts are pretty easy. The neck band is a bit of a challenge, but other than that it's just cutting fabric to a template and sewing pieces together using a sewing machine.
I mean the result might look better with an overlocker, but you can just fold and stich the ends instead. I guess it depends on what you're after. There are maker spaces and other creative hubs where you can easily use sewing machines or overlockers.
Or you can buy one for like ~€350. It's not cheap, but also not insurmountable if you want to go down the route of making your own clothes.
Go to your local Chinatown. You can get custom tailored clothing for a lot less than typical upper middle class branded office/semi-formal wear.
Tailoring is an old old art. Look beyond the flashy Saville Row brands or pseudo "quiet luxury" ones like Brunello that seem to be favored in the Valley.
Any city that has proper suburban shops, strip malls, or Chinatowns. Avoid anything on Main Street. Look for small hole in the wall proprietor operations. This is one of the few times where economies of scale doesn't make things cheaper so avoid any big brands.
Also, watch a YouTube video or two to get a crash course on fabrics. In the states it's labor that's expensive but the fabrics are usually genuine. Alternatively you can go to South East Asia or places like Hong Kong and Japan too but there's a higher likelihood of fraud when it comes to the fabrics. Labor is about a magnitude cheaper though.
Bring your own fabrics if you want authenticity. Fabrics are cheap (relative to the cost of a nice suit on a tech worker's salary)
Another suggestion (not advice, I am hardly a professional when it comes to tailoring) is to commission more cotton clothing first to start so you can get a feel for the process. Suits are nice and all but are an investment of time and money and need constant dry cleaning. Try some custom tailor daily wear instead of H&M for a change (better quality and contributes to your local economy).
Oh yes, when LLMs fail at translating they don't make a visible error. They fill up with inferred meaning. Translators can only be replaced by LLMs if there's no consequence attached to the meaning of what's being translated.
Meanwhile there's a 60's era fridge in our garage that still runs fine. For three generations it's reputed to keep beer at just the right temperature. To think that a machine like that would need an update... You'd never want to change something that works so well for so long.
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