227 vehicles have passed by us in the last hour. We are parked on the side of the road, in a car that is leaking oil. At least the hood has stopped smoking. Our two friends left in a taxi to Taluca, the closest town, to see a mechanic and have a grua tow us either to the town, or back all the way to Mexico City. We had gone to the park to see the monarch butterflies before they begin their migration north; we arrived too late, the mariposas had left three days prior, but the trail was still open at a discount, and many bodies of the butterflies that died were still littered on the edges of the walking paths, the ticket takers told us. We had driven about 2 hours out of the city to see them; we were three days and two hours too late. ...

For the first time, in my many years of eating lentils, I found a small stone in my lentils while I was eating the curry. It was slightly smaller than a single lentil. On the bag of the lentils, and in every online recipe describing how to cook lentils, the following warning exists: be sure to rinse your lentils prior to cooking to remove any rocks or debris as modern cleaning equipment cannot. And I do. But I have never actually found a pebble, and so thought this was a cautionary warning that lawyers required. Now, I figured, the process of cleaning the lentils during production likely was efficient and accurate enough now (in the direct contradiction to what the warning tells me). A good self-reflection example of how my prior experience incorrectly outweighs expert knowledge. ...

- A series of YouTube videos on how “practical effects” in movies are highlighted by directors, actors, and viewers, but actually are building blocks to extremely realistic computer generated visual effects. I didn’t even realize much of what he showed was technically possible: it makes sense that performing a stunt in real life can give VFX artists valuable information about how it should look when it is computer generated, but the fact that oftentimes the stunt itself is replaced with CGI is astounding; see, for instance, the Top Gun: Maverick replacement jets. ...

In the past six months I’ve started to have finger, wrist, and forearm pain. I previously was using the Logitech Mx Mouse and keyboard for business. But due to the pronation of my wrists I wasn’t able to type at all without experience severe pain that would continue through the evening. so recently I’ve been using the Windows voice axis. To try and perform as much typing and as many actions on the computer as I can. This post Is entirely written using my voice. And as you can I sit I’m still having trouble making this a usable tool. ...