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Have I talked about damper and dampener before? (Yes, I have!) ‘Damper’ is used in this edition of the New York Times’s Evening Briefing newsletter:
But SVB’s failure continues to put a damper on the environment for tech start-ups.
It’s probably used in that way in Australia, too, but it always rings oddly in my ears because, as an Australian, I always think of this when I hear the word ‘damper’.
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Aside: My goodness was it difficult to get a nice clean URL for that newsletter link. I hope you all appreciated it.
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I bought new shoes! I bought two pairs of Adidas sneakers almost six years ago that I’ve been regularly having resoled. The pandemic threw a spanner in that well-oiled machine as the shoe repairer I liked going to was around the corner from the office and since April 2020, I haven’t been going in there regularly at all. There is a similar place at the nearby station but his prices sounded more expensive than I remember paying and so I kept putting it off. The proverbial straw was the visit I paid to the library a weekend or two ago where it rained heavily and my right sock got drenched (presumably because there’s a hole in the sole somewhere). Of course, as a 40-year-old man all I wanted to do was buy the exact same sneakers I own, which of course you can’t do. I ended up going with the Daily 3.0 and the Futurevulc Lifestyle, mostly because they were on sale.
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Speaking of not going into the office on a regular basis, work has announced that it wants to start moving back to a pre-pandemic work environment. It’s not clear to me exactly what that means. Apparently we are supposed to work in the office at least once a week but I’m not sure whether it has to be more than that. And even if everyone does start going into the office almost everyday, will anyone specifically ask me to do so? I am the foreigner after all. My thought at the moment is to go in on Fridays.
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Someone created a TikTok account with one of my e-mail accounts. The strangest thing is that it’s not an account I ever use for anything: it’s an old Gmail account I set up years and years ago for sending e-mails from a web app. I logged in to TikTok for the first time ever and immediately deleted the account. It had followed a couple of people and had posted one video but the username looked like a spammer. Which I guess means I’ve helped improve TikTok?
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I had got into the habit a few years ago of having a nap when the kids went to bed but that’s finally been broken by the Steam Deck. I usually play it for half an hour or so while I wait for the kids to doze off and while that’s not bad, it has meant that I’m finding it difficult to stay up much past midnight. I realise that’s probably a good thing but I really miss being awake very late. I’ve always enjoyed that time of night but especially so once the kids were born and it felt like the one time of the day I had exclusively to myself.
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Apple Music Classical came out on iOS and it’s… fine, I guess? I listen to classical music occasionally and it is nice having an app that treats classical music differently to pop but the app itself didn’t create a good first impression. I listen to soundtracks quite a bit and I suppose because the composer is significant, Apple Music Classical thinks soundtrack albums are things it should display. It should not, dear reader. The results are innocuous at best and broken at worst.
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One of those soundtracks is Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. It’s a real shame Joe Kraemer didn’t return for Fallout as his score is the best in the series (Apple Music).
