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The washing machine is fixed! Life is good again. It turns out the problem was that we hadn’t been cleaning the filter and over the past (checks calendar) three years, all the lint had slowly blocked the tube for the waste water. Since the fault was ours, the repairman should have charged us but he explained that if he changed the heat pump, it the warranty would cover things so he not only saved us ¥15,000 but gave us a fresh heat pump! Thank you, universe.
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Saving that money made me feel better about purchasing five (yes, five!) air conditioners from the same electronics shop where I bought the washing machine three years ago. I don’t want to think too much about how much they cost but having lived in a Japanese house where the owner had clearly wanted to see if you really needed an air conditioner in every room, I can confirm that you do indeed.
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Frustrated at where my time is going, I decided to try to measure it. At the moment, I’m using the app, Timeglass, to do this. I basically have a series of stopwatches and when I start an activity, I try to remember to start the stopwatch. It’s too early to tell you if it’s helping but I’ll keep you posted.
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Eri’s condition improved a little more and so I took Rowan out to ride on a shinkansen. He wanted to go on the N700A but that’s a Tōkaidō shinkansen (Wikipedia) and they’re not as convenient for a short ride as the Tōhoku shinkansen (Wikipedia) so I told him we’d catch that some time after the move and that this time we’d go on one that left from Ueno Station. He hoped we’d catch an E5 and that’s indeed what we caught! While we waited on the platform, we saw a different E5, an E7 and an E2.
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The New York Times published an epic look at the turmoil roiling Rupert Murdoch’s family as he tries to change the terms of a family trust to make sure that his son, Lachlan will control News Limited. Somehow the Times got access to a trove of documents that had been submitted to the Nevada probate court where the case is being heard and it makes for an absolutely cracking read.
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Did you know that ‘chauvinism’ is named after Nicolas Chauvin (Wikipedia)? Chauvin was a (possibly apocryphal) soldier who served Napoleon in such a devoted manner that the term ‘chauvinism’ coming to mean excessive nationalist fervour.
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I started the second season of Severance. Like many modern TV shows, I think the second season is weaker now we know the big reveal from the first season. It’s still good but I wish we’d spent more time with Adam Scott’s Mark, particularly the his outie. I worry that the reason for this is so that the writers can ‘hide’ what he’s been doing for a reveal at the end of this season. I’d just as soon cut out the mystery and follow Mark on his journey.
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If you’re not that interested in space, this probably won’t do much for you but I loved Hank Green’s YouTube video about the four largest moons of Jupiter.
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After watching Trash Theory’s video essay about The La’s and ‘There She Goes’, I of course started listening to the song again. It’s great but as someone who’s never listened to their other material, I was impressed by how good the rest of the album is, too (Apple Music).
