I missed this in the news, then saw link refers to Kronen Zeitung report which is not a great newspaper to cite so thought for sure it cannot be entirely true? But it is! And here another link from Die Presse (google translate works fine here) which tells us it was not a jerk dad who brought his kid to drill holes but an idiot mom.

Interesting. As women tend to combat vaginal dryness later in life, guidelines like these are especially needed there. Pretty sure you very easily fall into a vicious circle of lubing, ruining cells which produce any remaining lube -> lubing even more. I guess the bottom line is to buy water-based lubes with some sort of an organic “gel” source and avoid propylene glycol/tons of glycerine/detergets (though those are harder to detect by name).

This is pretty interesting. I mean I’ve seen dogs dream vividly and am not quite sure how much I believe all them Babe the Pig-alike movies. :)

But I think the definition of a thought is a problem here. Everything we say (or contemplate of saying or trying to remember) is also a thought which precedes our verbal output. Those thoughts will inevitably be in a language of our preference. And actually in process of learning a new language that is often times the pivotal point - once your thoughts switch to a new language, you know you adapted it.

It can really depend where you live so I think the first advise is to take it easy on yourself.

• It is ok to combine ways of transports, say cycle to the first train/bus then load the bike on it/park at the station
• Start with a sturdier bike, the one which is bigger and more visible in traffic and gives you a better sense of control.
• don’t expect cars to respect you because you cycle or to know what to do around you. Bad drivers are everywhere. Don’t try to prove points. Safety is more important than ego.
• get yourself a good, large backpack. This will be your new back seat
• Take taxi/uber when needed. I once arrived to a friend’s wedding held out of town in a taxi and literally everybody I knew there looked at me as I was either a fool or a millioner. The bill was like 35$. Way cheaper than owning a car.

Lastly, enjoy how good you will feel. Climate protection and all that is great but your body will love you for it and you will feel it. Good luck

Not to mention academic/research text where authors are actually forced to pay to publish, only to have the articles end up behind a pay wall of given journal. If the authors want their papers freely available, they have to pay extra fees to the journal (we are talking thousands of dollars scale). Not a cent goes back to the authors or even research funding bodies. Long live Libgen!

Yes, yes, you are totally correct - delivery can make all the difference.

But I have to add that my main problem is that I am a scientist and big part of my job is to read immense amount of literature and memorize/connect often obscure terms. So when I read for pleasure (I love my job, but still) what I tend to enjoy the most are character heavy, emotional books with beautiful prose, written by people with deep understanding of life. Quite opposite to the academic literature.

So you are right, yes, this slog issue is not restricted to SF (e.g. I don’t read epic fantasy either; GoT and LOTR books I skipped myself as well), but SF in particular is something I really want to dig deeper, as there the ideas challenge my brain and remain lingering far after I finish the piece.

But! - I prefer to do it without being forced into a memory challenge. Because if I start and within the first two pages there are 15 names and 3 planets and lots of traveling (i really damn hate descriptions of pure traveling, like please lets just skip that part) then I lose interest in the main idea and the ideas are what I am after.

So Tldr yes, you are absolutely right, it is also the prose and the delivery, but still no prose or delivery would keep me long motivated or make me deeply enjoy reading work which has too many names or weird, invented terms.

Never too late for good recommendations! I am happy such a good collection of suggestions was made, not just for me but for everyone. Thanks for contributing!

I think to really solve this we will need to wait for the kids from this generation to grow up, and those who “figure it out” teach others how to do it, through a (hopefully adapted) educational system or otherwise. Because, to be honest, we don’t really know what this is like. We think we do, but we don’t, not really.

Thanks, especially for summarizing other comments. Also, sorry for my 1000 years of solitude misspell… Marques didn’t dream as big as Asimov haha

She keeps popping up so I think I really have to check her out. :)

I haven’t. I thought I wasn’t really into short stories… Till I discovered Ray Bradbury. Now I am very much into short stories. So will give Asimov a try for sure.

Just finished it a week ago. That prose… From another planet.

Exactly this. Thank you. :)

Omg this comment is so beautiful. Thank you so much! I think I am going to start with your first option, just got it on kindle (I am a total sucker for time/dimension travels, from 11/22/63 (one of my all time favorites) to Time Traveler’s wife to Blake Crouch).

This is such a good recommendation really, I have to elaborate why: I love The Stand (rebuilding the society), Heart is a Lonely hunter (american southwest) and 1000 years of solitude (story that spans across number of generations). So thanks!

Hey thanks for this, excellent resource! (Cozy catastrophe is def my new favorite genre name)

I think it has a lot to do with Instagram esthetics and (under-the-radar-proposed) user behaviour.

• You are encouraged through suggested posts on insta to make everything about you look perfect, so your ig becomes in a sense your own advertisment. That is not so much on FB. FB was always life as it is.

• Instagram users are somehow not encouraged to post comments that much, rather to like, which reduces the likelihood of anyone ruining that image of yourself you are creating. Again, this is different on FB.

• Also, there are no groups, no communities on Insta, so users cannot connect in the same way like on FB, so there is no negative political or other association to it.

• Lastly, if you think about it, Mark always was and by this day remained the face of Facebook and Facebook only. Rarely anyone ever mentions he is also behind ig. And we know people - they tend not to think about stuff which aren’t mentioned.

For the record, I deleted both at the same time 2 years ago. WA I still have but prefer Telegram. Wish I could ditch WA as well. Telegram is far more advanced.

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Happy to hear that! :)

I find colorful/funny tennis socks really cute. Even regular white ones with like a stripe or two of different color/small drawing are good enough. Couple them with shorts as the other user mentioned and some casual t-shirt/hoodie and you’ll easily achieve cute rather then edgy look.