Having to use Outlook was a significant contributor to me leaving my last job.

I’m grateful to Microsoft for Windows 11 providing me a bunch of free machines to stick in my basement and put Linux on.

You will then think about how you’re supposed to be relaxing but aren’t, which will spike your anxiety.

Ohai fellow ADHD-haver!

Congrats! You have this superpower and I am jealous.

Unfortunately you can now only concentrate on things you are supposed to do. You try to watch TV and you can’t follow the show because you’re thinking about how you need to mop the floors. Want to read? You can’t concentrate because you really should wash your windows. Your life becomes a hell of boring productivity. You lose sleep thinking about all the things you’re supposed to do, including how you’re supposed to be asleep by now. There is no more pleasure in life. There are no more quiet moments. There is only stuff you are supposed to do.

American food relies far too much on capsaicin for making things spicy. There are other spices too.

Most “American” foods were brought by immigrants too.

Honestly at this point if people want to try this I’m not gonna stop them.

I saw a New York Times recipe once that called for ¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons of all purpose flour.

They meant 125g.

You’re describing the boot keyboard, not the full USB HID protocol. It is true that there are some keyboards that only support NKRO, but the USB HID protocol has supported NKRO forever. https://www.devever.net/~hl/usbnkro

As a child one of my tasks (and probably my favourite - it was assigned more out of the fact that I was so eager to do it than anything else) was to make tea for my family. When we moved to the US, after eventually finding an electric kettle (which that was a mission in itself at the time), I noticed how much longer it took to boil the water. My dad started explaining the differences in the electrical systems to me.

One particular incident I can think of that really sparked my obsession with “how can I boil the most water possible in the least time possible?” occurred at a party. There were probably 30 people over and I was making tea and coffee for everyone. I was already maximising throughput by using a coffee maker on one circuit, a kettle on another circuit, and heating water in a pot on the stove. Yet it still took ages for me to provide everyone with their tea and coffee (longer than it would have taken with just a 2 litre 3 kW kettle without any of the other bits, because much of what I was doing was waiting for more water to boil). It didn’t help that the gas stove was seemingly better at heating up the rest of the house than at heating the water.

So it became one of those things where I apparently decided this was a problem with the world and I’m going to find the One Best Answer™. Right now the thing I think is probably the best available option is still not available in the US. Probably my ideal would be something that can boil a litre of water in under a minute and has at least a 5 litre tank so you can have an initial, near-instant burst of boiling water for your daily usage. Which would essentially be that same Quooker I linked, but with 10 kW of heating power rather than just 2.

(And before anyone asks… yes, I did once start enough kettles, induction cookers, etc. simultaneously that the lights dimmed and my UPS started beeping. No, there wasn’t a purpose to that other than for fun. Can you really blame me though? I had just got an electrician to install a 14-50R, a 6-20R and two new 5-20R circuits in my kitchen and I wanted to check whether I really could draw 25 kW of power in my kitchen!)

I guess “faster than what?” is what we need to clarify here, so I’ll give you a few numbers.

The fastest I’ve got a gas stove to boil a litre of water was around 6 minutes using a “Turbo boil” burner. The highest power US spec kettles you typically get are ~1500W, which take around 4m30s to boil the water, pretty similar to what you’ll get with a plug-in induction stove.

With a NEMA 6-20R, you can buy a plug adapter and a cheap British kettle (~3000W), which will boil a litre of water in just over 2 minutes. But those typically have 13 A fuses in the plugs. A NEMA 6-20R would realistically allow a 4500 W kettle which would finish off a litre of water in under 90 seconds.

Boiling water.

I am collecting data on various appliances and their water boiling abilities. I measure the temperature before and see when the temperature plateaus due to the state change. I time it. When possible I measure the energy use.

The more time I invest in it the more I think every North American kitchen should have at least one NEMA 6-20R.

About as wide as my oversized fridge.

Can’t wait to get rid of that shit and have something that actually fits in my kitchen.

Me replacing GNU coreutils with the rust ones.

That doesn’t get you a good text editor. That just gets you emacs with two bad next editors.

Because they know by doing that they can both get engagement and someone else to find the best quality version for them.

My experience with Apple has been more like

I credit Apple in many ways for their choice to design their business in a way that their profit motive often aligns with their users’ interests.

Their app store model for iOS is one of the strongest examples of them not doing that though.

Cat people are pretty self-sufficient. Normally food, water and a few cats are all they need, and they’ll come to you for attention. If you have two cat people there’s a good chance of them forming a bonded pair, too. More than two cat people and they’ll often socialise together.