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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: February 26th, 2024

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  • Yeah, I’ve had a realization a few days ago when I checked out about a dozen songs that had north of 10 million views on YT, but I’ve never heard of them, at all, or of the artists behind them. And all of those were from some 10 years ago. So I guess my taste in music is kind of frozen in time and I’ve been trying for a while to complete collections of “old” artists rather than getting to know new ones.
    I do get occasional inspiration from the folks at I Love Music, though.



    • Language is by far the most important door opener, so put in one hour of learning every day for at least a year.
    • Mingle to get out of your comfort zone: Go to after-work parties and flea markets, take public transit. Use hobbyist/ meet-up apps. Read/ watch the local news.
    • Don’t expect to be invited, especially not to people’s homes. People might also be uncomfortable being invited to your home. Meeting in a public place is almost always the better option, unless you’ve gotten to know someone really well.
    • Irony/ sarcasm don’t translate very well between cultures.
    • Europe has some lousy weather, so get watertight coats and waterproof your shoes and backpacks.
    • Take it slow.
    • Also: Enjoy it! Europe is a fantastic little place at the crossroads between Asia and Africa and I would never want to leave.





  • Once they touch the factory floor’s floor, plastics become filthy and cannot be used for high-quality applications - food wrappers, anything with body contact. Oils and heavy metals are the biggest contaminants, a plastics-producing company I used to work for concluded. They either sent it all to a recycling factory or used it for very low-quality stuff like trash bags.
    Now with post-consumer plastics, not only are they extremely heterogeneous, they will also have even worse contaminants like mold which proved to be very resistant to cleaning, a EU study concluded. So you might want to pyrolyze them like you do with crude oil, but there’s just too much O, N, S and halogens, so the output will be too corrosive, but also too heterogeneous for it to make economic sense.





    • Don’t be afraid of loneliness; don’t be afraid of too many people around; don’t be afraid of sharing your life with an SO you think you don’t really know. As you age, these phases tend to blunt and blend together, like the seasons. The only thing you really have, in the end, is yourself.
    • Adult life is a lot more about compromising than fighting. Don’t make other people’s life shitty on purpose, neither allow them to make yours shitty.
    • Get your regular medical check-outs.
    • Leave a place if you positively can’t stand it any longer, and start from scratch. It’ll be okay.