I've participated as a guest in several murder mystery type events. As a category, social deduction games tend to succeed or fail based on the enthusiasm level of the players. If too many people are checked out, or not willing to get fully into character, then everyone's experience will suffer. With that, consider crafting your guest list based on how keen they are about this kind of game, rather than just because they're your usual crew.

Germany recently introduced a new visa program that might make it easier for you to get back there. Best of luck while you're back in the US.

The Song Exploder podcast recently reminded me of the incredible Mohabbet by Arooj Aftab. She won a Grammy back in 2022 for "global music," but I think she's still incredibly underappreciated and deserves more attention for her unique blend of contemporary jazz and traditional Pakistani folk music.

I recently read Slaughterhouse-Five for the first time, as I somehow managed to avoid any exposure to Vonnegut in school. What a book! It's sad to be reading this 55 years after it was written, in the midst of another ground war in Europe. There's a lot of timeless lessons to be learned from this book, and it's a shame we haven't absorbed more of them.

So it goes.

Figures, thank you for the summary. I attempted a 4 week digital detox after reading Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism and mostly failed because I wasn't able to come up with practical alternatives.

I think I've seen more new spam accounts than legitimate users joining recently, so it seems like the current open/growth model is not working.

The site is pretty much already a quiet little club in a corner of the Internet, so this seems to be better acknowledging that reality.

There's not nothing in there, but the book is certainly not useful.

Thanks for the heads up. Too many non-fiction books these days would be better as a magazine article.

I've been playing Caroline Polachek's second album Desire, I Want to Turn Into You on repeat for the last few weeks. It's on quite a few critics' Best of 2023 lists, but I still think she's pretty unknown in the mainstream. Her music is pretty weird to begin with, but you really have to watch the music videos to appreciate just how out there she is. Here's the first track:

Kroger barely carries ingredients.

Trader Joes is a grocery store for people who don't know how to cook. Now that's a store that barely carries ingredients. They'll sell you five kinds of frozen Asian entrees, but not a bag of brown rice.

Man, what is going on in the UK these days?

Dunning-Kruger bias among the mathematically-inclined will result in an inappropriate reliance on Bayesian statistics

Do you think this problem could be self-correcting in the long run? Won't these folks like SBF who are making faulty predictions all wind up losing one way or another?

That money that should have been going towards student loans was saved, used to pay off credit card debt, and spent on goods and services. If anything, it was massively propping up the economy, because borrowers had hundreds of 'extra' dollars per month to support their consumerism.

about 25% of the time ... employees can live anywhere in the U.S. so long as they pay their own way to get to Orrville

This is still grossly exploitative. It would be unreasonable for any job with 25% required business travel to not reimburse employees for all associated expenses. Their own CPO admits that 2 years of work from home was successful, but these facts are clearly being overridden by the feelings of their old-school executives.

If Orrville Mayor Dave Handwerk had his wish, Smucker employees would be back in the office five days a week

Screw this guy. This attitude is unbecoming when it's coming from the mayors of New York City and San Francisco. It is pathetic coming from the leader of a 9000 person company town. He's lucky that Smuckers is still a family-run company, and hasn't been seduced away to a neighboring state with the promise of tax breaks.

Massey ... said she spent much of her time at Smucker in a nonmanagement role, not wanting to take on a leadership position if she couldn’t be in Orrville full-time...

Nicole Massey lives in San Francisco and commutes to Orrville for core weeks.

Good for her for overcoming the backwards corporate culture that was thwarting her advancement. Inflexible policies like mandatory in-office days are known to harm recruiting and retention of women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups. It's no surprise why this lunchroom looks like a bag of marshmallows.

I'm a huge fan of gin, but I've also quit drinking. Any advice on getting started with a project like this?

This music-related documentary rekindled my love for some old-school UK dubstep.

As a result, I've been immersing myself in albums like this:

Those would all be reasonable, nondiscriminatory, legitimate actuarial reasons for these decisions. Since the insurance companies can't claim that's what they're doing though, they're making it seem like something else is going on.

There's a pretty deafening silence of the insurance companies refusing to explain their allegedly legitimate reason for taking subsidized housing into account. It leads one to conclude that the real reason must be discriminatory, or they would be able to offer an alternative explanation.

Your friend has great quads. Sounds like you know how to have a good time.