I had an old BMW. I park in the back of retail parking lots because I don’t see the point in circling lots to find a space that is 40ft closer and you can pull through the spaces. Lots of times I would come out of the store and another BMW would be parked next to mine, like there was some automotive kinship or something. There would be five open spaces, some guy and my car. It was always weird.

Streaming services are the best thing to ever happen to music from a consumer standpoint. You get access to a library of more music than you could listen to in a lifetime, and you’re not dependent on industry gatekeepers like in the days of radio and MTV. You don’t have to shell out money and hope you like more than two songs on the album. Because of that, I’m more adventurous with music than I’ve ever been.

Russian soldiers have been recorded surrendering to both aerial drones and ground robots in this war, including by writing messages of surrender that they presented to the operator via the onboard camera and surrendering after notes telling them to do so were dropped by drones.

Surrendering to a machine sounds humiliating but still a better option than going back to the Russian military.

I’m kind of surprised by this. They gave me a 10yr multiple-entry visa when I applied for a single-entry visa, which made me think they really wanted tourists after COVID. I must have gone off-season, because the sites I visited in Beijing and Xi’an were overwhelmingly populated by domestic tourists.

If you are thinking of going. China is very cool and relatively cheap, especially food and lodging. It’s a little challenging to get around because a lot of the travel apps are blocked in China. Like the best map app is in Chinese, so you have to use it with a translator app, but that’s part of the fun.