afternoon treat

somehow on vacation the coffee is stronger the cake is fudgier and the chillin' is more chill. something to do with deciding not to bother with responsibilities and obligations i suppose. the company is the usual convivial comfortable and preferred.

old wine

a visit without an address, just muscle memory

and without a call, just hopeful hopes

yet he remembers us, as we him

as if the years have not come in between

it's a friendship across cultures and across borders

without expectation and without baggage

just shared memories

it's just special!

sawadee kah!

in twenty years, what has not changed:

• the crowds
• the stalls under the bridge!
• the squalor
• the gentleness
• the crazy road traffic, even past midnight

across the fields of yesterday

the faces of little J1 and little J2 flash before me and i think again how differently things may have been if i had not a merciful and almighty Help who always had the situation in hand even when i did not and could not. the pain is sharp as is the relief.

any advice for bringing up the child? a young man asks me. not from me, i tell him honestly. i have made more mistakes than i care to recall. but i can give you one piece of encouragement: that God is bigger than your mistakes will be.

in my poverty and my need the LORD takes thought of me and the richer gladder and fuller i am indeed. psalm 40:17. 

public holiday

a walk with HOM - spell at the gym - tea and talk at yakun - naps (several) - finishing the book - embroidery - watching the parade - making snarky comments. 

as we grow older, we do less with more pleasure.

calling bullshit - bergstrom & west (2020)

delightfully informative. i come away with a newly upgraded BS-meter. here are some useful nuggets:

• much of our communication is self-regarding, even when it is ostensibly other-regarding. how intuitively true, and so much for appearing self-deprecating!
• clickbait is real and thriving. i am not misguided in my sense of betrayal by the lists of 10 best places to eat at 20 best new cafes and 25 surefire ways to lustrous hair
• observation selection effect explains why we may be misguided in surveying learners about their learning, yes?
• bar charts tell stories about magnitude and should start at zero and line graphs tell stories about changes and need not. thirty years in a profession and i finally learn this.

in addition i learn about reverse image search and i get to read the dead salmon paper*.

*https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Neural-correlates-of-interspecies-perspective-in-an-Bennett-Miller/9b0305530d5b1d85c210f518615480ecf6e4ab19