I guess it depends on the person. 30 years ago, I was actually living and working in the US. I was driving a 1988 Volvo 760. I was still driving it 10 years later; best car I’ve ever had. Gas was under a buck. Interest rates were so high that once I got some savings, I lived off the interest and ended up saving 80% of my salary (years later, when the rates went down, I used those savings as a down payment for my house). I could get lost for a full day at Borders. I was able to hitchhike up the east coast, get odd jobs without any resumes or background checks, while on a road trip across the continent. There was a lot of new and exciting technology: CD’s and discmen, computers and the beginnings of the Internet. I read the news via Gopher (unless it was Sunday, then I bought the papers for grocery coupons). I feel that now there are too many limits on people. Lots of them are self-inflicted: I’m middle aged and with kids, so I need to be far more responsible. But when I look at my kids, I feel that they won’t have the same opportunities I had, for travel, education, personal growth, or independence.

In the evening. In the 7+ years since my first kid was born, I haven’t missed a single evening at home, to wish them a good night. I even excuse myself from business trips.

Don’t come to Ireland. I’ve lived in the US for nearly two decades, made lots of friends and even helped some to immigrate here. The harsh reality is, however, that we’re going through a really bad housing crisis, with our own homeless numbers growing every month, and house prices and rents exploding (a recent statistic showed that our growth in rents is four times the EU average). So, please, for our sake and yours, try a different country.

I love the album, but it stands to mention that this was a solo project by Roger Waters. Still, the lineup was stacked, and I loved the energy.

TV/movie: Motoko Kusanagi (Ghost in the Shell, especially from the SAC.)

Video games: Nicole Collard (Broken Sword series)

Electric Light Orchestra, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, The Rubettes. Essentially the same as when I go running.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Back when I was single and living alone, I did my share of nature photography, mainly landscapes and wildlife. Sitting for hours, waiting for the perfect moment, was my meditation. And yes, there were times where I just lived for the moment, rather than taking the pucture.

I saw the movie a few years after I settled down, and it triggered my only occasion where I questioned my life choices and wondered what might have been if I remained alone and unattached.

I’m being self-censored. Working for a very large corp that has a long list of topics I’m not supposed to discuss, and I’m pretty good at not talking about them under my real name. I’m quite certain that my anonymous comments may also be traced back to me, but the HR doesn’t care about those.

I always imagine All Along the Watchtower as a 1980’s fantasy movie along the lines of Red Sonya or The Beastmaster.

I’d love to see a movie based on Silent Running. But I’m afraid it’s shaping out to be a documentary…

(The existing movie of the same name has nothing in common with the song, but it’s worth watching anyway.)

I still have a Samsung Galaxy S2, which has such a cover. From the beginning, the phone would lose its back cover (and the battery would fall out) whenever it hit the ground, even just from a table. I solved it with getting a thin plastic phone case, and even after 14 years the phone works just fine.

May 1995. Started with Gopher to access other university sites. My e-mail client was through vi editor. Eventually, I got onto the WWW with the Mosaic browser. Back then, I didn’t know how to even use a URL. The browser defaulted to Yahoo, and I just kept clicking through categories and then on links that sounded interesting. Even later, I discovered Geocities, created my own page (learned HTML by exploring the code the WYSIWYG editor generated), and collected lots of swag sent to me by up-and-coming online stores and search engines for placing their button on my page. I miss those simpler times…

I’m helping people resettle to Europe. We currently host a recent college grad until they finalize their job and housing arrangements, and I don’t think they’ll be the last one.

Idealism is the privilege of elites. Maslow’s pyramid puts the majority of people into survival mode or comfort, and the US has been boiling the frog towards expanding the bottom of the pyramid for a long time. By the time people noticed that an open revolt (even so much as a work strike) would destroy their lives, it was too late. There are so few charismatic, moral and idealistic elites that the government could take care of them as soon as they threatened to become leaders of a real opposition. I don’t believe there would be a civil war, and I don’t believe there is a way back. The US will become a neofedual country, with a lucky few who have the means to move elsewhere. The best case scenario is for the rest of the world to isolate from the US, both economically and militarily.

I don’t follow other people’s private activities, but this one hurt a lot. He remains one of my favourite authors, and having him disappear from publishing leaves holes in my library (Trees and Injection, in particular).

The trifecta of 2005 TV shows:

• Threshold
• Surface
• Invasion

The 2005-2006 season was an absolute disaster for new, promising sci-fi shows.

Your saliva contains microscopic amounts of toxins. As you swallow, these toxins collect in your body, and eventually they’ll reach critical mass and kill you. The amount of toxins in your saliva, and the total amount required to kill you is very individual, so nobody knows which will be their last drop. Still, one day I’ll swallow my last bit of saliva and die.

I also use em dashes. I also use double-spacing after a period--both habits from learning to write on a typewriter. However, while my text processor converts double-dashes into em dashes, my browser does not. So, when I see em dashes in a forum post, I naturally become suspicious. It is very rare for me to write a post in a text editor and then copy/paste it into a text area, and I assume this to be true with others as well.

Games with the highest replay value for me:

• Civilization 4
• Heroes of Might and Magic III
• Sid Meyer’s Alpha Centauri
• TES3: Morrowind
• SimCity 2000

My wife shops on Temu regularly. She doesn’t trust them, so she uses one-time cards. Most of what she buys are single-use items: party accessories, crafts for kids, etc. The exceptions were solar lights, which are surprisingly durable, vastly outlasting those we got locally or Amazon. Speaking of Amazon, we used to shop there a lot but almost completely stopped. 90% of goods are just rebranded Temu products, and the “premium” selection can be found cheaper in the nanufacturers’ or speciality stores. Amazon is currently positioned very poorly, with competition pressuring them both from top end and junk. Looks like Amazon as a retailer is heading back to its origin, with books being the only reasonable deal there.