Last year, I made the observation that getting to know a person can happen through their grocery list.
It turns out that this also works for getting to know a country, with more and more tourists flocking to supermarkets at their destination and exploring the local specialty aisles.
Increasingly, she says, we’re seeking moments that feel authentic, participatory and accessible. Rather than simply observing a destination, we want to feel part of it.
A foreign supermarket offers exactly that.
But, as expected, authenticity takes a hit once supermarkets become tourist attractions.
The irony is hard to miss: a supermarket only works as a slice of normal life because nobody is putting on a show for you. Once tourists outnumber locals, it stops being an ordinary shop.
Authenticity as a feeling requires people going about their tasks, living their normal lives, working towards their current goals. Supermarket aisles are soulless without the people they are built for. An aisle comes to life when a person takes a product from it.
Of course, none of that crossed my mind the afternoon I stood in front of a dairy fridge in Athens looking at rows of white tubs, their labels entirely indecipherable. I turned them over one by one, searching for a single word I recognised, when a woman reached past my shoulder and grabbed one without slowing her trolley. I bought the same tub. It remains the best yoghurt I’ve ever eaten.
Reddit user mulberrybushesreminds us that there are good people everywhere.
Not 1 but 3 individuals stepped out of their vehicles this evening when I tripped over my own feet and faceplanted at a busy intersection and my environmentally conscious paper bag exploded all over the road because it was soaked through because of the rain.
Luxembourg citizens are not known for their warmth, but this doesn’t stop them from being empathetic in time of need. Scratch beyond the sterotype and you will discover people eager to help in practical ways.
Two people offered to walk me home.
One person pulled over on the side of the road and gave me a reusable shopping bag.
I find that, nowadays, sharing and spreading more simple acts of kindness is necessary. World news are filled with pain and misery. Social networks are filled with videos of fake acts of kindness, pushing us to escape negativity by escaping reality. And even genuine stories are usually about heroic, unique, life-saving acts.
Acts of kindness don’t need to be grandiose or life-changing. They can be microscopic, boring, normalised events. I believe they are as powerful as small gradual changes of habit or the compounding effect of interest rates. They are contagious, and can be performed by almost everyone, creating an ever-growing improvement of the collective well-being.
I am glad that mulberrybushes shared their story. I will now do the same.
The other day, a piece of paper fell off my pocket, and a kind stranger passing through let me know about it. It would have been unfortunate for me to lose that. I was having a really bad week, and that would have made it worse. Thank you, dear stranger.
Let’s pass the kindness torch on, in real, boring, and practical ways.
Ash Parish, writing for The Verge, regarding The Game Awards 2022:
But despite all the awards and announcements […] tonight’s winner by a country mile was a curly haired session musician by the name of Pedro Eustache and the infectious, ebullient energy with which he played his flutes.
Passion is contagious. And this is why Flute Guy went viral.
During the medley of the main themes of the nominated video games, he was rocking with energy and pumping his fist in the air, while playing various types of flute. In the end, he celebrated as if the orchestra had won an award. He was just so into it.
Here is a video of all the shots that captured him.
A few hours ago, he responded with a personal video thanking everyone for their support.
Pedro made us feel his passion. What a legendary performance.
In an interesting move, Google Maps is now served from the www Google subdomain.
In other words, in Luxembourg, Google Maps is no longer hosted at maps.google.lu. Navigating to https://maps.google.lu redirects your browser to https://maps.google.lu/maps, which then takes you to https://www.google.lu/maps.
What this means is that you can no longer share your location only with Google Maps, but all Google services that are hosted at www.google.lu.
I will not immediately conclude that this is a ruse from Google to constantly know where I am. As an engineer, I know that there are a lot of technical reasons to make this move. As a customer, however, this is something I want to know about. It would have been nice to be informed about this upcoming change, and not rely on my browser to prompt me that I am now sharing my location with another domain.
I loved John Gruber’s reaction to this, writing in Daring Fireball:
FIFA is 200 percent in control of the World Cup, Budweiser is 300 percent happy with beer being banned two days before the tournament started, and LGBT attendees are 400 percent welcome and safe in Qatar.
I have heard from friends that a lot of supporters plan on staying in Dubai due to more relaxed rules, and will only travel to Qatar for attending the games.
PS: For a a very good introduction to the topic, you can watch this short BBC Sport video.
I have been preparing interview questions for prospective senior DevOps engineers (whatever that is) to join our team and realised that I just want to have a great conversation. I want to get out of interviews with a new perspective. I like to share some of our struggles and hear what they have to say about them. I have no idea whether this is too selfish or even if it is the right approach. Only time will tell.
I also care more about a person’s capacity to create abstractions and propose solutions rather than the tools they have used. I do look for some exposure on well-known tools and services, but I generally don’t care whether they have used one tool over another.
I am particularly fond of candidates that:
Communicate problems and solutions well
Demonstrate an interest in the field by keeping up to date
Show that they are not afraid to learn new topics and demonstrate a way to do it
Talk about the challenges they had to overcome with excitement even when these challenges were painful
Have a capacity to create abstractions for things they don’t know but can then reason about solutions on top of these abstractions
Ask questions that show the kind of environment (operational, technical, employer) they want to work in
Have a sense of humour
I guess the best way to have an interview is in an informal way over coffee or tea.
I live in a place where people are officially trilingual. French, German and Luxembourgish are all official languages of the country and a very large number of the population speaks all three, in addition to English. I am multi-lingual as well.
I have been an Apple Music subscriber since the beginning. My main criticism on the service is that the music recommendations are generally not good for my music taste. I’m not basing my judgement solely on it not hitting the right rythm or melodies, but also on failing to target the correct language.
Nowadays, there are too many aspects of our digital life that are curated by dumb algorithms. In a welcome departure from the norm, Apple has been pretty public in promoting the human element of their recommendations. I’m a strong supporter of that idea. Yet, in this instance, I think that some poorly designed algorithm, or one with insufficient training data, is playing a central role in messing with my listening experience.
I mainly listen to music with lyrics sung in English but I occasionally tune into Greek and French songs. A while back I noticed that creating a radio station out of a Greek song sometimes results in a playlist composed of Russian, Turkish, German and Dutch songs. Today, I was browsing my New Music mix on Apple Music and it had songs in languages I don’t want to listen to.
I wish there was a setting/preference that restricted the languages that would play on our profile. For this to ever work, songs would need to know which language(s) their lyrics are written in. I find it alarming that when browsing Greek songs, I can’t actually see that there’s any indication that the language is Greek. I can also not understand why the songs are presented only in latin characters.
I admit that this is just empirical evidence but it strongly suggests poor language support in Apple’s music service. That’s a shame. I don’t think there’s any doubt that most people like to listen to songs in languages they understand.
