Some anecdotes and some links
We’ll be back soon with some deeper thoughts, for now you’ll just have to live with the shallow ones.
To cap off the traveling circus, I got right off the plane from LA and less than 24 hours later was walking through the gates of Efteling (aka Dutch Disneyland) still 9 hours jetlagged and working off a bit of food poisoning. And, even given all that, it was still pretty fun. I enjoy that engineered experience, but I also really enjoyed Cabel Sasser digging in to all of the ways that theme park experience design goes wrong.
Over the course of the traveling circus, I found myself on sleeper trains on 2 separate occasions (Amsterdam to Berlin, and Portland to Los Angeles). Yes, yes, this was my choice because I am both a nerd about trains and really don't like the climate impact of plane travel. I can not imagine ever doing the Portland to Los Angeles route again, in part because it was just so long (36 hours) and in part because it was just so Amtrak (prone to breakdowns, pretty mid service, weird timing). On the other hand, even though the Amsterdam to Berlin was quite a bit more austere it was also functional in a way that just makes sense: get on board in Amsterdam at 10pm, get off in Berlin at 6am. In neither case was the sleep particularly great, but for the Berlin train it gave me a whole extra day in Berlin. I wish Amtrak would at least do this for the San Francisco-LA route in both directions. And while I didn't take this specific route, I did enjoy this video on taking the Amtrak across the US.
Someone asked me recently what the best educational game on the market is, and I gave the same answer that I've been giving for quite a while now: it's Minecraft - and not the education-specific version, just regular off the shelf Minecraft. Pair this with the insight from the traveling circus about the value of games for creating a shared social context, I really enjoyed this pilot project that used Minecraft to build connections between adolescents in different countries.
The family and I just extended our Dutch visas for another 5 years! Huzzah to another bureaucratic hurdle overcome - and props to the Dutch government for how clear and straightforward the whole process was. Probably the biggest life change for Sarah & I since we've made the move is that we don't drive anymore. I can't even tell you how much I enjoy not driving...especially in a place where I don't feel any loss of mobility or access as a result. Related: I always enjoy a good in-depth explanation of counterintuitive insights and especially when they extol the merits of building strong public transit systems.
The culture of consumerism was very deliberately engineered. This might deserve a whole lot more air time than my brain is ready to give it right now, but even if you are kind of familiar with everything in this article seeing it all together in one place is kind of shocking. A couple months back I bought another espresso machine, this one older than I am - which means it has been maintained for over 40 years and still works about as well as it did when it first emerged from the workshop. It's dead simple, and while it's not quite as precise or customizable as the most advanced options available today it still does the job pretty damn well. I find that increasingly, I want the tools that I rely on the most to be ones that I can repair and maintain myself. There is something deeply endearing and dare I say empowering about relatively simple machines whose function is self evident. The glaring exceptions, there, of course being my phone and computer.
