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I felt like doing some knitting today so I decided to finally watch Austenland on Netflix. And you know what? It was charming! As a big fan of Jane Austen (and someone who can pretty much recite the entire script to the 1995 P&P miniseries), I really enjoyed all the nods and references to the Austen-verse. The casting was also spot on. I yelled out lout at one point, “THAT’S MR. HURST!” Nicely done, movie. I also loved that Jennifer Coolidge was basically playing a nicer version of her White Lotus character, and I had fun spotting both Shadow Moon (from American Gods) and Dr. Gaius Baltar (from Battlestar Galactica) in supporting roles. As for the central romance, I was legitimately torn between the two guys in much the same way the lead character was. I mean, Bret McKenzie as a charming stablehand? But also JJ Feild doing a stellar Mr. Darcy impression? I totally get why it didn’t land with critics, but for Austen superfans, this was light but fun. (And don’t even get me started on the post-credits sequences. My head exploded, in a very fun way.)

And on the topic of Regency LARPing, I started the movie thinking, “I would totally go to Austenland!” And about halfway through I was right there with Jane thinking, “OMG this would be totally boring.” And then at the end I was like, “I want to go to Elizabeth Charming’s Austenland TOMORROW.” 🎢🫖

Why did images of early pregnancy cause such a social media firestorm? https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/3/23435111/early-pregnancy-abortion-tiktok-social-media-images

Like many folks, I saw these images shared on social media in past few weeks. I never doubted their veracity though. I have a vivid memory as a kid of visiting the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and seeing their Prenatal Development exhibit. I’d recommend it to anyone. There is a lot of misinformation out there, and I’m not surprised that some folks would rather believe that at 4 weeks an embryo is a miniature person rather than an undifferentiated clump of cells. #stillprochoice

We Baked Loads of Pies to Find the Best Pie Pans https://www.seriouseats.com/best-pie-pans-6752341

This is relevant to my interests. 🥧

Public Service Announcement: If Google has been screaming at you that you’re running out of storage – I somehow got up to 87% full on mine – there is a useful tool that lets you review and delete things like large email attachments, Drive files you no longer need, etc. I used it to blast a lot of junk. 💥🗑

Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration – OH MAN. Just watching the trailer was like an instant dopamine hit. Straight back to my childhood… 👾

I like to pretend I’m above crappy American fast food, but let’s be honest – I would 100% try (and likely enjoy) this new Papa John’s monstrosity. 🍕

When shocked Europeans hear that I am sad about moving back to Australia, the lack of cycling infrastructure is one of the main reasons that I cite. And it’s not just that – some people are actively hostile to cyclists and in far too many cases have deliberately injured them. I have loved riding my bicycle in Munich. I ride it to work and the shops and the hairdresser, and I take short joyrides around the parks near my house, and every now and then I take a longer ride out of the city. In all of those rides, I rarely have to share the road with cars and I’ve seldom felt worried for my safety. I have a helmet but I don’t wear it very often. (I should wear it all the time, I know.) I see all kinds of people on bikes here – old people, kids, serious athletes, parents pulling bike trailers. None of this happens in Sydney. The end result is that I’m not going to bother to ship my bike back, because I know it will just gather dust and I’ll feel sad.

I should stop moping and go out for a ride today while I still can, I guess. 🚴‍♀️

I was delighted to see on my friend and neighbour Michael Mobbs’s blog that his Sustainable House in Chippendale will be featured on Season 2 of Zac Efron’s Netflix documentary series. If you watch the trailer, you can totally hear Michael’s voice in the shot where they’re drinking the water! I can’t wait to see it.

Here’s the trailer…

The Twitter takeover is complete. As soon as this whole rigamarole started a few months back I decided to start cutting down on my usage of the platform. In the end I’ve decided I don’t want to be counted as a Daily Active User on any platform run by that man, so today I downloaded the archive of all my old tweets and then used Tweet Deleter to blast them all. I’ve kept the account as I don’t want anyone to grab the username and pretend to be me, and I do still use it to log in to a couple services. But I’ve deleted the app off all my devices, and I’m going to do my absolute best to stay off it unless absolutely professionally necessary.

If you want to do the same, you can start by going into your Settings and requesting an archive of all your data.

Once you’ve got that, you can either delete your account or else delete each tweet manually. Tweet Deleter has a cost – I paid €12 for one month’s unlimited access – but I know that various folks are working on free Open Source solutions. (Here’s one.)

So what now? I plan on doing more blogging here, and going back to the old days of RSS feeds. I might think about integrating my old tweets into the blog somehow, but not sure yet. I’ve got like 700+ old posts that actually refer to my tweets, so I’ll have to fix those at some point too. I don’t think I’ll enable comments; if you want to ask me something, you can email or hit me up on Facebook or LinkedIn.

The Snook found this listing for a pristine mid-century home in LA. Wow. I don’t like any of the furnishings (or the rugs and wallpapers), but I love the bones of the house. Only $7M. 😂