Bruncvik

This is a perfectly valid reason to like Ubuntu, and it mirrors my own reason for preferring Mint: familiarity with an OS UI. In my case, Mint Cinnamon is the closest I could find to the Win98 user interface. Back in the old days I also had Ubuntu, but then they switched to the Unity UI and I changed to Lubuntu. That went to the pits a few years ago, so I moved on to Mint. Just like you, I also have a preference for the UI, and I suspect that very many people choose a distro based on their UI preferences. That's the beauty of Linux: plenty of options for everyone.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Great post! I was thinking about it the other day. I have a Citizen wrist watch from the 60s from my grandfather. It looks like new and functions well (mainly because of its self-winding mechanism). I also have a high-end Garmin watch, which from my personal experience lasts about 2 years, so I decided to start treating modern watches like the junk they are: get the cheapest possible that still has the features I want, because I'd be replacing it in two years' time anyway.

I also have an old mechanical typewriter. The drum doesn't move on the A key, so I'm used to hit the space bar whenever I type an "a". It moves the drum slightly more, which is something I always notice when I read pages typed on other typewriters. And don't get me started on the font. No computer can recreate the idiosyncrasies of a good typewriter.

Damn, now I got all nostalgic again. If you excuse me, I'll be in the attic, hammering away on my Consul...

Ads. I've been online since the age of Gopher. I've gone through every kind of ad or a pop-up you can throw at me. Even though I use an adblock, even without it I can subconsciously filter out ads so well that they won't bother me.

I keep Owen locked in the basement. He keeps the fire burning.

I'm probably one of the last people who use Win 8.1. The only thing I use there is Smart Switch to back up my phone. For everything else, there is Mint. I'll keep up with that setup until my hardware fails.

Steam owen. Haven't reheated my food un the microwave ever since.

The Canon didn't. That's where my assumption of a green laser came in. When I aimed the camera directly at the embassy, I got a white screen; when I aimed it a little to the side, I saw a green dot on the screen. This is a bit of a stretch, though. It could have been an optical artifact, with the sun behind me, and me wearing polarized glasses.

This is just pure speculation, but I think the firmware on the camera refuses to take pictures when its GPS detects it to be in a restricted area. That's how higher-end drones work. At the same spot where I detected my interference, a DJI drone would refuse to take off. Drone no-fly areas are well documented (and advertisef), though, so it was easy to check against those.

Professional: Self-driving trailers are already a thing. They are not legal on public roads, but they work just fine in warehouses and yards. The way it works, a dolly is hooked up to the front of the trailer, and the yard master just instructs it where to go and park, and forgets about it. Thanks to the trailer sensors, the trailer is also able to navigate around fairly heavy yard traffic, which is far more complex than linear traffic on roads. The EU is being lobbied to allow the trailers on the roads. The EU is also being lobbied to increase the max length of a tractor-trailer from 27m to 50m. The new road trains are also using these autonomous engines and steering directly on trailers. We estimate that by 2035, we'll start seeing a drastic reduction of demand for truck drivers.

Hobby: This is unconfirmed, just an odd thing I started noticing. In some places, in particular around US embassies, modern cameras are blocked from taking photos, and older models are being interfered with through green lasers. I noticed the latter when I tested with the first gen Gopro Hero and a 15 years old Canon. Need to dig out my film camera to see whether it has any impact there.

First who popped into my mind was Friday Jones from Robert A. Heinlein's Friday.

Don't know how the law is worded, but you won't find plastic straws in physical shops or restaurants, and all juice boxes come with paper straws. I don't have any issues buying plastic straws, both regular-size and for boxed juices, from Amazon.