cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47911444

Book Lovers, by Emily Henry, is actually really good. I feel like it has a rather severe case of last-100-pages syndrome, but... Well, I can only remember the last 5 minutes of my life at any given time, so I suppose that makes us a perfect pair.

I'm not sure I have the words to describe how this book has made me feel, but I'll try anyway. For one, it makes me feel like I never, ever want to not only be in a relationship, but I also never want anyone to love me romantically. It seems like such a magnanimously horrific, terribly contrived, and simply unbearable experience. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, but somehow it seems that that's actually the evil thing to think, so I guess I would actually wish love on my worst enemy, but let it be known that's a compromise between my own dreadful hate of love and society's incomprehensible yearning for it.

Hell is other people. Book Lovers is The Bible, but only

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47836613

Alright, I know that title is a little odd, but stick with me.

I'm reading Book Lovers, by Emily Henry, and I've been feeling very weird.

For one, I think it's not very good at all! Maybe it's because I'm an awkward guy, probably aroace and seemingly agender, and, as such, that book is, quite simply, not for me; but it might also be because it's genuinely weird. Many of the goings-on of the plot are terribly weird, to me. Something I can kind of get over - not really... - is that they don't want to get together because they work together. I mean, they don't even work together that much, for starters, but even if they did... So what? My parents work together. They've worked together for some 20 years. Same thing with many other people. It's not that weird. Whatever. I don't like the book very much, so far, but I'm willing to take it to the end.

Now, here's the real kicker: what the fuck? Is this what women li

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47679815

Have you guys seen stuff like that? People talking about drama and such being "huge news for the unemployed" and such.

On one hand, I think it's a little bit funny. As a serial unemployed person myself, I have to assume that many - shall I wager, most? - of the unemployed aren't actually spending all their time browsing the internet looking for niche micro-celebrity wannabe influencer drama to rot over, but I think the expression is moreso making light of people that are leeching off of others for no good reason and choose to spend their time dragging their crummy eyes over Twitter threads in hopes of finding a crumb of dirt to write a mean comment about some online nobody in a comment section. Which makes it funny!

On the other hand, however, I feel like it can be used to dismiss serious issues. For example, sometimes meaningful change is being discussed - such as the [SKG initiative](https://www.stopkillinggames.c

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47592466

I think people are nice.

I have a lot of thoughts about people and the nature of crowds and mobs, but I think that, on an individual level, most people are rather delightful. It's not that most people are necessarily someone I'd like to hang out with, but I do think most people are generally trustworthy individuals that just want things to work out well for everybody. Especially themselves, perhaps, but everybody.

Yesterday, a lady - I think she was Dutch, based on accent alone - asked me for help, me and another guy, but I ended up providing the help. She was really nice, and I was really nice. The other guy was also really nice and pleasant. It was just... Normal. Interestingly, I also met 4 other people yesterday: my new boss, and 3 of my new coworkers. My boss was stellar, one of my coworkers seemed delightful, though the other two seemed to be, let's say, in a bad mood. They were abrasive and they sounded and a

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47518472

I got the job!!

I had a job interview today and it went well. As good as it can go, I suppose, since I got the job. I'm signing the contract on the 11th of July, but I only actually start working on the 1st of September. So, as feared, I'll be jobless for a couple more months... But hey, progress!

The pay is good, the work is good, the boss is stellar - or at least really good at fooling me into thinking he's stellar - and it's in the city I used to live in, so that's great. I love that city very much, even though I only spent less than a year actually living there. It's just really nice.

Speaking of money. I used to earn around 1259€/month as grant money, which was nice because I paid no tax, but not so nice because there were no benefits otherwise. In Portugal, people usually earn 14 months' worth - since you get a month's salary as a vacation subsidy and another month's worth as Christmas subsidy - but gran

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47415360

Today, I got a call. It was from a job I applied to today, some research project from an AI and biomedical device company. As a bioengineer with some experience working with biomedical devices, that appealed to me quite a bit.

The interview is tomorrow, early in the afternoon. I'm a little nervous, but I know I'll be much more nervous soon enough - especially tomorrow. Still, I'm fine. I was starting to get a little... Unhappy, with the current situation. I've been unemployed for 2 months now after quitting my PhD... My parents were starting to get on my ass. Well, hopefully this goes well. The guy that called me - the guy from the company - was actually really nice and he seemed very excited to hire me, frankly. He said that he thought that I was probably a really good match. I hope so!

Nothing can be perfect, of course. Firstly, it's in a different city... Though, it's in the city that I was living in previously

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47341843

Today, I had lunch with my granny. She made roasted potatoes and octopus. I freaking love octopus and roasted potatoes! The food was tasty, and I very much enjoyed dessert: cherries and chocolate cake.

My grandma has a bit of an off-and-on relationship with baking, I feel like. She bakes rather often, but she's not very good at it at all. Occasionally, though, she'll manage to come out with a gem like today. She really hit it out of the park!

Most importantly, though, I got to spend some time with her and have a nice chat. Hear a little about what she's been doing and whatnot. It's nice.

I didn't do much today, outside of that. I ended up not rearranging my clothes, which is fine; I'll always have tomorrow. I do also have some clothes I should probably pick up.

On another note, I found a really nice Japanese YT channel! It's a girl vlogging her life. She speaks really fast, way too fast, but I can kind o

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47266844

I had sushi with my grandma, my brother, and his friend, today. It was good. Very good, even!

I always have the same pieces, but today I felt like branching out a little bit. I didn't pick anything too different - not that there's that many weird pieces available at the buffet, mind you - but I did try a few that I usually don't. Namely, one with some white stuff that I thought was mayo, for some reason. It didn't look like mayo, but I vaguely remember trying it a long time ago (read: a couple years, at most) and being unhappily surprised that it tasted like mayo, so that was my expectation. Thing is: I love mayo. I believe the reason I elected to pick that one to be obvious. It turned out to not be mayo at all, but rather some kind of cheese thing, maybe cream cheese or something. I don't know the words for this stuff. It was too white to be mayo, in retrospect.

I also had some time to speak to my granny, which w

Today, I finally finished rereading A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers.

It was fantastic and delightful in every way, absolutely incredible - perhaps even more than I remembered. This makes me want to reread The Night Circus as well; if this one was this good, than that one might be that good. Perchance.

Currently, though, I'm reading A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. Well, it's OK. I like it, sure, but I'm liking it much less. For one, I think the novelty - maybe... - has worn off a bit. The world is brilliant and inviting - luscious, as per Martha Wells - but now that I've been introduced to it in the first book, it doesn't hit as hard in the second. Maybe. I think this logic is a little flawed, since I did enjoy it very much on reread. I don't know.

We might be going into some conflict resolution soon, but I guess I do feel like not much conflict has existed in the first, what, 3/4ths of the book? It's still pretty and all, and there's some insight to be gleaned, certainly

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47108238

My youngest cousin is gonna have his first communion this coming August, and I'm likely to attend.

It's not a very formal event, but it's also not exactly something you're supposed to show up to in ripped shorts and a graphic tee. I've been thinking it through, and I think I don't really have appropriate clothes to take! Well, I do have jeans, some reasonable shoes, and a dress shirt - maybe that's enough - but I thought that this could be a good opportunity to get some "fancier" clothes, in relative terms. Nothing actually fancy like a suit, but just something a bit smarter that I could take to interviews, for example.

I thought that a polo shirt might be good. It's not formal, but it's definitely a step up from my usual Hard Rock Cafe shirts. Also, it's casual enough that it wouldn't really be weird to wear out and about, I hope.

Really, I wanted pants. I did have a list, at some point, of what pants I w

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47024388

While browsing YT - as one does - I came across the video linked in this post.

It elicited in me a certain feeling that I have never felt before. It's a certain kind of warmth, a weird sort of absolute peace permeating my very being.

Is this... Love?

Perchance.

Regardless, I think it's really cool. There are a few of these looks-old-but-isn't videos out there - they come up on my recommended occasionally - but they do always leave me wondering; did these people find old videos and decide to upload them now, or did they just genuinely record something with a 20 year potato? Alternatively, did they record it with an average modern recording device - say, a modern smartphone - and then purposefully deteriorate the quality to make it look like an old video? Questions.

For the record, I wanted to use the verb degenerate instead of deteriorate, there, but, for some reason, it just didn't feel right. I'm n