Weeknotes 304

It’s November now.

The heating only went on for about half an hour, but that’s still putting the heating on.

Three gyms. Six hours of Project Hail Mary left.

The anxiety ratchet only goes in one direction, and it clicked up another couple of notches this week. I hope one day it’ll release and I’ll be able to relax by exactly the right amount, but not today.

I haven’t made an appointment with a wrist doctor yet, but I think I need to.

I managed to have a restorative Halloween evening, starting with a delicious dinner at home and then watching The Black Phone, which despite being pretty unimaginative was competently made and understood the assignment of giving the audience what they want. Before falling asleep I also watched the first thirty minutes of scrappy fun in V/H/S/Halloween.

I stocked up on half-price Chug in an October sale and I’ve been enjoying it a lot. It’s definitely my current favourite beer, closely followed by Infinite IPA (via Matt).

At this point I’m confident I’ll easily finish 2025 without having touched any booze, so I suppose soon I’ll need to make a conscious decision whether to keep it up in 2026. I do have days when I feel like I picked the wrong year and wish I could unwind with a whisky without breaking my streak, but perhaps it’s ultimately healthy to resist that urge even if it seems unhelpful in the moment. Still, as a member of the lazy community I don’t appreciate the implication that I should actually fix the sources of stress in my life instead of numbing them temporarily.

Given that a lot of beer is sold in 440 ml cans, why’s it so hard to find 440 ml drinking glasses? Are you meant to just use a pint glass and enjoy it being a quarter empty?

I got an alarming email saying that the deodorant I use is being urgently recalled for safety reasons. The manufacturer’s information page is such a masterpiece of unclear writing that I found it almost impossible to tell whether the recall is due to a material problem (e.g. they added rat poison to it by mistake) or an abstract one (e.g. they updated the packaging in a way that misrepresented an allergen).

After repeated parsing (thanks Leo) it seemed likely that there actually was a problem with the product itself but when I dug out my deodorant stash none of the batch numbers matched anyway. What an emotional rollercoaster.

FOR ALL BRAN, THERE EXISTS BRAN: More time for experimentation has made it clear that M&S bran sticks are the best option I’ve found. They’re the narrowest and densest, and hence the closest textural match for the discontinued original product.

I’ve discovered that Waitrose sell their own variety (“[while] not identical to the original recipe, it is very close, and is a very acceptable alternative” — Mike from Tunbridge Wells) and I’m quite excited to try it. I just haven’t summoned the enthusiasm to cycle over to the Barbican to get some yet.

Guillermo del Toro has an inspiring strategy all worked out:

AI, particularly generative AI — I am not interested, nor will I ever be interested. I’m 61, and I hope to be able to remain uninterested in using it at all until I croak. […] The other day, somebody wrote me an email, said, “What is your stance on AI?” And my answer was very short. I said, “I’d rather die.”

I haven’t heard Last Christmas yet, but London’s definitely already in Christmas mode.