“Gracious acceptance is an art — an art which most never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving....”

—Alexander McCall Smith

In one of Beebe’s first zoo experiments, he claimed to have induced a “true mesmeric condition” in a captive parrot by first partially mesmerizing himself and then staring fixedly at the bird. As one does. https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/how-to-display-a-hoatzin/

Don’t blame it all on bloat—the reason is complicated.
Software is not as simple as it used to be.
Much of today’s complexity is invisible.
Slower is not necessarily worse. https://every.to/p/why-we-don-t-ship-software-as-fast-as-we-used-to

Cement company Progreso has completed Guatemala's first 3D-printed building. It's designed to withstand local seismic activity and combines modern #3Dprinting construction techniques with traditional local craftsmanship in the form of a thatched roof. https://newatlas.com/architecture/progreso-3d-printed-house/

21 species have been removed from the endangered list in the US
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/21-species-removed-from-endangered-list-due-to-extinction-us-wildlife-officials-say/

Like coffee? Liqueurs? Old stuff? Either way, this video will entertain you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61wFROC9_Kg

The power of a minor typo:
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
If you have any questions, don't. Hesitate to ask.

A new hackathon is helping to make elections more secure, writes David Strom https://siliconangle.com/2023/10/19/new-hackathon-helping-make-elections-secure/

This month, occupancy rates were at 50 percent of February 2020 levels. That is shocking — only half as many days are spent in the office compared with prepandemic times. ...Employees equate a mix of working in the office and working from home to an 8% raise. (gift link) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/opinion/office-work-home-remote.html

Lunch today. Two thumbs up! (And it makes a huge pot of food, so I'm glad we like it.)
https://thegoodlifefrance.com/normandy-pork-casserole/

The wood panel painting, titled Landscape of Italian Character, was reported stolen from the Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich after the war, and hadn’t been seen since 1945. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/lauterer-painting-returned-germany-2382029

Book bans in Texas spread as new state law takes effect
> Following the latest removals, the Katy school board decided that cartoon butts would be exempted from a district policy that called for removing books showing nudity.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/11/texas-library-book-bans/

Luvly O is a “light urban vehicle,” also known as a microcar.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/09/travel/luvly-flat-pack-microcars-climate-hnk-spc-intl

My husband told me to stop impersonating a flamingo... I had to put my foot down.

AOL Instant Messenger sounds
https://archive.org/details/im_20191103/BuddyIn.wav

A novice developer fixed a bug that sprung up around the same time he was born. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/10/22-year-old-firefox-tooltip-bug-fixed-in-a-few-lines-offering-hope-to-us-all/

TIL In the early days of the U.S. space program, NASA didn't offer astronauts life insurance for in-flight missions, and private life insurance was extremely expensive. To get around this, the crew of the Apollo 11 mission signed hundreds of autographs for their families to sell if they died. If the mission went wrong, NASA planned to cut communication with the astronauts and let them either suffocate or take their own lives. https://bigthink.com/the-past/apollo-11-plan-b/

A long-lost miniature model of an X-wing fighter from the original 1977 Star Wars film has sold at auction for an astronomical $3.1 million. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/oct/16/star-wars-x-wing-model-auction-rare-prop-found-sold-record-breaking-heritage-auctions

What does a happily ever after look like? We looked at over 1,400 romance novel covers featured in Publishers Weekly from 2011 to 2023.
https://pudding.cool/2023/10/romance-covers/

My Amazon review of _The Rock Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Rockological Knowledge_ by David Kamp and Steven Daly

Oh, SO MANY OF YOU will love this book.
https://amzn.to/48QsgwC