Return to Osaka

Leaving the apartment, I coped with the terrible stairs the same way I got in, by doing luggage fission. Lots of things down in the duffle, the wheeled luggage down, then put the duffel in the luggage outside. Good thing it wasn't raining.

Japanese trains have many virtues, but they often also have gaps both horizontal and vertical. The Keihin-Tohoku line I caught had notes that the end car had a smaller horizontal gap. Still a bit of vertical one.

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Recent reading

Reading:

Life After Cars, on the damage of car-oriented society. (This fed the make world worse post.)

Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, on foods to make vs. buy. It's a light read, especially as I skip most of the recipes. Entertaining to read, but less substantial analysis than I'd been led to believer.

A Certain Scientific Railgun, and its spinoffs, Mental Out and Astral Buddy. I'd recommend the first, toss-up on the second two, sort of entertaining but kind of dumb.

Platform Decay, the latest Murderbot.

Schlock Mercenary, ripping through the whole 20 year archives. It's still pretty good SF overall. Some cringe moments especially earlier on, and an ending weak in internal plausibility (possibly deriving from the author getting Long Covid early on, and still suffering from it.)