(3) They've seen it before, and they still want this.

I've been discussing this with friends the past week. There's a bunch of "if only she would've..." takes but I don't buy any of them. The 'every incumbant has lost this year' is going around a lot, and I think it is part of it, but it also feels like a nice economic scapegoat for libs - a safe haven of logic to avoid facing what I think is the harsher reality, which is that people do want this, whatever their imagined version of the next four years of this is.

And when people are scared, and people are tired, and people are worried, they choose simplicity.

Over here, after the dust of the election had settled, the consensus of the PVV's victory comes down to people voting for the extreme-right because they want stronger immigration. It's as simple as that. In previous elections the PVV were ostracized because of the whole far-right thing, but this election the neolibs said they wouldn't ostracize the party any longer. Suddenly, a PVV vote wasn't wasted anymore, so anyone who wanted to put their anti-immigration vote to good use flocked to the PVV.

I think there's a faint parallel to Trump's victory here - the simple answer could be that people hated the past four years (case in point: Biden approval ratings), and with the GOP now magawashed/normalized you're not gonna have a fight anymore with your family for voting President Chump.

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Personally I am also pondering if I should re-adjust my belief that people vote for what's best for their country, instead of what feels best for themselves. Sigh.

From one extreme-right-elected country to another: good luck, you're gonna need it.

I'm still left to wonder why the Harris turnout was so bad - according to CNN she did worse than Biden did in every district in the country.

Got married! Travelled across Spain! So many good vibes that I still have a hard time comprehending it all.

As a surprise gift, we got an envelope with a date from each of the guests. Inside the envelope, to be opened on that date sometime in this first year, is a fun task to undertake for us. It is such a thoughtful gift and such a great way to celebrate our marriage, like when we “had to” dine with sushi and wine this week because it’s a go-to combo from a good friend.

Good luck all yall with the dumpster fire (/ballot box fire??!) that is next weeks election. Feels like the whole world is watching.

We kind-of-accidentally made the wedding a 5 day thing, which turns out to be a phenomenal thing. Pretty early on we made the decision to have our civil marriage not on The Day but a few days early, giving us much-needed breathing space on The Day itself. We invited only our core families and the witnesses for it. Since our municipality allows you to have your civil marriage in your own garden we took that opportunity and ran with it. So we're now officially marriaged, although we have yet to be religiously married and have saved all the extravagancies for The Day. What I did not expect was the civil marriage to already feel so much like marriage - but speaking our vows in front of the people most dear to us and them gracing us with kindness too was just remarkable. We're now in a lovely inbetween place where we can look back on a part of the marriage already wildly exceeding our expectations, look forward to The Day, and gently float on cloud nine for a few days while we sort out the final to-do's.

Next Pubski I'll be in Andalusia with a ring on my hand. Prolly won't be around much for a while, as I am using the trip to detox from my phone more.

Two weeks on the dot until the wedding and it's all we're thinking about. Is there a life after? Who knows? My mood cycles from excited to nervous to already-grateful to nervous at least half a dozen times per day. I know it'll all be wonderful but there's some yak shaving to do to get there.

What about Siemens? The previous owners graced our kitchen with all-Siemens appliances, including the induction plate. Doesn't light up at all and I have maybe one? gripe with it.

You did get me to wonder what my Siemens oven has that I don't know about... it has a pizza mode, and it has a superspeed heat mode, which leads me to wonder if it secretly also has convection in it or sumthin' because it draws a clean 5-6 kW when I put it in said mode.

It's nice, but my god I can't wait for the eighties nostalgia wave to wane and for the nineties/zeroes to begin any day now.

I feel like we've touched this subject a few times before. This article in particular I found an interesting reflection on the clock.

I'm about halfway through The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Have read the Dhammapadana.

Yesterday I started reading The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway after enjoying Titanium Noir a while ago. So far I like the latter more than the former, but it's a slow burn supposedly.

I am dipping my toe into buddhism and sailing. We had a day out with our department where we went sailing on a lake for the afternoon. It was a thorougly enjoyable experience because it reminded me of when I was learning gliding eight years ago. You're on a vessel, subject to the whims of the wind going (vertically/horizontally), and have a few axes of control (flaps/sails). How well you fare is something you can only partially control; it's really a challenge of sensing what the wind does and being adaptable enough to lean into that. Some colleagues were frustrated by the fitful winds but I never was; the winds just are.

The interest in buddhism comes from watching an unreasonable amount of Dr. K videos and livestreams over the past year. I find his blend of clinical, (neuro)scientific and yogic/buddhist perspectives on mental health fascinating, and some of his videos have genuinely changed our lives. In one of his streams he shared his understanding of dharma and it made me curious to learn more, so now I'm reading the Dhammapada.

Picked out my wedding tux today. I'm so happy I finally found a skilled tailor that has a fantastic eye for style and that I like working with, so it's essspensivo but so worth it IMO.

Armenia and Estonia keep popping up in my head days after the Eurovision finals

If I had to pick a winner, it'd be "France, if it wasn't off-key at times"

with of course Ireland as an honorable mention

Booked a trip to Italy today! We’re going by Nightjet night train, with the remarkable timetable of taking an 8pm train and being in Italy at 9am without a single high speed train involved.

I’m quite sore from landscaping our garden today and the past weekend. The work is very fulfilling - urban planning and garden planning are both design challenges in the real world that I like. It also vaguely reminds me of my years in Minecraft as a teenager because I’m paving with brick in a pixel-like pattern of squares and doing landscaping, lol.

Had a fantastic day with my sister and her kids the other day. I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever been closer to her, it’s great to be a better brother and uncle than I was years ago. Most of the time we do end up discussing our oftentimes difficult parents and upbringing - glad we turned out okay despite it all.

Did a bunch of gardening over Easter. We took out most of the stone bricks and I started repaved parts where we want to extend the brickwork. Quite fun actually to lay down brickwork like that, it’s easy to do but a bit of a physical challenge as I’m using shouldering back muscles that almost never get to work. I’m hoping the weather helps a bit the coming weeks so we can get the garden plant-ready asap.

Maybe I read over it, or it’s hidden incorrectly in the ‘low self-esteem’ or ‘task aversion’ category, but what I see with myself and my peers is that the biggest reason for procrastination is the perceived ability to do the task. “I need to write an essay, but I don’t know where to start” or any other task where the steps from now to finished thing is fuzzy, unclear, tricky, scary, or all of the above. I see so many people struggling with procrastination actually struggling with generating the activation energy necessary to start and subsequently not losing steam. None of that seems present in this meta-analysis in a way that I find matching my experiences.

We're slowly starting to work on a plan to get our garden from 90% brickwork to 'as little pavement as we need'. We had a garden designer help us think through and make a first design, which we promptly iterated over until it looked almost nothing like what he drew for us. But it's still useful to have done - gotta start somewhere.

Now I just hope there's a few warm/sunny spring weekenddays to get the project going. So far this winter has been oscillating between "cold as fuck" 20% of the time and "mild, but raining" 80% of the time. Last week saw the first sunny mild days which was a nice change of pace, albeit another climate record shattered.