Once Upon A Time, I’m sure “old boy” style Pipe Lighters fit the category of “household supplies”.

However, even in Japan, these are not self-help books:

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I can’t decide if this picture represents Clinton or Trump tonight. Maybe both.

(via)

First snowfall in Okinawa in recorded history.

Anyone know if Al Gore was in the area?

There’s nothing more confusing than a loanword that looks too much like another loanword. A “T-shatsu” is a t-shirt, so what is a “Y-shatsu”? A white (wai) shirt. I loved the head-scratching on the Hello!Project forums back when Reina Tanaka covered “Heya to Y-shatsu to Watashi”, trying to figure out what a Y-shaped shirt could be.

But Reina covering a Y-shatsu isn’t nearly as interesting as a Y-shatsu covering Ai Shinozaki…

(more revealing photos here; video and pictures from her lengthy new Maxim Korea shoot: video, part 1, 2, 3, 4, posters)

I haven’t had anything to say about anime recently, because the only things I’ve watched so far this year are Bodacious Space Pirates on Crunchyroll (in convenient tablet form) and The Seven Deadly Sins on Hulu.

[gratuitous link to Elizabeth cosplay]

(via)

There’s nothing I hate more than a web site filled with animated GIFs that takes forever to load and spins up your CPU fans. So this one goes after the jump, even though it’s completely safe for work.

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A couple of weeks ago I bought the Anova Precision sous vide immersion circulator. Then I stopped off at Dong Vinh Restaurant Supply for some large plastic bins to hold the water, and Ikea for a few cheap accessories.

Since then, I’ve made terrific steak, roast beef, burgers, chicken breasts, eggs, and wings, all in convenient single-guy-living-alone serving sizes, and the larger bin will be filled with steaks for friends this weekend.

And, hey, it’s on sale on Amazon today for $140 instead of the usual $180:

Nice to see some people still remember the good stuff.

(via the never-safe-for-work Sankaku Complex)

Denise Matthews is the latest casualty of 2016. Not as politically significant as Antonin Scalia or as beloved as Abe Vigoda, but an important piece of my youth.

(via; as much as I preferred her sexy pics, I’ll leave that for another time out of respect for her beliefs)

[I don’t know who this young whippersnapper who turns up in iTunes searches is, but there will only ever be one Vanity.]

Due to a combination of company growth, whiny devs, and SOX compliance, I’m off to the Perforce Conference, aka “Merge”, April 11th-15th.

My dinner plans for the week mostly consist of “avoiding aggressive bums who piss on the sidewalk”, so unless I run into someone I know, I’ll either eat at the hotel or send out for pizza.

“I try to sleep, they’re wide awake, they won’t let me alone. They don’t get paid to take vacations or let me alone. They spy on me, I try to hide, they won’t let me alone. They persecute me, they’re the judge and jury all in one.”

It’s official: on Twitter, disagreement is harassment. Unless you’re disagreeing with those people, of course; then anything goes.

(via, at least until that account gets banned, too)

I’ve had a Jiji plush in my cube for years, but last week I decided I needed a more powerful presence to protect me from evil…

($11 on Amazon)

One of the interesting things about sous vide cooking is that if you’ve got the water at a certain temperature for a lengthy cooking session (such as 2-3 days for tough cuts of beef), you can toss in something else that cooks well at that temperature for a few hours (like steak or burgers).

It turns out that buffalo wings and coffee are compatible, although I suspect few hardcore coffee-drinkers are willing to wait two hours. But at least you’d have something to drink while the wings were getting crisped in the deep fryer.

Alternatively, the recipe also recommends one hour at 185°, which allows you to have coffee with your french fries.

Beats the hell out of a Hallmark card or a box of chocolates.

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