🎬 I rewatched Wall-E today with my daughter and enjoyed it even more than the first time I saw it.

I have one hour to work on important stuff right now, and here I am, looking at my Micro.blog timeline instead. 🤦‍♂️

It’s my third day of attending a virtual conference. I have seen too many presentations in a row, and consequently my mind is now a blur. My biggest takeaway is that presenters often lack focus, which causes them to run out of time before they get to the most critical points.

I am feeling much better about the slide deck I am creating for a data calls talk that I and my team will present this summer. I soaked up presentation after presentation for the past month, and put a lot of it into practice today without even having to think about it.

We had a one-second power outage in my neighborhood two nights in a row, after 11:00 PM. I can’t figure out why.

I have been attending a virtual conference most of the day today. Technically, today is the pre-conference training workshop/training day. So far, it is pretty good and I am learning something.

I am sympathetic to Naomi Osaka’s mental health-based arguments for skipping press events during the French Open. I am also sympathetic to the French Open’s argument that participation in these press events is a mandatory part of her contract. While I am more sympathetic to Osaka’s position, I think we should all end the charade of bringing up an athlete in front of a media panel to answer for her poor performance or to gloat about her good performance in a match. It is frivolous and adds no value. Didn’t Bill Belichick expose the futility of the sports press conference twenty years ago or more?

🎮 I started another run at Hollow Knight after quite a while away from it. I have missed a step or two… 😅

‘60s pop like The Four Seasons sounds great from the tiny, terrible, mono Amazon Echo speaker in my kitchen. The music must have been mixed with transistor radios in mind.

I’m spending this rainy morning listening to jazz and reading The New Yorker.

I enjoyed Jill Lepore’s recent article on burnout in The New Yorker:

Burnout is a combat metaphor. In the conditions of late capitalism, from the Reagan era forward, work, for many people, has come to feel like a battlefield, and daily life, including politics and life online, like yet more slaughter. People across all walks of life—rich and poor, young and old, caretakers and the cared for, the faithful and the faithless—really are worn down, wiped out, threadbare, on edge, battered, and battle-scarred. Lockdowns, too, are features of war, as if each one of us, amid not only the pandemic but also acts of terrorism and mass shootings and armed insurrections, were now engaged in a Hobbesian battle for existence, civil life having become a war zone.

Lepore argues for cultural and economic origins for burnout, which make for a useful lens through which to study the phenomenon. Personally, I think the burnout really is a manifestation of depression, specifically of high-functioning depression coupled with exhaustion. Lepore touches on this, too.

Burnout still feels like its own thing to me, because I experience the feeling at my desk during the work day. Fortunately, I have learned (or am still learning) to slow down and demand less of myself, and of those around me, when I am feeling burnt out.

🎮 I have been very much into playing Good Sudoku again lately. I am trying to master its Pro level, where the puzzles start to get very tricky. I am trying to learn how to spot the Y-wing pattern, but still need to resort to hints quite a lot to find them in the grid.

Today was a good day because I got to spend all morning outside with my kids, and because the family all shared a nice meal together in the evening.

Republicans Block Independent Commission on Jan. 6 Riot. It’s shameful. I don’t think we need an independent commission to know and understand what happened, though. It is no secret what happened. It is no secret what went wrong. Everybody knows who is responsible.

Micro Camp sounds like it will be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I’ll be traveling during it, so I won’t be able to attend.

I am on Zyrtec, so I don’t get many allergy symptoms anymore, but I think this is the longest and the worst allergy season in many years. I read somewhere, years ago, that climate change leads to increased pollen levels, and I believe it.

I have the day off to spend with the kids today. 😀

The washing machine is installed and running an empty load as a test. After that, it will be deluged with all the laundry that has piled up since our old machine broke. I feel sorry for it.

I am waiting for a new washing machine to be delivered to my house. Let’s just say that my family really needs it ASAP. 😂

I don’t drink that much coffee each day, but I missed my afternoon caffeine dose yesterday and felt completely awful until I had a coffee at dinner time. It was scary! Now I’m looking into strategies to reduce my dependence on caffeine.

🎵 I love the new Bleachers single “Stop Making this Hurt.”

I just learned that I get Friday off as a “bonus holiday” before Memorial Day. Now my schedule is in sync with the rest of my family’s, which is fantastic. I look forward to letting them know at dinner tonight. 😀

I actually achieved all my objectives at work this week. I am still floored by that! 😅

It is starting to get hot outside and it is not even June yet.

Apple support came through for me again this evening. I brought in my iPad Air 4, which appeared to have a faulty region in the screen (it was really minor, but I thought it would get worse over time), and came home with a brand new iPad.