Paul Ganssle @pganssle@qoto.org

I just bought some e-readers for my niece and nephew, and I'd like to get them started by loading them with some high quality books. Anyone have recommendations for engaging books for teens/preteens?

Nephew is 14 and he's really into tech. I think he mostly wants the e-reader because it's an e-ink screen that he can hack on, so that archetype should be easy for the kind of crowd that follows me. He was also asking a lot of questions about physics when I was there, so high quality explainers for stuff like relativity and quantum mechanics aimed at a young teen level would probably be good.

Niece is 12 and insists that she will not use the e-reader. My wife thinks that she will like anything that says boys are stupid (this makes her sound vapid, but she is quite sharp). Tougher nut to crack, obviously.

Fiction and non-fiction recommendations are fine.

#books #recommendations #ya

@adamchainz Immediately after it happened, it felt tight and swollen, like when you have a twisted ankle (without the pain from the soft tissue damage, obviously). I couldn't really bend it or straighten it all the way out for a few hours, and it is still pretty stiff.

Now it is a lot better but not all the way. The needle site is still sore and it looks *horrible*, but it looks worse than it is.

@Nekokawaigari Thanks, they said it is pretty common and the water will eventually get absorbed into the rest of my body.

Did double red cell donation today; normally this is a very nice experience because you get some saline infusions to rehydrate you, but apparently today I accidentally got a little hole in my vein and all the saline just went into the space around my veins and muscles and such.

So now one of my arms is all inflated like a water balloon 😅 I will spare you the picture, but it looks like a lumpy potato 🥔😛

@poleguy Doesn't look like there is any Braille on the sign.

To be fair I do think these signs are primarily there to communicate that the button doesn't affect the timing of the signal.

I don't know how long I've seen these signs before realizing the fundamental mismatch between the medium and the intended audience here...

#hashtag

@kevin Yeah I dunno who these people are who think you can get from one place to another in less than 15 minutes. If you told me I could prevent nuclear apocalypse by getting from my house to the closest grocery store in less than 15 minutes I would probably just start calling my loved ones to say goodbye.

@jimray Sure, but the allergy came on suddenly, then went away immediately when we went to Spain, then came back on when we were in a different city in Spain. It would be useful if we could eyeball it and see what correlates with the attacks.

Does anyone know of a site that has historical pollen index data (just needs to cover the last few weeks)? I am trying to figure out what precisely my son may be to.

Seems to me like all the pollen sites are like weather sites, where they only enter give the current values and forecasts.

#pollen #allergies

@quentinpradet I don't *want* to fly to Spain every month to buy a case of yogurts, but I don't see that I have any other options.

This is going to turn me into one of those airline miles people who gets on random flights to Singapore for the points, except I'm going to have to set up an alert for any time plane tickets to anywhere in Spain drop below $100 so I can show up for 3 hours to buy yogurt and then fly right back.

@adamchainz Getting slightly closer to the states...

Do they have this specific brand and flavor of yogurt outside of Spain? I think it is basically Oikos Triple Zero, but this particular flavor is super good (it has little chunks of banana in it), and doesn't compare to the banana cream flavor we have in the States.

Apparently if you filter a Danish it turns into a donut, which is something smokers prefer?

Since it came up several times at #pyconus, I thought I'd post here. The method I've been using to learn Spanish (and liking quite a bit), is Comprehensible Input.

A good starting point for finding information about CI, and finding materials in your target language is [Compehensible Input Wiki](https://comprehensibleinputwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page)

For Spanish, I started with [Dreaming Spanish](https://www.dreamingspanish.com)

#comprehensibleinput #languagelearning