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Naturally, since we don’t come from a culture where public nudity is the norm, my brother and I aren’t so keen on the idea of stripping butt-naked in front of our grandpa and his octogenarian friends. Grandpa’s tried everything to change our Nos to Yeses: at first he asked us nicely, then he tried urging us and bullying us into agreeing.

I finally caved today, more to shut him up than anything. In the wake of my uncle’s death, I’m aware that this might very well be the last time I get to spend time with my grandpa, so I figured I could lock my dignity and clothes away for a few hours to make him happy. My brother suffered no such lapse of judgement, which prompted Grandpa to lecture him on the importance of being brave.

Grandpa and I headed to the bathhouse this morning after breakfast. I don’t know why Grandpa and his friends choose to go at 7:30 in the morning, but plans are plans and I gave him my word.

After stripping down and putting my clothes in a locker, I fumbled my way upstairs, where I met Grandpa’s friends. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a naked man extend his hand for a handshake as if it were a completely normal occurrence, but I wasn’t ready for the shock.

“I was your aunt’s classmate,” one said, smiling a little too enthusiastically for my liking.

I shook his hand and nodded silently, grateful that I’d left my glasses behind. My eyes blurred out the things I did not want to see, as well as most everything else. Blindness has its perks sometimes.

After showering, dipping in the heated tub, and sweating in the sauna, I got to the part I was actually somewhat looking forward to. I’ve been too scared to go to a Korean spa in my hometown to have my skin scrubbed off, so I thought doing it here would be a cheaper way to try it out.

The scrub was vigorous, thankfully not painfully so. I’m ticklish and not particularly comfortable with being touched, so my thoughts cycled between that’s nice and please don’t go there to oh—you REALLY don’t need to go there. I thought I’d mentally prepared myself prior but old Chinese men are comfortable with nudity in a way I could not even have imagined.

I survived. I can’t stop touching my arms now, my soft skin a consolation prize for suffering through that sweaty bathhouse and all its unclothed chain-smoking men.

Hanns Alexander was the son of a prosperous German family who fled Berlin for London in the 1930s, becoming an investigator of war crimes.

Rudolf Höss was a farmer and soldier who became the Kommandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp and oversaw the deaths of over a million men, women and children. The hunt was on.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. Lieutenant Hanns Alexander is one of the lead investigators, Rudolf Höss his most elusive target.

Really enjoyed this one. It was fascinating and morbid in equal measure. The detail that Harding shares of around the holocaust and what the Jews went through is bone chilling.

I knew about the holocaust and the concentration camps, of course, but I didn't know the details of how the camps when from inception, to ultimately murdering millions of Jews. Using Höss' diaries, Harding is able to give a unique insight to how this occurred.

The lion's share of the book focusses on the background of Höss and Alexander, and how their stories ultimately converge, which I liked as it gave an insight into Höss' mind and how he ended up doing what he did.

The irony of Höss being caught by a German Jew is very satisfying, I must say.

Overall, a very thought provoking and powerful book.

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I think it can’t be that hard to create this routine, without me having to remember I have to add extra CSS or HTML in my post. Whether I post from Drafts, Emacs, Obsidian, the micro.blog app or website, I should be able to write, add images, publish and be done with it. No extra fluff to remember. Have the templates and CSS figure that one out.

Any tips are welcome!

AI is not over-hyped, imho. I'm discovering new significance for it every day. An example. I had to go back to some very complex code I wrote a week ago. I wanted to give it new flexibility, that would be simple from the user's point of view, and in order for it to work technically it has to maintain that simplicity internally. It's a tall order to go back to something complex a week after writing it, and rip it apart and put it back together and have it retain the simplicity it had before. But I had an advantage this time that I had never had before, a programming partner with a perfect memory. I had written the original code with ChatGPT. So I went back and asked it to review my plan, and then worked with it step by step as I had before. It had perfect recall, right, of course where my recall is pretty sketchy. It took two sessions to get it done, but it works now, and I'm confident I've covered all the bases. How do you put that story in a press release? If you want to understand a new technology, don't talk to the CEO of the tech company that made the product, their lives are whirlwinds, they don't have time or the capacity to understand how big the idea is, they just know that it is big. If you want to understand you have to use it and you have to talk with other users. #

Martha My Dear is the essential Paul McCartney love song. #

This is a typical dialog you see when you visit a site with an ad blocker installed. They say that turning off the ad blocker will "support" them. No, I don't think it actually will do anything for them. It might expose me to malware or having my interests shared with businesses who will use that info for who-knows-what. Much better would be to let me click a button to give them $0.50 to read the freaking article that's behind that idiotic dialog, and btw, the payment would have to be anonymous or I'm clicking the Back button. I really did want to know what happens if Trump is found guilty and sentenced to prison. I still do. But I don't think I'm going to turn off my ad blocker. I'll think about it. In the meantime if they had let me pay them $0.50 to read the freaking article, I might have linkblogged it to people who follow me via RSS or email, or on Bluesky or Mastodon, thus giving them a chance to sell others on paying $0.50 to read the freaking article. Not promising I'd do that, but if they really answer the question, if I really learn something I certainly would pass it along. Come on USA Today, get conscious. We'll happily support you for giving us info we wanted, just let us actually help you in a meaningful way, not by penalizing us for having the audacity to use an ad blocker. #

I wonder if anyone named their dog Alexa, and if any hilarity ensued.#

The Knicks won last night #

• Knicks at the Garden via ChatGPT 4o.#

• They needed fresh blood, and they got it. #
• Knicks won in a blowout. #
• I had no idea that was coming. #
• Next game on Friday.#