A place to see another person think.
Posted by Zen On 20 July 2018
TouchPad by JACOBURGE ELECTRONICS
Interviewer: How did you find the Touchpad?
13HourCafe: One day I was on internet (as one does) and I was looking for a small programmable keyboard. Upon filtering out super backlit, super gaming, super huge as and super expensive options I stumbled on TouchPad’s kickstarter and was instantly taken by the neatness, nay, slickness of the look of this thing. I actually missed the kickstarter and waited until it was in stock to buy, but nobody cares about that.
Posted by Zen On 31 May 2018
The thing about #metoo movement is…I feel like I can’t contribute to it. I mean…haven’t all of us has experienced micro sexual assault? No?
It’s just so difficult to perceive it as being abnormal.
I vividly remember when I was groped by an older boy in school. Just once, on the stairs. The stairs lead to the first floor of the languages department. He made a conscious decision to place his disgusting hand …on a young girl’s arse and squeeze it. I do remember the shock and embarrassment. This humiliation.
Or that time I was wearing my favourite strawberry and cherry patterned dress and a guy on the street did that to me. I kicked him. He nearly kicked me back. How dare I fight?
It’s just so hard. Because these insignificant…they were violations for sure, but they weren’t…they weren’t I don’t know…they weren’t enough for me to…Yes, it was horrible and embarrassing and infuriating at the time, but what could I do? What could I do? Say to someone? What can they say to me? It’s not like I would remember their faces. What would someone say? ‘your personal boundaries have been breached by an arsehole, I’m really sorry’ That doesn’t *do* anything. That doesn’t change society.
And, anyway, nothing much happened. I wasn’t raped. I wasn’t tortured, or injured. And there are women out there who had worse – much worse, whom I think people need to listen to.
We went out to a gay club (mostly male) one night, during uni life, ‘we’ being 7 girls and 1 guy, and it so happened that girls had a good time, but the guy got groped. I remember him being shocked. STUNNED. He couldn’t believe, he simply couldn’t comprehend that someone would do that to him. He talked about it for days after. He refused to go that place ever again. And my reaction to it was…why are you surprised by this? Not because it’s socially accepted, not because I approve of this, not because I don’t like the guy, not because it’s appropriate behaviour, not because…because it’s just something that happens. It is something I’ve already dealt with… what’s the big deal?
You have to…just…you can’t stop, you can’t dwell on it, you have to move on, you can’t question your self-worth, you can’t rationalise, you can’t analyse your behaviour because any assault on your boundaries is an assault, it is unacceptable. Since you can’t spend any time thinking about it to preserve your psyche…that’s why you can’t talk about it.
I’ve read somewhere that people blame victims because they want to distance themselves from the fear of ending up being a victim, themselves. Distance themselves from the fear that empathy creates.
You can’t talk about it, you need to move on with your life. In a way you simply have to… accept it. Put it in your “just another shitty thing men do” folder and move on. That’s the fucked up thing, not what happened physically to me, no, it’s is how I have accepted it as “manageable personal space violation of sexual nature”. “Manageable humiliation”. How utterly fucked up is that.
#MeToo
Posted by Zen On 25 May 2018
– Life is essentially meaningless. We will all die, probably in a stupid way, and not a single person will remember us as we want to be remembered. We live in a universe of endless possibilities and statistically probable coincidences, where every day we have to chose whether to face the void or do our taxes, where every day we struggle against conflicting opinions and contradictory information…we live in this universe – and you still want to pretend to me that this job you’re doing really matters?
– Look, fine, I’ll go out with you to lunch.
Posted by Zen On 20 May 2018
– M’Lady! Our time together has finally come! As destiny couples us in this ride across the universe my heart leaps form joy at the mere thought of your offers. Madame, I have decided! I desire your finest buns, charred as lightly as a sparrow’s shadow, and upon it your moist, delectable fränkfürtёr that is so lovingly cooked to it’s juicy perfection. And oh! Please, M’lady, easy on the onions.
– …Do you want a drink with that?
Posted by Zen On 5 May 2018
K: Is there anything to do around here for lunch?
D: No, there’s bloody nothing around here.
A: That’s just not true!
Posted by Zen On 28 April 2018
Department of minor technical inconveniences (MTI).
MTI was created with one idea in mind: Profit.
P r o f i t.
Director Craig Stanton got his position in Antar Corp through listening to people. He was one of the few senior managers in history who wasn’t a founding member or a cut-throat on his way to become a shareholder. People under him respected him, he was faithful to his wife, spend quality time with his children and did E only once at a university party – decades ago, never touching anything stronger than tea in his day to day life.
His ideas didn’t make extraordinary profits, in fact his ideas made ordinary profits. Constant ordinary profits. The genius of Mr. Stanton was that he really paid attention to people, even people like Sean.
Posted by Zen On 18 February 2018
Here we are again. This is finally the last of the leftover wood that I have!
And this time I took the lesson I learned from bench N2 and pre-painted it already, before putting it together. Some will say it’s a hack job at this point, and they will be right. From what I have seen and read, everything points to making a project first then painting it. Which is fine and grand for actual projects worth putting artistic effort into, but this not such a project. Also I just used straight up ‘outside wood paint’ on pre-lacquered panels, so go ahead, judge me.
Posted by Zen On 17 February 2018
Diet culture is crazy. It’s not a recent phenomenon, of course – it has been with people since people have turned into society. Physical aesthetic has changed wildly over the centuries – you can see it reflected in our art and our media. The change probably has correlated with food availability and/or the rise of consumerism that played on our insecurities.
I personally believe that diet culture is bad – as a culture. There’s nothing inherently wrong with dieting, in order to get yourself a healthier you, mind. My problem is with ‘the culture’ of it. There are insane number of diets shared all over the internet – which are rarely based on solid scientific evidence – supported by a number of ‘nutritionists’ – a term not subject to professional regulation – that work on the basis of selling you a dream of healthier you, instead of making you healthier.
Here you are. Your tastes are sophisticated. Your choices are unusual. Inception didn’t blow your mind back in the day. And yet, people still fail to acknowledge you’re interesting and it’s all just “Look, here’s Jake he’s a bit odd but alright kind of guy”. Here’s a simple checklist to show you’re not just a plebeian consumer, but in fact a stud of knowledge
Posted by Zen On 13 January 2018
N: …I made someone buy kitchen scales like that for me. So at one point I asked my ex to bake me a cake. I didn’t have a measuring scale, I could just about do it without.
A: I wouldn’t do that, that’s not my style, cup measurements are imprecise…although you can make yourskshire pudding.
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