My Costco put in self check-out lanes but also has an employee stand guard to spot-check your member ID card before you check yourself out to prevent people sharing their memberships. I love being treated like a criminal for shopping at the place I pay a membership to go to.

“my favorite and my least cited paper” should be the topic of a conference

As a working class college student, books were one of the most devastating purchases I had to make every semester. I'm sure they can have intimate value to someone who can afford them, but they were awful for me. An immediate tax for access to an education I was already paying for.

in the contiguous US we use a mirror and a razorblade

my favorite Windows update hijack is when I am at a conference with a laptop and I'm closing down at the end of a session - updating now! also, make sure to not power down while updating!

Yes I could post my bluesky member number, but I am more proud of being on LinkedIn for like a decade and never once having made a post, comment, or reaction

I just read that Madison has won the Best Tasting Tap Water competition in the state of Wisconsin twice in the last 10 years, presumably the Moderate Pulp category

how is it possible that these kinds of problems weren't solved roughly around the same time as the invention of the steam locomotive

It's the NCAR Research Data Archive: rda.ucar.edu They regularly archive ERA5 products, but there is latency and probably reduced scope of variables compared to ECMWF/CDS. I only needed some select ERA5 products so I retooled to pull from here and just deal with the fewer options.

I completely abandoned ECMWF/CDS for just getting the stuff archived by CISL/RDA when ECMWF/CDS was down for like 4 months for the "upgrade". I don't think I will go back unless it's the last possible choice.