swatkat

In trying to find a new pair of closed-toed sandals that use a buckle instead of Velcro, I'm learning that's basically a product no longer being made. I'm also learning shoe websites don't like people searching for things like closed-toed, or the clasp mechanism. Sometimes what I want is classified as a sandal, sometimes a shoe. And this isn't even getting into considering things like heel height, and heel narrowness.

It's especially demoralizing to find there's very little made in the way of women's shoes with buckles these days. Something nice to wear to work and meeting up with friends that helps me feel like I'm a grown-up and costs less than $400 doesn't seem like it should be giving me such a headache, but then, it's shoe shopping. Nothing's at all pleasant about that. These seem promising, and I may risk buying sight unseen to avoid going into a physical shoe store.

In chatting about arbitrary divisions into two groups and applying that to the internet, we came up with the binaries of good internet and bad internet, and young internet and old internet. I then suggested algorithmic internet and end-user internet, and I stand by that. I often say I only use social media on my computer where I have a full keyboard, big screen, mouse, and browser extensions, all of which help me curate my experience - while it's not perfect, I'm still largely in control of things. I haven't ceded ground to an app or control to a set of suggestions. I'll often see complaints but rarely what's being complained about, which gives me both a skewed view of what's going on and satisfaction in being so well-curated I barely glimpse what's being touted as a widespread problem.

Keeping the internet on a computer, where it belongs, fixes a lot of problems before they start.

Also of note today was someone on my floor moving out and I got some fancy imported Korean sea salt they weren't going to bother hauling around with them. I don't know how fancy it is, but it tastes quite nice. I'm thinking I'll use it in soup.