The Week #276

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  • 🧚 The tooth fairy made another visit to our house. Finally. This last tooth has been hanging on by a thread for (what feels like) weeks. With 4 front teeth missing, now is the time to make sure I get extra photos of that smile.
  • 🌽 Japan has a unique scheme called "hometown tax". Most people in Japan, regardless of where they're born, end up in one of the big cities because that's where the jobs are. This shift in population is making it difficult for rural municipalities to function without a tax base. Hometown tax lets you redirect a portion of your resident tax to any municipality in the country and the receiving municipality sends you a "thank you gift" in return. There's entire shopping sites setup for this – even Amazon runs one.

    For years I've meant to do it, but find myself on December 31st in analysis paralysis and miss the deadline. Finally, this week I took part. By supporting a few different towns around the country I am getting in return a year's supply of tissue, toilet paper, and a monthly delivery of seasonal veg. 
  • 💩 I started reading Enshitification and am finding myself nodding along. It really does explain the shift in computing from being useful utilities to always seeming to get worse. I looked at buying it on my Kindle, but besides being locked in to the platform (especially with the title of the book), it was a 1 dollar cheaper to purchase it directly from the author. While I won't need a new PC any time soon, it has started the "Ugh, I kinda don't like what macOS is becoming" and  and desktop linux threads in my head.... One day....
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