Ten Things I Asked Google This Week
1. Where was the bridge on the River Kwai?
Inspired by a friend’s daughter who visited this bridge in Thailand, I looked it up. I always thought it was in Vietnam, although I’m not sure why I thought that. My historical context is a little shaky since I mostly know of it from We Didn’t Start the Fire (the same source for my [extremely limited] knowledge of Dacron, Brigitte Bardot, thalidomide…and an embarrassingly large number of other lyrical references).
2. How do you make bread crumbs?
I brought back several loaves of stale-ish sandwich bread from the beach and needed to replenish my freezer supply.
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| Perfect way to spend the day before the Fourth of July, when young men with internships have the day off, and it’s 40 billion degrees. |
3. How can you see a chart of your running times on Apple?
I’m working toward a sub-30 5k and I use the workout app on my watch, which tells me my time each time I finish a workout, but it took forever to figure out how to view my times from past days. With help from Gemini, I created a shortcut on my phone that takes me to a list of my running times.
4. Was it Jim Justice who showed his dog’s hiney during a speech?
5. What are common side effects of SSRIs?
Asking for a friend who’s been on Zoloft for thirteen years and is wondering, now that her husband’s high-stress job is gone, if life would get better, worse, or stay the same if she lowered her dose.
6. When is the World Cup final?
I’ve surprised myself with how much interest I’ve shown in the World Cup (ie, more than zero). I think it helps that I understand who is playing whom. (The rest of the year when Jason is watching soccer: Me: Who’s playing? Jason: England. Me: Who else? Jason: England. Then why…are they…playing…?)
7. What is The Last House Guest about?
After being blown away by All the Missing Girls, I added every single Megan Miranda book to my TBR list. I just finished both The Girl From Widow Hills and Such a Quiet Place, and then noticed that The Last House Guest was missing from my TBR. I added it before bits of the plot started coming back to me and I finally remembered that I have read it—and that it was a letdown after All the Missing Girls, which cooled me on reading the others for a while. But I’m on board again, having finished (and enjoyed) The Last to Vanish last night (very apropos in thunderstormy weather!) and looking forward to starting The Only Survivors, still sitting on my nightstand.
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| Fourth of July, waiting for it to get dark enough for fireworks |
8. How much does heat affect running time?
Before the thunderstormy weather there was the surface-of-the-sun-except-more-humid weather. Having finally figured out how to view and compare my running times since June 1, I was dismayed to realize that I’ve gained two minutes, when I’m working hard to get faster.
You can pretty much find any answer you want to find if you look long enough, so I stopped as soon as the internet gave me a formula that, when calculated, told me that an equivalent time in the current temperatures would’ve had me gaining five minutes since the relatively cool early June.
9. What does 77ยบ, 81% humidity feel like?
For the aforementioned calculations.
10. How does the pacer function in the Apple workout app work?
Pretty neat, assuming it works as stated—you can tell it what you want your distance and time to be and it’ll give you a live graphic during your run showing whether you need to speed up or slow down to hit your target. They also added a custom running workout option where you can set up interval times you want to do and it’ll ping you when it’s time to sprint or recover or whatever.
Now if only it had a function that said It’s so hot you’re amazing for even being here and your two minutes of gained time in fact proves how incredible you are!
