It's time to eat the fucking rich

I thought the whole selling point of AI was supposed to be that you didn’t *need* to be proficient in it.

Beers. Belgian beers. Sheesh. I swear, I only had one Negroni earlier!

Humans have not walked on the moon in my lifetime.

Tomorrow: a walking tour of Antwerp and then a pub crawl(ish) to taste Belgian beets!

It is the year 2026 AD. Super hackers have gained illicit backdoor access to the AI Claude through the Chipotle support chat.

If you’re using AI to write books, understand that’s not going to somehow get you respect or money like real writers who aren’t using AI to write books because we don’t get respect or money either.

With apologies to Douglas Adams: I teleported to the Waffle House with Ron and Sid and Meg. Ron had a stack with pecans in them and I got Sidney's eggs.

So, my cabin is nice, but also only several feet and a few stairs from reception desk, the stairs to the other decks, and the ship’s bar. I can definitely still hear the mellow sax from “Just The Way You Are” drifting over from that direction.

I’m not kidding. I think I convinced her I wasn’t Mitchell, but I also think she was going to text her sister and say she’d just met the star of Ludwig.

Enjoying some light FM from the ship-board live piano player, sipping a Negroni, and watching the sunset off the…I want to say starboard side?

Shortly after the aid cuts, NPR did a piece on a priest scouring the countryside for anyone willing to sell him their rationed HIV meds so that an orphan he looks after wouldn't die. Of course Africa is resilient. Of course people are resilient. That doesn't mean people shouldn't hang for this.

I’m on a boat.

I had a lovely dinner with a couple from New Jersey, and then another woman in the restaurant was convinced I was the spitting image of David Mitchell—is it the beard?—to the point that she asked to take a photo. 😀

That’s a weird thing to say about a strait we apparently don’t need and that he already like totally got reopened just a couple of days ago.

I tell you, a thing I like about visiting Europe is there’s usually a good eight hours or so before cranky America wakes up.

We’re sailing away.

This hasn’t been standard fare in any other hotel I’ve stayed at.

About to set sail for Antwerp!

Is this a new 48 hours or a different 48 hours than the last 48 hours?

Not really bucking those Greg Stilson comparisons.

My cabin and the view from port

Now we get to discover “am I the only one on my own on this tour?” “Am the youngest one just by dint of being under 50?”

Getting ready to leave the city for the ship. Some more parting shots of Brussels, then.

I have spent maybe an hour trying to find a place selling frites where I wouldn’t be on line for another two hours.

Can’t miss a place you’ve never been.

I’m not necessarily the biggest Magritte fan, but The Empire of Light is genuinely one of my favorite series of paintings.

Ceci n’est pas “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.”

Belgian street art

Brussels

Brussels is lovely, but its twisty, hilly, often cobbled streets do slightly test the definition of “easily walkable.”

My luggage needs to be out of the room by 10 am. (But not my carryon.) I need to be out of the room by noon. We don’t leave for the ship until 3 pm. Most everything in town isn’t open until 10:30 or 11 am. So I’m kind of just aimless. So in the meantime, have some Smurfs.

My bag has to be ready for pickup by 10 am. Admittedly a little nervous about handing it over to somebody again so soon after getting it back.

😲👽 www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/u...

Add a food to a movie title Scrambled Eggs and Hamnet

Hotel breakfast, then not sure what in Brussels before heading to the ship to join the tour group this afternoon.

My bag has been delivered! Little weirded out that I’d nodded off and then woke up to find it having been wheeled to the end of my hotel room bed…

Not to jinx it, but delivery of my luggage is now being measured in minutes on the tracker they gave me. Fifty-some, but still!

Listen, I’m on vacation.

Be more pro-log.

Look, there’s no denying the Belgians know their beer.

My luggage is supposedly gepland en klaar voor levering, so that’s something.

I went to the Comic Arts Museum.

They do love their Tintin round here.

The city is a little crowded.

I am moderately jetlagged now.

Meanwhile, I am sightseeing in Brussels.

Okay, my bag is apparently on a flight to Brussels scheduled to land within the hour.