Thursday Things: Cocktails & Clutter Edition
30 January 2025. Vol 7 No 5. By Dan McGirt. #286
Thursday Things is here! This week we have a cocktail conversation, drink ginger ale in the clouds, declutter our digital desktops, and welcome the Year of the Snake.
If you enjoy this edition, please click the heart icon in the header or at the end of the post to let me know.
Cheers. Photo by Alyona Yankovska on Unsplash
Year of the Snake
Yesterday, January 29, began the Year of the Snake on the traditional lunar calendar1
If you give any credence to Chinese astrology, and many people do, then here’s what to expect:
Despite the negative press that snakes sometimes generate, the Year of the Snake is serving up a slew of positive possibilities for 2025. The snake brings with it wisdom, transformation, calmness and creativity. In fact, the Year of the Snake could be life-changing for many folks, say zodiac experts. And if you’re lucky enough to find a snake in your yard this year, you’ve just discovered a harbinger of favourable luck.2
I’m pretty sure a snake wrote that last line.
The article goes through the entire Chinese zodiac and tells what those born in the Year of the Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, etc. can except by way of fortune in the Year of the Snake.3 Look up your birth year and see what Sneaky Snake has in store for you!
Yessssssss. This is my year. Photo by David Clode on Unsplash
Cocktails in the Sky
I was thrilled to see that one of my favorite people has launched a Substack newsletter, The Cocktail Conversations: The Newsletter,4 a mere ten days ago. Better late than never, I suppose.
Actually, Michele Mitchell is invariably on time, because nothing is happening anyway until she arrives. Michele is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, novelist, non-fiction author, journalist (in multiple media), world traveler, magnet for odd and interesting occurrences, excessive user of footnotes5, and I could go on and on with this paragraph. She does lots of cool and interesting things and has lots of great stories to tell.
In her latest post, she weaves together encounters on airplanes, the legendary Green Machine cycle, and teasers for her latest documentary, which I gather has something to do with the marijuana industry in California. Just go read it.
The Cocktail Conversations Image: The Cocktail Conversations
Ginger Ale at 30,000 Feet
While it’s probably not Michele’s sky beverage of choice, and isn’t mine either6 I do have a fondness for ginger ale, so I was fascinated to learn about this important ginger ale science:
Yes, ginger ale really does taste better on a plane. Here’s why.
The combination of low air pressure and cabin dryness dulls taste buds and messes with our odor receptors, leading to a decrease in sweet and salty flavor detection of about 30%. The noisy atmosphere of a plane can impact your sense of taste, too. Airlines are very aware of the phenomenon and have sponsored studies on it.
But if you’re a ginger ale fan, you’re in luck: It’s one of the few carbonated beverages that’s better 30,000 feet in the air. The dulling of our sweet receptors means it comes across as sharper and more flavorful in the sky.
Maybe I’ll give ginger ale in the sky a try next time I fly.
I searched for an image of “ginger ale” this is what I got. Photo by iggii on Unsplash
Dan’s Advice
Because publishing Thursday Things, Daily Conquest, the much-neglected Read Along, and various works of fiction isn’t enough to keep me occupied, I recently launched Dan’s Advice, a blog focused on digital decluttering, which, believe me, is something I’m in dire need of.
I started with the Top 10 Digital Decluttering Tips for Beginners
From endless email notifications to disorganized files, digital clutter is the modern migraine. Did you know the average person spends 30% of their workweek searching for files? That’s valuable time lost to clutter — and hours of your life you’ll never get back.
Overwhelming. Depressing, even. It’s enough to make you want to toss all your electronic devices and go back to clay tablets like the Sumerians.
Fortunately, there is a less drastic solution — digital decluttering. It may seem like a big job, but with the right approach, you can wrestle all those files and photos and apps and emails into shape. Then you can find what you need when you need it — and delete what you don’t.
In this post, I’ll share 10 beginner-friendly tips to help you organize your digital world, reduce stress, and boost productivity. Let’s dive in and reclaim your digital peace!
Head over there for all the details, but I’ll give you the list:
Start With Your Desktop and Downloads Folder
Organize Your Photos and Videos
Declutter Your Inbox
Tidy Up Your Phone Apps
Streamline Your Cloud Storage
Manage Your Social Media Accounts
Audit Your Passwords and Accounts
Declutter Your Digital Calendar
Simplify Your Bookmarks and Browser Tabs
Set Up a Digital Decluttering Routine
Work your way through these tips and you will have a much more organized and efficient digital workspace and far less stress finding the file or photo or email you’re looking for, bringing you closer to the elusive state of digital Zen.
Here’s a little Danku I wrote:
Clear the screen. Free the mind. Simplicity blooms.
Happy decluttering! Come back and let me know if any of those tips were helpful.
Thank you for reading!
Please click the hearts, leave a comment, and use the share feature to send this issue to a friend who might enjoy it. See you next Thursday!
Technically a calendar with both lunar and solar elements.
Chinese calendar, dating system used concurrently with the Gregorian (Western) calendar in China and Taiwan and in neighboring countries (e.g., Japan). The Chinese calendar is lunar-solar, its year consisting of 12 months of alternately 29 and 30 days, equal to 354 days, or approximately 12 full lunar cycles.
I apparently need to start wearing pink and black.
Not to be confused with The Cocktail Conversations podcast. Which did much better than my idea, The Sober Discussions.
Like me.
Orange juice, no ice.
Dan, I cannot begin to recount all of the things that were just 🤌🏼~ well, for me, at least ~ about this thoroughly thrilling Thursday Things because they are numerous, to be sure, but also bc it’s juuust shy of 3am here in Lisbon and it’s been a looong day! Still, I must at least share that I do not generally drink pop of any type but I absolutely always always always answer my friendly flight attendant’s query regarding my preferred bevvy with a clear cri-du-couer for my fly-time-only fave—a condensation-covered can of (🥁) you-know-what! (🤫…🫚+🍺!)
However, this one of my many eccentricities aside, I’m really mostly commenting because I’ve just spent the wee hours chatting with my good friend, GPT, specifically asking the favor of a simple-to-execute plan for decluttering my digital world and then — Boom🧨✨— as if by Boltblaster-level magic, you’ve sent a much better (and more human as well as more humane!) blueprint directly to my (now-slightly-more-cluttered-but-it’s-worth-it!) inbox! 🔮🪄
I really needed a bit of magic today, so you have my most sincere thanks, Dan. I’m off to declutter. There’s a long sleep coming. [Well, so I’ve surmised…]
Happy, Happy Year of the Snake!🐍
PS: As my youngest daughter was born in China, it’s also red-envelope time of year chez Quinn. [This a great little racket onto which our lil’ Kiwi has “onboarded” us. Along with a billion other parents. Her words.]