I have been really enjoying the Pilot FriXion 4-colour pen to make notes and graphs. The pen not only has a 0.5mm fine tip in 4 colours, but the FriXion also allows “erasing” the text by friction.

This is not happening by abrasion like pencils are erased, but by heating up the ink.

I read in a review of the pen that someone left the pen in the sun in the car and now the ink was blank as one would expect. But there was a response suggesting leaving the pen in the freezer “to restore the ink” which was surprising.
So I thought about trying it out and put the paper in the freezer and lo and behold it indeed came back:

In the Ophan X book “Out of the Dark” (by Gregg Hurwitz) the bad guy makes his notes with a FriXion pen and “destroys” these by using a microwave. As in the story, a part stays legible, just like my attempt:

However, besides just increasing the contrast like my phone does, all Orphan X had to do was put it in the freezer and…

More on the background of the chemistry can be found for example here.

Fun stuff.

Let it be known, that I am of the firm opinion that the only real celebration of the mind expanding properties of psychedelic mushrooms saint that rewards the good and punishes the bad, is the Dutch Sinterklaas, not this imposter Santa Clause.

As one of my math professors convincingly argued in a time I was still quite impressionable:

1. 17+ Million clear headed Dutchies can not be wrong. All those cola-advertising-indoctrinated ones can.
2. Sinterklaas is on December 5th, Santa Clause is December 25th. Clearly the first is the first.
3. If that is not convincing, Sinterklaas existed before the American culture that promotes Santa Clause existed. Again, the first is clearly the first, is clearly the correct one
4. The elder Sinterklaas spends his off-time in a warm climate (Spain). The elder Santa Clause goes and hides on the North pole icecap. If you could fly anywhere anytime at several times faster than the speed of sound (to deliver all the packages), without breaking the sound barrier, and you were an older gentleman, where would you go?

QED

Update December 2024: the tomb of Saint Nikolas seems to have been found.

Doing a meditation, I had a random idea to make a post on tongue tricks I know of. Without further ado, here it is.

• When running, keep your tongue inside your teeth, even if you are panting: as pointed out to me by a Krav Maga trainer, you don’t want your tongue caught between your teeth if you can fall or be hit on your jaw. This took a small bit of attention to practice and soon it became my default.
• When you have an urge to sneeze and don’t want to sneeze, rub your tongue against the palate of your mouth (i.e. the ribbed part on the upper part of your mouth). For some reason this suppresses the sneezing impuls (conflicting sensations in the same nerve bundle?). Interestingly, it does not work the other way around: rubbing the palate of your mouth does not have you sneeze.
• When you have muscle tension in your jaw, relax the muscles and use your tongue to slightly open your mouth. Much more relaxing!
• When you are playing with energy, especially micro-cosmic orbit, place the tip of your tongue gently on the palate of your mouth (I rest it against my front teeth). Supposedly this helps guide the energy down again. All I know is that it helps prevent headaches I got doing energy play without this.