On a sunny weekday morning between Alsace and northern Germany, two rectangles of light open on the screen. Frank smiles the way broadcasters do when they know a good story is coming; Ralf—cheerful, precise, already caffeinated—waves hello. The topic is everyday life skills, the sort we learn not from textbooks but from kitchens: how to…
Introducing Brida’s November Theme: “Skills” There’s a quiet moment that happens before every new skill begins.A pause between “I can’t” and “Maybe I could.”That’s where November begins. Across the Brida community, we’re opening the month with one deceptively simple word — Skills — but behind it lies a universe: the tools we build, the instincts…
The Weekly Slice | 31 October 2025 This week on The Pineapple, Europe stretched from the kitchen window to the Mediterranean horizon, then outwards through cables, clouds, and conversations that turned distance into insight. The theme across every story was perspective — how we see, how we learn, and how we care. We began in…
It was lunchtime for one of us, night for another, dawn for a third. The screen sliced the world into four gentle windows: Janita in South Africa hosting, Frank (“the Mayor”) in a quiet French village, Rosii in the noise and brightness of São Paulo, and Monica in Adelaide, where the day had already given…
There’s a particular electricity to conversations that begin with a laugh and end with a long, reflective sigh—the kind you’d overhear at a sunlit table where coffee cools and the world briefly makes sense. This week’s Peeling Potatoes lands exactly there: a final episode in a month-long exploration of “life,” recorded across continents by Frank…
Professor Bruce Lloyd invites ChatGPT and DeepSeek to read, reflect, and respond. Here’s a summary and critique of “Atlantic Corridor | Life: Borders, Beliefs, and the Beautiful Ordinary” (by Mayor, 30 October 2025): (ChatGPT) Summary The essay captures a reflective, cross-continental conversation between three participants—Ismar (Brazil), Ritesh (India), and the Mayor (France)—who meet virtually to discuss how geography,…
Campo Grande. Bangalore. Cleebourg. One cloudless Monday, three windows lit up on a screen: Ismar (64) in Brazil, Ritesh (29) in India, and the Mayor hosting from a rain-polished corner of eastern France. What followed felt less like a meeting and more like a long lunch with smart friends—curious, candid, and wonderfully human. The topic…
They connected across a grey European afternoon: Frank at his desk in Cleebourg, rain freckling the window; Alexander back from two weeks away, an inbox swelling like a tide. What unfolded was a warm, intelligent debrief of a family cruise that somehow became more than an itinerary—equal parts travelogue, expectations audit, and a gentle lesson…
Grey Skies, Bright Conversations We were live on a windy, rainy morning — the kind of northern European weather that makes you reach for another cup of coffee and wonder why the sun has forgotten you. I was in my office in Cleebourg, France; Ralf was at home in northern Germany. Between us lay 700…
🍍 This Week in The Pineapple — 20–24 October 2025 This week at The Pineapple, the stories travel — from a French village tangled in bureaucracy to the wide skies of Kruger, from the scent of barbecue smoke in northern Germany to a philosophy of language that turns a preposition into a revolution. Each article,…
