Mitch W
About Archive Photos Replies Also on Micro.blog
  • Wherever you go, go with all your heart. 📷

    → 10:23 PM, Nov 28
  • 27 years in California and sometimes I’m still amazed by palm trees. 📷

    → 10:21 PM, Nov 28
  • Nice work, neighbors. 📷

    → 10:17 PM, Nov 28
  • Would you like to see a one-minute video of Minnie running around the backyard and digging? Of course you would. 📷

    → 11:19 PM, Nov 24
  • Lake Murray in the morning, San Diego, CA, 7:40 am PT. A Day In The Life #adayinthelife

    → 8:47 AM, Oct 14
  • My home office needs a name. I am choosing between:

    • The Room Where It Happens
    • The Cockpit
    • The Boom Boom Room
    • The Dangerous Exotic Bamboo Tiki Lounge and Bowling Alley
    → 8:15 AM, Sep 30
  • Robert A. Heinlein’s Red Planet was the gateway drug to books for me. My 3rd grade teacher, Miss Kaufman had a little area of bookshelves in the corner of her classroom. I read Red Planet and a biography of Helen Keller and was hooked.

    I told that story on Facebook a few years ago and in 2018 I heard from Miss Kaufman. She said she remembered me well. Holy crap. Mind-blowing for me. I imagine it was for her too – she remembered an 8-year-old boy and now she was messaging with a 57-year-old man, who was typing to her from a hotel room in Florida. But I expect she’s used to that by now.

    I think my Heinlein addiction finally subsided, within the last three years or so. The supply is exhausted – he’s not writing any more – and I’ve reread everything a million times. I still do love history though.

    There was a new Heinlein published in the last year or two – a previously lost manuscript – “Pursuit of the Pankera.” Supposedly pretty good, but I’m just not highly motivated to read it. It’s an alternate version of “Number of the Beast,” one of my least favorite of his novels.

    → 10:48 AM, Sep 28
  • FBI Demands Apple’s Assistance In Opening iPhone Packaging

    → 8:53 AM, Sep 28
  • This house has a dinosaur in the yard. The dinosaur wears a nametag. His name is Burt. 📷

    → 6:25 PM, Sep 27
  • Out of curiosity, I rewatched “Dance of the Dwarfs,” a 1983 low-budget horror-adventure that was in heavy rotation on cable TV around the time it was released. Back then, cable TV didn’t have a lot of content to choose from, so you saw a lot of the same thing over and over. I ended up seeing this movie a few times then, and then not since.

    It’s based loosely on “The African Queen.” And I mean, very loosely. A then-famous actress named Deborah Raffin plays an anthropologist, who hires drunk helicopter pilot Peter Fonda to fly into the jungle to investigate legends of a race of pygmies. The cast also features John Amos as a witch doctor. The location is unspecified, but I expect it’s Latin America based on the supporting cast of Latino stereotypes – bandits, street urchins, servants and a couple of hookers.

    I don’t know if it’s a good movie, but I enjoyed seeing it again. Raffin is leggy and gorgeous. She does what the role requires of her. Fonda plays a down-on-his-luck drunk very well, in a stained luau shirt and tropical white pants; you can almost smell him. There are a couple of nice comedy bits, some decent action sequences. Raffin screams piercingly, but she is also an expert shot and thinks her way out of trouble. The monsters, when finally revealed, look cheap. Raffin and Fonda have no chemistry – you can understand why she comes to like and respect him, but not why she falls in love with him, other than that’s what the script requires.

    The director, Gus Trikonis, did TV and exploitation movies. He started his career as a dancer in the movie “West Side Story,” and was Goldie Hawn’s first husband. His latest IMDB credit is 2001, on a TV series with the delightfully cheesy name. “18 Wheels of Justice.”He does a good job on this movie, there are some nice shots of the helicopter in flight with the jungle below. And the helicopter itself is gorgeously decrepit.

    I watched the movie over several days. It goes well with lunch. I do not expect to watch this again; there are too many other options for entertainment today. But if it’s 1983 and you’re looking for something to watch, “Dance of the Dwarfs” is a good choice.

    Earlier

    📺

    → 1:01 PM, Sep 27
  • We don’t get many majestic trees like this in San Diego. 📷

    → 6:21 PM, Sep 26
  • We’ve been living in this house more than 20 years and last night Julie showed me an extremely useful lightswitch which I had previously been ignorant of.

    → 7:35 AM, Sep 22
  • My brothers and me having a Tarantino moment at Niagara Falls around 1971. 📷

    I think the white car was our car. Dad liked a muscle car. It was an era when you could get a family-size muscle car.

    → 12:04 PM, Sep 20
  • Even when I was a little boy, I understood the importance of personal style. Around 1964. 📷

    → 11:59 AM, Sep 20
  • Just look at this beautiful house we saw on a trip to Athens, Ohio, to visit family a few years ago. Just look at it. 📷

    → 6:28 PM, Sep 17
  • African safari journal: Homeward bound

    June 2019 Our final Africa safari stop was Little Kulala Desert Lodge, in Sossusvlei, the Namib-Naukluft Park, Namibia. We took another small charter flight, from Hoanib Valley Camp – or, rather the nearest airstrip from that camp, which was about two hours’s drive away from the camp itself. Sossusvlei Geluk Airstrip is the usual empty airstrip, just a cleared length of land with one or two sheds. As at our other camps, one of the staff picked us up in a Toyota truck converted for passengers, enclosed but not air conditioned. The weather was another scorcher of a day with bright sunlight, even though it is the African winter. We were accompanied by the pilot of the plane, Graham, who was staying at the lodge overnight. About 15 minutes in, Graham conversed with the driver of the truck, Alfred, in Afrikaans, and then Alfred turned the truck around. Graham confessed that he was supposed to start a beacon on the plane to let his company know he’d arrived safely, and he’d forgotten to do that. When we returned to the airfield, Graham did that thing and then we turned the truck around back toward the camp.

    I have to confess, we were road-weary at that point and ready to come home, but we still had four more nights in Africa ahead of us plus 28 hours on planes and in airports. And now as I write this a week after our return, I miss being in Africa.

    There were only two things you could do in Sossusvlei that appealed to us: Seeing and climbing the majestic dunes, and visiting the Seasrim Canyon. That’s meant a two-night stay would have been ideal; we stayed for three and so we had some time on our hands. And because of the heat, Kulala Desert Lodge was not the ideal place to sit around and rest. There are other things to do in the area, but they did not appeal to us: Ride e-bikes and fat bikes, or go on a wine tasting. You can also take a balloon ride, but that would have cost $1,000, which seemed like a lot for a short experience. I’ve ridden on hot air balloons twice, once with Julie, it’s wonderful but we weren’t interested this time around.

    Aside: I wrote all my other journal entries in Africa, with unreliable or no Internet access. Now I’m home with our lovely, home WiFi. And I can just look things up if I don’t know what they are. The name of the lodge we stayed at? The name of the canyon? Pow! Type in a few characters in a browser and there’s your answer. [Update from 2020: I wrote this journal entry in July 2019, a few weeks after returning home, based on notes on the trip.]

    The lodge is laid out similarly to the other places we stayed, with a main building in the center, done up like a giant hut, containing the dining room, bar, outdoor seating, and offices and reception desk. The entrance is in front of that building. Spread out on either side were 23 cabins for guests, which are actually big, furnished canvas tents on platforms, as with Xakanaxa and other places we stayed. The lodge calls the cabins “kulalas,” from an African word for sleep. Because of the number of cabins, service was more hotel-like and impersonal; we enjoyed the family feeling at the smaller lodges we stayed at, such as Xakanaxa and Hoanib Valley, and liked Kulala Lodge less.

    The dining room has big plate glass windows overlooking the flat desert plain, which seems to stretch off for miles to the distant mountains. We’d been to several African deserts by then, as well as the Anza-Borrego Desert at home, and each one seemed more austere and barren than the last. The shrubs at Sossusvlei are sparse and many tens of yards apart. There are few other animals there, just some birds and lonely impala and kudu.

    The big draw at Sossusvlei, though, are the dunes. They are just piles of loose sand, hundreds of feet high and miles long, marching across the desert. One of the highlights of the visit is climbing one of the biggest dunes, called “Big Daddy.” 130 meters high. It’s strenuous, like walking on the beach but also climbing. The sand fights you on every step. And you’re standing on a relatively narrow path, with a steep slope on either side. The path is wide enough that I was only worried a little bit about falling. I was worried a little more about just getting down. I’d been assured by both tourists and guides that getting down is easy and fun, but I was skeptical; I have a lousy sense of balance and anything involving anything like climbing is tricky for me.

    Climbing up the dune you have a long string of hikers both in front of and behind you. It isn’t crowded, but if you’re like me and you move slowly, you’ll be passed a couple of times. Like I said, it’s not crowded, but I got to thinking about the famous photos of climbers lined up to ascend to the summit of Mount Everest, like people waiting to get on a bus.

    Despite the crowds, tourism isn’t a problem for the dunes, because every night the wind blows and cleans up the footsteps and repairs the damage. The dunes are like new every morning. That’s the theory at least.

    I got about two thirds of the way up the dune and decided I had gone far enough. I wasn’t tired, but I’d spent enough time on the climb and didn’t have anything to prove. Also, I didn’t want to keep the other people on our bus waiting. So I turned to my right and went down the steep slope.

    And it really was fun going down. I fell twice, but backwards, on my butt, and the sand is so soft it didn’t hurt a bit and I just popped back up. Both my feet were sunk in sand halfway up to my knees, so walking was more like wading and slow going. After I got about two thirds of the way down, I found a rhythm and the rest of the way down was like gliding slowly. Delightful!

    We don’t intend to return to Sossusvlei – we feel like we’ve seen and done everything we want to there – but if we somehow do find our way back I want to do that climb again, and this time go all the way up to the summit and do the walk down properly.

    In addition to Big Daddy, the attraction next to the dune is Deadvlei, a white clay pan that’s so dry that nothing lives there. Some trees are still standing, 800 years after they died. We were instructed not to touch the trees, lest they shattered.

    After lunch, we decided to skip the afternoon activities, and just sat around the cabin in the heat.

    The next morning, we were up early, and off to the Seasrim Canyon, which is about 100 feet deep and the third biggest canyon in the world.

    We had the guide to ourselves that morning – and the entire canyon, too. Our guide said most people do the dunes in the morning and the canyon in the afternoon, when it can be excuse-me-pardon-me crowded. But we did not see another soul on the climb down and nearly the whole climb up, with just a lot of magnificent geology to ourselves. By that time we were overwhelmed by magnificent nature and a little burned out on it, but we still had enough awe left in our souls to be stirred, at least a little bit.

    In the afternoon I began to get cabin fever, and decided to go for a walk along the dry riverbed that the lodge is built alongside of. It was perfectly safe, and a lodge-approved activity. I walk for exercise in a park at home, and this was similar, only dryer, and hotter, and instead of being accompanied by our dog, I had a fly following me much of the way and trying to land on my face. Festus, our guide previously, said flies there don’t bite; they’re trying to drink water from our faces. That must have been one thirsty fly. Along the route, I realize I did not have any solo selfies from the trip, which is like a violation of international law, so I took a couple. The fly photobombed one of them, landing on my face. A flyless African selfie from that afternoon is now my default online profile pic.

    The next morning, we began the long journey home, which took two or three days. The nine-hour time difference and 28+ hour flight time from Johannesburg to San Diego make it confusing as to how much time has actually elapsed. The first step was back to the airfield, where we waited a half-hour in the truck for the “ground pilot” – the airfield’s one employee - to show up and open the gate. We didn’t mind; by then we were used to how things are done in Africa. Prior to our trip, I’d talked to a colleague who’d lived six months in South Africa; she said be prepared for things that should be easy to be difficult, and things you’d expect to be difficult to be easy. That stuck with me in incidents such as the wait for the ground pilot to show up. The plane wasn’t going anywhere; we were the only passengers.

    We flew a bit more than an hour to the Windhoek Airport, and were met at the gate by our old pal Antone, who had driven us from Windhoek to Okonjima a week or so earlier. He waited with us to check in, poor bastard – there was a very long line and he had somewhere else to be.

    The flight to Johannesburg was a commercial flight, and getting on the plane was the end of our safari adventures, because one-hour commercial flight in Africa is not too different from one in the US or Europe.

    We arrived in Johannesburg, breezed through customs, and checked into the City Lodge. We were scheduled to get up the next morning for an 8 am private, guided city tour, but neither of us were excited for that. When we’d had Internet access, I’d checked Yelp and TripAdvisor and Google for things to do in Johannesburg and didn’t come up with much of anything. The Apartheid Museum got rave reviews, but it sounded depressing to me. I wanted to see Soweto, which had been the only place Blacks were allowed to live during apartheid, but Julie wasn’t enthusiastic about that. So we put off the tour until 10:30 am so we could pack at leisure.

    The driver picked us up in a town car with leather seats, a far cry from the open, battered trucks we’d been bouncing around in for weeks. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of South Africa, Johannesburg, and its history. The one other place we wanted to see, other than Soweto, was Maboneng, which travel guides billed as a bohemian shopping district.

    The driver, whose name was Seabo, offered to take us to Soweto in the morning and then to a native African place for lunch. I said hell yeah, because I was always on the lookout for native foods – nearly all the foods we’d eaten on this trip were European, although nearly all of it was delicious – but Julie said no. I thought for a moment and realized that it was not a great idea to sample street food in an unknown cuisine a few hours prior to getting on a plane for a 28-hour flight. So I passed too. Instead, we went to Maboneng, and Seabo dropped us off for lunch and a bit of walking round.

    Maboneng was disappointing. It was crowded and a little threatening, like much of the rest of Johannesburg we’d seen, with a few cheap-looking shops and stands set up selling crafts that looked no different than the kind of thing you’d find at the airport. There were also a few Ethiopian and other African restaurants and a coffee cafe, which would have been tempting to me on another day, but like I said I didn’t want to try any strange cuisines just before a long flight. So we ate at an Italian restaurant/sports bar that was actually very good, and friendly. When we got out the neighborhood looked friendlier too; I even spotted one man who looked local, dangling a big camera from his hand. People don’t dangle big cameras in a dangerous neighborhood. Not for long at least.

    Seabo returned shortly after lunch and took us to Soweto.

    Soweto, he explained, is home to 1.2 million people, which makes it a respectable city within the city. It has neighborhoods of great poverty – shantytowns and slums made of scrap metal – which, Seabo noted, are all that you see in photos and video of Soweto. There are also middle class homes, and even affluent residences. Even the affluent residences seemed cheek-by-jowl close to each other, and small to me, though Julie said she thought some of them were larger. They had high fences around them, suggesting a high crime rate. And you’d see poverty and affluence very close – a shed or just open air tables selling a hodgepodge of merchandise, just a few steps from a scavenged home. Hand-painted advertisements adorned walls, touting businesses; I noted a lot of building contractors. Businesses mingled with housing. If there were any zoning laws in Soweto, I didn’t see evidence of it.

    I saw livestock grazing in empty lots, cattle and goats. In the middle of the city!

    Seabo lived in Soweto; he seemed to like it.

    Seabo offered to stop to let us out at Nelson Mandela’s and Desmond Tutu’s homes, he seemed disappointed when we didn’t get out. But that street was dense with panhandlers, buskers, and other street people, who seemed aggressive; not violent, but not inclined to take no for an answer. Julie and I were not in the mood to run that kind of gauntlet.

    We arrived back at the hotel at 3:30 pm, said goodbye to Seabo – who really was a good guide; we were just bad tourists – and made our way to airline check-in.

    All in all I was not impressed with Johannesburg. It seemed to me the kind of place you’d only ever go to if you for financial reasons. Maybe, like Seabo, you were a poor villager looking to make a living. Maybe you’re a millionaire looking to be a billionaire. Or maybe you’re just somebody in the middle.

    And then we were on our way home. I barely slept on the 28+-hour flights, watched something like five movies, two seasons of The Good Place, then slept most of the next 24 hours when we arrived home. Several days later I drove a car for the first time in a month; I did not hit anyone or go off the road.

    We talk a lot about going back. We went to Africa really on a whim; it felt like a fun adventure. And it was, and we’ve fallen in love with it. Maybe in three years, if we can afford it financially. I’d like to see gorillas and chimpanzees, visit the Olduvai Gorge where the first people on Earth lived millions of years ago, see Cape Town, spend a day each in Windhoek and Swakopmund, spend more time in Botswana, get Festus to guide us around. Africa is a big, beautiful continent with so much to do! 🌍📓

    → 2:05 PM, Sep 17
  • "Dance of the Dwarfs"

    In the early 1980s cable movie channels didn’t have much inventory and they’d play the same movie over and over, multiple times a day. And if you had the TV on for digital wallpaper, you’d sometimes end up watching the same movie a few times over the course of a few weeks.

    One of those movies, for me, was called “Dance of the Dwarfs," and I quite liked it. It was a ripoff of “The African Queen,” about an uptight, beautiful woman anthropologist who hires a drunk, down-on-his-luck helicopter pilot for an expedition into the jungle to find a mythical race of monster dwarves. Or dwarfs. The helicopter pilot is played by Peter Fonda.

    I have no idea if the movie was any good. I fear not, but I’d like to watch it again to find out – and oho, I see it is uncut and remastered on YouTube!

    The co-star was an actress named Deborah Raffin, who I remember thinking at the time was a recognizable B-list star and I now don’t recognize much of anything she was in before this movie. Or afterward.

    The movie also featured John Amos in a supporting role.

    The preview DEFINITELY looks low-budget, with some cheesy acting and cringey dialogue … but kind of charming?

    I remember the scene where she shoots all his liquor bottles. A woman who was adept with a gun was a novelty in movies at that time. To my uneducated eye, she seems to be using a proper shooting stance, not waving her gun around like most movie characters.

    I’ll see if I can get Julie to watch the movie with me. I’m not hopeful.

    Later: I rewatched it. Not bad.

    🍿

    → 12:12 PM, Sep 16
  • I’m about halfway through reading the very first Perry Mason novel, “The Case of the Velvet Claws,” published 1932. Perry has virtually no inner life. The same for his supporting characters. Supposedly it’s this way throughout the series. We never learn Perry’s backstory, his hopes and dreams, his anxieties and fears. He just solves crimes and protects clients.

    Perry Mason seems similar to Nero Wolfe. You get more backstory from Nero Wolfe. But as with Perry Mason, neither Nero, nor his little created family of employees and allies, suffers the kinds of doubts, fears and neuroses the rest of us do. They’re singularly focused on their work.

    Today we’d consider that a terrible writing flaw. I’m enjoying it. If I want neurosis and anxiety my own brain keeps me in good supply.

    In the Perry Mason novel, we’ve already had a scene where Perry’s femme fatale client throws herself at him. That’s mandatory in any noir novel. She’s gorgeous and sexy and lets it be known that she is fully available to him. I’ve seen that scene a few times in the Spenser novels, where Spenser was always tempted but able to muster the strength of will to resist. Perry isn’t tempted the least little bit. (Maybe he has a thing with Paul Drake. Heh.)

    Perry Mason in the novels has little relationship with the recent HBO TV series and I’m OK with that.

    → 12:04 PM, Sep 16
  • A colleague on a Zoom meeting this morning shared his Mac screen with red numbers in the dock for App Store and operating system updates, and now I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight.

    Thank goodness his battery was fully charged.

    → 12:02 PM, Sep 16
  • We are enjoying “Endeavour.” It gives me an idea for a Star Trek series: “Ensign Kirk.”

    This is the story of a young Starfleet Ensign, fresh from the Academy, on his first assignment. He’s a rising star of Starfleet but that doesn’t mean he’s given special treatment; it just means expectations are higher for him. He’s just another junior officer, considered expendable, sent on dangerous missions to spare more valuable officers.

    The first episode finds him on his first day of duty out of Starfleet Academy graduation, assigned to a new ship, where he meets and befriends an older doctor named Leonard McCoy.

    Younger versions of other characters from the original series will put in occasional appearances, but mainly this is Kirk’s show, with support from McCoy.

    This is not the Kirk of the 80s and 90s movies, who broke the law and disobeyed orders. And this is especially not the Kirk of the J.J. Abrams movies, who was a spoiled-rotten privileged fratboy.

    This is the Kirk of the original series, where Starfleet is an egalitarian institution and you get ahead on merit, not connections. Jim Kirk is just a plain old farmboy from Iowa who got into Starfleet on talent and hard work, and who respects and obeys regulations and the chain of command (but doesn’t have to like it). He’s a model officer, able to act independently, improvise or obey orders when appropriate.

    Like the young Endeavour Morse, Jim Kirk is hungry and ambitious. He yearns to become the youngest person to command a Constitution-class starship and hustles and throws himself into danger to fulfill that dream.

    I got this idea from Endeavour and also from a novel I read when I was in my teens, “Ensign Flandry,” by Poul Anderson. Anderson was a prolific, popular and highly respected midcentury science fiction and fantasy writer. He wrote a series of novels in the 50s or so about an interstellar secret agent named Dominick Flandry – like James Bond, a thousand years in the future. This novel was about Flandry on his first assignment. Great fun!

    → 8:58 AM, Sep 14
  • In the 90s, Justin Hall was a rich kid with distant parents and a need for attention. He fell in love with the Internet and started sharing intimate details of his life on his website, links.net. He was, maybe, the very first personal blogger, and paved the way for legions of people to share their own intimate details on Facebook on YouTube. He produced an autobiographical documentary in 2015.

    overshare: the links.net story

    Today, he is apparently in a committed relationship, with young kids, and he’s a cannabis entrepreneur because of course he is.

    Hall’s philosophy of radical personal exhibitionism was commonplace in the 90s and early 2000s. I admired it but never participated myself, and now I’m glad I stayed away. These days, I try to be extremely active online in ways that don’t compromise my, and other people’s privacy.

    I never participated in the radical transparency internet culture when that idea was popular, and now I’m far more careful about privacy than I used to be.

    For example, a few weeks ago, a cousin shared a photo of my mother as a young woman, dressed up and looking pretty for a wedding. My Mom was older when she started a family, so this is really a view into another life for her.

    I thought for a moment about sharing the photo online, but then decided, no, that one’s just for me and friends and family.

    → 8:41 AM, Sep 14
  • I get relaxation from certain kinds of low-stakes digital activities, requiring little or no thought, like organizing email newsletters and suchlike.

    In the past I’ve beaten myself up about that, considering it wasted time.

    Now I think instead I need to make it work for me. Because sometimes you need to unwind.

    People collect stamps, right?

    → 6:43 PM, Sep 9
  • What is a “digital garden?”

    I encountered the idea of a “digital garden” Friday and was instantly enthusiastic and spent some time this weekend nerding out about it. Here is the result – the beginning of my digital garden: mitchwagner.com.

    A digital garden is a personal website curated by its author, with essays and information about the subject or subjects they’re excited about. Some are wide-ranging and complex and cover a variety of subjects, while others cover a single subject, such as neurology or books,

    Here’s a directory of digital gardens. It’s a digital garden of digital gardens!

    Digital gardens provide an alternative to chronological streams such as blogs and social media. Streams are great for finding out what’s happening and whats new now. But they’re lousy for organizing information. Also, streams are terrible for longevity. Once stuff gets pushed down off the top of the stream, it disappears. Digital gardens are places where you can organize information and keeping information available over the long term.

    Digital gardens can be very simple, just an index page or a Google Doc. Or you can use sophisticated software to create complex, Wikipedia-like documents.

    After a while thinking about this idea, I realized that we’re talking here about the old, 90s “personal website.” People back then would create websites devoted to their favorite bands, or hobbies, or just their own lives and interests. Eventually these got swallowed up by Wikipedia, Google and the various social media silos.

    Digital gardens are an extension of, and renaming of, personal websites. That doesn’t make the idea less powerful though.

    Digital gardens are exciting to me, personally, because they solve a couple of problems that I’ve been noodling about for years. One problem is that I post a lot of stuff to my streams. Some days I post a dozen or two dozen items. Most are ephemeral – links to breaking news articles, some with comments, some without. Wisecracks. Memes. Old ads and photos from the mid-20th Century.

    But some of what I post seems like it should be more long-lasting, whether it’s a book review or the journal of our 25th anniversary safari to Africa last year.

    A digital garden solves that problem. I can just put up an index page of links to long-lived and notable content, and let that — rather than the blog or my biography — be my home page. I’ll continue with the blog and keep the bio. But the index page will be the main entrance to my site.

    Again, this is not a new idea. Gina Trapani has been doing that a few years, and I don’t think she would say her idea is particularly original to her. But it’s still a great idea — and it’s new to me.

    The second problem that digital gardens solve for me is that I’ve been noodling about ideas for projects for, well, several years now. Interviews with people I find interesting, software reviews and how-tos. Occasionally I have even acted on these ideas. But I don’t do it often because I don’t have a permanent home for them.

    Resources

    My digital garden: mitchwagner.com.

    Here’s the article that got me excited, and introduced the idea of “digital gardening” to me: Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet

    How the blog broke the web – Amy Hoy provides a brief history of blogs and social media, and discusses why they’re not great ways to organize information.

    Hoy says there were only 23 blogs in 1999? Amazing. By late 2001 there seemed like a million of them.

    Maggie Appleton: A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden – Apparently the term and idea has been around in various forms for more than 20 years. Not surprising. The internet is a tangled web. Streams and search engines are two great ways to find stuff, but stuff can still be hard to find. That’s not a new problem.

    Maggie Appleton’s directory of digital gardeners and digital gardening tools

    Maggie’s Digital Garden

    Maggie again: A brief overview of digital gardens as a Twitter thread.

    A list of artificial brain networked notebook apps – These include a couple of familiar names to me, such as Roam Research and Obsidian. They seem to be a mix of private note-taking apps, Internet publishing tools, and private apps that can also publish to the public web.

    This is a take on “digital gardens” that borrows from the philosophy of “zettelkasten.” Put simply, a zettelkasten is a system of note-taking where you write down each idea separately — in its original vision decades ago, you wrote each idea on a slip of paper or index card, though now of course there are digital versions — and then link madly between related notes. Ideas can come from books, articles, thinking, observations, whatever. Zettelkasten advocates say they can come up with fresh insights simply by returning to their zettel and following the links. German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who invented the idea, credited his zettelkasten as a collaborator on many papers and books.

    You don’t have to use dedicated software for a digital garden. Mine is just an index page for my existing blog.

    Second Brain – “A curated list of awesome “Public Zettelkastens 🗄️ / Second Brains 🧠 / Digital Gardens 🌱”

    Digital Gardens – Another explainer with a couple of examples. The author says:

    In basic terms, [a digital garden] is a different format for written content on the web. It’s about moving away from blog posts ordered by dates and categories, into more of an interlinked web of notes.

    One of the main ingredients is bi-directional links between those notes, creating a network of notes, similar to Wikipedia.

    I would not say that the notes have to be interlinked, Wikipedia-style. Though they can be.

    gwern.net – A very nice example of a digital garden covering a broad range of subjects.

    Article: My blog is a digital garden, not a blog by Joel Hooks.

    → 8:05 AM, Sep 8
  • I updated mitchwagner.com to index the best of my personal writing. I’ve heard people call that a “digital garden.”

    → 4:24 PM, Sep 7
  • Our Africa journal – Saying goodbye to a new friend

    June 23, 2019 — Yesterday, we left the camp for our next stop. Festus drove us two hours over those rough desert roads to the same airstrip we’d flown in to. We arrived 40 minutes early so we had time to spend with our new friend. We sat in the same shelter where we’d had our first lunch together three days earlier, and talked.

    Festus told us how he found his way when guiding people through through the bush. I thought maybe he’d memorized the features, the trees and rocks and hills and such, like Mark Twain memorized the Mississippi River. He said no, those things change, but the desert is surrounded by mountains and he looked for the relative position of the peaks to figure out where he is. I was reminded of how I found my way around by car when we lived in Boston; the Prudential and Hancock skyscrapers towered over the skyline and were visible miles around. I looked for those two towers and their positions relative to each other and that gave me a first approximation of my position and whether I was moving in the right direction.

    The airstrip was just a cleared stretch of flat ground with a few sheds at one end of it, where we sat. The only other people were a young Himba man, wearing Western clothes, who worked as a sort of attendant, along with two of his buddies, keeping him company. I was reminded of a rural gas station in upstate New York that I visited for two minutes to get driving directions one night years ago when I got lost on the way to visit a friend. I thought at the time that I blew through that town in less the five minutes but those three friends had probably been at that gas station for years.

    In addition to the three Himba men, the only other denizens of the airstrip were two emaciated, medium-sized dogs who walked slowly through. They didn’t belong to anyone; they were just passing. They came to the door of the restroom and watched with sad eyes while I did my business in there. I am usually leery of off-leash dogs but pair looked so sad I just wanted to give them a bath, take them home, feed them a nice supper of boiled chicken and rice, and then curl up on the couch and watch TV together. One of the Himba men attempted to chase the dogs off by throwing pebbles and shouting at them. The dogs looked like they had been ready to move on anyway. Three more dogs, equally skinny, forlorn and slow moving, came through a few minutes later.

    We had a surprisingly moving goodbye with Festus, considering we’d only been together three days. Festus gave me a warm triple handclasp with both hands and looked me in the eye, a traditional greeting he’d taught us. I’m afraid I rushed it; Julie pointed out to me later that I’m just not an emotionally demonstrative person, other than with her. I’m working on that. I hope Festus will remember our conversations and my sincere respect and affection for him, and that he will forget my hurried goodbye.

    And we got on the small plane to our next stop, which was actually two flights, one more than an hour to Swakopmund, a small city founded by Germans for mining and other industry, and then we switched planes while the first refueled, to go more than another hour to our current destination, Sossusvlei. Our planes on both legs were Cessna C210s, with two passenger seats for me and Julie, the only passengers, and a couple more seats temporarily removed for our luggage.

    I’m getting to quite like small planes. The ride is more interesting, even if it is more likely to be scary sometimes. You chat with the pilot. They give the safety and orientation talk personally and always include the same joke: They show us the airsickness bag and tell us if we use it we should not return it; instead, keep it “as a souvenir” of the airline. For our our first leg, to Soussesvlei, I did the joke before the pilot did. He was chagrined; I’d stepped on his laugh line!

    During our brief layover in Swakopmund, the airline parked us inside a small waiting room in a hangar. It was a bit of a transition after our time in the bush, a proper modern waiting room with a sign with the WiFi password. This was my first access to good WiFi in a week and I slurped up email and reviewed it on the plane. I had left an out-of-office message that said I would be out all June and NOT reading email, even when I get back, so anyone who needs anything should email my colleagues or message me again in early July. I am adhering to the spirit of that message; I only plan to read a few messages when I return. The only reason I’m even checking email is to see if anything cataclysmic or wonderful happens. So far there’s been neither, just work and my friends and family rolling on without me. Similarly, I glance at news headlines every few days and am surprised by how inconsequential it all is.

    On the leg from Swakopmond to Soussevlei, we had a scenic flight, and the pilot pointed out landmarks from the air, including salt processing fields, two shipwrecks, one of which is now deep inland as the desert advances over the century since that disaster, and the dunes of Soussuslei.

    Sossusvlei is a big, dry hot desert. Every time I say someplace in Africa is pretty dry and hot and desolate, we go someplace even more dry and hot and desolate. Geology is Sossusvlei’s big draw, including miles and miles of sand dunes, stretching up to hundreds of feed tall. Like our two previous destinations, Soussusvlei is blistering hot by day, even now, in African winter, though it gets cold at night. It can get up to 50 degrees C in summer.

    🌍📓

    → 3:04 PM, Sep 7
  • In “Man of Steel” there’s a scene at the end where Superman and the big villain are having a fight flying around midtown Manhatttan, and they’re ripping apart skyscrapers and you see these shots of Superman and the villain getting thrown through a floor of cubicles and sending partitions and desks and office furniture flying.

    And I kept thinking that there’s probably some poor bastard who finally got his cubicle JUST RIGHT — just the right desk chair, keyboard tray at the perfect height, little potted cactus, couple of inspirational posters, tiny corkboard in the perfect spot, two-cup USB-powered teakettle. And now it’s all smashed up. 🍿

    → 11:27 AM, Sep 5
  • The house 🎃 across the street ☠ is starting 👻 to decorate 🧛‍♀️ for Halloween. 🧙 Too soon!🦇

    → 11:08 AM, Sep 5
  • “Digital gardens” are personal spaces on the Internet that avoid the one-size-fits-all look and feel of social media. They’re not ephemeral and stream-of-consciousness, like blogs or social media. They’re curated (to use an overused word) websites about the creator’s interests and passions: Museums, books, philosophy, politics, etc. More permanent than either blogs or social media.

    This is extremely intriguing to me.

    Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/0…

    And here’s why they’re called “digital gardens:” My blog is a digital garden, not a blog joelhooks.com/digital-g…

    You don’t have to use fancypants technology. This guy’s digital garden is just a Google Doc. docs.google.com/document/…

    This is very much in the IndieWeb spirit.

    → 9:15 AM, Sep 3
  • Like I said about 10 hours ago, I thought I had insomnia licked because I got a good night’s sleep five nights in a row, but last night it was back and I got about three hours of sleep total.

    I was pleased, however, because I got myself set up so I can work on my iPad in the living room until I’m tired.

    Insomnia is no longer an occasional thing for me. It’s a lifestyle.

    → 1:06 PM, Sep 1
  • “I’ve got this insomnia thing licked,” I said. “I’ve slept well six nights in a row,” I said.

    Note the timestamp on this post.

    Oh, well, at least I got work done — good progress on an article I’ve been stuck on for a month or more.

    → 3:32 AM, Sep 1
  • Minnie in a weird position, 2017. 📷

    → 12:07 AM, Sep 1
  • Casey Newton: “Few will cry any tears for Facebook… But the events of this summer have folks I know in Silicon Valley asking the same question over and over: who will Apple put the squeeze on next?”

    → 6:02 PM, Aug 26
  • Big Tech doesn’t have persuasion superpowers. The companies are toxic because they’re monopolies. [Cory Doctorow]

    → 1:01 PM, Aug 26
  • Using machine learning to optimize the layout of banana slices on a sandwich. [Cory Doctorow]

    I imagine this would work with pickle chips too.

    → 12:54 PM, Aug 26
  • I’ve learned that my resting face when I’m a zoom call looks like I’m drunk. Once I have my colleagues trained that I’m not drunk, I can start day-drinking.

    → 11:28 AM, Aug 26
  • RNC Speaker Mary Ann Mendoza Cancelled After Boosting Conspiracy About Jewish Plot to Enslave the World

    → 9:37 AM, Aug 26
  • If you want to see women walking while talking on the phone, most with dogs, some pushing strollers, get out of your house and walk around the neighborhood at 7 am.

    → 9:03 AM, Aug 26
  • I dropped a container of imported parmesan cheese flakes on the floor the other day and swept it up and put it back in the container and now the dog gets a little cheese with her food. She’s asking to see the wine list too.

    → 5:03 PM, Aug 25
  • I stopped briefly on my walk yesterday to fiddle with my iPhone, and this beautiful cat came out from behind some bushes to say hello. After pausing a moment to make sure I wasn’t going to do anything violent, she flopped at my feet. 📷

    → 11:50 AM, Aug 14
  • Epic Games' assertion that there's an iPhone market that Apple monopolizes, distinct from the smartphone market that includes Android, looks like bullshit to me.

    Apple kicked Epic’s Fortnite out of the App Store for terms of service violations. Fortnite immediately sued.

    Thomas Claburn at The Register:

    Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, filed a lawsuit against Apple on Thursday accusing the iGiant of illegally monopolizing iOS app distribution and app payments.

    The game biz earlier in the day announced a promotional initiative called Fortnite Mega Drop to allow Fortnite players to purchase in-game virtual currency and in-game items directly from Epic, at a price 20 per cent below their iOS App Store in-app purchase price.

    In doing so, Epic violated Section 3.11 of Apple’s App Store Guidelines, which states that iOS developers must use Apple’s payment mechanism.

    → 6:13 PM, Aug 13
  • The bizarre dimming of bright star Betelgeuse caused by giant stellar eruption [Space.com]: Betelgeuse farted.

    → 6:07 PM, Aug 13
  • Simulate driving through dozens of world cities while listening to local radio. driveandlisten.herokuapp.com Johannesburg driving is scary.

    → 9:35 AM, Aug 5
  • If you start reading a book and it’s not grabbing you, how long do you give it until you give up? Or do you always read through to the end once you start?

    → 7:28 AM, Aug 5
  • Facebook is refusing to remove a doctored Nancy Pelosi video. Factcheckers put ‘partly false’ label on video that has been circulating since Thursday and viewed more than 2m times www.theguardian.com/us-news/2…

    → 3:38 PM, Aug 4
  • When Covid Subsided, Israel Reopened Its Schools. It Didn’t Go Well. www.nytimes.com/2020/08/0…

    → 3:36 PM, Aug 4
  • Photorealistic portraits of Roman emperors, generated by machine learning and Photoshop. medium.com/@voshart/…

    → 2:36 PM, Aug 4
  • Trump has had more nice things to say about a woman arrested for sex trafficking than he has about John Lewis.

    → 2:30 PM, Aug 4
  • How to spell “entrepreneur:” It’s got more Rs than you think.

    → 2:29 PM, Aug 4
  • Wilford Brimley was once a bodyguard for Howard Hughes. twitter.com/rstephens…

    → 2:11 PM, Aug 4
  • Clashing privacy laws between the US and Europe spell trouble for big tech

    “If you’re a U.S. subsidiary of a big U.S. firm and you’re based in Europe, whom do you obey? The European law that says you can’t hand it over because of GDPR or the American laws that say they have extra judicial control and you’ve got to hand it over?"

    siliconangle.com/2020/08/0…

    → 1:04 PM, Aug 4
  • Why QAnon is here to stay

    → 10:16 AM, Jul 31
  • Mirrors only became commonplace and inexpensive in the 19th Century. Until then, almost everybody had no idea what they looked like. They had never seen images of themselves.

    Pessimists Archive: Mirrors

    → 10:15 AM, Jul 31
  • I saw this regal gentleman at Lake Murray. 📷

    → 8:41 PM, Jul 27
  • Drive-through communion at the church up the street from us. 📷

    Communion was no longer running when I saw the sign while out walking yesterday. That’s a good thing because I would have hopped in my car, driven up and asked for a grilled cheese burrito and chalupa supreme with a pineapple twist freeze and then I would have gone straight to hell.

    The church is Baptist but often hosts other denominations.

    → 9:23 AM, Jul 27
  • Too often I try to get just a couple more shaves out of an old blade. That’s a metaphor for something.

    → 7:10 AM, Jul 27
  • The good: I shaved with a new blade this morning and I’m wearing a new shirt.

    The bad: I have a razor burn on my left cheek from the last time I shaved, and a blemish on my philtrum.

    → 7:10 AM, Jul 27
  • I resolved on Thursday to do less Facebook, because Facebook doesn’t make me feel good. I was on Facebook this weekend more than I would’ve liked, during which time I learned about three friends going through big life events.

    Doing less Facebook is not easy. People who never joined made the right choice.

    I’m unfollowing a lot of people I don’t feel strongly about, and leaving groups. I’m there to get updates from friends and family. That’s all.

    → 8:37 PM, Jul 26
  • Vacation photo, Borrego Springs, California, 2013 📷

    → 8:23 PM, Jul 26
  • A photo essay of classic Japanese ads

    → 1:09 PM, Jul 26
  • A photo essay of classic Japanese movie monsters.

    Where Western movies used animated clay figures, the Japanese used men in costumes on miniature cityscapes. Some of those cityscapes were elaborate and beautiful.

    Godzilla is drawn from Japan’s lived experience at the receiving end of a nuclear bomb attack. The texture of his skin is based on the scars carried by Hiroshima survivors. Godzilla is also based on the Shinto god of destruction, “which Godzilla B-movie maker Shogo Tomiyama says operates not in service of humankind, but rather the laws of nature. ‘He totally destroys everything and then there is a rebirth,’ he says, ‘Something new and fresh can begin.” Godzilla isn’t good or bad. It just exists.

    → 1:07 PM, Jul 26
  • “The line of troopers walked forward, billy clubs out. They knocked Lewis to the ground and struck him on his head. He tried to get up; they hit him again with the billy club. His skull was fractured.” John Lewis Crosses Selma Bridge One Last Time

    → 12:39 PM, Jul 26
  • “Aggravation is an art form in his hands.” RIP Regis, my friend and companion on many a business travel hotel room morning in the 90s and 2000s.

    → 12:29 PM, Jul 26
  • I have an idea for a movie. An action-comedy about two cops who are partners and best friends and who bicker a lot. They are out to take down a wealthy drug dealer. There are car chases and gunfights. Their captain shouts at them.

    → 10:55 PM, Jul 25
  • We watched Bad Boys tonight, which we had never seen. It was the least enjoyable film I have watched all the way through.

    → 10:26 PM, Jul 25
  • This is a good look for me. In no way does it make me look threatening or mentally unbalanced. 📷

    → 5:52 PM, Jul 25
  • meet my new BFF https://t.co/4WDhx3BpZo

    — Michelle 🍵💻 (@tinymwriter) July 24, 2020
    → 3:22 PM, Jul 24
  • More than half the people born in 1980 are over 40. My brain cannot process this information.

    → 2:18 PM, Jul 24
  • Velveeta vs. Microsoft.

    → 8:21 AM, Jul 24
  • Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at ZDNet: The 5 most over-hyped tech devices.

    Don’t be a hater – CueCat will make a comeback!

    → 8:17 AM, Jul 24
  • David Roth at The New Yorker: How “Starship Troopers” Aligns with Our Moment of American Defeat: Verhoeven’ s Starship Troopers depicts “a society whose fixation on force has left it preening, idiotic, and paradoxically weak. This state manifests as endless columns of cultishly revered and supremely well-equipped violence workers who know how to do only one thing, and a culture that exists exclusively to celebrate their efforts….”

    → 8:14 AM, Jul 24
  • Eli Reiter at OneZero: My Bizarre Stint As an Amazon Reviewer for Hire

    → 8:12 AM, Jul 24
  • I saw this lost dog sign on my walk yesterday. I hope they find the little guy. He looks sad. 📷

    → 8:11 AM, Jul 24
  • Lake Murray from Cowles Mountain, five miles from home, 2018. Maybe I’ll do the climb again this weekend. 📷

    → 8:08 AM, Jul 24
  • Two years ago today I was at the Google Next conference in San Francisco. I mistook another editor for a waiter at a stand-up cocktail reception and tried to take food off his plate.

    → 8:03 AM, Jul 24
  • Julie got me this cunning hat for my birthday yesterday, which I will wear with pride on my next trip back east in winter. I think it’s a great look for me. 📷

    → 7:37 AM, Jul 24
  • → 10:34 PM, Jul 23
  • Such a shayna punim! 📷

    → 3:00 PM, Jul 23
  • The least likely scenario for the 2020 election is that Trump both loses and accepts defeat graciously.

    What Could Happen If Donald Trump Rejects Electoral Defeat?. By Masha Gessen at The New Yorker.

    → 2:18 PM, Jul 23
  • “Hurting people at scale: Facebook’s employees reckon with the social network they’ve built. Ryan Mac and Craig Silverman go in-depth for BuzzFeed News.

    The most charitable interpretation of Facebook’s behavior is that it’s trying to remain neutral in a fight against racism and autocracy.

    → 2:17 PM, Jul 23
  • I don’t know how how to spell “entrepreneur” but I know there’s an extra R in there somewhere.

    → 1:21 PM, Jul 23
  • “Delicious, but too messy to handle,” was how Ruth Burt described the new ice cream treat her father, Harry Burt, concocted in 1920—a brick of vanilla ice cream encased in chocolate. So her brother, Harry Jr., offered a suggestion: Why not give it a handle?”

    A brief history of the Good Humor ice cream truck: How the Ice Cream Truck Made Summer Cool, by Colin Dickey at Smithsonian Magazine.

    → 8:43 AM, Jul 23
  • That was, indeed, unexpected.

    Zoom and Enhance! from r/Unexpected
    → 8:41 AM, Jul 23
  • Ladies and gents, I present my husband who did not want a cat from r/aww
    → 8:40 AM, Jul 23
  • In his biography of Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson makes a case that Franklin was one of the greatest people who ever lived, anywhere at any time.

    Franklin rose from poverty to become a successful businessman, writer, publisher, journalist, diplomat, statesman, politician, and political philosopher. Success in any one of those fields could get him a couple of statues. Franklin succeeded in all.

    Franklin was a leader in building a government that has lasted longer than any other extant today. No other major nation today is still using the government it had in the 18th Century.

    Franklin was also a legitimate scientific genius.

    And as a friend points out, Franklin invented technology that is still in use today: his stove, lightning rod and bifocals.

    Also, Franklin invented swim fins, the urinary catheter and a musical instrument called the armonica. The last invention is not still in use much today, but it’s lovely.

    → 8:39 AM, Jul 23
  • Venice is reducing the number of people allowed on individual gondolas, as tourists have gotten fatter. “Going forward with over half a ton of meat on board is dangerous.”

    Previously, “Greece banned hefty tourists from riding donkeys on the popular island of Santorini, after activists complained that the animals were suffering spinal injuries.”

    → 8:31 AM, Jul 23
  • Biden went into this campaign with his chief credential being that he was a nonentity who would do nothing. With Biden as President, Americans could go back to ignoring politics.

    Instead, Biden is turning into a fire-breathing radical – and I love it.

    He appears to be building an FDR-style transformative Presidency, which is what the US and the world need right now.

    The fate of civilization and billions of lives literally depend on it.

    Although now that I think of it, to call Biden a “radical” is wrong. When the house is on fire, it’s not radical to shout, “The house is on fire!”

    → 8:30 AM, Jul 23
  • Biden’s $2 trillion climate plan.

    → 8:29 AM, Jul 23
  • Country-themed sitcoms ruled the TV airwaves for a decade, but in the early 1970s, CBS axed them. The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and Petticoat Junction were just three of the shows that bought the farm.

    The Rural Purge: Death of the Country Broadcasting System, on Mobituaries by My Rocca.

    → 8:22 AM, Jul 23
  • I had not planned to spend quite so much time this morning updating my Mac but here we are.

    → 8:11 AM, Jul 23
  • When did we stop having “problems” and starting having “issues”? Because I have a problem with that.

    → 7:38 AM, Jul 23
  • That’s sorted.

    Moon vs. Sun utilization question answered The Monroeville Breeze, Indiana, September 20, 1934. pic.twitter.com/tU4FGC1rqX

    — Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) July 23, 2020
    → 8:19 PM, Jul 22
  • Light and time are great ways to disinfect masks. Washing is generally unnecessary

    James Hamblin MD, writing at The Atlantic:

    Have several masks, made to fit well around your nose and mouth. Make them as heavily layered as you can tolerate. After wearing them for a day or so, or in a high-contact scenario, let them sit for a few days in a sunny, out-of-the-way place. Between the effects of time and light, there should be little need for running a washing machine or going through the hassle of hand-washing your masks….

    If it sounds like I’m making this up based on best guesses, I am. Everyone is. We would ideally all be wearing surgical masks, and disposing of them frequently, but we didn’t prepare accordingly. So for all their flaws, cloth masks are important: Making them effective enough for use in daily pandemic life means we’re freeing up medical-grade masks for people who really need them, especially in places where they are still in short supply, such as the United States. Health-care workers around the world still need proper personal protective equipment more than a random guy named Gene who wants to go to the store to buy snacks.

    Good news for me. I haven’t washed my masks in … well … ever.

    → 5:34 PM, Jul 22
  • → 4:42 PM, Jul 22
  • The Amazon Critic Who Saw Its Power From the Inside: Tim Bray was a celebrated engineer at Amazon. Now, he is its highest-profile defector

    Bray walked away from $1 million because he couldn’t stand Amazon’s labor and business practices anymore. Now he’s an outspoken advocate for breaking the company up.

    Karen Weise writing at The New York Times:

    SEATTLE — Tim Bray, an internet pioneer and a former vice president at Amazon, sent shock waves through the tech giant in early May when he resigned for what he called “a vein of toxicity” running through its culture.

    Within a few hours, his blog post about the resignation drew hundreds of thousands of views, and his inbox filled up with requests from journalists, recruiters and techies. Soon, lawmakers on Capitol Hill cited the post. It all made Mr. Bray, 65, Amazon’s highest-profile defector.

    But there was more he wanted to say.

    In the weeks since, he has aimed his brain power not at fixing a coding problem but at framing a broader critique of the company. In talks and blog posts that have drawn attention inside the company, he has called for unionization and antitrust regulation. Amid “the beating of the antitrust drums,” Mr. Bray wrote in one post, he would like to see Amazon separate its retail business from its lucrative cloud computing unit.

    “And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone,” he said.

    → 4:31 PM, Jul 22
  • Mexican cave relics suggest humans were populating the Americas up to 17,000 years earlier than thought

    → 4:26 PM, Jul 22
  • This is a photo of a kitten

    Honestly trying to work here.

    Joyce Garcia https://www.garciabuxton.com/2020/07/21/honestly-trying-to.html
    → 11:56 AM, Jul 22
  • I was looking through my wallet for a particular document, which I did not find, but I did find random credit card receipts dating back to 2017.

    from Seinfeld GIFs via Gfycat

    → 11:51 AM, Jul 22
  • Facebook is adding security and privacy protections to Messenger. That’s like Ghislaine Maxwell taking first aid classes so she can be a better babysitter for your teen-age girls.

    → 11:33 AM, Jul 22
  • We ordered a new couch which was supposed to arrive today but which seems to have disappeared in transit. I am haunted by the vision of it being sat on by people with poor personal hygiene who are eating Cheetos and wiping their fingers on the upholstery.

    → 9:30 AM, Jul 22
  • America can become the country claims to be, starting by telling the truth about its history of slavery, genocide and oppression. “Until we tell the truth we deny ourselves the opportunity for beauty.”

    The Ezra Klein Show: Bryan Stevenson on how America can heal

    → 8:11 AM, Jul 22
  • Tempted

    → 8:07 AM, Jul 22
  • Tucker Carlson, the most popular host in the history of cable news, returned from a week-long vacation after his head writer was exposed as a raging bigot. The scandal won’t stick.

    Financially, it will cost some advertisers but Fox gets most of its revenue from subscribers, who love this kind of controversy.

    Tucker Carlson’s America

    → 8:06 AM, Jul 22
  • I walked a different route than I usually do today, and saw several noteworthy vehicles. Two were classics, all had character. 📷

    → 7:46 PM, Jul 21
  • 📷

    → 6:07 PM, Jul 21
  • Lush photo essay from the golden age of shopping malls.

    Cruising the Past & Future of the Retro Shopping Mall

    I loved to go to the mall in my 20s. I’d go alone, during the day, get a fast food lunch, see what was new on the science fiction shelves at B. Dalton and Waldenbooks — anything by Asimov, Heinlein, Niven or Zelazny? A new Robert B. Parker? In that era before the mainstream internet and before I got plugged into science fiction fandom, the only way to find out if a favorite author had a new book out was to check in stores.

    Then I’d catch a movie matinee. I’d find a spot directly under a light in the theater and read from one of my new books until the movie started.

    That was a good afternoon.

    → 8:06 AM, Jul 20
  • From my journal two years ago: My Apple Watch alarm went off while I was watching the dishes, and without thinking about it I tapped the watch face with my nose to switch the alarm off. I believe I have hit on a breakthrough in nasal user interface design.

    → 9:01 AM, Jul 19
  • I was feeling down and blue so I spent a lot of time on social media and now I feel ever so much better and more cheerful, said nobody never.

    → 10:19 PM, Jul 18
  • 📚I finished reading “Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic," by Tom “insert Spider-Man Joke Here” Holland. It’s a history of the rise to power of Julius Caesar and then a quick overview of the reign of Augustus. It’s one of the most readable histories I’ve read, very novelistic, which is not surprising, because Holland got his start as a novelist.

    The Romans had a republic that lasted 500 years and was quickly replaced by a monarchy. That’s something that’s been on my mind based on the news of the past few years.

    Next, I think I’ll read Holland’s follow-up: “Dynasty,” which covers the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.

    But first I’ll finish reading “The Annihilation Score,” a novel by Charles Stross, in his Laundry series.

    → 8:22 AM, Jul 14
  • Man, It’s Boss! Monogram’s Red Baron model kit, the Groovy Custom Show Rod Now at Your Favorite Store! (1968) via

    → 10:50 PM, Jul 13
  • Hula hoop ad, 1963 via

    → 10:45 PM, Jul 13
  • I am continuing to fiddle with handwriting recognition (aka Scribble) on the iPad. I’m getting better at it but I don’t know if it will ever replace the onscreen keyboard.

    I read multiple reviews that say Scribble is amazing even with the reviewers' awful handwriting. My awful handwriting is Scribble’s Waterloo.

    → 6:28 PM, Jul 12
  • Was Orwell an anti-Semite?

    Orwell struggled with anti-Semitism — others' and his own.

    → 4:43 PM, Jul 12
  • Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow: “Trump’s decisions to politicize voting and wearing masks means that his base have been convinced not to vote and to commit mass suicide.” Also, Trump is paying grifters millions for masks.

    → 2:39 PM, Jul 12
  • Americans saw the story they wanted to see. Some saw respected professionals fearing for their safety, reasonably exercising their Second Amendment rights to defend their home from violent trespassers. Others saw an overwrought, older affluent couple, recklessly pointing their weapons and asserting their white privilege.

    Portland Place couple who confronted protesters have a long history of not backing down - Metro - stltoday.com

    → 2:31 PM, Jul 12
  • The Republicans Who Want to Destroy Trump

    The Lincoln Project is headed by people who are just now realizing that the Republican Party has been toxic since before Trump.

    → 2:10 PM, Jul 12
  • A 13-Year-Old Will Be Tried As An Adult For Shooting And Killing His Brother While Playing Cops And Robbers.

    The father, who kept a loaded gun unsecured in a house with children, seems like the criminal here, not a boy too young to understand what he was doing.

    → 2:03 PM, Jul 12
  • Your mask feels uncomfortable? Get over it. As a surgeon, I know how vital they are.

    → 1:58 PM, Jul 12
  • The World Is Drinking Less Coffee While Office Workers Stay Home. More for me!

    → 1:55 PM, Jul 12
  • not all heroes wear capes. pic.twitter.com/KEG2P2Qbz2

    — Love Yo Self ✨ (@MichellCClark) July 11, 2020
    → 1:49 PM, Jul 12
  • How old is your dog? New equation shows how to calculate its age in human years

    Dogs age quickly their first years, more slowly later.

    Minnie is 62.

    → 1:33 PM, Jul 12
  • 📷

    → 12:35 PM, Jul 12
  • David Frumat the Atlantic, about Roger Stone: The Most Conspicuous Scandal in American History.

    Trump and his cronies commit their treasonous crimes in plain sight, and that helps them get away with it.

    → 4:43 PM, Jul 11
  • David Gerrold’s 1983 novel “A Matter for Men” features the Earth facing a biological menace which many people believe is a hoax, and the US in decline but still powerful and threatening.

    Oh, that old-time science fiction! So unrealistic!

    Very Hungry Caterpillar

    → 1:29 PM, Jul 11
  • Hello, again, Lake Murray. 📷

    → 1:07 PM, Jul 11
  • This may sound like Trump’s wackiest conspiracy theory. But it’s actually true. Republicans have been peddling insane conspiracy theories for decades, and now it is coming back to destroy them, as rank-and-file Republicans are refusing to vote using mail in ballots or to take precautions to protect themselves against coronavirus.

    → 10:26 AM, Jul 11
  • Scientists thought they found evidence of a new planet at the edge of the solar system. Now they think it might be a black hole.

    If the Solar System’s ‘Planet Nine’ is actually a small black hole, here’s how we could detect it… wait, what?

    → 1:39 PM, Jul 10
  • On Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic: Hospitals are using homebrew dongles with code from a Polish hacker to repair ventilators, getting around thieving licensing by manufacturer Medtronic. Datamir helps cops spy on protesters with Twitter. How arms dealers make billions on police militarization. local California businesses used clamshells as currency during the Depression. And France’s Macron demands a national database of porn preferences

    → 12:39 PM, Jul 10
  • For me, texting is a full-duplex conversation. I think possibly most people think of texting as half-duplex, like speech, and consider my approach rude.

    → 10:41 AM, Jul 10
  • “Ghislaine, Is That You?”: Inside Ghislaine Maxwell’s Life on the Lam

    I did not know this: Ghislaine Maxwell is the daughter of the late media mogul Robert Maxwell, briefly famous as a rival to Rupert Murdoch. Robert Maxwell’s body was found floating near his yacht in 1991.

    Maybe his death was an accident. Maybe it was suicide. Maybe he was murdered to cover up … something.

    The yacht was named the Lady Ghislaine, for his daughter.

    The elder Maxwell and Richard Epstein had a lot in common. They were both parvenus who bought their way into high society and respectability, and who fell to disgrace.

    Ghislaine Maxwell idolized both men.

    Mark Seal reports at Vanity Fair:

    To Ghislaine, her mother, three brothers, and three sisters, Robert Maxwell was Samson, tearing down the gates of Gaza, as he was depicted in a stained-glass window in their 51-room Oxford mansion: a titan of luck, impossible achievement, and unlimited wealth. “If Bob Maxwell didn’t exist, no one could invent him,” Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock would say. Born Jan Ludvik Hoch into a Hasidic family in a tiny village in Czechoslovakia, he was so poor that he and his six siblings had to wear shoes in shifts. He evolved into a warrior, surviving the Holocaust, in which 300 of his immediate and extended family members perished, to join the Czech resistance. When his country fell to the Nazis, he fled to France and joined the British Army, fighting in bloody battles from Normandy to Germany. After the war, he married the daughter of a prosperous British silk merchant, christened himself Robert Maxwell, and bought Pergamon Press, a publisher of scientific journals. It became the anchor of an empire that would, at the time of his death, include hundreds of companies, among them the publishing giant Macmillan and newspapers from The Mirror in London to the New York Daily News. As big as or maybe even big-ger than his rival, Rupert Murdoch, Maxwell was a bombastic, demanding patriarch who dined with kings and presidents and exhibited a bottomless appetite for family, food, fortune, and fame.

    Now he was dead, and it wasn’t long before the mighty house of Maxwell was exposed as a house of cards. Maxwell, it turned out, had pledged millions from his company’s pension funds to shore up his tottering empire, exposing his 32,000 employees to retirement ruin and racking up debts of nearly $5 billion. The conspiracy theories multiplied: He committed suicide rather than face his financial crimes; he died aboard his yacht while engaged in sex with a mistress; he fell overboard during his regular postmidnight piss over the railings; he was murdered by British security agents panicked that he had taken possession of tapes that could incriminate the MI6 intelligence service in crime and espionage; he was injected with a poisonous syringe by frogmen sent by his Mossad spymasters to silence him from revealing their secret arms deals.

    → 9:27 AM, Jul 10
  • Bill Murray dances with Gilda Radner at Studio 54. via

    In the 70s, overalls and high heels were considered perfectly acceptable ladies' wear for a night on the town. The 70s were a very strange decade.

    Gilda’s rocking it. She looks fantastic.

    → 9:18 AM, Jul 10
  • How AI makes policing more racist: AI is biased as the people who program it.

    → 9:13 AM, Jul 10
  • I like writing things by hand … in theory.

    I like the idea of being the guy who carries around a notebook, like Indiana Jones’s father, and writes down all my brilliant thoughts. In my mind, it’s a simple but beautiful notebook, and I write in it using a fountain pen.

    In reality, I type everything on my MacBook and if I’m not at my MacBook I use my phone. On the phone, I’m using voice transcription more and more.

    → 9:10 AM, Jul 10
  • Al Pacino with his parents, Salvatore and Rose, in 1940. via

    He’s just a few months old and he already looks like Al Pacino.

    → 9:04 AM, Jul 10
  • I often see this bus parked around the corner. I keep expecting 11-year old Danny Bonaduce to emerge. 📷

    → 10:04 PM, Jul 9
  • I installed the new iPad beta and I think I like the scribbling feature it takes getting Used to. I don’t handwrite anything anymore

    → 8:11 PM, Jul 9
  • Incoherent Conspiracy Suggests Ghislaine Maxwell Is a Powerful Redditor: Because a supercriminal setting up pseudonymous social media account to rule the Internet would absolutely use a variation on their real name.

    → 4:27 PM, Jul 9
  • Cory Doctorow: Cops are buying breach data. Why get a warrant when the crooks can do the work for you?

    → 12:32 PM, Jul 9
  • A Twitter Account Is Tracking the Cringiest Misuses Of Black Language

    → 12:30 PM, Jul 9
  • 3 Mac apps I'm not using anymore

    I configured a new MacBook Pro a month ago. Usually I use Migration Assistant for that kind of thing but this time I started from scratch and moved data and apps over manually.

    Three apps that still haven’t made the transition.

    • Alfred
    • Keyboard Maestro
    • TextExpander

    All three are apps I previously used daily and would have sworn were essential to my workflow. Apparently not.

    I do have an idea for a thing I want to do with Keyboard Maestro – set up a series of palettes to remind me of keyboard shortcuts. But I’m in no rush on that.

    → 9:42 AM, Jul 9
  • Spies, Lies, and Stonewalling: What It’s Like to Report on Facebook: “… operating with the secrecy of an intelligence agency and the authority of a state government, Facebook has arrogated to itself vast powers while enjoying, until recently, limited journalistic scrutiny.“

    → 9:20 AM, Jul 9
  • The Militarization Of Police: Journalist Radley Balko, author of ‘Rise Of The Warrior Cop,’ says police departments across America are increasingly using equipment designed for use on a battlefield, including tanks, bayonets and grenades, and using them against peaceful protestors.

    → 9:18 AM, Jul 9
  • Study finds asteroid impact, not volcanoes, made the Earth uninhabitable for dinosaurs: ‘Only plausible explanation’.

    I thought this was settled science years ago.

    → 9:14 AM, Jul 9
  • Two racist cops threw me in jail 13 years ago. Let me tell you what needs to happen now.

    Searing commentary from Ty Smith, a retired, decorated Navy SEAL and founder of a San Diego security company.

    → 9:12 AM, Jul 9
  • How to Buy Tech That Lasts and Lasts

    Brian X. Chen at the New York Times:

    When we buy a gadget these days, we rarely assume that it will endure.

    We expect to play a video game console only for as long as companies make games for it. We expect to use a smartphone or a laptop for just as long as the battery has juice or until it can no longer run important software.

    At some point, we feel that we must upgrade. We must have the latest and greatest camera. We must have apps that run faster. We must have brighter screens.

    Here’s the thing: This is all the doing of marketing professionals, seared into our subconscious. The reality is that consumer electronics, such as your phone, computer or tablet, can last for many years. It just takes some research to obtain tech that will endure. This exercise will be increasingly important in a pandemic-induced recession, which has forced many of us to tighten our spending.

    “It’s a matter of buying what you need, not what the company is telling you that you need…. ”

    Look for tech that’s easy to repair, particularly replacing the battery. And consider spending more to get the best.

    → 9:08 AM, Jul 9
  • Sheboygan toilet clogger sentenced to probation, 150 days in jail

    Headline of the week.

    → 9:02 AM, Jul 9
  • via

    → 8:57 AM, Jul 9
  • via

    → 8:52 AM, Jul 9
  • → 8:48 AM, Jul 9
  • Microsoft did a virtual-reality/augmented-reality thing to make video meetings look more like physical meetings

    You get an avatar that sits at a table or – for bigger meetings – in a virtual lecture hall, with your own video-captured face on it.

    I’m skeptical.

    https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/08/microsoft_together_mode/

    → 2:31 PM, Jul 8
  • I got the new Facebook layout yesterday evening. That’s late – many people were getting it months ago, weren’t they?

    I like it. It reminds me of Google+.

    I like the new notifications layout.

    I’ve lost the ability to format text in posts, which I had for a couple of months. No big deal.

    But the Facebook News Feed is still a cluttered mess and inconvenient to use. And the News Feed is the only part of Facebook that interests me.

    I want to be able to get notifications for comments separately from likes and reactions.

    Also, I want to be able to create lists of friends, groups and pages where I see EVERY post made by members of that list, sorted reverse-chronologically by the time of the post.

    Neither of these things is possible.

    → 2:00 PM, Jul 8
  • I’m not a Boomer. I’m Generation Jones

    Generation Jones is the younger cohort of boomers. We are a separate generation, raised in the recession of the 70s in very early 80s, rather than the prosperous decades following World War II.

    We have a different attitude and different pop-culture icons than our older peers.

    Jeffrey I Williams writes at the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2014:

    Generation Jones is an actual thing. It refers to the second half of the baby boom, to a group of people born roughly from 1954 to 1965.

    We might be grouped with the baby boomers, but our formative experiences were profoundly different. If the zeitgeist of the boomers was optimism and revolution, the vibe of Gen Jones was cynicism and disappointment. Our formative years came in the wake of the 1973 oil shock, Watergate, the malaise of the Carter years and the Reagan recession of 1982. Above all, we resented the older boomers themselves — who we were convinced had things so much easier, and in whose shadow we’d been forced to spend our entire lives.

    The fact that most people have never even heard of Generation Jones is the most Generation Jones thing about Generation Jones.

    Not My Generation www.chronicle.com/article/G…

    Also, from Jennifer Finney Boylan, at the New York Times last month:

    Donald Trump (who is, it should be noted, an older boomer) has been a fraud on so many levels, but if there’s anything authentic about him, it’s his air of grievance. It may have been this, Mr. Pontell says, that made Jonesers vote for him in 2016. Hillary Clinton, to them, was the epitome of older baby boomer entitlement, and if Mr. Trump stood for anything, it was for the very things Gen Jones most identifies with: jealousy, resentment, self-pity.

    There’s a word in Ireland, “begrudgery.” Padraig O’Morain, writing in The Irish Times, says: “Behind a lot of this begrudgery lies the unexamined and unspoken assumption that there is only so much happiness to go around. And guess what? The others have too much and I have too little.”

    Mr. Jones and Me: Younger Baby Boomers Swing Left www.nytimes.com/2020/06/2…

    → 9:51 AM, Jul 8
  • Julie got a new handbag. Sammy says, “Mine now!” 📷

    → 9:48 AM, Jul 8
  • 📷

    → 12:36 PM, Jul 5
  • 📷

    → 10:49 PM, Jul 4
  • We watched Hamilton last night and 1776 tonight. That’s five hours and 25 minutes of movies. My butt has declared independence.

    → 10:37 PM, Jul 4
  • My reaction immediately before watching “Hamilton:” “Nearly three hours? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

    After one hour: “I sort of like it.”

    After watching the whole thing: “I liked it, but did not love it.”

    This afternoon I listened to the soundtrack. I guess I love it.

    → 10:31 PM, Jul 4
  • The 1776 drinking game: Take a drink — of rum — every time John Adams says “Good God!” or “Incredible!”

    → 8:39 PM, Jul 4
  • The first movie I saw in a theater

    A friend asked her Facebook friends what was the first movie that they remembered seeing in a theater.

    I dug through the IMDB to find some of the earliest movies I remember seeing in theaters and enjoying. They include Doctor Doolittle, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the Love Bug and the Jungle Book. They came out in 1967-68.

    Also at about that time I remember a movie with Sammy Davis Jr. — I probably had no idea who he was when I first saw the movie, but I recognized him later, in memory. For most of my life I remembered one or two scenes of that movie and how much I enjoyed it but I couldn’t remember the name of the movie or what it as about.

    I remembered Sammy was in a castle and that the movie was a comedy. I remembered one scene where he was shouting out a window. Not a lot to go on, but enough for Google:

    “Salt and Pepper.” It’s from 1968 and also stars Peter Lawford.

    The “Salt and Pepper” movie poster. It’s groovy.

    After discovering the body of a murdered female agent in their trendy Soho, London nightclub, groovy owners Charles Salt and Christopher Pepper partake in a fumbling investigation and uncover an evil plot to overthrow the government. Can our cool, yet inept duo stop the bad guys in time?

    Here’s the trailer on YouTube:

    Sammy Davis Jr. plays Salt and Peter Lawford plays Pepper. Get it?

    It’s not a children’s movie, but I expect my Mom wanted to see it and so she dragged my Dad and me and my brothers. I remember my parents hated it and my brothers were too young to get it, but I loved it. I thought Sammy and Peter Lawford were cool. Which they absolutely were, but the movie looks like a turkey.

    📓📽

    → 11:47 AM, Jul 4
  • ‪I like that the instructions for Hot Pockets say I should “prep” it first. Like sticking a thing in a cardboard sleeve makes me a chef. ‬

    → 11:08 AM, Jul 4
  • Minnie supervises my second Covid haircut, by Julie, who did an excellent job. 📷

    → 10:11 AM, Jul 4
  • I’ve had to teach myself how to read books again. When I was a kid and into my 20s I read books voraciously, but beginning in my 40s I transitioned to a diet of articles and status updates consumed on the Internet.

    Listening to a recent Ezra Klein podcast yesterday, he talked about the need to spend an hour or more of uninterrupted reading – get into a deep reading state, to truly absorb information and make connections. I suppose I did that yesterday, got in a good hour of reading. But I switched between two books — a history and a science fiction novel. Does that count?

    For most of my life, I’ve followed Theodore Roosevelt’s reading style. He read voraciously and widely, and just kept books with him at all times and read when he could, even if it was just for a minute. People who worked with him at the White House said that if he even had a minute or two between meetings in the Oval Office, he’d pull out a book and read for whatever seconds or minutes he had available.

    When I was a kid, I read sitting on the couch when my family was around me watching TV. I can’t do that anymore. If the TV is on, it pulls me in.

    → 10:36 AM, Jul 3
  • Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate, has been charged with enticement of minors.

    This could get interesting. It seems likely she knows everything Epstein knew about the proclivities of powerful men.

    → 8:57 AM, Jul 2
  • Trump Mistakes Cowboy Sculpture In His Office As Teddy Roosevelt In Interview About Knowing The History Of Statues

    “Trump’s gaffe seems all the more ironic given that in other parts of the interview, he talks about how he believes protestors taking down statues don’t understand the history behind the statues.”

    → 12:23 PM, Jun 29
  • I wish Trump put as much energy into protecting live Americans as he does for dead Confederates and Vladimir Putin.

    → 8:16 AM, Jun 29
  • The Decline of the American World

    Other countries are used to loathing America, admiring America, and fearing America (sometimes all at once). But pitying America? That one is new.

    Tom McTague looks at the US from Britain, with a view that’s harsh, but ultimately loving and optimistic.

    That’s how I feel about the US these days as well.

    As I’ve mentioned here before, I’ve been reading ancient history recently, and that tells me the US is still a very young country. I believe our best days are ahead of us. But we’re in a dark time now – maybe the darkest since the Civil War – and the worst may still be to come.

    → 8:15 AM, Jun 29
  • A volcanic eruption in the Aleutians triggered climate change that accelerated the fall of the Roman Republic.

    The Roman Republic Was Teetering. Then a Volcano Erupted 6,000 Miles Away.

    → 8:11 AM, Jun 29
  • Doomscrolling Is Slowly Eroding Your Mental Health

    Checking your phone for an extra two hours every night won’t stop the apocalypse.

    → 8:09 AM, Jun 29
  • Kellogg’s Mashups Cereal Combines Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops

    Not enough sugar and artificial coloring.

    → 8:08 AM, Jun 29
  • Duke researchers say all brain activity studies are wrong

    → 8:06 AM, Jun 29
  • Milton Glaser, Co-founder of New York Magazine and Creator of ‘I❤NY,’ Dies at 91

    Christopher Bonanos at New York Magazine:

    He wrote, too. Starting in our first issues, Glaser and his friend Jerome Snyder, the design director of Sports Illustrated, created “The Underground Gourmet,” becoming very possibly the world’s first columnists covering cheap ethnic restaurants in a sophisticated way. That sounds like no big deal now, but it was a minor revolution in 1968. As Glaser himself would explain when asked, nobody back then bothered to cover restaurants outside the white-tablecloth world, because they didn’t advertise. But as hardcore New Yorkers, Glaser and Snyder knew that a whole lot of us love nothing more than a great Chinatown dumpling joint, or a superior taco stand, or a scoop of perfect whitefish salad, or a bowl of udon. He brought all of those and more to New York’s early readership, and everyone — from the Times on down — soon started doing the same. …

    In the mid-1980s, Steve Hindy and Tom Potter, the founders of a new microbrewery, came to him for a logo design. Glaser took a look at their proposed name — Brooklyn Eagle, recalling the defunct newspaper — and, as he told the story, he offered one key bit of advice. “Anheuser-Busch already has the eagle,” he told them. “You’ve got Brooklyn. That’s enough!” Brooklyn Brewery, with its swoop-y baseball-jersey logo evoking both the departed Dodgers and a swirl of beer foam, made its debut in 1988. Because it was a start-up without much money, Glaser took a stake in the company instead of a fee. Today, Brooklyn Brewery is a huge global brand — and, as Glaser told me a couple of years ago, that was the thing that made him financially independent, enough to keep him in taxicabs and then some, enthusiastically sketching, for the rest of his life.

    Milton Glaser, New York and ‘I❤NY’ Designer, Dies at 91

    → 8:05 AM, Jun 29
  • "You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument"

    Caroline Randall Williams says that as a light-skinned Black woman, her body is a monument to the Confederate legacy.

    I am a black, Southern woman, and of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow.

    According to the rule of hypodescent (the social and legal practice of assigning a genetically mixed-race person to the race with less social power) I am the daughter of two black people, the granddaughter of four black people, the great-granddaughter of eight black people. Go back one more generation and it gets less straightforward, and more sinister. As far as family history has always told, and as modern DNA testing has allowed me to confirm, I am the descendant of black women who were domestic servants and white men who raped their help.

    You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument

    → 8:02 AM, Jun 29
  • Remastered silent movies from the 1890s look breathtakingly real and contemporary, like the people could just walk out of the frame. youtu.be/jN2E3s6Pk…

    Matt Loughrey uses machine learning to add additional frames to smooth the motion. The films include Broadway in New York, in 1896, and “Buffalo” Bill Cody having a conversation with an Oglala Lakota leader.

    → 7:57 AM, Jun 29
  • → 7:54 AM, Jun 29
  • African safari journal – one year ago – we visit a tribal village

    June 21, 2019 - Yesterday was busy even by the standards of this trip. Up at 6 and out at 6:30 to the main tent for breakfast and coffee. The coffee is not bad here; it’s not great, but drinkable black.

    I chatted with Jordanna, an Asian woman with a posh English accent. I asked where she is from; she said London. If she had said Singapore, I would not have been surprised – Crazy Rich Asians. [Note from 2020: I had just seen the movie a few weeks earlier on the plane over. Only a year later and that pop culture reference seems hopelessly dated.]

    =-=-=-

    Later at breakfast yesterday we had a conversation with Ross and Agnes, a couple from Atlanta. We talked about the difficulties of bad WiFi – how bad WiFi is worse than no WiFi, because with no WiFi at least you know you have no WiFi, but with bad WiFi you’re endlessly pulling to refresh. [Note from 2020: The Oatmeal did a comic on just this very subject: <theoatmeal.com/comics/no…>]

    I was so used to meeting non-Americans – Namibians and Botswanans in particular – that when they asked where we are from, I reflexively nearly said, “The United States. California. San Diego,” which is now my stock answer I told them that and they laughed and said that when telling non-Americans where they are from, they say, “Atlanta. It’s a big city in Georgia. Which is next to Florida.” People around the world have heard of Florida.

    Festus, our outstanding guide, took us out for a game drive in the morning, and the highlight of that was finding lions feeding on a zebra. I found it fascinating, but neither thrilling nor disgusting. It was nature.

    But the highlight of the day was a visit to a Himba tribal village, a family of about ten people living as their ancestors have probably done for tens of thousands of years. We drove about two hours through the hot desert, flat and khaki colored and featureless like much of it is here in Africa, with the occasional hardy plant. We went through canyons and saw zebras galloping at full speed, despite the heat. That’s how zebras move by default – always at a gallop, Festus told us. The male zebra brings up the rear of his harem. We saw ostriches too.

    The village comprises two large rectangular kraals, totaling an acre I guess, made of the same rough vertical wood branches that are standard for those sorts of structures. One is for goats – we saw a few wandering around – and the other is for cattle. That’s mainly what the Himba live on, their diet consists of a great deal of protein, Festus told us later.

    There were ten people in the tribe, a man, his wives, a few toddlers and very young children, and a younger man who looked to be about 15 or 16. They were nearly naked, the women with their breasts uncovered. The primary man, who we interacted with mainly, wore leather sandals like flip-flops, a short skirt or kilt made of a blue fabric in front that appeared to be manufactured, appendages that looked like fur animal tails in the rear, a handmade necklace that seemed to be made of leather and maybe bone or wood, and nothing else that I can recall. He and all the people were lean but appeared well-fed and healthy. The younger man wore a T-shirt advertising a brand of beer, in English, that I did not recognize.

    Festus said ahead of time that he would introduce us to each person, and encouraged us to use the tribal word for hello – “morro” - accompanied by a firm handshake. We did that, greeting the men and women. I added, “I am very pleased to meet you,” knowing my words would not be understood but hoping my voice would.

    The people lived in a few small huts, about as tall as me and maybe wide enough to lie down. [Note from 2020, for those who don’t know me personally – I’m about 5'9"-5'10" – average height for an American man.] The huts are conical, made of dung mixed with mud. There were a couple of smaller hut-like structures on raised platforms about knee or waist height, used for storage. There were two small campfires, one of them with religious significance where the man told us he went to pray each morning.

    We talked a bit, translated by Festus, because none of these people spoke English. I addressed my questions and statements to the man directly, occasionally looking to Festus, as I have seen people do when dealing with translators in TV and movies. I don’t have much experience with that myself.

    I asked the man what message he would like the rest of the world to know about his people. He was stumped by that, and called to the women for help. Later, Festus told us they have a matriarchal culture – despite being polygamous – and women are very well respected. He asked me in return what I wanted. I said long healthy life and not to get in trouble with my wife. We all laughed at that.

    Then he invited us to take a look around and said we were welcome to take pictures.

    By that point I was ready to go because it seemed to me that these people’s lives were awful. Living in the hot desert with barely any shelter or clothing, squatting on the ground, eating goats and cattle, in a community of less than a dozen people. But we did not want to be rude, so we looked around a bit and I took a few photos.

    They had a large table set up with crafts, many of which they’d made locally, some of which they’d bought, inexpensive giraffe and hippo figurines and jewelry. Some of it was made from PVC pipe. I had previously planned to buy a bracelet and be able to tell people casually I bought it in a Himba village, a primitive tribe in Namibia, but that seemed disrespectful now and none of the items appealed to me or were even in my size.

    =-=-=-

    But we bought a few things because that was the arrangement. Festus has told us we were expected to bargain, and so we did although it seemed petty to bargain the equivalent of a US dollar or two from people who had so little.

    In the first part of the ride back to the camp I was troubled by what I had seen. I’ve grown up seeing images of people who live like the Himba, but to see it in real life was moving. The Himba have less than the homeless in any US city or the people who live in the shantytowns we passed at Windhoek.

    I was torn, I told a Festus. On the one hand, I said, I think people have a right to life how they want to live. On the other hand: Not like that.

    Festus was silent then and I asked him to tell me if he thought I was wrong. He said no, he agreed with me.

    At one point on the drive back to camp we passed a single broken beer bottle on the desert floor. It was the only trash we had seen. Festus stopped the Toyota and hopped out. He crouched down next to the debris and examined it momentarily without touching it, then carefully plucked the pieces one at a time with one hand and deposited them gently in his other hand. I thought it would be good to get out and help but I was enervated by the heat and the scene I’d seen at the Himba village, so I watched.

    We drove on mostly quiet on the way back to camp, over a sea of sand, as it got dark out.

    Later in conversations with Festus and other Africans, I learned that the quandary I faced in thinking about the Himba is reflected in African policy. The African nations have ceded large tracts of land to the Himba and the Himba get revenue from rent on that land. The camp we are staying at is on land leased from the Himba.

    In conversations with Africans later I learned a couple of things about the Himba that made me think differently about their lives. They have a rich matriarchal society and tradition. Social ties are as important to human beings as physical needs. And close social ties are something we Americans lack, leading to epidemic in suicides and to drug addiction, which is a kind of slow suicide. Would it be ridiculous to suggest that Americans are as impoverished as the Himba? [Note from 2020: An exaggeration but not ridiculous.]

    Also, the Himba enjoy complete freedom of movement. They can at any moment pack up all their belongings on their back and go elsewhere.

    I think it was the same evening that Festus gave a brief astronomy presentation, showing us major features of the night sky using a laser pointer that shot out a solid beam, similar to the one we’d gotten from another guide at another lodge. He talked about red giants becoming supernovae, and showed us a red giant, Antares. He pointed out dust clouds that obscured part of the Milky Way, including the biggest dust cloud, the Coal Sack. We already knew Festus was expert on the local animals, birds, insects and plants, geology, anthropology and centuries of history. Now astronomy too?!

    Throughout our stay in Africa I’ve encountered evidence of the wrongness of Western prejudices about indigenous peoples being less sophisticated than Westerners. Festus is a prime example, he’s from the Herrrera tribe and grew up in a simple village, but he is as intelligent, well educated and thoughtful as anyone I’ve met. He seems like a kind and good soul as well. All the guides we’ve had are encyclopedias of knowledge of natural history, with a love of nature and their home country and eager to share that love with tourists. But Festus stands out among even that group for his dedication. I asked him what he does for fun, when he’s not working. He spends time with family, visits a park favored by Africans, watches nature documentaries – he’s particularly fond of Attenborough – and reads natural history. So he’s working even when he’s not. At work, when he’s not shepherding tourists, he trains other guides. The rest of the staff of the camp seem to hold him in high esteem, and after spending only three days with him, Julie and I do too.

    One of the waitresses, named Thensia, speaks a click language. She shared a few words with me, it was beautiful and unintelligible. Julie and I asked the staff to take our photo, and several of the younger staffed in jumped in and wanted to take photos with Julie and each other, so we did that a few minutes and everyone had fun. One of the young men planted a kiss on the cheek of one of the waitresses just as I clicked the shutter and everyone laughed. Young Black Africans seem to enjoy photos, we encountered the same thing in the school we visited. Both the children and the staff at the camp crowded around the phone to see the photos when they were done.

    Thensia asked me if I had WhatsApp and I said I do, but I hardly ever use it. She watched over my shoulder as I poked around in the app looking for a way to send a message to a new phone number but could not find a way. She told me I had to add the number to my contacts first, and with my permission she snatched the phone from my hand and quickly added herself to my address book. And I sent her the photos.

    My point is that she was quite adept with the iPhone; her fingertips flew over the keyboard and icons. Hardly an innocent savage!

    And now I have the phone number of a pretty 20-year-old waitress in my contacts list. What could go wrong with that?

    [Note from 2020: I just checked my phone. I still have her number!]

    (click the images for a bigger view)


    Me, Julie and Festus have lunch.


    A lion feasting on a zebra.


    Lion walking away after feeding on a zebra. Note the bloody jaws and chest.

    Part of me thought the last two photos were too graphic to post, but mainly I think they’re just nature.

    📓🌍

    → 7:52 AM, Jun 29
  • What happened to Brexit?

    Last night I woke up in the middle of the night unable to sleep – which I’m doing now at least two or three times a week, it’s just normal now – and I thought did Brexit happen?

    I remember it was a really big deal for a couple of years, and then it was imminent and then it was going to be days away and then … nothing. Did it happen? Has great Britain left Europe? Is Great Britain literally drifting around the Atlantic Ocean now, unmoored?

    Also, what happened to the murder hornets?

    → 6:36 AM, Jun 29
  • African safari journal – one year ago – never get tired of the elephants

    June 19, 2019 — We got our cold weather yesterday, up at 5 am for the morning game drive. Camp Kipwe wasn’t cold. I’d assumed it might be at night, knowing the wide temperature fluctuations you get in the desert and judging by the heavy blankets the resort laid on the bed. But it remained warm all night and it felt like the mid-60s at breakfast and when we set out on the drive. But it quickly got colder as we went across the desert – into a different micro-climate? – and the wind whipped through the open safari truck. We drove for more than an hour down relatively smooth dirt roads, rough dirt roads, and rutted desert landscape – more African massage – until we found a dozen elephants.

    Even though we’ve seen literally more than a hundred elephants so far, this was worth it. These were desert adapted elephants, of which only about 600 remain here, with longer legs and broader feet. We got pretty close, a dozen or so yards, and saw a mother with her baby, including breastfeeding, and two immature males play fighting, locking tusks and tossing their heads around.

    On the way back we stopped for coffee in the middle of a flat sandy desert plain, nearly devoid of visible life other than ourselves, with irregular notched mountains in the distance. The temperature got up to the 80s or 90s by then.

    We were really surprised by this heat. We were expecting more of the same, even colder, temps in the 30s or 40s first thing in the morning, and 70ish in the hottest part of the day. Instead, it’s hot and the sun is bright, the kind of weather that makes you want to stay inside in the a/c bxack home. Fortunately we’re prepared, with clothes for any temperature from 40 degrees to 100 degrees. (After that, clothing won’t help you.)

    I wonder what the temperature is at home. No internet means no way to find out.

    At lunch, we decided to skip the afternoon activity and just take the rest of the day as a down day. This was a comfortable spot for it. We’d once again been upgraded to a suite, with comfortable chairs. We had a good nap – those 5 and 6 am wake up calls add up, combined with long, leisurely dinners that start at 7 pm. After nap, I had a shower, which was lovely, as our African schedule has allowed me only three or four of those per week.

    =-=-=-

    We woke up this morning for breakfast at Okonjima Lunxury Bush Camp and were driven to Okonjima Airstrip by Gabriel, the manager of the resort, a South African with a nicer four-wheel drive vehicle than the others we’ve ridden in. He told us that he ran the place with his wife Sarah, a Canadian, who we’d met previously. The staff is, as Julie surmised, all men. He said that started by coincidence, but they kept hiring men and turning away women because that meant they did not need separate housing. Also, no maternity leave, ha ha. Other than institutional sexism, Gabriel was a pleasant fellow, and told us about difficulties running a resort in Namibia. Hard to find supplies, businesses close at lunch, no Internet access, to name three.

    We took another small plane, big enough for eight passengers but with the seats taken out and only me and Julie riding. We encountered moderate turbulence over the mountains. I’m doing much better with that; I still don’t like it but my brain continues to function. I keep my eyes open and concentrate on looking at the horizon; I think I read that somewhere. Also, while there are no handgrips in the plane, I gripped the bottom of the seat with one hand, which was helpful. No big deal. We landed at Twyfelfontein Airstrip after 50 minutes, a smooth landing. Our pilot, Nick, bid us farewell.

    As was the case at most of our other stops, our guide greeted us at the airstrip. As with most of our other stops, he will be our guide for the duration of our stay. His name was Festus, and over the course of our first few hours together, he revealed an encyclopedic knowledge of natural history, including botany, zoology, geology and anthropology – I was interested to learn from Festus that there had been a recent discovery of a new human ancestor, Homo Namibius, placed between Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus, at about 3.5 million years before present, if Festus recalled correctly. He knows African and Namibian history, and he served us a tasty lunch of beef schnitzel, green salad with feta cheese, and fresh fruit, along with fresh water, with soft drinks available but not requested. The schnitzel, along with apple strudel at dinner, is a byproduct of Namibian’s colonial history, it was a colony of Germany.

    Twyfelfontein proved to be another hotbox, and Festus drove us through the desert for two hours in heat I estimate at 90 or even 100 degrees, and me wearing hiking boots and medium-weight cargo pants. The desert is even more austere and beautiful than Okonjima, all khaki and a few hardy plants and animals, with flat plains stretching off to abrupt mountains.

    And now we are at Hoanib Valley Camp in Kaokoveld, which is in the middle of the desert, surrounded on several sides by khaki mountains and abutting a broad plain of desert life. The camp is about a half-dozen guest tents, with a big common area for meals and relaxing, with coffee, tea, wine and treats on tap. The food and service are impeccable, as at nearly every place we’ve visited on our trip. We have the Honeymoon Tent, with a big broad king-size bed, linen sheets, a small writing table on which I’m writing this journal entry, and a living area with couch, table and chairs, and front deck beyond, with chairs, looking over the desert. Like Camp Xakanaxa, it’s basically a lovely hotel room inside a tent.

    The manager, TJ, showed us around the tent, including the shower, which has a steel bucket in one corner. He said he expected we encountered that arrangement before, but we had not. He explained that the bucket is a water conservation measure. When the shower starts and runs cold, you run it into the bucket. When you add hot water and have the temperature the way you like it, you push the bucket aside and shower normally. The maids come in and use the water from the bucket to clean the floors.

    Hoanib Valley Camp has WiFi, and the electricity runs 24x7. The WiIf is slow but functions. I’ve got my iPad plugged in and am uploading photos to the cloud.

    (Click the photos for a bigger view)


    View from our tent at Hoanib Valley Lodge.


    Our shower at Hoanib Valley Lodge. The bucket is for water conservation.


    Nice bathroom at Hoanib Valley Lodge.


    Our tent at Hoanib Valley Lodge.


    These little birds hopped up on the table and begged for treats at Camp Kipwe. The waiter scolded Julie for feeding them. The staff’s attitude at Camp Kipwe contributed to this being not our favorite place in Africa, despite the camp itself being lovely.


    Panoramic photo of the desert. That’s Julie next to the truck.

    🌍📓

    → 2:17 PM, Jun 28
  • Petition calls for statue of Christopher Columbus in Ohio city to be replaced with Chef Boyardee

    The city is Cleveland and it’s actually not a bad idea. Ettore Boiardi was an immigrant success story.

    → 11:44 AM, Jun 28
  • ‪Remarkable time-lapse video of a toucan growing up from hatching to adulthood. ‬‪Seems like an intelligent, playful animal that recognizes its person. ‬ ∫youtu.be/nfK6k8nCW…‬

    → 11:40 AM, Jun 28
  • Black Lives Matter is working

    → 11:26 AM, Jun 28
  • “ ... trying to shame people into wearing condoms didn’t work—and it won’t work for masks either.”

    Shaming didn’t work to get men to wear condoms during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, but making condom-wearing convenient and less unpleasant was effective. The same lessons need to be applied to mask-wearing today.

    Julia Marcus at The Atlantic:

    Public-health professionals have learned this lesson before. In 1987, Congress banned the use of federal funds for HIV-prevention campaigns that might “promote or encourage, directly or indirectly, homosexual activities.” As a result, public-health campaigns avoided sex-positive imagery and messaging, and instead associated condom use with virtue and condomless sex with irresponsibility, disease, and death. According to one particularly foreboding poster, which featured an image of a gravestone: “A bad reputation isn’t all you can get from sleeping around.” But those moralistic, fear-mongering health messages often fell flat. Other HIV-prevention campaigns began to adopt a harm-reduction approach, which empathizes with people’s basic human needs and offers them strategies to limit potential dangers. For some men, condoms got in the way of what they valued most about sex: pleasure and intimacy. Not surprisingly, HIV-prevention campaigns that put pleasure and intimacy at the center of their safer-sex messaging tended to work.

    When the public-health community talks about harm reduction, we often talk of “meeting people where they are.” A fundamental part of that is, well, literally meeting people where they are. Just like the buckets of free condoms stationed in gay bars, masks need to be dispensed where they’re needed most: at the front of every bus and the entrance to every airport, grocery store, and workplace. Masks should become ubiquitous, but distribution should begin in areas where the coronavirus has hit hardest, including black and Latino neighborhoods. (That black men who wear masks may be at heightened risk of violence is one more grim illustration of why combatting racism is inextricable from public health.) What matters most is that people choose to wear a mask when they are indoors or in close proximity to others—and that choice needs to be rendered as effortless as possible.

    The Dudes Who Won’t Wear Masks

    → 11:20 AM, Jun 28
  • → 11:11 AM, Jun 28
  • → 11:10 AM, Jun 28
  • → 11:08 AM, Jun 28
  • New research explores how conservative media misinformation may have intensified the severity of the pandemic

    “… infection and mortality rates are higher in places where one pundit who initially downplayed the severity of the pandemic — Fox News’s Sean Hannity — reaches the largest audiences.”

    → 11:05 AM, Jun 28
  • The White House is taking increasing measures to protect Trump from covid, even as he insists publicly the disease is no big deal

    As he seeks to insert rival Joe Biden’s health into the presidential campaign, Trump has voiced escalating concern about how it would appear if he contracted coronavirus and has insisted on steps to protect himself, even as he refuses to wear a mask in public and agitates for large campaign rallies where the virus could spread.

    When he travels to locations where the virus is surging, every venue the President enters is inspected for potential areas of contagion by advance security and medical teams, according to people familiar with the arrangements. Bathrooms designated for the President’s use are scrubbed and sanitized before he arrives. Staff maintain a close accounting of who will come into contact with the President to ensure they receive tests.

    Measures to protect Trump from coronavirus scale up even as he seeks to move on

    → 11:01 AM, Jun 28
  • Not the first time Sammy got to the glass of water I put out for myself.

    → 10:19 PM, Jun 27
  • Russia offered the Taliban bounties to kill American soldiers, and Trump has been dithering about a response for months, according to this report in the New York Times.

    Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says

    → 11:54 AM, Jun 27
  • House passes bill to provide D.C. statehood

    Republicans oppose statehood for DC because DC is mostly Black people.

    → 4:07 PM, Jun 26
  • Pence tries to put positive spin on coronavirus pandemic despite surging cases in South and West

    Dangerous moron Mike Pence says increase in cases is “very encouraging news” and a “great success.” Asked whether people should wear masks, he said they should pray.

    → 4:05 PM, Jun 26
  • Obamacare Must ‘Fall,’ Trump Administration Tells Supreme Court

    No, it is the Trump administration that must fall.

    → 12:50 PM, Jun 26
  • In the middle of the worst pandemic in a century, Trump wants to eliminate medical insurance for 20 million Americans. Even for Trump, this is depraved and evil.

    → 12:49 PM, Jun 26
  • YouTube views of sourdough videos jumped 400% in coronavirus lockdown. And “workout from home” video views more than tripled

    → 12:40 PM, Jun 26
  • A subsurface ocean on Europa, a moon of Jupiter, may have been habitable. For microbial life at least, possibly sometime in the past.

    → 12:35 PM, Jun 26
  • → 8:14 AM, Jun 26
  • Paradise, California, suffered extensive damage and deaths in 2018 forest fires, and is now grappling with the pandemic and recession. The high school graduating faces uncertainty with hope for the future

    Justine Calma at The Verge:

    For the second year in a row, graduation at Paradise High School became a tribute to triumph over disaster. The tight-knit small town — where many seniors have taken classes together since kindergarten — was almost entirely razed by the Camp Fire in 2018. It was the deadliest and most destructive blaze in California’s history. Then, COVID-19 upended the school year, and seniors once again graduated into a world that looked very different than it did when the year began.

    For the class of 2020, even the near future is a question mark. The pandemic has already taken over 100,000 lives in the US and no one can predict when it — or the economic collapse in its wake — will end. Temperatures are soaring to record highs, an ominous sign for the coming fire season. Persevering through compounded crises is the new rite of passage for graduates across the US. The town of Paradise, California just happened to have an early baptism by fire….

    In some ways, Paradise is a glimpse into what might be a new normal for many of us: a cycle of upheaval, followed by adrenaline-fueled hope, exhaustion, and, ultimately, adaptation….

    Eighty-five people died in the Camp Fire, sparked by deteriorating PG&E power lines; 18,804 homes and buildings burned. Roughly nine of every ten Paradise High students lost their homes; [Class valedictorian Katie-Lynn] Chandler was among those whose homes burned. The care facility where her mother worked was also destroyed. She and her mother rent a room in a house from the person who owned the place where Chandler’s mother had worked.

    Surviving paradise: Through fire and fear, Paradise, California’s teens take control of their lives

    → 8:09 AM, Jun 26
  • "The Great" – it's great 📺

    Julie and I are loving the Hulu series “The Great,” about the rise to power of Catherine the Great, 18th Century empress of Russia. It’s funny, appalling, endearing, tragic, bawdy, super-violent and often sad all at once. It’s visually gorgeous, with good-looking costumes and actors. Elle Fanning stands out as Catherine, who seems at first to be a beautiful nincompoop but turns out to have mettle.

    The subtitle for “The Great” is “an occasionally true story.” I don’t remember much about Catherine the Great’s history so I can’t tell you where they play fast and loose with the facts.

    The actor Nicholas Hoult is great as Peter, the emperor. Not Peter the Great: that was his father, and in this case, the apple fell very far indeed from the tree. Peter is a narcissist and a dope. Peter wants to be loved and feared, but the best he can do is evoking fear and contempt. He’s basically Michael Scott from The Office, if Michael Scott had been boy-band pretty and could have sex with any woman he wanted to, and kill anybody anytime he wanted to. He actually thinks all his power comes from his own merit, and that his people love him.

    Of course, Peter is in no way reminiscent of any world leader today.

    Sacha Dhawan is also terrific as Orlov. Doctor Who fans will remember Dhawan as the villainous Master on the last season of DW. He’s almost as good in The Great as he was in DW, though I do miss his big, insane grin as the Master. Here he’s a milquetoast.

    Other supporting characters and actors are also outstanding.

    Casting is colorblind, at least for minor characters. So Peter has Black courtiers, and Dhawan is of course East Asian. Would’ve been nice to see more PoCs in more prominent roles but what the heck.

    One of the things that stands out about The Great is the use of language. They do an excellent job mixing contemporary 21st Century English with a seasoning of period language for flavor. (The Apple TV series “Dickinson” tried to do the same, but did it badly – I found myself yearning to hear 19th Century language and music, rather than the contemporary language and hip-hop the show used.) Characters drop an awful lot of F-bombs. And they also say “Huzzah!” frequently, which Julie and I have started to do with each other.

    But In actual fact, Russians have never ever said ‘Huzzah!’

    → 7:58 AM, Jun 26
  • How to “manage up” from home

    Getting ahead at the office when you’re not at the office.

    Crises are not a time to negotiate increased titles and compensation…. Jump in and do the work, learn new skills, build your network, and don’t be afraid to fail. When the time is right, the actual promotion will come, either at this company—or in your next job somewhere else.

    applied.economist.com/articles/…

    → 7:34 AM, Jun 26
  • He got it from the mask.. I just bet he did.

    → 5:20 PM, Jun 25
  • U.S. Used Missile With Long Blades to Kill Qaeda Leader in Syria

    American Special Operations forces used a specially designed secret missile to kill the head of a Qaeda affiliate in Syria this month….

    American and Qaeda officials said on Wednesday that Khaled al-Aruri, the de facto leader of the Qaeda branch, called Hurras al-Din, perished in a drone strike in Idlib in northwest Syria on June 14. He was a Qaeda veteran whose jihadist career dates to the 1990s….

    The modified Hellfire missile carried an inert warhead. Instead of exploding, it hurled about 100 pounds of metal through the top of Mr. al-Aruri’s car. If the high-velocity projectile did not kill him, the missile’s other feature almost certainly did: six long blades tucked inside, which deployed seconds before impact to slice up anything in its path.

    Sounds brutal, but developed “under pressure from President Barack Obama to reduce civilian casualties and property damage.” The inert warhead and blades do less damage than explosives.

    In an era when it seems the US can’t do anything right, it’s good to know we still excel at killing people.

    → 5:11 PM, Jun 25
  • Working at Home Means Softer Toilet Paper – and a Climate Toll

    Soft toilet paper is better for your butt, but worse for the climate. Commercial TP is made from recycled paper, but the kind of TP we use at home is made from “virgin fiber…. primarily from clear-cutting forests.” In other words, it’s fresh from the tree to your bathroom.

    Sheltering at home, we use more consumer TP and less of the commercial variety.

    → 5:02 PM, Jun 25
  • How big tech distorts discourse: It’s the monopoly, stupid. Making the case for job guarantees. Activists dox Chicago cops in realtime. 759 Trump atrocities, documented. Congress introduces bold, sweeping Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act. It’s great for America, and telcos will hate it. Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

    → 12:26 PM, Jun 25
  • More photos from our African safaris – one year ago

    These were taken June 18, 2019, in Namibia.

    Our cabin at Kipwe Lodge in Namibia.

    View from the cabin.

    View from the cabin toilet.

    The cabin bathroom.

    The cabin sitting room.

    Another view of the cabin sitting room.

    The cabin bedroom.

    Driving across the Namibian desert.

    Typical of the planes we used when flying between lodges in Botswana and Namibia.

    Plaque inside the passenger hut at a Namibian airfield.

    A passenger hut at a Namibian airfield. More posh than most we encountered in Botswana and Namibi.

    🌍📷📓

    → 8:52 AM, Jun 25
  • We’ve had big, gorgeous monarch butterflies in the yard recently. 📷

    → 7:59 AM, Jun 25
  • Africa journal – one year ago – spectacular leopard encounter

    June 17, 2019 [Note from 2020: Overlap here with yesterday’s entry. I’m repeating myself.] We arrived at Windhoek in Namibia two days ago, after a commercial flight of less than two hours, and were greeted outside customs by Antone, who put us in an enclosed VW van with air conditioning and car seats. He drove us through Windhoek, a relatively new city 29 years old [Note from 2020: That’s what Antone said. Wikipedia says it’s about a century older], the capital of Namibia and apparently a commercial center as well. Antone told us that Windhoek grew up as a crossroads between other major Namibian cities and for its proximity to mines. Because Namibia is surrounded by mountains, the airport is 38 km out of town. We drove out of town, stopping at a Shell service center that seemed a little sketchy, though it was clean and well stocked and I suspect that if I were to ever find myself living and working in Windhoek, that service center would be a place I’d stop for gas and coffee and a snack and never think twice about it. [Note from 2020: It looked like an ordinary American or British highway rest stop. These moments of sheer normality were dissonant on our trip. Almost everything was so alien.]

    It was a 3.5 hour drive to our camp, which was frankly too much.

    The Okonjima Bush Camp turns out to be inside the Okonjima Game Reserve, which is owned by the Africat big cat rehab center. We stayed in a spacious private round lodge, with a simulated hut motif and what appeared to be stone walls. The lodge was separated in half by a partial wall, with the bathroom facility on the opposite side of the beds. The shower was open.

    Opposite the beds, a picture window with two comfortable chairs overlooked a desert plain, beautifully silver lit by moonlight at night.

    A separate round building with a thatch roof was a sitting room, with chaise lounges and an open wall overlooking the plain. The wall had a two-foot ledge separating the room from the outside plain. The sitting room is equipped with a jar of birdseed and a small flock of guinea hens comes hopping over for treats when we come into the room, like the dog and cats at home gathering for feeding.

    (Click the photos for a bigger view)

    We were feted by the staff for Julie’s 70th birthday and our 25th anniversary. The staff came out and sang in African harmonies and brought champagne and fruit and chocolate. We already had sparkling wine in the car from the travel company, so that’s a lot of bubbly. And we have had similar birthday celebrations from other places we’ve stayed. We met a few nice couples at the lodge, and had dinner with one, Becky and Anthony from Leceistershire, England, who have been on many safaris previously, including to Namibia. We had dinner with them and split the wine.

    We had spectacular success on our game drives. On our first morning, yesterday, we went to the big cat rehabilitation center, and learned about the work they do there. We saw a few cheetahs in a fenced in reserve.

    In the evening we went out in search of leopards. Danny, our guide, had a handheld radio antenna like a capital “I” with broad top and bottom, attached to a device that looked like a walkie talkie. That was used to detect the cats’ radio collars. We located a big, 12-year-old male sleeping on the side of a large riverbed. We watched a while to see if he would get up but he did not. Still, the experience was interesting and we saw a few other animals and birds and stuff so we were satisfied.

    On the way to our sundowner drinks Danny caught another signal and so we abandoned sundowners and went in search of more leopards. And we scored big.

    =-=-=-

    First we found a half-grown leopard cub gnawing on part of a baboon carcass on the side of the river. Then its mother came from across the river, with another cub about the same age. A brown hyena stalked the smell of the carrion, and came slowly down the riverbed, but thought better of the project when it saw three leopards, and retreated with its fur all bristly to look more threatening. Somewhere along the way, the first leopard cub retreated to the top of a dead tree, taking the baboon carcass with it, and it gnawed on the carcass from up there,sometimes letting it dangle, playing with its food.

    This whole process played out over the course of an hour or so, and was very exciting.

    This morning we went out and used the same radio mechanism to locate several white rhinos. We tracked them quietly on foot for the last part of the expedition.

    Then at 1:15 or so our guide drove us to the local airstrip – why didn’t we fly in there in the first place, rather than drive? Compared with some of the airstrips we saw in Botswana, this was elaborate, with a hangar and a small waiting area, a two-room rectangular structure with glass sliding doors, the interior of which looked like it had been transported from an office building in a big city. It was decorated with flying memorabilia.

    Our plane was an eight-passenger prop driven Kodiak, and we got to our next destination in 35 minutes.

    Getting out of the plane was quite a contrast. Okonjima was a scrub desert, with lots of thorn bushes and other dark green foliage, much like home in San Diego. Temperatures were about 40 degrees F in the morning – I needed my puffy jacket and hat and midweight pants and wished I had gloves too – to barely 70 in the hottest part of the day.

    Our current location, Twyfelfontein, is hardcore desert, a flat plain of khaki colored sand punctuated by hardy shrubs each a few dozen yards from the other, and big piles of rocks dozens of feet high, with mountains off of the distance in every direction like a backdrop. The sun was bright and the temperature topped 90, maybe even topped 100. And me still in my heavy fleece, which I ditched quickly.

    We took one of the ubiquitous khaki colored trucks, with comfortable seats mounted in the bed, to Camp Kipwe, our home for the next two nights. The camp comprises the usual cabins with a hut motif, built into stacks of boulders on the side of a hill. I have sworn off of my usual media pop culture references for the duration of this trip, but if I had not done that I would say this place reminds me of the Flintstones, whereas Okonjima reminded me of Gilligan’s Island. It’s beautiful and luxurious here, and we have the suite, at the highest point in camp, with a bedroom and living room, and open walls overlooking the spectular desert vistas. Even the bathroom has specatulcuar views of the desert; from the toilet I can see a beautiful plain.

    As ever, the food is delicous, though all we’ve had to eat so far is a couple of grilled ham and cheese sandwiches done up for our late arrival, along with small green side salads.

    On a housekeeping note: Apparently we may not have laundry this stop. And us sweating in the heat. I don’t think anyone will be offended. Also, I decided for the first time to convert my convertible pants, which I have resisted doing until now because it seemed like getting the legs back on might be a hassle. Why have convertible pants if you don’t convert them?

    Also, no Internet here whatsoever for two days. We’ve had good internet in Okonjma; I got to upload photos to the cloud and update Flickr. OK internet in Johannesburg, as you’d expect at an airport and airport hotel. Bad and unusable internet in Botswana. but now two days without Internet whatsoever.

    Sundowner in a few minutes, then dinner. Tomorrow we’re up at 5 am for a game drive and visit to some interesting archeological formations and ancient bushman wall decorations. As with the other places we’ve stayed, other than Chobe, we have a nice long break in the early afternoon to regroup. Then we’re off to our next location the day after tomorrow.

    I can feel we are on the downhill side of our African holiday.

    🌍📓

    → 8:19 AM, Jun 24
  • I saw these chairs on a New York City street a few years ago. The gentlemen who occupied the chairs were very nice. 📷

    → 2:12 PM, Jun 23
  • African safari journal – one year ago – a travel day

    June 15, 2019 – Yesterday was a travel day. We had an 11:25 am charter flight from the LLT airstrip [Note from 2020: That’s the Leroo La Tau safari camp, where we stayed for a few days], and could have jammed in a short game drive, packing and breakfast before then, but it would have been too stressful. Instead we decided to sleep in, which turned out to be 6:30 am for Julie and 6:55 am for me. We were done sleeping. Noteworthy because at home we can sleep hours later if we don’t have to get up. We packed, had breakfast and killed about two hours reading and such before we left for the airstrip at 10:40 am.

    The resort staff, who adore Julie, packed us bag lunches, which was lovely but more to carry, so we had mixed feelings about that.

    A guide named Bones, who provided star lessons two evenings earlier, was our driver and with many heartfelt farewells to the staff, we set off for the airstrip. After three days together it felt as if we were leaving friends, as we had before at Camp Xakanaxa.

    We drove along unpaved roads. The Toyota moved slowly and fishtailed on fine white sand like beach sand that buried the road. A few times Bones stopped to shift gears to get us out of a particularly deep sand drift. A couple of times he hopped out of the car to inspect the wheels and undercarriage. We slowed down once to avoid goats in the road, and another time to avoid cows. We arrived at the LLT airstrip, with its only building a structure that looked like a Little League dugout, along with fire protection equipment. The airstrip was just a long narrow rectangle of flat packed dirt a thousand or so feet long. We had been told earlier that sometimes flights were delayed because animals wandered out on the runway, and sometimes elephants dragged brush on the runway, which had to be cleared for takeoff and landing. But none of those things were problems yesterday; our plane was waiting for us, a four-seat prop job with the pilot standing beside it. The pilot was named Myello; he had joined us for breakfast earlier. We climbed in the plane and he warned us that the plane was light and the skies were windy, so we might be blown around a bit. That concerned me; I don’t do well with vertigo; my brain shuts down in panic mode. Myello taxied us to the far end of the runway. He consulted a computer printout folded in his hand. We were sitting immediately behind him in the snug little plane, closer than the backseat passengers to the driver of a car. He held his hand behind him to show me a line of text demarcated with his thumb; I saw Julie’s surname, Brown, with letters and numbers in a row. I looked at it blankly. He gave me a querying look. We couldn’t speak because the engine noise was too loud, and he was wearing a headset. The line of text was clearly an important question, but I had no idea what it was. I smiled and nodded and gave him the thumbs up. He appeared satisfied. He reached the end of the runway, turned the plane around, paused and gunned the engine. The plane lunged forward and we lunged into the air. [Note from 2020: I wonder if bush pilots do that pause-and-then-floor-the-accelerator for dramatic effect?]

    The warning about rough skies proved overstated. Our half hour flight was relatively smooth and comfortable. I looked out the window and photographed the desert. The desert gave way to our destination, the city of Moun, which is more of a town of a few tens of thousands of people. I could see houses below us like ordinary suburban subdivisions, but with apparently unpaved roads.

    (Click the photos for a bigger view)

    Moun has a proper, but very small, airport, with a tower and many commercial planes lined up and a terminal where we were met by a porter and representative of our travel company, who together helped us get our bags checked and get us through customs. The porter disappeared before I could tip him. I didn’t tip the travel company representative, although now I think maybe I should have. [Note from 2020: Tipping was a mystery in Africa. I just gave money to people at random.] The terminal has a bare-bones but comfortable cafe, where we had $5 water bottles, attempted to get on the WiFi, and waited for our flight at a gate that looked more like a bus terminal than an airport, crowded with what seemed to be backpackers, safari travelers like us in khaki and olive green, businesspeople – a couple of them tapping on laptops – and just regular people taking a flight.

    Our flight to Johannesburg was a regular commercial flight, same as any intercity hop in the US. Again, our travel agent arranged to have a porter meet us at the gate, who escorted us and helped us with our bags through customs and deposited us at the CityLodge hotel, located inside the airport, where we spent our first night in Africa 11 days ago. By now we felt like Africa veterans, light years beyond the greenhorns we’d been when we arrived. We’d faced down lions and hippos and elephants and the aggressive porters who hang around the airline check-in desks (completely different than the lovely porters who’d met us at the gate when we landed – we’d have another encounter with the check-in variety of predator the next day).

    I had been looking forward to returning to the airport hotel, to enjoy a restaurant meal, sleep in a climate controlled room, and use reliable WiFi. But the room was too warm, the food was mediocre at best and the service was slow, and once I’d spent 15 minutes on the Internet I was done with that, though I did leave my iPhone and iPad connected to back up photos to iCloud and Flickr.

    We discovered we were able to check luggage at CityLodge until we returned for our final night in Africa before going home in 10 days. For some reason the desk clerk on our first night 10 days ago told us we couldn’t do that. Huh? Julie insisted we buy a cheap duffle at the airport shops for that purpose, and we did. I filled it in part with unnecessary electronics, including a power brick, several electrical adapters that are lightweight but relatively bulky, and a noise canceling headset, also lightweight but bulky and unnecessary until my flight home. Julie checked clothes and a travel pillow and backrest for the flight home. I estimate we cut our travel weight by about 25% and I am delighted by that.

    And now we’re on a commercial flight to Windhoek in Namibia, eager to get back to the bush and resume our holiday.

    =-=-=-

    Anton, our driver, takes us through Windhoek. He says it’s a city of about a half-million people, only 29 years old, built because it’s a crossroads between other Namibia cities. It’s the nation’s capital, and also seems to be an industrial town. Seems relatively quiet for midday. [Note from 2020: Wikipedia says Windhoek was founded in 1840, abandoned, and then founded again in 1890. I remember it felt more like a large town than a city of a half-million.]

    =-=-=-

    We were taken on a long, 3.5-hour drive from Windhoek to the Afrikats lodge, which was our next destination. The highway is rural between towns, mostly devoid of human construction, flat and well paved and maintained, two lanes in each direction narrowing to one each way. In towns we see construction, a sign of affluence, alongside poverty, people living in shanty villages. We see warthogs and baboons on the side of the road. Once or twice we pass big clusters of shacks and some tents forming bazaars of traditional crafts.

    We drive through mountains. In other places the desert is flat enough to see to the horizon.

    It is a long drive, much of which we sit in silence.

    [Note from 2020: It was a looooooong drive, in an air-conditioned modern minivan, more comfortable than but not as interesting as the Toyota safari vehicles. Later, when we returned to the US, we asked our travel agent WTF she booked us for a drive rather than a short flight – Afrikats has an airstrip a few minutes away. She said the flight would have cost literally thousands of dollars US. So, yeah, the drive was a good idea.

    [Also: I was puzzled during the drive by the juxtaposition of prosperity and poverty – new city construction immediately adjacent to squatter camps. A few days later, one of our guides told us the squatter camps were populated with people who were coming to work on the construction.]

    =-=-=-

    We stopped at a Shell rest area to stretch our legs and wash up. All variety of people there, very busy. We saw several stout middle aged women wearing traditional clothing, flowing print dresses with two-part hats representing animal horns. A skinny man approached Julie to try to sell wooden beads bigger than golf balls. She has difficulty brushing him off.

    [Note from 2020: The dresses are traditional women’s clothes for the Herero, a Bantu ethnic tribe of about 250,000 people. The dress is based on colonial German women’s dresses. Photos and more information on Wikipedia: <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here…>]

    📓📚

    → 8:50 AM, Jun 23
  • "City of Girls," by Elizabeth Gilbert, was very enjoyable and a nice change of pace from my usual reading 📚

    Elizabeth Gilbert is of course the author of “Eat Pray Love” and a writer who until recently I never gave any thought to because I pigeonholed her as a women’s novelist. But I heard her interviewed on two of my podcasts recently, and she seemed wise and smart and likable. And the novel is set in 1940 New York, which is a time and place that fascinates me – it’s the time and place where my parents and aunts and uncles and many of my childhood friends' parents grew up (and then they moved out to Long Island and had us).

    And I’ve been trying to read more variety lately, particularly books by women and PoC. So I said sure, why not.

    And I’m glad I did.

    “City of Girls” is the story of Vivian Morris, a privileged 19-year-old who has been kicked out of Vassar because she is a bad girl. Her parents are at a loss what to do with her, so they ship her off to New York to live with her Aunt Peg, the black sheep of the family, who runs a seedy theater. Vivian, who is beautiful and a brilliant seamstress, gets to work as the theater’s costumer, and immerses herself in the world of theater and nightclubs.

    She has a lot of sex. A lot. Gilbert said in her interviews that she wanted this book to be about how someone could be a good person without being a good girl. Vivian isn’t always a good person – she does one thing in particular which is awful – but she tries to be her best, which is all any of us can do, right?

    The novel is written in the first person, by 90-year-old Vivian in 2010, writing to a younger woman who has asked Vivian what Vivian’s relationship was to the younger woman’s father. “City of Girls” is Vivian’s answer. She takes a while getting there, and I loved going on the trip with her.

    The characters are great, the plot twists are surprising, defying what we have learned to expect from romance (and from action-adventure with romantic B-plots, which is something I read a lot of) and the characters are extremely well-drawn and lovable (except for when we are supposed to dislike them, which we do). The writing style is breezy and witty, and if Vivian sometimes uses language more appropriate to a Millennial or Gen X than to somebody of her generation, well, so what?

    Particularly appealing to me, Gilbert fleshes out the worlds of midcentury New York in great and fascinating detail.

    The title is “City of Girls” and this is a novel about women; men are peripheral characters, though a couple of them are fascinating.

    This novel kept me up late reading one night, which is something that rarely happens to me anymore and I love it when it does.

    I expect I will read more Gilbert. But I’ll save Eat Pray Love for last. It still doesn’t seem like my kind of book.

    www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/318…

    → 8:37 AM, Jun 22
  • The pandemic comes close to home

    This morning I talked with a friend who lost his sister to covid Friday. I learned about that on a professional mailing list my friend and I share; another member of the list also said he’d lost a family member to covid.

    I then talked with a family member of someone who is close to me, and is very sick and may well pass, well, any minute now. This person had covid a couple of months ago, and we thought they had recovered from it, but now it appears possibly not.

    And last night I saw a tweet from someone who lost their mother to covid a few days ago, and is expecting to lose their father to covid any day now.

    Please do not leave any condolence replies here. We do not deserve them; we are among the fortunate and blessed.

    But please do wash your hands regularly and thoroughly, practice social distancing when you can and wear a mask where social distancing is impractical.

    → 1:26 PM, Jun 21
  • Rosebud at the side of the house. “Feed me, Seymour!” 📷

    → 12:06 PM, Jun 20
  • Alaska Airlifts ‘Into the Wild’ Bus Out of the Wild

    Alaska has airlifted the “Into the Wild” bus out of the Alaska backcountry. Too many tourists made the trek to the location and had to be rescued.

    The abandoned Fairbanks city bus that Christopher McCandless lived and died in has been removed from the Alaska backcountry. Photos that went viral on Facebook on Thursday show the bus being hauled out by a Chinook helicopter and then loaded onto a long flatbed trailer for transport to an unknown location.

    → 11:31 AM, Jun 20
  • Trump wants to dismantle the OTF: Trump wants to dismantle the US Open Technology Fund, a nonprofit that funds development of open source communications tools used to counter oppression throughout the world.

    Cory Doctorow:

    The Trump admin wants to nuke the OTF and give all its money to a bunch of grifty, closed-source privacy and firewall-circumvention tools. These tools are NOT auditable, and the companied that make them stand to make BANK from the move.

    I have no idea whether these companies are CIA fronts, but I tell you what, if i was a Uyghur in Xinjiang or a dissident in Tehran, I would NOT trust my life to these tools. No goddamned way.

    Even if these companies aren’t fronts for spooks, they could be in the future. Because if the companies that made these tools – companies that had been dealt a huge favor by the US government – were suborned for surveillance later, it would be very hard to catch them.

    OTF’s ironclad rule of funding open, free code isn’t just a way to allay suspicions about the tools' true purpose – it’s also a preventative against corruption, because the projects OTF funds can’t insert spy code without being caught right away….

    This money built the tools that Black Lives Matter protesters use, to say nothing of the Hong Kong protests and many other movements around the world.

    It will be a genuine, deep, widespread tragedy if this move isn’t stopped.

    → 1:16 PM, Jun 19
  • Algonauts: Experimental artist Shardcore uses machine learning to generate “Algonauts” – uncanny, fake Peanuts panels – Cory Doctorow

    → 1:09 PM, Jun 19
  • That’s the art of the deal, people! Trump paid $7.3 million for covid “test tubes” that turned out to be contaminated miniature soda bottles – Cory Doctorow

    → 1:01 PM, Jun 19
  • Avia, c’est mort: French courts struck down a law that would have required the Internet Archive to remove 15 million documents, including a repository of Grateful Dead music, for violating anti-terrorism rules – Cory Doctorow.

    Keep on truckin', you French courts you.

    → 12:49 PM, Jun 19
  • Austerity in disrepute – Cory Doctorow: 75% of Americans favor maintaining or expanding extended unemployment benefits from pandemic stimulus bills. The extensions are popular even among Republican voters.

    But GOP politicians intend to terminate the payments, and they’ve been clear about why: poor people won’t risk death or permanent disability in order to serve cocktails or give manicures unless the alternative is homelessness and starvation.

    → 12:43 PM, Jun 19
  • Cory Doctorow: Microsoft criticizes Apple’s monopolism – and Microsoft oughta know about monopolies!

    But companies that try to sic antitrust regulators against competitors need to watch out, because that kind of thing bites back.

    → 12:40 PM, Jun 19
  • A Man Has Raised Over $10,000 To Tap-Dance Over His Downstairs MAGA Neighbor And Says He’s Donating All Proceeds

    → 10:15 AM, Jun 19
  • Thousands of tampons! The Hugo Girls discuss Mary Robinette Kowal’s Hugo award winning novel, “The Calculating Stars,” which is, they say, basically Mrs. Maisel in space. They also discuss women’s body hair. And also feminism and sexism and stuff.

    → 8:26 AM, Jun 19
  • Today, Explained: A good day for DREAMers: The Supreme Court’s decision upholding DACA was a wonderful surprise, but Trump can strike down DACA again in literally a few hours. The Supreme Court didn’t rule on the specifics of DACA; it just said Trump didn’t file the right paperwork. Transcript

    Still, it’s a good day for for DREAMers, who can breathe a little easier. And also a good day for all Americans with empathy for their fellow human beings. And now we all get to enjoy a little more the contributions that DREAMers make to society.

    → 8:13 AM, Jun 19
  • Ice skating in a suit. 1930s via

    → 12:11 AM, Jun 19
  • My new employer needs a professional looking photo.

    → 10:53 PM, Jun 18
  • Medical supply company threatens to sue to stop iFixit from distributing repair manuals

    Cory Doctorow:

    When a once-in-a-century public health emergency strikes, some people leap to help. Others leap to sue.

    Ifixit published maintenance manuals for medical equipment. Steris Corporation threatened to sue them for it.

    Steris, makes sterilizer equipment, is behaving obscenely. This is why we need “right to repair” laws – you have a moral right to do whatever you want with your own property. In this case, that right is literally a matter of life and death.

    → 3:27 PM, Jun 18
  • The EU has an opportunity to break Big Tech's monopolies by requiring interoperability

    This is the EU’s interoperability moment – Cory Doctorow

    It should be legal for you to buy a third-party service to manage your Facebook feed.

    → 3:25 PM, Jun 18
  • via

    → 12:40 PM, Jun 18
  • → 12:37 PM, Jun 18
  • Oracle: How sports teams are keeping fans engaged during the pandemic shutdown: Money quote: “Sports fans are committed and involved. They are the only customers I know who are willing to have their favorite team logo tattooed on their bodies.”

    → 12:34 PM, Jun 18
  • How to stop Google Calendar from automatically including Google Meet links in meeting invitations.

    Zoom: Disable Google Hangout on Google Calendar

    This has been a stone in my shoe for years; now that I’m sending out meeting invitations more frequently, it’s become a real problem.

    The article refers to “Google Hangout,” which is what “Google Meet” was called recently.

    → 9:01 AM, Jun 18
  • Television promo photo 1970 in Hungary via

    → 10:24 PM, Jun 17
  • vial

    → 10:19 PM, Jun 17
  • Welcome to the future, brought to you by America’s Independent Electric Light and Power Companies, advertising art from Newsweek, April 1959. via

    → 10:07 PM, Jun 17
  • Cory Doctorow: “Hue and cry, posses, sheriffs: What did we do before cops?” Professional policing is a relatively recent invention, and one whose time has gone.

    → 12:49 PM, Jun 17
  • Cory Doctorow: Americans don’t trust Big Tech to moderate their communities: Censorship by big business in partnership with government is not the answer to harassment, hate speech and fake news on the Internet.

    → 12:49 PM, Jun 17
  • Cory Doctorow: The Earbuddy is experimental technology that takes advantage of wireless earbuds' microphones being sensitive enough to tell the difference between touching different parts of your face. You could control your phone or communicate with each other just by touching your face (except of course you shouldn’t touch your face). Didn’t Carol Burnett pioneer this technology?

    → 12:49 PM, Jun 17
  • Cory Doctorow: “Robots aren’t stealing your job: Your boss is destroying it and blaming it on automation.” Automation enables gig-economy jobs, offshoring and flexible scheduling that drives down pay and turns people into robots.

    → 12:49 PM, Jun 17
  • Cory Doctorow: “SF anthology to benefit covid charities: Surviving Tomorrow is a new anthology whose entire profits go to pay for covid-19 tests for front-line workers. Contributors include Neil Gaiman, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Robert Silverberg, Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, Andrew Mayne, Scott Sigler, Orson Scott Card, Alan Dean Foster, A.C. Crispin” and Cory.

    → 12:48 PM, Jun 17
  • Cory Doctorow: Politics and sf: People look out for each other during a crisis, despite stories about people going crazy and turning on each other during disaster, or when civilization collapses.

    As pulp writers, science fiction writers don’t want to confine themselves to man-against-man or man-against nature, we like the plot-forward twofer, where it’s man-against-nature-against-man, where the tsunami blows your house over and your neighbors come over to eat you. That kind of story of the foundational beastiality of humans does make for great storytelling, but it’s not true. That’s not actually what happens in crises.

    In crises, the refrigerator hum of petty grievance stops and leaves behind the silence to make you realize that you have more in common with your neighbors. It’s when people are are their best.

    → 12:48 PM, Jun 17
  • You know that thing where I was doing daily digests of links and occasional image digests? I’m tired of that. Let the firehose resume?

    I seem to enjoy fiddling with how I post to the blog and social media as much as I enjoy posting.

    → 12:47 PM, Jun 17
  • After many years working from home, suddenly I feel like I need to wear nice shirts for work most days. The reason is Zoom, of course.

    → 11:20 AM, Jun 17
  • I’m doing a few Zoom calls a day now. I hate my meeting face.

    → 10:21 AM, Jun 17
  • Found images: June 17, 2020


    1930s via


    via


    via



    → 7:19 AM, Jun 17
  • Link list: Tuesday, June 16 2020

    Cisco rolls out new solutions for remote work, learning, post-pandemic

    For instance, one solution combines video collaboration hardware and software to offer virtual visitations for inmates in correctional facilities. Another solution uses Wi-Fi and analytics software to monitor social distancing in workplaces."


    Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic: The technology of Uyghur oppression: How China uses technology to oppress Uyghurs and Kazakhs: While the concentration camps imprisoning 1M+ people are most visible, the entire region “has been turned into an open air prison where technology tracks and controls predominantly Muslim Turkic people while allowing Han people to go about their business largely unhindered.”

    The people who are “free” – that is, not interred in a concentration camp – were nevertheless forced to provide blood, DNA, fingerprint, iris and facial biometrics to the security apparatus. The penalty for noncompliance was imprisonment.

    Authorities set up a dense network of biometric scanning points throughout the region, points that Han people were typically waved through, while Turkic people had to stop and be scanned – more than 10 times/day.

    And while Xinjiang is its own unique horror, it has its roots in the US post-911 counterinsurgency theory (COIN), pioneered by US Army General Petraeus, and in the EU’s “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) programs.

    China’s motto: “teach like a school, be managed like the military, and be defended like a prison.”

    American companies supply tools to China, and those companies sell consumer products in the US, provide funding to universities such as MIT, and collaborate with scientists.

    The US can end complicity with the program and put pressure on the Chinese state and companies to end human rights abuses in the region.


    Cory: How covid spreads: Research shows covid is less likely to spread outdoors than indoors, long-duration contacts are more dangerous, and “good air circulation is a powerful preventative.” Also, mysteriously, most positive cases won’t spread the disease, while “a small minority [of ‘superspreaders’] will spread it widely; the mechanism for that is unclear.


    Crooked Timber’s John Quiggin has a cynical take on yesterday’s surprise pro-LGBTQ decision by the US Supreme Court: The court follows election returns. If the court had overturned LGBTQ protections yesterday, it would have fired up Democrats to win more elections, pass even broader civil rights protections, and encouraged Democrats' belief that Gorsuch is an illegitimate right-wing hack. As it stands now, the court is free to make more decisions like Citizens United, which entrench Republican power.

    Quiggins expects “hard neoliberals” on the right “to welcome the fact that this unwinnable fight is over,” but “culture warriors who back Trump will be furious.”

    In other words, the court sees the country swinging to the left, and conservatives are shifting from seeking gains to protecting against losses.


    Mo Rocca: Sammy Davis Jr. Death of the Entertainer: Sammy Davis Junior loved to perform so much that he once said he wanted to die on stage. He very nearly did, delivering a barnstorming performance just before his death from cancer in 1990.

    From the age of three Sammy Davis, Jr. did it all better than anyone else – singing, dancing, acting, even gun spinning.


    There Is No ‘Second Wave.’ The U.S. Is Still Stuck In The First One


    Mo Rocca: Audrey Hepburn: Death of an Icon: Lithe and elegant, Audrey Hepburn survived girlhood malnutrition in Nazi-occupied Belgium. For the rest of her life, she wore her gratitude for surviving that experience.


    Oracle BrandVoice: 4 Questions To Ask SAP During SAPPHIRE: IT teams need to focus on innovation, not deploying and managing on-premises systems. “Companies don’t want a driveway full of tools and car parts.”

    → 2:07 PM, Jun 16
  • Interesting finds in my home office

    After my Mom passed away in 2000, and then my Dad in 2004, I inherited my Mom’s rolltop desk. It’s in my home office. If you’ve ever done a Zoom call with me, you can see it behind me. It’s not my primary desk; it’s just sitting there with piles of stuff on it.

    Yesterday I was looking through the drawers of the desk for a Post-It note. The drawers are mostly empty; I don’t use them. The wide drawer in the top center had some USB thumb drives in the front tray, which I’d put in there myself a few years ago and then forgot about them. In the big wide space behind the tray, there were some bills that have been sitting there since before Dad died. Behind those, two envelopes: One was from 1989, containing two tickets to my middle brother’s college graduation ceremony. They still looked new, red and shiny.

    The second envelope had a handwritten address on the front, written by a child in pencil. It looked like one of my brothers' handwriting. Interesting! The return address was Harley Avenue Elementary School. That’s the school my brothers and I attended. Even more interesting!

    I opened the envelope and found a letter that my brother had written to his future self, part of a class project. My youngest brother was then 9 years old, and he wrote it to himself at 19. I would have been about 15 then. It was 1976.

    I took a photo with my iPhone camera and sent it to my brothers for their enjoyment. In situations like this, I marvel at what my 1976, 15-year-old self would have thought about that technology. I was a die-hard science fiction fan then; I would have loved it

    The message was unremarkable. I don’t think my brother’s head was in the assignment. He is wondering what the prices will be 10 years in the future, and whether inflation will still be a big deal. Inflation was a big deal in 1976.

    My youngest brother and I both had the same teacher when he was in second grade and I was in third, Arlene Kaufman, who of course we called Miss Kaufman. I actually heard from her two years ago on Facebook. Yesterday, I looked her up again on Facebook to let her know about the new find, but she seems to have deleted her account. When I heard from her, she was living in Queens, NY, parts of which were hard hit by Covid. I hope she’s doing OK.

    Here’s how I heard from Miss Kaufman (I’m just going to stick with that name) two years ago: A year or so before that, in my random Internet cruising, I came across the cover of an early edition of the science fiction novel Red Planet, by Robert A. Heinlein. Miss Kaufman had a small library in the corner of her classroom, which contained that edition of that book. It was one of the first two chapter books I read. The other was a biography of Helen Keller. And I loved Red Planet. It awakened a love of reading, science fiction, and Heinlein that sticks with me to this day.

    A year after the first post, Miss Kaufman wrote to me on Messenger; she said a former student of hers had forwarded the post to her, and she said she remembered me too. I received the message from her while I was in a hotel room in Florida on a business trip.

    I wonder what that must have been like for her. You remember a 9-year-old-boy and you turn around and he’s a 50-something man writing from a hotel room in Florida. I mentioned this insight to a friend recently, who said Miss Kaufman is probably used to it. I guess that happens to teachers frequently, if they are good teachers with long careers who touch many students' lives.

    Now that I think of it, regarding the Helen Keller biography: I love history now too. So thanks again, Miss Kaufman!

    I never did find the Post-Its. It turned out I did not need them. I used a memo pad instead — from my first job in tech journalism, at Open Systems Today, 30 years ago. They gave me far too many of those memo pads and I rarely have a need for them, so they sit around my office. I photographed that with the iPhone, too, and sent it to my editor on that job, who I recently reconnected with about freelance work.

    My office is like an archeological site. I really need to declutter. 📓

    → 8:14 AM, Jun 16
  • Found images: Tuesday, June 16 2020



    Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, 1910s. She wore pants, smoked publicly — often on the roof of the White House — kept a pet snake and a dagger, partied all night and slept until noon.

    “I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice Roosevelt. I cannot possibly do both.” — Theodore Roosevelt

    via


    via


    via


    via





    → 8:02 AM, Jun 16
  • Link list: Monday, June 15 2020

    On Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic:

    Mad Magazine’s Al Jaffee is retiring young – he’s only 99.

    Jaffee launched “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” and the fold-out.


    Marie Foulston and her friends held a pandemic party in a spreadsheet.


    The pandemic is rising in red states because it turns out you can’t just ignore healthcare and trust that only brown-skilled people, who are Democrats, will die.

    The GOP is trapped in a prison of its own making. To keep the fortunes of the 1% intact, they need to restart American commerce. But doing so will not just murder racialized people who don’t typically vote Republican, but also the GOP’s base: elderly and rural people.


    The US has virtually no cyberdefense; it’s virtually all offense.

    [Jason Healey on the Lawfare blog:] “There are tremendous risks when a fearsome offense is paired with a weak defense,” because “a more fearsome cyber offense makes it more likely they will get in a sucker punch on the U.S. before Cyber Command can bring its big guns to bear.


    NYC community activists are scraping traffic-cam to find evidence of police brutality against Black Lives Matter protesters.


    Security researchers find a huge trove of data belonging to customers of “niche dating sites.”


    Why the Pandemic Is Driving Conservative Intellectuals Mad. Conservative intellectuals view respect for life and health as symptoms of civilizational decay.


    What We Know About the White House’s Secret Bunker Popular Mechanics: “There’s a whole city’s worth of stuff underneath the White House and other government buildings in and around Washington, D.C.”


    “Is God Dead?” at 50

    54 years ago, Time Magazine put an essay on its cover: “Is God Dead?”

    The authors did not mean to claim that religion was irrelevant (which was my interpretation of the question).

    The article was far more nuanced than the cover might suggest, but [theologians William Hamilton and Thomas Altizer] were not hedging in their views. It’s tempting to take them metaphorically, to say “death” and mean “irrelevance,” but they were speaking literally. The idea was not the same as disbelief: God was real and had existed, they said, but had become dead.

    Jesus Christ was a better model than God for the work that needed to be done by man, of which there was a lot—particularly, for him, within the civil rights movement. He saw religion’s place in the human realm, not in heaven. Altizer took that idea a step further: Jesus Christ had to die in order for the resurrection to happen all those Easters ago, and likewise God had to die in order for the apocalypse to take place.

    Today, religion is a far more powerful world force than it was in 1966.

    “Nobody would ask whether God is dead [today],” says Rabbi Donniel Hartman, author of the new book Putting God Second. “You can’t understand three-quarters of the conflicts in the world unless you recognize that God is a central player.”

    And yet, 97% of Americans professed belief in God in 1966; by 2014, only 63% of Americans “believed with absolute certainty.” And while religious conservatives control the White House, Senate, and judicial benches, the biggest religious affiliation in America is “none.”


    The GOP is rolling over its 2016 platform for 2020, with numerous criticisms of the “current President.”


    Alexis Madrigal: America Is Giving Up on the Pandemic


    Jesus Christ, Just Wear a Face Mask!: There is plenty of evidence that face masks and social distancing are effective and easy methods of blocking the spread of COVID-19 and permitting safe reopening, and no good reason not to use them.


    Civil Rights Law Protects L.G.B.T. Workers, Supreme Court Rules

    A good day. And Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch led the decision.

    Conservative hypocrites who claim to support the literal interpretation of the law are now tying themselves up in knots trying to criticize this this decision, which is based on literal interpretation of the law.

    Also, Justice Samuel Alito says it’s a terrible decision because women go crazy if they see a penis.


    Supreme Court lets stand California’s ‘sanctuary’ law on undocumented immigrants

    A victory for decency and common sense.


    Mo Rocca: The Forgotten Forerunners: Three people who changed history, but who you’ve probably never heard of: Black woman Elizabeth Jennings integrated New York public transit a century before Rosa Parks and years before the Civil War; Black man Moses Fleetwood Walker played pro baseball more than a half-century before Jackie Robinson, and Lois Weber was a highly paid, successful and prolific movie director in 1910s Hollywood.

    → 2:11 PM, Jun 15
  • As a Jewish New Yorker I’m supposed to be appalled by thin-sliced bagels – particularly thin, longitudinally sliced bagels – but honestly I think they are a great idea and I’m surprised they didn’t become popular before now.

    → 12:44 PM, Jun 15
  • Nathan Lane’s performance in “City of Angels” is particularly amazing because, well, he’s Nathan Lane. He’s always been talented and charismatic but I only ever associate him with roles like he’s played on “The Bird Cage” and “Modern Family.”

    → 10:23 PM, Jun 14
  • We hate “Penny Dreadful: City of Angels,” but can’t stop watching.

    We don’t hate Nathan Lane though. He’s outstanding.

    → 9:45 PM, Jun 14
  • Linked list: Sunday, June 14, 2020

    The reality show “Cops” was canceled a short time ago. Should scripted police dramas follow? On the Today, Explained podcast www.listennotes.com/podcasts/…

    I know that depiction of police on TV is problematic, but I loved “Hill Street Blues” and “NYPD Blue.”


    On Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic: LA schools returned grenade launchers but kept their assault rifles. And a voting machine company won’t give election officials a login to inspect the integrity of their own voting machines. pluralistic.net/2020/06/1…


    Mo Rocca investigates sitcom deaths and disappearances, including Richie’s older brother Chuck on “Happy Days,” the two Darrens on “Bewitched,” etc. With Henry Winkler and Sandy Duncan. www.mobituaries.com/the-podca…


    Mo Rocca: For a year, JFK impersonator Vaughn Meader was one of the most famous and successful entertainers in the US. He’s virtually forgotten today. The Kennedy assassination ended his career in a single moment, and he never got over it. A surprisingly poignant story. www.mobituaries.com/the-podca…


    Bottlenecks? Concerns about a possible shortage of glass vials to contain and distribute the coronavirus vaccine. If and when we get a vaccine. www.reuters.com/article/u…


    In a time of quarantine, car sex isn’t just for kids anymore. melmagazine.com/en-us/sto…

    But what about love in an elevator?


    Trump Hates Losers, So Why Is He Refighting the Civil War—on the Losing Side? www.newyorker.com/news/lett…


    Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police www.nytimes.com/2020/06/1…


    Spike Lee refuses to say Donald Trump’s name on ‘Da 5 Bloods’ press tour, refers to him only as ‘Agent Orange’ www.yahoo.com/entertain…


    A serious conversation about UFOs podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0…

    UFOs are one of those topics that it’s hard to take seriously because they’re covered in kitsch and conspiracy. But there are those who take them seriously, which means approaching the question with humility. The history, frequency, and consistency of these events point toward something that merits study. But the explanations we force onto them — from religious visitations to aliens — confuse us further. We’re working backward from beliefs we already have, not forward from phenomena we don’t understand.

    Ezra Klein talks with Diana Walsh Pasulka, professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and author of “American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology.” In her book, Pasulka describes how she “embeds in the world of UFO research and tries to understand it using the tools of religious scholarship.”

    “There’s something here that’s very strange,” Pasulka says. But she doesn’t know what it is

    Klein talks about how society ridicules UFOs and fringe beliefs as a means of shutting down discussion about them. Ridicule can be more effective than outright censorship.


    Unbundle the Police www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc…

    We require too much of police – solving crimes, controlling traffic, providing psychiatric intervention, controlling the homeless. And many towns depend on traffic citations as a form of revenue (which basically means these towns are funded by armed robbery but sure whatever). Too much of that work is contradictory; it’s unreasonable to expect the same person to take down an armed shooter and calm down a domestic disturbance or provide help to a homeless person.

    The solution: Unbundle those jobs and give then to different people.

    This solution doesn’t address police corruption. Many police departments seem to see themselves, not as public servants, but as occupying armies subjugating unruly natives.

    → 12:47 PM, Jun 14
  • Exercise is not just important to health; it also stimulates the mind. For example, when I was exercising recently I had the insight that “I Dream of Jeannie” and “Bewitched” are essentially the same show.

    → 12:03 PM, Jun 14
  • Africa journal - one year ago today - Tswana language lesson

    Julie has picked up a few words of Tswana, one of the two major languages of Botswana. The other major language is English:

    Kealeboga =thank you Dumela mma= good morning - different ending if you’re talking with a man vs. talking with a woman.
    Re mono fela= we are just here
    Re kgobile= we are relaxed 📓 🌍

    → 10:50 AM, Jun 14
  • People attending Agent Orange’s June 19th rally need to sign away their right to sue if they get COVID.

    Since this article ran, Bunker Boy rescheduled the rally, but as far as I can see the legal weaseling remains intact.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elections-2020/trump-rally-sign-up-includes-disclaimer-about-potential-covid-19-exposure/ar-BB15mmDB?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email

    → 12:17 PM, Jun 13
  • African safari journal – one year ago today – a visit to a local village

    In the morning at home, I look at the news. Here in Africa, in the morning I look at the gnus. A herd of wildebeest gathers on the plain outside our cabin as the sun rises.

    Last night, one of the guides gave us a brief five-minute tour of the African starscape. One thing I keep forgetting is that we are in the southern hemisphere now, so the stars are completely different. Until last night, I forgot to look up at the sky. I can see Alpha Centauri, Antares, the Milky Way and those other places I’ve read about in science fiction books for so many years.

    The man doing the star show used a laser pointer that shot out of visible beam of light, so he could easily point out the various stars in their location, as if we were in a planetarium. I did not realize laser pointers could do that. I thought you had to point them at something to display a dot at that location.

    It is now about 20 after eight on Thursday morning. In a few minutes we will be leaving for what is billed as a cultural visit to a local village. I have no idea what is in store for us there. But I am looking forward to it!

    Yesterday afternoon we saw a Toyota truck go by in the evening game drive, carrying a full load of black people. It was the first time I had seen black people in the back of the Toyota, as passengers, rather than driving. Our guide told us that they were teachers from the same school that we are going to visit today. They look very young, as though they were teenagers and students themselves.


    The cultural event proved to be an excursion to Khumaga (khoo mah cha), a nearby village of about 2,000 people. We drove in on an unpaved dirt road, past houses ranging from circular mud huts to plain square brick buildings to small neat houses with proper windows and fences and cars in front that would not have looked out of place in a middle class American neighborhood. We saw some people, but not a lot, men walking in pairs at the kind of deliberate pace you maintain when you’re going to be waking a long way. Children waved to us cheerfully; we grinned and waved back.

    We visited a school for kindergarten through seventh grade. A teacher told us briefly about the school. She seemed citified, in a brightly colored floral skirt and blue double breasted jacket that might have been a fleece. Fleeces are ubiquitous here, the resort staff wears khaki fleeces as part of their uniforms. The teacher asked for donations and seemed shocked when we told her, truthfully, that we had not brought wallets or cash. I’ve gotten in the habit of locking my wallet, cash and passport in my room safe when arriving at a resort. We just don’t need it. We’ll arrange a donation later today.

    We went into a seventh grade classroom and the children broke into three groups to crowd around the three of us who visited from the resort, me and Julie and a man in his 70s who had previously volunteered at the peace corps, so he was familiar with this kind of place and situation. His wife, who is disabled and uses a wheelchair, waited in the Toyota.

    My little group of children, mostly boys 11-13 years old, pushed up against me in a circle. They asked me how old I am and marveled at the number (it amazes me too, kids) and admired my hair and shirt and shoes. They asked me what kind of animal is my favorite (our dog and cats at home – but in Botswana I like elephants, giraffes, zebras, gnu and baboons). They told me what they want to be when they grew up, a doctor, scientist, dentist and soldier. They asked me what kind of work I do, and seemed satisfied with the answer. They loved elephants and told me with relish that they can kill you. They showed me a worksheet of what to do and not to do when you encounter elephants. There is an elephant overpopulation problem in Botswana; the beasts trample crops and destroy property. The government is considering reversing the ban on hunting, to reduce numbers. The boys asked me my religion; I said Jewish, non-practicing. I don’t know if that registered. Earlier, the teacher had said the children study world religions and she listed a few, of which Judaism was not one. That’s reasonable; we Jews are few in numbers, just a few million in the whole world, and maybe a child in an African village has no need to know about us.

    The kids and I ran out of things to talk about but they cheerfully demanded to be photographed, so we did that. They mugged for the shot and then crowded around the iPhone to see how the photo came out.

    Afterward we visited the kindergarten, about 25 children in a one room building with a concrete floor and metal roof. They sat on the floor and colored and greeted us cheerfully. Then we visited a woman who wove baskets; she wore a pink bathrobe, belted carefully to make it look more like a dress.


    Tomorrow, which is Friday, will be a travel day. Saturday too. Multiple hops to get from here in Botswana to JoBurg, where we will again spend the night at an airport hotel. I must admit I’m looking forward to a dinner that is not a production number, and going shopping at the airport stores for additional camera accessories. The on a plane Saturday morning for two flights and a road transfer to our next stop, in Namibia. Namibia and Botswana are neighboring countries so hopefully there will be direct flights between them one day.

    📓🌍

    → 11:54 AM, Jun 13
  • Safari journal – one year ago today – we learn the local language and speak it badly

    Leroo La Tau, our current safari camp, is in the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park in Botswana, on the banks of the Boteti River. The resort is on a cliff overlooking a river and plain. We can go out on a deck and see wildebeest and zebras and elephants and stuff. Last night when I woke in the middle of the night, I heard a terrible screeching. It sounded a little electronic. Today I imitated the sound for our guide, Gee. He said it sounded like a jackal.

    Gee is knowledgeable, enthusiastic, efficient and friendly, as all our guides have been. He has a restful energy, unlike TS, who was great but who could be a bit jangly. The hotel staff loves Julie, and treat her like a queen, which she deserves! Julie has been trying to learn a few words of Tswana, one of the common languages of Botswana (the other is English). I have followed her lead. We regularly butcher “thank you” and are working on “hello” and “good morning.” There is also “slowly slowly,” which seems to translate roughly to “take it easy” or “mellow out” or “chill.” Also, “we are here,” which seems to have a deeper meaning I have not been able to ken.

    I am drinking far more liquor now than I do at home. At home I have 0-4 drinks per month. Here I have been having 3-4 drinks per day. At the end of the afternoon drive we have “sundowners” in the field; the guide mixes drinks and lays out snacks on the Toyota tailgate, or on a little panel that folds down from the front of the truck. I hae gin and tonic. Before dinner, we have more drinks. I have discovered Amarula, a liquor made from local fruit and milk. I’m told it tastes like Baileys, which I have not had in many years. Amarula is delicious. Then we have wine with dinner. I feel like Keith Richards.

    The reason I don’t drink Baileys at home is that milk gives me an upset stomach (though I can no trouble with cheese and yogurt, which I love and consume regularly). Here in Africa, though, the milk doesn’t bother me.

    And now it’s night and we’re in bed. We can hear water lapping not too far below the cabin. And we can also hear a variety of animal sounds, including a loud grunting that may be one or more hippos just a few yards away.

    📓🌍

    → 8:24 AM, Jun 12
  • African safari journal – one year ago today – Camp Xakanaxa to Leroo La Tau

    We’re on a 12-seater Cessna now, on our way from Camp Xakanaxa, where we spent three lovely days, to our next stop, the name of which I cannot remember.

    TS, our guide at Camp X [Note from 2020: I’m not going to spell it out] is tall, thin and handsome, with dark black skin and a broad smile. He tells people his name stands for True Story, because he only speaks truth. At other times, he says the name stands for other things. He has a dry sense of humor. He is passionate about being a guide, with a deep knowledge of nature and a strong drive to take us to see the most interesting animals and birds. He finds them by listening to their calls, driving slowly while hanging his head off the side of the truck to watch the ground for leopard or lion tracks, by consulting with other guides on radio, and apparently by extra sensory perception. When he hears over the radio that the other guides have found some fascinating animal, he throws the truck in gear and we careen across the road, bouncing high in the air. A few times I’m completely airborne above my seat. He usually doesn’t say what he’s after, but I know that when we’re moving at that speed it’s something good. Yesterday it was a leopard, which we could barely see when we arrived. That’s just how it goes; game drives are a lot of patience and luck.

    TS is opinionated about which animals are worth stopping for – lions, leopards, elephants and giraffes – although elephants are less interesting than leopards, so we do not stop to see elephants on the way to a leopard. I love baboons and monkeys but TS thinks they are a waste of time so we do not stop to see the monkeys. That’s ok; we’ve seen plenty of monkeys anyway.

    TS tells us he comes from a small farming village in Botswana, with 35 brothers and sisters from multiple mothers. Many people in the village were unschooled and illiterate; they believe book learning is a waste of time, compared with learning what they need to know for farming.

    TS sat next to a group of Italians during lunch, and asked them how to say hello in Italian. Later, after I asked him, he said everybody he knows growing up came from that one little village. Now he meets people from all over the world. The world is an amazing place.

    As I thumb-type this, we are in a small 12-seater Cessna, with those same Italians, on our way to the next stop for three days. We loved Camp X and felt a connection to the place and staff there but I’ll be glad to sleep indoors. And wake up indoors too. The tents at CX get cold at night and in the early morning when we get up for our dawn game drive. They give us hot water bottles after dinner, one each, which we carry to our tent in our arms and tuck under the blankets. And the blankets are lovely and warm and the sheets are clean and white. It’s quite cozy – despite how cold it is outside, 40 degrees, I still find myself throwing the blankets partway off during the night.

    But it is most definitely not warm when we wake up.

    And it’s dark at night too; camp power is provided by a generator and some of the tent lighting runs on batteries. The generator goes off around 10 and goes back on a little before wake up.


    The food at Camp X is fantastic. [Note from 2020: True for all our camps.] I’m going to need bigger pants. Meals are served in a big tent; we eat at big long wooden dining tables and real chairs, with china and linen tablecloths and napkins and separate glasses for wine and water, like a restaurant. We serve ourselves from buffet tables and talk with the other guests and guides, who eat with the guests, about what we saw and did that day, although we did get into a brisk political discussion with a few Germans one night. I would have preferred to talk about the game drives. Political discussion is one of the things I’m getting away from.

    The German who talked politics asked me, the next night, about my work. I had resolved that for the duration of this trip I would not volunteer what I do for a living, but would tell people when asked. So I did. I think next time I’ll make something up, like “Mafia accountant” or “large animal veterinarian.”

    I’m thumb typing this on a 12 seat plane from Camp X to our next stop. 50 minute flight. We just swerved abruptly and I was overcome by vertigo and I closed my eyes. Julie said she saw another plane that we had swerved to avoid

    Landing now. I’ll put away my phone.


    And now we are at the Leroo La Tau Lodge, still in Botswana, this time on the desert. It’s 1:26 pm, we checked in, got our orientation talk from the manager, and had another enormous and delicious lunch. I brought two sets of pants, one for cooler weather and one for warmer weather. I should have brought bigger pants too.

    LLT is designed along the same lines as CX, with huts with thatched roofs. But LLT is a complex of buildings, rather than tents on platforms. We’re told to expect cooler weather here.

    This is the Kalahari Desert. Coming in on our 12-seater plane – Clement was our pilot again – we saw small villages of huts and cattle and goats penned in with rough fences, called kraals. On the dirt road to the camp – more bouncy bouncy in one of the ubiquitous converted Toyota trucks – we saw a truck going in the opposite direction, with a middle aged white couple in the cab. The woman, in the passenger seat, had a small dog on her lap. It occurred to me that this was the first time we’d seen animal who was a pet,in a week.

    CX and Chobe Lodge were surrounded by electrical wire fences, high enough to stop elephants but let other animals through. We saw baboons on the lawn in front of our cabin in Chobe. A resident hippo wanders around CX, his name is Oscar. We saw him just outside the camp when TS drove us in to the camp on our first day; TS cautioned us that Oscar is not domesticated, he is a wild animal, and hippos are vicious too, and can move fast when provoked, we should stay 30-40 meters away. Not sure how you can do that in the camp, but it was a moot point; we did not see Oscar again.

    When we drove up to CX, two managers greeted us with a big smile and a goofy dance. A short time ago that would have made me uncomfortable; I would have assumed it was a residue of colonialism and racism. Now I think it’s just how they do things. One of the managers was a tall, handsome, erect young man named Mox, with deep black skin and a broad smile. Unlike his colleagues, Mox spoke in a British-inflected accent; he told us later that he was educated in a private track in a public school and – he confessed – has an English girlfriend. (“Shocking,” I said, and he was surprised that I said it, but Julie explained that I was kidding. I said it with a deadpan that any American would have recognized I meant the opposite of what I was saying, but that inflection doesn’t translate. We told him that we have absolutely no problem with mixed-race relationships.)

    But we did not know any of that when we were checking in. I saw him as another native member of the hotel staff, who likely spent his entire life in Botswana. So I was surprised when he said, as he picked up our bags to carry them off, “Alright alright alright!” Surprising to meet a Matthew McConaughey fan so far from home!

    I’ve been thinking here about the legacy of colonialism. At home I had a vague, unarticulated idea that colonialism was unalloyed evil and that it had left a false skin on African culture that would inevitably be sloughed off as colonialism receded in the past. While I’m still no fan of colonialism, I now think the Africans regard the colonial legacy as part of their heritage, just as much as their native roots, and are in no rush to slough off European influences, any more than the English are looking to rid themselves of Roman and Norman influences. In general I have encountered similar attitudes when dealing with people in the developing world. In past decades we worried about American cultural imperialism, but people who live in the developing world seem happy to take what pleases them or is useful from American and European culture, and retain their native traditions where those are pleasing or useful. This also applies to China, which can’t be described as a member of the developing world anymore; it’s a superpower rivaling America, maybe soon to surpass us. [Note from 2020: I’m not certain I agree with my 2019 assessment of geopolitics here and post-colonial culture. I’d only been Africa a week when I wrote it, and less than four weeks total.]


    Last night at CK I woke up in the middle of the night and heard animals calling nearby. I turned over in bed in the dark and saw, on the canvas wall of our tent, the shadow of a vast animal moving slowly by. I turned over and went back to sleep.

    This evening as we were washing for dinner we heard the sound of two male elephants nearby disagreeing loudly.

    🌍📓

    → 1:21 PM, Jun 11
  • We are watching “The Great” and rewatching “Rome.” Great TV. So many severed heads.

    → 9:24 PM, Jun 10
  • I have a new job! I’m happy to say I started work this week as a senior writer at Oracle, getting out the good word about what Oracle and its customers are doing in the cloud. I’m working with former colleagues and a team of others that I’m looking forward to getting to know.

    → 2:28 PM, Jun 10
  • The real lesson of William Shatner's “Get a Life” sketch

    William Shatner’s “Get a Life” sketch from Saturday Night Live in the 1980s. dai.ly/xmagzq

    I’d never seen it before.

    In an interview on Gilbert Gottfried’s podcast, Jason Alexander describes meeting Shatner, when Alexander was starring on Seinfeld and Seinfeld was a hit. Alexander, who’s an enthusiastic Trekkie, was thrilled. www.gilbertpodcast.com/jason-ale…

    Shatner told a story about how he had trouble getting work after Star Trek, and hated being typecast. He hated the fans too. Later, Shatner said, he came to appreciate the rare gift of being Captain Kirk. Alexander said he tried to learn from that, even as he was having trouble being typecast as George Costanza.

    I’m no William Shatner or Jason Alexander, but I’ve enjoyed some success in life while also sometimes feeling bitter that I had not had more success, or been successful at different things.

    Jason Alexander is a mensch.

    → 7:24 AM, Jun 9
  • Our African journal – One year ago today – At the Okavango Delta in Botswana

    I literally squeed when I saw a mother baboon carrying her baby. “Oh my god it’s a baby baboon!” I exclaimed in a high pitched squeal like an 11 year old girl. The baby dropped off the mother, stood on his hind legs a wobbly moment, then looked puzzled and fell over. Who would not squee at that?

    =-=-=-

    Dawn river cruise. Instant coffee from metal camp cups at sunrise, mixed with hot water from a Stanley insulated bottle

    =-=-=-

    Kasane International Airport, outside Chobe National Park in Botswana, is tiny, but it is clean and modern and efficient. [Note from 2020: Kasane is small, but a proper airport. Many of the other places we caught planes were just airstrips — a grassy field with a long cleared strip, often graded but not paved, to accept small planes.] We’re here on our way to Camp Xakanaxa (pronounced ka-ka-na-ka), in the Okavango Delta in Botswana. The plane is a Cessna 208 or 208B Caravan. It seats 12 but we are the only two passengers, along with pilot Clement and another guy, who I think is the baggage master. Other than the road, I don’t see a sign of human habitation from the air.

    I watched the ground go by outside the window of our little plane. Dozed off. Woke up. Same. Ground was greener and wetter and swampy. We descend for landing. I see a few houses.

    =-=-=-

    The Okavango airport is a dirt airstrip with no buildings, just a structure like a Little League baseball dugout with a sign that says VIP Lounge. Good to see irony thrives in Africa. There is no Starbucks.

    =-=-=-

    TS, our driver, was moving fast and the truck was rocking and rolling over rutted roads. I was daydreaming when suddenly I was knocked off my seat and hit the unpadded metal floor on my ass, hard.

    I was uninjured, which was lucky, because that’s how people get permanent, disabling back injuries. On the other hand, had I gotten a permanent, disabling back injury, it would have been a better story than everybody else’s story. Everybody else gets back injuries reaching for paper towels from the top shelf of their kitchen cabinets.

    We parked next to two sleeping male lions, and waited a half hour for them to wake up. For the first part of that time there were about four other trucks parked in a semicircle, watching the lions. How would you like to be sleeping in bed and wake up to find 25 people in a semicircle around your bed staring at you while you slept?

    TS asked whether he should get out of the truck and wake the lions up. We said sure, and he laughed. Funny guy, that TS. We agreed that taking a selfie with the lions would be a great way to become world famous and score many views and likes on YouTube. Unfortunately you would not be around to enjoy the celebrity.

    Internet connectivity here at Xakanaxa is crap, electricity goes out at 10 pm so I’m just going to power down my phone at bedtime so it has maximum charge for tomorrow. Shocking!

    📓🌍

    → 6:32 AM, Jun 8
  • Julie received a text message that just said, “Mom I’m sorry.”

    It was a wrong number.

    Julie did not respond because, she said, every response she could think of seemed cruel. “Wrong number.” “I don’t have any children,” etc.

    → 5:44 PM, Jun 7
  • Riot aftermath here in La Mesa, California: Murals by local artists cover smashed storefronts 📷

    About 10 days ago a video went viral of Amaurie Johnson, a young African-American man, apparently being bullied by police at a transit station here in La Mesa, a suburb of San Diego where Julie and I live.

    Charges dropped against Amaurie Johnson after controversial arrest in La Mesa www.cbs8.com/article/n…

    As I understand it, the incident was, sadly, unremarkable. The kind of thing African-Americans have to go through every day. Nobody was injured physically. But coming on the heels of Floyd George’s murder, the incident struck a spark. People protested in La Mesa Village, and the protests turned to riot, looting and arson. Two banks were burned down, and many storefronts were smashed.

    This is bonkers. La Mesa is a sleepy little suburban village. The kind of place you go for Sunday brunch and then a little window-shopping in boutiques. And even then, you wouldn’t come from very far to get to La Mesa. It’s a lovely little village but nothing special. Nowhere you expect riots.

    We could hear the rioting in our living room window Saturday night. We had no idea what was going on; we thought it was Saturday night traffic on the highway, which is close enough to our house that we frequently hear traffic going by. That’s a little spooky and resulted in my compulsively checking the news every few hours for days.

    The rioting spread from the village to the nearby La Mesa Springs Shopping Center, which is just a few hundred feet away from the village. That shopping center is anchored by a big Vons supermarket, where I shop frequently.

    Following the riots, the very next morning, the community came together to clean up the village and shopping center, and make temporary repairs. Artists decorated plate-glass windows. I stopped by La Mesa Springs yesterday to see what it looked like.

    → 1:09 PM, Jun 7
  • African travel journal – one year ago today – I complain like a Karen

    Yesterday was our first full day really in Africa, when we got out of the airport/hotel complex in Johannesburg to the Chobe Game Lodge in Botswana . This place is posh, with a vaguely colonial style and dozens of staff, smiling and jumping to attention. Indeed, service is both overly attentive and not quite what we wanted.Four or five people serve us at each meal, and yet service is slow and it can be difficult to find someone if you need something. I ordered a rump roast for dinner last night from a gemsbok, a type of antelope. It was delicious, but very tough, and I sawed at it for minutes with a standard table knife, looking around for a server to ask for a sharp steak knife. But there was no one to be found. There had been two separate people there a few minutes ago to take our drink orders, separately and with unnecessary redundancy.

    When choosing our meals, Julie pointed out one dish, which was labeled as spicy, and asked how spicy it was. The waitress smiled and said promptly that it is spicy. Julie said, yes, but HOW spicy. The waitress smiled and said it’s “spicy.” Yes, said Julie, but is it VERY spicy. On a scale of one to five, Julie said, where five is extremely spicy and 1 is not spicy at all, how spicy is it? The waitress said, “I’ll have to ask the chef,” and left the table, returning with the answer. “Two.”

    Another example: Breakfast yesterday was a buffet of cold food. There was a server at the buffet, a smiling young woman with a “TRAINEE” badge. I asked her if I could get any hot food, and she said no, this was all cold food. The buffets had veils in front of them, I expect to keep out flies, and in some areas when I wanted something it was this young woman’s job to lift the veil so I could serve myself, as I would at any buffet. Flavored yogurt and fresh and canned fruits.

    When I got to the table, the waitress brought over our menus. Of hot breakfasts. “B-b-b-b-b-ut,” I said to myself. “The waitress over there just said ‘no hot food.” And why is there a waitress serving at a buffet – doesn’t that defeat the whole “buffet” concept, making it more of a “cafeteria.” Then I realized that the waitress was thinking I was asking if there was hot food at her station, and she answered truthfully. I did not ask her if there was hot food elsewhere, so she did not answer that question.

    The whole place is like that. Communications difficulties. But the food has been delicious, and we had very nice sandwiches for lunch, sitting out on a deck while we could see giraffes and elephants not too far away. So, we are having a fantastic time.

    We got lucky with an upgrade to our room – a whole suite, two bedrooms and a sitting room. Everything is spacious and beautiful.

    I took more than 300 photos yesterday alone. Wednesday evening, the day we arrived, I chatted with a fellow Californian who was taking no photos at all. He and his wife and daughter had been traveling 10 days. He said he’d been on trips with people where everyone was taking photos and he took none, because he figured the photos part was covered and he was free to just enjoy the experience. I endorse this point of view, and you can expect the rate of photography to trickle off as the trip progresses. But for now I am having a great time taking photos.

    This is a philosophy I’ve been thinking of for some time actually, how social media makes us observers of our own lives, taking photos or (if you’re like me) thinking of things to say about what you’re doing. So yeah the long term goal for this trip is less photos and thinking of things to say online, and more being in the moment. But for now I’m doing the other thing.

    I get the idea this fellow I was talking with worked in tech, like me. But I’d made another rule for myself this trip - if anyone asks what I do I’ll gladly tell them, but I won’t volunteer my work when I’m introducing myself, which is a thing that I’m told is characteristically American in social situations.

    Yesterday was very scheduled, and I gather that will be typical of this trip. Up at 5 am for a dawn game drive, get driven around the bush on a flatbed open truck with padded seating for about two and a half hours. It’s cold in the morning, temperatures in the high 40s or low 50s this time of year. We wear light winter coats.

    Then it’s back to the lodge for breakfast at 8:30 am.

    River cruise at 11 am, then back to the hotel for lunch at 12:30 pm. There’s a choice between eating in the hotel restaurant, which is an enclosed deck, nearly like being indoors, or on an open air deck. We chose the open air deck and feel we chose wisely, with beautiful food and delicious views. I meant to say delicious food and beautiful views, but I like the other way.

    After lunch I tried to have a nap but only got in about 20 minutes. Yesterday was the day that jet lag hit me hard. I got about three hours of sleep Sunday, the night before we left California, then only a few minutes of sleep on the 24 hours or so we were in transit. Then I was wide awake at 1:30 am Thursday. I don’t think those days add up, by the way. Traveling for 48 hours through nine time zones gets confusing, like a complicated time travel Doctor Who episode.

    I laid in bed until about 3:30, and heard a lion roar not too far from us, which was thrilling. The lion did not sound anti-Semitic in his food preferences, like she would gladly have eaten me. I was glad to be indoors behind thick walls. I got out of bed and sat reviewing photos and writing in this journal - that was the most recent entry before this one – until it was time for the morning game drive.

    Even the afternoon attempt at a nap was refreshing, and we were up again for a 3 pm tea. The tea was served by about a half-dozen servers dishing up tea and savory and sweet pastries. Again, too much service – that’s 2-3x the number of people needed to do the job. Or, really, we didn’t need any servers at all; just put out the beverages and cakes and let people help themselves. But instead we had a half-dozen people serving up food.

    I let Julie order first, as a gentleman does, and everything she ordered sounded good so I just said “the same” to each. The servers thought that was hilarious; they laughed and laughed.

    A few days before we left for Africa, I talked with a friend and former colleague and the conversation turned to our upcoming trip. I had completely forgotten until that moment that this woman I was talking with had LIVED for a time in South Africa. I asked her for tips and she pointed out that we were traveling to third world countries, and we should leave our American expectations about service behind. Things that seem like they should be easy will be difficult (steak knives, hot breakfast). Things that seem like they should be difficult will be easy. We’ve only been in Africa a couple of days but I think I’m starting to understand.

    =-=-=-

    Chobe Game Lodge, Chobe National Park, Botswana – Lovely surprise at breakfast this morning. The waitstaff came over with a cake and sang “happy birthday” and “happy anniversary” and one or two songs with an African rhythm, all done with African multipart harmonies, one of the women ululating occasionally and little synchronized dance moves. It was all very beautiful and silly and fun.

    I had temporarily forgotten that this was a celebration of a milestone birthday for Julie. The birthday itself is October. And also a celebration of our 25th anniversary, which was in December.

    I suspect the guiding hand for this and one or two other pleasant surprises, is the travel agent who helped us arrange the trip , Vanessa Hensley at African Portfolio. onsafari.com. So far, we have found working with her and the company to be a fantastic experience – I rate them 7 out of a possible 5 stars.

    Julie did about 85% of the work with Vanessa on planning the trip. I kicked in for the final few weeks but mostly my role has been showing up. I’m pretty good at showing up.

    River cruise in a few minutes.

    I wrote a longer journal entry this morning but I don’t know if I will ever post it. I was cranky at the time. Nothing helps you get over being cranky like cake for breakfast. With occasional ululation.

    =-=-=-

    Dinner tonight: Buffet style, served on linen covered tables in a clearing over a short boardwalk from the lodge. Marimba band playing one the path a bit of a distance away, far enough to be pleasant but not overwhelming. Thandi was our waitress again, for the fifth time or so. We’re starting to get fond of her. I had steak filet with a pepper sauce. There was a tasty local bread, a distant cousin to naan. I asked the server what kind of bread it is; he said “local bread.” Ah.

    One of the foods was ox tail. A woman did not understand what the serverwas saying, so he said “ox,” then stuck out his butt, pointed at it and said “tail.”

    I also had poached pair in red wine, for dessert.

    Now Julie is packing. I already have, as far as I can. I made a separate pile for things I brought and now regret including three pairs of heavy cargo pants, and two external power supplies for our gadgets. I also wish I’d brought a camera strap instead of the camera holster I did bring, and I wish I’d brought a light knapsack to use as a daybag, in addition to my computer bag, which is good for travel days but too much to bring on drives and boat cruises.

    📓🌍

    → 11:24 AM, Jun 7
  • Seen at the supermarket: a woman wearing a mask and tiara.

    → 10:23 AM, Jun 7
  • Consumer reports: How to safely and effectively record video during a protest www.consumerreports.org/audio-vid…

    → 1:02 PM, Jun 6
  • Our Africa trip journal - one year ago today: Botswana

    We arrived at Kasane Airport, a small airport outside Chobe National Park in Botswana, yesterday, and when we stepped outside the airport that is when our trip really began. A driver from the resort met us, a dark-skinned black woman wearing a navy medium weight coat and wool beanie hat despite 80-plus degree heat. We loaded aboard our vehicle, which was not the shuttle bus I’d expected, but rather a flatbed truck with high sides and padded bench seats. She drove us about 40 minutes, almost entirely on the park’s rutted dirt roads, to our home for the next three nights, the Chobe Game Lodge inside the park, which is a vast nature preserve on the Chobe River. We had a few minutes to settle in and then we had tea and snacks, then a game cruise on the river, on a flat pontoon boat with about a dozen people. This small group and our guide, a dark-skinned black woman named RB, would be with us the three days of our stay. RB is also the boat pilot, sole deckhand, and bartender.

    I’m currently enjoying jet lag at 4:34 am. Wake up call for river cruise in 25 minutes! An hour or two ago I heard an animal roar or growl or trumpet outside the lodge. It sounded big and possibly carnivorous and not a bit anti-Semitic in its food preferences.

    Note from 2020: Up until the point we got in that open-air tour bus, the trip to Africa had been very ordinary, just like flying between any two major metropolitan airports anywhere in the world. But when we got on that tour bus, it was a different world. We stopped on the side of the road and looked and wildlife, including elephants. Elephants! Right there on the side of the road! We saw a lot of that over the next few weeks, but it never felt ordinary.

    📓

    → 10:45 AM, Jun 6
  • African safari journal: One year ago today, Julie and I arrived in Africa

    From my travel journal, lightly edited for typoes:

    We’ve been in transit nearly 2 days now. And we are almost there.

    We left the house at 8 AM on Monday. Our flight was more than four hours from San Diego to Atlanta. I barely remember it now so I guess it was fine. We had a 90 minute connection to Johannesburg. Julie was having a little bit of difficulty with baggage, so we grabbed one of those golf cart things and were chauffeured around the airport in style, coming apparently close to bowling over pedestrians a couple of times, which made the drive more enjoyable. We decided to check our big bags at the gate. We have literally 5 to 10 flights on this trip – I’ve lost count – which makes me worry about checking bags. On the other hand carrying all the bags with us does not seem entirely practical. I’ll worry about this problem when it comes up.

    The flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg was about 16 hours. It is a long flight. A very long flight. A very very very long flight. No, it is even longer than that. The longest duration nonstop flight in the world is Los Angeles to Singapore, and that is only 18 hours.

    I was not interested in any of the movies on the plane. My brain quickly tired from reading. Prior to the flight, I downloaded every season of The Good Place, and watched more than a dozen episodes. I did not like the first 9 episodes but after that I got into it. I don’t know if I will ever say that about a TV show again, until my next long-haul international flight at least. [Update from 2020: I ended up watching the first three seasons and enjoying them. I’ll catch up with the final season one day.]

    I watched “The Dark Knight,” which I’ve never seen before, and is one of those movies that makes me feel like I’m culturally ignorant for having missed. Heath Ledger’s performance was reputed to be brilliant, and it really was. He chewed the scenery admirably. I guess subtle acting is a higher skill, but scenery chewing is a good skill too, and Ledger was great at it. A couple of online articles talked about him having studied various sources, and worked hard to get the Joker’s speech intonation and laugh. None of these articles noted that Ledger was copying the laugh wholeheartedly from Caesar Romero’s Joker in the Batman TV series from the 1960s, Hoo hoo ha ha! Nothing wrong with him doing that, but I’m surprise nobody picked up on it in the articles about the movie.

    Other than Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight was dumb.The theme is a very old and ugly one in American pop culture – going back to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and beyond – that law and order and the Constitution are all fine but some threats are so terrible that only a strong man can save us, by operating outside the law. Breaking the law in order to save it. You know, like Donald Trump saving us from illegal immigration. Or every President from Nixon to Reagan saving us from drugs. Or every President from Truman to Reagan saving us from Communism. And the Nazis and Japanese before that. And Communists and gangsters before that. So basically we’ve been in a permanent state of emergency the past century.

    So yeah The Dark Knight was dumb. And disturbing if you think about it. As was Batman Begins before that. And yet I want to see The Dark Knight Returns. Because I’m crushing on Anne Hathaway, since The Devil Wore Prada. [Update from 2020: I might have enjoyed the movie more if I was not watching it on a screen barely larger than my hand, on a 16-hour flight.]

    We got up and walked around the plane a couple of times, thus missing the entertainment value of deep vein thrombosis.

    We arrived in Johannesburg at about 5:30 PM, and were greeted at the gate by a porter with a name card, as arranged by our travel agency. His name was Phumani, and he talked with a couple of the people that we passed him in a non-English language. I asked him what it was and he said it was Zulu, which seemed passably exotic to me.

    We checked in overnight at the CityLodge hotel, which is connected to the airport. If you’ve stayed at any airport hotel in the US, this was pretty much the same. And that’s fine.

    This morning I was up a bit before six, Julie a few minutes later. I went out to the airport in search of some things I’d forgotten to pack: Toothbrush, razor, TSA lock, USB-A port. [Update from 2020: I have no idea what I mean by “port” here. A hub?] Got everything but the port. The airport had a large and diverse array of shops, including a Woolworth that includes a whole small grocery store.

    And then we went to the gates for our final short flight to Kasane. [Update from 2020: That’s Botswana, adjacent to South Africa] We’re waiting at the gate now. After the flight we have a 45 minute shuttle bus to the Chobe Lodge [In Chobe, also Botswana] and that is the beginning of the main part of our trip, about 47 hours after leaving home. The thing about travel to distant locations is that they are very far away.

    Lotta people at the airport with their hand out. I am not sure who were supposed to tip and we aren’t so I’ve basically been giving out money to random strangers. Men’s room attendants are a thing here now. They greet you with a big grin and say welcome to my office. The first time I heard it I thought it was clever. The second time I realize it is clever but it is also what they say. A man helped us with the airline checkin, operating the self-check-in kiosk for us. Yes, I know, self check-in but those things can be confusing. He asked for $20 at the end and said he would split it with another guy who also helped us. Then we went to baggage check counter and the second guy tracked us down there and also asked for $20, and became agitated when I said no we already paid the other guy. These guys were not mentioned in any of the tipping guides I’ve read, leading me to believe we may have been scammed. So it goes.

    Later, we arrived at Chobe and had ox-tongue dinner.

    📚🌍

    → 9:17 AM, Jun 5
  • Who is Alan Tarica and why does he say I’m an idiot?

    I fell down an Internet rabbit hole this morning. I received an email from someone signing himself as “Alan Tarica.” It read:

    “How do you have nothing to say? Idiots like you need to be exposed for having no critical thinking or meta cognition and no integrity.”

    I had no idea what this was about. I thought it might be related to one of my political posts, but experience tells me that it could be about _anything._I’ve been active on social media, blogs and other Internet discussion services for many years, and have received worse insults like that for expressing options about Doctor Who, Star Trek, Apple, and any number of things you’d be surprised that people get worked up about.

    I scrolled down a bit and found Mr. Tarica was apparently following up an email he sent me in January 2017 — yes, more than three years ago! — that I never replied to. I don’t even remember receiving the initial email. The initial email contained several links to articles about Shakespeare.

    That is the full extent of my correspondence with Tarica. Two emails, both sent by him, unsolicited, with no response from me. Or maybe just one email; I have no record of ever receiving the initial 2017 message from Mr. Tarica

    I am not a Shakesepeare scholar and I don’t have anything more than a casual interest in Shakespeare. I struggled through his plays in high school and college. I loved the movie “Shakespeare in Love.” Julie and I have seen a couple of Shakespeare productions over our years together; we loved one, liked one or two more and I vaguely remember another that we disliked although I couldn’t tell you where we saw it, which play it was, or why we didn’t like it (though I vaguely remember it having to do with the production rather than the plays themselves).

    I googled “Alan Tarica” this morning and found this article:

    The Shakespeare Wars: 150 years of vicious conflict www.jameshartleybooks.com/shakespea…

    From which I learn that Tarica is a middle-aged software developer in Bethesda, Md., who believes that the works attributed to William Shakespeare were, in fact, written by the Earl of Oxford, and that a conspiracy of academics is burying the truth. This is actually a somewhat common theory, dating back nearly 150 years; believers have included Sigmund Freud, Orson Welles, John Gielgud, Charlies Chaplin, Charles Dickens and the actor Derek Jacobi.

    The conspiracy theorists are known as “Oxfordians,” while people who believe Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him are “Stratfordians.”

    I also found this thread, which started in 2013 groups.google.com/forum/

    Alan Tarica apparently likes to send insulting emails to Shakespeare scholars, and people who have even casually mentioned Shakespeare, to get attention.

    Alan Tarica is on Twitter as well, where he likes to insult people.

    twitter.com/alantaric…

    Perhaps he will take notice of me as well?

    I find the whole thing charming, reminiscent of an older, more innocent age on the Internet, when the worst thing Internet trolls could do to you was send nasty message. Nowadays, the Internet trolls and conspiracy theorists literally have access to nuclear weapons. For example:

    twitter.com/realdonal…

    📓📚

    → 8:17 AM, Jun 5
  • 📷 Baked potato, deli turkey breast, spicy brown mustard. Delicious!

    → 8:39 PM, Jun 4
  • 📷 Jacaranda

    → 8:39 PM, Jun 4
  • Pluralistic: Ferguson's first black mayor, why do protests become violent and more

    On Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic pluralistic.net/2020/06/0…

    Ella Jones is Ferguson’s first black mayor.

    =-=-=-

    Why do protests become violent?

    …police escalation leads to violence. Sending police to protests in riot gear begets riots. Tear-gas begets violence. These are the findings of scholars and blue-ribbon panels alike.

    They are roundly ignored by police.

    There’s a feedback loop: violent suppression of protest leads to militancy among protesters; this is the pretence for more violent suppression. We know this, we just don’t act on it.

    Instead, “We live in a world where trained cops can panic and act on impulse, but untrained civilians must remain calm with a gun in their face.”

    =-=-=-

    “Dressing up cops like they’re on patrol in Mosul isn’t just a bad policing, it’s also incredibly expensive.” Dressing a cop in military gear costs “more than enough to outfit 55 front-line health-care workers in top-of-the-range PPE.”

    =-=-=-

    Zoom wants to help the FBI spy on you.

    pluralistic.net/2020/06/0…#more-920

    → 11:40 AM, Jun 4
  • 📚Reading "The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic."

    I finished reading “Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic,” by Mike Duncan www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/mi…

    Duncan, who is the voice of the History of Rome and Revolutions podcasts, traces the decline of the Roman Republic from the mid-2d Century to the mid 1st Century BCE — from around the time of the Gracchi brothers to the death of Sulla.

    The Republic was straining as the middle class and poor struggled against domination by a small, wealthy elite. The nation was shocked to find that the normal ways of doing things in government were just customs, easily swept aside by ruthless, ambitious men. The nation faced an onslaught of outsiders seeking citizenship. Citizens and plebs were rioting in the streets. And the nation was in a constant state of war against enemies abroad.

    In other words: Rome was nothing like the US today. This was just light reading.

    “Storm Before the Storm” was enjoyable and informative, but I can’t say that I learned any lessons that could be applicable today. The book was a lesson in the saying attributed to Mark Twain: History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

    → 8:32 AM, Jun 3
  • QAnon: 'Where We Go One'

    QAnon believers, united in a battle against what they see as dark forces of the world, reveal where the internet is headed.

    The Qanon community is united in the belief that they can use the Internet to make the world better, and build personal connections and friendships

    I do not believe the fundamental tenets of Qanon, which are as I understand it that Hillary Clinton, Obama and their allies are part of a conspiracy dating back at least 50 years, which includes a child sex ring operating out of a pizza restaurant.

    And I certainly do not believe that Donald Trump is a hero and anointed by our military to save us. Trump isn’t the cure for the disease, he’s the disease’s most prominent symptom.

    But real world conspiracies are not that different from what Qanon believes. Pizzagate is bullshit but Jeffrey Epstein was real.

    And my own political beliefs today would have seemed completely bonkers and paranoid to myself 25 or so years ago.

    www.nytimes.com/2020/05/2…

    → 5:37 AM, Jun 3
  • 10 things Democrats could do right now - if they actually wanted to stop Trump’s power grab

    Democrats control the House, many state Houses, governors’ offices, and the City Halls of major cities. There’s a lot they can do — right now, if they have the will.

    1 - Stop giving Trump more police power. Stop working with Republicans to revive the Patriot Act.

    sirota.substack.com/p/10-thin…

    → 5:31 AM, Jun 3
  • How ‘antifa’ became a Trump catch-all www.politico.com/news/2020…

    Antifa isn’t an organized group and there’s no evidence they’re responsible for rioting but you do you, Republicans.

    → 5:29 AM, Jun 3
  • RIP Irene Triplett, the last living person to receive a US Civil War pension

    Triplett’s father, Mose, fought for the Confederacy and then joined the North and fought as a private. After the war, he had “a reputation for orneriness.”

    [He] kept pet rattlesnakes at his home near Elk Creek, N.C. He often sat on his front porch with a pistol on his lap.

    “A lot of people were afraid of him,” his grandson, Charlie Triplett, told the [Wall Street] Journal.

    Pvt. Triplett married Elida Hall in 1924. She was 34 when Irene was born in 1930; he was 83. Such an age difference wasn’t rare, especially later, during the Great Depression, when Civil War veterans found themselves with both a pension and a growing need for care.

    Irene Triplett received a monthly pension of $73.13 from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

    She died Sunday from complications following surgery for injuries from a fall, according to the Wilkesboro, N.C., nursing home where she lived.

    She was mentally disabled, and lived in the poorhouse with her mother, and later in a series of care homes.

    She saw little of her relatives. But a pair of Civil War buffs visited and sent her money to spend on Dr Pepper and chewing tobacco, a habit she picked up in the first grade.

    www.wsj.com/articles/…

    → 5:26 AM, Jun 3
  • 75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice medium.com/equality-…

    → 5:22 AM, Jun 3
  • The systems that protect bad police. www.nytimes.com/2020/06/0…

    → 5:21 AM, Jun 3
  • Conspiracy theories have been fundamental to American history since the Revolution. www.npr.org/2020/05/1…

    → 5:18 AM, Jun 3
  • George Will: ‘There is no such thing as rock bottom for Trump. Assume the worst is yet to come.’

    Those who think our unhinged president’s recent mania about a murder two decades ago that never happened represents his moral nadir have missed the lesson of his life: There is no such thing as rock bottom. So, assume that the worst is yet to come. Which implicates national security: Abroad, anti-Americanism sleeps lightly when it sleeps at all, and it is wide-awake as decent people judge our nation’s health by the character of those to whom power is entrusted. Watching, too, are indecent people in Beijing and Moscow.

    www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/…

    John Gruber at Daring Fireball notes this was published just hours before Trump ordered his goons to use tear gas and flash bang to disperse peaceful protesters for a photo opp at a church. “Trump proved Will’s prediction within mere hours.” daringfireball.net/linked/20…

    Minutes before the photo opp, Trump proclaimed himself a friend to peaceful protesters. Even as he was doing that, you could hear his goons attacking peaceful protester’s in the background.

    → 5:11 AM, Jun 3
  • → 9:44 PM, Jun 2
  • KC Short, the Army veteran who organized Saturday’s protests in La Mesa, CA, the San Diego suburb where I live, said he does not condone the looting and rioting that escalated after the peaceful movement he planned. www.nbcsandiego.com/news/loca…

    → 3:51 PM, Jun 2
  • Fans rally around Crazy Fred’s, a comic book store in the San Diego suburb La Mesa (where I live), which was looted in riots this weekend. www.nbcsandiego.com/news/loca…

    I shop in the Von’s supermarket in the same shopping center as Crazy Fred’s. I had forgotten the comic store was there.

    → 3:49 PM, Jun 2
  • Protesting is important, but it's not the hard thing, or the most important thing

    To be honest, it’s not that hard to protest. It’s not that hard to go someplace. And it doesn’t mean that it’s not important. It doesn’t mean that it’s not critical. But that’s not the hard thing we need from people who care about these issues. We need people to vote, we need people to engage in policy reform and political reform, we need people to not tolerate the rhetoric of fear and anger that so many of our elected officials use to sustain power.

    nextdraft.com/archives/…

    → 12:24 PM, Jun 2
  • "It's enough to break a true patriot's heart"

    I’m trying to understand why wearing a mask — which is meant only to protect the most vulnerable among us and slow the spread of the virus to everyone else — has become the political equivalent of wearing a bumper sticker on your face. It makes me weep to think about it: Our one ready-to-hand tool for getting this country back to normal as quickly and as safely as possible has become yet another symbol of the seemingly insurmountable schism between Americans. It’s enough to break a true patriot’s heart.

    nextdraft.com/archives/…

    → 12:19 PM, Jun 2
  • Trump’s bailout czar makes out – how to stop police brutality

    Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic pluralistic.net/2020/06/0…

    Trump’s bailout czar, Justin Muzinich, responsible for trillions in bailout money, is getting rich sucking on the public tit. Democrats and Republicans alike love Muzinich because he talks like a grownup but doesn’t let that get in the way of thievery.

    ===

    Big data shows which policies reduce police brutality: Training and bodycams don’t work. What does work? Demilitarizing police equipment, and predictive policing to identify abusive cops:

    … the overall message is just commonsense. Tell cops they’re not allowed to use violence. Don’t outfit them like an army.. Punish and fire cops who break the rules.

    ===

    “Broken windows” crimefighting policies are the new Jim Crow, unfairly targeting black people.

    Matt Taibbi: “We have two systems of enforcement in America, a minimalist one for people with political clout, and an intrusive one for everyone else.”

    Cory:

    This is why NYC had to pay $33,000,000 in restitution for one hundred thousand strip-searches performed on people facing misdemeanor charges. These searches don’t merely reflect sadism – they’re also a way of creating new charges, like “resisting arrest.” It’s a twofer.

    It’s why cops – correctly – came to understand that the people they were policing hated them and saw them as an occupying army.

    Lucky for them, that was around the time military contractors successfully lobbied for a program of low-cost “surplus” sales of military equipment to local law.

    That’s when we started to see cops dressing up like infantry on patrol in Mosul. “Dress for the job you want.”

    Broken windows was a fraud, and “community policing” (the euphemism for stop-and-frisk) never worked. But it lumbers on as a zombie “fact” whose research was long discredited, claiming Black lives in its wake.

    pluralistic.net/2020/06/0…

    → 9:54 AM, Jun 2
  • Protesters Dispersed With Tear Gas So Trump Could Pose at Church

    Old Yellow Stain declared himself a friend to peaceful protesters, and then ordered in flash bang explosions and tear gas to disperse peaceful, lawful protesters so he could get a photo op in front of a church, waving a Bible.

    I’m just a nonobservant Jew but I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t say anything about flash bang explosions and tear gas. Correct me if I’m wrong?

    “He did not pray,” said Mariann E. Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington. “He did not mention George Floyd, he did not mention the agony of people who have been subjected to this kind of horrific expression of racism and white supremacy for hundreds of years.”

    www.nytimes.com/2020/06/0…

    → 9:56 PM, Jun 1
  • An American Uprising: Who, really, is the agitator here? – David Remnick at The New Yorker

    He quotes AOC: ‪“If you’re calling for an end to unrest, but not calling out police brutality, not calling for health care as a human right, not calling for an end to housing discrimination, all you’re asking for is the continuation of quiet oppression.”‬

    www.newyorker.com/news/dail…

    → 12:40 PM, Jun 1
  • In late 2001, after 9/11, I got in the habit of having my clock radio set to an all-news station to wake me up in the morning.

    If the first words I heard were “Michael Jackson,” I knew there was no big news that morning. I could just shut off the radio. I didn’t have to rush to the Internet to find out what blew up. I could just get on with my wake-up routine.

    There have been far too few Michael Jackson days this year..

    → 11:50 AM, Jun 1
  • While cowering in a bunker and doing nothing, President Tweetie demands other people get tough. www.cnn.com/2020/06/0…

    → 11:43 AM, Jun 1
  • → 9:18 AM, Jun 1
  • @dave Winer compares Trump to Captain Queeg — Old Yellow Stain.

    Hell yeah. Trump in the bunker with the White House lights off, muttering about the antifa – his stolen strawberries.

    It’s like the scene at the end of The Stand, where Glen Bateman is in a prison cell, laughing about how foolish he feels to have been be afraid of Randal Flagg, who turned out to be just pathetic.

    twitter.com/davewiner…

    → 8:27 AM, Jun 1
  • Let’s just leave Trump in his protective bunker until January, and shut off the Wi-Fi too.

    → 8:17 AM, Jun 1
  • Saturday after another night of rotten sleep I decided I need to minimize going on the Internet after dinner. I picked a bad day to start that.

    → 8:09 AM, Jun 1
  • Good morning! I spilled a little coffee on my hand this morning and the dog licked it off enthusiastically. That’s my girl!

    She says she wants maybe a light roast next time.

    → 7:01 AM, Jun 1
  • Minneapolis has a deep history of police abuse and racism

    On Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic.net:

    Minneapolis police have flouted reforms.

    “[P]olice union boss Lt Bob Kroll kept his job even after he showed up for work with a white power badge on his uniform.”

    And Amy Klobuchar declined to prosecute Derek Chauvin when she was the city’s top proseecutor, “giving him license to commit a string of crimes that culminated in the daylight murder of George Floyd”

    pluralistic.net/2020/05/3…

    → 1:40 PM, May 31
  • Looting and arson come close to home (but we’re fine)

    I slept in this morning, woke up a few minutes before 10 am and found my phone was lit up with messages from local friends. Last night there was looting and vandalism in La Mesa Village, about 2.5 miles from where we live.

    La Mesa, where we live, is a suburb of San Diego, about a dozen miles inland from the beaches. La Mesa Village is a few blocks of restaurants and antique stores and such. The village is the kind of place where you go for brunch on Sunday, followed by a stroll and some window-shopping. Lately it’s gone upscale, with some fancy restaurants.

    A few days ago, a video went viral of an African-American man, Amaurie Johnson, 23, getting arrested and apparently subject to police bullying at the Grossmont Trolley Station on Fletcher Parkway here in La Mesa, within walking distance of the Village. From the news:

    The nearly six-minute video shows a heated verbal exchange between Johnson and the officer. It also shows the officer forcefully push Johnson into a sitting position onto a nearby bench.

    Johnson told 10News at no point did he resist or assault anyone.

    “I feel as though people that look like me, um, feel the same way I do and we’re tired of it. We’re tired of having to deal with stuff like that,” he said.

    Johnson said he was cited with assaulting an officer and resisting arrest.

    www.10news.com/news/loca…

    More background here:

    www.sandiegoville.com/2020/05/v…

    Elsewhere, I’ve seen a long video of Johnson being interviewed by a news reporter. The video I saw is not the news video; it’s a video of the interview shot by another camera. Johnson is sitting in the driver’s seat of a car, with a phone propped up on the steering wheel. We can see him videochatting with a news reporter on the phone. The video I saw was shot from the passenger seat.

    Johnson tells a compelling, articulate story that he was just standing around the transit center waiting to meet some friends, when the cop started hassling him for no good reason. I find Johnson’s story believable —. with the qualification that we don’t know what happened before the video altercation with the cop started.

    Yes, I know, “we don’t know what happened before the video started” is a thing racists say. Racists say all kinds of bullshit. I’m just saying I want to hear the officer’s story, and hear from the several witnesses to the incident, before making any final conclusions.

    Coming on the heels of the apparent murder by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis just prior, this incident got a lot of attention.

    Yesterday, demonstrators started outside the La Mesa Police Department, and later closed off the highway. We could hear the action from the house – police loudspeakers saying “KEEP THE SHOULDER CLEAR,” etc. I took Minnie out for a walk anyway, and then went out myself for the second, solo part of the walk.

    Since the pandemic started, I’ve been limiting my walk to a few loops around the neighborhood. The entire neighborhood is on the side of a hill, and I can see the highway from a couple of points along the walk. This was late afternoon; the traffic was moving smoothly on the highway going west, toward San Diego, but stopped going east, inland. I saw more cars than you would expect to see that time of day; I expect they were getting off the highway and traveling on surface streets instead.

    I also saw about a dozen people on motor scooters, where I’d usually see only a couple of those every month. Some of them were moving in groups of two or three. I’m pretty sure they were all white people, for what it’s worth. I surmised at the time that they were demonstrators.

    It seems to me that if you’re going to a demonstration, and planning to shut down the roads, or at least expect the roads might be shut down, then scooters are a good way to go in and out. From that I surmise this was not their first demonstration. They knew what they were dong.

    From what I’m told on message threads from friends – I still haven’t checked the news, or social media, or left the house yet – vandalism and looting started in La Mesa Village after the demonstrations broke up. La Mesa Village is 2.5 miles from where we live. We were oblivious. We watched a movie in the living room last night. The windows were open, and we can hear the highway from the living room when the windows are open. The highway sounded particularly loud last night. We assumed that was just Saturday night. Then we went to bed.

    So that’s what I know so far. Everything is fine here for us personally. House is fine – as far as I know; like I said, we haven’t been outside yet. Julie and I and the animals are fine. Later today I’ll go out and see if I can see anything around the neighborhood, or if the neighbors know anything.

    And that’s the day so far. I’ve been awake nearly two hours and still haven’t finished my coffee. How is your day?

    → 11:49 AM, May 31
  • Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First

    Look, we all have the right to protest, but that doesn’t mean you can just rush in and destroy any business without gathering a group of clandestine investors to purchase it at a severely reduced price and slowly bleed it to death…. It’s disgusting to put workers at risk by looting. You do it by chipping away at their health benefits and eventually laying them off.

    www.theonion.com/protestor…

    → 1:47 PM, May 30
  • ThreadReaderApp now has beta support for the Micropub Spec so you can publish Twitter threads directly to your blog boffosocko.com/2020/05/2…

    Very cool!

    → 10:40 AM, May 30
  • New York couple decides to quarantine together after one date

    Gali Beeri is 37 and works as an executive assistant. Joshua Boliver is 42 and creates visual effects for movies. They both live in New York City and met at a dance class in March, as the city was preparing to lock down. At the time, they made the unlikely decision to quarantine together — after their first date.

    www.npr.org/sections/…

    What a lovely story.

    → 1:48 PM, May 29
  • US anti-vaxxers aim to spread fear over future coronavirus vaccine. A dangerously large numbers of Americans are already reluctant to take an anti-covid vaccine. www.theguardian.com/world/202…

    → 1:45 PM, May 29
  • Norway and Denmark say they will reopen tourism between their two countries soon, but will maintain restrictions for Swedes.

    Sweden did not impose a lockdown, unlike its Nordic neighbours, and its Covid-19 death toll - above 4,000 - is by far the highest in Scandinavia.

    www.bbc.com/news/worl…

    → 1:41 PM, May 29
  • Trump wants a race war to get himself re-elected

    David Pell on NextDraft:

    Remember, this is a guy who ran on Birtherism and walls, and has led with Muslim bans, kids in cages, very fine people on both sides, shithole countries, and political enemies described as human scum. When the looting starts, the shooting starts is the brand he ran on and won on in 2016.

    nextdraft.com/archives/…

    → 1:02 PM, May 29
  • I don’t have any useful judgment to share for or against the rioters in Minneapolis. I understand why they are doing it. George Floyd seems to be only the spark that ignited the fire.

    I’ve seen discussion that you needed both Martin Luther King AND race riots to achieve the gains of the 60s. King said, look, black people just want equality. They want to live in the suburbs and mow the lawn and have barbecues on weekends and complain about work and how lousy the home team is playing and bring cookies to PTA meetings and do all those other things white people do.

    And the riots said: You can have that, America … or you can have this.

    → 12:50 PM, May 29
  • How I cynically exploited "Hands Across America"

    On May 26, 1986, millions of Americans across America joined hands for 15 minutes to form a line stretching from the East Coast to the West Coast because reasons.

    On the This Day in Esoteric Political History podcast: radiopublic.com/this-day-…

    I was a daily newspaper reporter and covered the event. I remember I joined up with a group that piled into a school bus and drove a couple of hours to the shore, where the designated line-up point was. I didn’t know anybody on the bus but I joined up with a friendly group. I can’t remember if the drinking started on the bus. We got there early so we piled into a bar and drank some more. Then a few minutes before the designated time, we piled out and joined hands. I think there was singing involved. Then I think probably more drinking.

    My article reflected what a wholesome and spiritual experience the whole thing was. In other words, the article was a lie.

    → 8:54 AM, May 27
  • Talking about “A Canticle for Leibowitz”

    📚I found myself thinking about the novel “A Canticle for Leibowitz,” by Walter M. Miller Jr., occasionally for the last week or two. It’s always been one of my favorites. It tells the story about a Roman Catholic monastery that work to preserve knowledge for a thousand years after a 20th Century nuclear war. A major theme is the tension between faith and science.

    Two days ago I saw a tweet praising my appearance on the Hugos There podcast, where I talked about the novel, and about Miller, with host Seth Heasley. It was a nice moment.

    twitter.com/EmInPortl…

    I quite enjoyed doing the podcast. So I decided to listen to it again and was reminded of things I learned when preparing for the appearance, and have since forgotten.

    hugospodcast.com/podcast/h…

    This 1997 news article about Leibowitz’s death is powerful and terribly sad, particularly the opening.

    www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-x…

    → 10:06 AM, May 26
  • A Piers Anthony encounter

    I saw these books in the neighborhood Little Free Library. I read and enjoyed them in the 80s when they came out, and haven’t thought of them since.

    Piers Anthony is hugely prolific and I read a lot of his work. He fell off my radar in the late 80s but he still seems to be going strong.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Anthony_bibliography

    → 9:49 AM, May 26
  • Agenda: Great app, but not for me

    I spent some time yesterday fooling around with Agenda, an app for taking time-sensitive notes, such as notes on meetings or notes on projects with deadlines or timelines.

    agenda.com

    In addition to organizing notes by date, you can group notes together into projects and categories, and add tags to organize them further. It looks like a great app, but I do not have a place for it.

    Likewise, I took another look at Ulysses, which I used for years. It’s still a great app for writing and note-taking. But don’t see a place for that in my work anymore either.

    ulysses.app

    I’m fully committed to DevonThink for document management and note taking now. You can live inside DevonThink, or live without DevonThink, but you cannot live with DevonThink. Somebody said that recently about a different app entirely — emacs — but it applies to DevonThink as well.

    www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devo…

    www.gnu.org/software/…

    I was inspired to take another look at Agenda after listening to Rosemary Orchard describe her setup on the Nested Folders podcast.

    nestedfolderspodcast.com/podcast/e…

    ⚙🖥📱

    → 8:57 AM, May 26
  • I don’t use ad-blockers because I hate ads

    I’m a journalist. I’m fine with ads. They pay my income.

    I don’t use ad-blockers to protect my privacy. When it comes to the Internet, I’m just a typical shmo — I complain about privacy invasion but I do very little to protect my privacy.

    I use ad-blockers because ad-tech makes the web unusable. Ads and pop-ups obscure the articles I’m trying to read. Which is nuts; it’s like websites are inviting hackers to come in and break their own sites. Ads slow down my Mac until the machine becomes unusable. I have a midrange 2018 MacBook Pro. It is not an underpowered machine, and yet ad-tech routinely slows it to a crawl.

    We used to complain about TV commercials, but Internet advertising is way worse. TV commercials limited themselves to their own little time blocks. TV commercials didn’t shout over the dialogue on a TV show, or jump in between the camera and the actors so you couldn’t see the action.

    Likewise, in magazines and newspapers, the ads didn’t creep from one side of the page to cover up the article. Nobody in 1973 was ever sitting at the kitchen table reading a magazine article only to have an ad cover up the article nagging them to subscribe to the newsletter.

    The ad-tech is winning here. I use 1Blocker. It’s just not good enough, and I’m not motivated to shop around and look for alternatives, in part because it does not seem obvious to me that there is anything better than 1Blocker available.

    I don’t know what the end-state here is. Maybe the best sites will start to mix subscriptions and advertising, which is a business model refined for print periodicals over the course of a century or more. And the ads will get more restrained, because the subscribers are paying customers.

    By the way, here’s a secret of newspapers and magazines in the late 20th Century: The subscriptions didn’t turn a profit. They broke even, paid for the cost of production. The primary purpose of the subscription was to demonstrate to advertisers that there were people willing to pay for the periodical, and therefore these people were worth the cost of advertising too.

    The problem with subscription models on the Internet is that there are too many newspapers, magazines and blogs to subscribe to, particularly if you might only want to read one article. This seems solvable, but it’s a big deal for now. 🌕

    → 11:29 AM, May 25
  • Sammy is very relaxed 📷

    → 3:51 PM, May 24
  • Dune is a rational space opera, as logical and geometrical as a Sherlock Holmes story, with an irrational occult spirit journey built on top. It needs both parts to succeed. The David Lynch movie attempted the occult part, and was completely uninterested in the rational genre story. 🍿📚

    → 12:10 PM, May 24
  • 🍿I watched the end of the Coen Brothers comedy “Hail Caesar” yesterday. We’d watched the first part weeks ago but Julie lost interest and I finally had a chance to catch up. I quite enjoyed the movie.

    George Clooney does a great job playing cheerful idiots. He makes a lot of stupid faces. He seems to enjoy it and he is very good at it.

    → 10:58 AM, May 24
  • Who’s watching Lawrence Welk anymore? My grandparents watched it in the 70s. They were in their 80s then. That’s always seemed like the target demographic. Are there enough 120-year-olds around now to keep the show on the air?

    → 10:49 AM, May 24
  • I stopped in at Mystic Grill & Bakery last night to pick up a takeout dinner for myself and Julie. The chairs were down off the tables, indicating that dining service was available. But I only saw one person sitting at a table, and he may have been an employee. On a normal Saturday night at that time there would have been a couple of families there.

    Several people came out for takeout, which was good to see. Staff and customers were all masked.

    The TV was playing Lawrence Welk. I don’t think that’s significant from an epidemiological perspective

    → 10:40 AM, May 24
  • Julie and I watched “Dune” again not long ago. The only other time I’d seen it was in the theatrical release in the 80s. It was fine. I enjoyed it. I had zero expectations, and the movie met them.

    A friend said she loved it because it visualized all the settings and characters of the novel. I said it was a terrible movie and the settings and characters looked different from the way I visualized them when reading. She said she didn’t care. Her perspective is valid.

    → 5:20 AM, May 24
  • On the It’s the Pictures That Got Small podcast: Dune, with Karina Longworth, Nate DiMeo and Natasha Lyonne.

    David Lynch had no interest in the mythology of Dune. He just loved the imagery. It is the ultimate movie do to use for GIFs, or to project on the wall of a bar on the Lower East Side. Or watch in any public place with the sound off.

    Karina Longworth: “It only doesn’t work if you it expect to be a movie.”

    Lynch’s cut of the movie was five hours. The final cut was a little over two hours. Maybe the director’s cut would have been better?

    → 5:13 AM, May 24
  • 📷 Two ducks 🦆 🦆 hanging out in the pond, a third duck 🦆 joins them. A brisk discussion of etiquette ensues.

    LEEEROY JENKINS!!!!!

    → 8:15 PM, May 23
  • 📽Last night we watched “Saving Mr. Banks,” about the making of Mary Poppins. The movie stars Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Bradley Whitford, etc. — excellent cast.

    “Saving Mr. Banks” takes great liberties with historical reality. In reality, PL Travers, the author of the series of Mary Poppins novels, never cared for the movie “Mary Poppins,” and wouldn’t permit another adaptation for 30 years. When she finally relented, for a stage production in London, she stipulated no Americans could be involved. And she had a much more interesting life than “Saving Mr. Banks” portrays. She was a successful actress and dancer and poet and studied philosophy and lived with Native Americans for a time and studied their philosophy and folklore. She adopted a boy, from whom she was later estranged.

    Walt Disney, in real life, was kind of a bastard.

    The movie is bullshit and propaganda and I loved it anyway and would gladly watch it again.

    Much of the movie focuses on Travers’ childhood in Allora, Australia, in the early 1900s. It was a small town then and it’s no metropolis today, with a population of 1,223.

    → 10:13 AM, May 23
  • Patton Oswalt: Joey Pants is the real hero of “The Matrix,” and the computers are trying to be nice.

    “There’s a very strong case to be made for [Joey Pantoliano’s character, Cypher], like, ‘No. Plug me the fuck back into this,’ Oswalt said. [Cypher is] one of the freed humans who regrets the decision to take the red reality pill, since the simulation was so much more warm and satisfying than reality.

    “‘I’m nude with atrophied muscles, hairless in a jagged wasteland of radioactive slag, or I can be in this world where I have a nice job, where I eat a steak and marry someone,'” Oswalt ranted. “‘Can I just live in this — I am fine with it. Morpheus, who the fuck are you helping?! Why are you dragging us out?! The machines aren’t trying to kill us.'”

    He continued from the point of view of the machines: “‘And by the way, you guys fucked up the Earth. We’re doing the best we can for you guys. We could have just let you all die in the wasteland, but instead, we found a way so that you can live.'”

    Back speaking for himself, Oswalt added, “People always miss that line where [Agent] Smith (Hugo Weaving) says, ‘You know, when we first did the Matrix, it was just flat-out paradise, and you guys couldn’t handle that and you rejected it.’… Probably the first version of the Matrix, everybody could fly and orgasms lasted three months and you could just eat all the chocolate you wanted. And people were like, ‘No! I want a goddamn cubicle job!’ And the machines went, ‘OK. I guess they want cubicles. Give ‘em that. We tried to be nice.'”

    → 2:22 PM, May 21
  • The last typist was kicked out of the Writers Room in New York’s Greenwich Village 10 years ago.

    The ribbon has run out on the last typewriter at a Manhattan writers' den.

    Skye Ferrante has spent six years at the Writers Room in Greenwich Village, blissfully banging away on his grandmother’s 1929 Royal typewriter.

    The 37-year-old writer represented a bygone era, the last typewriter-user in a special room devoted to typists.

    “In the event that there are no desks available, laptop users must make room for typists,” read a sign posted in the “Typing Room” for years.

    When Ferrante returned to the Writers Room in April after an eight-month break, the sign was gone and his noisy typewriter was no longer welcome.

    “I was told I was the unintended beneficiary of a policy to placate the elderly members who have all since died off,” said Ferrante, a Manhattan native who’s writing children’s books. “They offered me a choice to switch to a laptop or refund my money, which to me is no choice at all.”

    Ten years later, Ferrante is still around, doing wire sculptures, which he shares on Instagram. The Writers Room is still around too, and looks lovely, though I expect it’s on pandemic hiatus.

    → 2:07 PM, May 21
  • Did the Black Death lead to the Renaissance?

    What does that history teach us about what to expect in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic?

    It’s complicated, says Professor Ada Palmer.

    Palmer, a historian and science fiction writer and all-around genius, appears in a wide-ranging interview on the Singularity Podcast:

    Prof. Ada Palmer on Pandemics, Progress, History, Teleology and the Singularity

    The Renaissance was in many ways a terrible time to be alive; Europeans fought many fierce wars and lifespans were drastically shorter than the preceding Middle Ages. Other parts of the world, particularly China, were far more advanced than Europe, and Europeans knew it.

    But the Renaissance also produced great art and scientific breakthroughs. Then as now, it was the best and worst of times.

    Francis Bacon invented the idea of progress in 1620. There was plenty of progress before then, of course, but until Bacon, people viewed history as more or less the same. They were some places and times that were better to be alive than others. Empires rose and fell. But our ancestors lives were the same as ours and our children’s would be the same as well.

    Bacon had the idea of using science to cumulatively improve all peoples lives today and in the future into the future. For that reason, he said science was the best form of Christian charity.

    We didn’t see the first breakthrough from Bacon’s insight for 150 years, until Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod. But since then he’s been proven right. Refrigeration, the rule of law, medicine and other advances have improved life for everyone, and will continue to do so.

    Accepted wisdom today for many people is that one of the advances of the Renaissance was the break with religion and move to secularism. But great scientists like Isaac Newton and Descartes were devout Christians. Newton was deeply immersed in beliefs that we would consider occult.

    People today sometimes say that figures like Newton were actually closet atheists, and could not share their beliefs because of censorship and fear of the Inquisition. And it’s true that censorship makes it very hard for later historians to find out what was actually going on. But we can deduce people’s actual beliefs by looking at other things they did say that they believe. And Renaissance intellectuals espoused beliefs that were far more dangerous than atheism. The Inquisition was far more concerned with heresy than atheism. If people like Newton and Descartes were atheists, they would have said so.

    Atheism developed as a by-product of publishers making hyped claims in trying to flog translations of the work of the Greek philosopher Epictetus.

    People calling themselves “transhumanists” today look forward to the Singularity, when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence. But we’ve already been through a kind of Singularity, in the 17th Century, when for the first time it became impossible for an educated person to familiarize himself with every book ever written. With the invention of the printing press, books were being published faster than they could be catalogued, let alone read and understood! Until then, an educated person was considered to be one familiar with the total of all human knowledge. After that, we get the idea of specialization.

    Poverty is a tax on intelligence. If you’re spending a lot of time worrying about paying bills, you don’t have that intelligence to think about other things. Palmer estimates that if we lift a person out of poverty, we raise their intelligence 25%.

    All knowledge is useful, if for no other reason than it’s satisfying to learn things. Even finding out whether giraffes can swim is satisfying.

    Humanity is a very young species, and we will get our act together eventually. Until a few centuries ago, it was considered fine and ok for people with powerful patrons to go around murdering people and bragging about it. Now, we believe all people should be subject to the law. That’s a big deal!

    Progress comes from everyday people doing small things, more than from geniuses and great men and women doing great things:

    The small things that we are achieving that feel small are the way that the civilization-wide big things happen. The more I look at history and zoom in the less it is the geniuses and the people whose names we know that made the world shift and the more it is, in fact, the microscopic – from a historical standpoint – teamwork of everybody. So never feel that the stuff you’re doing isn’t important.

    → 9:17 AM, May 20
  • How Ben Stiller Will Remember His Father, Jerry Stiller

    → 4:53 PM, May 19
  • Coronavirus: The Mask Wars – Science Vs

    Scientific studies suggest no conclusive evidence that cloth masks help slow the spread of coronavirus. N95 masks are definitely helpful, but we’re not sure whether the same is true for surgical masks, or homemade cloth masks, or bandanas.

    I’m going to keep wearing a mask anyway, when I go out in public, because the difficulty is low and potential payoff is high. Also, social signaling matters.

    → 11:45 AM, May 19
  • “Shoe-leather” contact tracing works – Cory Doctorow

    The only effective way to do contact tracing is by paying an army of people to do it – the “shoe leather” approach. Contact-tracing apps are at best helpful in automating record-keeping.

    It appears that the countries that have done best at containing coronavirus are those where the people trust their government, and that government is worthy of trust. These are two conditions that do not exist on a national level in the US.

    I do trust our local, county and state governments in matters like this. Although I may not agree with them, they seem to me to be competent people who are acting in good faith to serve their constituents. The same is not true on a federal level, and has not been for a long time, predating Trump.

    → 11:31 AM, May 19
  • HP Lovecraft warned readers to stay away from pulp magazines – Cory Doctorow.

    Readers should turn to the Bible and Lord Dunsany instead, said Lovecraft in a 1920 letter to the editor of the Omaha Bee.

    I interviewed the science fiction writer Robert Charles Wilson, who said he read a letter or essay from some 19th Century person who was denouncing the “boys books” of the time, with their preposterous, ridiculous stories of little boys who run away from home to become sea captains. T

    These sorts of books (said the 19th Century literary person) were awful stuff, to be avoided.

    Wilson said they sounded awesome to him, and he sought out and read a few, and that became his own excellent novel, “Julian Comstock: A Story of the 22nd Century.”

    → 11:21 AM, May 19
  • Department of Justice Reopens Spat With Apple Over iPhone Encryption

    Daring Fireball:

    Saying you want technology companies to make a backdoor that only “good guys” can use is like saying you want guns that only “good guys” can fire. It’s not possible, and no credible cryptographer would say that it is. You might as well say that you want Apple to come up with a way for 1 + 1 to equal 3….

    The DOJ is not asking for Apple’s cooperation unlocking existing iPhones — they’re asking Apple to make future iPhones insecure.

    → 9:34 AM, May 19
  • On Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

    ++ This is the first pandemic ever experienced by a society that understands how pandemics work, and other insights from Renaissance historian and science fiction writer Ada Palmer.

    ++ You can raise a person’s IQ 25% by getting that person out of poverty, as that person no longer has to devote attention to jugging bills all day, Palmer says.

    ++ Gig economy companies are massive Ponzi schemes. A restaurateur fights back by arbitraging pizza.

    ++ England’s storks have returned for the first time since 1416.

    ++ The case for universal broadband.

    ++ “Platform coops” are gig economy services where the workers own the platform.

    → 12:37 PM, May 18
  • “Get your stinking paws off me you damned dirty ape!” and 99 more favorite movie quotes.

    → 12:06 PM, May 18
  • If Not 10,000, How Many Steps Should We Be Walking Each Day?

    The 10,000-step rule is completely arbitrary, writes journalist Tanner Garrity at InsideHook. There is zero science behind it. The figure was plucked from the air by a Japanese electronics company trying to sell a new pedometer in the 1960s.

    In the mid-1960s, a a Japanese watch company called Yamasa Clock debuted the figure that has been associated with daily step-counts, activity meters and modern wearables like Fitbit and Apple Watch ever since. The young brand’s marketing team named their pedometer Manpo-kei, which translates to “10,000 steps meter.” Something about the number sounded right: it was large enough to feel like a goal, but small enough to feel like an achievable one for the average adult. But Yamasa’s motive was even less scientific than that. The Japanese character for 10,000 somewhat a resembles a gentleman out for a brisk stroll: 万.

    5,000-8,000 steps a day seems to be a more scientifically justified goal.

    Even knowing all this, I try to do 10,000 steps a day because why not. Often I do not hit that goal. My hard goal is 7,500 steps a day. I’ve done at least that every day since we got back from Africa 11 months ago.

    Says Garrity:

    Most of all, remember to enjoy the steps you do take. Last week, The New York Times asked New Yorkers to share “the things they achingly miss” during quarantine. I long for my daily constitutional from InsideHook’s office in Midtown to the lower reaches of Central Park. The Heckscher Ballfields are down there and I like to stop and watch the midday games, which are inexplicably comprised of coeds in their mid-20s and guys who look like they taught at NYU in the ’90s. It was going to be my job this spring to find out how they all know each other. I miss scrambling over the schist, knowing the bench that gets the most sun, dodging selfies. It’s admirable to try to improve your physical conditioning each day with thousands of steps — just remember to leave a few hundred or so for the soul.

    → 12:03 PM, May 18
  • What We Might Learn From The 1918 Flu Pandemic – Fresh Air – In broad outlines, public reaction to the the 1918 flu pandemic and covid epidemic follow the same course, says historian John Barry – “the outbreak was trivialized for a long time.”

    Also, Woodrow Wilson was almost certainly sick with the 1918 flu during the Geneva peace talks. He wanted to argue against punitive settlement with Germany, but was too sick to do so. So, while it’s a stretch to say the 1918 pandemic led to the Nazis, it’s not a HUGE stretch.

    → 11:53 AM, May 18
  • Knockoffs – 99% Invisible – Dapper Dan went from street hustler to fashion impresario and has spent time on both sides of American trademark law. In the world of fashion trademarks and knockoff merchandise, it’s hard to tell the legitimate merchants from the outlaws. They’re often the same guys.

    → 11:13 AM, May 18
  • → 10:41 AM, May 18
  • Inside Trump’s coronavirus meltdown

    Edward Luce delivers a fast but deep read on the Financial Times, about how Trump and his henchmen have bungled pandemic response, unnecessarily killing tens of thousands of Americans — so far! — and destroying America’s world leadership.

    “America is first in the world in deaths, first in the world in infections and we stand out as an emblem of global incompetence. The damage to America’s influence and reputation will be very hard to undo.”

    → 9:38 AM, May 17
  • A pandemic is no walk in the park, except yesterday that's exactly what it was

    Yesterday, Lake Murray was open for the first or second day since the social distancing order became law in California (which was March 20, by the way, so that’s nearly two months now). I went there on my daily walk.

    Too many people! Social distancing was difficult, too easy to slip inside the six-foot distance. Only about half of the people were wearing masks. Maybe less than half. You could walk in and out freely but they had park workers set up on the entrance road to keep the parking lot from filling up. According to what I read, they were allowing only 50% capacity in the parking lot, to keep the park from getting crowded.

    The photo here doesn’t look crowded but it was tricky trying to maintain a brisk walking pace AND social distancing. Pedestrian traffic on that trail is tricky even under normal conditions because you’re basically trying to manage four or five groups of people, all moving at different velocities: You’ve got people out strolling, often with small children in strollers, who are moving very slowly and not paying attention to their surroundings; there are brisk walkers like me; there are runners; there are adults riding bicycles and other wheeled human-powered transportation; and there are also preteens on bicycles, who rocket along at a million miles an hour not paying attention to their surroundings and occasionally colliding with other objects and people.

    I was feeling nervous when I got home, and did not get close to Julie until I’d showered and changed my clothes. I plan to not go back to the park, to resume my daily routine of walking there, for a while, until it feels safer.

    In other pandemic news: We got a shipment of paper towels yesterday. We are also stocked up on toilet paper. We are ready to face the apocalypse with clean countertops and butts. 📓

    → 9:12 AM, May 17
  • Montgomery Ward, 1960 via

    → 11:10 PM, May 16
  • Fred Willard doing opening monologue on SNL, 1978 via

    → 11:06 PM, May 16
  • Trans World Airlines (1952) via

    → 10:49 PM, May 16
  • Janis Joplin Woodstock 1969

    via

    → 10:38 PM, May 16
  • Jughead, 1970. It doesn’t require much individuality to be viewed as an eccentric iconoclast in Riverdale.

    via

    → 10:35 PM, May 16
  • There’s Nothing Like a ‘54 Ford via

    → 10:30 PM, May 16
  • Fred Willard, 1978. via

    → 10:27 PM, May 16
  • The death cult at the grocery store – Retail workers are being called on to enforce facemask requirements, and they’re facing threats and violence from anti-maskers.

    → 1:20 PM, May 16
  • Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts? – Facebook refuses to factcheck fake news, based on the discredited social theory of “backfire effects,” which claims that people dig in to false views when faced with contradictory evidence.

    Facebook’s belief is based on a 2008 study, since discredited. In reality, when faced with contradictory evidence, people change their beliefs, just as you would like them to do.

    So Facebook’s fake news policy is based on fake news.

    → 1:17 PM, May 16
  • Hackers who broke into a law firm claim to have dug up dirt on Trump, and will release it in a week if they don’t get $42M ransom

    → 1:13 PM, May 16
  • Facebook’s Giphy acquisition would be a privacy disaster

    How Facebook Could Use Giphy to Collect Your Data – Giphy already tracks users online behavior, and Facebook should not be allowed to buy it.

    Also: In America, healthcare workers can’t find PPE, “essential workers” are pooping in alleyways, but Facebook can afford to drop $500M on animated GIFs.

    → 12:17 PM, May 16
  • Coronavirus: The last ‘normal’ photo on your phone

    → 11:30 AM, May 16
  • Qanon is so popular because there are so many real-life conspiracies

    Cory Doctorow: Social media isn’t particularly great at persuasion. But it is excellent at finding small, diffuse groups that are receptive to a message, and targeting those groups.

    That’s great if you’re a refrigerator business looking to find people who are shopping for a refrigerator. It’s even better if you’re an LGBTQ kid in a small town, looking to find community.

    It’s not so great for society if you’re looking to organize people who might be inclined to believe that a Presidential candidate is operating a child rape ring out of the basement of a popular Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant.

    The reason people are inclined to believe in conspiracy theories is that so many of the trends destroying the US and planet are, in fact, conspiracies:

    The opioid epidemic was a conspiracy between rich families like the Sacklers and regulators who rotate in and out of industry. The 737 crisis was caused by Boeing’s conspiracy to cut corners and aviation regulators' conspiracy to allow aerospace to regulate itself.

    Senators conspire to liquidate their positions ahead of coronavirus lockdown, well-heeled multinationals conspire to get 94.5% of the “small business” PPP fund, Big Tech conspires to fix wages with illegal collusion while fast food franchises do the same with noncompetes.

    And how different is Pizzagate from the real life of Richard Epstein? Also, Donald Trump may not technically be a serial rapist, but he’s certainly a serial sex abuser.

    Additionally, conspiracies often make people feel at home, and provide them with status.

    And now two points that are mine and by me:

    The people profiled in the recent Atlantic piece about Qanon seem lovely. I don’t want any of them making public policy because Qanon is bonkers. But I’d be happy to have any of them as my neighbors and friends.

    Also, as I’ve mentioned previously, I’m deeply immersed in ancient Rome now, and Qanon reminds me of the mystery cults that thrived in the first century One of those cults became Christianity. So maybe Qanon will go away soon, but don’t bet too much on it.

    Also on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic: Dr. Seuss coronavirus parodies, including “Oh, the Places You Won’t Go.”

    And a Hong Kong ice cream shop is selling tear-gas flavored ice cream, which one customer says is far too tear-gas-like, which reminds me of the Monty Python “Crunchy Frog” sketch.

    → 4:11 PM, May 15
  • Former newspaper editor is now a homeless blogger

    The New York Times: Rick Jackson, 54, was top editor of The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Indiana. He got laid off “in the parking lot next to the paper’s headquarters. He was also told he would have to vacate the apartment in the same building, where he had been living for 10 months.”

    Unable to go to the newsroom, Mr. Jackson started a blog. He called it The Homeless Editor….

    He’s living in a Motel 6 now.

    Mr. Jackson, who has covered homelessness, said on his blog that most homeless people are not those “who sit on the streets of all our major cities.” Rather, he wrote, “the homeless crowd are much more like me — a person who doesn’t have a single address to call home.”

    Jackson is now looking for work. He hopes to stay in journalism.

    “There’s something about being in a newsroom where I feel like I’m wrapped in a warm quilt,” he said. “It’s where my home is.”

    → 1:20 PM, May 15
  • New Christopher Pike "Trek" series in the pipeline. SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!

    Hollywood Reporter : CBS All Access is doing a new Star Trek series, based on the adventures of the Enterprise under Captain Christopher Pike, with Anson Mount returning as Pike, Ethan Peck as Spock and Rebecca Romjin as Number One.

    Also in the pipeline: New seasons of Discovery and Picard, an animated series, “Lower Decks” – I think I read elsewhere that will be a comedy – another Discovery spinoff, Section 31, starting Michelle Yeoh, and a younger-skewing CG-animated series for Nickelodeon.

    With all that and The Orville, it’s a good time to be a Trekkie

    → 12:50 PM, May 15
  • I like the way the dog looks at the camera for approval. "Did you see that move?"

    Stop what you’re doing and watch my weird dog fight a tree. pic.twitter.com/Tam5fBLZBc

    — K.B. Spangler (@KBSpangler) May 14, 2020
    → 9:45 AM, May 15
  • Losers who use “loose” when they mean “lose.” Makes me lose my shit.

    → 9:42 AM, May 15
  • Excitement during the pandemic.

    I like that it’s a professional model. Don’t want to use the AMATEUR equipment.

    → 9:38 AM, May 15
  • The Saga of Michael Flynn – Politics doesn’t permit nuance. Either Michael Flynn is a hero or a traitor. Either the Justice Department investigation was entirely justified or it was a witchhunt.

    → 9:18 AM, May 15
  • Rumors that some horror movies are cursed become their own kind of curse for the people who make those movies

    The Curse of The Curse – Great episode of the Imaginary Worlds podcast: filmmaker Jay Cheel talks about his new documentary series “Cursed Films,” which explores why people think movies like The Exorcist, The Omen, and other horror films were cursed – targeted by demonic forces. Also, special effects artist Craig Reardon and director Gary Sherman separate fact from fiction with the alleged Poltergeist curse. And theologian Brandon Grafius, author of “Reading the Bible with Horror,” describes horror’s Biblical connections.

    → 9:13 AM, May 15
  • Thoughts following my my first-ever at-home haircut

    1. I had long, thick hair when I was a young man and I miss it. For years I’ve wondered if I would look good with long hair today, even though my hair is extremely thin now.

    Social distancing gave me an opportunity to find out; I went far longer than usual between haircuts.

    The answer is that I look terrible with long hair. I am back to number two clippers all over, for good.

    1. For years I have thought that I could just give myself a haircut, or have Julie do it for me, and save us some money. How hard can it be to cut my hair with number 2 clippers, all over?

    Turns out it’s actually pretty hard and I will be going back to a professional barber as soon as it is healthy to do so.

    1. I have long luxurious ear hair and Julie did not want to trim it out of concern for injuring my ears. It looks awful. But on the other hand it helps keep my AirPods securely in place. 📓
    → 9:01 AM, May 12
  • Help Garry Armacost, a Vietnam vet, fight cancer and VA bureaucracy

    Garry Armacost, was wounded fighting for his country in Vietnam. Now he’s in the fight of his life, against cancer and the bureaucracy of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

    Garry is a big, cheerful, quiet 75-year-old who lives in San Diego. He needs cancer surgery for his survival. The surgery is complicated, long, done robotically, and requires sophisticated post-operative care.

    Garry has had bad experience with post-operative care at the VA, which proved nearly fatal in 2012. Fortunately, Garry’s son, Chris, is a doctor, and arranged for the head of urology at Sharp Memorial to do the surgery.

    But the VA has refused the transfer because they don’t want to cover the cost.

    “What price do they put on Garry’s life? Apparently not much,” Garry’s wife, Linda, writes in a Facebook post. “We have called, argued, pleaded, tried to talk with the Director, to no avail. We’re wondering if these will be our last days together. It didn’t need to come to this.”

    Garry was wounded in Vietnam, and earned a purple heart. He came home, raised a family, and worked a long career for various railroads in the Northeast. He is now retired and lives with his wife, Linda, in San Diego. Linda is active in local Democratic Party politics, which is where I met her.

    Please help Garry and his family. If you have any ideas on who to contact and otherwise how to influence the VA to give him the treatment he needs, let me know and I’ll pass the word. You can contact me directly at mitch@mitchwagner.com.

    If you work for the VA or know someone who does, please put in a word to get Garry’s transfer approved. Contact your Congressional representative and apply pressure.

    Share this post far and wide on social media.

    The VA needs to be held accountable to provide care, not just for Garry, but for every veteran. They were there when we needed them – now we need to be there for them, when they need us.

    “It may not work for me," says Garry, “but hopefully another vet will have a better outcome.”

    🌕📓

    → 8:18 AM, May 11
  • Julie gave me my first rona haircut. Fine job and I still have all my ears!

    → 3:47 PM, May 10
  • Kiss cam finds the best couple.

    via Gfycat

    → 10:27 AM, May 10
  • → 10:23 AM, May 10
  • → 10:22 AM, May 10
  • Little Richard, Rock Pioneer Who Broke Musical Barriers, Dead at 87 – He pioneered rock and roll’s gender-bending flamboyance, throat-shredding vocals, and piano-pounding rhythm.

    In the years before his death, Little Richard, who was by then based in Nashville, still performed periodically. Onstage, though, the physicality of old was gone: Thanks to hip replacement surgery in 2009, he could only perform sitting down at his piano. But his rock & roll spirit never left him. “I’m sorry I can’t do it like it’s supposed to be done,” he told one audience in 2012. After the audience screamed back in encouragement, he said — with a very Little Richard squeal — “Oh, you gonna make me scream like a white girl!”

    → 2:13 PM, May 9
  • The Sopranos: How Would Tony Soprano Handle the Coronavirus? – The dancers at the Bada Bing get furloughed, starting with the lapdancers.

    → 2:03 PM, May 9
  • My Facebook profile recently got upgraded to support formatting text: Bold, italic, blockquotes and hyperlinks. I haven’t seen an announcement or news on this. Dave Winer has been — rightly — insisting on the importance of this for years. Makes Facebook ever so slightly more usable and less Internet-hostile.

    → 11:39 AM, May 9
  • Today (and yesterday) on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic –

    Armed Michigan voters are escorting their state reps to work to protect them from swastika-brandishing white terrorists.

    A good-guy hacker wrote a script to flood Ohio’s snitchline where employers are supposed to report workers who refused to come in over coronavirus fears, so those workers can be denied unemployment benefits. Ohio doesn’t have vaccines. effective therapeutics, sufficient ventilators, or adequate PPE/disinfectant, but it has a snitchline.

    In a real incident very similar to Lord of the Flies, the kids were very nice to each other and built a lovely little village in the 15 months they were stranded.

    By the time we arrived, the boys had set up a small commune with food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gymnasium with curious weights, a badminton court, chicken pens and a permanent fire, all from handiwork, an old knife blade and much determination."

    The kids agreed to work in teams of two, drawing up a strict roster for garden, kitchen and guard duty. Sometimes they quarrelled, but whenever that happened they solved it by imposing a time-out. Their days began and ended with song and prayer.

    Kolo fashioned a makeshift guitar from a piece of driftwood, half a coconut shell and six steel wires salvaged from their wrecked boat – an instrument Peter has kept all these years – and played it to help lift their spirits.

    US public health officials are unenthusiastic about contact-tracing apps. Contact-tracing is extremely effective, but it requires an army of people and lots of shoe leather.

    Volcano gods demand workers:

    “Re-opening” isn’t about saving ordinary workers and earners. You can’t save someone by infecting them with a deadly disease. In a world without contact-tracing, therapeutics, tests, PPE, santizing products, etc, more contact means more risk of illness and death.

    “Re-opening” is about saving investors: the 1% who constitute the major shareholders in large firms whose calculus goes like this: “30% unemployment means that for every worker who dies on the job, ten more will apply to take their place.”

    → 11:35 AM, May 9
  • Ocasio-Cortez claps back at GOP criticism for playing Animal Crossing: ‘Curious for your thoughts on Trump’s golf bills’

    → 10:59 PM, May 8
  • I think I will suggest to Julie that we should watch “The Andromeda Strain” tonight.

    Not the 2008 remake. I hear that was fine. But it lacks the glorious microfilm-and-mainframe futurism of the 1971 original.

    → 5:51 PM, May 8
  • Wilford Brimley was only 48 when he appeared in “The Thing” and 51 in “Cocoon.”

    I learned about Brimley’s age in “The Thing” when I myself was 48. That freaked me out a bit. “I’m as old as Wilford Brimley?!”

    → 1:41 PM, May 8
  • As Restaurants and Stores Reopen, What’s Safe? – Are haircuts, going back to work, eating in restaurants, and visiting friends and relatives OK? Experts lay out the options.

    → 1:29 PM, May 8
  • Microsoft and AWS exchange poisoned pen blog posts in latest Pentagon JEDI contract spat – Microsoft and Amazon’s fight over the $10B DoD JEDI contract enters the pissing contest stage.

    → 10:51 AM, May 8
  • Roaming ‘robodog’ politely tells Singapore park goers to keep apart – A roaming robot dog built by Boston Dynamics is politely telling people in Singapore parks to enforce social distancing.

    “Let’s keep Singapore healthy,” the yellow and black robodog named SPOT said in English as it roamed around. “For your own safety and for those around you, please stand at least one metre apart.

    “Thank you,” it added, in a softly-spoken female voice.

    → 10:41 AM, May 8
  • Zoom is adding data center capacity in Equinix, as it signs a deal for cloud service from Oracle.

    → 10:17 AM, May 8
  • Google unifies all of its messaging and communication apps into a single team – A good move. Google has multiple redundant messaging apps. I don’t use any of them because (1) I don’t have time to sit down and figure out what’s what and (2) I’m not going to invest in yet another Google service that Google will then turn around and kill.

    I was burned by Google+ and Google Reader, and I saw what happened to Buzz and Wave. So, not going to try to kick that football again.

    → 10:12 AM, May 8
  • House GOP urge Trump against supporting additional funding for state and local governments – Republicans see coronavirus as an opportunity to overthrow elections in states like California and Illinois, by forcing those states to go bankrupt and appointing Republican judges to run them.

    → 9:37 AM, May 8
  • James Carville Warns Trump: Your ‘Grifter’ Campaign Aides Are Lying To You — “Trump is getting fleeced by members of his own campaign who know he’s going to lose reelection but won’t tell him for one simple reason: they’re trying to make money off the campaign.”

    → 7:59 PM, May 7
  • Which Supreme Court Justice Flushed the Toilet During Oral Arguments?

    → 5:20 PM, May 7
  • Now I’m curious which book it was and what was the so-called virtue signaling?

    It's true: I am contractually obliged to offer at least three instances of virtue signalling in the first chapter of any book I write. If I don't I'm in violation of my contract. Also, two instances of political correctness and at least one subliminal tract on the virtues of soy. pic.twitter.com/MEYSSHnr6M

    — John Scalzi (@scalzi) May 7, 2020
    → 1:36 PM, May 7
  • Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

    The TSA is being sued for hoarding 1.3 million N95 masks: The agency isn’t even using them, while other federal agencies. like the VA, “go begging for PPE for high-risk workers….

    Use of America’s airports have fallen by 95% and the TSA has asked most of its screeners to stay home. Those screeners that are working are wearing surgical masks, as they have not been trained to fit N95 masks.

    One Minnesota TSA manager tried to donate his mask to that state’s department of health but was unable to do so.

    America is united in favor of keeping quarantines going: “The tiny minority who’d benefit from the premature re-opening of businesses (large shareholders in large corporations that might survive such a blunder) want the rest of us to throw ourselves in the volcano to appease the economy gods.”

    Strong antitrust enforcement begat Unix, which is the basis for “almost every computer you use today.”

    Wechat spies on non-Chinese users.

    Hidden doors disguised as bookshelves I thought about doing that for my home office and one day I just might. I’d make it look like the entrance to the Batcave in the 1966 Batman, complete with the door-opening switch hidden in the bust of Shakespeare.

    → 12:37 PM, May 7
  • Supreme Court throws out convictions of New Jersey officials in Bridgegate scandal – Political corruption is legal. That’s literally what the Supreme Court said. Unanimous ruling. Even the liberals went along with this bullshit.

    → 10:48 AM, May 7
  • The first Google account you sign in to is set as the default account. This was driving me nuts until I figured it out.

    → 9:18 AM, May 7
  • “She’s starting to shake! She’s starting to shimmy!". Thanks, @odd!

    → 9:08 AM, May 7
  • → 8:55 AM, May 7
  • → 8:54 AM, May 7
  • → 8:54 AM, May 7
  • → 8:54 AM, May 7
  • → 8:53 AM, May 7
  • → 8:53 AM, May 7
  • → 8:53 AM, May 7
  • → 8:53 AM, May 7
  • → 8:44 AM, May 7
  • → 8:43 AM, May 7
  • Everybody alive today will be somewhat germophobic the rest of their lives. Like the way my parents' generation, who grew up in the Depression, were always frugal in at least some ways.

    → 10:59 PM, May 6
  • [Several years ago]
    JULIE: “What is ‘mansplaining?'”
    ME:
    ME: “This is a trick, isn’t it?”

    → 1:28 PM, May 6
  • Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

    ++ Alvim Corrêa’s beautiful, bleak illustrations from the 1900 French edition of HG Wells' “War of the Worlds.”

    ++ Lobbyists are lobbying for big financial bailouts for … themselves. After ensuring that the bulk of previous bailouts went to fat-cat businesses who don’t need the money, lobbyists want their turn at the trough.

    ++ Either we sacrifice landlords and banks to save businesses and jobs, or we lose the businesses and jobs and take the landlords and banks with them.

    ++ Chef Itsuo Kobayashi has done beautiful paintings of every meal he’s eaten for 32 years.

    ++ An appeals court says Miami jail doesn’t need to provide soap, making waiting for a hearing into a possible death sentence, and encouraging the spread of coronavirus, not just in prison, but to the population at large.

    ++ Ohio has a snitchline for bosses whose employees won’t go back to work, so those workers can be denied unemployment benefits. Great way to increase the death toll, Ohio!

    → 1:21 PM, May 6
  • ‪I am hosting a video conference for dozens or hundreds of people this evening so of course today seemed like a good day for me to get my first shaving cut in years. And it was a big one. My bathroom this morning looked like the Texas chainsaw massacre.‬

    → 11:09 AM, May 6
  • The grocery store was nearly out of our favorite brand of cookies, Tate’s.

    Lots of gluten-free cookies left, though.

    I guess people are all if I’m gonna be dead in month fuck it I’m having gluten.

    → 9:37 AM, May 6
  • We watched the first episode of “Rome” last night. Polly Walker is va va va voom. I am attracted to smart, sexy auburn-haired women who can have me put to death.

    → 7:31 AM, May 6
  • We may be dramatically overestimating China’s capabilities – David Ignatius on The Washington Post – We may be making China seem more capable than it actually is, as we did with the supposedly unstoppable Japanese economy of the 1980s and the US/USSR “missile gap” decades earlier.

    The Washington establishment needs an existential foreign threat.

    → 7:13 AM, May 6
  • via

    → 10:01 PM, May 5
  • Parking Lots Have Become a Digital Lifeline — Without home internet access and with libraries and cafes closed, people are driving to parking lots to get on Wi-Fi.

    → 7:50 PM, May 5
  • Over on Twitter, I’m suggesting to @MikeElgan that he might want to consider moving to micro.blog.

    I did some research in the autumn and concluded that micro.blog is the ONLY blog platform out there that doesn’t require significant fiddling and configuration. Which is sad for the blogosphere.

    I mean, you can do a great deal of fiddling and configuration on micro.blog if you want to do that. But if you just want to type stuff and post photos, then micro.blog is your only option.

    → 10:07 AM, May 5
  • On Twitter, @mat asks: “With the benefit of a couple of months of hindsight, what was your best preparing for a pandemic move?"

    I replied:

    Stocking up on toilet paper. It wasn’t forethought – we routinely buy that kind of thing in bulk and prior to lockdown was when we were due to replenish.

    OTOH, I needed a haircut even BEFORE we went into lockdown.

    Interesting thread.

    → 8:16 AM, May 5
  • That is an awful lot of Rome

    Yesterday I read some of “Storm before the Storm” a history of the fall of the Roman Republic, by Mike Duncan, and “Silver Pigs,” the first in the mystery series by Lindsey Davis about Marcus Didius Falco, a private detective in Imperial Rome. I’ve read that series before but I’ve forgotten most of it so it’s nearly new to me.

    I finished re-watching “I, Claudius” Sunday — that’s the fourth time I’ve seen that. Maybe give it another go in ten years?

    I listened to the “I, Podius” podcast, which is about “I, Claudius” — possibly the final episode of that, although there seems to be some unfinished business, so there may be at least one more episode.

    I bookmarked a few articles about the historical accuracy of “I, Claudius,” for later reading.

    Julie expressed some interest in rewatching “Rome,” the mid-2000s HBO series about the rise of Julius Caesar and the Roman Civil Wars.

    Also, a few weeks ago, Julie and I watched “Hail, Caesar,” a Coen Brothers comedy about the making of a Golden Age Hollywood movie about Julius Caesar, featuring George Clooney. Julie didn’t care for it but I loved it; I still have 37 minutes to watch.

    “Storm Before the Storm” is the earliest chronologically, covering events in the second century BCE. Then comes “Rome,” 1st Century BCE. Then comes “I, Claudius,” later in the 1st Century BCE through the early and mid 1st Century CE. Then comes “Silver Pigs,” a couple of decades after “I, Claudius,” in the late 1st Century CE. Finally, “Hail Caesar” comes along almost 1900 years later, around the time the books “I, Claudius” and “Claudius the God” were published, with the movie-within-the-movie covering the events of the early part of “Rome.”

    It’s all the same universe, like the Marvel superhero movies. 📚📺📽📓

    → 8:07 AM, May 5
  • One year ago today I saw possibly the most ridiculous example of security theater I have ever witnessed

    A young woman ahead of me at airport security was walking with a cane and had a “boot” on her foot – a removable enclosure to immobilize an injured foot.

    The security guy asked her if she could walk without the cane, and take off the boot, and put them through the security scanner. The security guy was nice about it; he said if taking off the boot and walking without the cane caused any discomfort at all, she should just leave them on.

    The woman said no no no that’s all right and she sat down in a chair and wrestled the boot off, and then hopped through the scanner.

    It occurred to me, watching, that this was security theater in the purest form. This exercise was completely unnecessary. I bet if you asked this woman why she was going through this exercise, she would have looked surprised and said, why, it’s the rules. And you have to follow the rules, right?

    This woman was given a choice of whether she had to send her stuff through the scanner, and she chose to do it , even though the purpose of this exercise is not supposed to be empty obedience. It’s supposed to be catching terrorists. And this woman knew better than anybody else that she was not a terrorist, and therefore would have been perfectly safe strolling through security without any screening at all!

    I don’t say this to criticize the young woman, who seemed perfectly nice and just trying to be accommodating, or the security guy, who was also very nice and just trying to do his job.

    I wrote the preceding in my journal a year ago. Re-reading it now, I see that I was wrong then. The purpose of security theater isn’t security. It is empty obedience.

    You may well ask, holy crap, Mitch, when did you become such a paranoid conspiracy theorist? I ask myself that sometimes. 📓

    → 8:01 AM, May 5
  • 📺 I have finished watching I Claudius, for the fourth time. I now realize why I didn’t have any memory of the last episode. It is because the episode is weak, bleak and uncomfortably incesty.

    → 7:46 PM, May 4
  • I just want a professional haircut. I realize this is literally the smallest problem in the universe compared with the sacrifice others are making, often unwillingly.

    I’ve discussed the matter with my wife, who is going to have to do the deed, and we’ve mutually agreed that I should have 100% of my pre-existing ears when the process is done.

    → 1:33 PM, May 4
  • The Hollywood Vigilante

    Actress Marisol Nichols, star of the TV series “Riverdale,” is a real-life vigilante, hunting down sex predators.

    Erika Hayasaki on Marie Claire:

    Nichols dresses the part in case a perp glimpses her through the window. She’s 46 but, waif-like and five foot four with a hoodie over her head and a bedsheet draped across her shoulders, can pass for a teenager. Or she might wear her long, dark hair matted and put on a beer-soaked Mötley Crüe T-shirt, and suddenly she’s a young junkie mom prostituting her kid. She can play madam or victim.

    On this morning, she wears a black baseball cap backwards, a black V-neck T-shirt, and bell-bottom jeans. She carries a pack of American Spirit cigarettes. She could be anyone. Most of these guys, she says, are “wimps.” Cowards. Sick men who want to take advantage of a girl. She remembers one sting in which she played a trafficker who sets up child sex parties. The target was 38, looked like a real estate agent or something, probably in a fraternity in college. “Looking the guy in the face,” she says, got her in her gut. “These guys look like normal people. And you’re pretending that you just happily and eagerly set up children for them to have sex with.” Nichols kept her cool throughout the interaction, but she adds: “To watch his eyes”—the way they lit up at the mention of an underage kid—“you want to kick him in the balls and beat the hell out of him.”

    Jesus.

    → 1:12 PM, May 4
  • “Having no plan is the plan! … Plans are for commies and the Danish. Here we do it fast and loose and dumb and wrong, and occasionally we have a man who manufactures pillows come to the White House to show the president encouraging texts. It all works!” – Dave Eggers: Flattening the Truth on Coronavirus

    → 12:49 PM, May 4
  • As a newly self-employed person, I’m learning that the weekend is a thing you schedule. My most recent weekend was Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m planning my next one for Friday and Saturday.

    → 11:21 AM, May 4
  • John Cleese: “If you’re absolutely no good at something at all then you lack the skill to know that you’re absolutely no good at it."

    Sadly, those of you who need to hear this the most are too stupid to realize I'm talking directly to you. #johncleese #stupid #people pic.twitter.com/TdpO6nBvgc

    — John Cleese (@JohnCleese) April 21, 2020
    → 11:01 AM, May 4
  • Hospital CEOs are keeping their seven-figure salaries while frontline workers go without pay

    → 10:30 AM, May 4
  • Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

    ++ The pandemic could make Big Tech our permanent overlords

    ++ Hospital CEOs are making millions while slashing health care worker salaries and hours, announcing layoffs and furloughs. “The average hospital CEO gets $3.1m/year. The average nurse gets $75k.”

    ++ Workers at Wired Magazine are forming a union.

    ++ How open source has failed: The focus should be “on protocol documentation … in a cloud-based era, real software freedom comes from being able to make compatible clients for existing servers, and compatible servers for existing clients.” That’s in addition to legal protections against monopoly practices.

    The traditional antitrust world did not permit firms to attain dominance through mergers with major competitors, catch-and-kill buyouts of nascent startups, or vertical monopolies where companies that owned platforms competed with the companies that used them. [But these] rules were heavily nerfed by Reagan, then further eroded by every administration since."

    → 10:11 AM, May 4
  • Larry Ellison Reveals His Big Data Battle Plan To Fight Coronavirus In Partnership With Trump White House

    Billionaire Larry Ellison has turned the Hawaiian island of Lanai into a luxury health resort, and plans to use it to save the world. Philanthropy, he said, is the definition of unsustainable. Profit is sustainable.

    He “is tackling three sets of complex issues on the island: the global food-supply chain, nutrition and the transition from fossil fuels to sustainable energy sources.”

    Ellison also distances himself from Trump, saying he has worked with every President.

    → 9:51 AM, May 4
  • AWS engineer Tim Bray resigns from Amazon following worker firings – Bray quit Amazon in protest over the company firing vocally critical employees. Bray was an Amazon Web Services VP and distinguished engineer, who previously did stints at Google and Sun.

    “… remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised,” he said. “The victims weren’t abstract entities but real people…. "

    He adds: “I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right?”

    → 9:32 AM, May 4
  • Inspired by a conversation with Mike Elgan yesterday, I’m going to do Facebook a lot less for a while.

    → 8:57 AM, May 4
  • → 10:40 PM, May 3
  • This Woman Was Isolated In Her Nursing Home, So Her Grandchildren Stood Outside With Signs To Ask Her For Money

    → 10:35 PM, May 3
  • Man In Quarantine Can’t Remember How Long It’s Been Since He Danced Through Town Square Followed By Big Chorus Of Friendly Locals

    → 10:34 PM, May 3
  • → 7:39 PM, May 3
  • The Scientists Who Won’t Give Up on the Warp Drive — Dozens of engineers and physicists are trying to do the impossible, develop a means of moving faster than the speed of light. They see it as an interesting thought experiment that could shed light on the boundaries of physics — and maybe more.

    → 3:57 PM, May 3
  • Terry Pratchett: Doctor Who is not science fiction. Thanks, Cory!

    → 3:20 PM, May 3
  • School bus converted to mobile, full-time off-grid home. And it’s a really NICE home too.

    → 8:59 AM, May 3
  • It’s the 50th Anniversary of Humanity’s Favorite Activity: Staring at an LCD

    → 8:54 AM, May 3
  • The Coronavirus Is Rewriting Our Imaginations

    Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson went off the grid in mid-March, rafting down the Colorado River. He returned into a new world. He sees Covid-19 as a precursor into crises yet to come – chiefly global warming – and finds reason for hope.

    Possibly, in a few months, we’ll return to some version of the old normal. But this spring won’t be forgotten. When later shocks strike global civilization, we’ll remember how we behaved this time, and how it worked. It’s not that the coronavirus is a dress rehearsal—it’s too deadly for that. But it is the first of many calamities that will likely unfold throughout this century. Now, when they come, we’ll be familiar with how they feel.

    What’s coming? Droughts, food shortages, electrical outages, storms, floods.

    Imagine what a food scare would do. Imagine a heat wave hot enough to kill anyone not in an air-conditioned space, then imagine power failures happening during such a heat wave…. Imagine pandemics deadlier than the coronavirus. These events, and others like them, are easier to imagine now than they were back in January, when they were the stuff of dystopian science fiction. But science fiction is the realism of our time. The sense that we are all now stuck in a science-fiction novel that we’re writing together—that’s another sign of the emerging structure of feeling…

    Right now we’re hearing two statements being made. One, from the President and his circle: we have to save money even if it costs lives. The other, from the Centers for Disease Control and similar organizations: we have to save lives even if it costs money. Which is more important, money or lives? Money, of course! says capital and its spokespersons. Really? people reply, uncertainly. Seems like that’s maybe going too far?”…

    Even though our economic system ignores reality, we can act when we have to. At the very least, we are all freaking out together. To my mind, this new sense of solidarity is one of the few reassuring things to have happened in this century. If we can find it in this crisis, to save ourselves, then maybe we can find it in the big crisis, to save our children and theirs.”

    → 8:50 AM, May 3
  • Welcome to your work-from-home dystopia: Employers are using spyware to monitor remote employees' work at home, requiring workers to leave their cameras and microphones on at all times. Surveillance software on employee computers monitors every keystroke, takes screenshots every few seconds, and tracks every email, message, the music employees listen to while working, and records facial expressions.

    → 8:29 AM, May 3
  • What The U.S. Might Learn From China’s Approach To COVID-19 – New York Times health and science reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr. points to China as a model of how to stop a fast moving pandemic in its tracks.

    China is not to blame for this virus. They didn’t release it on purpose, or accidentally from a lab. And they didn’t cover it up. The mayor of Wuhan covered it up and when Beijing found out about it they chastised him hard, forced him to apologize on national TV, and took swift, decisive action.

    Chinese people were required to take mandatory testing and if they were positive, they were immediately taken away, separated from their families, and put in gymnasium-style hospitals where they slept on beds separate from each other, were tended by workers in PPE and – when they recovered – set free and home. It’s harsh but not cruel and it got the pandemic under control.

    China has committed numerous awful crimes against its own people, but this was not one of those cases, McNeil notes. Quite the opposite; the Chinese government is demonstrating leadership and doing the right thing.

    The US’s more wishy-washy approach is going to stretch out for years and cost many, many unnecessary deaths. This doesn’t mean autocracy wins; World War II teaches us that free societies can beat autocracies when those free societies have a national will and strong, intelligent leadership (rather than the current Republican Party).

    → 8:28 AM, May 3
  • via

    → 2:42 PM, May 2
  • Boy raises a hammer during a solidarity rally for the 42,000 miners on strike in the Zonguldak coal fields in Turkey, November 1990. via

    → 2:38 PM, May 2
  • Wearing a mask is for smug liberals. Refusing to is for reckless Republicans. – Mask-wearing and other pandemic protections have become political virtue-signaling.

    Good article, but I think it overstates the polarization. Most Americans recognize that the current situation is both unsustainable and necessary.

    The people ranting about rights and Communism are lunatics. A tornado doesn’t care about your property rights when it knocks down your house.

    → 1:18 PM, May 2
  • John Belushi reportedly visited the set of “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” on the day he died. He wanted to work on his William Shatner impression.

    For those of you who are not Trekkies, that was the one with Ricardo Montalban rocking the daring decolletage.

    → 1:05 PM, May 2
  • The U.S. Needs Way More Than a Bailout to Recover From Covid-19 – We need a new New Deal to fix structural problems with the US economy that long predate the current crisis.

    If we want to restart the engine that made this nation a superpower, we need to do something big. I mean really, really big: defeat-the-Nazis, land-a-man-on-the-moon, invent-the-internet big.

    By my college pal Barry Ritholtz (and by “pal” I mean we talked a few times and said hello).

    → 1:01 PM, May 2
  • Funniest work videoconferencing misadventures

    When videoconferencing meetings go wrong, you get to see flossing, naked husbands and more.

    … I could tell both his dogs were barking frantically but couldn’t figure out what the rest of the noise was, and I was concerned. “Are you OK?” Deep sigh. “We have a parrot, and the parrot has learned to call the dogs. He waits until the dogs come in the room and then imitates my wife. When the dogs can’t find her, they lose their minds.”

    → 12:57 PM, May 2
  • Every Question In Every Q&A Session Ever

    → 12:50 PM, May 2
  • Airplane Mode – For grounded frequent flyers, this web page replicates the experience of being on a long flight and staring out the window. Via Mike’s List @mikeelgan

    → 12:16 PM, May 2
  • Today on Cory Doctorow's Pluralistic

    Pluralistic: 02 May 2020 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

    ++ The mistrust epidemic

    The pandemic isn’t the only disease that’s annihilating our society: alongside of it, there is an epidemic of mistrust in institutions and a growth in conspiricism, a panic to save yourself and let everyone else fend on their own.

    Blaming Big Tech for the collapse in trust and commonly held truth is backwards: Big Tech’s bigness is en effect, not a cause, of the corruption that made our institutions so untrustworthy.

    ++ Prisons, meat packing plants and nursing homes

    Coronavirus outbreaks are concentrated in three places: Prisons, meat packing plants and nursing homes – industries that are built on treating people cruelly, like disposable components.

    “Public health has always known the truth. The care of the most margnialized members of society is important for fighting infectious diseases.”…

    … the GOP’s emphasis has been on shielding employers whose employers or customers die of coronavirus due to unsafe conditions. These industries are designed to run in unsafe ways and can’t conceive of operating safely.

    ++ Contact tracing apps could be worse than useless.

    Too many false positives and false negatives. It’s like those security warnings you see on websites that are so noisy that everybody just clicks past them and ignores them.

    An exposure-notification app that forgets to notify you when you’re at risk AND often notifies you when you are not at risk becomes a worse-than-useless frippery, as well an expensive boondoggle and distraction.

    And security defects in those apps could literally increase a population’s exposure to terrorism, crime, election fraud and authoritarian governments.

    However, contact tracing can be useful and safe, with the right precautions.

    ++ Ticketmaster sold a $500M stake to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who ordered the murder, torture and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

    ++ And a hopeful note from Kim Stanley Robinson.

    → 10:27 AM, May 2
  • Increasingly Desperate Alex Jones Says He Will Kill and Eat His Neighbors

    → 9:11 AM, May 2
  • Microsoft lays out more detail on its 5G, edge computing and private wireless ambitions

    → 9:03 AM, May 2
  • Monty Python, 1976 via

    → 11:58 PM, May 1
  • 1956 kitchen design (flooring).  via

    → 11:51 PM, May 1
  • via

    → 11:49 PM, May 1
  • July 1973 via

    → 11:46 PM, May 1
  • via

    → 11:41 PM, May 1
  • Zenith portable radio advertisement, 1956 via

    → 11:38 PM, May 1
  • Harlan Ellison: “I don’t take a piss without getting paid for it."

    → 12:56 PM, May 1
  • Me, deciding to take advantage of pandemic downtime: “Yeah, 220, 221, whatever it takes."

    → 12:44 PM, May 1
  • Covid-19 is 9.5-44x more fatal than seasonal flu — Scientific American — Flu deaths are counted in a misleading, grossly inflated manner, as compared with how Covid-19 deaths are counted.

    → 8:41 AM, May 1
  • ME (1 month ago today): “How is it April already? This situation has been going on a long time!”

    ME (seemingly minutes later): “How is it May already…. ?”

    → 8:25 AM, May 1
  • We watched the latest episode of “The Good Fight” last night. I liked it. I would’ve liked it more if the stinkers hadn’t given away a major plot point in the previews.

    The main storyline of this season seems to be about a mysterious Memo 618. However, the previews told us what Memo 618 is. Feh. 📺

    → 8:16 AM, May 1
  • Cover art for the Erber Science Fiction series, Germany, 1976-1977. via

    → 10:49 PM, Apr 30
  • The Invisible Man – Today, Explained podcast: Where in the world is Kim Jong Un? Vox Journalist AlexWard says the rotund North Korean leader is probably not dead, might be very sick, and that North Korea’s leaders are watching the US, West and Western news media carefully to see how we react when we think he might be dead.

    Also, Kim Jong Un is EXTREMELY obese. He merely looks chubby on TV – testimony to the power of loose-fitting dark clothes. And he’s a chain-smoker. Kim Jong Un was huffing and puffing to keep up with Trump.

    → 5:27 PM, Apr 30
  • Biden’s Campaign of Isolation – The New York Times Daily podcast: Joe Biden is campaigning from his basement, struggling to attain visibility while Trump commands the spotlight. This might be good for Biden.

    → 5:22 PM, Apr 30
  • URL for the micro meetup? I did not see that advance registration was required!

    → 5:08 PM, Apr 30
  • In the Republican solution to the Trolley Problem, the top priority is saving the trolley.

    → 4:56 PM, Apr 30
  • Ernest Hemingway supposedly wrote a six-word short story: “For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never Worn.”

    Didn’t happen. The story about Hemingway is apocryphal, appearing first in “Papa,” a one-many play about Hemingway by John deGroot, which debuted in 1996.

    However, something very like that ad appeared in real life in a Tucson newspaper in 1945.

    → 4:28 PM, Apr 30
  • A former prosecutor dismantles Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegations against Biden.

    It just didn’t happen. She’s lying.

    → 4:15 PM, Apr 30
  • California official calls for reopening so coronavirus can kill off the old and the weak: ‘It would also free up housing’

    → 1:01 PM, Apr 30
  • I’m hosting a “town hall” style Zoom meeting next week and I’m looking for a guide to doing such a thing. Anybody with experience willing to walk me through the process? We’re talking about seven or 8 speakers and maybe 100 attendees or more.

    → 12:56 PM, Apr 30
  • Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

    ++ “Swedish covid death rates soar above neighbors': “Do nothing” is not doing something.”

    ++ “Financial services workers dying for junk mail: Broadridge workers denied PPE, sick leave.”

    ++ AMC: “We will never show another Universal movie”: The feds are dismantling the monopoly regulations that broke up the Hollywood studio system. Soon we will have a few companies owning all the cable companies, movie studios and movie theaters. That’l be financially disastrous for anybody who works on or consumes Hollywood products.

    → 12:49 PM, Apr 30
  • They died for junk mail: Six workers died of COVID-19 at a Long Island, New York, warehouse for a company that prints and mails financial documents.

    The company, Bainbridge Financial Solutions, pressured employees to avoid taking sick days, and delayed distributing PPE.

    Coronavirus Kills Six Workers at Broadridge Warehouse

    Thanks, Cory!

    → 12:45 PM, Apr 30
  • Last night, Julie and I watched the first episode of “Tales from the Loop,” an anthology series on Amazon Prime about the people in an Ohio smalltown where everybody works at some kind of paranormal research facility.

    The episode was long on visual style and mood, short on actual story.

    I’m not inclined to watch it again.

    On the other hand, Julie likes it and I don’t dislike it enough to not watch another episode with her. So I’ll give the show at least one more try.

    Even the fact that the show is apparently set in the 70s or early 80s was not enough to pull me in. 📺

    → 11:01 AM, Apr 30
  • Man Not Sure Why He Thought Most Psychologically Taxing Situation Of His Life Would Be The Thing To Make Him Productive

    → 11:28 PM, Apr 29
  • Zoom Crasher Becomes Too Engrossed In Sales Meeting To Scream Obscenities

    → 11:26 PM, Apr 29
  • Congress Concierge Health Clinic Quietly Gets Funding Boost — Congresspeople who reject government healthcare for the people — including Rand Paul and Nancy Pelosi — enjoy the finest government healthcare themselves.

    → 11:16 PM, Apr 29
  • The corporate right is giving us two choices: Work, or starve

    → 11:11 PM, Apr 29
  • 67 bits of good unsolicited advice, and one modest joke, from Kevin Kelly on his 68th birthday.

    → 6:57 PM, Apr 29
  • Underrated Netflix gems to add to your must-watch list — I’ve added most of these to the watchlist.

    Since when does Looper do real articles, btw? I thought they were pure clickbait.

    → 5:41 PM, Apr 29
  • Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

    ++ Cigna health insurers are telling investors they’re looking ahead to a great year, even while the health insurance lobby group is begging for a handout from Washington.

    ++ Damien Patton, co-founder of Banjo, a “grifty” AI surveillance startup that works with police, is a convicted Ku Klux Klan terrorist.

    As a 17-year-old, Patton “was a Nazi skinhead who once helped a KKK leader stage a drive-by shooting that ‘sprayed bullets’ into a synagogue.” He was active in the Dixie Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

    Patton was the wheelman for a Klansman who fired a TEC-9 into a Nashville synagogue, and then was smuggled out of state by another Klansman….

    His testimony included this phrase: “We believe that the Blacks and the Jews are taking over America, and it’s our job to take America back for the White race.”

    Patton says he no longer believes those things to be true, and he sincerely regrets his youthful actions and beliefs.

    Banjo “has conned the state of Utah into giving it access to state’s surveillance feeds with the promise of fighting crime using secret methods that Utahans (and independent reviewers) aren’t allowed to understand.”

    ++ In other surveillance news: NSO Group is a cyber-arms dealer that helps “the world’s most despicable dictators” commit crimes against humanity – including the Saudi murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi.

    At least one NSO employee used National Security Agency tools to stalk a woman he knew personally. He broke into NSA offices in the United Arab Emirates. This practice is so common that the NSA has a cute nickname for it, LOVEINT.

    ++ After the British Empire conquered the world and looted cultural artifacts, the British Museum, is claiming copyright over images of those artifacts. I’m planning to steal my next-door neighbor’s lawnmower and then claim copyright on pictures of it.

    ++ The medical debt collection industry is going strong during the pandemic. Victims include a nurse who is borrowing gas money to get to work because all of her pay is being garnisheed.

    ++ 68 pieces of advice from Kevin Kelly on his 68th birthday. Includes:

    • Always demand a deadline,
    • “Being able to listen well is a superpower” (I’m working on listening and am getting better at it. Previously I was just “waiting to talk.")

    Also:

    Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.

    And:

    Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.

    → 1:46 PM, Apr 29
  • 101-year-old Angelina Friedman tested positive for coronavirus and recovered. Previously, she survived the 1918 flu pandemic, cancer, miscarriages, internal bleeding, sepsis and at least one husband.

    → 12:19 PM, Apr 29
  • Google is making Meet free for everyone — I’m sticking with Zoom for now. I know it works and I don’t feel like fooling around with another platform.

    → 11:19 AM, Apr 29
  • I seem to be on a Rome kick lately

    I watched Britannia, with Julie, and am rewatching I, Claudius.

    I just started reading “Silver Pigs,” the first book of the historical mystery series by Lindsey Davis about Marcus Didius Falco, a private investigator in 1st Century Rome. I read many of those books years ago but I have essentially forgotten them so I’m quite enjoying “Silver Pigs.” I did not get through the whole series then, and plan to do so now. I expect it’ll take me a couple of years but that’s OK.

    And I just started reading Mike Duncan’s “Storm Before the Storm,” a history of the events that led up to the fall of the Roman Republic.

    The Roman Republic rose from an obscure village to the first megacity, conquering Italy and beyond. It lasted 500 years. Think of how long that is – that’s the equivalent of the early 1500s to today. The Republic must have seemed immutable, a permanent fixture of the world, like the land and sky. And then it went away. Potential parallels to today are obvious.

    I think of Roman TV shows as being set in the same universe as I, Claudius, like Marvel superhero movies or Star Trek shows. The Claudiverse – or Clavdiverse! Britannia is a series about events that take place entirely offstage during the 11th episode of I, Claudius, “A God inColchester.” One of the main characters of Britannia gets namechecked twice in that “I, Claudius” episode. “Rome” is a prequel to “I, Claudius.” And so on.

    Reportedly, when David Milch pitched “Deadwood” to HBO, he went into the meeting with a series in mind that would have been set in ancient Rome. Milch was obsessed with the concept of civil society rising up out of disorder – you can see that in “Deadwood” and his earlier show, “NYPD Blue.” So his idea for a series would have followed two ordinary soldiers in the Vigiles Urbani, the police and firefighters of imperial Rome. According to the story, when Milch took the meeting the HBO executives said they already had a Roman series, which become “Rome,” and so Milch thought fast on his feet and the series became “Deadwood.”

    “Deadwood” was fantastic but I want to see that other series. I even have a made-up title for it: “SPQR Blue.” 📓📚📺

    → 10:12 AM, Apr 29
  • Man Just Buying One Of Every Cleaning Product In Case Trump Announces It’s Coronavirus Cure

    → 10:46 PM, Apr 28
  • Damning Report Finds White House Ignored Skeletal Horsemen Galloping Through Sky As Early As January

    → 10:44 PM, Apr 28
  • Obama: ‘I’m So Proud To Endorse Joe Biden—That’s Who They Went With, Huh?—For President’

    → 10:42 PM, Apr 28
  • Trump Accuses New York Of Padding State’s Mortality Rate By Including African American Deaths

    → 10:41 PM, Apr 28
  • Undaunted Texas Waffle House Waitress Has Been Expecting To Die There Every Day For The Past 20 Years Anyway

    → 10:39 PM, Apr 28
  • Teleconferencing Pastor Requests Any Worshipper Currently Speaking In Tongues Go On Mute

    → 10:37 PM, Apr 28
  • Walgreens Introduces New Dumbass-Only Shopping Hours For Dipshits Who Don’t Know How To Stay 6 Feet Away

    → 10:35 PM, Apr 28
  • I’m thinking of trying Amethyst, a tiling window manager for the Mac, even though I have a mental block against adding keyboard shortcuts to my brain.

    I wonder if I have any Post-It notes around the office?

    → 2:03 PM, Apr 28
  • How to pitch an editor – Great tips from Esther Schindler, who knows, for freelance writers on how to get an editor to buy an article.

    I’m looking to broaden my portfolio into general-interest, tech journalism, which is an area where I have zero reputation. So I’ll be (metaphorically speaking) pinning this article prominently to my bulletin board.

    (I actually don’t have a bulletin board and don’t print things out. But you know what I mean.)

    → 11:28 AM, Apr 28
  • Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

    → 9:43 AM, Apr 28
  • Six years ago today, a girl in the park wanted me and Minnie to participate in a science experiment about handedness in dogs. She said Minnie had to be able to to sit and give paw on command. I said Minnie wasn’t reliable on that — truth is, we have never done it. The girl said we couldn’t participate. Minnie’s self-esteem was severely damaged (by which I mean Minnie had no idea what was going on and continued cheerfully on her way).

    → 9:39 AM, Apr 28
  • Feels like the news has been the same every day for a couple of weeks, but something big will reach a tipping point any day now.

    → 11:28 PM, Apr 27
  • Doctor Who: McGann, Eccleston & Tennant Doctors Unite For New Story — New Doctor Who miniseries will feature the Christopher Eccleston, Paul McGann, and David Tennant Doctors, as well as Billie Piper’s character, Rose Tyler, on “every possible media platform apart from the main Doctor Who television series,” including “novels, comics, audio, video games, VR games and even a new series of Doctor Who themed escape rooms.”

    Sounds exhausting.

    → 10:57 PM, Apr 27
  • via

    → 2:54 PM, Apr 27
  • Fortnite and the Metaverse: Why Epic Games may build the next version of the Internet – Fortnite is building the Metaverse – a parallel universe in virtual reality.

    → 2:35 PM, Apr 27
  • The Computer Scientist Who Can’t Stop Telling Stories – Pioneering computer scientist Donald Knuth started working on the book series “The Art of Computer Programming” in 1962. It’s still unfinished.

    → 2:33 PM, Apr 27
  • “I Forgive You, New York”

    → 2:31 PM, Apr 27
  • First-person account of how Covid-19 hit hard in a rural Georgia town – On the Today, Explained podcast

    → 2:29 PM, Apr 27
  • I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter was out of stock last time I was at the supermarket. I expected the same when I went to the supermarket yesterday. But I was pleasantly surprised to see they had a good quantity on the shelves.

    I exclaimed joyously, “I can’t believe it’s I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!”

    → 2:17 PM, Apr 27
  • Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

    ++ Indie booksellers are doing pretty well in the pandemic, including Barnes & Noble, which is rebooting as an indie chain;

    ++ Listen to the podcast of “Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town,” one of my favorites of Cory’s novels;

    ++ Billionaires are making big money on the pandemic, while their employees go broke and risk death;

    ++ The pandemic proves ISP data-caps were always a pretense;

    ++ And Denver Health Medical Center cuts healthcare workers' pay while giving executives five- and six-figure bonuses.

    → 2:04 PM, Apr 27
  • A former neighbor of Joe Biden’s accuser Tara Reade has come forward to corroborate her sexual-assault account, saying Reade discussed the allegations in detail in the mid-1990s – Business Insider.

    I’m still for Biden but this is troubling to say the least.

    → 1:06 PM, Apr 27
  • The chairman of Tyson Foods warns the food supply chain is breaking – Neoliberalism treats resiliency as waste, and Tyson is a chief culprit here. If you treat your employees like disposable components, you can’t keep up with an emergency.

    → 12:45 PM, Apr 27
  • A New York ER doctor who treated coronavirus patients took her own life. – The New York Times

    “Make sure she’s praised as a hero, because she was," Dr. Lorna M. Breen’s father said. “She’s a casualty just as much as anyone else who has died.”

    Yes.

    → 12:40 PM, Apr 27
  • San Diego officials are struggling with finding permanent housing foe 1,000 homeless people now sheltering in the Convention Center.

    → 12:32 PM, Apr 27
  • [via](via https://twitter.com/neontaster/status/1254804783875141633)

    → 11:52 AM, Apr 27
  • Six years ago today was a weekend day and I went to the mall. Out and around people, not wearing a mask or gloves!

    From my journal:

    Shopped for sandals, stopped in at Apple Store, looked in at Microsoft store (an eerie clone of the Apple store but none of the computers on display connect to anything other than the Microsoft Store demo website and one of the computers was broken). I had a dirty soy chai latte, which a friend regularly drinks. It was very tasty.

    While leaving the Apple store I walked into a glass wall, thinking it was a passageway, and bumped my head. Smooth!

    → 9:00 AM, Apr 27
  • I went grocery shopping yesterday. Plastic bag reuse has been suspended in California for the crisis. The cashier said she was glad about that. People bring in some disgusting bags for re-use, she said.

    → 8:46 AM, Apr 27
  • via

    → 10:48 PM, Apr 26
  • You’ll Probably Forget What It Was Like to Live Through a Pandemic — People who live through big historical events often forget details.

    → 8:00 PM, Apr 26
  • When all this handwashing began I was using a harsh soap that gave me a small rash on my left wrist. That means I have to wear my Apple Watch on my right wrist. That was weeks ago and I still haven’t gotten used to operating the Watch that way.

    Completely unrelated: I’ve just learned I’ve been nominated for the Whiny Little Pandemic Bitch Award.

    → 9:57 AM, Apr 26
  • → 9:56 AM, Apr 26
  • John Ritter guest starred on the last episode of Mannix in 1975. They used “The Brady Bunch” set for the interiors.

    Screen grab and caption courtesy of Ashley Nevius

    via

    → 9:54 AM, Apr 26
  • via

    → 9:50 AM, Apr 26
  • Social distancing via

    → 9:43 AM, Apr 26
  • via

    → 9:41 AM, Apr 26
  • I went through a Southern Rock phase in college. I wore a cowboy hat. I was a pudgy Jew from Long Island. I looked ridiculous.

    I still love the music tho. Sometimes I crank up the Outlaws' Ghost Riders in the Sky loud and listen to it like 18 times in in a row. AirPods have saved our marriage.

    → 9:39 AM, Apr 26
  • Microsoft Word Now Flags Two Spaces After a Period as an Error – “Wake me up when Word starts flagging the use of Arial with ‘Did you mean to use Helvetica?’… "

    → 9:35 AM, Apr 26
  • I suck at not touching my face but I think about not touching my face while I’m touching my face so that’s good right?

    → 9:29 AM, Apr 26
  • ‪Dog, me and Julie were sitting on the couch just now. Dog looked at me and straight-up belched, sounding very human. Julie said she thought I’d done it. I don’t think she’s entirely convinced it wasn’t me. ‬

    → 7:12 PM, Apr 25
  • Found Snapshots of a Secret 1960s Crossdressing Resort in the Catskills

    By Amy Faith on Messy Nessy Chic:

    “What struck me on that first day was the normalcy of the images, even if it was a studied illusion. Here were photos documenting everyday women, going about their everyday lives – except that these women were men who probably lived as truck drivers, accountants, or bank presidents during the week.”

    Great photos and a hell of a story!

    → 1:14 PM, Apr 25
  • What We Can Learn From 1918 Influenza Diaries

    Smithsonian Magazine:

    When Dorman B.E. Kent, a historian and businessman from Montpelier, Vermont, contracted influenza in fall 1918, he chronicled his symptoms in vivid detail. Writing in his journal, the 42-year-old described waking up with a “high fever,” “an awful headache” and a stomach bug.

    “Tried to get Dr. Watson in the morning but he couldn’t come,” Kent added. Instead, the physician advised his patient to place greased cloths and a hot water bottle around his throat and chest.

    “Took a seidlitz powder”—similar to Alka-Seltzer—“about 10:00 and threw it up soon so then took two tablespoons of castor oil,” Kent wrote. “Then the movements began and I spent a good part of the time at the seat.”

    → 12:54 PM, Apr 25
  • The 1Password team share their work-from-home setups

    “I’m going for “Mom from Kiki’s Delivery Service” or “Alchemist next door” kind of vibes.”

    By Emily Marchant

    → 12:49 PM, Apr 25
  • Injections of Bleach? Beams of Light? Trump Is Self-Destructing Before Our Eyes

    “The notion that [Trump] is bound for four more years is pure superstition.”

    This is a wonderful rallying cry by Frank Bruni at the New York Times about Trump’s extreme beatability this year. Indeed, Trump doesn’t have to be beaten; he’s destroying himself.

    Trump is extremely unpopular now. Of course, he was extremely unpopular in 2016 as well, and won anyway.

    But the dissonance of that victory could be explained partly by what he represented: a protest against the status quo. Now he _is _the status quo, and voters have had a chance to sample the disruption that he pledged. It tastes a lot like incompetence.

    I’ve been saying – and hoping – something similar for a couple of years. A big part of Trump’s support in 2016 came from people who went into the voting booth and saw two levers. One was marked “MORE OF THE SAME.” They pulled the other lever, which was marked “SOMETHING DIFFERENT.”

    Also, while Trump makes a strength out of outrageous behavior that would be fatal to another politician, a lot of what he has going for him is just plain luck.

    He’s lucky beyond all imagining. But here’s the thing about luck: It runs out.

    Yes.

    Thanks, @ReaderJohn!

    → 11:23 AM, Apr 25
  • The Lockdowns Were the Black Swan [Holman W. Jenkins, Jr./WSJ]

    We did not need to lock down the country to flatten the curve.

    A reasonable argument. Not sure I agree with it. Needs evidence-based discussion.

    → 11:05 AM, Apr 25
  • Coronavirus Overtakes Ninjas As Top Invisible Enemy [The Babylon Bee]

    What makes coronavirus even worse than ninjas, according to Trump, is that there is currently no known defense against it, while the defense against ninjas is well known (train with monks for a decade in the mountains to learn the secrets of martial arts).

    This is of course satire but no dumber than things 45 actually says.

    Thanks, @chet!

    → 5:24 PM, Apr 24
  • The week before the shutdown here in San Diego I went to two social events – which is a lot for me – and surprised myself how much I enjoyed them.

    Days before the shutdown I said to myself, “I think my time as a recluse is over. I need to join community associations and clubs and get out more and socialize.”

    So the pandemic is my fault. My bad.

    → 5:02 PM, Apr 24
  • Ben Affleck Smoked A Cigarette While Wearing A Face Mask So Here Are The Pics [Lauren Yapalater/BuzzFeed]

    He’s one of my favorite actors and directors and I’m sorry to say this but Ben Affleck is kind of an idiot isn’t he?

    → 2:34 PM, Apr 24
  • Navy recommends reinstating captain of coronavirus-stricken aircraft carrier [Amanda Macias/CNBC]

    → 2:30 PM, Apr 24
  • Opening a can if wildly corroded Spider-Man pasta [Twitter/DinosaurDracula]

    → 2:25 PM, Apr 24
  • Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

    ++ A GoFundMe to save NYC’s Forbidden Planet store.

    ++ “A labradoodle breeder is in charge of America’s vaccines: An actual labradoodle could do a better job.”

    ++ “Inject disinfectant:” Even when faced with ridiculous objections to scientific fact, such as climate change, journalists feel the need for dangerous both-siderism.

    ++ “Masks work: Lasers reveal your revolting, spittle-flecked utterances.”

    ++ “US telcoms sector isn’t doing better than Europe’s: Net Neutrality’s murderers want you to believe they saved the American internet.”

    ++ “Amazon uses its sellers' data to figure out which products to clone: And they lied to Congress about it.”

    ++ “Facebook let advertisers target ‘pseudoscience’ and ‘conspiracy’:” This uses the same algorithm that previously allowed advertisers to target “jew-haters.”

    ++ “Security expert conned out of $10,000: If you think you’re too smart to get phished…. "

    → 12:58 PM, Apr 24
  • I miss going to the grocery store to buy three things

    I’d realize I was out of apples or coffee, and then I’d go to the store and buy that and maybe two other things and that was my errand.

    Related: I miss having apples every day. I now have apples most days but I do not want to risk going to the store often enough to allow me to have apples every day. I’ve been out of apples several days now, but on deadline so don’t have time for a grocery run.

    → 9:19 AM, Apr 24
  • Can the coronavirus be spread through farts? [Eric Hegedus/NYPost]

    Australian doctors aren’t sure whether farting spreads coronavirus, and advise restraining from bare-bottom farting and farting when close to other people.

    Which begs the question whether bare-bottom farting and farting close to other people has previously been common practice in Australia?

    I know I have several Australian social media friends and I would appreciate enlightenment on this subject.

    → 8:14 AM, Apr 24
  • How close are we to breaking encryption with quantum computing? [Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols/InsiderPro]

    Not very, but we need to be ready when it happens.

    → 7:58 AM, Apr 24
  • Breitbart literally says that Trump’s opponents misquoted him by reporting the exact words Trump used in the context he said it.

    → 7:33 AM, Apr 24
  • Wi-Fi is getting its biggest upgrade in 20 years [Jacob Kastrenakes/The Verge]

    Wi-Fi is getting 4x the spectrum for a lot more elbow room.

    → 6:08 AM, Apr 24
  • → 5:49 AM, Apr 24
  • I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out for coffee.

    → 5:31 AM, Apr 24
  • TV show idea: “Zeno, Warrior Princess,” about a transgender Classical Greek philosopher who defeats evildoers using logical paradoxes.

    → 6:38 PM, Apr 23
  • Not a Joke: The Trump Admin Hired a Dog Breeder to Run Its Coronavirus Task Force [Bess Levin/Vanity Fair]

    “Don’t worry, Brian Harrison also has virtually no public health experience.”

    When faced with a pandemic that threatens millions of lives, I want a labradoodle man in charge.

    → 2:07 PM, Apr 23
  • An old friend just shared a Dropbox folder of hundreds of photos he took when we were teenagers together.

    This is me looking much cooler than I have ever been in my life.

    That hair tho. I do miss having hair. 📷 📓

    → 11:46 AM, Apr 23
  • Claim that coronavirus came from a lab in China completely unfounded, scientists say [Kashmira Gander/Newsweek]

    I expect everybody who believes the virus came from a Chinese lab will look at this article and say, “Welp, guess I was wrong about that. Thank you for sharing that information!”

    → 10:36 AM, Apr 23
  • The Coronavirus in America: The Year Ahead [Donald G. McNeil Jr./The New York Times]

    An excellent overview of the best science on what to expect – not just for the next year, but for years.

    Short version: Expect gradual, cautious “opening the economy” and going out in public, in phases. The process could take literally years. People proven immune will get passports that let them move freely anywhere. At-risk people will live more limited lives.

    The civil liberties implications here are ENORMOUS; freedom of movement and assembly are two essential characteristics distinguishing police states from free societies. But we are going to have to give those things up to minimize harm from the pandemic.

    Not said in this article: Or we could be stupid and lots of people could rush out right away to bars and movie theaters and sporting events, and we’ll see hundreds of thousands of deaths.

    → 10:31 AM, Apr 23
  • Are You Sitting Down? Standing Desks Are Overrated [Aaron E. Carroll/New York Times]

    I’ve been using a standing desk for about 10 years. Or more precisely a sitting/standing desk - I have a tall stool that I perch on when I want to take a break from standing.

    → 10:22 AM, Apr 23
  • The Year 2038 Problem [Reset]: If you enjoyed the Year 2000 crisis, we get to do it again in 2038.

    Also: Making the case that Y2K was not rubbish; rather, a lot of people got together to make sure that nothing would go wrong, and very little did. Because of their efforts, we did see some problems in 2000, but they were no big deal.

    And, interestingly, some of the effects were felt this year, in January – one of the Y2K workarounds was to essentially kick the problem down the road 20 years.

    → 9:33 AM, Apr 23
  • Who’s Organizing the Lockdown Protests [The Daily]

    “An informal coalition of influential conservative leaders and groups has been quietly encouraging demonstrations against stay-at-home orders across the country.”

    Usual suspects of Tea Party backers, gun rights groups, and Trump advocates.

    Generally I’m happy to see Trump supporters burn their own houses down, but I am genuinely grieved and appalled to see photos of these protest groups. They’re playing Russian roulette with their own lives, their children and their families, friends, co-workers and neighbors.

    It’s like watching a group of people protest traffic laws by walking blindfolded across a major superhighway during rush hour.

    → 9:24 AM, Apr 23
  • via

    → 11:06 PM, Apr 22
  • Wheels on a shopping cart be like [yeahiwasintheshit.tumblr.com]

    → 11:02 PM, Apr 22
  • The problem with read-later bookmarking services like Pocket and Instapaper is your queue is filled with articles you decided not to read.

    → 6:11 PM, Apr 22
  • My women friends are showing their coronavirus hairdos on Instagram. Here’s mine.

    → 1:47 PM, Apr 22
  • “Remain calm! All is well!" The White House maintains order during the coronavirus pandemic.

    → 1:21 PM, Apr 22
  • CDC Director Robert Redfield warned the coronavirus pandemic might come back in the winter, worse than before. The White House claims he never said it. The White House is lying.

    Why the CDC director wasn’t misquoted on coronavirus – no matter what the White House says [Chris Cillizza/CNN]

    → 1:18 PM, Apr 22
  • Why do people think 5G causes coronavirus?

    The 5G coronavirus conspiracy theory[Reset]

    A vague throwaway line in a European newspaper in January ignited multiple conspiracy theories about a nonexistent link between 5G and coronavirus

    People subscribe to theories like this because there are things really going on in the world that would have been unthinkable a short time ago

    The best way to combat the spread of a conspiracy theory: Start by listening.

    → 11:46 AM, Apr 22
  • What to expect in the next year or two of the pandemic

    Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times science and health reporter, who has successfully anticipated the pandemic thus far, polishes his crystal ball and looks at what to expect for the next year or two.

    • Immunity passports, as people get certified immune and fit to go out in public;
    • Start-stop lockdowns, as societies open up, infection rates increase, and then societies shut down again;
    • and strategic self-infection – people intentionally infecting themselves in hopes of acquiring immunity.

    Afterward, possibly a flourishing of prosperity and progressive policy, as happened after World Wars I and I.

    The Next Year (or Two) of the Pandemic [The Daily/The New York Times]

    → 11:37 AM, Apr 22
  • Gentleman on Reddit espouses the brilliant fan theory that “Star Trek” takes place in the same universe as the soap opera “Days of Our Lives."

    → 11:23 AM, Apr 22
  • Stories to Wash Hands By [The Memory Palace/Nate DiMeo]: “20 stories, each 20 seconds, to accompany you in the proper washing of hands.”

    → 11:20 AM, Apr 22
  • Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

    ++ Calls by the music industry to put copyright filters on the entire Internet are a terrible idea. Existing filters are utter failures at finding copyrighted material and “they also flag and block entire libraries' worth of legit materials.” Copyright filters will do the EXACT OPPOSITE of what they intend: They will encourage copyright abuse, stifle legitimate free expression and creativity and – because they cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year to implement – they will block startups from competing with the big incumbent internet companies.

    ++ Apartment buildings didn’t cause the pandemic.

    ++ “Reopen” websites are backed by the Koch brothers and other grifters behind the Tea Party, GOP and conmen who stir up fears that guns are going to confiscated.

    ++ Charter gives its field techs $25 gift cards to restaurants – which aren’t open – instead of hazard pay or PPE, and it requires back-office staff to come to work in the office. Now at last 230 Charter employees have Covid-19 and the company is under investigation by the NY Attorney General.

    ++ Disney heiress Abigail Disney says the company’s top executives ought to forego bonuses rather than furlough 100,000 front-line workers.

    → 9:46 AM, Apr 22
  • Trump is going down hard in November

    Everyone is in denial about November [Daniel W. Drezner/The Washington Post]

    We’re only in the second inning of the pandemic. Getting a little breather now, things are looking like they’re getting better, but most of the crisis is still ahead of us.

    And Trump can be counted on to make things worse. That is his biggest liability as a President. Not his numerous character flaws – jerk, crook, racist, narcissist, serial and compulsive liar. No, Trump’s biggest liability as a President is that he’s an incompetent moron. He’s an idiot. Even worse, he THINKS he’s a super-competent genius. And that’s going to be even more obvious in November than it is today.

    → 9:06 AM, Apr 22
  • "World on Fire"

    Last night we watched about 15 minutes of the second episode “World on Fire,” a British miniseries about the Nazi conquest of Europe, told from the vantage point of ordinary people.

    Then we turned off the TV.

    I loved the first episode of the program and was extremely impressed by it, but somehow we’re not feeling like watching “World on Fire” when the world seems like it’s on the verge of burning.

    → 8:22 AM, Apr 22
  • A view into an alternate universe

    A big part of my job is – or was – attending conferences. When I learn – or learned – about an interesting-looking conference, I put it in my calendar.

    And now that calendar is a view into an alternate universe, one where I continued to work at my previous job, and coronavirus did not happen.

    Today in that alternate universe, I am returning from the Open Networking Edge Summit in Los Angeles.

    → 7:59 AM, Apr 22
  • With the nation healthy, tranquil and prosperous, our President turns his attention to thoughtful media criticism.

    Trump tunes in to ‘Morning Joe,’ says he sees ‘hatred and contempt’ [Kyle Balluck/The Hill]

    → 10:10 PM, Apr 21
  • Barr Threatens Legal Action Against Governors Over Lockdowns [Chris Strohm/Bloomberg]

    Even before the coronavirus crisis began, I thought of the Republican Party as a criminal racist death cult. Really looking to be proven wrong on that one.

    → 7:55 PM, Apr 21
  • McConnell slams brakes on next round of coronavirus aid [Burgess Everett/Politico]

    Captain of the “Titanic” says he will not begin lowering the lifeboats until all the deck chairs are arranged just so.

    → 7:52 PM, Apr 21
  • Whole lotta love: Robert Plant gave a big donation to a company that makes PPE [Erica Banas/WMMR]

    → 7:35 PM, Apr 21
  • Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

    • Beware of fake “Someone you came in contact with tested positive for COVID-19” warnings. They’re scams.

    • Investors that own doctors' groups blew millions on ads to promote “surprise billing” even as they were denying access to PPE, cutting wages and firing doctors.

    • Every Covid commercial is exactly the same.

    • The Texas AG threatens to imprison people for warning about the risk of getting Covid while voting.

    • Covid didn’t escape from a Chinese lab.

    • Whole Foods is making heatmaps to detect union activity – cheaper than paying people a good wage.

    • Amazon workers are planning a strike.

    → 2:19 PM, Apr 21
  • How far back does your resume go?

    Question for my over-50 associates: How far back does your resume go? I’ve seen tips that experienced job-seekers should only have resumes going back 15 years. Mine goes back to 2003 and I’ll probably keep it that way because I was at that particular company until 2009 – 11 years ago, within the 15-year window.

    How about you? How far back does your resume and LinkedIn profile go?

    When updating my resume and LinkedIn in February I was a little sad to hit the delete key on the first 15 years of my career, which encompassed local weekly and daily newspapers, time at UNIX Today and Open Systems Today, my first gigs at InformationWeek and Computerworld, and my first 10-month stint freelancing – gone gone gone.

    → 10:47 AM, Apr 21
  • How Coffee Became a Modern Necessity [Augustine Sedgewick/WSJ]: “For much of its 500-year history, the drink was viewed with confusion, suspicion and disgust.”

    → 10:12 AM, Apr 21
  • Vintage Season: C.L. Moore and the “Golden Age” of Science Fiction [Eric Rosenfield/Literate Machine]

    C.L. Moore was a talented science fiction and fantasy writer whose career spanned the Golden Age of pulp magazines, from the 1930s, and briefly into television. She wrote both under her own byline and in collaboration with her husband, Henry Kuttner. She retired from writing in 1963, and died a quarter-century later. The ferocious demands of making a living writing at cheap pulp rates had burned out her talent and used her up.

    Her most famous story is probably “Vintage Season.” Set in the present day, it’s about a man who rents out a house to a group of strange but congenial people who, the man learns, are from the future. The mystery of the story is what these people are doing there, at that time: the man thinks there is absolutely nothing remarkable about himself, his house, his city or that moment. He soon learns differently.

    Moore’s husband, Kuttner, died of a stroke in his sleep at age 44 in 1958. A month earlier, a talented writer named Cyril Kornbluth died of a heart attack at age 34 “and there was a palpable feeling among their fellows in the trenches that these men had died from the constant need to produce in the pay-per-word mills, especially through the long crunch of the mid-to-late 50s.

    Rosenfield writes:

    “I was only twenty-three, then,” writer Robert Silverberg would say later, “but I somehow realized right away that these two men had literally died from writing science fiction and I was afraid that I was going to die too. I had some bad months.”

    More writers would fall away over the next few years; Mark Clifton dead of a heart attack in 1963 at 57, H. Beam Piper a suicide in 1960 at 60. Still others quit prose fiction altogether. Isaac Asimov, for example, turned to cranking out nonfiction books at his customary breakneck pace and wouldn’t come back to fiction until the ’70s. Leigh Brackett took up a noted film career, including scripts for Rio Bravo (1958), The Long Goodbye (1973), and The Empire Strikes Back (1980), among many others.

    Moore for her part completed the transition to television, writing for Maverick, Sugarfoot, 77 Sunset Strip, and other shows under the name Catherine Kuttner. But in 1963 she remarried a physician and quit writing altogether.

    It’d be easy to speculate that her new husband didn’t want his wife writing, but she herself said in a later interview, “Since I don’t have to write for a living anymore, I just don’t have the motivation to resume writing, although I wish I did.” There’s a sense in this sentence that the pressures of commercial fiction had sucked out whatever passion Moore had once had for writing–all that giddy glee in which she’d typed out that first story for fun back in 1933–transforming it into just another job. And when the need for that job evaporated so did the desire to do it.

    → 10:08 AM, Apr 21
  • The Woman Who Might Find Us Another Earth

    Sara Seager is a tenured professor of physics and planetary science who won a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation in 2013. Her area of expertise is exoplanets – planets that orbit stars other than our son – specifically the search for a planet that might contain life.

    Chris Jones profiles Seagar for the New York Times. She emerges as the very picture of the obsessed scientist: She speaks in an unmodulated breathless tone, never learned to manage money, doesn’t celebrate birthdays, Christmas or holidays, never learned to cook.

    It would be easy to pigeonhole someone like Seagar as a soulless human computer. But this profile is only half-focused on her work; the other half deals with her immense grief over becoming a young widow, struggling to raise children alone, and eventually finding friends and connection with people.

    → 9:45 AM, Apr 21
  • → 9:29 AM, Apr 21
  • → 9:27 AM, Apr 21
  • → 9:25 AM, Apr 21
  • via

    → 11:05 PM, Apr 20
  • vintagegeekculture:

    Star Trek art designer Matt Jeffries, with one of his most famous creations: the Klingon battlecruiser.

    Bonus: his original, and in my view, far better, design for the shuttlecraft.

    via

    → 10:55 PM, Apr 20
  • via

    → 10:46 PM, Apr 20
  • KOOL cigarette ad from the 1960s. via

    → 10:42 PM, Apr 20
  • via

    → 10:40 PM, Apr 20
  • via

    → 10:38 PM, Apr 20
  • via

    → 10:34 PM, Apr 20
  • The temperature will probably get up past 90 by Saturday. I am looking forward to complaining about the heat as a break from complaining about the cold.

    → 6:11 PM, Apr 20
  • Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic.net:

    • Denmark is denying bailouts to companies headquartered in tax havens: If you don’t pay taxes, you don’t get to enjoy tax benefits.

    • Zoom claims it uses AI to stop sexytimes. Zoom won’t let you zoom anybody on Zoom. Or so it says – AI has been terrible at detecting nudity, there’s no reason to think it’s gotten better. And why does Zoom believe it has the right to be sex police?

    • Cars, not public transit, are correlated with contagion in NYC. I need to look into this further; it doesn’t make sense. I am 100% pro-public-transit, and it absolutely can be made to work even here in suburbanized Southern California. But public transit, like sporting events, religious services, Comic-Con, and other wonderful things, seems like contagion vectors.

    • 94.5% of “small business” money went to giant corporations. Because Trump’s only skill is grifting.

    • Also, while every President since Reagan has had a terrible record on anti-trust, Trump is the worst. He’s not even trying.

    → 2:29 PM, Apr 20
  • Tales of romance and relationships during the pandemic

    Covering Covid [Embedded]

    A woman tries dating by Facetime and Zoom, and has stories.

    A newlywed couple, married just one year, is quarantined together in a one-bedroom apartment; they’re struggling as he’s an average male slob and she had a terrible fear of death that she was seeking counseling for even BEFORE the pandemic.

    A man tells his wife he wants a divorce and then they get locked in together in quarantine, which is awkward.

    I loved this episode and am looking forward to the inevitable Richard Curtis movie adaptation.

    But it occurs to me that all the stories are about privileged people. Where are the so-called “essential workers” – the Amazon warehouse and Instacart workers? Where are the doctors and nurses? Where are the people who are sick or dying?

    P.S. Dating stories from my over-30 single women friends are a guilty pleasure of mine. They’re suffering for my entertainment!

    → 10:39 AM, Apr 20
  • The poop emoji was born in Japan in 1997 and launched a generation of cute poop. This is the cute poop decade.

    The poop fad connects with unicorns, unboxing videos, toys, marketing, Apple, the changing role of girls, slime, ice cream, emoji, glitter, Google, and middle-age people’s difficulties having bowel movements.

    Unicorn poop: How did excrement get cute? [Decoder Ring]

    → 10:19 AM, Apr 20
  • Cast of Pulp Fiction and Quentin Tarantino, 1994 via

    I remember I didn’t want to see this for years because I thought it would be artsy and tedious. Boy was I wrong.

    → 11:55 PM, Apr 19
  • “Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper too?” 1970’s campaign via

    → 11:26 PM, Apr 19
  • A paid testimonial from Basil Rathbone. 1960. via

    → 11:23 PM, Apr 19
  • “Kids are murder!” - Sanatogen Tonic Wine ad with a mail-in coupon to receive a sample [1960s] via

    → 11:21 PM, Apr 19
  • Del Cerro hills, from a few minutes’ walk from home. The air is amazingly clear. 📷

    → 8:33 PM, Apr 19
  • Don’t care what the answer is. I’m keeping mine.

    → 4:26 PM, Apr 19
  • Coronavirus will also cause a loneliness epidemic

    COVID-9 exacerbates another long-standing and serious pandemic: Loneliness.

    Loneliness can literally cause physical illness. People most at risk from COVID-19 are the elderly and disabled, and they’re more likely to be lonely too.

    [Ezra Klein/Vox]

    → 4:04 PM, Apr 19
  • Procrastination is Not Laziness

    David Cain at Raptitude:

    … procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability — which is pretty much everything.”

    So much here is true for me. Sometimes, when I’m particularly hard on myself, I think I could have accomplished so much more.

    And by “sometimes” I mean “often.” Maybe every day.

    → 3:56 PM, Apr 19
  • Why Walking Matters—Now More Than Ever

    Shane O’Mara at The Wall Street Journal:

    Walking is essential to our nature. Walking upright is one thing that sets humans apart; no other animal does it, but we can’t do without it.

    Walking helps the body heal, helps the brain function. Walking, rather than seeing, is how we build metal maps of our environment. And walking protects us against depression.

    I walk 3+ miles daily.

    → 3:48 PM, Apr 19
  • How NOT to Wear a Mask [Tara Parker-Pope/The New York Times]

    → 3:37 PM, Apr 19
  • via

    → 3:34 PM, Apr 19
  • Aaron E. Carroll at The New York Times: “I’m a Doctor. If I Drop Food on the Kitchen Floor, I Still Eat It.” If the dog doesn’t get to it first.

    → 3:32 PM, Apr 19
  • Who’s Right About The Economy? Wall Street Or Silicon Valley?

    Brian McCullough, host of Techmeme ride home, talks with TechCrunch’s Alex Wilhelm.

    My $0.02: Wall Street is expecting they’ll be getting fat at the trough of that sweet, sweet government bailout money. Silicon Valley is seeing reality

    → 3:27 PM, Apr 19
  • Remdisivir, a drug that shows promising signs as a potential treatment for COVID-19, was developed using public funds. But Gilead, a pharma company, stands to profit big.

    Republicans were right to warn about welfare kings and queens “driving Cadillacs and getting fat on government pork.” These moochers are the wealthy, big-business donors to both Republicans and Democrats.

    Gilead, the remdesivir welfare queens [Cory Doctorow/Pluralistic]

    → 12:14 PM, Apr 19
  • “80% of the stimulus tax break will go to 43,000 people” [Cory Doctorow/Pluralistic]

    → 12:07 PM, Apr 19
  • “If Americans pour back out in force, all will appear quiet for perhaps three weeks. Then the emergency rooms will get busy again."

    And the morgues.

    [NextDraft by Dave Pell]

    → 11:56 AM, Apr 19
  • Sweet Farm, in Half Moon Bay, CA, will let you add a live goat cam to your next virtual meeting. The service is called Goat 2 Meeting. (Via Mike’s List. Thanks, Mike!)

    → 11:48 AM, Apr 19
  • I’m trying to remember when I last had a day off work, and I can’t recall. Weekend before lockdown when I went out to brunch with Julie, maybe? That was more than a month ago.

    I’m not working ALL the time. I take a few hours off every day. Indeed, I am actually not currently working very hard at all, though that needs to end very soon and I need to get back to working hard again. Because money.

    Still, I do work every day, some more and some less. Every day. And my schedule is unhinged. Like Billy Pilgrim or Doctor Who, I have become unstuck in time. Last night after 10 pm I caught up on email and worked on organizing my to-do list. Not something I would normally do on a Saturday night.

    Yesterday was Saturday, right? And that means today is Sunday? [Checking phone] Yes, that’s right.

    What does a day off look like anyway, when you work from a home office, most of your work and play both involves staring at screens, and – this is the key part – YOU CAN’T GO ANYWHERE.

    I asked Julie and she said: Clean house. We usually have a service come in and do that but of course they’re not coming now and the house is getting pretty colorful.

    So I guess that’s what I’m doing. As a self-employed person I can schedule my “weekend” whenever it makes the most sense. So I guess sometime in the next few days I’m taking the day off and helping clean house. Um, yay?

    → 9:34 AM, Apr 19
  • Tell-Tale Tongue, Holloways Brand Pills, 1956 via

    → 11:30 PM, Apr 18
  • Is the Virus on My Clothes? My Shoes? My Hair? My Newspaper? - Tara Parker-Pope on The New York Times

    Staying safe when you come in from the big world.

    tl;dr: If you’re not leaving the house much, and not coming in contact with infected people, then social distancing, mask wearing and handwashing should be fine. And even mask-wearing is unnecessary if you stay outdoors and can keep your distance.

    Julie and I do not wear masks on our daily walks. We live in a quiet suburb, and it’s easy to keep 20 or more feet away from anyone we encounter.

    → 12:50 PM, Apr 18
  • Peter Tsai, who invented the N95 mask 30 years ago, is coming out of retirement to help find safe ways to disinfect the single-use masks for reuse - Emma Bowman on NPR

    → 12:42 PM, Apr 18
  • An Austin school district deployed 110 buses equipped with Wi-Fi to neighborhoods and apartments where home Internet is least likely. The idea is the bus parks near students' homes - Andy Jechow on KUT90.5

    → 12:39 PM, Apr 18
  • I’ve done something counterintuitive to ease news anxiety: Turned on news notifications on my phone.

    Yes, on.

    If the news notifications look like the usual baloney, then I know there’s no crisis requiring my immediate attention.

    I used the same principle immediately post-9/11 with the technology available at that time. I had my clock radio tuned to wake me up with news radio. If the first words I heard were “Michael Jackson,” I knew there was no reason for me to rush to look at headlines.

    → 11:12 AM, Apr 18
  • Caleb, a young man whose life is going nowhere, finds escape and purpose on YouTube. First of a new podcast series by The New York Times.

    One: Wonderland - Rabbit Hole

    The podcast producers are nonspecific about where Caleb’s story ends, but it seems to be far-right extremism. Shocking because he seems like a pleasant young man. And Caleb even supported Obama. Not in a deep or informed way, but Caleb thought Obama seemed like a good guy, and that it spoke well for the US to have an African-American President.

    I see my past self in Caleb.

    “Rabbit Hole,” a narrative audio series with tech columnist Kevin Roose, explores what happens when our lives move online.

    → 10:18 AM, Apr 18
  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez interviews from quarantine with the New York Times Daily podcast and discusses why she voted against the pandemic bailout bill – because it devotes hundreds of billions of dollars to propping up share prices for megacorporations who don’t need it, and not enough to struggling people, who do.

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Progressivism and the Pandemic

    She uses the phrase “rugged capitalism for the poor and unfettered socialism for the rich,” which she attributes, possibly incorrectly, to Martin Luther King.

    AOC’s primary subject is the future of progressivism and the Democratic Party after Sanders dropped out of the Presidential race. She sees support for Biden as minimizing harm rather than necessarily doing good, but is prepared for a better outcome (same for me).

    She also discusses the difficult task progressives face – Democrats need affluent middle-class suburban white votes to win elections, but those voters are often put off by the progressive agenda.

    → 10:06 AM, Apr 18
  • Nearly a half century after the OPEC oil embargo almost brought the US to its knees, we’re now the worlds largest oil producer rather than consumer, and Trump is trying to jack up oil prices.

    That’s normally Presidential suicide, but Trump is trying to protect the US oil industry.

    Oil be back - Donald Trump’s big bet - Checks and Balances

    A wise economic strategy for the US would have to carefully balance protecting the oil industry while encouraging clean energy production, such as solar. But Trump doesn’t do subtle – his only move is smashing things with a hammer and grabbing gold and power for himself and his cronies.

    → 9:50 AM, Apr 18
  • In this prophetic science fiction story from 2015, a cooking blogger keeps up a cheerful attitude and makes do while self-quarantining with her family during a global pandemic. Excellent story and a fast read: “So Much Cooking,", by Naomi Kritzer on Clarkesworld.

    And from a few days ago, Kritzer follows up: “Didn’t I Write This Story Already? When Your Fictional Pandemic Becomes Reality. Some interesting discussion by Kritzer about the themes she explores in the story, how fans and friends are reacting today, what the author got right and wrong about the pandemic, and how the fictional characters' quarantine struggles maps to reality.

    Inspired by “So Much Cooking,” on my next grocery run, I’m going to go out and buy a couple of vacuum-sealed cans of Maxwell House or Chock Full o' Nuts coffee. Just in case the good stuff gets hard to find.

    I’m also going to think about what more I can be doing to help neighbors and the community. Confession: So far, not much.

    Thanks, Cory.

    → 9:29 AM, Apr 18
  • Julie sent this to me idk why

    → 9:56 PM, Apr 17
  • Cory Doctorow at Pluralistic: ‪The health insurance industry is thriving during the pandemic. With Sanders and Warren out of the race, the companies are freely gouging patients and spending on stock buybacks without fear of Medicare for All.

    Meanwhile, doctors are getting pay cuts. ‬

    → 5:20 PM, Apr 17
  • An Australian family recreates a 15-hour holiday flight in their living room, after coronavirus cancels their real, planned European vacation - Naaman Zhou at the Guardian

    → 5:07 PM, Apr 17
  • Carnival kept sending out cruise ships while knowing it was risky. And the chairman of Carnival is on Trump’s back-to-work council. Rearranging dreck chairs - David Pell on Nextdraft

    → 4:59 PM, Apr 17
  • Armed far-right groups are behind anti-lockdown protests in Michigan and elsewhere. They love Trump and Trump is cheering them on. Martyrdom and dumber - David Pell at Nextdraft.

    → 4:55 PM, Apr 17
  • ME: I have 300+ podcast episodes in my queue. I will never listen to them all!

    ALSO ME: This looks like an interesting podcast. I’ll subscribe now!

    → 1:47 PM, Apr 17
  • Comic-Con Cancels 2020 Event, Sets 2021 Return - Erik Pederson on Deadline.com.

    Disappointing but not surprising, and the right decision.

    → 1:21 PM, Apr 17
  • John Horton Conway, a ‘Magical Genius’ in Math, Dies at 82.

    Siobhan Roberts writes The New York Times’s obit for mathematician and “Magical Genius” John Conway, most famous for inventing the computer Game of Life. Cause of death: COVID-19

    Martin Gardner, the longtime mathematical games columnist for Scientific American, said that when the game went viral on the internet, “with addicts programming it at home and at work — one quarter of the world’s computers were playing it.”

    Conway’s colleague, Princeton mathematician Simon Kochen, said there are two kinds of geniuses in mathematics and physics, ordinary geniuses. Ordinary geniuses just seem to be people who work hard.

    “But then there are the magical geniuses,” he added. “Richard Feynman was a magical genius. And the same always struck me about John — he was a magical mathematician. He was a magical genius rather than an ordinary genius.”

    Also:

    Math, Dr. Conway believed, should be fun. “He often thought that the math we were teaching was too serious,” said Mira Bernstein, a mathematician and a former executive director of Canada/USA Mathcamp, an international summer program for high-school students. “And he didn’t mean that we should be teaching them silly math — to him, fun was deep. But he wanted to make sure that the playfulness was always, always there.”

    People like Conway seem to be to be the truly blessed people in the world. They work hard at what they do, they excel at it, and the work is pure joy to them. We’re all advised to do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life – it will all be play to you – but very few people can achieve that.

    I became fascinated by Conway’s game around 1983-84 or so, and wrote a program in the computer language Basic to play it on an early IBM PC. Each turn took a half-hour!

    → 1:13 PM, Apr 17
  • China Police Censor Tales of Post-Coronavirus Renewal.

    New York Times journalist Paul Mozur finds signs of a nation opening up on the streets of the big Chinese city of Hefei, population 8 million.

    He also finds xenophobia, and police censorship that’s both laughably clumsy, and effective.

    Mozur was expelled from China, along with other Western journalists, shortly after.

    → 12:53 PM, Apr 17
  • Some people say we need to open the economy soon and if a few thousand people – or hundred thousand people – die because of it, well, that’s a small price to pay.

    People who espouse this view should be asked whether they themselves are taking greater risk to help others. Are they volunteering at a food bank, blood bank, or working front lines in essential retail service?

    If not, they should be invited to shut the fuck up.

    In any war, there are always chickenhawks – people who, from a place of safety, advocate ruthless sacrifice BY OTHER PEOPLE. I’ve noticed over the decades that these people are never themselves combat veterans. Somehow when it was their turn to stand in front of unfriendly strangers with guns, these brave warriors had other things to do.

    Donald Trump, aka “Captain Bonespurs,” is of course the chickenhawk-in-chief.

    → 10:56 AM, Apr 17
  • Dr. Tony Fauci: From One Pandemic to Another - Epidemic.

    AIDS activists in the 1980s were surprised to find a champion in a civil service doctor, Anthony Fauci.

    And for people who lived through that crisis, the coronavirus pandemic gives them a terrible sense of déjà vu.

    → 10:48 AM, Apr 17
  • Judy Garland and the long history of ‘Me Too’ in Hollywood - Retropod: Judy Garland suffered outrageous sexual harassment as a teen-aged movie star.

    → 10:42 AM, Apr 17
  • Kicked Out of China - The New York Times Daily podcast.

    As the pandemic spread, China expelled Western journalists, including New York Times reporter Paul Mozur, as well as reporters for the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. Mozur talks about the experience, and heightening tensions between China and the West.

    Foreigners in China are facing increase xenophobia as the Communist Party spreads rumors that foreigners brought coronavirus in China. Some rumors say it was a deliberate act of biowar by the US Army.

    This is an old trick for the Chinese Communist Party. Whenever they fear the legitimacy of their rule threatened, they stir up hostility toward foreigners, particularly the West, particularly the US. And of course Republicans in the US are now borrowing the same playbook.

    The Chinese government wants to tell a story to the world that they have gotten the coronavirus under control, through their variety of enlightened autocracy, while democracies are flailing. They are expelling western journalists, who might tell the truth and undermine that story.

    Mozur also discusses his grief at leaving China - probably never to return - which has been his home for 13 years.

    → 10:37 AM, Apr 17
  • All praise, no pay - Today, Explained: Essential workers in the food, transportation, and retail industries are being called American heroes. They want to be paid that way.

    → 10:35 AM, Apr 17
  • We had drama. Julie commented at bedtime that she hadn’t seen Vivvie, our slate-gray cat, for about 24 hours. So we spent some time looking around the house for her. I went down in the courtyard, though Vivvie never, ever shows any interest in leaving the house. She’s a timid cat and runs away at any sign of busyness. No sign of Vivvie. I kept my eyes peeled around the yard when I was putting Minnie to bed. No sign of Vivvie. I looked in the spare room and closets. Nothing.

    Vivvie did not come to bed with Julie during the night either.

    This morning, we looked around some more. Still no sign of Vivvie. Julie was distraught. I was concerned and also puzzled. Sammy is an escape cat. If Sammy was missing that amount of time I’d be sure she’d gotten out. But Vivvie stays put.

    Then Julie had an idea: My recliner in the living room. I’d been sitting in it yesterday. What if Vivvie climbed up in there when it was open, then couldn’t get out when I shut it and got up?

    And we went to the living room and opened it up and Vivvie SHOT OUT AT TOP SPEED.

    We are often in the living room with the dog and Vivvie is wary about the dog so when she got stuck in there she didn’t complain the whole time we were in the room. Or I don’t know maybe she liked it. Cats are weird. 📓

    → 9:01 AM, Apr 17
  • Easter Wishes, 1908 Via

    → 11:43 PM, Apr 16
  • Trump meets “The Honeymooners.” - video

    Ralph Kramden for President!

    → 10:35 PM, Apr 16
  • → 10:22 PM, Apr 16
  • → 8:44 PM, Apr 16
  • What AOC Gets that Bernie Didn’t - Michael Grunwald at Politico

    Progressive pot-stirrer Sean McElwee has some thoughts about what went wrong for Sanders supporters, and how they can get what they want (eventually).

    McElwee defies conventional wisdom for progressives by saying progressives need to embrace conventional wisdom — polling, focus groups, and changing the message to suit the district.

    He popularized the slogan “Abolish ICE” — even had it as part of his twitter handle — but advises Democratic candidates to be extremely cautious using it themselves, because it’s just not a slogan that will win many elections.

    Talking about which policies could work politically in Trump districts is not a fun conversation to have, but we need to have those conversations.

    This article comes at a good time for me; I’ve been disgusted by national Democratic Party politics, discouraged and pessimistic about the future of the US. But now I’m reminded politics is incremental. Getting Trump out of office and keeping Congress would be a big win and it seems very achievable. Winning the Senate and a few state houses would be even better. That would only be the beginning — if Democrats fail to deliver real improvements in people’s lives, they’d be out of power by 2024. But victory in 2020 would be a great start.

    → 8:42 PM, Apr 16
  • Why Aren’t We All on the Same Time Zone? - Patrick J Kiger on How Stuff Works

    Time zones are confusing to people who routinely communicate or travel across them, and some people are proposing to put the whole world on one time zone - UTC, which is five hours ahead of Eastern time in the US.

    This does not mean that New York businesses would open five hours earlier. A business that opens at 9 am today would open at the same time under the new system, it’s just that the clock would say 2 pm. Everybody would get used to it quickly, say proponents of the change.

    I think this is a bad idea, simply because I don’t think there are enough people doing business across time zones to make it worthwhile to change the system for everybody.

    However, I have thought for years, that there should be a custom of using universal time for those of us who DO have business crossing time zones. I’ve been routinely doing business across time zones for many years, and even now I still occasionally miscalculate, or propose a meeting time to someone without specifying which time zone I mean.

    → 3:54 PM, Apr 16
  • One of my favorite features of the iPhone is the ability to get notifications for replies to individual email messages and threads.

    → 1:20 PM, Apr 16
  • Police department reminds residents to wear pants while checking mailbox

    “You know who you are. This is your final warning.”

    → 1:04 PM, Apr 16
  • “It’ll all be over by Christmas”: Charles Stross predicts a two-year coronavirus economic and political shitshow.

    → 12:36 PM, Apr 16
  • Watch the weird cinematic rabbit hole that is Blade Runner: The Lost Cut - Adi Robertson at The Verge

    “Blade Runner: The Lost Cut” is a 20-minute fan film that splices Blade Runner with

    … other films that star Blade Runner cast members, plus more films starring those films’ co-stars, resulting in a masterfully edited cinematic rabbit hole where Rick Deckard is hunting down a cast of replicants including Gene Hackman (via The Conversation, one of Harrison Ford’s first films), Steve Martin (via The Jerk, which stars M. Emmet Walsh, who plays Deckard’s boss Bryant), and John Belushi (via The Blues Brothers, which features Ford’s Star Wars co-star Carrie Fisher).

    Getting on lunchtime here so I think I’ll be watching this while I eat.

    → 12:10 PM, Apr 16
  • Rodney Dangerfield is cooler than you are

    → 10:37 PM, Apr 15
  • → 3:59 PM, Apr 15
  • The coronavirus pandemic is heightening the need for “Right to Repair” – eliminating laws that make it illegal to fix the machines you own.

    Cory Doctorow writes about two instances: A researcher has released a proof-of-concept for a hack that allows a relatively inexpensive CPAP machine to function somewhat like a ventilator.

    Also, several state treasurers have demanded ventilator manufacturers release documentation so hospitals can maintain their equipment during a crisis.

    Also on Cory’s Pluralistic.net today:

    • One guy is in charge of oversight for $2.2T in stimulus. He’s got no staff and he communicates by Twitter. He formerly worked for Elizabeth Warren so we can be optimistic he’s both honest AND competent – but nobody is that honest and that competent.
    • Universities want to install mandatory, undetectable spyware on students' computers.

    And more.

    → 1:03 PM, Apr 15
  • (How) American Collapse Resembles Soviet Collapse: Six Ways America’s Collapse is Eerily Like the Soviet Union’s Last Days - umair haque

    This article seems more timely now than it was a year ago when it was published.

    American collapse is not preordained – we have free will, both as individuals and as a society. But every day Trump remains President and the Republicans remain in power, it’s a day closer .

    The Democrats are better. But on a national level they’re still not good. Just not as bad.

    → 12:50 PM, Apr 15
  • → 10:48 AM, Apr 15
  • → 10:47 AM, Apr 15
  • via

    → 11:58 PM, Apr 14
  • I did not love the Deadwood movie, but I loved Al Swearengen’s final line. [YouTube]

    → 10:47 PM, Apr 14
  • ‘That Thing You Do’ cast plans reunion fundraiser for coronavirus relief [USAToday]

    The Wonders, the fictional group at the center of the 1996 movie “That Thing You Do,” will reunite on Friday for a community watch party of the film to benefit the MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund….

    Funds raised through the watch party will aid musicians and touring professionals who are out of work because of the coronavirus.

    The watch party also will pay tribute to Adam Schlesinger, The Fountains of Wayne musician who died recently of complications of COVID-19. Schlesinger wrote and composed “That Thing You Do,” the song that launched the fictional band ― initially and confusingly called the One-ders ― to brief stardom in the film, set in 1964.

    I love this movie. I need to see it again.

    → 10:33 PM, Apr 14
  • Bloomberg News Killed Investigation, Fired Reporter, Then Sought To Silence His Wife [David Folkenfilk/NPR]

    “ … Bloomberg News killed an investigation into the wealth of Communist Party elites in China, fearful of repercussions by the Chinese government. The company successfully silenced the reporters involved. And it sought to keep the spouse of one of the reporters quiet, too.”

    Bloomberg was concerned about being locked out of the lucrative Chinese market.

    Not a good look, Michael.

    → 7:51 PM, Apr 14
  • via

    → 2:19 PM, Apr 14
  • via

    → 2:18 PM, Apr 14
  • Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic:

    • Amazon fires tech workers for warehouse worker solidarity.

    • Southern states are in for the worst coronavirus misery. Poor healthcare and social services contribute to the problem, and the burden will be borne more heavily by PoCs, who are more likely to have chronic untreated health conditions, no savings to allow them to take time off, and no healthcare – which is of course why Republicans are OK with it.

    Also:

    • “… if billionaires need you to go back to work to keep their fortunes intact, then it follows that your work – not theirs – is responsible for those fortunes to begin with.”

    • And Cory’s doing a charity reading for #podapalooze, reading an hour of his novel “Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town” – one of my favorite of his novels. It’s is about a man’s quest to build a mesh Wi-Fi network in Toronto. The man’s father is a mountain, his mother is a washing machine, one of is brothers is a zombie, another is a set of nesting dolls, and his girlfriend has wings.

    → 2:15 PM, Apr 14
  • Via @JohnPhilbin

    → 1:21 PM, Apr 14
  • I’ve always thought that fundamentalists support Trump because they’re idiots who choose to believe he repented from his philandering, lying and other sins. Or as a calculation – Trump himself is an unrepentant sinner, but he appoints conservative judges and supports conservative policies.

    Here’s an alternate theory – Trump’s fundie supporters see him as being just like them.

    Welcome to the Trumpocalypse [Bob Moser/Rolling Stone]

    Maybe the administration would take a bit more care with the coronavirus pandemic if it weren’t loaded with folks who are looking forward to the end of the world…

    Trump gets these people and their brutal, zero-sum view of the world — and vice-versa. For starters, the universe is divided neatly into friends, who must constantly prove they’re really friends, and mortal enemies, who must be trampled. Also, of course, the truth that he knows, like the truth they know, is the only truth, even if it’s often subject to revision. And just as the world is out to get them, it’s out to get him. What’s often painted as a marriage of convenience between Trump and the religious right is far closer to a pure love match. When Pence fixes those doe eyes upon his president, he isn’t just kissing up; he means it."

    These fundies believe the end times are here, the Rapture is coming, and any day now they’ll be transported bodily to heaven.

    … before things start to get really ugly on the earth, with God-sent wars and plagues far worse than COVID-19, they’ll be wafted up to heaven en masse, to live in eternal peace, bliss, and moral superiority while everyone else — including lesser Christians — suffers years’ worth of unspeakably gruesome torments prior to the final, earth-destroying battle between Warrior Jesus and Satan at Armageddon, and the Final Judgment in which Jews and others who refuse to convert are condemned to eternal torture in hell."

    Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo really believe in this toxic bullshit. Or they claim to, which is the same from a policy and political perspective. Trump probably does too – this worldview casts him as literally having been chosen by God.

    → 12:45 PM, Apr 14
  • This does not look comfortable to me but Minnie seems to love it. I think it’s because the concrete is absorbs the sun. I patted her two minutes later; she was a very warm dog. 📷

    → 11:01 AM, Apr 14
  • Minnie is back to herself, energetic and cheerful. This morning when she came in she was very excited, and I sat on the daybed with her for a little while and petted and praised her. Much of the time she appears to be walking normally; you have to look closely to see she’d favoring the injured leg. I am optimistic she will not need the surgery and soon she’ll be back to where she was before, or very close, and I’ll be able to take her on our regular, long, 3-mile walks. Although I’m enjoying them alone; without her I can do the walk in 100 minutes or so on good days.

    Minnie gobbles treats and cheese and rotisserie chicken with gusto, but turns away from her regular kibble and canned food. She doesn’t even eat peanut butter, which she previously jumped for joy over. She is barely eating since Wednesday. I talked with the vet about Minnie not eating her kibble and canned food, and also got comments on Reddit and Facebook. My conclusion is that Minnie is playing mindgames with me, as she did when she was a puppy, and holding out for better food. So from now on I’m a tough guy; we are back to the normal routine, modified for current circumstances: Glucosamine treats and a cheese ball containing her anti-inflammatory pill in the morning, and kibble in the morning and evening. If she doesn’t eat the kibble, she doesn’t eat. We’ll give that a couple of days and see how it goes. 📓

    → 10:44 AM, Apr 14
  • We watched episode one of “World on Fire,” a big-budget British miniseries about England during World War II, focused, so far as I can see, entirely on regular people, not great generals or statesmen, drawn from all social classes.

    Two cast members I recognize: Sean Bean is a shell-shocked World War I veteran, father of a brave young woman and an insolent, obnoxious teen-age boy. It’s a very different role from the last thing we saw him in, the swashbuckling Richard Sharpe adventure stories, set in the Napoleonic Wars 200 years ago, that aired mainly in the 1990s, with two sequels in the mid-2000s. Bean is also famous as Eddard Stark on Game of Thrones, and for a role in the Lord of the Rings movies. We only saw the first LoTR movie and I, at least, was so bored by that that I didn’t bother with any of the others and have nearly forgotten it. This is a very different role than I’ve ever seen Bean in; he’s previously always seemed to be some variation of the dashing warrior, sometimes a hero, sometimes a villain but still basically the same guy. In this he’s a working-class father, psychologically scarred by his own war experience, and now a committed pacifist. He moves stiffly and his clothes are cheap but neat, fitting my image of a certain type of respectable working class British man. And yet in his own way he’s as strong and courageous as Richard Sharpe or Eddard Stark.

    The other actor I recognize is Helen Hunt, playing an American journalist in Berlin and Poland as the Nazis begin their march across Europe. The series is set in 1939; HItler is rolling into Poland and still proclaiming that he is only interested in peace; Helen Hunt’s character is a radio journalist, trying to warn the world that Hitler is lying. She’s strong and tough as nails. Also a different role for Hunt than I’ve seen her in; she was a movie and TV star in the 90s, in “Twister,” “As Good as It Gets,” “Mad About You,” and a flawed but interesting movie called “Pay it Forward.” She was gorgeous, and could do sexy and also smart and she was a good actress too. The most recent thing I can remember seeing her in was the HBO miniseries “Empire Falls” in 2005, where she was still recognizably the same actress she was earlier in her career. I loved “Mad About You” and have been bummed that the new miniseries is only available to Spectrum cable subscribers – I’d gladly have paid for it on Apple TV, Amazon Prime or whatever, or even signed up for a new subscription service for the duration, but Spectrum is not available where we are and anyway I will not go through the hassle of switching Internet providers just to watch ONE TV series.

    In “World on Fire,” Helen Hunt plays a woman who would have been described at that time as “handsome,” rather than beautiful or sexy. It’s a more limited performance than Bean’s, with a narrower range and more conventional, but Hunt is still very good. Her character is tough, brave and smart, the very ideal of what a journalist of any gender should be.

    The series is DARK. I went into it with some vague idea that it might be a period piece like “Downton Abbey,” a fun melodrama that would have some sad moments but that would remain safely inside the TV. But “World on Fire” is, at least so far, a bleak and scary story. The Nazis were some of the biggest monsters history has produced, and in 1939-40 they appeared to be an unstoppable force, rolling effortlessly over Europe and leaving a trail of dead and broken bodies behind them. It must have been a terrifying time to be alive, and the series captures that perfectly.

    Although it also occurs to me that the Nazis' sin was that they treated Europe the way that Europe and America treated Africa and Asia. So maybe the Nazis were not so uniquea after all.

    I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of this one.

    → 9:28 AM, Apr 14
  • John Scalzi talks about how he did a “reboot” of the classic H. Beam Piper novel “Little Fuzzy." Same story with many of the same characters, Scalzi just wrote his own version of it

    “Little Fuzzy” (both the 1962 version by H. Beam Piper and Scalzi’s version in 2010) is the story about a prospector on another planet who finds a race of cute, furry childlike aliens (I think the Ewoks in Star Wars were lifted from Piper’s Fuzzies). The prospector takes it on himself to fight a legal battle to get the Fuzzies declared as people – the equivalent of humans – with all the rights attached thereto. Both the Scalzi and Piper novels are terrific, although the Piper, at least, is problematic because it echoes the White Man’s Burden justification for racism, which lives on in American exceptionalism today, the premise that other races are like children and white people are like their parents, with a responsibility to guide those childlike brown-skinned people into adulthood. Which is a load of crap.

    Still, I re-read the Piper Little Fuzzy relatively recently, and I quite enjoyed it; the aliens in that novel really ARE like children. And the Scalzi novel was very good too.

    One of my three unpublished novels is a reboot, in its own way, of one of my favorite series of novels, the Cities in Flight series by James Blish. Written in the 1940s-50s, Blish’s premise is the invention in the early 21st Century of a device called a “spindizzy,” which combines a faster-than-light starship drive, artificial gravity, and a force field that can hold in air and keep out radiation. Whole cities on Earth are put in spindizzy globes and flung into space; “gone Okie,” in the jargon of the stories. The hero of the series is John Amalfi, Mayor of New York, New York, which is now a trading ship flying between the stars, with a bridge on top of the Empire State Building. Like all the Okie citizens, Amalfi has had immortality treatments, so he’s hundreds of years old. The series is great fun! But also badly dated, and not one I’d necessarily recommend to new readers today.

    In my reboot of the series, I did not make the setting New York or any terrestrial city, both for copyright purposes and because then I’d have to do research and stuff. Instead, I made up a city, Nighthawk, built into an asteroid and converted into a starship. In my story, Nighthawk has fallen on hard times, trapped in orbit around a planet, and the hero is somebody from the bowels of the city, an honest street cop on a corrupt force. I had fun writing it.

    → 9:13 AM, Apr 14
  • Matthew Yglesias explains the argument over the post office bailout [Vox]

    No, the post office isn’t failing because Amazon is ripping it off, which is Trump’s stupid theory. People are just sending less First Class mail, and Congress won’t let The USPS go into other lines of business, such as banking.

    Yglesias is skeptical that six-day-a-week delivery needs saving.

    But given USPS’s popularity with the public, it’s also not really clear why spending money on this would be a big problem other than a principled opposition to having the government do anything at all.

    In the immediate circumstances of a collapsing national economy that coincides with a census, a huge surge in people’s dependence on delivery services, and the potential need to convert the entire fall election to vote-by-mail, laying off tons of postal workers seems obviously unhelpful. But unless Congress can reach some sort of deal, that’s the situation they’ll be facing by late summer.

    As others have pointed out, having a service that can visit every home and business in America in a single day seems like an incredibly useful thing potentially. One that should not be dismantled. Not useful every day, but useful during an emergency. Such as a pandemic.

    Additionally, as Cory Doctorow pointed out earlier today, the postal service disproportionately benefits rural people and veterans, two groups that Republicans are popular with. It continually amazes me how the Republicans continue to shit on their supporters, and the supporters just ask for more.

    → 6:00 PM, Apr 13
  • 5 of the 13 things Messy Nessy Chic found on the Internet Monday

    100-year-old Bell Telephone ad; restaurant sleepover of World War II; rare 17th Century Parisian apartment for holiday rental (gorgeous!); how you get your hair done in the 1920s for a permanent wave; Harlem fashion boutique (1968) credited with popularizing Afrocentric style for the next decade; mini-dressed hostesses working for British Rail in 1972.

    → 2:35 PM, Apr 13
  • Trump goes postal, coronavirus in the UK vs. Ireland, and more on Cory Doctorow's Pluralistic.net

    Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic.net

    Trump plans to murder the US Postal Service, in violation of the US Constitution.

    The USPS is about to declare bankruptcy. It’s at the center of the longstanding plans for disaster recover and has been since the Cold War. It’s the only institution that could (for example) deliver covid meds to every home in America in one day.

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/2…

    But Congress has decided not to bail out the postal service, despite Art 1, Sec 8 of the US Constitution: “To establish Post Offices and post Roads.”

    Maybe it’s because without a USPS we couldn’t have a postal vote in 2020?

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/2…

    The proximate cause of the post office’s bankruptcy is the pandemic, but that is merely the finishing blow. The USPS was murdered in 2006, when Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.

    www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/04/w…

    The Act gave the USPS a mere 10 years to “prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years.” That is, to set aside cash to pay medical bills for future employees who hadn’t been born yet.

    www.govtrack.us/congress/…

    …

    The USPS’s murder is straight out of the neoliberal playbook: “1 Defund, 2 claim crisis, 3 call for privatizatization, 4 profit!”

    As Lambert Strether points out, it was a bipartisan act of murder, cosponored by the “centrist” Democrat Henry Waxman….

    The USPS is the nation’s second largest employer of veterans, with 630,000 employees. Trump is about to allow it to collapse so that UPS, Fedex and other private firms can skim off the most profitable parts of its business and leave rural Americans totally isolated.

    The loss of the USPS would mean the loss of the last truly universal federal program in America and would unduly hammer the people whom Trump claims to love — veterans and rural voters.

    www.eff.org/deeplinks…

    Also:

    Virginia Governor Ralph Northam has made election day a statewide holiday, joining the handful of other states that have passed this vital, democracy-protecting law, like Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky and New York.

    edition.cnn.com/2020/04/1…

    It should be a federal holiday. It isn’t, because Republicans believe that increased voter turnout is bad for their electoral chances.

    www.commondreams.org/news/2020…

    …

    Northam’s new holiday-establishing order also eliminates Virginia’s Lee-Jackson day holiday, which celebrated the traitorous, slave-owning Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson, who murdered American soldiers to defend their right to treat other Americans as property.

    Here’s a campaign to #TakeBackTuesday and establish a US-wide election-day holiday.

    www.good.is/take-back…

    Also:

    Coronavirus death rates in Ireland, which embraced quarantining early on, are half what they are in the UK, whose idiot Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in denial about the seriousness of the threat.

    Medical historian Elaine Doyle notes that “as the Irish government was shutting schools, 250,000 people in the UK were gathering for a Cheltenham match.”

    Ireland canceled St Paddy’s Day and shut pubs a week in advance. The UK had megaconcerts like the Stereophonics gig in Cardiff.

    The Irish government made clear, continuous announcements about the gravity of the pandemic, urging people to stay home and take care. The UK government was virtually silent.

    The thing about exponential growth is that early interventions make a huge difference. The UK dawdled for nearly two weeks before taking the lockdown steps that the Irish enacted.

    The Tory ideology holds that governments are incompetent. This creates a perverse incentive: when Tories govern badly, they prove their own point. But Tories are supposed to murder poor people to juice the economy, not murder pensioners AND the economy.

    Boris Johnson is a vile piece of work: a racist, misogynist bigot and a fool. His unwillingness to take (medical) expert advice (and his reliance on finance-sector advice) resulted in the measurable, deaths of Britons. Thousands of them.

    What Cory says about Johnson and the Tories goes for Trump and the GOP too of course.

    → 1:07 PM, Apr 13
  • Minnie is recovering nicely, but she won't eat her regular kibble or canned food.

    Minnie is hopping around on three legs and occasionally using the injured one, which suggests it is healing. She’s got her old personality back – active, curious and playful. She even tried chasing one of the cats yesterday.

    However, she won’t eat her regular kibble or canned food. We’ve been giving her treats, a little cheese and a lot of rotisserie chicken. She loves that rotisserie chicken.

    I put down a bowl of kibble for her to eat a few minutes ago. She sniffed the edges and gave me a dirty look, like, “You are SO getting a one-star review on Yelp for this!”

    I’m not worried – yet. We went through something like this when she was a puppy. I’ll keep giving her rotisserie chicken until we run out of that, then switch her back to 100% kibble. If she skips eating two days in a row then back to the vet she goes. 📓

    → 11:36 AM, Apr 13
  • I am having my feelings and thoughts without guilt

    Monotony, frustration over having to wear a mask, being unable to take the dog to the park, or go anywhere around people. And I have so many opinions!

    But I am also mindful that there are people out their dying in the most miserable conditions, exposing themselves to contagion to stock supermarket shelves, and medical personnel working 20 hour days without adequate protection. So yeah my problems, while large to me, are small. 📓

    → 11:29 AM, Apr 13
  • Giving men false confidence starts early.

    → 10:47 PM, Apr 12
  • I, too, am an armchair epidemiologist and I’m pretty sure I’m spelling that right. twitter.com/markhumph…

    → 6:03 PM, Apr 12
  • This is one of our neighbors. He is unfriendly and never says hello. 📷

    → 5:38 PM, Apr 12
  • I’ve always like this house around the corner from ours. 📷

    → 5:35 PM, Apr 12
  • I am not a sentimental man who cries at rainbows and flowers, but when I saw this in the supermarket today I bawled.

    → 5:32 PM, Apr 12
  • The Jungle Prince of Delhi

    For 40 years, journalists chronicled the eccentric royal family of Oudh, deposed aristocrats who lived in a ruined palace in the Indian capital. It was a tragic, astonishing story. But was it true?

    Ellen Barry unravels the mystery at the New York Times

    → 3:20 PM, Apr 12
  • ‪If TP shortages continue there’s always the three shells youtu.be/n7nFEnFtv… ‬

    → 2:46 PM, Apr 12
  • James Nicoll reviews Isaac Asimov’s 1950s time-travel novel, “The End of Eternity,” and finds it still holds up.

    Interestingly, Nicoll notes, the premise of Eternity is similar to the Foundation series — a secret cabal manipulating human history — but this novel takes the story in the opposite direction.

    Earlier I said the premise of Foundation is sinister when you think about it: The two forms of government we see are empire and rule by a secret, unaccountable conspiracy of technocrats. Both of these states are presented as utopian, when in reality the first has been shown to be pretty awful, and the second looks a lot like Communism, which has not proven to be swell either.

    Nonetheless, I cut Asimov slack. He was a VERY young man when he initially wrote Foundation, reading headlines about the Nazis seemingly unstoppably conquering the world and wanted assurance that everything was going to be OK. Asimov’s fictional science of psychohistory could have provided that assurance, had it existed. That observation is not original to me; Alec Nevala Lee said it in his terrific history of science fiction, “Astounding.”

    I think it’s also true that in both the Foundation series and later in End of Eternity, Asimov was exploring the desire to be assured that the grownups are in charge of the world, as presidents and prime ministers and heads of billion-dollar companies and vast government bureaucracies, and that these grownups had matters under control. The 21-year-old Asimov who wrote Foundation had very diffferent ideas about that premise than the 34-year-old who wrote The End of Eternity.

    Asimov wrote more Foundation stories in the 1980s. By that time he was in his 60s, written hundreds of books, including bestsellers. He appeared many times on national TV and had been published in the New York Times. He was an American public intellectual, and was himself one of the supposed grownups running the world. He had a different perspective on those issues once again.

    → 9:59 AM, Apr 12
  • Passover was a really big deal when I was a kid

    We had the second seder at our house, with upwards of 20 aunts, uncles and cousins swarming over the place. Our cousins Janet and Barry even brought their dog; Mom couldn’t stand dogs but she made an exception for Dusty.

    Dusty is still one of my alltime favorite dogs, although I believe Janet and Barry prefer Custer, their next dog. And now that I think of it, Custer is a weird name for a dog.

    Jimmy Fallon said in an interview once that when he was growing up, his parents didn’t have friends. They had brothers and sisters and cousins. Says I to myself on hearing that: Holy crap. I thought that was just us. My parents socialized frequently, but it was almost always with people genetically related. Though my Dad did have one or two old friends he grew up with, whom he saw once or twice a year.

    Mom was usually not a great cook, but she did a great job with the seder, working for days and putting on the full spread. Mom and Dad seldom drank, but they had a little wine with dinner – Manischewitz and Mogen David, of course! – and laughed a lot. My uncle Nat and Aunt Harriet were the only real drinkers in the family; my parents kept a bottle of vodka in the house for when they came to visit. We told the same jokes every year and never got tired of them.

    To this day I am only a social drinker. I like beer and wine and Jameson’s and I went on a martini kick for a few years. But I don’t drink when I’m at home and I can go for weeks and months without having alcohol, and I do not miss it. 🌕

    We kept kosher for Passover for the full eight days. The rest of the year we were lax. I like to say that we were pizza-and-chinese-food-on-paper-plates kosher – the foods we kept in the house were kosher, and we kept the proper two sets of plates, one for meat and one for dairy. But we brought in pizza and Chinese food regularly, and when we did, we ate it on paper plates. When I was an adult, it took me some time to get used to eating pizza on regular dishes.

    I loved matzoh during Passover, and gobbled it up plain, or with margarine, rendered chicken fat or cream cheese. I never got tired of matzoh during Passover, but I stopped eating it and switched back to bread the moment I could, and never had matzoh, or wanted it, the rest of the year.

    → 8:54 AM, Apr 12
  • Happy Easter!

    He is risen!

    But do not talk to Him until He has had coffee because seriously he’s just plain grouchy til then.

    → 7:45 AM, Apr 12
  • One of the crazy things about this pandemic is that it’s all going to be over in a year or a few years at most. Done. History. Past tense.

    Everybody who was going to get it will have gotten it, many will die, the rest of us will just get on with our lives. The disease itself might continue in the population, but it will be like the flu. Just part of normal life. No social distancing or special measures required.

    And if the 1918 pandemic is a guide, we will not talk about it much and it will be all but forgotten in a generation.

    A generation from now we will STILL be talking about the 1970s because that was such a crazy decade. But the “coronavirus pandemic?” What was that? Never heard of it.

    → 7:26 AM, Apr 12
  • Last night I was getting ready for bed and looked at my pedometer app and saw it was at 9,800 steps and said to myself, welp, guess I’m not making it to 10,000 today.

    And then I got into bed and pulled the covers up and was all set up and cozy and ready to go to sleep and I looked at the pedometer app again and it was over 9,900.

    And I got out of bed and walked around the house for about 5 minutes until I was over 10,000.

    → 7:08 AM, Apr 12
  • Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic.net

    [Private equity] companies that “looted healthcare want billions in bailout.”

    Corporations that went to binding arbitration to stiff consumers are screaming now that automation is threatening to make the playing field fair

    E-voting is a nonstarter for secret elections but it’ll work for public votes by elected officials such as legislators

    Republicans plan squads of ex-military and ex-police to intimidate black and Latino voters

    “‘Job creators’ are job annihilators”

    Eric Snowden warns that pandemic surveillance will become permanent. If you liked the PATRIOT Act, you’ll love pandemic surveillance!

    Also: “RIP MAD’s Mort Drucker: One of ‘the usual gang of idiots:”

    His daughter, Laurie Bachner, told the AP: “I think my father had the best life anyone could hope for. He was married to the only woman he ever loved and got to make a living out of what he loved to do.”

    Drucker worked at MAD from the mid-50s on, helping to define the magazine’s caricature house-style.

    → 12:30 PM, Apr 11
  • I just cancelled my $119 annual Dropbox account, which expires in 10 days. I’m pretty sure I can get everything I need from iCloud plus the free Dropbox tier.

    As a test, I moved everything out of the Dropbox sync folder except for one small folder that I still want to use with Dropbox. We’ll see if anything breaks!

    I’ve been using Dropbox for at least 10 years, so this feels like more of a big deal than it probably actually is.

    → 11:33 AM, Apr 11
  • → 11:08 PM, Apr 10
  • → 10:55 PM, Apr 10
  • → 10:50 PM, Apr 10
  • → 10:49 PM, Apr 10
  • The vet gave us parking lot service: when I arrived, I called from the parking lot, a vet tech came out to the car, checked us in, and brought Minnie inside. I never entered the vet building.

    Out of old habit I almost ordered a burger, fries and chocolate shake from the vet tech. But I stopped myself in time. Still, would’ve been nice if she’s cruised up on roller skates.

    The vet phoned me while I was in the car trying to figure out how to get the iPad hooked up to the Verizon network (which I never did succeed in doing). She said Minnie has basically blown out her right rear knee. Minnie probably did the left one too at some point a while ago (the vet said), but recovered and has been compensating.

    I’m thinking Minnie probably did the left one in September when we took her into the vet because she could barely stand up after zoomies.

    The prognosis: Rest for two weeks, anti-inflammatories, and then we’ll see.

    If that doesn’t work: Surgery. Which costs $4,000. So yeah, permanently disabled dog vs. spending $4K on surgery is a choice between unacceptable options. Let’s just say she’s going to recover fine after two weeks of rest.

    The vet said Minnie will probably eventually need the surgery, when she is an old dog. But “eventually” is a long way away, and may never come, so I’m not going to worry about that now.

    When I dropped Minnie at the vet initially, I asked how long it would take. They said a half-hour to an hour. I said OK we live a short way away so I’ll just turn around and go home and then come back to get her when I get the call that she’s ready. I figured it’d probably be more like two or three hours, just because things usually take longer than people say they will .

    But nope, the vet called just as I was pulling up the road to the house. I finished the call in our driveway, went upstairs, had lunch, then went back downstairs and picked up the dog.

    Julie took this photo of Minnie recovering from her ordeal.

    → 7:35 PM, Apr 10
  • I filed a bug report with Flexibits about a Fantastical 3 problem I had in February. I’m just getting a response now.

    Um, yay?

    → 3:40 PM, Apr 10
  • Manischewitz wine is popular in Caribbean communities. [Nadege Green/WLRN] This story makes me happy.

    → 12:32 PM, Apr 10
  • Minnie was still hopping along on three legs this morning and looking pretty miserable. I called the vet and they’re doing parking-lot check-ins. So I’m off to the vet later this morning.

    It’s pouring rain out. I know that’s no big deal to the real world, but we Southern Californians are big babies when it comes to any kind of foul weather.

    A friend says dogs just do that sometimes, and she’ll get over it in a week. Maybe so. But Minnie is seven years old and she has never done it. She frequently strains herself after zoomies, but never like this and never this badly. And she seems pretty miserable, so anything we can do to make her more comfortable seems like a good idea.

    Also, it seems prudent to have her checked out.

    → 10:19 AM, Apr 10
  • Gavin Newsom Declares California a ‘Nation-State’

    Last year, Democratic state Senator and party leader Scott Weiner said,

    “The federal government is no longer a reliable partner in delivering health care, in supporting immigrants, supporting LGBT people, in protecting the environment, so we need to forge our own path…. We can do everything in our power to protect our state, but we need a reliable federal partner. And right now we don’t have that.”

    Yes.

    [Francis Wilkinson/Bloomberg]

    → 8:57 AM, Apr 10
  • Alan Brown reviews a the recently published lost Robert A. Heinlein novel, “The Pursuit of the Pankera,” and likes it [Tor.com]

    “The Pursuit of the Pankera” is a kind of metafiction – fiction about fiction. It is an alternate version of “The Number of the Beast,” which Heinlein published in 1980.

    Both novels are about travel between alternate universes, and so they are alternate-universe novels about each other.

    I have never liked “The Number of the Beast,” in part because it suffers from the sins of late-period Heinlein: Long-winded political preachiness combined with the author’s creepy sex scenes.

    And a third problem for “Number:” It’s Heinlein’s love letter to the science fiction/fantasy action-adventure of his youth, particularly the Oz books, Barsoom books and E.E. “Doc” Smith.

    None of those three series were childhood favorites of mine and Heinlein does nothing to make them seem appealing.

    Brown says “The Pursuit of the Pankera” is a much better book than “Number.” and that’s what I’m hearing elsewhere. It’s on my to-be-read list, near the top.

    Heinlein has been one of my favorite authors since I was 8 years old, but his most-popular books tend to be the ones I like least. I like his early and middle-period stuff.

    → 8:41 AM, Apr 10
  • Well, shit. Minnie injured her foot and now she’s walking on three legs. Nothing visibly wrong with it and she doesn’t react when I manipulate it.

    Normally I’d say give it a day and if she’s not better tomorrow she’s going to the vet. But that’s not an option now. Not for this.

    → 2:04 PM, Apr 9
  • Larry David, Master of His Quarantine

    Maureen Dowd at the New York Times:

    When I ask if he is hoarding anything, he is outraged. “Not a hoarder,” he said. “In fact, in a few months, if I walk into someone’s house and stumble onto 50 rolls of toilet paper in a closet somewhere, I will end the friendship. It’s tantamount to being a horse thief in the Old West.”

    “I never could have lived in the Old West,” he added parenthetically. “I would have been completely paranoid about someone stealing my horse. No locks. You tie them to a post! How could you go into a saloon and enjoy yourself knowing your horse could get taken any moment? I would be so distracted. Constantly checking to see if he was still there.”

    → 1:08 PM, Apr 9
  • I've been drinking a meal replacement shake called Huel for breakfast for months

    For several months, my daily breakfast has been about a pint of a thick “nutritionally complete” liquid, called Huel.

    Huel is a powder you mix with water to make a milky liquid, like a thin milkshake. You can add more water to make it thinner, or less to make it thicker. You can use vegetable milk, or mix it with fruit or peanut butter for added flavor. The powder itself can be unflavored, or vanilla, chocolate or berry flavored. I’ve tried all three, and settled on the vanilla as my favorite.

    I used to eat a real breakfast every day, fruit and cottage cheese, but when I started Huel in November I needed to get a running start in the morning and keep running all morning.

    At that time, I was working with an international workgroup. I’m based in San Diego, which means I got into work when everybody else around the US had already been working for hours and colleagues in the UK were already into late afternoon. I didn’t want to take time out to eat breakfast, even though my body demands it.

    When I read about Huel in this article by Nicole Dieker, I said sure, why not. And I liked it and stuck with it.

    And I feel fine. I no longer have that morning scheduling pressure but I’ve stuck with Huel. It takes some of the complexity out of the day. And I like it.

    Some people, including Nicole Dieker, above, take Huel for two meals a day, but that’s too many for me, because I like to eat. Just not as often as my body seems to need me to eat.

    Some people take all their meals with Huel, but that’s not a good idea, because you risk nutritionally deficiencies. Human beings are evolved to consume a variety of foods to get a broad range of nutrients; it’s why your dog and cat are happy eating kibble every day but you’d go nuts if you always ate exactly the same thing every meal.

    Huel is one of several “meal replacement” liquids that have come on the market in the past few years. They all have pretty much the same marketing pitch: Eating three meals a day, plus snacks, is a hassle. Meal replacements are designed to replace the fast-food burger you consume at your desk, not the meals you enjoy with family and friends.

    Meal replacements are particularly touted for people looking to get off a junk food diet.

    Soylent is the most famous of these meal replacements. I’ve tried Soylent and like it fine, but I went with Huel this time around on a whim, because of that article.

    Also, Soylent is made with chemicals but Huel is made with real ingredients: Oats, tapioca, flaxseed, sunflower, coconut, peas, rice, etc.

    (Yes, I know that those so-called “real ingredients” are ALSO chemicals. You know what the fuck I mean, piglet..)

    As Huel notes on its website: A liquid meal made from a powder sounds weird and dystopian, but it’s actually an old idea: Flour is an example of a powder that becomes food, and soup is an example of a liquid meal. Both have been around for thousands of years. Many people have smoothies for breakfast. Huel is just a variation on that. 🌕

    → 12:19 PM, Apr 9
  • Kansas Republicans are fighting to kill Christians and Jews [Zack Budryk/The Hill]

    Kansas’s Republican-led legislator overturned the Democratic governor’s ban on gatherings during Easter and Passover.

    Kansas legislature strikes down governor’s directive limiting size of religious gatherings

    Kansas Republicans are claiming religious persecution, which is ridiculous because (1) The law is designed to save people’s lives and (2) The law does not single out any particular religious denomination or indeed single out religions at all. This is settled law in the US and has been for many, many decades.

    The Pope and Saudi Arabia are canceling religious gatherings, including the pilgrimage to Mecca, which is a tradition dating back more than a thousands years and literally the holiest thing that a Muslim man does in his life.

    Via Cory Doctorow, who says:

    It’s another reminder that the right’s claim that it is the party of rational long-termism rather than squishy bleeding-heart reflex is just bullshit.

    There’s literally nothing more politically short-term than dooming your core voters to die gasping deaths in a month because you’re afraid they’ll be angry at you on Easter Sunday. Angry voters might not vote for you. Dead voters can’t.

    I do not celebrate anybody’s death but it is really hard to remember that when toxic people are fighting for the right to kill themselves and their followers. But even if I were cold-blooded enough to wish death on my enemies, they’ll take their neighbors and innocent children with them.

    Remember this the next time you hear someone say the Republican party is pro-life and pro-common sense.

    This is why I am a Democrat.

    Sure, the Democratic Party is frequently fucked up – you want to complain about the DNCC, Congressional leadership, and the way the Presidential Primary played out, I’m right there with you.

    But the GOP is a criminal conspiracy and death cult.

    → 11:56 AM, Apr 9
  • Automating micro.blog categories using emoji. Nerdy fun!

    Listening to the Monday microcast with @macgenie and @manton yesterday, I learned that you can use filters on micro.blog to search for text in a post you write, and automatically include that post in a category.

    So you can automate micro.blog to search for any post containing the word “beer,” or the beer emoji 🍺, and put that in a “beer” category. Instructions are here.

    Additionally, micro.blog uses emoji in lieu of hashtags, which I like. Because emoji are awesome and hashtags are ugly.

    Later, in the evening, I set up an automated, filtered category for “best of,” using the full-moon emoji 🌕 for a filter. I chose that emoji for no other reason than that it is a nice emoji, and won’t get in the way of people reading the post.

    So now I have a blog category for my best posts, to distinguish them from the daily flow of ephemera.

    I’m also thinking of using emoji with IFTTT or Zapier to control cross-posting to Twitter and Tumblr.

    One of the things I love about micro.blog is that it manages to be both simple and powerful, which is a rare combination.

    And now because this post contains that full moon emoji, it should automatically appear in the best-of category, without my having to do anything about it.

    → 11:00 AM, Apr 9
  • Appalling/delightful Disney horror/comic mashups! IT heroes! Forging PDF signatures! And more!

    On today’s Pluralistic by Cory Doctorow

    Disney horror/comic mashups are appalling/delightful

    Daniel “Kickpunch” Björk created an incredible set of Disney Comic/horror movie mashups.

    The chemistry of cold-brew coffee

    I can’t say I have strong feelings about cold-brew coffee. I like a nice iced coffee in hot weather. But even in hot weather, I like hot coffee.

    The crisis is making heroes of IT workers

    IT workers are pulling all-nighters and multi-day marathons to set up co-workers for remote work and provision systems for new workflows.

    Automating fake PDF signatures

    The modern era has many tiny hypocrisies, but none quite so common as the mutual pretense by which you ask me to print, sign and scan a PDF and I pretend that I didn’t just paste my signatures into it."

    But some firms shatter this tacit social contract and demand that you really engage in the ridiculous ritual of actually printing, signing and scanning.

    Enter Falsiscan, a tool to automate convincing forgeries of this procedure.

    gitlab.com/edouardkl…

    Falsiscan takes in 27 variants of your signature and then feed these sigs and your PDF to it, with the (x,y) for each signature blank as arguments, and it will produce a slightly off-center, slightly degraded new PDF that looks like you actually signed it.

    → 10:07 AM, Apr 9
  • → 11:58 PM, Apr 8
  • → 11:55 PM, Apr 8
  • → 11:55 PM, Apr 8
  • → 11:54 PM, Apr 8
  • → 11:54 PM, Apr 8
  • Feds are seizing medical supplies from hospitals without saying what they’re doing with it [Noam N. Levey/LA Times]

    “In order to have confidence in the distribution system, to know that it is being done in an equitable manner, you have to have transparency,” says Dr. John Hick, a Minnesota emergency physician.

    “Are they stockpiling this stuff? Are they distributing it? We don’t know,” one official said. “And are we going to ever get any of it back if we need supplies? It would be nice to know these things.”

    → 8:19 PM, Apr 8
  • New study investigates California’s possible herd immunity to COVID-19 [Caitlin Conrad/KSBW]

    Scientists are investigating the possiblity that California was infected with coronavirus early — in the fall. The mystery is that California gets more visitors from China than other states do, and yet has a relatively low infection rate.

    → 8:11 PM, Apr 8
  • The 10 Most Offensive Movies Ever Made [Keith Langston/Screenrant]

    (1) The writer Tad Williams and his wife, Deb, had a cat named “Henry, Portrait of a Serial Kitten.” Or just Henry. Tad told wonderful stories about that cat, and Julie and I got to meet the cat, who was indeed wonderful.

    (2) The following would be great names for podcasts: “I Spit On Your Grave,” “The Human Centipede,” and “Cannibal Holocaust.”

    → 4:29 PM, Apr 8
  • Swiss physicist Nicolas Gisin may have solved one of the fundamental mysteries of physics: Does time exist?

    Does Time Really Flow? New Clues Come From a Century-Old Approach to Math

    Relativity makes no distinction between past, present and future; they are all fixed. In relativity, “now” does not exist.

    In real life, though, we know that time flows from past to future and we live in the now. Quantum mechanics agrees with real life.

    How to resolve the contradiction?

    Gisin thinks he has, using an obscure, turn-of-the-20th Century branch of mathematics.

    Gisin’s theory, if borne out, would explain the nature of time, reconcile classical and quantum mechanics, explain whether numbers are real, describe the nature of “now,” and might require physicists to invent a whole new kind of mathematics. Kind of a big deal!

    [Natalie Wolchover/Quanta Magazine]

    → 12:59 PM, Apr 8
  • Coronavirus breaks my iPhone: FaceID doesn't work when you wear a mask

    Privileged person problem: When I go to the supermarket, I keep the shopping list on my iPhone. When I’m wearing a mask, Face ID doesn’t recognize me. I have to open my iPhone by entering the passcode a dozen times or more.

    I heard about a feature called “Setup Alternate Appearance” for situations where you have an “appearance that can look vastly different.”

    I tried it with my mask on this morning. Nope, didn’t work. It said I had something obscuring my face and I should try again.

    Joanna Stern has more on the whys and wherefores at the Wall Street Journal. The iPhone needs to see your eyes, nose and mouth. It’ll work for many sunglasses but not all. It supposedly works when men grow and shave off facial hair, and when women wear or don’t wear makeup.

    There’s apparently a workaround to the mask problem: masks printed with images of the lower parts of faces on them!

    Doctors who’ve been living with this problem for years offer suggestions: Just use pen and paper, bunch up your interactions with the iPhone in batches all at once, tell someone you trust to unlock the phone for you, ir continue typing in your passcode like a savage.

    Stern notes, and I can confirm, that you can punch in your passcode and otherwise use your iPhone while wearing thin nitrile gloves on with trivial additional inconvenience. 🌕

    → 11:50 AM, Apr 8
  • Cory Doctorow's Pluralistic.net: Cleveland Plain Dealer massacre; TSA child molesters and more

    Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic.net

    Cleveland Plain Dealer’s new owners massacre staff

    The owners of the Cleveland Plain Dealer laid off all but 14 of the newsroom staff, then prohibited the survivors from covering the beats they’ve mastered over decades, giving those roles over to the non-unionized staff at cleveland.com. …

    Among those affected: Ginger Christ, the paper’s health reporter, who has been stripped of her beat during a pandemic.

    This during the largest public emergency in the last 75 years. Peak parasitic capitalism.

    The TSA wanted to inspect a 16-year-old trans girl’s genitals

    The scanner operator “she told Jamii she must go to a private room, expose herself, and let her ‘feel up in there.’ That is, a TSA supervisor demanded to molest a child.”

    When her mother refused, TSA called in the police and top TSA managers. They were eventually released and drove 600 miles rather than flying.

    The TSA previously strip-searched a grandmother on Mother’s Day to get a look at her sanitary napkin, and penetrated another woman’s vulva and “falsely told her that she could not refuse the search and abandon her trip and threatened to physically restrain her if she didn’t submit.”

    Also:

    • The 400-year-old Bannatyne Manuscript may not be the oldest surviving F-bomb. Roger Fuckebythenavele ftw.
    • Excellent public domain Zoom backgrounds. Alas, my MBP is too underpowered to use Zoom backgrounds. I have not been moved to buy a greenscreen but these backgrounds may change my mind!
    • Monster-themed COVID PSAs.
    → 10:14 AM, Apr 8
  • What will you do the day social distancing ends?

    I think we’ll be cautious and not rush out to any restaurants or crowded social gatherings.

    But I think I’ll absolutely take the dog to the park, Lake Murray, where we used to walk every day. Stop and talk to people. Let Minnie sniff out some other dogs. That sounds lovely. With Julie of course if she wants to come. 🌕

    → 9:23 AM, Apr 8
  • The computer language COBOL debuted in 1960, and it’s still running the world’s governments and banks

    It’s tried and true. And also, according to this article, not hard to learn.

    I do recall a remark by a programmer a few years ago – once you’ve learned one or two languages, it’s not hard to pick up another.

    I took a couple of computer science classes in late 1979 as a college freshman. EVEN THEN we were taught COBOL was obsolete!

    [Dave Gershgorn/OneZero]

    → 9:13 AM, Apr 8
  • Rules Rewritten: Managing Data Centers Through the Pandemic: Data center operators are reducing headcount to minimize coronavirus exposure, and these reductions may become permanent. [Scott Fulton III/IT Pro Today]

    → 7:42 AM, Apr 8
  • This looks like a useful new feature on Inoreader: Convert Almost Any Webpage Into RSS Feed With Inoreader’s Web Feeds

    Inoreader will let you subscribe to updates for web pages even when those pages don’t offer RSS feeds.

    Whenever you see a web page with a series of updates, be it news articles, blog posts, classifieds, product updates, weather alerts, practically any series of HTML links, Inoreader should be able to present it as an RSS feed. This feed will then be continuously updated, and any new links added to the list will pop up as articles inside Inoreader. Just like any regular feed.

    I’m guessing it does a little screen-scraping and looks for patterns in text.

    → 7:30 AM, Apr 8
  • Social distancing is getting hard in our house. And we’re normally people who have a limitless capacity for solitude and not going out.

    → 6:52 AM, Apr 8
  • 500-year-old manuscript contains one of earliest known uses of the “F-word”

    Scotland is the home of a 500-year-old medieval manuscript containing the oldest extant written F-bomb.

    “The profanity appears in a poem recorded by a bored student in Edinburgh while under lockdown as the plague ravaged Europe…. The poem is getting renewed attention thanks to its inclusion in a forthcoming BBC Scotland documentary exploring the country’s long, proud tradition of swearing, ‘Scotland—Contains Strong Language.'”

    That is darn interesting.

    [Jennifer Ouellette/Ars Technica]

    → 10:06 PM, Apr 7
  • Life Without Toilet Paper Is Better

    Frank Bures at Vice:

    If you were walking barefoot through your yard, and felt the unpleasant squish of fresh dog do through your toes, what would be your reaction? Would you think, “Geez, I need to get some dry, easily torn paper to smear this off my foot”?

    No. You would quickly get yourself to a hose, or a sink. You would find some soap. And you would scrub your foot off using your hands.”

    Don’t thank me for sharing this.

    Really. Don’t. I don’t ever want to discuss it.

    → 6:00 PM, Apr 7
  • Shkreli’s plea from prison: Free me and I’ll cure COVID-19 [Beth Mole/Ars Technica]: Disgraced pharma exec, best known for raising the price of a lifesaving medicine from $13.50 a pill to $750, goes full supervillain.

    → 5:40 PM, Apr 7
  • This is what happens when a narcissist runs a crisis

    Jennifer Senior at the New York Times:

    Since the early days of the Trump administration, an impassioned group of mental health professionals have warned the public about the president’s cramped and disordered mind, a darkened attic of fluttering bats….

    Faced with a historic public health crisis, Trump could have assembled a first-rate company of disaster preparedness experts. Instead he gave the job to his son-in-law, a man-child of breathtaking vapidity….

    Trump is genuinely afraid to lead. He can’t bring himself to make robust use of the Defense Production Act, because the buck would stop with him. (To this day, he insists states should be acquiring their own ventilators.) When asked about delays in testing, he said, “I don’t take responsibility at all.” During Friday’s news conference, he added the tests “we inherited were “broken, were obsolete,” when this form of coronavirus didn’t even exist under his predecessor.

    This sounds an awful lot like one of the three sentences that Homer Simpson swears will get you through life: “It was like that when I got here.”

    → 5:36 PM, Apr 7
  • White House creates ‘Team Telecom’ to probe whether foreign telcos should be allowed near US networks [Tom Claburn/The Register]

    → 5:28 PM, Apr 7
  • New Jersey seeks COBOL programmers to fix unemployment system: “… many of the state’s systems use older mainframes, and those systems are now seeing record demand for services as the coronavirus outbreak disrupts the economy.” [Kif Leswing/CNBC]

    → 5:26 PM, Apr 7
  • Cato Networks raises $77 million for cloud security platform that protects remote workforces

    Cato Networks, which provides SD-WAN and other Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) connectivity, raises $77M additional funding, on top of $55M last year for a total of more than $200M. [Chris O’Brien/VentureBeat]

    Cato securely connects remote workers and branch offices, which is of course kind of a big deal right now.

    I’ve been doing a little work for Cato this year.

    → 1:50 PM, Apr 7
  • Cambridge Analytica and other abusers killed the open, collaborative, API-driven Web 2.0. “It’s amazing, in hindsight, just how naively open everything was back then.”

    This Video Has 3,627,803 Views - YouTube

    A delightful video that takes a surprisingly philosophical and optimistic turn.

    → 1:08 PM, Apr 7
  • Photos of a computer shop that’s been locked since 2001, when the store owner, who also owned the strip mall it sits in, went bankrupt. [Cory Doctorow/Pluralistic]

    Gateway 2000 PCs, LCD displays, and big beige CPUs with big fans!

    → 12:19 PM, Apr 7
  • LA crime drops 23% during the pandemic, including an 11% drop in family violence crime, even though family tensions often rise during crises. [Madeline Holcombe/CNN]

    This proves once again that in an emergency your neighbors will help you; it’s the elites you have to watch out for, notes Cory Doctorow.

    → 12:11 PM, Apr 7
  • The stimulus bill seems big – $2 trillion – but it’s just one week of median income for small businesses and families.

    Cory Doctorow: “The crisis is already four times longer than that, depending on which city you live in. The end is not in sight.”

    Umair Haque: “Coronavirus is an extinction level event for modern economies.” We are living through the complete collapse of the US economy. This is happening now, will play out over the summer and will take generations to recover.

    The solution for Congress is to just spend money to keep the economy going – or, more precisely, put the economy in suspended animation. Whatever it takes. Fund businesses to pay employee salaries and meet other essential expenses while the employees stay home, so when the crisis passes the businesses can just reopen their doors, call the employees back in and get back to work.

    Only essential employees should be working now, and the government should spend whatever it takes to pay them and be sure they have the best protection we can provide.

    Whatever it takes. $2 trillion is inadequate. A thousand trillion is a quadrillion. A thousand times that is a quintillion. If that’s what it takes, so be it.

    → 12:06 PM, Apr 7
  • After a church pastor in California announced he would defy shelter in place orders and hold services, his landlord, the Bethel Open Bible Church, changed the locks. [Lisa Fernandez/KTUTV] Via Cory Doctorow

    Reminds me that I’ve been looking for years for a word other than “Christian” to describe the folks like those idiot pastors who are keeping their churches open. I have Christian friends; they are lovely, SANE people.

    I’ve come up with “Fox News Christians” but I don’t really care for that either.

    → 12:01 PM, Apr 7
  • New video technique lets you replace the background on videos without any greenscreen required.

    Via Cory Doctorow who says it “really puts Zoom’s background switching in the shade."

    My MacBook Pro processor is too weak to use Zoom’s background switching, so I was forced to clean out my office instead. Or at least clean out the part of my office visible from the webcam!

    → 11:37 AM, Apr 7
  • Why is Trump touting hydroxychloroquine? Follow the money

    Trump and his cronies are investors in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine. Trump has been touting hydroxychloroquine as a possible coronavirus cure, despite lack of scientific evidence, and also despite significant risks to people who take it, and despite its being needed for legitimate, proven medical uses, such as treating lupus.

    Peter Baker, Katie Rogers, David Enrich and Maggie Haberman report at The New York Times: Trump’s Aggressive Advocacy of Malaria Drug for Treating Coronavirus Divides Medical Community

    Sanofi’s largest shareholders include Fisher Asset Management, the investment company run by Ken Fisher, a major donor to Republicans including Trump.

    Another investor in both Sanofi and Mylan, another pharmaceutical firm, is Invesco, the fund previously run by Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary. Mr. Ross said in a statement Monday that he “was not aware that Invesco has any investments in companies producing” the drug, “nor do I have any involvement in the decision to explore this as a treatment.”

    As of last year, Mr. Trump reported that his three family trusts each had investments in a Dodge & Cox mutual fund, whose largest holding was in Sanofi….

    Several generic drugmakers are gearing up to produce hydroxychloroquine pills, including Amneal Pharmaceuticals, whose co-founder Chirag Patel is a member of Trump National Golf Course Bedminster in New Jersey and has golfed with Mr. Trump at least twice since he became president, according to a person who saw them.

    Andrew Cuomo is also touting the drug.

    Dr. Daniel H. Sterman, the critical care director at NYU Langone Health, said doctors there are using hydroxychloroquine, but data about its effectiveness remained “weak and unsubstantiated” pending the study. “We do not know whether our patients are benefiting from hydroxychloroquine treatment at the present time,” he said.

    On the other hand, many healthcare providers are advising use of the drug based on good preliminary results.

    Dr. Roy M. Gulick, the chief of infectious diseases at Weill Cornell Medicine, said hydroxychloroquine was given on a case-by-case basis. “We explain the pros and cons and explain that we don’t know if it works or not,” he said.

    Doctors at Northwell Health and Mount Sinai Health System are using it as well. At the Mount Sinai South Nassau County branch on Long Island, doctors have employed a regimen of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin “pretty much since day one” with mixed results, said Dr. Adhi Sharma, its chief medical officer.

    “We’ve been throwing the kitchen sink at these patients,” he said. “I can’t tell whether someone got better on their own or because of the medication.”

    → 9:41 AM, Apr 7
  • Most New York coronavirus deaths were among men and 86% were people with underlying illnesses such as hypertension and diabetes. [Joseph Spector/Rockland/Westchester Journal News/USAToday]

    → 9:21 AM, Apr 7
  • Irony: Calling someone stupid, naive or malicious for failing to anticipate a leak in a speech that you failed to anticipate leaking.

    Transcript: Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly addresses USS Theodore Roosevelt crew about ‘stupid’ ousted captain [CNN]

    Like a good kleptocrat, Modly echoes the boss’s party line: It’s all the media and China’s fault. Like the way the media and China laid off the pandemic response team, took numerous golf breaks and campaign rallies while the pandemic spread, ignored warnings from the Obama White House, Department of Defense and other sources that a pandemic was imminent and said the seriousness of the pandemic is a Democratic Party hoax.

    → 6:15 PM, Apr 6
  • “Nuclear-powered locomotive” 1979Via

    → 3:29 PM, Apr 6
  • Why not the best? Red Hat vet Paul Cormier takes over as CEO

    Red Hat’s new CEO and president has driven the company’s enterprise leadership for 20 years.

    [Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols/ZDnet]

    → 2:57 PM, Apr 6
  • Who Reads Cosy Catastrophes?

    Jo Walton:

    Cosy catastrophes are science fiction novels in which some bizarre calamity occurs that wipes out a large percentage of the population, but the protagonists survive and even thrive in the new world that follows. They are related to but distinct from the disaster novel where some relatively realistic disaster wipes out a large percentage of the population and the protagonists also have a horrible time. The name was coined by Brian Aldiss in Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction, and used by John Clute in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction by analogy to the cosy mystery, in which people die violently but there’s always tea and crumpets.

    Cosy catastrophes were hugely popular after World War II in Britain, among people who wouldn’t be caught dead reading science fiction. They were a reaction (says Walton) to social programs that made life vastly better for working people, but somewhat less comfortable for the middle class, who could no longer afford servants, vacations to France, etc.

    The social contract had been rewritten, and the richer really did suffer a little. I want to say “poor dears,” but I really do feel for them. Britain used to be a country with sharp class differences—how you spoke and your parents’ jobs affected your healthcare, your education, your employment opportunities. It had an empire it exploited to support its own standard of living. The situation of the thirties was horribly unfair and couldn’t have been allowed to go on, and democracy defeated it, but it wasn’t the fault of individuals. Britain was becoming a fairer society, with equal opportunities for everyone, and some people did suffer for it. They couldn’t have their foreign holidays and servants and way of life, because their way of life exploited other people. They had never given the working classes the respect due to human beings, and now they had to, and it really was hard for them. You can’t really blame them for wishing all those inconvenient people would…all be swallowed up by a volcano, or stung to death by triffids.

    [Tor.com]

    → 2:29 PM, Apr 6
  • Bug bounty platforms buy researcher silence, violate labor laws, critics say

    Bug bounty platforms were designed to provide support for researchers ethically disclosing security flaws, but instead they serve as slush funds for hush money to help businesses keep their security problems quiet

    And the platforms may also violate labor law by exploiting researchers.

    [J.M. Porup/CSO]

    → 2:13 PM, Apr 6
  • I have long thought that the two greatest threats the United States face are hyperpartisanship and the Republican Party.

    It’s not lost on me that these two beliefs are contradictory.

    → 2:09 PM, Apr 6
  • A Recipe for Caesar [Common Sense With Dan Carlin] Either we find our way out of the current political tit for tat cycle, or we follow it to his logical conclusion: a Caesar

    → 2:07 PM, Apr 6
  • Frontier says insufficient fiber investment led to bankruptcy [Mike Robuck/FierceTelecom]

    → 1:31 PM, Apr 6
  • New IBM CEO Arvind Krishna is shaking up the leadership team his first day on the job. [Maria Deutscher/SiliconAngle]

    → 1:28 PM, Apr 6
  • ‘You’re basically right next to the nuclear reactor.’

    Dr. Cory Deburghgraeve has volunteered for one of the coronavirus pandemic’s most dangerous jobs, despite an underlying condition that puts him at risk.

    This is my entire job now. Airways. Coronavirus airways. I’m working 14 hours a night and six nights a week. When patients aren’t getting enough oxygen, I place a tube down their airway so we can put them on a vent. It buys their body time to fight the virus. It’s also probably the most dangerous procedure a doctor can do when it comes to personal exposure. I’m getting within a few inches of the patient’s face. I’m leaning in toward the mouth, placing my fingers on the gums, opening up the airway. All it takes is a cough. A gag. If anything goes badly, you can have a room full of virus….

    Our team had a meeting on March 16th to figure out a staffing plan, once it was clear where this was going. Chicago’s becoming a hot spot now. Our ICU is almost full with covid patients. The pediatric ICU has been cleared out to handle overflow. The wave is just starting, and we need to limit our exposure or we’re going to run out of staff. Everyone basically agreed we should dedicate one person to covid intubations during the day and another at night, and I started thinking: I’m 33 years old. I don’t have any kids at home. I don’t live with older relatives. About an hour after the meeting, I emailed my supervisor. “I’m happy to do this. It should be me.”….

    I try to keep my lungs strong. It’s hard not to think about, because I’ve had bad asthma since I was a kid.

    I use an inhaler twice a day. I’m very in tune with my breathing, and whenever I’m getting sick, the first symptom is I start wheezing.

    Hero.

    [As told to Eli Saslow/The Washington Post]

    → 1:04 PM, Apr 6
  • How do you win a war when your government abandons you?

    Interviews with doctors and nurses struggling to save lives in hospitals without federal support.

    [New Orleans nurse Yani Turang] worked in Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak [in 2015], but says that experience was less stressful than what her colleagues are enduring now in the United States. In Africa, she said, “there wasn’t even a question that I would ever have to reuse any supplies.” Her colleagues are now forced to purchase their own protective eyewear and face masks. She blames privilege and arrogance for this chaotic mismanagement, a “consequence of living in a world where you think you’re kind of untouchable.”

    But Trump’s TV ratings are great. That’s the important thing.

    [Wajahat Ali/The Atlantic]

    → 12:52 PM, Apr 6
  • During a Pandemic, an Unanticipated Problem: Out-of-Work Health Workers

    Healthcare providers are putting doctors and other caregivers on furlough, a stark prioritization of profits over lives.

    Americans are now merely domestic animals that serve banks. Expendable.

    [Ellen Gabler, Zach Montague and Grace Ashford at The New York Times via Yahoo]

    → 12:41 PM, Apr 6
  • Apple has sourced over 20 million protective masks, now building and shipping face shields - Jonathan Shieber at TechCrunch

    Managing the supply chain and getting products from Chinese factories to US store shelves quickly has been key to Apple’s success. Now the company is turning that wizardry to manufacturing personal protective equipment for coronavirus fighters.

    → 11:58 AM, Apr 6
  • A Letter to the City - NextDraft

    Ex-New Yorker Dave Pell:

    I lived above an off-Broadway theater on Vandam. When I’d walk into my front door around show time, I’d get yelled at for cutting the line.

    → 11:50 AM, Apr 6
  • YouTube is boosting ridiculous conspiracy theories about how 5G is the real cause of coronavirus. But it’s not because people are stupid – it’s because so many ridiculous conspiracies are real, says Cory Doctorow.

    Youtube vs 5G arsonists

    In real life, billionaires got rich lying about the safety of opiods, prosecutors and lawmakers covered up for pals like Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein, conspirators ignored evidence about Flint’s water. Scientific journals publish fake papers, doctors get paid off by pharma companies, and regulators are captured by business.

    Compared with real life, antivaxxers, #PizzaGaters and even flat-Earthers don’t look so crazy.

    Anna Merlan documents conspiracy theories in her 2019 book, “Republic of Lies,” Cory says, adding:

    Merlan describes how conspiracists aren’t ignorant, but rather lavishly misinformed. UFO conspiracists can go chapter-and-verse on aerospace conspiracies, of which there are so. many. including, most recently, the 737 Max scandal.

    Antivaxers know tons about opioid coverups and other medical malpractice. People who believe that the levees were dynamited during Katrina to drown black neighborhoods and spare white ones know all about when that actually happened in Tupelo, MS.

    Susceptibility to conspiratorialism arises when someone is exposed to actual conspiracies, and trauma.

    → 9:14 AM, Apr 6
  • Illinois is reinstating use of barbarically cruel physical restraints against special needs kids - Cory Doctorow

    → 9:04 AM, Apr 6
  • Apple acquires Voysis for natural language recognition, presumably to beef up Siri - Bloomberg News/ITPro Today

    → 8:16 AM, Apr 6
  • Is Huawei an open source champion now? Huawei? The company joined the US-based open-source patent non-aggression group Open Invention Group, whose members cross-license Linux system patents to one another on a royalty-free basis. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has the story:

    Huawei joins major US-based open-source patent protection consortium OIN

    → 8:04 AM, Apr 6
  • “I wouldn’t worry about even getting COVID-19 when COVID-20 is going to be released in a few months and it will support 5G.” - @joshua

    Too soon?

    → 10:55 PM, Apr 5
  • Coronavirus cooking: Isolation is teaching us a better way to think about food. - Rebecca Onion at Slate

    Isolation is making people less wasteful of food. Maybe.

    Even today, we’re still many of us a lot better off than our grandparents.

    → 10:50 PM, Apr 5
  • Consider the Possibility That Trump Is Right On China

    And consider that Trump might be right about globalization too.

    Nadia Schadlow at The Atlantic:

    At least as controversial as Trump’s critique of China is his emphasis on the importance of sovereignty and his insistence that strong sovereign states are the main agents of change. But states are the foundation of democratic governance and, fundamentally, of security. It is the citizens of states who vote and hold leaders accountable. And it is states that are the foundation of military, political, and economic power in alliances such as NATO, or organizations like the United Nations….

    Contrary to what critics argue, “America first” does not mean “America alone.” That Trump might be introducing needed correctives to the hyper-globalization pursued by earlier administrations is generating serious cognitive dissonance in some quarters. And the reality is that only one organization in the entire world has as its sole responsibility the American people’s safety. That institution is the U.S. government. Whether led by Republicans or Democrats—or by Donald Trump or anyone else—it should always put the American people first.

    I am shocked to find myself agreeing with this article.

    → 8:28 PM, Apr 5
  • Coronavirus hurts Silicon Valley caterers and event businesses

    Salvador Rodriguez at CNBC:

    Performers, food caterers, event planners, venue owners, models, DJs and others that rely on the tech industry are now staring at blank calendars with no idea of when they will be able to return to their livelihoods.

    For much of the last 20 years I went to one or two industry events a month, mostly in San Francisco, the Bay Area and Las Vegas. I can’t imagine they’ll be among the first things to return when sheltering in place lifts.

    → 5:41 PM, Apr 5
  • Today is looking like it was not a great day to cut down on coffee. Tomorrow is not looking great for that either. 

    → 1:57 PM, Apr 5
  • I think we’ll go out to brunch today at DZ Akins, an excellent kosher-style deli just a few minutes drive way. It’s often crowded on Sunday; in a truly wonderful American fashion, this Jewish restaurant fills up when churches let out. But it’s worth waiting for a table.

    The weather looks gray, but not rainy, which makes it a good day to visit Balboa Park and check out the museums. San Diego has some excellent museums, surprisingly so for a surfer/tourism town. Again, the park is usually crowded on Sunday and it’s hard to find parking, but worth the trouble.

    → 10:01 AM, Apr 5
  • Jack Butler at the National Review calls Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series a “comforting technocratic fable."

    I loved the Foundation Trilogy when I was a boy. I listened to the audiobook of “Foundation” recently and was not moved to continue on. It doesn’t hold up.

    Lately I am inclined to see the heroes of that series as badly misguided. Another writer might have even called them villains.

    One of the fundamental problems with the premise of the series is that it assumes that human beings don’t have free will.

    Asimov was by training a scientist. He was a Ph.D. in chemistry. And one of the fundamental lessons of that science comes from the study of the behavior of fluids. Liquids and gases. Individual molecules behave randomly and are completely unpredictable. An individual molecule in a liquid or gas might move in any direction at any time. There’s no way of knowing.

    But if you put trillions of molecules of fluid together, they become completely predictable. Water flows downhill.

    Asimov presumed the same thing for human behavior. Individual humans are completely unpredictable. Even billions of humans, the population of the Earth, cannot be predicted. But if you assume the entire GALAXY is settled by humans, billions of Earths, with a population in the TRILLIONS, you have a population that is completely predictable.

    That’s the made-up science of psychohistory in Foundation.

    But it doesn’t exist. And it would be terrible if it DID exist. As Cory Doctorow points out, if you could know the future for certain, what would be the reason to get out of bed in the morning? Particularly if the future is BAD. If you’re a Jew in Europe and it’s 1928 and you can predict the future with certainty, do you even want to be alive at that point?

    That’s one of the problems with the Foundation Trilogy.

    The other problem is alluded to in Butler’s description of the series as “technocratic.” Asimov gives us a choice between two lousy forms of government: An empire – in other words, a hereditary dictatorship, like North Korea or Saudi Arabia. Or government by bureaucrats. We never encounter a planet governed by a democratic government with a robust civil service that serves the will of the people. Nope.

    Indeed, when I look back on science fiction from that period, I see a lot of galactic empires presented as benevolent, and other forms of benevolent dictatorships. You have to wait until Star Trek until you get something truly resembling representative democracy.

    And the OTHER problem with the Foundation Trilogy is that it’s just plain old-fashioned. The prose and storytelling style has not aged well. The characters are flat and one-dimensional, and the action takes place offscreen and is described in dialogue.

    Nonetheless, when I revisited the first novel recently, I did find charm in the retro-future vision. When Asimov imagines someone from the outer planets visiting the Galactic capital of Trantor, we see Asimov himself: A leading individual in one of the golden times and places of American history, immigrant New York from around the turn of the century to the 1950s. Jews and Italians fled hard lives in the old country and became Americans, and helped build America. My own parents grew up in that milieu; if I had a time machine it’s one of the times and places I would most like to visit.

    And the Foundation Trilogy WAS among my favorite books when I was a kid. If I identify problems with it now, that doesn’t take away from my enjoyment then.

    Nor does it take away from my admiration for Asimov, who was and is one of my heroes. He was far from a perfect person in his life, but who is?

    As Alec Nevala-Lee writes in his recent book “Astounding," a history of science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s (recommended), when Asimov conceived Foundation, he was a teen-ager in New York, reading about the news of the Nazis rolling over Europe, and threatening America, with the Holocaust killing people just like himself, his family and friends. He dreamed of a world where he could somehow find assurance that everything was going to be ok.

    → 9:33 AM, Apr 5
  • Julie and I are both easily annoyed today. I came into her office to tell her about something that was annoying me, and before I could say a word she went into telling me about something that was annoying her. That annoyed the hell out of me.

    I hope she is not annoyed by my posting this.

    Also, I think maybe I picked the wrong historical event during which to reduce coffee consumption.

    → 2:56 PM, Apr 4
  • Private equity is using the pandemic to loot public health facilities, such as hospitals and medical clinics. One example: Firing medical professionals who speak out about unsafe working conditions - Cory Doctorow

    → 1:52 PM, Apr 4
  • A dystopian Reagan era video game foresaw the economic crises of the 21st century.

    → 1:51 PM, Apr 4
  • LA landlord threatens to evict 300 tenants if they don’t pay rent in full, in violation fo state and local emergency tenant protections. Landlord uses cc instead of bcc, helping tenants organize a web strike. Whoops - Cory Doctorow

    → 1:50 PM, Apr 4
  • Supercut of Fox News hosts insisting coronavirus is no cause concern, a Democratic/MSM conspiracy, etc. Not “ha-ha-weird, nor ha-ha-funny. It’s more ha-ha-Exhibit-A-for-a-future-war-crimes-tribunal” - Cory Doctorow

    → 1:48 PM, Apr 4
  • What did people do before toilet paper?

    The ancient Romans wiped their butts with a “tersorium,” a stick with a vinegar- or salt-water-soaked sponge attached, although these may have been used to clean the latrine rather than the person.

    Other ancient cultures used small stones, rags on sticks, spatulas, and – for scholars – manuscripts. Yen Chih-Thui, a sixth century AD scholar, said he didn’t dare wipe himself “on the names of sages.”

    The Chinese imperial family was using mass produced rice-paper-based toilet paper by 1393.

    Inventor Joseph Gayetty introduced the first mass-produced TP in the west in 1857; it was called “J.C. Gayetty’s Medicated Paper for the Water Closet” because they knew how to do product names back then.

    By Erin Blakemore at National Geographic.

    → 10:31 AM, Apr 4
  • One month ago today I went to the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club general meeting with a hundred or so of my closest friends. Following that, a small group of us had a light dinner and drinks at Hooley’s

    This is a historic event for two reasons: It was the-second-to-last time I spent a lot of time in close proximity to a lot of people, prior to COVID-19 ramping up. The last time was as few days later, when Julie and I went out to brunch. A few days after that: Lockdown!

    Since then, it’s just been social distancing.

    The other reason this dinner is historic is I sat immediately next to someone who later got sick with COVID-19. We were packed onto that table so he and I were very close, nearly bumping elbows. He later spent a harrowing week or two in the ICU unit. He’s recovering at home now – thank goodness.

    Fortunately for my and Julie’s peace of mind, I found out about this gentleman’s hospitalization more than two weeks after the dinner, well past the incubation period for myself and Julie. So we’re safe. Probably. I’m trying not to think about how little science actually knows about the spread of coronavirus, and whether that two-week figure might be simply be wrong.

    Lots of things I’m not thinking about right now. I am becoming excellent at compartmentalization – part of me plans and prepares for the worst and part of me just tries to live life as normally as I can, working and spending time with Julie and reading my books and walking the dog and not thinking about the awful things that might happen. Nearly certainly will happen to so many people.

    BTW, I realize this is extraordinarily self-centered – here’s this guy in the ICU and I’m all whew glad that wasn’t too stressful for me. I’m prepared to mount a LarryDavidian defense of my thinking.

    → 9:37 AM, Apr 4
  • Earthquake. About 50 minutes ago. Just a minor one, no damage or injury that I’m aware of. But it’s the biggest earthquake we’ve felt in a long time. Maybe ever.

    Because life needed to get more interesting.

    → 7:43 PM, Apr 3
  • Help me with a thought experiment here. Those of you who identify as Republican or conservative: What are the values you hold most dear? What should our national priorities be? What should be government’s goals?

    If you fell into a deep slumber and woke up in the United States 50 years from now what would you hope it would be like? Assume a cultural and political renaissance where everybody comes around to realize that your beliefs were best after all.

    And how well do you think the Trump administration and present-day Republicans are doing?

    Aside to my liberal/Democrat/progressive friends and family: Just sit on your hands on this one please. Let’s keep our mouths shut and learn some things.

    → 9:44 AM, Apr 3
  • From Google News a few seconds ago.

    Republicans and Democrats perceive parallel universes with completely different realities now. But there is only one real world.

    → 9:18 AM, Apr 3
  • Researchers are building nearly microscopic robots, made from living cells, that live in petri dishes

    Meet the Xenobots, Virtual Creatures Brought to Life

    Xenobots are designed to roboticists using algorithmic evolution in computer simulations.

    Joshua Sokol at The New York Times:

    Xenobots with a fork- or snowplow-like appendage in the front can sweep up loose particles (in a petri dish) overnight, depositing them in a pile. Some use legs, of a sort, to shuffle around on the floor of the dish. Others swim, using beating cilia, or link up blobby appendages and circle each other a few times before heading off in separate directions….

    [Researchers crafted] virtual worlds that would reward particular behaviors by the clumps of repurposed frog. Take walking: First an algorithm produced many random body designs; some just sat there, others rocked or waddled forward. Then the algorithm let the best of the walkers procreate into the next generation; from these, another generation was produced, and so on, each one improving on the best designs. Another simulation, aimed at finding designs that could carry an object, became crowded with bagel-like bodies that had evolved a central cavity to hold things."

    Eventually, robots like these could “sweep ocean microplastics into a larger, collectible ball,” “deliver drugs to a specific tumor,” or “scrape plaque from the walls of our arteries…. "

    “[W]hatever their intended purpose, their bodies would be designed not by an engineer but by a simulacrum of real evolution built to encourage the right behavior in the target environment.”

    Ethicists see possible problems.

    → 9:14 AM, Apr 3
  • A long and pointless post about coffee

    Just before the lockdown went in place in California, I had brunch with Julie at Farmer’s Table. The coffee was excellent, so much so that I asked the waitress about it. She said they got the coffee from a place in Barrio Logan (and now I see on Google there is more than one coffee place in Barrio Logan. I think Cafe Virtuoso was the one she said.)

    I asked the waitress what equipment they use to make the coffee, and she said just a restaurant coffee machine. Not a fancy pourover. Just a drip coffee machine.

    So I remembered that and a while later I was Googling about coffee, and came across an article – which I now cannot locate – about how baristas make coffee for themselves, at home. One of the respondents said he used a Mr. Coffee. Just a Mr. Coffee.

    And that intrigued me because the Aeropress, which is how I’ve been making coffee for a couple of years, is a bit more fuss than I like in the morning. Same for a French press. And with a Mr. Coffee you assemble the ingredients, press a button and you’ve got coffee a few minutes later.

    I thought about that for a couple of weeks and priced a Mr. Coffee on Amazon and it was $22 for a four-cup version. I discussed it with Julie and we said sure why not and I ordered.

    While I was waiting for the delivery, I read the reviews – really should have done that before I ordered, right? I had just looked at the overall rating. But now that I read the reviews, I saw that the four-cup machine didn’t actually make four cups. Mr. Coffee measures a cup at 5 ounces. WTF, I thought to myself. That’s 20 ounces of coffee. I like to have about 24 ounces in the morning. Three cups. Three real cups.

    Plus, I realized that, although Julie and I make coffee separately, the reason we do it is because the Aeropress only makes three cups, and even that is pushing it. However, if we had a drip machine I could make coffee for both of us in the morning.

    So I’d bought the wrong size.

    Or had I? Yesterday, I thought to myself that three cups of coffee is really too much. The caffeine doesn’t bother me (or I don’t think it does – I do sometimes have trouble sleeping, but I do not attribute that to coffee. I attribute that to the world, which was a troubling place even before COVID-19). However, I just don’t enjoy that third cup as much as the first two. Plus, drinking three cups of coffee takes a lot of time. That doesn’t matter when I’m just working at my desk, but it’s annoying when I want to be out and about in the morning and I have to wait to finish my morning caffeine fix.

    So fine, I said to myself. I’ll cut down to two cups. And Julie said she’s fine making her own coffee in the morning. So we decided to keep the four-cup Mr. Coffee.

    But wait, there’s more to this.

    Last night I remembered something. We have a third spigot on our kitchen sink. We have the normal hot and cold, and a third one that dispenses even hotter water, for coffee and tea. And that spigot dispenses water at the perfect temperature for brewing with the Aeropress.

    Except I remembered that a few weeks ago I accidentally splashed myself with the spigot and it didn’t hurt. And I said to myself at the time, that should have hurt more. I wonder if the spigot is set hot enough? And I promptly forgot.

    I mentioned this to Julie last night and she said she runs the water a few seconds before filling the Aeropress. She waits until she sees steam coming up. I said I used to do that too – why on Earth did I stop? No idea.

    So I decided to make myself one more Aeropress this morning before I try the Mr. Coffee tomorrow, just to have a proper baseline for comparison. I made a three-cup pressing this morning because I only got about five hours' sleep last night. I don’t know if I taste much difference in the flavor but it’s hotter than it has been, which I like.

    I may make a two-cup batch in the Aeropress tomorrow, just to be comparing like amounts with the Aeropress and Mr. Coffee.

    → 8:20 AM, Apr 3
  • If you’re not nice to the barista, you’ll get decaf.

    11 Behind-the-Counter Secrets of Baristas - Shaunacy Ferro at Mental Floss

    → 7:43 AM, Apr 3
  • I’ve been troubled by insomnia for months, but just last night I was thinking how glad I was that I hadn’t had a bout in weeks. Been sleeping soundly every night. Thank goodness for that, I thought last night.

    You’ll totally guess what happened!

    → 7:30 AM, Apr 3
  • I’ve seen a bunch of inspiring chalk messages around the neighborhood this week.

    → 8:37 PM, Apr 2
  • ME (grocery shopping while wearing mask, consults shopping list app on iPhone)
    MY iPHONE’S FACIAL RECOGNITION: “Who the hell are you?”
    repeat several dozen times

    → 2:51 PM, Apr 2
  • Report on an excursion to the supermarket

    I went to the big Von’s on University Avenue to stock up today

    I wore nitrile gloves, as I did the other time I went to the supermarket nine days ago. I also wore an N95 mask – my first time out in public wearing one.

    I felt self-conscious about the mask, and over the past few days I was mentally rehearsing the conversation I might have with a hypothetical person who might confront me about using the mask when healthcare professionals are doing without. I imagined myself saying, “We bought the masks long before the pandemic; Julie uses them when she cleans the litterbox. We had the gloves too. We’re not hoarding; we have 10 masks and 100-200 pairs of gloves.

    “We do not have a large extended family in the area,” I would have said, “so if one of us gets sick the other one takes care of them. If we both get sick, well, we’re screwed.

    “By protecting ourselves, we avoid becoming additional burdens on the healthcare system,” I would have said.

    “And also, you may be right,” I would have said to the hypothetical person.

    Nobody non-hypothetical confronted me.

    The supermarket crowd was light, but I would not have found it remarkably light on an ordinary day. Only three or four of us wore masks, and a few more wearing gloves. None of the supermarket staff seemed to be wearing masks, but the pharmacy staff did. The cashier, at least, was wearing gloves, of the type that food service workers usually wear.

    One man brought his son, who looked to be about 4 years old. Seems like a bad idea. Maybe he had nobody to watch the kid?

    The supermarket had most of the things I was looking for. Plenty of fresh produce, even fresh asparagus for a treat tonight. They did not have Julie’s favorite brand of salad dressing, but that might not have been virus-related as the shelves were full of salad dressing. Maybe they just didn’t carry it.

    Also absent: Toilet paper and cleaning supplies. I keep hearing the supply chain is fine with those, and people are just hoarding. So when will that ol' supply chain kick in? Eventually people will run out of room in their houses for toilet paper.

    I also was able to find two big bottles of my favorite hand soap, Dr. Bronner’s. That was a pleasant surprise.

    → 1:22 PM, Apr 2
  • I still get occasional comments on this article I wrote 10 years ago. Ten years!

    5 reasons why people hate Apple

    I just got an email this morning.

    The email had no context. Just a short two sentences on why the sender hates Apple – he’s an Android user and was using Dark Sky until Apple bought it this week and shut off API access, including Android.

    I replied by asking him why he was sending the email to me. But I was still waking up when I sent that reply, because truly I already knew. That article.

    I just reread it. It’s a pretty good article. If I were writing it today, I’d spend time discussing Apple’s monopolistic practices. Or quasi-monopolistic – they don’t own the market, but they control a big chunk of it. It’s the same all over the economy; a few big companies control each industry. They compete against each other but mainly they’re concerned with stifling new competition.

    I’m still nearly exclusively an Apple user but I have fewer illusions today. When you do business in the current economy, you compromise your principles. Like using Facebook, for example.

    → 8:16 AM, Apr 2
  • Baked potato + kosher-style spicy brown mustard: Good idea? Discuss.

    → 5:35 PM, Apr 1
  • I just did the census. For “origin” I put in “American,” after Julie pointed out that her great-grandparents (and my grandparents and great-grandparents) were from other countries, but she and I are from right here in the USA.

    I gave serious thought to putting in “human” for race, because I am becoming seriously convinced that racial differences aren’t just social constructs, they’re toxic bullshit.

    But I went with the conventional answer: White.

    Although to people who get really exercised about race, Jews aren’t white.

    Fellow Americans, take the census today, if you have not already: 2020census.gov. It’s important; it’s how representation and government services will be distributed over the next decade.

    → 2:25 PM, Apr 1
  • In the “Reign of Terror” episode of “I, Claudius,” a character being beaten to death at the behest of a tyrant declares: “I’ve never fully realized before how a small mind, allied to unlimited ambition and without scruple, can destroy a country full of clever men.”

    This TV drama is about ancient Rome, and it aired in 1976, so of course this quote has absolutely no bearing on today.

    Via the delightful “I, Podius” podcast, with John Hodgman and Elliott Kalan.

    The petty tyrant in the above scene is Sejanus, played by a thirty-something Patrick Stewart. Sir Patrick has hair in “I, Claudius” but – I learned in a previous episode of the pod – it’s stunt hair; Stewart has been bald since he was 19.

    → 1:58 PM, Apr 1
  • On a very special shelter-in-place episode of the design podcast 99% Invisible, host Roman Mars describes the history and design of things around the house.

    → 1:45 PM, Apr 1
  • Something else to think about: Potential disruptions in the food supply chain.

    Skimmed and bookmarked for later reading.

    Food supply worries farmers in US as coronavirus disrupts their work - CNN

    The Effects of COVID-19 Will Ripple through Food Systems - Scientific American

    → 1:11 PM, Apr 1
  • How to play Scrabble. Classic Ze Frank. Funny - YouTube

    → 1:01 PM, Apr 1
  • Larry David: “I basically want to address the idiots out there…. You’re passing up a fantastic opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to stay in the house, sit on the couch and watch TV!” twitter.com/gavinnews…

    → 12:30 PM, Apr 1
  • The US is losing jobs drastically faster than other nations -- by design

    Emmanual Saez and Gabriel Zucman, economists at the University of California, Berkeley, writing at the New York Times: According to some projections, unemployment might rise to 30% in the second quarter of 2020 in the US, far beyond what other nations are seeing.

    Elsewhere, “governments are protecting employment. Workers keep their jobs, even in industries that are shut down. The government covers most of their wage through direct payments to employers. Wages are, in effect, socialized for the duration of the crisis.”

    Then, when the crisis ends, workers and businesses just pick up where they left off.

    But in the US, we’re relying on improved unemployment benefits. You suffer the stress of losing your job, you have to apply for unemployment, which is burdensome and swamps the system.

    Many Americans will find that when the crisis ends, their jobs are gone, with many of their former employers out of business.

    That’ll slow down recovery, whereas in Europe, people will just get back to work.

    And as they’re losing their jobs, Americans also lose health insurance.

    There’s a saying that when the US goes to war, it mis-applies the lessons of the last war. That’s what’s going on here. Conservatives and progressives were both rightly appalled by the lesson of the 2008 bailout, when we propped up broken businesses and rewarded the thieving and incompetent investors and managers who crashed the economy, while abandoning middle class and poor victims to fend for themselves.

    But the situation is different now. Yes, we still have an economy that rewards greed, stealing and incompetence, but coronavirus is slaughtering both good businesses and badly run businesses. Government’s goal should just be to press the pause button on the entire economy, then resume, and fix structural problems, when the crisis passes.

    Via Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic.

    Cory says: “The package also needs to create Covidcare For All, universal health coverage for the duration of the emergency (and beyond, ideally – once Americans get a taste for it).”

    → 12:14 PM, Apr 1
  • A major medical staffing company just slashed benefits for doctors and nurses fighting coronavirus

    Yes, you read that right. The company, Alteon Health, slashed benefits to emergency room healthcare workers during the pandemic. These emergency room healthcare workers are literally the most important people in the world right now.

    Isaac Arnsdorf at ProPublica:

    Alteon Health, a staffing company backed by private-equity firm Frazier Healthcare Partners, will cut salaries, time off and retirement benefits for providers, citing lost revenue. Several hospital operators announced similar cuts.

    Most emergency room providers in the US work for companies like Alteon – staffing companies with contracts with hospitals. Coronavirus is eating into those companies' profits.

    Steve Holtzclaw, CEO of Alteon Health, delivered bad news to employees Monday: “Despite the risks our providers are facing, and the great work being done by our teams, the economic challenges brought forth by COVID-19 have not spared our industry.”

    The memo announced that the company would be reducing hours for clinicians, cutting pay for administrative employees by 20%, and suspending 401(k) matches, bonuses and paid time off. Holtzclaw indicated that the measures were temporary but didn’t know how long they would last.

    In other words: Thanks for risking your lives and families to save the rest of us. Now go fuck yourselves.

    The cuts are coming at a time when these emergency room workers are accruing the cost of living apart from their families to avoid infecting loved ones.

    One doctor said he’s getting a $20,000 annual pay cut.

    He said, “This decision is being made not by physicians but by people who are not on the front lines, who do not have to worry about whether I’m infecting my family or myself. If a company cannot support physicians during the toughest times, to me there’s a significant question of integrity.”

    That’s far more diplomatic than I would use.

    Hospital operators, including Tenet Healthcare, Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Atrius Health, are also announcing cuts.

    Another Alteon physician said he had been planning to ask for time off to go help out in New York, where the coronavirus outbreak is the worst in the nation. Now he has no paid time off, and he thinks his employer won’t support him if he gets sick. He said if his pay drops he’ll have to look for a new job.

    “I have a huge loan payment. I have rent. I have groceries. I’m not going to sacrifice my life for when I get sick and they’re going to say, ‘You were replaceable,’” the physician said. “I cannot believe they did that to us."

    Tell me again why it would be bad for the US to have Medicaire for all?

    Via Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

    → 11:50 AM, Apr 1
  • Seth Davis was stranded at Los Angeles Airport for three months after his wallet was stolen Christmas Eve.

    Until a few days ago, he and his seizure dog, Poppy, lived at Terminal 6, sleeping on the floor behind a pillar.

    Stranded and homeless at LAX. Then coronavirus hit - Los Angeles Times

    Devastating story, by Maria L. La Ganga with photographer Francine Orr:

    Davis had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome and epilepsy. He had been in foster care or adult protective services for most of his three decades. He survived on Social Security and food stamps. As Christmas Eve turned into Christmas Day, his wallet was stolen. Then his identity was hijacked and his bank account plundered.

    What was already a precarious life began to spin out of control.

    Davis and Poppy were not sick, yet the coronavirus hit them hard. The agencies that could help them, he said, had been mostly overwhelmed or closed in recent weeks. On Tuesday evening he had $5 and change. Poppy was out of dog food.

    They were homeless and alone.

    You’ve maybe heard that about half of Americans are one paycheck away from disaster and ruin. Davis is one of those people. $350 made all the difference to him between a comfortable, albeit difficult, life, and homelessness.

    → 8:45 AM, Apr 1
  • Loss of taste is a warning sign for COVID-19 so if you wear any of the following, immediately self-isolate:

    • Socks with sandals
    • side-cut tank tops
    • Shoes with velcro fasteners
    • Ugg boots
    • Pajama pants in public
    → 8:24 AM, Apr 1
  • A year ago today I was at San Diego Airport and saw this tile for sale at one of the shops. For the rest of my life, I will regret not purchasing it.

    → 8:17 AM, Apr 1
  • That sad moment when you realize it may be time to throw one of your favorite T-shirts into the rag bag.

    → 5:46 PM, Mar 31
  • The GOP is pushing forward with plans to kill Obamacare because if you’re a Republican now seems to be a great time to deny healthcare coverage to 20 million Americans. - Sam Brodey at The Daily Beast

    → 1:57 PM, Mar 31
  • Las Vegas, with 150,000 vacant hotel rooms, has the homeless sleeping on the ground in parking lots. - Mario Koran at The Guardian

    → 1:48 PM, Mar 31
  • That time there was a Communist revolution inside the online game Runescape - Emilie Rākete at The Spinoff

    “… armed with both the revolutionary science of Marxism and dragon battleaxes, the RuneScape communists were militarily undefeatable. Within three months, the communists controlled 95% of Server 32.”

    → 12:25 PM, Mar 31
  • Joe Biden is getting a pass on sexual assault and misbehavior allegations

    Arwa Mahdawi at Common Dreams: “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real.”

    Joe Biden said that. The same standard should apply to the accuser against him.

    → 9:57 AM, Mar 31
  • OpenTable will allow people to reserve shopping times at supermarkets - Taylor Lyles at The Verge

    Trials in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

    Good idea.

    I’m due to make another supermarket run in a day or two.

    → 9:46 AM, Mar 31
  • How social distancing looks from the virus’s point of view.

    Thanks, Cory!

    → 9:37 AM, Mar 31
  • You shouldn’t use Zoom; it’s a privacy disaster. - John Gruber at Daring Fireball

    I agree … but I gotta be honest here; I’m following the course of least resistance and using Zoom anyway.

    Gruber advises using Zoom on the iPhone or iPad, where you must use Zoom. I’m going to think about whether I can somehow elevate my iPad to give me a good camera angle on Zoom.

    Similarly, I’m very active on Facebook despite strong misgivings about its business model. Path of least resistance. It’s where the people are.

    → 9:12 AM, Mar 31
  • High Fidelity at 20: the sneakily dark edge of a comedy about bad breakups

    Scott Tobias at The Guardian: High Fidelity is the story of a self-centered jerk who learns to become less of a self-centered jerk.

    Also, this: “One of the film’s most insightful and endearing qualities is how much it’s willing to poke fun at Rob, Barry, and Dick’s record-clerk arrogance without belittling their passions entirely.”

    Love this movie.

    Didn’t even try watching the new gender-crossed TV series. I am not offended by the gender-crossing. I do feel like the main character is a male archetype, and doesn’t work as a young woman. But if they can make it work, that’s cool.

    It’s just the TV series did not look appealing to me. And the movie already exists – it is perfect as is, it cannot be improved.

    → 9:03 AM, Mar 31
  • His actual name is “Victor Von Doom.” Shouldn’t that have been kind of a red flag?

    → 8:16 PM, Mar 30
  • 📷I saw this sign today on my walk. No, I have not got religion. I am still the same nonebelieving Jew I’ve always been. I just like the sign.

    I have seen it a million times before but this is the first time I’ve really taken a second to look at it.

    → 7:57 PM, Mar 30
  • Saying the quiet part very loud, Trump admits “You’d never have a Republican elected in this country again” if voting access is expanded. - John Queally at Common Dreams

    → 7:44 PM, Mar 30
  • A Las Vegas farm feeds 4,000 pigs slops made from waste food from casinos. The farm is now struggling.

    Tiana Bohner at Fox5 Las Vegas:

    “Pigs are a lot like us so they love sweets, candies, ice cream,” Las Vegas Livestock co-owner Hank Combs said. “They like meat and potatoes. They’re not a big fan of salads and produce, but they will eat it.

    On a normal day, the farm would get 20 tons of food from casinos and restaurants across the valley. Once the strip shut down and casinos closed, their food source was cut off…..

    Months before the coronavirus outbreak, Combs and his company developed and designed a new system. The first of its kind, it can un-package anything, allowing them to use the food inside sauce packets and milk jugs.

    The farm blends the food then boils it.

    Farm scraping by to feed 4,000 pigs without Las Vegas Strip leftovers

    Via John Gruber at Daring Fireball, who notes this as an example of the extraordinary interconnectedness of the present-day economy.

    → 5:02 PM, Mar 30
  • Glice is building artificial skating rinks with plastic panels instead of ice

    On Roofs or in Basements, a New Way to Ice Skate

    You can use Glice rinks year-round or in tropical climates.

    Alyson Krueger at the New York Times:

    Glice is arguably more ecologically conscious and certainly more convenient than traditional ice rinks, which require large amounts of water and electricity, as well as noisy, cumbersome machines including refrigeration systems and compressors.

    “In the past I worked for a hotel that had a traditional ice skating rink,” [said David Lemmond, general manager of the William Vale hotel, which has a Glice rink installed]. “You wouldn’t believe the logistics of it. It requires an enormous amount of infrastructure to keep frozen water frozen”: water tank, refrigerated pipes, 24-hour compressor and the famous Zamboni, which re-cuts the surface after it gets marked up and lays down a new layer of water to freeze.

    Critics argue that Glice rinks are still bad for the environment because they are made of, well, plastic. But the company replies that this plastic is durable, with panels lasting 12 years, after which you can flip them over, and use them for another 12….

    But skating on a Glice rink is not a perfect substitute for the romantic capades of yore. There are no grooves from skaters or marks that show where a turn was made. There are no timeouts for the Zamboni, or cold air coming off the surface. Flushed cheeks, sparkling eyes and visible puffs of breath are not a given.

    “It definitely takes some getting used to,” said Mr. Moore at the William Vale. “There are some differences. It doesn’t quite bite as much when you dig into the ice, so most people find it more slippery at first.” It takes about 15 minutes for skaters to adjust, he said. Many people do a shuffle-like motion until they realize they can make longer strides.

    No Zamboni? That’s just wrong!

    → 2:38 PM, Mar 30
  • An astrophysicist proves he is not a rocket scientist when he gets magnets stuck up his nose while inventing a device to keep people from touching their faces - Naaman Zhou at The Guardian

    → 2:15 PM, Mar 30
  • According to BMI calculations, I am at the high end of healthy weight range and could still be healthy if I weighed up to 25 pounds less. That seems nuts to me.

    → 12:17 PM, Mar 30
  • Making the case for municipal broadband - Cory Doctorow

    → 10:44 AM, Mar 30
  • The Koch network is pushing for an end to covid lockdown and social distancing, while sending its own workers home to ensure their health and safety. - Cory Doctorow.

    The group previously pushed to slash the CDC, contributing to US unpreparedness for the pandemic.

    → 10:39 AM, Mar 30
  • Lax antitrust regulations killed a plan to stockpile ventilators

    Cory Doctorow::

    13 years ago, the US Dept of HHS awarded a contract to design low-cost, reliable ventilators to Newport Medical Instrument of Costa Mesa, CA. The ventilators would cost <$3k, allowing the US to procure a shit-ton of them against future pandemics.

    This was a problem for existing med-tech giants, who charged >$10K for competing ventilators…

    So Covidien, a med-tech giant, paid $100 million to buy Newport and killed the project.

    Covidien is now a division of Medtronic.

    Medtronic has been leading the fight to kill off an open artificial pancreas, which could free people with diabetes from dependence on meds. These people become “ambulatory inkjet printers, dependent on manufacturers for overpriced consumables to keep their fucking organs working.”

    Medtronic pacemakers and defibrillators “can be wirelessly hacked to kill you where you stand.”

    And Medtronic has worked with other companies to kill state Right to Repair bills, which is one big reason hospitals are now struggling to keep lifesaving equipment going during the pandemic.

    Philips now has a contract to deliver artificial ventilators. It hasn’t shipped.

    → 10:30 AM, Mar 30
  • Pandemic surveillance will be abused

    Before using tools built by data harvesting companies to track the coronavirus pandemic, we must assume the tools will be abused, says Violet Blue at Engadget.

    Our failure to contain coronavirus has nothing to do with failure of “invasive surveillance,” Blue says. It’s because autocrats in China and the wannabe autocrat in the White House refused to take coronavirus seriously in the beginning.

    Surveillance advocates are trotting out the old canard of privacy vs. safety. But it’s not a “vs.” – privacy is a form of safety. When we have less privacy, we are less safe, from overreaching police, unscrupulous big business, terrorists and stalkers.

    Israel and China are going full 1984.

    On the other hand, countries like South Korea and Taiwan are balancing surveillance with privacy protection. Even Singapore, which otherwise ranks low on civil liberties and privacy protections, understand that it needs to protect privacy during the pandemic.

    Singapore “clearly gets that if you treat your people’s privacy and data the same way Facebook does (or China, or Zoom for that matter), your problems are going to breed problems like tribbles,” Blue says.

    These data collection tools were not built to save lives in emergencies: they were purpose-built for exploitation and abuse.

    The only way to repurpose them safely and effectively is to treat them like they’re radioactive: we must proceed with the certainty that all virus tracking and tracing tech will be abused.

    Violet Blue also outlines privacy problems with Zoom. It’s a privacy nightmare. I’m going to look for alternatives.

    → 10:15 AM, Mar 30
  • Big tech conferences could be a COVID-19 casualty

    Lindsay Clark at the Register predicts smaller, fewer tech conferences post-COVID-19.

    My first was CA World in New Orleans in 1998. In front of an audience of thousands, then Computer Associates CEO Charles Wang wandered across the stage pontificating as a chorus of children danced about him (no, really) and I knew I had indeed entered a whole new world of weird.

    A chorus of children dancing around the CEO is actually not particularly unusual for a tech conference for a billion-dollar company. You see some weird-ass shit for entertainment at conference keynotes.

    Already pre-COVID-19 we saw the big vendor-neutral tech conferences dry up. Remember COMDEX? Remember Interop? And there were always rumors that the gargantuan Mobile World Congress was struggling to break even.

    These were replaced by events sponsored by individual vendors, including Amazon Web Services, Google, Cisco, VMware, etc., with attendance in the tens of thousands, as well as smaller, focused multivendor events with attendance in the hundreds.

    I prefer the smaller, focused events myself; easier to find people to talk with who are useful professionally.

    At the bigger events, sheer navigation becomes a challenge. Some years, my commute to and from Mobile World Congress was 30-60 minutes on public transit, like a regular job. Though part of me actually enjoyed that; it made me feel cosmopolitan and worldly. Like I lived in Barcelona.

    Salespeople love conferences because it helps them generate leads and make deals. Engineers get a rare opportunity for face-to-face networking. And everybody loves the parties.

    Or, rather, everybody except me loves the parties. As an introvert who went to one or two conferences per month, I looked forward to the opportunity to go back to my hotel room and decompress.

    Big conferences give CEOs and senior executives the opportunity to bask in front of a wildly cheering crowd of thousands. They get to be rock stars for a day. Don’t overlook that as a driver keeping big conferences in business.

    → 9:47 AM, Mar 30
  • Julie took this photo of Minnie saying good morning to her. My legs at the right. 📷

    → 7:53 PM, Mar 29
  • Julie took this marvelous photo of a mallard swimming in the pond in our backyard. 📷

    → 7:51 PM, Mar 29
  • Julie took these outstanding photos of Vivvie. 📷

    → 7:49 PM, Mar 29
  • The problem with making coffee is you haven’t had your coffee when you’re making your coffee.

    → 7:46 PM, Mar 29
  • I saw this excellent sidewalk chalk art walking the dog yesterday. Drive to the flower.

    → 7:45 PM, Mar 29
  • Portrait of a weekly newspaper in the small town of Julian, California, circulation in the hundreds, founded in 1985, owned and run since 2004 by Michael Hart, now 67 years old, and his wife Michele Harvey, 69.

    Small Julian newspaper is all about community, by J. Harry Jones at the San Diego Union-Tribune:

    Just once, Michael Hart and his bride of 17 years, Michele Harvey, took a few days off to stay at an inn at Joshua Tree.

    “It was sort of our honeymoon years after we got married,” Hart, 67, said.

    “Just once we took off three days in a row,” Harvey said. “Those three days and two nights were really all we could stand to be away.”

    Since the summer of 2004, Hart and Harvey, 69, have been putting out the weekly Julian News. The newspaper was established in 1985 and had a handful of owners before they purchased the business for $200,000.

    “He puts in 70 to 90 hours a week,” Harvey said of her husband. “Make that 65 to 70,” said Hart.

    The writers are colorful characters. One “was obsessed about the size of his byline.”

    “He wanted his byline to be bigger than the headline of his stories,” Harvey said. He would bring into the office many examples of bylines from newspapers around the country.

    And then there was a contributor who didn’t know how to replace the ribbon on her typewriter so instead she would put carbon paper between two white sheets of paper and then write her column even though she couldn’t see what it was she was composing. She’d then give the carbon copy of the column to the paper to let them try to figure out what it said.

    → 1:08 PM, Mar 29
  • Social distancing vs. economic recovery is a false choice. According ta recent study, cities that enacted social distancing hard and fast during the 1918 pandemic were quicker to recover economically. “… the earlier, more forcefully and longer cities responded, the better their economic recovery.”

    Scott Duke Kominers at Bloomberg:

    That’s not to say that the flu pandemic didn’t cause an economic strain: the authors found that the areas hit hardest saw real declines in manufacturing employment and output, as well as a persistent reduction in bank assets — probably because of losses on loans amid bankruptcies. They also found a decline in auto registrations, which they say suggests a decline in demand for consumer durables.

    That said, the cities that implemented aggressive social distancing and shutdowns to contain the virus came out looking better. Implementing these policies eight days earlier, or maintaining them for 46 days longer were associated with 4% and 6% higher post-pandemic manufacturing employment, respectively. The gains for output were similar. Likewise, faster and longer-lasting distancing measures were associated with higher post-pandemic banking activity.

    → 1:05 PM, Mar 29
  • Cory Doctorow: The US coronavirus epidemic is Part 2 of the 2008 financial meltdown, in the wake of which we elected dufus strongmen, gutted emergency preparedness budgets and passed the money to billionaries.

    → 10:44 AM, Mar 29
  • Zacharius Braciszewicz says Trump will be turned out of office in five weeks, but the butcher’s bill will be terrible.

    → 10:45 PM, Mar 28
  • Before reporting to the American people, coronavirus task force members need to say how wonderful Trump is - Meredith McGraw at Politico

    → 8:36 PM, Mar 28
  • Doonesbury captured Trump 44 years ago, in this strip about Chairman Mao. via

    → 7:42 PM, Mar 28
  • Screenwriter J.D. Shapiro on the making of the 2000 movie, “Battlefield: Earth:”

    “I Penned the Suckiest Movie Ever - Sorry!"

    “… comparing it to a train wreck isn’t really fair to train wrecks, because people actually want to watch those.”

    → 5:47 PM, Mar 28
  • Stella, a dog, jumps with gusto into piles of leaves. - video

    → 5:16 PM, Mar 28
  • Sophie Lewis at CBSNews.com: Walmart reports increased sales for tops but not pants

    → 11:24 AM, Mar 28
  • Via

    → 10:36 AM, Mar 28
  • We’ve come full rectangle: Polaroid is reborn out of The Impossible Project

    Devin Coldewey at TechCrunch: The Polaroid camera is back, with a sleek new model priced at just $100. But film will cost you $2 per shot!

    Love the headline!

    → 10:25 AM, Mar 28
  • Mike Dano on Light Reading: Satellite company OneWeb is reportedly filing for bankruptcy and Elon Musk’s SpaceX could be in trouble as well.

    → 10:15 AM, Mar 28
  • Podcast downloads in the US have fallen about 10%. True crime podcasts are down the most, and comedy podcasts are also hit hard.

    Coronavirus Causes Dip in Podcast Listening

    Makes sense. Social distancing = fewer people commuting.

    I listen to podcasts while walking and doing chores, so my podcast listening duration is unchanged. However, more of my podcasts now are daily news than they were before.

    → 10:03 AM, Mar 28
  • The San Diego City Attorney is seeking an injunction against Instacart

    Chris Jennewein at the Times of San Diego:

    The San Diego City Attorney’s Office has petitioned an appellate court to reinstate its injunction against grocery delivery company Instacart, which the city alleged misclassified its employees as independent contractors, and now places Instacart‘s workforce at greater risk because of the coronavirus pandemic.

    The risk is not just to Instacart workers, but to all the people they come in contact with. They’d literally be carrying infections into people’s homes, along with groceries.

    → 9:51 AM, Mar 28
  • British Drivers Swearing

    I found this enjoyable both for the colorful expletives and for the many video snippets of random British roads.

    → 9:38 AM, Mar 28
  • How Huawei is dividing Western nations

    Scott Bade at TechCrunch: Western countries are split on whether to ban Huawei outright on telco networks, like Australia does, or allow the company to be used cautiously, like Britain.

    The US is, of course, calling for a Huawei ban.

    Much of the split is geographic. The US and Australia are Pacific powers, with China as a neighbor. For Europe, China is a half a world away.

    If war breaks out between the US and China, the US and its more Sino-cautious allies fear their vital networks would be controlled by the enemy. And even in peace, Western nations don’t want to see those vital networks controlled by China.

    You can’t chalk this one up to more Trump idiocy. The US started turning up the heat on China under Obama. And a million Uighurs will tell you that China is not a nice country.

    → 9:20 AM, Mar 28
  • Uranus Ejected a Giant Plasma Bubble During Voyager 2’s Visit - The New York Times

    Uranus is very farty.

    → 7:31 AM, Mar 28
  • This painting by Rudolf Sieber Lonati was used on the covers of Silber-Grusel-Krimi #213 and Larry Brent #49. Via

    → 12:02 AM, Mar 28
  • 1961 cover art by Mitchell Hooks Via

    → 11:59 PM, Mar 27
  • #ayyy Via

    → 11:56 PM, Mar 27
  • Via

    → 11:53 PM, Mar 27
  • SF Bar Owner on Yelp’s GoFundMe partnership: ‘Fuck All of These People Entirely” - Eve Batey - Eater SF

    Yelp launched GoFundMe campaigns for small businesses without their permission, which is making the small business owners angry.

    → 11:50 PM, Mar 27
  • Fearsome Flush - Real Ghostbusters (Kenner) Via

    → 11:34 PM, Mar 27
  • Steve Ditko. Via

    → 11:23 PM, Mar 27
  • The sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden, explained - Anna North - Vox

    → 8:28 PM, Mar 27
  • Opinion - The Religious Right’s Hostility to Science Is Crippling Our Coronavirus Response

    Katherine Stewart at The New York Times: At a time when responsible people are practicing social distancing — if they can — the Religious Right is filling church pews and claiming coronavirus is a liberal conspiracy to remove Trump from office after the Mueller investigation and impeachment failed.

    → 8:14 PM, Mar 27
  • ‘White-Collar Quarantine’ Over Virus Spotlights Class Divide

    Noam Scheiber, Nelson D. Schwartz and Tiffany Hsu writing at the New York Times:

    … a kind of pandemic caste system is rapidly developing: the rich holed up in vacation properties; the middle class marooned at home with restless children; the working class on the front lines of the economy, stretched to the limit by the demands of work and parenting, if there is even work to be had.

    → 8:07 PM, Mar 27
  • I have developed my own modification to the standard hand-washing technique you’ve seen on YouTube and in GIFs, which I believe will be beneficial (although I am not a medical professional):

    In addition to turning off the faucets with the towel, to avoid contamination, also use the towel to open the bathroom door and turn out the lights. This further avoids touching contaminated surfaces.

    Then go out in the living room and let the dog lick your hand.

    → 7:50 PM, Mar 27
  • Nurses Share Coronavirus Stories Anonymously in an Online Document - Edmund Lee - The New York Times

    More than 1,200 health care workers have used a private online document to share their stories of fighting the coronavirus pandemic on the front lines.

    In their accounts, they say the outbreak has turned American hospitals into “war zones.” They talk about being scared to go to work and anxious that they will become infected. They describe managers who seem to not care about their plight.

    “But we show up and have to keep showing up,” one nurse wrote, “and we have to test ourselves.”

    The document was created on March 19 by Sonja Schwartzbach, a nurse in New Jersey who is studying as a doctoral student. She said she started compiling the accounts after she determined that hospital conditions were “far worse” than most people realized and that her fellow health care workers needed a place to share what they were seeing.

    → 5:47 PM, Mar 27
  • How the Pandemic Will End - Ed Yong - The Atlantic

    → 5:38 PM, Mar 27
  • One month ago today I took Minnie in to the vet for her bordatella and heartworm test.

    Two years ago today I was on a train to LA for a conference.

    Three years ago today one of my oldest friends was in town for a conference, and so he and another of my oldest friends got together for dinner.

    So much activity involving being around people, at less than a 6' distance!

    → 11:55 AM, Mar 27
  • Coronavirus changes everything about the 2020 election. Trump is now the favorite to win. All he has to do is not fuck up egregiously.

    People will continue to support Trump even in the face of normal incompetence from him – it will take outrageous incompetence to undercut Trump’s support.

    On the other hand, outrageous incompetence is something that Trump regularly does. This is a man who went out bankrupt – repeatedly – running casinos, and whom no legitimate bank would do business with.

    → 11:44 AM, Mar 27
  • Cory Doctorow: San Francisco’s DNA Lounge is delivering cocktails in mason jars. A mason jar is three servings – or one if you really want to party like it’s 1999.

    → 11:22 AM, Mar 27
  • Cory Doctorow: “Reasonable covid food-safety advice: Sanitize your hands and your cart, practice social distancing, and…you’re done.”

    This pretty much matches what I’ve read on Consumer Reports, and what I did when I went out grocery shopping Tuesday.

    Also, I’m saving up grocery shopping for big runs. Normally, when I run out of something, I go out and get it. However, I’m running out of apples now and I’ll just do without apples a few days until I have a lot of stuff to buy.

    → 11:20 AM, Mar 27
  • Cory Doctorow: Right-wing extremists who denounce their opponents' incivility are using the same arguments as advocates of slavery in the antebellum US.

    → 11:16 AM, Mar 27
  • Cory Doctorow: Real-estate plutocrats are making a killing on the Senate stimulus. And guess what business Trump is in?

    → 11:13 AM, Mar 27
  • Cory Doctorow: [The US is now the epicenter of the pandemic] a: “Trump wants the country to go back to work by Easter, because in his version of the Trolley Problem, the most important thing is saving the trolley.”

    In cruel irony, the bulk of the people who die will be older Americans – the Trump and Fox news demographic, Cory notes.

    But so many people will die because of this. Old people. Young people. People with disabilities. People who just had very bad luck. Kids.

    And that’s before you get to all the people who have car wrecks or heart attacks or slip-and-falls and can’t get treatment in overloaded hospitals.

    When Hoover fucked up by giving in to plutes and crashed the economy, he got tent cities, or “Hoovervilles.”

    Trump’s fuckup will end with mass graves. Trump Mausoleums? Mar-a-Plague-Pits?

    We will get through this. But Trump will have murdered so many of us before it’s over.

    → 11:09 AM, Mar 27
  • Gentleman buys a DVD at a flea market containing 80 minutes of previously unseen Seinfeld bloopers.

    → 10:43 AM, Mar 27
  • Andrew Sullivan uses his memories of the AIDS epidemic to cast light on coronavirus and society.

    How to Survive a Plague

    It’s quite possible that by the end of all this, almost every American will know of someone who has died. A relative, a friend, an old high-school classmate … the names will pop up and migrate through Facebook as the weeks go by, and in a year’s time, Facebook will duly remind you of the grief or shock you experienced. The names of the sick will appear to be randomly selected — the ones you expected and the ones you really didn’t, the famous and the obscure, the vile and the virtuous. And you will feel the same pang of shock each time someone you know turns out to have fallen ill.

    You’ll wake up each morning and check to see if you have a persistent cough, or a headache, or a tightness in the lungs. This is plague living: witnessing the sickness and death of others, knowing that you too could be next, even as you feel fine. The distancing things we reflexively do — “oh, well, he was a smoker”; “she was diabetic, you know”; “they were in Italy in February” — become a little bit harder as time goes by, and the numbers mount, and the randomness of it all sinks in. No, this is not under control. And no, we are not in control. Because we never are.

    And this will change us. It must. All plagues change society and culture, reversing some trends while accelerating others, shifting consciousness far and wide, with consequences we won’t discover for years or decades. The one thing we know about epidemics is that at some point they will end. The one thing we don’t know is who we will be then.

    I know that I was a different man at the end of the plague of AIDS than I was at the beginning,

    Sullivan says: The epidemic could bring out the best in us, and we could create a more fair and humane society. Or it could bring out our worst, and make us more socially isolated, xenophobic, and authoritarian.

    I suspect that those who think COVID-19 all but kills Donald Trump’s reelection prospects are being, as usual, too optimistic. National crises, even when handled at this level of incompetence and deceit, can, over time, galvanize public support for a national leader. As Trump instinctually finds a way to identify the virus as “foreign,” he will draw on these lizard-brain impulses, and in a time of fear, offer the balm of certainty to his cult and beyond. It’s the final bonding: blind support for the leader even at the risk of your own sickness and death. And in emergencies, quibbling, persistent political opposition is always on the defense, and often unpopular. It requires pointing out bad news in desperate times; and that, though essential, is rarely popular.

    Watching Fox News operate in real time in ways Orwell described so brilliantly in Nineteen Eighty-Four — compare “We had always been at war with Eastasia” with “I’ve felt that it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic” — you’d be a fool not to see the potential for the Republican right to use this plague for whatever end they want. If Trump moves to the left of the Democrats in handing out big non-means-tested cash payments, and provides a stimulus far bigger than Obama’s, no Republican will cavil. And since no sane person wants the war on COVID-19 to fail, we will have to wish that the president succeed. Pulling this off as an opposition party, while winning back the White House, will require a political deftness I don’t exactly see in abundance among today’s Democrats.

    On the other hand, even further incompetence or failure on Trump’s part could finally, maybe, puncture the cult, and deliver the White House to Biden and the Congress to the Democrats. And the huge sums now being proposed by even the GOP to shore up the economy and the stock market at a time of massive debt, as well as the stark failures of our public-health planning, could make an activist government agenda much more politically palatable to Americans.

    → 10:32 AM, Mar 27
  • If we need to kill grandma and grandpa to save the economy, then fuck the economy.

    A far-right rallying cry: Older Americans should volunteer to work

    This article compares current conservative calls to sacrifice older Americans against the Obamacare “death panel” scare. But that’s rubbish because the death panels never existed, whereas this kill-the-olds movement is real.

    Hillary was right. A good percentage of Trump supporters really are deplorable.

    We do not sacrifice the weak and old to protect society. The reason we have society is to protect the weak and old.

    → 10:05 AM, Mar 27
  • Not even three weeks on lockdown and the people who were once sneering at this as being no worse than the flu are now wetting their pants and planning on turning old people into Soylent Green.

    → 10:58 PM, Mar 26
  • People who say cruel things on the internet are often not the cartoon villains we imagine them to be.

    He urged saving the economy over protecting those who are ‘not productive’ from the coronavirus. Then he faced America’s wrath. - The Washington Post

    Attorney Scott McMillan brought the wrath of the internet on himself when he tweeted: “The fundamental problem is whether we are going to tank the entire economy to save 2.5% of the population which is (1) generally expensive to maintain, and (2) not productive.”

    Yes, it’s wrong and appalling but so what? Cut him some slack.

    Internet shaming and death threats are never the answer.

    I have a special interest in this because McMillan is in La Mesa, the San Diego, CA suburb where we live.

    His statement is wrong and appalling because we do not measure the value of people by their productivity.

    And the flood of deaths that will follow ending the quarantine prematurely, like Trump and McMillan suggest, will be a million times worst for the economy than extended quarantine.

    Also, McMillan says he doesn’t want the younger generation to be like the generation that grew up in the Depression. That generation includes my parents. They turned out fine. They went without as kids, but sacrificing their grandparents’ generation would not have made them better off.

    If people have to die to support the economy, then fuck the economy.

    → 10:13 PM, Mar 26
  • Any micro.bloggers in San Diego?

    → 8:30 PM, Mar 26
  • As part of our morning wake-up routine I’ve been giving Minnie three chicken-flavored treats every day. They’re infused with glucosamine, which is good for her joints.

    This morning I dropped all three from waist height at the same time – and Minnie snatched all three from the air, simultaneously, before they hit the ground.

    I was in awe.

    The glucosamine is fantastic, btw. She’s a lot more active now.

    → 7:55 PM, Mar 26
  • With Affirmed Networks purchase, Microsoft looks to plug 5G into Azure - Light Reading. With its Affirmed acquisition, Microsoft is challenging telco software vendors such as Ericsson, Cisco and Mavenir.

    → 7:47 PM, Mar 26
  • How Triscuits got their name

    It has nothing to do with the number “three.”

    And it’s actually very cool, particularly if you’re a fan of retro-futurism — i.e., how people from past generations envisioned the future.

    → 7:38 PM, Mar 26
  • Good news for gig workers in stimulus bill, but Uber CEO talks rubbish about “third way” to classify employees

    Gig workers for companies like Uber, Lyft would get unemployment benefits under $2 trillion Senate stimulus bill www.cnbc.com/2020/03/2…

    Good news.

    But Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is looking for a “third way” to classify workers, apart from employees or contractors. This sounds like self-serving rubbish to me. How are Uber drivers not employees?

    → 7:27 PM, Mar 26
  • Huawei ‘rip and replace’ price tag doubles to $2B amid coronavirus outbreak https://www.lightreading.com/security/huawei-rip-and-replace-price-tag-doubles-to-$2b-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/d/d-id/758502?_mc=RSS_LR_EDT

    ‪Chump change after a $2T bailout. ‬

    → 7:22 PM, Mar 26
  • Microsoft is right now groaning under the weight of a 52,000-person internal Reply-All email storm. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/26/microsoft_reply_all_email_storm_52000/

    → 7:11 PM, Mar 26
  • Trump threatened to sue media outlets that air a political commercial that accurately quoted his statements ridiculing the coronavirus threat. thehill.com/homenews/…

    More from Cory: pluralistic.net/2020/03/2…

    → 4:50 PM, Mar 26
  • Cory Doctorow reviews Thomas Pikkety's new book, "Capital and Ideology."

    The thesis of the new book is that “the ‘laws’ of economics are actually policies, created to ‘justify a society’s inequalities,’ providing a rationale to convince poor people not to start building guillotines.”

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/2…

    My $0.02: You see this in one of the main conservative and so-called moderate Democrat arguments against Medicaire-for-All: That we can’t afford it.

    If society can’t afford to save lives, then we can’t afford to have that society.

    There are other arguments against M4A, namely that it might suck. I do not necessarily share those arguments, but they are reasonable.

    Cory:

    The elites' indifference to working people is grounded in an alliance between the Brahmin Left (educated, well-paid liberals) and the Merchant Right (the finance sector). Notionally leftist parties, like the Democrats, are dominated by the Brahmin Left.

    Me: This is one of the leading Republican criticisms of the national Democratic Party. And it has a lot of merit to it.

    But more than any other, Macron epitomizes this alliance: proclaiming his liberal values while slashing taxes on the wealthy — punishing poor people for driving cars, exempting private jets from his “climate” bill.

    Life in a “meritocracy” is especially cruel for poor people, because meritocracies, uniquely among ideologies, blame poor people for poverty. It’s right there in the name. French kings didn’t think God was punishing peons, rather, that the Lord had put them there to serve.

    → 4:43 PM, Mar 26
  • Journalist practices social distancing in unexpected encounter with a herd of bison.

    “Oh my God. Oh, no, I’m not messing with you.”

    Funny.

    www.cnn.com/travel/ar…

    → 9:13 AM, Mar 26
  • Who would you be willing to sacrifice – have them die – to keep the stock market up? Sullen teen offspring? Obnoxious neighbor who runs the lawnmower and/or snowblower at 7 am Saturdays? Coworker who never makes a fresh pot of coffee? Discuss.

    → 7:54 AM, Mar 26
  • A programmer switches gears – so to speak – and takes up a career as a bike courier. From 2005. I wonder what he’s doing today? web.archive.org/web/20050…

    Highlights:

    The most common sort of bike you will see couriers on is your standard street bike. Light frame, slick tires, no suspension and between 18 and 24 gears. Among veterans however, the favoured bikes are single speeds. There is a large variety among single speeds as well (fixed drive or freewheel, coaster brakes or hand brakes, etc.) but they all share the advantage of being mechanically simple machines. When you are riding eight hours a day, any part that can fail, eventually will. And probably dramatically. Thus, the simpler the mechanism, the lower the mechanic’s bill….

    As a courier, you will get hit by cars. It is an occupational hazard…. A certain brash courier from another company who liked to refer to himself as “The Fastest Messenger in Toronto” (and he may well have been, arrogance aside) once told me that he didn’t wear a helmet because having a safety net makes you reckless and that if you are fast enough, you don’t fall. The next week, he went through the back window of an SUV that stopped suddenly and spent two weeks in the hospital. I don’t know a single courier who has worked the job for more than a year and not been hit at least once….

    One thing I was surprised to discover is that pedestrians are almost as dangerous to the full-time cyclist as drivers are. Especially if you indulge in sidewalk riding, but frequently even if you stick to the road, people will dart in front of you or suddenly stop or change direction without even the most cursory glance or indication of intent. A car, at least, can’t change its direction of travel by a full 180 degrees in half a second.

    → 12:31 PM, Mar 25
  • On Reddit: “My dad is a pilot and during the pandemic decided to make a work simulator at home” Funny https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/forwf5/my_dad_is_a_pilot_and_during_the_pandemic_decided/

    → 11:51 AM, Mar 25
  • Teaser that ran in movie theaters for the Max Fleischer “Superman” cartoons, 1941 www.youtube.com/watch

    → 11:31 AM, Mar 25
  • My little experiment using micro.blog categories to automate selective syndication to Tumblr and Twitter failed. Posts were not showing up in either place, except for one post that showed up on Tumblr but formatting was screwy.

    And even if that problem were resolved, it would drive me crazy to remember to check the little category boxes every time I post to micro.blog.

    So for now I’m going back to my previous default: Automatically cross-post everything to Tumblr, which results in duplicate posts when reblogging from Tumblr. And manually post to Twitter.

    I may revisit this another day. I expect I will.

    @manton said yesterday that using micro.blog automation to cross-post multiple categories might result in problems, and he suggested IFTTT instead for that case. But did I listen? Noooooooo.

    → 11:13 AM, Mar 25
  • Today on Cory Doctorow's Pluralistic.net

    • The Internet Archive is supporting unlimited book-lending during the crisis. “… they buy and scan one copy of every book (pretty much every book, ever) and lend it out to one person at a time. They’ve just announced that during the crisis, they are lifting the one-borrower-at-a-time restriction and allowing unlimited borrowing, ‘to meet the needs of a global community of displaced learners’. They call it the ‘National Emergency Library.'”

    • Kaiser threatens to fire Oakland nurses who wear their own masks. “Nurses who report for work wearing their own N95 masks have been threatened with immediate dismissal for ‘insubordination.'” Those masks don’t just protect nurses; they protect patients too.

    • O’Reilly is getting out of the conference business. Not just now – forever. Can’t plan for the future when they don’t know when the emergency will end.

    • Trump’s bible study teacher, Ralph Drollinger, thinks coronavirus is God’s wrath for Chinese excess, women working outside the workplace, American tolerance for homosexuality, and environmentalism. (I’m a Jewish nonbeliever, but I had the distinct impression that Christ preached loving your neighbor, charity toward the least of us, and not judging others.)

    • The $3/month DoNot Pay service uses an chatbot to automatically petition companies for relief during the coronavirus crisis. “Using a chatbot, you determine which of your bills are eligible for relief. Then it generates a ‘compassionate and polite request’ seeking help. If the company does not comply, it follows up with a firmer letter citing relevant state/federal laws.”

    • “Xi’s enemies sense weakness: Autocracies are only as good as their last crisis-response.

    • Immigrants face infection in ICE lockups.

    • Doctors and dentists are hoarding chloroquine in case it turns out to be an effective Covid-19 treatment, thus depriving people who rely on the drug for conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

    • The Toilet Paper Splitter is “a DIY project to separate a single two-ply roll into two single-ply rolls.”

    • This year’s science fiction Worldcon has been cancelled. WorldCons began in 1939, and have been held every year since other than 1942-45 during World War II.

    • The United States Postal Service is crucial to emergency response; it’s the only federal agency that can knock on every door in America in a single day. “When (if?) effective covid meds are available, it’s likely a postal worker will deliver them to you. Now is a good time to remember that the GOP have been trying to dismantle the universal, self-funding, vital USPS for decades, so that private carriers like UPS and Fedex can cream off the most profitable parts of its business and leave rural Americans in the cold.”

    • Volante Design is making stylish masks for covid responders – they can protect N95 masks from contamination, prevent you from touching your face, and partly contain coughs when medical masks are unavailable. They’re looking for donations to make and shop more. docs.google.com/spreadshe…

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/2…

    → 11:04 AM, Mar 25
  • Second Life-maker calls it quits on their VR follow-up techcrunch.com/2020/03/2…

    Linden Lab is selling off Sansar to a small company called Wookey Search Technologies.

    → 9:25 AM, Mar 25
  • The travel, conference and tourism industry are going to be in recession for a long time after coronavirus is a distant memory.

    As Charles Stross notes here in another context, people are going to be reluctant to gather in big groups with other people who’ve come from far away.

    www.antipope.org/charlie/b…

    He says he doesn’t expect to see much activity in science fiction conventions in 2021 or 2022. I agree and see this going far beyond science fiction conventions.

    Most of my career has been closely tied with professional conferences. I’ve gone to one or two a month, mostly traveling by plane to get there. And the companies I work for have been primarily in the conference business, with editorial operations – my work – as a sideline. Those companies are going to be struggling for years.

    Yet another reason why I see a career change in my short-term future.

    → 9:16 AM, Mar 25
  • Shopping run: I went to the supermarket yesterday – for the benefit of my local friends, the Vons on University in La Mesa. The crowd seemed about typical for a weekday afternoon, which is to say moderate. Neither heavy nor light. Most people were not wearing masks or gloves. I wore latex gloves – surprisingly light and comfortable, and blue, which made me think of the bad guys on the TV show “Firefly.” I did see a few other gloves-wearers, and a couple of people wearing masks. None of the staff were wearing gloves or masks.

    The shelves for toilet paper, sanitizer and wipes were bare. Slim pickings on soup. My favorite pea soup with ham was in, Julie’s tortilla soup was out. Our favorite brand of cat littler had only one box in stock, but I was able to load up on an alternative. Everything else seemed pretty well stocked up, including meats, dairy and produce.

    There was a box of hand sanitizers at the front entrance of the supermarket for public use. I think it’s there all the time, not just during the pandemic. Usually I don’t bother. Yesterday I took one and used it to quickly wipe down the handle of the shopping cart, even though I was wearing gloves and my hands wouldn’t be touching the handle.

    We mostly kept a six-foot distance. Although we did get closer when we passed each other, we didn’t linger. We kept our distance at the shelves; if one person was taking something, the other hung back until the first was done. No reacharound.

    When I got to the cashier, there was one woman in line, behind the person being checked out. She took two steps back and I realized I had been standing too close, and did the same. When it was her turn, and I stepped up to the on-deck position, the cashier said I should load my groceries on the conveyer belt like usual, and then stand at the end of the checkout counter until it was my turn.

    I asked when toilet paper would be in stock. She said likely Wednesday, but I should be sure to get there early. When the store opens at 7 am there’s a line of 150 people waiting to get in.

    I am slightly concerned as we are legit running low on TP. Got about a week’s supply. Got plenty of facial tissues and paper towels so that’s not a cause for concern. Likewise, while I am running low on my favorite hand soap, we have plenty of other soap.

    Our pending possible shortages are like inaudible whispers compared with the jet engine roar of what may be coming in a few weeks.

    → 8:26 AM, Mar 25
  • → 10:49 PM, Mar 24
  • Julie said today that I am “contumacious.”

    → 10:11 PM, Mar 24
  • So like I said, I ordered a new iPad Pro last night. I am a confessed Apple fanboy, so I’m excited to get it and feel like I can barely wait the 2-2.5 weeks until it’s due to arrive.

    Last night as I was falling asleep, I found myself wondering what kind of world we’ll be in when the iPad gets here. Things are moving awfully fast.

    → 10:04 PM, Mar 24
  • I excavated my briefcase from where it was buried under cardboard boxes in my office. I thought I had packets of hand sanitizer wipes in there, but it turned out to be Coffee-Mate, which is not a substitute, I think.

    → 1:29 PM, Mar 24
  • "Even during a global pandemic, nobody in Boston eats manhattan clam chowder"

    The coronavirus leftovers: Twitter users share grocery store items no one is apparently buying www.foxnews.com/food-drin…

    Reminds of college dorm life: Corn nuts would be the last candy left in the vending machine, after the M&Ms, Snickers, and all other candies sold out. This was a weekly occurrence. Eventually I acquired a taste for corn nuts.

    → 9:45 AM, Mar 24
  • "Julia Roberts’ performance is the magic spell that makes Pretty Woman work."

    Appreciating “Pretty Woman,” 30 years later www.refinery29.com/en-ca/202…

    I didn’t see “Pretty Woman” until years after it came out because chick flick. It’s a delightful movie. Julia Roberts yes but also Laura San Giacomo, who is an underappreciated national treasure. Jason Alexander is the perfect d-bag. And Richard Gere is Richard Gere and Hector Elizondo is Hector Elizondo, two things that are excellent to be.

    → 8:41 AM, Mar 24
  • I see a few social media darwinists saying we should be willing to sacrifice lives in the short term to restart the economy. But nobody’s willing to lead by example.

    → 10:35 PM, Mar 23
  • But her emails!

    → 7:49 PM, Mar 23
  • Protect Yourself From Coronavirus Grocery Shopping

    www.consumerreports.org/food-shop…

    This is me tomorrow. I wish we had a space suit lying around.

    → 6:14 PM, Mar 23
  • I have committed iPad Pro 13"

    My brain has been tempting me with the new iPad Pro, about how nice it will be to have that big screen when I’m sitting and reading or doing social media. Or whatever. I’ve been replying to my brain that hey I just got laid off two months ago and I need to focus on building an income stream or finding another job.

    My brain said to me this morning, well, if you had a new iPad Pro it would be a backup computer if the MacBook Pro goes belly-up and needs to spend time in the shop. You’ll be able to continue working. And until then you’ll be able to enjoy the iPad Pro – it won’t just sit on a shelf collecting dust.

    I said to myself, ha ha foolish brain you are tempting me again with your ridiculous– wait, that actually makes sense.

    So I talked it over with Julie. The iPad Pro arrives in 2-2.5 weeks.

    → 2:28 PM, Mar 23
  • How Biscoff Cookies Became the Snack We Crave on Planes www.cntraveler.com/story/how…

    I never eat ‘em on the ground but I love them on planes.

    It’s crazy how great it is when the flight attendant comes by with Biscoff or other favorite airplane treats. Same for the Amtrak snack boxes. I’m a grown-ass adult who can afford to buy this stuff for myself if I want it.

    → 1:12 PM, Mar 23
  • How to boost your home’s Wi-Fi www.theverge.com/2020/3/19…

    → 1:09 PM, Mar 23
  • It’s time to track people’s smartphones to ensure they self-isolate during this global pandemic, says WHO boffin.

    Professor Marylouise McLaws, a technical adviser to the World Health Organization’s Infection Prevention and Control Global Unit, praises Singapore, which has a system where the government sends an SMS to citizens, who click a link which uses the phone’s location services to report their location.

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/23/track_phones_coronavirus_who/

    It’s an intriguing system, with the advantage that citizens can easily opt out after the crisis, by simply refusing to participate.

    We may need to allow government to track everybody’s locations during the duration of the pandemic. But we need to roll back surveillance when the emergency is over. And once government has been given power, it’s really, really hard to roll that back.

    → 1:02 PM, Mar 23
  • Video: Italian mayors berate citizens for breaking quarantine.

    “Getting in your mobile hairdressers?! What the fuck is that for? Don’t you understand that the casket will be CLOSED?”

    twitter.com/GiuliaRoz…

    → 11:16 AM, Mar 23
  • My first multi-person Zoom coffee break this morning. We discussed bronies and the catechism. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a meeting where either was discussed, let alone both.

    → 10:09 AM, Mar 23

  • I saw this excellent sidewalk art near the house. “Just keep walking” can be seen as inspirational or a threat.📷

    . Minnie practices her reading comprehension skills.

    → 11:00 PM, Mar 22
  • The Grass Is Always Greener by George Malcolm-Smith Bantam Books 410, 1948 Cover by Casey Jones

    gameraboy1.tumblr.com/post/6133…

    → 10:47 PM, Mar 22
  • Law firm warns work-from-home employees against eavesdropping by Alexa, baby monitors, etc.

    Locked-Down Lawyers Warned Alexa Is Hearing Confidential Calls - Bloomberg

    Mishcon de Reya LLP, the U.K. law firm that famously advised Princess Diana on her divorce and also does corporate law, issued advice to staff to mute or shut off listening devices like Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s voice assistant when they talk about client matters at home, according to a partner at the firm. It suggested not to have any of the devices near their work space at all.

    Mishcon’s warning covers any kind of visual or voice enabled device, like Amazon and Google’s speakers. But video products such as Ring, which is also owned by Amazon, and even baby monitors and closed-circuit TVs, are also a concern, said Mishcon de Reya partner Joe Hancock, who also heads the firm’s cybersecurity efforts.

    We don’t have them in the house. The risk seems high, and the potential benefit seems low.

    → 12:48 PM, Mar 22
  • Tlaib proposes minting two $1 trillion platinum coins to finance monthly coronavirus debit cards

    Everybody gets $2,000 upfront plus $1,000/mo. to get through the crisis.

    → 12:41 PM, Mar 22
  • Today on Cory Doctorow's Pluralistic

    A law firm is telling employees to switch off smart speakers and similar devices while working from home.

    We don’t have any in the house. The payoff seems low in the potential risk seems high.

    A Florida city sent power disconnection notices to its poorest residents during the pandemic crisis. The mayor is ducking accountability.

    Rashida Tlaib proposes meeting trillion dollar coins, and then using those to send “every person in the USA a $2K prepaid credit card that would receive $1K/month until a year after the crisis’s end."

    Each person – children, adults, documented, undocumented, rich, poor – would get the card and the deposits, and progressive taxation would rake it back from those who don’t need it (far more reliable than means-testing, which is a persistent failure).

    How “concierge doctors” supply the “worried well” with masks, respirators and tests

    One big difference I observed between my life under Canadian medicare (30 years), and UK NHS (13 years) is that in the former, there is no private option, so rich people have to advocate for everyone’s care in order to improve their own. I think the relative fortunes of the NHS and OHIP can be largely explained by this difference. Allowing the rich to opt into a private system reduces the political costs of slashing the public system.

    More: Pluralistic: 22 Mar 2020

    → 12:36 PM, Mar 22
  • Cory Doctorow: How prepper media is dealing with coronavirus

    Prepperism is about being the individual savior, while solving a community or global crisis requires collective action.

    Now I’ve got the 1970s Dr Pepper “Be a Pepper” jingle stuck in my head, which completely undercuts the seriousness of the point being made here.

    → 12:13 PM, Mar 22
  • “woefully concupiscent snails” would be a good name for a podcast.

    → 10:58 AM, Mar 22
  • ME

    THERMOMETER: Your temperature is “don’t be such a hypochondriac you don’t have the rona” degrees.

    → 11:31 PM, Mar 21
  • ME (before the rona): <Bleeding profusely, skin inflamed, boils, hacking wheezing cough, seizures, occasional blindness> Probably nothing. It’ll go away on its own in a couple of days.

    ME (now): <coughs once, softly, slight headache> OMG I got the rona I’m gonna die!

    → 11:29 PM, Mar 21
  • We’re “taking our temperature with a mercury thermometer” years old.

    → 11:24 PM, Mar 21
  • ME (before the rona): I haven’t been out except to walk the dog and run essential errands. All my communications, except with Julie, are online. I’m ok with that.

    ME (after the rona): Same, but now I’m going nuts with claustrophobia.

    → 11:23 PM, Mar 21
  • From the comments: She is holding the floppy in the one spot you’re not supposed to touch it. via

    → 8:29 PM, Mar 21
  • If you’re going to fake paying attention with Zoom backgrounds, make it a looping video

    Use a looping video of yourself paying attention as a background for video conferences. Then you can just go sit in the other room, drink beer and check blogs and stuff.

    → 7:59 PM, Mar 21
  • I saw this hopeful sign while walking the dog. 📷 🎉

    → 3:21 PM, Mar 21
  • I just ordered clippers for a home haircut. I am prepared for the apocalypse.

    → 2:16 PM, Mar 21
  • → 2:08 PM, Mar 21
  • → 2:08 PM, Mar 21
  • I followed @bestoftimes this morning and added two books to my to-be-read list from his feed. Thanks!

    → 10:48 AM, Mar 21
  • Coronavirus: Drive-in theaters report uptick in business - Axios

    Fond memories of going to drive-ins with my parents and brothers as a child, and later with friends as a teenager.

    → 8:45 AM, Mar 21
  • → 12:20 AM, Mar 21
  • → 12:19 AM, Mar 21
  • Mel Gibson - The Road Warrior (1981) via

    → 12:18 AM, Mar 21
  • via

    → 12:12 AM, Mar 21
  • Jungle Comics #93 (1947), cover by Joe Doolin Via

    There is a lot going on here.

    → 11:55 PM, Mar 20
  • → 7:50 PM, Mar 20
  • → 7:50 PM, Mar 20
  • We need a moonshot program to build a first-class healthcare system in the US in the next year or so.

    This will certainly be difficult but it will benefit in so many ways.

    → 5:19 PM, Mar 20
  • This Is How We Beat the Coronavirus www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc…

    → 5:18 PM, Mar 20
  • Trump viciously attacks NBC News reporter in extended rant after being asked for message to Americans worried about coronavirus www.cnn.com/2020/03/2…

    → 1:34 PM, Mar 20
  • Trump is outbidding state agencies for medical supplies.

    “Trump has refused to coordinate federal procurements of emergency supplies for states, saying the fed is not “a shipping clerk” for state governments.”

    A bidding war for medical supplies is a terrible idea right now.

    • Cory Doctorow

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/2…

    → 11:50 AM, Mar 20
  • Right to Repair is important during a pandemic, because medical professionals are the right people to make decisions on field-repairing hospital equipment, not med-tech company shareholders and their lawyers - Cory Doctorow

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/2…

    → 11:47 AM, Mar 20
  • Charter is now letting employees to work from home . www.lightreading.com/cable-vid…

    → 9:01 AM, Mar 20
  • I saw Lake Murray looking spectacular this afternoon. 📸

    → 11:13 PM, Mar 19
  • → 11:09 PM, Mar 19
  • We’re not going back to normal: Social distancing is here to stay for much more than a few weeks. It will upend our way of life, in some ways forever. www.technologyreview.com/s/615370/…

    → 8:56 PM, Mar 19
  • Senator Richard Burr Warned Of Coronavirus Effects In Private Meeting - NPR

    Even while GOP leaders were ridiculing and downplaying coronavirus risks, at least one – Senator Richard Barr, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee – was simultaneously saying the opposite to big-money constituents, warning them that the virus was extremely dangerous. https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/818192535/burr-recording-sparks-questions-about-private-comments-on-covid-19?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email

    → 12:49 PM, Mar 19
  • Steve Sinofsky compares the evolution of the iPad Pro vs. laptops replacing many PCs and PC servers replacing mainframes.

    The newer, smaller, more flexible device begins to take on the characteristics of the older, bigger, more rigid device.

    However, in the case of the laptop and PC server, the new devices were much less expensive than the ones they replaced. Not so with the iPad Pro vs. laptop!

    twitter.com/stevesi/s…

    → 12:37 PM, Mar 19
  • Empty Grocery Shelves Are Alarming, But They're Not Permanent

    America’s grocery supply chains are going strong. Shelves are bare because of spiked demand. “It’s like the weekend before Thanksgiving — day after day after day.” www.npr.org/2020/03/1…

    → 12:32 PM, Mar 19
  • Cory Doctorow: Fox News is a suicide cult. Theirs and Trump’s initial coronavirus denialism is still helping fuel the spread. pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…

    → 10:27 AM, Mar 19
  • Cory Doctorow: “How to structure a fair covid bailout: Stimulus, not private jets.” pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…

    → 10:25 AM, Mar 19
  • Cory Doctorow: The Democrats' worst Congressman is out of a job

    “Congress’s worst Democrat is Dan Lipinski, a corrupt, anti-abortion, corporatist, gunhumping asshole…. "

    And now he’s primaried out.

    Shameful that the DNCC supported this clown.

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…

    → 10:22 AM, Mar 19
  • 15 Broadway Plays and Musicals You Can Watch On Stage From Home www.playbill.com/article/1…

    → 10:10 AM, Mar 19
  • Beijing fears Covid-19 is a turning point for China and globalization

    China didn’t start coronavirus, but Chinese incompetence and authoritarianism is a big part of the reason why it’s now a global pandemic, rather than a local problem.

    The same Chinese government that mishandled the crisis at first is now telling us that everything’s fine in China now; they’ve got it under control. Seriously?

    Michael Auslin:

    While the world fights the coronavirus pandemic, China is fighting a propaganda war. Beijing’s war aim is simple: shift away from China all blame for the outbreak, the botched initial response, and its early spread into the broader world. At stake is China’s global reputation, as well as the potential of a fundamental shift away from China for trade and manufacturing. Also at risk is the personal legacy of General Secretary Xi Jinping, who has staked his legitimacy on his technocratic competence. After dealing with the first great global crisis of the 21st century, the world must fundamentally rethink its dependence on China.

    … no one knows if Beijing’s claims that new indigenous cases are slowing down are true or not, given long-standing doubt about the veracity of any official Chinese statistics, and the party’s failure to act in the early days of the coronavirus.

    Auslin goes on to say that the coronavirus pandemic is making globalization downsides apparent, particularly the reliance on China for so much manufacturing, particularly essential drugs.

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/…

    → 9:40 AM, Mar 19
  • Jeet Heer: The Democratic party's DC leadership is failing the coronavirus test

    Congressional Democrats are to the right of the GOP on coronavirus relief.

    If Sanders, Warren, and Ocasio-Cortez find a way to speak with one voice, they can push the Pelosi–Chuck Schumer–Joe Biden wing to act with urgency. Otherwise, we’re stuck in a world where Romney and Cotton are to the left of the Democratic Party’s leadership.

    www.thenation.com/article/p…

    → 9:09 AM, Mar 19
  • We live in Zoom now www.nytimes.com/2020/03/1…

    → 12:00 AM, Mar 19
  • ‘Friends’ Reunion Special Delayed at HBO Max www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed…

    They will not be there for you.

    → 10:22 PM, Mar 18
  • I heard you like coronavirus memes so here are 28 coronavirus memes

    → 3:09 PM, Mar 18
  • When your phone links you to a crime: How law enforcement used a “geofence” warrant to identify a suspect of a crime he didn’t commit.

    Google tracked his bike ride past a burglarized home. That made him a suspect.

    player.fm/series/re…

    → 2:12 PM, Mar 18
  • Dr. Fabiano Di Marco, a doctor in a hospital in Bergamo, Italy, shares his story: “It’s like a war,” he says. “We cry every day.” The US may be headed the same way. www.nytimes.com/2020/03/1…

    → 2:08 PM, Mar 18
  • The origin stories of the peace sign, smiley face and power button symbol.

    There are symbols all around us that we take for granted, like the lightning strike icon, which indicates that something is high voltage. Or a little campfire to indicate that something is flammable. Those icons are pretty obvious, but there are others that aren’t so straightforward. Like, why do a triangle and a stick in a circle indicate “peace”? Where does the smiley face actually come from?"

    99percentinvisible.org/episode/u…

    → 2:05 PM, Mar 18
  • If you must smoke while wearing your influenza mask, 1918 reddit.com/r/OldScho…

    → 2:00 PM, Mar 18
  • How to avoid the time-suck of social networks while working at home www.zdnet.com/article/h…

    → 12:33 PM, Mar 18
  • Bill Gates: Countries shut for coronavirus could bounce back in weeks — www.cnbc.com/2020/03/1…

    → 12:30 PM, Mar 18
  • Sister Maria Elena Romero, a cloistered nun, offers advice on social distancing, which nuns and monks have been doing for nearly 2,000 years.

    cruxnow.com/church-in…

    → 12:28 PM, Mar 18
  • U.S. Virus Plan Anticipates 18-Month Pandemic and Widespread Shortages

    www.nytimes.com/2020/03/1…

    18 months!

    → 11:18 AM, Mar 18
  • Cory Doctorow: Plague precautions from 1665.

    A comprehensive list, resembling extreme measures we might see today – both virtues and flaws (tippling in public houses STILL permitted).

    Science was just getting started then, but people had plenty of experience with plague.

    Among the precautions: Public entertainments, including bear-baiting, are banned. The bears must have been pleased.

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…

    → 9:18 AM, Mar 18
  • Cory Doctorow: "Bigoted Republican Congressjerk votes against coronavirus relief because it might cover same-sex partnerships."

    Cory: “The Republican Party, folks. The party of death and poverty and tragedy and hate. Remember that in November.”

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…

    In reality, the law that hateful moron Andy Biggs (R-Az) objects to makes no change to US policy regarding same-sex partnerships. None.

    Also, the way infectious disease works is that for any of us to be protected, all of us need protection. Even people we find contemptible, like Andy Biggs.

    → 9:09 AM, Mar 18
  • John Green on coronavirus: “Togetherness is the superpower of our species. Like, yeah, we as individuals are very smart, as animals go, but it is our collective knowledge that has made us so successful.”

    youtu.be/dh23nwxpf…

    → 9:04 AM, Mar 18
  • American Airlines blew $15B on stock buybacks to benefit shareholders, jacked up prices and nickel-and-dimed customers. Now it wants a $50B bailout - 3x 9/11.

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…

    When companies make good decisions, management and shareholders are rewarded. When companies make bad decisions, they scream for help to Uncle Sam … and management and shareholders are rewarded at taxpayer expense.

    Good thing Bernie is going down. Otherwise we might have socialism or something!

    → 8:56 AM, Mar 18
  • NYT: Trump Now Claims He Always Knew the Coronavirus Would Be a Pandemic

    www.nytimes.com/2020/03/1…

    Trump lies compulsively, and many times a day, about things that are easily verifiable as untrue. He claims he always knew the coronavirus would be pandemic within days of having gone on the record numerous times downplaying the seriousness of the virus and ridiculing people who took it seriously.

    None of this is secret. It’s all on video. You can see it for yourself. Probably you did see it.

    → 8:42 AM, Mar 18
  • Scientists warn we may need to live with social distancing for a year or more

    www.vox.com/science-a…

    Grim reading.

    → 11:30 PM, Mar 17
  • Facebook was marking legitimate news articles about the coronavirus as spam due to a software bug

    www.theverge.com/2020/3/17…

    → 8:20 PM, Mar 17
  • San Diego leaders back freeze on evictions tied to coronavirus outbreak despite landlord concerns

    www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/poli…

    → 7:43 PM, Mar 17
  • California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday he has put the California National Guard on alert to help protect communities and fight the spread of COVID-19.

    www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/mili…

    → 7:40 PM, Mar 17
  • Suddenly unemployed, San Diego workers grapple with how to pay rent and utility, grocery bills

    www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/…

    → 7:37 PM, Mar 17
  • The Atlantic: America’s Restaurants Will Need a Miracle

    Social distancing could prove devastating to the restaurant industry, as restaurants are becoming vital economic infrastructure.

    Americans now spend more at restaurants than at grocery stores—something they had never done before 2015. This modern dining revolution has made restaurants one of the country’s most important sources of work. In 1990, manufacturing employment was almost three times larger than the food-service industry, but today there are about as many jobs in food service as in manufacturing. Restaurants are the new factories, and without them state and local economies across the country would fall to pieces. Food-preparation and food-service jobs now account for more than 10 percent of all employment in Nevada, Hawaii, and Florida.

    www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc…

    → 12:39 PM, Mar 17
  • Having a wonderful time, 1969

    https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWayWeWere/comments/fia3db/having_a_wonderful_time_1969/

    → 12:11 PM, Mar 17
  • Scientific American: Time Has No Meaning at the North Pole

    On the research vessel, Polarstern, at the North Pole, time zones, seasons and even day and night are meaningless.The sun rises and sets once a year, and 24 times zones converge on a single point.

    The captain changes the ships time zone arbitrarily, to communicate with other ships on different clocks.

    blogs.scientificamerican.com/observati…

    → 12:06 PM, Mar 17
  • This Tom Hanks Story Will Make You Feel Less Bad

    www.nytimes.com/2020/03/1…

    → 12:02 PM, Mar 17
  • “There is nothing in this world that occurs to you that has not occurred to me first. That is the affliction I live with.”

    maximumfun.org/episodes/…

    → 11:59 AM, Mar 17
  • → 11:39 AM, Mar 17
  • → 11:39 AM, Mar 17
  • Shit.

    → 10:53 AM, Mar 17
  • Charter employees are fuming as the Internet and phone provider prohibits working from home, despite coronavirus.

    One engineer sent an angry mailblast to a SVP and hundreds of engineers. He doesn’t work at Charter anymore.

    techcrunch.com/2020/03/1…

    → 9:31 AM, Mar 17
  • Cory Doctorow: Be sure to fill out your census. Do it online or by phone.

    Filling out your census is important to your community getting its share of federal representation and services.

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…

    → 9:07 AM, Mar 17
  • Cory Doctorow’s Twitter account was suspended for a day, because of a list of trolls he created called “colossal assholes.”

    Says Cory: “‘Colossal assholes’ got me suspended, but not its companion list, ‘Toe-faced shitweasels’”

    But he’s back now.

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…

    → 9:03 AM, Mar 17
  • Family Room Decor, 1970s retropopcult.tumblr.com/post/6128…

    → 11:19 PM, Mar 16
  • Andrew Cuomo Is the Control Freak We Need Right Now

    www.nytimes.com/2020/03/1…

    The qualities that make him a problematic governor in normal times are right for a crisis like the one we’re in.

    → 10:11 PM, Mar 16
  • We are legit running low on TP. May have to use cats instead.

    → 7:18 PM, Mar 16
  • Andrew Sullivan: Reality Arrives to the Trump Era

    Andrew Sullivan finds similarities between the initial public reactions to the coronavirus, the gay community’s initial reaction initial to the AIDS epidemic – which, as a gay man, Sullivan lived through – and the 1918 Spanish flu.

    In all three cases, the initial reaction was denial and complacency. Even people who accepted the reality of the situation failed to gauge its seriousness and react appropriately.

    https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/andrew-sullivan-reality-arrives-to-the-trump-era.html?utm_campaign=nym&utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1

    Ira Glass, at this American Life, compared the current period to waiting for biopsy results from the doctor.

    www.thisamericanlife.org/696/low-h…

    Julie and I have been through biopsies a few times and the metaphor is perfect. You walk around living your life as usual – eating, working, watching TV, etc. – and not even feeling particularly scared most of the time. But in the back of your head is this little bubble of fear. You know that everything could turn awful very soon. Or it could all be … nothing.

    Also, this from Sullivan:

    With Trump, we have a deeper crisis, of course. Trump is incapable of admitting error, numb to any form of empathy, narcissistic even in a communal crisis, and immune to any kind of realism. He simply cannot tell anyone bad news. And he cannot keep a story straight, which is essential for public health. His only means of communication is deceptive salesmanship.

    (Emphasis mine.)

    At the end of this weekend’s This American Life, Glass announced that he’d been exposed to the virus and was going into self-quarantine.

    → 10:51 AM, Mar 16
  • A white Republican mayor seeks the truth about Tulsa’s race massacre a century ago

    www.washingtonpost.com/history/2…

    → 10:39 AM, Mar 16
  • → 10:38 AM, Mar 16
  • Two more seasons of Bosch, then no more. Alas!

    https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/bosch-renewed-seventh-final-season-at-amazon-1279258?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

    → 10:37 AM, Mar 16
  • Even with coronavirus, the US toilet paper supply remains strong. Interesting article for supply chain nerds.

    “Barring a new craze for mummy costumes, the actual use of toilet paper is unlikely to increase.”

    https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-03-14/coronavirus-will-we-run-out-of-toilet-paper?_amp=true&__twitter_impression=truer

    → 10:31 AM, Mar 16
  • He comes to talk to his dad every day since the nursing home is on lockdown https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/fjlguv/he_comes_to_talk_to_his_dad_every_day_since_the/

    → 10:19 AM, Mar 16
  • Anbara Salam on Twitter:

    “As a public service in these stressful times I’d like to offer, as a palate cleanser, the most embarrassing moment of my life.”

    twitter.com/anbara_sa…

    The lobster pool float completes the tale.

    → 10:00 AM, Mar 16
  • The Man With 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer Just Donated Them

    www.nytimes.com/2020/03/1…

    Cut the guy some slack. He’s in a perfectly legitimate business, he saw an opportunity and he overreacted.

    If you hate the guys who hoarded all that hand sanitizer, wait until you find out that a few hundred people have hoarded half the wealth in the country.

    And they’re not keeping it in their garage, either.

    P.S. If you sent this guy death threats, he’s not the asshole. You’re the asshole.

    → 9:30 AM, Mar 16
  • Cory Doctorow: TikTok’s secret guidelines require moderators to suppress videos from old, ugly, fat, disabled and poor people.

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…

    → 8:55 AM, Mar 16
  • How to prepare for coming layoffs: Good advice from Cory Doctorow, who’s been self-employed for nearly 20 years. :)

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…

    → 8:51 AM, Mar 16
  • Cory Doctorow: An Italian hospital fixed its ventilator with 3D printed parts.

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…

    → 8:49 AM, Mar 16
  • Stupid TiVo didn’t record the debate.

    What’d I miss?

    → 8:45 PM, Mar 15
  • Went to the store. Did not buy extra TP. Did buy extra coffee.

    It’s called “priorities.” Look it up.

    → 4:05 PM, Mar 15
  • I’m ready for the debate.

    → 11:18 AM, Mar 15
  • NBC’s Saturday Night Live Various Artists Arista Records/USA (1976)

    retropopcult.tumblr.com/post/6125…

    → 10:58 AM, Mar 15
  • mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/6125…

    → 10:52 AM, Mar 15
  • The opening to Chiller Theater scared me when I was a kid. I couldn’t watch it.

    Still scares me now but I’m a grown-ass adult so I made myself sit all the way through.

    www.youtube.com/watch

    → 10:49 AM, Mar 15
  • Republican blogs are pushng the meme that Uncle Joe has dementia. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at that, because the Republicans are also criticizing the Bidens for nepotism. I expect they’ll next criticize Biden for having a bad combover and orange spray-tan.

    I’ve seen the videos that purport to show Biden’s senility and I just don’t see it. In one he wanders off-camera during a Facebook Live chat. In another, he stumbles over when he would take office as President. In neither case does this seem like anything other than a gaffe.

    Sure, I’ll watch the debate closely tonight to see if Biden seems to have all his faculties. But even if Biden is so deep in dementia that he doesn’t know his own name, I’d still vote for him over Trump.

    → 10:48 AM, Mar 15
  • He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them

    On March 1, the day after the first coronavirus death was announced, Matt and Noah Colvin started a three-day, 1,300-mile journey from their homes in Chattanooga, Tenn., filling up a U-Haul truck with hand sanitizer and antibacterial wipes. Then Amazon cracked down on price gouging.

    “It’s been a huge amount of whiplash,” [Matt Colvin] said. “From being in a situation where what I’ve got coming and going could potentially put my family in a really good place financially to ‘What the heck am I going to do with all of this?’”….

    Mr. Colvin said he was simply fixing “inefficiencies in the marketplace.” Some areas of the country need these products more than others, and he’s helping send the supply toward the demand.

    “There’s a crushing overwhelming demand in certain cities right now,” he said. “The Dollar General in the middle of nowhere outside of Lexington, Ky., doesn’t have that.”

    He thought about it more. “I honestly feel like it’s a public service,” he added. “I’m being paid for my public service.”

    www.nytimes.com/2020/03/1…

    → 10:46 AM, Mar 15
  • The “tragedy of the commons” is junk science developed by a racist who espoused eugenics and white supremacy.

    thebaffler.com/latest/fi…

    → 10:40 AM, Mar 15
  • We’ve stocked up on about two weeks of emergency supplies, like you’re supposed to. It wasn’t a stretch – we buy in bulk anyway.

    All but coffee. We only have a few days of coffee because it’s really best if you brew it soon after it’s roasted and grind it just before you make it, with a burr grinder rather than a blade grinder, and I guess I’m a hipster now where’s my moustache wax?

    → 10:39 AM, Mar 15
  • I have two important videoconferences scheduled for Monday, and I spent much of the day getting the office in shape to be seen – or, rather, the part of my office visible from the Mac camera,

    I used the Photo Booth app to photograph the office from the perspective of the Mac camera, and I picked up clutter to make everything nicer. But only within the cone of space visible to the camera.

    There are five steps from my office to the yard and I went up and down them a million times, carrying out junk. My Apple Watch Activities app is giving me high fives.

    I’ve been working on an article assignment that has me thinking about how work has changed from the beginning of my career to now. This is one of the ways. In the first half of my career, if I had an important meeting, I put on a suit and tie, made sure my shoes were polished, showed up a few minutes early, etc. Now, this.

    → 10:37 AM, Mar 15
  • Cory Doctorow: The CIA’s information security is really terrible

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…

    → 9:52 AM, Mar 15
  • → 9:42 AM, Mar 15
  • “Like Japan in the mid-1800s, the United States now faces a crisis that disproves everything the country believes about itself.”

    www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc…

    → 9:38 AM, Mar 15
  • Meghan and Harry Overplayed Their Hand

    www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc…

    → 9:35 AM, Mar 15
  • The 1918 flu pandemic in San Diego: 366 deaths, sheep dip and mandatory masks

    0.5% of San Diego’s population was killed in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic; the equivalent of more than 6,000 today.

    www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/heal…

    → 8:47 AM, Mar 15
  • From the San Diego Evening Tribune Archives: How San Diego officials reacted to the 1918 flu

    www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/loca…

    → 8:35 AM, Mar 15
  • The ballet dancer who led a prisoner uprising at Auschwitz

    Franceska Mann, a 26-year-old Jewish ballet dancer from Poland, arrived in Auschwitz in 1943, part of a transport of 1,800 so-called VIP prisoners from Bergen-Belsen. The prisoners “had been lured into thinking they were en route to freedom as part of an exchange for German POWs ostensibly organized by the Allies. The Germans promised that Auschwitz was merely a stop on the way to Switzerland, but the women among the group soon found themselves being led to the gas chambers,” according to a 2019 report in Haaretz.

    Women prisoners were ordered to strip by Nazi guards. According to one version of events, Mann performed a seductive strip-tease. While the SS soldiers were distracted, Mann took off one shoe and threw it hard at a guard, hitting him on the forehead. The soldier began to bleed and collapsed. Mann jumped him, stole his weapon and shot him dead. Two other Nazis were wounded by the gunfire.

    In another account, she refused to remove her undergarments at first, then threw her bra in a Nazi guard’s face and jumped him, grabbed his pistol and shot him.

    Her action inspired a brief, doomed uprising, which the Nazis quickly – and fatally – shut down. Survivors among the prisoners were gassed.

    Remember Franceska Mann the next time you see some yokel waving a Nazi flag or other symbol of racism, and hear Trump equivocating “good people on both sides.” Be inspired by her. The American Nazis are coming first for Muslims, illegal immigrants, and other brown-skinned people. But they’ll get around to the Jews soon enough.

    www.haaretz.com/israel-ne…

    https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/fi8zxy/franceska_mann_arrived_at_auschwitz_in_1943_when/

    → 11:17 AM, Mar 14
  • “It was my first time ordering bulk crickets off the internet….”

    Funny Twitter thread.

    twitter.com/_cingraha…

    → 11:00 AM, Mar 14
  • Covid-19 needs a new name. Branding matters, people!

    → 10:12 AM, Mar 14
  • I’m getting email from every company I’ve ever given my address to, earnestly telling me how much they care about me and don’t want me to get Covid.

    If they really cared about me, they’d send soup.

    → 10:03 AM, Mar 14
  • Apple TV+ 'Foundation' series production halts over coronavirus fears

    appleinsider.com/articles/…

    What this tells me is the long-rumored series based on Asimov’s Foundation novels is in production — and therefore will happen. Looking forward to it!

    I expect the series will take great liberties with the novels. And that’s OK.

    → 9:44 AM, Mar 14
  • → 10:39 PM, Mar 13
  • “Sad ukelele” would be a great name for a podcast.

    mcmansionhell.com/post/1834…

    → 11:26 AM, Mar 13
  • Trump administration blocks states from using Medicaid to respond to coronavirus crisis

    www.latimes.com/politics/…

    The GOP is a death cult.

    → 10:50 AM, Mar 13
  • The Ezra Klein Show: Trump didn't break democracy. Broken democracy gave us Trump.

    Also: Republicans understand that politics is transactional. The NRA has been great for the GOP, and so the GOP is unwaveringly pro-gun.

    Democrats are uncomfortable with transactional politics, and that’s why the Republicans, a minority party, are running the country.

    player.fm/series/th…

    → 10:23 AM, Mar 13
  • A brief history of the floppy disk. Fascinating!

    www.redhat.com/en/comman…

    → 10:16 AM, Mar 13
  • Find out which weather service is most accurate in your area

    ForecastAdvisor shows you the accuracy of major weather forecasting services in your area. It says that The Weather Channel and AccuWeather are most accurate for us, which matches my unscientific explorations.

    www.forecastadvisor.com

    There is a joke that San Diego doesn’t need weather forecasts because the weather is always the same. There is some truth to that – but only some. Generally, you can tell what the weather is going to be by looking at the calendar, and any forecasting service will give you the rest of the information you need. It doesn’t rain much, which is bad, because we’re in a drought. It gets chilly, but not cold, in the winter. Sometimes too hot in the summer, in our party of the county. Spring and fall are lovely.

    But we’ve been having rain for days, and I like to schedule my walk around the rain. So suddenly I care about the accuracy of weather forecasts. The Weather Channel and AccuWeather seem to do best for hourly forecasts.

    Dark Sky, which fans say can do an uncanny job of predicting rain down to the MINUTE, doesn’t work well here at all.

    → 10:13 AM, Mar 13
  • AT&T CEO pay rose to $32 million in 2019 while he cut 20,000 jobs

    arstechnica.com/tech-poli…

    → 9:59 AM, Mar 13
  • The Verge guide to Twitter (with a contribution from yrs trly)

    www.theverge.com/2020/3/13…

    → 9:47 AM, Mar 13
  • Reporters Without Borders uses Minecraft to sneak censored works across borders.

    techcrunch.com/2020/03/1…

    → 9:38 AM, Mar 13
  • The Zoom virtual background for videoconferences doesn’t seem to work with my Mac. I can buy a portable green screen, that attaches to the back of a chair, for $65.

    Or I can just clean my office.

    → 2:44 PM, Mar 12
  • “Social distancing” is actually not that big a change for me. #JokingNotJoking

    → 12:59 PM, Mar 12
  • Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (aka MBS) is a brutal tyrant, who has also implemented reforms, including expanded women’s rights and crippling the oppressive, conservative Saudi clergy.

    But even for his reforms: Permission is not the same thing as freedom. Permissions granted by a tyrant can be taken away by the tyrant.

    www.npr.org/2020/03/1…

    → 11:35 AM, Mar 12
  • Barbara Krasnoff: How to hide your messy room during a Zoom video conference

    www.theverge.com/2020/3/11…

    Another excuse for me to postpone cleaning up the mountain of empty Amazon boxes in my home office.

    Um, thanks, Barbara?

    → 11:30 AM, Mar 12
  • → 11:26 AM, Mar 12
  • Jason Snell: How to customize the display of the Apple Watch Workouts app.

    Useful tips - I did it right away after reading this article.

    sixcolors.com/post/2020…

    → 11:25 AM, Mar 12
  • Twitter 101: how to follow people and discover topics.

    Should be headlined: “How To Tell Your @ From a Hole in the Ground.”

    By me on The Verge (with a lot of work from my editor, Barbara Krasnoff - thanks!)

    www.theverge.com/2020/3/12…

    → 10:58 AM, Mar 12
  • The FCC is giving out big bucks for rural broadband, and New York is the one state in the continental US that’s been left out.

    https://www.lightreading.com/new-yorkers-fret-about-getting-left-out-of-fccs-rural-broadband-funding/d/d-id/758167?_mc=RSS_LR_EDT

    → 10:46 AM, Mar 12
  • IBM says it’s number three in cloud sales, but analysts say nope. Not even close.

    Interesting definitional disagreement on what “the cloud is.” Analysts say if it’s not like Amazon, it’s not the cloud.

    www.itprotoday.com/hybrid-cl…

    → 10:45 AM, Mar 12
  • These face-touching memes have been canceled for public health reasons.

    Funny.

    www.theverge.com/2020/3/12…

    → 10:25 AM, Mar 12
  • Cory Doctorow: “Senate Republicans have killed emergency sick leave legislation, a move that will force millions of low-waged cleaning and food-service workers to choose between homelessness and potentially spreading Covid-19.”

    Billions for tax cuts for the rich, but when it comes to helping the poor, the GOP suddenly gets fiscal responsibility religion.

    This is peak disaster capitalism. If employers are required to pay sick leave, they lose money. But if people get sick and die, the healthcare and funeral industries make bank.

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…

    → 10:15 AM, Mar 12
  • Cory Doctorow: A former top Cigna exec calls baloney on Biden’s claims that Medicaire-for-all is impractical.

    For starters, M4A wouldn’t COST $35T; it would SAVE at least $450B/year.

    pluralistic.net/2020/03/1…

    → 10:07 AM, Mar 12
  • The head of the TSA says he’s standing by a decision to take away healthcare coverage from part-time agents.

    Because of the nature of their work, TSA agents are at high risk of spreading infectious disease, like Covid-19.

    www.cnn.com/2020/03/1…

    → 10:03 AM, Mar 12