2020
The bizarre dimming of bright star Betelgeuse caused by giant stellar eruption [Space.com]: Betelgeuse farted.
Simulate driving through dozens of world cities while listening to local radio. driveandlisten.herokuapp.com Johannesburg driving is scary.
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?
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…
When Covid Subsided, Israel Reopened Its Schools. It Didn’t Go Well. www.nytimes.com/2020/08/0…
Photorealistic portraits of Roman emperors, generated by machine learning and Photoshop. medium.com/@voshart/…
Trump has had more nice things to say about a woman arrested for sex trafficking than he has about John Lewis.
Wilford Brimley was once a bodyguard for Howard Hughes. twitter.com/rstephens…
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?"
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.
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.
Too often I try to get just a couple more shaves out of an old blade. That’s a metaphor for something.
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.
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.
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.
