2020
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.
That sad moment when you realize it may be time to throw one of your favorite T-shirts into the rag bag.
Las Vegas, with 150,000 vacant hotel rooms, has the homeless sleeping on the ground in parking lots. - Mario Koran at The Guardian
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
📷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.
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.
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!
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.
Making the case for municipal broadband - Cory Doctorow
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.
Lax antitrust regulations killed a plan to stockpile ventilators
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.