“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.

That was, indeed, unexpected.

Zoom and Enhance! from r/Unexpected
Ladies and gents, I present my husband who did not want a cat from r/aww

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.

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.”

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!”

Biden’s $2 trillion climate plan.

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.

I had not planned to spend quite so much time this morning updating my Mac but here we are.

When did we stop having “problems” and starting having “issues”? Because I have a problem with that.

That’s sorted.

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.

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.

Mexican cave relics suggest humans were populating the Americas up to 17,000 years earlier than thought

This is a photo of a kitten

Honestly trying to work here.

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

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.

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.

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