2022
Dave Pell is on a roll on NextDraft today:
”At 8:10 p.m., more than nine hours after his family reported him missing, a passing tanker spotted the man near the mouth of the Mississippi River and alerted the Coast Guard." NYT (Gift Article): A Man Fell From a Cruise Ship. And Survived. “Mr. Grimes, whose family described him as an exceptional swimmer, had treaded in 65- to 70-degree water for hours, withstanding rain, 20-knot winds and three- to five-foot waves in the Gulf of Mexico, where bull sharks and blacktip sharks are common.” (That actually sounds better than how I imagine cruises.)
Also:
”To prepare for the depths of winter when food is scarce, many animals slow down, sleep through the cold or migrate to warmer locales. Not the common shrew. To survive the colder months, the animal eats away at its own brain, reducing the organ by as much as a fourth, only to regrow much of brain matter in the spring." This is not unlike my experience being on and then getting off Twitter.
Elon Musk gets mail. “Akiva Cohen, an attorney representing 22 laid-off Twitter employees, sent a letter to Twitter and Elon Musk (shared, of course, on Twitter): ‘If basic human decency and honor isn’t enough to make you want to keep your word, maybe this will…. ‘” By John Gruber on Daring Fireball.
Elon is getting to the “… and find out” bit.
“Robert Moses Is A Racist Whatever.”
Jason Kottke blogs about an interview with Robert Caro, author of “The Power Broker,” a definitive biography of urban planner Robert Moses.
Moses’ racist vision for New York transformed the city, literally paving over Black neighborhoods with highways.
Moses came along with his incredible vision, and vision not in a good sense. It’s like how he built the bridges too low.
I remember his aide, Sid Shapiro, who I spent a lot of time getting to talk to me, he finally talked to me. And he had this quote that I’ve never forgotten. He said Moses didn’t want poor people, particularly poor people of color, to use Jones Beach, so they had legislation passed forbidding the use of buses on parkways.
Then he had this quote, and I can still hear him saying it to me. “Legislation can always be changed. It’s very hard to tear down a bridge once it’s up.” So he built 180 or 170 bridges too low for buses.
…
Robert Moses had always displayed a genius for adorning his creations with little details that made them fit in with their setting, that made the people who used them feel at home in them. There was a little detail on the playhouse-comfort station in the Harlem section of Riverside Park that is found nowhere else in the park. The wrought-iron trellises of the park’s other playhouses and comfort stations are decorated with designs like curling waves.
The wrought-iron trellises of the Harlem playhouse-comfort station are decorated with monkeys.
One detail I remember from stories about Moses: When he died in 1981, nobody attended his funeral. Even white people hated him.
What weird food habits did you have in your family when you were a kid? If you’re a parent, how would your kids answer that question?
I’m remembering that one summer when I went to day camp where the kids brought their lunches. My mom made a big batch of hamburgers on Sunday, and froze them, and so I had a desiccated frozen hamburger for lunch every weekday.
On good days the hamburgers were fully thawed.
My mom was great, and she was a wonderful mother, but she was not a good cook most of the time.
Disney’s new neural network can change an actor’s age with ease. The “production ready” neural net makes actors younger or older for film or TV. By Benj Edwards at Ars Technica
This made me happy this morning
This morning while walking the dog I saw one of the neighbor men in front of his house, getting ready to take his three-year-old daughter to school. I shouted, “Good morning,” as we do, and he smiled a little and nodded back, distracted.
I saw the little girl. I shouted, “Good morning!” to her.
She struck a pose, facing me, standing up straight, with her arms stretched out at her sides and her head held high.
Then I saw that she was wearing red tights, and a green top with triangular notches along the bottom.
“You’re an ELF!” I shouted, and she grinned broadly and nodded.
I hope your day is as happy as hers.
How can the Democrats claim to be pro-union and pro-labor and also do this?
The bill that the House passed forcing railway workers back to work requires the workers to take a deal they voted to reject before, giving them only one sick day a year.
US House Passes Bill Forcing Railway Workers Not to Strike
Ian Welsh:
People’s backs are to the wall. Since about 1980, the predominant policy in the US has been to immiserate workers, especially wage workers. This was possible because the New Deal and post-war eras had made workers well enough off that they had some surplus which could then be stolen from them.
But now a lot of people are up against the wall. Many full-time workers, especially at places like Amazon, live in their cars or tents, for example. There is nothing left to give.
People with nothing to lose are dangerous.
I have become fastidious about washing my hands, maybe even OCD, but I have also decided the dog and cats are sanitary, and I am still entirely clean if I have been petting the animals and letting the dog lick my hands and face.
That’s how it works. It’s just science.
I have become fastidious about washing my hands, maybe even a little OCD, but I have also decided the dog and cats are sanitary, and I am still entirely clean if I have been petting the animals and letting the dog lick my hands and face.
That’s how it works. It’s just science.
“You’ve got to vaccinate people against the hate”
MetaFilter: In Russia, China, Iran, and the United States, autocracy is stumbling and liberal democracy is looking resilient. (But in the US at least, the far right isn’t taking no for an answer.)
Noah Smith: “… although liberal democracy is the GOAT, each generation is driven to fuck around and find out.”
Also Smith: “People love to think of themselves as the inheritors of a great civilization. But I’d rather think of myself as the ancestor of a great civilization yet to come!”
Also Smith: We’re entering another period of conflict between great world powers. In those conflicts, there are no good guys, only bad guys and less bad guys. Hopefully, we’ll be the less bad guys this time.
A friend reminds me that I started getting healthy and fit after I attended a science fiction convention in around 2007, and saw that a third of the fans in attendance were using mobility scooters. I saw that for my own not-too-distant future if I didn’t lose weight and start exercising.
And so I did.
A few years after that convention, I attended another and was satisfied when I climbed a short flight of stairs two at a time.
That’s not something I’d do today. My wind and muscles would be able to do it easily, but my knees would protest.
Hello again, micro.blog! It’s me, Mitch Wagner, getting a fresh start on a new blog.
If you follow me on atomicrobotlive you can keep right on doing that, or you can just follow me here. I’ll explain what I’m doing later. I’m still figuring it out myself.