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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.” 📓📚📺

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?

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.)

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).

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.

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.

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!”

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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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.

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?

‪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. ‬

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!

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.”

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!

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!

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.

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…. "

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.

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.

I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out for coffee.

TV show idea: “Zeno, Warrior Princess,” about a transgender Classical Greek philosopher who defeats evildoers using logical paradoxes.

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. 📷 📓

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.

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.

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.

The problem with read-later bookmarking services like Pocket and Instapaper is your queue is filled with articles you decided not to read.

My women friends are showing their coronavirus hairdos on Instagram. Here’s mine.

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.

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]

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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