Mitch's Blog
Two more seasons of Bosch, then no more. Alas!
Even with coronavirus, the US toilet paper supply remains strong. Interesting article for supply chain nerds.
“Barring a new craze for mummy costumes, the actual use of toilet paper is unlikely to increase.”
He comes to talk to his dad every day since the nursing home is on lockdown https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/fjlguv/he_comes_to_talk_to_his_dad_every_day_since_the/
Anbara Salam on Twitter:
“As a public service in these stressful times I’d like to offer, as a palate cleanser, the most embarrassing moment of my life.”
The lobster pool float completes the tale.
The Man With 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer Just Donated Them
Cut the guy some slack. He’s in a perfectly legitimate business, he saw an opportunity and he overreacted.
If you hate the guys who hoarded all that hand sanitizer, wait until you find out that a few hundred people have hoarded half the wealth in the country.
And they’re not keeping it in their garage, either.
P.S. If you sent this guy death threats, he’s not the asshole. You’re the asshole.
Cory Doctorow: TikTok’s secret guidelines require moderators to suppress videos from old, ugly, fat, disabled and poor people.
How to prepare for coming layoffs: Good advice from Cory Doctorow, who’s been self-employed for nearly 20 years. :)
Cory Doctorow: An Italian hospital fixed its ventilator with 3D printed parts.
Stupid TiVo didn’t record the debate.
What’d I miss?
Went to the store. Did not buy extra TP. Did buy extra coffee.
It’s called “priorities.” Look it up.
I’m ready for the debate.
NBC’s Saturday Night Live Various Artists Arista Records/USA (1976)
The opening to Chiller Theater scared me when I was a kid. I couldn’t watch it.
Still scares me now but I’m a grown-ass adult so I made myself sit all the way through.
Republican blogs are pushng the meme that Uncle Joe has dementia. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at that, because the Republicans are also criticizing the Bidens for nepotism. I expect they’ll next criticize Biden for having a bad combover and orange spray-tan.
I’ve seen the videos that purport to show Biden’s senility and I just don’t see it. In one he wanders off-camera during a Facebook Live chat. In another, he stumbles over when he would take office as President. In neither case does this seem like anything other than a gaffe.
Sure, I’ll watch the debate closely tonight to see if Biden seems to have all his faculties. But even if Biden is so deep in dementia that he doesn’t know his own name, I’d still vote for him over Trump.
He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them
On March 1, the day after the first coronavirus death was announced, Matt and Noah Colvin started a three-day, 1,300-mile journey from their homes in Chattanooga, Tenn., filling up a U-Haul truck with hand sanitizer and antibacterial wipes. Then Amazon cracked down on price gouging.
“It’s been a huge amount of whiplash,” [Matt Colvin] said. “From being in a situation where what I’ve got coming and going could potentially put my family in a really good place financially to ‘What the heck am I going to do with all of this?’”….
Mr. Colvin said he was simply fixing “inefficiencies in the marketplace.” Some areas of the country need these products more than others, and he’s helping send the supply toward the demand.
“There’s a crushing overwhelming demand in certain cities right now,” he said. “The Dollar General in the middle of nowhere outside of Lexington, Ky., doesn’t have that.”
He thought about it more. “I honestly feel like it’s a public service,” he added. “I’m being paid for my public service.”
The “tragedy of the commons” is junk science developed by a racist who espoused eugenics and white supremacy.
We’ve stocked up on about two weeks of emergency supplies, like you’re supposed to. It wasn’t a stretch – we buy in bulk anyway.
All but coffee. We only have a few days of coffee because it’s really best if you brew it soon after it’s roasted and grind it just before you make it, with a burr grinder rather than a blade grinder, and I guess I’m a hipster now where’s my moustache wax?
I have two important videoconferences scheduled for Monday, and I spent much of the day getting the office in shape to be seen – or, rather, the part of my office visible from the Mac camera,
I used the Photo Booth app to photograph the office from the perspective of the Mac camera, and I picked up clutter to make everything nicer. But only within the cone of space visible to the camera.
There are five steps from my office to the yard and I went up and down them a million times, carrying out junk. My Apple Watch Activities app is giving me high fives.
I’ve been working on an article assignment that has me thinking about how work has changed from the beginning of my career to now. This is one of the ways. In the first half of my career, if I had an important meeting, I put on a suit and tie, made sure my shoes were polished, showed up a few minutes early, etc. Now, this.
Cory Doctorow: The CIA’s information security is really terrible
“Like Japan in the mid-1800s, the United States now faces a crisis that disproves everything the country believes about itself.”
Meghan and Harry Overplayed Their Hand
The 1918 flu pandemic in San Diego: 366 deaths, sheep dip and mandatory masks
0.5% of San Diego’s population was killed in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic; the equivalent of more than 6,000 today.
From the San Diego Evening Tribune Archives: How San Diego officials reacted to the 1918 flu
The ballet dancer who led a prisoner uprising at Auschwitz
Franceska Mann, a 26-year-old Jewish ballet dancer from Poland, arrived in Auschwitz in 1943, part of a transport of 1,800 so-called VIP prisoners from Bergen-Belsen. The prisoners “had been lured into thinking they were en route to freedom as part of an exchange for German POWs ostensibly organized by the Allies. The Germans promised that Auschwitz was merely a stop on the way to Switzerland, but the women among the group soon found themselves being led to the gas chambers,” according to a 2019 report in Haaretz.
Women prisoners were ordered to strip by Nazi guards. According to one version of events, Mann performed a seductive strip-tease. While the SS soldiers were distracted, Mann took off one shoe and threw it hard at a guard, hitting him on the forehead. The soldier began to bleed and collapsed. Mann jumped him, stole his weapon and shot him dead. Two other Nazis were wounded by the gunfire.
In another account, she refused to remove her undergarments at first, then threw her bra in a Nazi guard’s face and jumped him, grabbed his pistol and shot him.
Her action inspired a brief, doomed uprising, which the Nazis quickly – and fatally – shut down. Survivors among the prisoners were gassed.
Remember Franceska Mann the next time you see some yokel waving a Nazi flag or other symbol of racism, and hear Trump equivocating “good people on both sides.” Be inspired by her. The American Nazis are coming first for Muslims, illegal immigrants, and other brown-skinned people. But they’ll get around to the Jews soon enough.
“It was my first time ordering bulk crickets off the internet….”
Funny Twitter thread.
Covid-19 needs a new name. Branding matters, people!
I’m getting email from every company I’ve ever given my address to, earnestly telling me how much they care about me and don’t want me to get Covid.
If they really cared about me, they’d send soup.
Apple TV+ 'Foundation' series production halts over coronavirus fears
What this tells me is the long-rumored series based on Asimov’s Foundation novels is in production — and therefore will happen. Looking forward to it!
I expect the series will take great liberties with the novels. And that’s OK.
“Sad ukelele” would be a great name for a podcast.
Trump administration blocks states from using Medicaid to respond to coronavirus crisis
The GOP is a death cult.
The Ezra Klein Show: Trump didn't break democracy. Broken democracy gave us Trump.
Also: Republicans understand that politics is transactional. The NRA has been great for the GOP, and so the GOP is unwaveringly pro-gun.
Democrats are uncomfortable with transactional politics, and that’s why the Republicans, a minority party, are running the country.
A brief history of the floppy disk. Fascinating!
Find out which weather service is most accurate in your area
ForecastAdvisor shows you the accuracy of major weather forecasting services in your area. It says that The Weather Channel and AccuWeather are most accurate for us, which matches my unscientific explorations.
There is a joke that San Diego doesn’t need weather forecasts because the weather is always the same. There is some truth to that – but only some. Generally, you can tell what the weather is going to be by looking at the calendar, and any forecasting service will give you the rest of the information you need. It doesn’t rain much, which is bad, because we’re in a drought. It gets chilly, but not cold, in the winter. Sometimes too hot in the summer, in our party of the county. Spring and fall are lovely.
But we’ve been having rain for days, and I like to schedule my walk around the rain. So suddenly I care about the accuracy of weather forecasts. The Weather Channel and AccuWeather seem to do best for hourly forecasts.
Dark Sky, which fans say can do an uncanny job of predicting rain down to the MINUTE, doesn’t work well here at all.
AT&T CEO pay rose to $32 million in 2019 while he cut 20,000 jobs
The Verge guide to Twitter (with a contribution from yrs trly)
Reporters Without Borders uses Minecraft to sneak censored works across borders.
The Zoom virtual background for videoconferences doesn’t seem to work with my Mac. I can buy a portable green screen, that attaches to the back of a chair, for $65.
Or I can just clean my office.
“Social distancing” is actually not that big a change for me. #JokingNotJoking
Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (aka MBS) is a brutal tyrant, who has also implemented reforms, including expanded women’s rights and crippling the oppressive, conservative Saudi clergy.
But even for his reforms: Permission is not the same thing as freedom. Permissions granted by a tyrant can be taken away by the tyrant.
Barbara Krasnoff: How to hide your messy room during a Zoom video conference
Another excuse for me to postpone cleaning up the mountain of empty Amazon boxes in my home office.
Um, thanks, Barbara?
Jason Snell: How to customize the display of the Apple Watch Workouts app.
Useful tips - I did it right away after reading this article.
Twitter 101: how to follow people and discover topics.
Should be headlined: “How To Tell Your @ From a Hole in the Ground.”
By me on The Verge (with a lot of work from my editor, Barbara Krasnoff - thanks!)
The FCC is giving out big bucks for rural broadband, and New York is the one state in the continental US that’s been left out.
IBM says it’s number three in cloud sales, but analysts say nope. Not even close.
Interesting definitional disagreement on what “the cloud is.” Analysts say if it’s not like Amazon, it’s not the cloud.
These face-touching memes have been canceled for public health reasons.
Funny.
Cory Doctorow: “Senate Republicans have killed emergency sick leave legislation, a move that will force millions of low-waged cleaning and food-service workers to choose between homelessness and potentially spreading Covid-19.”
Billions for tax cuts for the rich, but when it comes to helping the poor, the GOP suddenly gets fiscal responsibility religion.
This is peak disaster capitalism. If employers are required to pay sick leave, they lose money. But if people get sick and die, the healthcare and funeral industries make bank.
Cory Doctorow: A former top Cigna exec calls baloney on Biden’s claims that Medicaire-for-all is impractical.
For starters, M4A wouldn’t COST $35T; it would SAVE at least $450B/year.
The head of the TSA says he’s standing by a decision to take away healthcare coverage from part-time agents.
Because of the nature of their work, TSA agents are at high risk of spreading infectious disease, like Covid-19.
Trump’s ban on European travel exempt nations where he owns resorts.
What an extraordinary coincidence! How fortunate for him!
Cory Doctorow: A scam-buster hacks into a scam factory and surveills the heck out of them.
Cory Doctorow: Details of Italy’s “I stay in the house” law.
Cory Doctorow: Twitter upgraded its terms of service to permit academics to use bots for research and auditing purposes
Cory Doctorow: Sensor Tower, which provides VPN and other software it describes as privacy protecting, was in fact distributing spyware.
Cory Doctorow: The satiety index: Which foods make you feel the most full?
Cory Doctorow: Nobody knows why people have gotten fatter since the 1950s. Diet and levels of physical activity don’t explain it, at least not entirely.
Even animals are getting fatter, both domestic animals and feral animals.
Michael McConnell, a prominent San Diego homeless advocate, fought against Proposition C in San Diego, which allocated $2 billion for homelessness. He said the law didn’t do enough and would have been too easily abused.
A California software engineer found paragraphs and themes in the novel “The Manchuriam Candidate,” by Richard Congdon, that were plagiarized from “I, Claudius.”
Yes, the individual sentences and paragraphs and character personalities were copied, but this doesn’t pass the sniff test for plagiarism. The novels are blatantly different from one another.
Astronomers are using computer models for for slime mold growth patterns to trace filaments connecting galaxies.
Reminds me of season 1 of “Star Trek: Discovery!”
Cory Doctorow: Farmers are fighting John Deere for the right to fix their own tractors.
This is literally jeopardizing the US food supply.
Cory Doctorow: A woman sued the TSA over a “pat-down” that penetrated her vagina.
Led Zeppelin wins a ruling that “Stairway to Heaven” was not plagiarized from an earlier record, potentially setting a precedent for future copyright cases.
Holy Crom, is that what Robert Plant looks like now?
X-ray Shoe Fitting “Customers Expect It!” [1940s]
Dick Van Dyke for Colorburst instant cameras (1978)
Belmont Radio (LIFE, March 6, 1944)
https://www.reddit.com/r/vintageads/comments/fgoixp/belmont_radio_life_march_6_1944/
Elvira for Coors Light, 1986
https://www.reddit.com/r/vintageads/comments/fgofxx/elvira_for_coors_light_1986/
IBM’s outgoing boss Rometty awarded $20m+ in 2019 for growing revenue 0.1% Nice work if you can get it.
IBM Food Trust: Who’s using blockchain to track supply chain?
IBM has pushed blockchain hard for tracking customer supply chains, and touted marquee customers such as Walmart and Nestle. But it’s a big, hairy problem and uptake is slow.
I came into my office at about 4 am. Minnie had been closed up in here for six hours.
It’s now after 7 am. Minnie still hasn’t gone out to relieve herself.
I’m kind of in awe.
VMware is looking to rejuvenate again with a Kubernetes injection:
VMware today rolls out an aggressive plan to integrate Kubernetes with traditional applications (running on VMware vSphere, natch). I go in-depth on the news at The Next Platform.
“The power of Frenchmen in your intestines” (1919) via
Back of the famous 1 Hacker Way Facebook sign via
The back side of Hollywood Squares, 1976 via
Can You Really Hire a Hit Man on the Dark Web?
The dark web is swarming with hitman-for-hire sites, with colorful names like Azerbaijani Eagles and Sicilian Hitmen International Network. They charge tens of thousands of dollars in bitcoin – but they are frauds. They don’t actually kill people.
What Bernie Sanders Gets Right About the Media:
much of the U.S. media still covers elections as if they’re sporting events and that the affluent New Yorkers who run and appear on television networks are not inclined to like him.
Corporate media sees Sanders and Trump as the same, which is wrong.
Trump is “a star of the corporate media who hacked its commercial incentives to his advantage, delivering free lively entertainment to cable networks desperate for programming. … Mr. Sanders wants to remake the media in a new model.”
California’s Gig Economy Is Under Attack.
AB5 is limiting freelancers' ability to work, going far beyond the Uber drivers it was intended to protect.
AB5 is a disaster. Terrible legislation.
Grace and Frankie is Golden Girls minus the rattan furniture.
Like Cambridge Analytica, “but more nefariously, arguably:" Banjo, an artificial intelligence firm that works with police, used a shadow company to create Android and iOS apps that looked innocuous but were specifically designed to secretly scrape social media.
Cory Doctorow: Europe looks like it may be getting the courage to take on Apple, mandating that consumers have a right to repair their phones
That would be a big threat to Apple’s revenue, as the company depends on customers replacing worn out phones when Apple deems the pocket-fondles are beyond repair.
The Last Alternative: A 1978 Soviet TV adaptation of Isaac Asimov's "The Naked Sun"
Cheesy even by 1978 standards, according to this fellow on Reddit.
On YouTube: here and here and here
I gave it a quick peek and can confirm its cheesiness. It’s in Russian, no subtitles, so I didn’t watch. I don’t speak Russian.
Old age is very different today, when the average lifespan is 79, than at the turn of the 20th century, when it was 49. It’s a new stage of life, like adolescence emerged 70 or so years ago.
An interview with Louise Aronson, author of the book “Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life." From the book description on Amazon:
For more than 5,000 years, “old” has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we’ve made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, denigrated, neglected, and denied.
In the words of Doc Holliday: “I’m in my prime.”
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: Coronavirus really is that bad and you should work from home
We watched “Sharpe’s Gold.” I bet the men in the 95th Rifles found Hagman annoying after a couple days. “Enough with the singing,” they said.
How to Tell If You Have the Flu, Coronavirus, or Something Else
I think I had norovirus almost exactly a year ago, after returning from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. And I passed the norovirus to Julie. Because you should always bring your spouse a little something when you return from a business trip.
I have been that tourist. It’s why I often patronize Starbucks when I’m out of town.
