RIP James Sikking, who played the gung-ho militaristic Lt. Howard Hunter on “Hill Street Blues." He also played Doogie Howser’s father.
I loved that show so much. I want to be Frank Furillo when I grow up.
Today’s fashion hate-reads
Sock height is now a “fierce controversy.. No-show socks make you look old. Crew socks are now fashionable. Unless you’re already old, in which case crew socks make you look old too.
This article has it all, including gratuitous Boomer-bashing and a grown-ass man who is devastated that teenagers are making fun of his socks at Disney World.
I take great pride in not caring about socks. As long as they’re approximately the same color, that’s good enough for me.
Also: Carolyn Hax advises a woman who is aghast that her sister-in-law wore white jeans to a wedding reception, when the invitations SPECIFICALLY SAID “festive cocktail attire.” The only person in this letter who is NOT horrible is the woman in white jeans.
If someone asked me to wear “festive cocktail attire” to an event, I would have no idea what that is. I guess that’s a big reason why we never get those kinds of invitations.
Good profile of J.D. Vance, Trump’s VP pick, in the form of a 55-point list at Politico.
TL;DR: Vance is a crackpot conspiracy theorist and LGBT-phobe motivated strongly by a desire to pwn the Libs. Also, he either had a 180-degree change of heart about Trump, or he’s a sociopathic opportunist; in 2016, he said Trump is an “idiot” and might well be America’s Hitler.
I would not bet on Vance surviving long. Trump tried to have his last VP whacked.
Something I noticed re-reading Roger Zelazny's "Doorways in the Sand"
I recently re-read Roger Zelazny’s “Doorways in the Sand,” which I last read when I was a teen-ager. I loved it as much today as I did then. One of my favorite Zelazny books, which makes it one of my favorite books.
In that novel, a character in his 60s is looking back on his life and says that the world goes through one massive change after another—but they happen one at a time, spaced out at long intervals, and after each change life goes back to pretty much what it was before, so you can convince yourself nothing has changed.
Then you look back over the course of 40+ years and the world is completely different from when you were 20 years old.
I glided over that passage when reading it first as a teen, but re-reading it again over the past few months it hit me hard.
In my adult lifetime, we’ve seen the emergence of he Internet, smartphones, the rise of China, the end of the Cold War, Covid, Donald Trump, the fall of the USSR—after each of these events, we could say, “That was a big deal but still our day-to-day lives are not much different than they were before” And yet you put it all together and the world is very, very different than it was in 1981.
This rule does not apply if you or someone close to you is personally affected by any of these global changes. And these changes can affect hundreds of millions of people — that’s what makes them global. But billions of people are not directly affected by these changes. For them, each individual change is a jolt and then life goes on mostly as it has done before.
Meet the thing I've been working on for three months: Fierce Network Research
I’m excited to unveil what I’ve been working on for the past three months: Helping to launch Fierce Network Research, the research arm of the Fierce Network technology news portal.
Fierce Network Research is dedicated to delivering insights on the impact, benefits and challenges of the new era of smart networking for communications service providers (CSPs) and enterprises.
We call this new-era networking Smart Cloud. It combines cloud, observability, automation, AI and security to build communications infrastructure essential to global economic and societal transformation.
We’re seeing the entire built world become intelligent — smart transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, automation, healthcare, energy and more. Everything that drives the economy and society is becoming connected, saturated with sensors and using artificial intelligence and automation to make smart decisions that improve productivity and efficiency.
None of that works without Smart Cloud connectivity.
I’m part of the Fierce Network Research team as Chief Analyst, defining the research business’s point of view and taking overall responsibility for its research into the latest global trends.
About me: I’ve been covering enterprise and telco technology for more than 30 years, including leadership positions at Light Reading and InformationWeek. I also helped drive content marketing in a full-time position at Oracle and as a consultant for business-to-business technology companies for the data center, cloud platform, networking and security spaces.
For more information on our current and upcoming reports, go here: It’s time to meet Fierce Network Research
And here’s the website: research.fierce-network.com
I searched the house for my glasses this morning. Eventually, I found them on the ground outside in the backyard, where they had been all night.
I took them off to read the phone while standing in the backyard waiting for the dog to do her business so we could both go to bed. Usually, when I take off my glasses to read, I tuck them into the neck of my shirt. But I wasn’t wearing a shirt, so I tucked the arm of my glasses into the pocket of my shorts, and then I promptly forgot about them. They fell on the ground while I was putting the dog to bed.
Eyeglasses are amazing engineering. They are made of glass and fragile wire, but they’re tough little tanks. I abuse the hell out of mine and they’re fine.
Al Sharpton should write the defining op-ed in the NYT, not George Clooney, who is very pretty, and a great choice to cast in movies like Up In The Air or Michael Clayton, but we don’t know anything about his political judgment.
Today I learned about Benford’s Law, which can be used to identify financial fraud and other dodgy statistics. It figures in the 2016 Ben Affleck movie, “The Accountant.”
Elon Musk’s Plan to Put a Million Earthlings on Mars in 20 Years [Kirsten Grind / NYTimes] — SpaceX employees are working on designs for a Martian city, including dome habitats and spacesuits, and researching whether humans can procreate off Earth. Mr. Musk has volunteered his sperm.
Hamilton Nolan: There’s a hole at the heart of the Democratic party, and Labor needs to fill it.. (Thanks, Cory! @pluralistic@mamot.fr)
A fast-read explainer: What Is Project 2025? Inside the Far-Right Plan for a Second Trump Term
Molly White launches FollowTheCrypto.org to track cryptocurrency spending to influence the 2024 elections.
The crypto industry has spent more on the 2024 US elections than oil, pharma and more than the energy sector and the health sector combined.
Remember: The only purposes for crypto are gambling, money laundering and ransomware.
The true, tactical significance of Project 2025 — Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr: Despite its legitimately scary and terrible proposals, the Project 2025 document reveals schisms in the conservative coalition, which can be exploited by a Democratic party led by workers.
