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| August 17, 2022 |
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A big example of the news
ticker was the 'Motograph' installed by the New York Times in 1928 to display
headlines along the sides of Times Tower. Popularly known as 'the Zipper',
the display was 388 feet long, five feet high, and used over 14,800 light bulbs
until they were retired and replaced in 1994.
- How
to disable auto-correct on Android (since my new cell wouldn't let me
curse, in a text).
- All about guy wires.
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| August 16, 2022 |
- DIY astrology-free horoscope for the digital age:
look up your first name in the
Urban Dictionary.
- Make My Drive Fun -- enter
departure and destination; get a map with points of interest marked along the way.
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| August 6, 2022 |
- A Slate investigation into a surprising statistic. Do
Vending Machines Really Kill More Americans Than Sharks, Every Year? No, don't
be ridiculous.
- Concerning the trajectory of the once-popular name, in France -- We
need to talk about Kévin: French namesakes fight national mockery. Seems
the name's now associated there with an airhead in a bad-taste
shirt with a souped-up car, similar I guess to who we called "Biff" when I
lived at the beach. I'm reminded of the
Society of Fred (I used to work with a Fred who was a member). I wonder if
Karens have formed such a group, yet.
- I had a smart-ass English teacher who tried to provoke his 12-grade class by asking
us what the Washington Monument was. I knew what he was getting at but was too embarassed
to speak up, unlike this
grandma in Mexico, whose dying wish was granted: a huge phallic symbol marks her
grave. Maybe unusual in Latin America but Different Lands, Different Customs.*
In Japan, the NSFW fertility
shrine near Kawasaki Daishi, and in Thailand,
Worshiping the
Phallus at the Fertility Shrine in Bangkok.
* Andere Länder, Andere Sitten -- title of my first German textbook in college
- Heard about this on NPR the other morning, Republican governors of Texas and AZ sending
buses
of migrants to DC and NYC -- that's thousands of people being dumped on the street, now.
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| August 1, 2022 |
- CNN: Why
you're going to hate traveling this summer. Count me among the haters after our
flight home from Vegas was cancelled yesterday, three hours from departure. Southwest
rebooked on flights 49 hours later; possibly acceptable but not since I had
to be home this morning for Jury Duty (which I didn't have to attend, as it
turned out).
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| July 14, 2022 |
Just a bit of cowboy poetry for today:
They say with barbed wire came the fall of the West
I ain't denying it's true
'Cuz there's a few places left, in this once-empty West,
you can go and just buckaroo.
But you follow a fence and you'll find gate or hole,
and there you can wander on through.
But the days are gone, when you took horse and tack,
and could go and just buckaroo.
For the East runs this land, and they don't understand
about cows or our points of view
They don't even care if they're playin' square
or care 'bout some lost buckaroo.
But throw the gate wide, 'cuz I'm still full of pride,
and I'll fight 'em till my life is through.
And out in the West, when they lay me to rest,
I'll go and just buckaroo.
Note that I personalize that next-to-last line as "Out in the West, where I'm feeling my
best," and that was 'Go and Just Buckaroo' by
Leon Flick (1954-2013).
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| July 10, 2022 |
- NASA
'strongly rebukes' pro-Russian separatist flag display on the ISS. Roscosmos
shared two photos on social media channels showing cosmonauts holding flags used by
pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. I was unfamiliar with this flag -- like
Russia's, but the white stripe is black, instead.
- In the Atlantic, The
Most Pathetic Men in America. The courage and character of Ukraine stands
in perverse contrast to America's cowering Republican Party, whose resistance might as well
have been led by the Uvalde police.
(archive link)
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| July 3, 2022 |
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| June 30, 2022 |
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Recently learned how Josephine
Baker was active in the Resistance, and was decorated
for her war-time service. Seen here speaking at MLK Jr's March on
Washington in 1963, wearing her Free French uniform. (Click the iconic
photo for a transcript of her speech). I read of her Jazz Age performances
but never heard her voice, until now -- a 'video' from the Internet Archive:
Haiti, (1934).
- Politico: What
Republicans Know (and Democrats Don't) About the White Working Class. The settled vs "the hard-living."
- π = 355/113 (or close enough)
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| June 28, 2022 |
- TheHustle wonders, Can
a corporation own a color?
- Although you can find their stuff in yup-scale supermarkets stateside now, I first
became aware of Bahlsen cookies during my 1984 tour of West Germany, Scandinavia, Belgium and France.
These
are my favorite, labeled Choco-Star then; but it's been a while, looks like they'e
been renamed. The company's been around a long time, and there's
a
book about their pre-war biscuit tin and candy box design and
the Present & Correct
blog has posted some scans.
- At Bored Panda, 27
photos Rich took in Southern California. #25: Even an Oil Rig
can look Beautiful in SoCal.
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| June 16, 2022 |
A traveler's development, as documented through his passport photos. The
last two are scans of the originals, as it's become difficult to see through
the overlayed, psychedelically swirly watermark, which is now made up of
strings of identifying data.
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| June 13, 2022 |
- Although useful, I pity their audience, those seemingly too
busy to read during the rest of the year. But here's a couple Reading
Lists for Summer 2022: At Rest of World, 24
books from around the world that you should put on your reading list;
and at NPR,
Book
Picks for all 50 States (and then some).
- Really? You've been using
Chrome? For years!? Yish. Back in '06
I tried to educate about the benefits of Firefox; although
much has changed since then, it's still my browser of choice. Now, according to The Verge,
Firefox
and Chrome are squaring off over ad-blocker extensions. One of the first things
I do, when setting up a new machine, is install uBlock
Origin onto Firefox -- recommended, especially if you explore
the sketchier areas of the web, as I do.
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| June 2, 2022 |
Everybody knows that San Francisco has cable cars but the City also
operates trolley-cars/streetcars/trams, and on the Market Street "F" line these trains
are vintage PCC. (Not
getting into the nomenclature of
cable car
here, but those aren't funiculars
like Angel's Flight in LA, nor the ski-lifts the Japanese call ropeways.) The
streetcar.org site is all about these
vintage streetcars, many of which came from Philly, St. Louis and the Twin Cities,
in addition to San Francisco; and they've been painted in the livery of cities all
over which used to have trolley systems of their own, including one for my hometown,
which I've spotted a couple times (including last weekend) but never ridden. Pre-Metrobus,
as a teenager, I'd ride buses which looked like this (when the fare was 15¢), but
the trolley was terminated before my time. Lots of detail about DC Transit in
the
streetcar.org page for this car.
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