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Blogs.harvard.edu is shutting down, with its total run being almost exactly two decades. (Doc Searls final post on the platform says 'At the time I was told something like "Hey, Harvard has been around since 1636, so your blog will last a long time here."', but the total is around 6% of Harvard's total lifespan so far.)

I don't have any particular connection to Harvard's blog endeavor, but us long-time online geeks often feel a twinge at such times. There used to be a feeling that URLs could - and should - be forever, or as web godfather Tim Berners-Lee put it, "Cool URIs don't change"... but when I stumble over any old list of links I may have assembled, it's inevitably an absolute ghost town.

In abstract theory the unlimited perfect copies of the digital universe should enable virtual immortality in that URI-ish sense; in more nuanced theory, the cost in terms of dollars and institutional attention mean there are precious few guards against entropy, and a website is far less likely to be long lived than a print book (ideally on good acid free paper) And in practice, too often it's "well, I hope the Internet Archive Wayback Machine spiders it well".

(Some of these links come from David Winer's Scripting News... I feel like I should have been reading this blog for much longer. But it's a frustrating and weird read, like it's hard to pinpoint him on a scale of cynicism vs optimism. Or maybe it's just nothing but jaded and I'm too polyanna to see it.)

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The more I use ChatGPT, the more I feel it calls into question our models of human language production. How much of how humans use language is based on pattern matching and prediction, and does not rely on what we would consider to be awareness or understanding?

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Our poor kitty Dean has a touch of a small cell lymphoma - the prognosis is decent but his meds schedule (especially on top of his asthma, and wanting to track how we're feeding him) is intense!

I made a simple printable pill schedule generator webapp, I describe it in detail on my devblog.

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People don't have a strong intuitive sense of how much bigger 1 billion is than 1 million. 1 million seconds is about 11 days. 1 billion seconds is about 31.5 years.

And of course from there, a trillion seconds is 300+ centuries, or 30 millennia - and its only been 20 centuries or 2 millennia since Rome and Jesus and all that, and maybe 9 or 10 since the earliest cities.

We just have no sense of scale. We've got almost 8 billion people around, and the US budget gets into like 6 trillion. Or to quote Feynman:

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

I just saved a ton of money on Christmas presents by discussing politics on social media.

Even though I'm wary of "bucket lists" for my entire life, for some reason those scratch-off movie posters and lists like WaPo's Books for the Ages: The best books to read at every age, from 1 to 100 are tempting. This is the list, minus explanation why and well-chosen photo:

Age 1

“The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle

Age 2

“Llama Llama Red Pajama” by Anna Dewdney

Age 3

“Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak

Age 4

“Charlie Parker Played Be Bop” by Chris Raschka

Age 5

“The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein

Age 6

“Ramona the Pest” by Beverly Cleary, illustrated by Jacqueline Rogers

Age 7

“The Complete Calvin and Hobbes” by Bill Watterson

Age 8

“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling

Age 9

“Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” by Judy Blume

Age 10

“Smile” by Raina Telgemeier

Age 11

“Ghost” by Jason Reynolds

Age 12

“Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” by Mildred D. Taylor

Age 13

“I Am Malala” by Malala Yousafzai

Age 14

“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky

Age 15

“The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas

Age 16

“Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë

Age 17

“Once Upon a River” by Bonnie Jo Campbell

Age 18

“A Gate at the Stairs” by Lorrie Moore

Age 19

“The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood

Age 20

“The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Díaz

Age 21

“The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway

Age 22

“Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville

Age 23

“The Autobiography of Malcolm X” by Malcolm X and Alex Haley

Age 24

“Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand

Age 25

“I Capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith

Age 26

“Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Age 27

“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey

Age 28

“Sister Outsider” by Audre Lorde

Age 29

“In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan

Age 30

“The Joy of Sex” by Alex Comfort

Age 31

“Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck

Age 32

“The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck

Age 33

“Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story” by Paul Monette

Age 34

“Beloved” by Toni Morrison

Age 35

“How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk” by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish

Age 36

“Life Among the Savages” by Shirley Jackson

Age 37

“The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan

Age 38

“The Sportswriter” Richard Ford

Age 39

“What Alice Forgot” by Liane Moriarty

Age 40

“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Age 41

“Rabbit, Run” by John Updike

Age 42

“The Woman Upstairs” by Claire Messud

Age 43

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston

Age 44

“The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt

Age 45

“Where’d You Go, Bernadette” by Maria Semple

Age 46

“Salvage the Bones” by Jesmyn Ward

Age 47

“Stretching” by Bob Anderson

Age 48

“Bossypants” by Tina Fey

Age 49

“Walden” by Henry David Thoreau

Age 50

“Fifty Shades of Grey” by EL James

Age 51

“Who Do You Think You Are?” by Alice Munro

Age 52

“Men Without Women” by Haruki Murakami

Age 53

“A Man Called Ove” by Fredrik Backman

Age 54

“The Denial of Death” by Ernest Becker

Age 55

“Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Strout

Age 56

“When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chödrön

Age 57

“Remains of the Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro

Age 58

“The Plague of Doves” by Louise Erdrich

Age 59

“Dynamic Aging” by Katy Bowman

Age 60

“The Five Years Before You Retire” by Emily Guy Birken

Age 61

“Fear of Dying” by Erica Jong

Age 62

“Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand” by Helen Simonson

Age 63

“Our Souls at Night” by Kent Haruf

Age 64

“Old in Art School” by Nell Painter

Age 65

“65 Things to Do When You Retire” edited by Mark Evan Chimsky

Age 66

The “Outlander” series by Diana Gabaldon

Age 67

“Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes

Age 68

“The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion

Age 69

“I Remember Nothing” by Nora Ephron

Age 70

“Master Class: Living Longer, Stronger, and Happier” by Peter Spiers

Age 71

“Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdie

Age 72

“Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel García Márquez

Age 73

“The Years of Lyndon Johnson” four volumes, by Robert Caro

Age 74

“Paris in the Present Tense” by Mark Helprin

Age 75

“The History of Love” by Nicole Krauss

Age 76

“Women Rowing North” by Mary Pipher

Age 77

“Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson

Age 78

“Charlotte’s Web” by E.B. White

Age 79

“The Coming of Age” by Simone de Beauvoir

Age 80

“Coming Into Eighty: Poems” by May Sarton

Age 81

“Devotions” by Mary Oliver

Age 82

“The Summer of a Dormouse” by John Mortimer

Age 83

All the thrillers and mysteries

Age 84

“The Last Unknowns” edited by John Brockman

Age 85

“Ravelstein” by Saul Bellow

Age 86

“Old Filth” by Jane Gardam

Age 87

“King Lear” by William Shakespeare

Age 88

“Nearing Ninety: And Other Comedies of Late Life” by Judith Viorst, illustrated by Laura Gibson

Age 89

“A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing 90” by Donald Hall

Age 90

“Beachcombing for a Shipwrecked God” by Joe Coomer

Age 91

“Selected Poems: 1988-2013” by Seamus Heaney

Age 92

“Nothing to be Frightened Of” by Julian Barnes

Age 93

“Sapiens” by Yuval Harari

Age 94

“This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism” by Ashton Applewhite

Age 95

The Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante

Age 96

“Somewhere Towards the End” by Diana Athill

Age 97

“My Own Two Feet” by Beverly Cleary

Age 98

“Life Is So Good” by George Dawson and Richard Glaubman

Age 99

“Little Boy” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Age 100

“Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author” by Herman Wouk

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Live Action References for Disney's Little Mermaid:

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Phew- watching the show "Abandoned", episode on Ghost Malls, starting with Randall Park mall.... sigh. (though it's like they got their a bit late after demolition was underway so not many interior shots)

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and now euclid square mall, dang. though that felt a bit less vibrant even back in 1990.

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weird show. skaters, store front churches, and paranormal investigators.

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I knew there was a lot to respect in Sikh culture, but was unaware of their increasing presence in the trucking industry.
Will Stenberg:

I hate "we're fucked."

I mean, I don't want to shame anyone who has said it, thought it, or posted it. I have too. But as a philosophy, as a statement of belief, I hate it. Because it means you've given up.

We are absolutely NOT fucked.

Things are so bad. This country has taken a turn that I could never have predicted. It is absolutely fascist, nativist, and extremist. It's every bit as scary as it seems.

But we are not fucked.

I read a long-form article on the Russia hacks in the New Yorker not long ago. However much you think that influenced the outcome, it was an instructive piece of journalism. There is very little indication that there was a specific political agenda that was being wished for. The goal was simple: Sow chaos and undermine the faith of Westerners in their own institutions.

This is really important to think about right now.

I have a high regard for Mueller and I think his investigation will have some influence. But don't wait on him to save us. He can't. And don't wait on impeachment. I would support it fervently, but it is nothing to bank on. And especially don't assume Trump can't win again. He absolutely can. Our best bet - better, even, than all of our protests and actions - is actually voting.

It's so square. It's so old-fashioned. Many of us involved with the hard-left or anarchist scene have been trained to disregard it.

Fucking don't. NOT NOW, guys. It is the best tool at our disposal. Yeah, you can say that they will sabotage it, reject it, whatever. "Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof." In other words, don't create troubles before they exist. Anything seems possible to me right now, but it remains the case - despite hacked voting machines and gerrymandering - that there is no known mechanism by which our government can deny massive voter turnout.

Take back the House in November. Then take back the Presidency in 2020. The worst thing we could do is pretend that these are givens. I never, ever, ever thought that this piece of shit could sit in the Oval Office. I was so humbled by my error. Therefore I assume he could take it again - I know he could - unless we accept the threat as real.

When we say, "We're fucked," we roll over. We defeat ourselves. We do their job for them. Don't do that. We are NOT fucked. We are in a fight. It sucks. It's hard. People are suffering. The earth is suffering. It will get worse.

You know, since everyone loves the Nazi comparisons, there were people during the HEYDAY of the Third Reich who NEVER said, "We're fucked." They said, "We're in a fight." And you know what's interesting? Nazi Germany went from the worst regime in the world to a liberal democracy within a lifetime.

Look at Japan. Take the historical view. Stop pretending that the worst of what's happening now is what is going to always happen. This is what is happening RIGHT NOW. That's all you know. If you think it's going to be this way forever, read a book.

Countries slide into fascism for long periods. It happens. Countries also have short-term extremist right-wing governments. Happens in Europe all the time. They get voted out. The threat remains. The threat of fascism will remain in America in a way it never has before. It's a real movement. But we're not fucked. Not even close. We can get off the ropes in the mid-terms and knock them out in 2020. But only if we stop saying that we're fucked, and start seeing this as a fight.

I'm no Pollyanna. Things are so unutterably bad that I walk around in a constant state of nausea and horror. But you have to take the historical view, and you can't lie down and say we're doomed, or else they have beaten you.

Again, I don't want to shame anyone who says, "We're fucked" as an emotional reaction. I get it, I really do. But if you say that as a historical reality, then you SHOULD be ashamed. We are so far from being fucked. It's time for that warrior spirit, from everyone.

Our best bet, actually our only realistic bet, is to mobilize the vote. There has always been a silver lining to this situation. I have always hesitated to state it, for fear of sounding like I am not taking the horror seriously. Fuck that; I do. But there has always been the possibility, there remains the possibility, that this is a time when our country faces up to its worst reflection, sees it truly, and breaks the fucking mirror. A time when the last bastion of white power and male supremacy and oligarchy attempts to enact fascism, but the antibodies of the American system and American multi-culturalism kick in to reject it.

Where do you want to stand in that equation? As someone who rolled over because we've have had two awful years of shit that much of the world has already experienced many, many, many times over, so you decided that we're finished and done for? Come on. Look at Europe, look at Africa, look at Asia. Back and forth with this shit, and much worse.

I have your back. Get up. Here's my hand. Let's fight.

It can't become hip to give up. It can't become hip to say we are fucked. Look at history. People have been so much more fucked than us, and won. If you truly believe we are finished, I'm sorry, but you were the first to fall. Stick a fork in you, turn you over, you're done. I don't want to see you do that, if only for the selfish reason that we need you.

Do all the protests, do all the direct action, make all the phone calls, then mobilize in October and November. That's when we can get off the ropes and start punching again. Take the long view, my sisters and brothers. Don't let them take you out of the fight.

And if you need me for anything, I am here.

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RIP Harlan Ellison - "For I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is one of my favorite titles ever, not to mention all his work on 'Trek... I'm grateful that our new place has a dishwasher... but damn the Finnish habit of putting drying racks OVER the sink hits my "why didn't that ever occur to me?" hard.

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Heather's adventures in Spain indicate that it's suboptimal for less tall people and also precludes a nice window-behind-sink. BUT STILL.

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Arkansas Man Topples Ten Commandments Monument. Bug copy and pasting URLs from chrome on Macs Anyone else run into this? I mostly noticed copying from chrome into gmail under Safari (where I keep on any on personal email when at work.) Very frustrating - my workaround was to copy everything but the first letter of a URL, paste, and then type the letter (and maybe the http: )

LOL, time for a unit test for them I guess. (No, actually I guess it would have to be at least a functional or maybe even integration test...)

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--from College Humor's Troll GIFs - GIFs really are the silent movies of our times

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I don't know much about skateboarding but Tony Hawk's last 900 is bittersweet--

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me: How much did you pay for the nipple clamps?
dad: Those are jumper cables. What the hell is wrong with you?

I will never know what MY earlobes taste like

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I want to leave a living will saying that if I am in a coma, you should use that time to do hilarious makeovers of me for at least six months before considering switching off life support. (It just seems such a waste that I'll be out of it and nobody will draw a moustache on me or make me up like a clown.)

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https://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~cgregg/typewriter/ a guy at Tufts actually executes on an idea I had myself, using solenoids to be able to use a typewriter as a computer printer. From 50 Photos Of Actors Behind The Scenes That Will Change How You See Their Movies Forever-
I love the hand-tinted look of this one:

I just watched the series "Life's Too Short" with Little Person Warwick Davis- I'm kind of blown away by how young he looks here. (Oh, I guess he was just 13 or so. I imagine a host of 13-year-olds who'd at least consider trading places with him here, short stature and all.)
New art class! And very different -- it almost felt like an open studio, except the instructor did a quick demo, and I kind of followed her lead, and I'm using a very different form of charcoal. I'm pleased with the results, so much so that I'm worried I'm missing some of the point of the other style. (Though it very likely made these attempts much better.)




Whoa, supreme court!



Personally I think the weirdest thing right now is how health insurance is the default employment perk -- it's bundled with its costs oddly masked. No matter where you are on single payer healthcare thinking, don't you think the status quo is a bit weird?

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http://whatwoulddondraperdo.tumblr.com What Would Don Draper Do. Old but somehow inspiring even if the man is not the complete role model.
--via (or something like it) 22words

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http://www.slate.com/slideshow/arts/is-this-a-gay-bar/ Trends in Gay Bar names...

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Neat to watch the local garbage guys on my walk to work- so deft. One shoved an empty plastic can across the street- how did it not tip??

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Surprised the concept "Digital Arts and Crafts" doesn't get more play. There is a Fisher-Price gadget for it, though: http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?e=digitalstudio-product

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i'm amused that some white guy referred to the process of americanizing an asian film with white actors and such as 'honking it up'.

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The first iPhone couldn't use most headphones without an adapter. (Supposedly for 'shielding' reasons) A weird design faux pas by Apple.

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And it's weird that you can edit playlists on the iPhone but it STILL ignores your iTunes folders for playlists- just one big honkin' list.

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Or does it? Weird, Playlist Folders are listed as an iOS 4 feature but I'm pretty sure it's ignoring mine...

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Don't focus on the one guy who hates you. You don't go to the park and set your picnic down next to the only pile of dog shit.

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Wanna go to the basement, beautiful?"
"That's the strangest proposition I've ever had. Well, not really.

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There's this special biologist word we use for 'stable.' It's 'dead.'

--Interesting how to get a steady pan, you have to crank up the rate of zoom so much. Also, I need to go brush now.

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what the chimney sang for aphrodite / one spreads its white wings on a far-reaching track, a man like me?

Power outage at home all yesterday afternoon and night, maybe a result of a lightning strike. Something weirdly third world about not having power. Plus combined with my Aunt not being able to go to New Jersey because of train track work in Connecticut... it truly feels like our infrastructure isn't all that healthy.

Today's title comes from some Spam I received just as I was going to hit "save and publish". Maybe I should use random spam titles more often.

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Cartoon of the Moment

--Kate Beaton's history project. Oddly enough I realized the other day she also has a Conversations with a Younger Self series, albeit her ten-year-old self.

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Quote of the Moment

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.

Sigh, I'm getting way too may of my quotes from the "Quote of the Day" service lately. Wow, HOT.

Between the extremes of walking around in wilting summer heat and freezing winter cold, I'll always take the former. Jonathan took the opposite view, citing the usual idea that you can always dress more warmly but there's only so far you can strip, but still. Trudging through severe winter cold makes me feel as if I'm suffering, this kind of summer heat is just sticky and unpleasant.

It's a good time for summer movies, then. Saw "Fantastic Four" last night. Verdict: not so fantastic, to make the obvious joke. For me part of the pleasure of this kind of dumb summer blockbuster is seeing what the writers and directors do within the constraints of the universes they have to work with, so it's less fun when superpowers and threats kind of warp and morph to meet the needs of the story, rather than the other way around.


So if Marvel is indeed planning to make its own movies rather than licensing them out, they have to do better than this, especially as they reach deeper into their pantheon for folks whose stories haven't been put to screen. (And man... how many hamfisted cameos can one guy do? I'm looking at you, Stan Lee.)

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Geek Trick of the Moment
How to Extract A Song From YouTube (Or Other Video Sites). I wouldn't recommend it except for music you can't readily get through other channels; it's a shade immoral and possibly a bit illegal, the quality isn't fantastic, and people who posted the video might not have lined up the music with the beginning and end of their production. But still, the trick is there.

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Quote of the Moment

Some parts of the past must be preserved, and some of the future prevented at all costs.

I think the best thing to say about something that has had all its fun or interesting parts taken out is that it has undergone a "radical coolectomy".

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Image of the Moment
The planets of our solar system, allowing you to see the scale of them. From this rense.com page, which has other views, including our sun and other larger stars.

I always assumed Jupiter was even bigger relative to Earth. And the funny thing is, I think I have a feel for the size of the Earth from airplane trips on clear days, where I can see its curvature pretty well. So from there, with this page I can extrapolate to the size of, say, Jupiter, and from there the sun, and I can think that my physical place in the universe isn't quite as tiny as I sometimes assume.

Also, compare this previously kisrael'd HTML scale model of the Solar System, scrolling horizontally to give you a feel for the distance between these planets. But I'd say today's image gives a better feel for the sizes.

Quote of the Moment

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.

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Why I Think I Might Not Be A Romantic

"A man may fight the greatest enemy, take the longest journey, survive the most grievous wound- and still be helpless in the hands of the woman he loves."
~Quotes from Frank and Brian Herbers Dune chronicles

HAHAHAHA---WHIPPED! *whikCHH*! *whikCHW!*

I'm right cynical for a guy who has a site called the loveblender...but I'm reasonably happy with my attempt to transcribe the whip sound.

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Link of the Moment
Dang, I was about 2 days late to this Slashdot thread on one-button-gaming but some friendly person mentioned my own JoustPong...I followed up with a mention of the gamebutton arcade.

Actually, the original gamasutra article is pretty cool, with some simple flash demos of the movement ideas they're talking about.

Also I want to check out oneswitch gaming...but they're not limiting it to one button to be "cool", they seem to have the interests of disabled people in mind.

Poetry of the Moment

O proud left foot, that ventures quick within
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.

Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.
To spin! A wilde release from Heavens yoke.
Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl.

The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt
Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.

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Public Service of the Moment
This is a little warning for my friend Jane. It may have come to late for her, but maybe it will help someone else from a wayward path:

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Literary Bit of the Moment

Is there no rest? No escape? I stumble to the closet and reach in for my salvation. I see it all so clearly now--I'll follow Papa Hemingway to the happy hunting grounds with a one-way ticket on the Lead Bullet Express over Gun Powder Falls through Massive Head Wound Canyon.

So I've kind of "invented" (though it's not very original) a new photo technique. There's probably better technology to help out, it's pretty labor intensive, but it's basically tracing the major contours in a new layer in Paint Shop Pro then using flood fill of a single color from each region. I thought it would help me learn to draw a bit better, but actually it's taught me more about color; for instance, in most pictures, especially those taken inside, caucasion skintone doesn't look like skintone out of the context of the picture.

Anyways, I like how some of these came out.

Hints if you want to try this yourself: learn how to use layers in your paint program. You'll generally want to go for the lightest shade in any given region. I used a 2-pixel solid brush for the lines, though for Mo's head in the final picture, I had to do it with a 1-pixel brush, then retrace. And, as always, work on a larger image, and then shrink it down.

Clockwise from Top:   Me, Post Party Mo, and the Demon Lupschada.

Ocean Grove, New Jersey, November 1999

Quote of the Moment > This was also around the time Congress made > "In God We Trust" the national motto (1956) > and ordered that "In God We Trust" be printed on > all the paper money (1957). (It had been struck > on coins beginning in 1864.) Invoking God in the Pledge of Allegiance is merely an affront to the Constitution. Invoking God on money is an affront to God. I don't mean to harp on this too too much, but when Arab states have the Islamic equialent of that as their motto, it kind of scares me. Link of the Moment Great page with lots and lots and lots of data about and diagrams of skyscrapers!

(2019 UPDATE: I remember, years ago, working really hard so that the skyscraper would seem to be resting on the top of the next entry. That didn't survive the various redesigns, but I've added a black bar to capture some of the effect...) Just in time for the wedding... I'm getting a bad cold! Alright!

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Geekdom of the Moment
You can see the fullsize version onastick.net. It's not quite as random as it may first seem, it's a parody of an image from a game called Warhammer 40,000. It's a tabletop game played with miniatures of high-tech warriors. (Someone even made a few miniatures for the Hello Kitty 40K universe.)

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Poem of the Moment

        At dinner their first night
    He looked at her, her bright green eyes,
          In candlelight.
    They laughed and told the hundred stories,
        And kissed, and went to bed.
          "Shh, shh," she said,
"I want to put my legs around your head."
            Green eyes, green eyes.

        At dawn they sat with coffee
    And smoked another cigarette
          As quietly
    Companionship and eros met
        In conversation's afterplay,
          On their first day,
And late for the work she loved, she drove away.
            Green eyes, green eyes.

(2019 UPDATE: Intriguingly, now when I try and google for this poem, I find it has become a poem "Conversation's Afterplay" which changes from third person to first and second person.)