I’m on vacation in Northern Italy. I had a wonderful Italian moment just minutes after arriving here.
Deplaning in Milan in the pre-dawn cold, we were herded onto buses to take us to the terminal. A dad standing near me went to hold on to a bare metal pole, but jerked his hand away and quietly exclaimed, “Gelato!”
When it comes to being graphically interesting, NYC just can’t help itself.
In a Barnes & Noble in Manhattan, I stumbled upon a category I’d never noticed before mixed in among the Psychology and Personal Growth and Self-Help sections.
A while ago, I mentioned Heinlein’s use of indirect exposition, but then I discovered that Eric S. Raymond (one of the fathers of the free software movement) had already written about this in “SF Words and Prototype Worlds” and “Rudyard Kipling Invented SF!” which points out how Heinlein was influenced by Rudyard Kipling (and which, in turn, references “A Master of our Art: Rudyard Kipling considered as a Science Fiction writer” by Fred Lerner.)
In a related vein, Raymond also wrote an excellent essay called “A Political History of SF“. For the record, it should also be pointed out that Raymond has had problematic views on women, much as Heinlein did.
Did my Generation X cohort arc from earnestness to cynicism? Did this correspond to the arc of U2 from earnestness (pre-Achtung Baby) to cynicism (from the Zoo TV tour on)? Discuss.
Rewatching “Veep” and “The Thick of It”, I think I struck on the aspects of the seasons I like which are absent in the seasons I don’t like nearly as much. Early on, both shows are about people supposedly in power who constantly find themselves powerless. In later seasons, the main characters find themselves out of power and even more powerless. There’s plenty of comedic schadenfreude in the former, but the latter just feels cringey.
When browsing in Chrome I often have Inspect open just because. Visiting a time.com article on climate change, I noticed this comment between the
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A terrible example of the “Golden Gate Bridge swallowed by fog” cliche as shot from the Presidio.
The fog burned off the afternoon, I pushed up my long sleeves, and of course got my forearms sunburned.
For my trip to California, I continued my trend of staying at dive motels converted to boutique motels: Beck’s Motor Lodge in San Francisco and (once again) the Safari Inn in Burbank.
About two-thirds of the way between Stamford and JFK, my driver cryptically asked me, “Do you know if the tide is high?”
I wasn’t sure if I would be shot in the face with a silencer if I answered wrong. My instinct was to reply “Yes, but turning.” Instead I just asked him what the hell he was talking about.
Apparently, when the tide is high, boats are able to flow through the river and the bridge goes up, which would have tacked on another 20 minutes to our drive, or something.
TL;DR need to know the lunar schedule to get to the airport on time.
For the first time in, like, twenty years I’ve learned a brand new HTML tag! In my blog, I’ve always done translations like this…
小河马 (xiǎo hémǎ or “little river horse”)
With the set of <ruby> tags, I could do them like this…
小河马 (“little river horse”)
Not quite LaTeX. But a little closer. I also figured out how to abuse the <ins> tag.
At work, but I suppose more generally in life, my sense is that I instinctively project an equilibrium between levity and gravitas. I’m not sure if other people see me that way.
I enjoyed my first Independence Day in New England by watching fireworks from my balcony and hearing the squawking of startled seabirds.
In the distance, across the Sound, I could also see fireworks up and down Long Island.
My dad loved movies. We never knew what to get him for birthdays or Christmas so we all, independently, seemed to converge on giving him movie tickets and passes. When we sorted through his stuff, we found a cache of unused tickets and gift cards. We divvied them up evenly.
I wanted to see the new Jim Jarmusch movie The Dead Don’t Die but it only seemed to be playing across the border into New York at the AMC in Port Chester. I thought I should probably try and use one the gift cards. This all happened to fall on Father’s Day.
It was all a little overwhelming.
I ended up seeing the movie, but didn’t use any of the gift cards. It was my least favorite Jarmusch in a long time. When I got home, I discovered that it had been playing at The Avon a block from my house the whole time.