A transgender anarchist who recently won an un-contested GOP nomination for Sheriff on the platform slogan of “F— the Police” is turning to Go Fund Me to raise funds to fix her recently vandalized car.
Jimmy Carter not only confirmed long suspected rumors that he allowed Willie Nelson to spark one on the roof of the White House but that the president’s son Chip was getting baked with him.
Just in case you were wondering, yes, the Pentagon has a plan just in case there is a zombie apocalypse.
40-year-old Lia Ditton pulled into Waikiki harbor after 86 days rowing solo from San Francisco. She was put up in a suite with a beautiful ocean view but demurely requested a room with a view of the mountains.
Stay safe y’all and see ya later California! By this time next week, I’ll be posting from NYC!
TWTW is a weekly collection of bits and pieces I run across each week while looking after things at SmartNews. Feel free to sign-up to get this via email or forward to a friend.
Hundreds of people assembled at a German church to hear an organ change chords for the first time in nearly seven years. The church is 19 years into performing John Cage’s Organ/ASLSP (As Slow As Possible) and is due to finish the piece in the year 2640.
Looking to differentiate itself from other sushi outfits, one Nagoya proprietor has hit gold by offering macho sushi delivered by body builder trainers temporarily out of work because of gym shutdowns.
While we may not be able to attend a football game in person you’ll be glad to know that you can light some scented candles so you can experience the game in smell-o-rama. Choose from the no description need Jock Strap or $18 Nachos, or Hashtag Field Goals which smells like fresh cut grass.
Another man saw to it that he could stand in a tub filled with ice cubes up to his shoulder for 2 hours and 30 minutes. Afterward he said the sun felt “really great” on his back.
TWTW is a weekly collection of bits and pieces I run across each week while looking after things at SmartNews. Feel free to sign-up to get this via email or forward to a friend.
It’d be easy to say that last week’s orange-colored skies were the final straw that told us it’s time to go but this move has been in the works for awhile and only in the past few weeks has become reality. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
For a couple years Izumi and I planned to sell the house and move once the kids up and left for college. Our house in Alameda is just too big for two people and a small dog and we live on a block too ideal for a family with small kids to keep it to ourselves. The house gained some value over the years as well which will allow us to pay off our children’s college debt.
So when our youngest started at college in August we began to inquire about selling the house. Things progressed rapidly from there and within a few weeks we completed the transaction, contacted the movers, and started the process of unloading years of stuff in preparation for moving into more modest quarters.
George Carlin on stuff
The plan is to move to NYC. SmartNews has an office there and many of our publishing partners are based there so when things start to go back to normal it would make sense to be there. We would also be closer to the kids, who both go to school in Massachusetts, and they were both excited to the prospect of spending vacations in a bustling city.
We leave in a few weeks. Because of COVID restrictions we wanted to limit the amount of flying back and forth looking at places so we’re not sure where we’re living beyond the 30-day furnished apartment we just reserved online. Come to think of it, this is how we moved to Alameda in 2004 and to Finland in 2010 so I guess this is just how we roll.
We’re planning on living in Manhattan. People are fleeing downtown so hopefully that will make it somewhat affordable. We’ll see when we get there. I am optimistic for the future. NYC may be down but I can never imagine it would be out. The spirit of the city is just too strong.
Navigating the nightmarish hellscape that is New York City.
If part of the plan was to keep Izumi busy so she wouldn’t get depressed being an empty-nester than I guess you can say it worked. She’s been a Tasmanian Devil packing what’s important and ruthless about pitching the rest.
I will, of course, miss friends and family (bye Sis!) I leave behind. I came out to the Bay Area in 2004 because no one on the East Coast knew what I was talking about when I ranted about the transformational impact of blogging. I moved here to be around like-minded people and rode that wave to where I am today. Now everyone “blogs” on Facebook. and tech is making moves to set up in NYC anyway.
Thank you to my colleagues at SmartNews for their understanding and support that allowed me to make this move. I should mention we are hiring to find someone to fill my shoes and work on my team in the SF office so please reach out to me if you want to learn more.
Izumi and I were born in Brooklyn so this move is like returning home in some ways. On my last trip to NYC I stayed in Brooklyn and spent the evenings riding a bike around the city looking for my old house. Like salmon swimming upstream, maybe we’re feeling a little nostalgic?
I think I read somewhere that Italians like to say that you should live your life in pursuit of experiences that will make for a good stories. Stay tuned as I have a feeling we’ll get a lot of stories out of this move.
I found an old notebook of scribblings from a two week vacation taken in Paris around 2010. We were wonderfully disconnected from the internet and spent each morning at a museum or gallery and each afternoon on extended walks thru selected neighborhoods. As you can see, I took a grim view of technology when viewed from outside that bubble.
A bit over-dramatic but indulge me.This is what a couple of weeks in Paris will do to you.
The spindled algorithms of our time are optimizing the sinews of humanity. Gnashing life’s great works in the gears of its Engine. These are the dark Satanic Mills of our generation. Spitting out matchsticks of Knowledge that are mere sulfur-tipped flashes of attention-seeking factoids, no longer able to light the pyre of change to our mossy, over-grown minds deadened by years of trackpad-enabled twiddling.
We are addicted to the new of newsfeed but have lost the wisdom of perspective. Supplicants to the superior recall of the internet brain, we slavishly log time on the social treadmill with a thirst to be first for our friends and followers. Dark Times ahead if we continue to blindly submit to the false gods of Real-Time, PageRank and Likes.
Step away from your monitor, stop stroking your little glass-faced friend. Look into your neighbor’s eyes and peer into their soul. Smile to the passing stranger on the street and note them for who they are and how we are all connected. Embrace the warmth and smell of humanity. Live to create, not consume.
At UC Berkeley I took Literature of Philosophy which spent a lot of time debating the meaning of specific words and dissecting them ad infinitum. The final exam consisted of three questions, each one a paragraph long that took up half a page. You only had to answer one question but it took me a good hour to read through and comprehend each question before I could even pick which one I wanted to answer.
While cleaning things out my garage, I ran across an old journal with this passage that made be laugh, it sums up my experience at Cal Berkeley perfectly.
Prof. Banfield introduces Bertrand Russel’s Theory of Knowledge. She uses his example of the table using the table in the classroom for illustration. The table is your typical classroom table, linoleum top, chrome legs, standard academic affair. The class can only visually see three legs and Prof. Banfield posits that there is no proof to say that the fourth leg isn’t a grandly carved walnut late-Elizabethan leg, no proof that it is or is not . . . and to make her point she leans over and puts her weight on the corner. To her surprise, the table collapses and she falls to the ground in an ungraceful heap. The 4th leg was missing.
The entire class was silent, not knowing if we were to laugh or if this was part of her lesson plan. Turns out UC Berkeley facilities just gave Prof. Banfield a bum table. Take that Betrand Russel!
Last week a 3-year old girl was plucked out of the ocean floating on an inflatable winged unicorn. This week another 3-year old girl, this one in Taiwan, was swooped high up into the air when her legs became tangled in the tail end of a kite.
A 53-year old Long Island woman joined a team of gymnasts ranging in ages from 9 to 15 is now winning championships.
Short collection this week – busy on a new project and will share more later! Stay safe everyone!
TWTW is a weekly collection of bits and pieces I run across each week while looking after things at SmartNews. Feel free to sign-up to get this via email, follow on Facebook, or forward to a friend.
In an interview with a level designer for the video game, Last of Us Part 2, we learn that one part of the game took a “solid two years” to build.
Near the end of the interview, Brown asks Hill roughly how long the entire sequence took to build from scratch and perfect. “Pretty much two solid years,” says Hill. “Pretty much the big secret for all Naughty Dog level design is just iteration and work. We have some fundamentals but there were some levels in this game that were redone about 25 times.”
Researchers at University College London redesigned optical cables so they can transmit data at 178 terabits per second. This speed is double the capacity of any system currently used in the world and is able to download the entire Netflix library in just one second.
The Greenland glaciers have melted to “the point of no return” and has gone beyond a tipping point that will bring them back.
A man who lives on his farm in the middle of Narita Airport popped back in the news to report that he, “finds farming easier now with less air traffic disruptions due to Covid-19.”
Hobbies have kicked into overdrive during the pandemic driving up prices of collectibles everywhere, including houseplants. One person bid over $5000 for a single plant, approximately $1300 per leaf.
KFC marketers decided that during a time where we are supposed to avoid touching our faces it might be best to pause the finger lickin’ good slogan. McDonald’s doubled-down and will release a spicy Chicken McNugget.
One particularly dedicated prankster managed to completely mess up the entirety of the Scottish version of Wikipedia. “The sheer size and scope is something to behold: look at virtually any of the 57,000-plus pages and you’ll find a nonsensical mishmash of English and Scots.”
Our diets have all gone to hell so the folks at Lucky Charms have decided to cut to the chase and now sell just the marshmallows. What does, “magically. delicious” mean anyway?
The law finally caught up with a Southern California man who has been posing as a Homeland Security Agent for years. Federal agents grew suspicious when Donovan Nguyen, 34, showed up at a raid wearing full tactical gear and no one knew him.
Can someone get into the Exclusive Website and report back what it’s about? I can only listen to the hold music for so long.
TWTW is a weekly collection of bits and pieces I run across each week while looking after things at SmartNews. Feel free to sign-up to get this via email or forward to a friend.
This story of the night John Lennon met Brian Wilson (of the Beach Boys), told by Alice Cooper is too good not to re-publish.
As told by Alice Cooper:
“I was sitting backstage after the 1974 Grammys with Bernie Taupin (Elton John’s lyricist) and John Lennon. This was when Brian was really having some mental issues. During the course of the conversation, I kept seeing Brian out of the corner of my eye, just kind of staring at us from different angles.”
“Finally, he came up to the table, bent down and whispered in my ear ‘Hey Alice, introduce me to John Lennon.’ I couldn’t BELIEVE that these two men had never met! They were virtually neck and neck in the 60’s as the greatest bands on the planet, and I’m SURE they must have crossed paths at some point. But then I thought to myself, ‘Wow, if they REALLY have never met, I’m going to be the one to introduce them and become a part of rock history!’”
“So I merely said, ‘Brian Wilson, this is John Lennon. John Lennon, this is Brian Wilson.’ Lennon was very cordial and polite, saying things like ‘Hello Brian, I’ve always wanted to meet you. I’ve always admired your work, and Paul and I considered Pet Sounds one of the best albums ever made.’ Brian thanked him and walked away, at which point Lennon went right back to his conversation like nothing had happened.”
“About ten minutes later, Brian came by our table again, leaned down and whispered something to Bernie, and all of a sudden, Bernie was saying ‘Brian Wilson, this is John Lennon. John Lennon, Brian Wilson.’ Lennon was just as cordial and polite as the first time, saying essentially the same thing about always wanting to meet him. As soon as Brian walked away, John looked at both of us and casually said in his typical Liverpudlian accent, ‘I’ve met him hundreds of times. He’s not well, you know.’”
Boston University’s Dean Elmore has the unenviable task of leading BU’s student population safely thru the pandemic. He is normally jolly and approachable and, when you meet him, his love of BU is plainly infectious.
Here he is taking the plunge into the Charles River after challenging at least 2,011 seniors (more than half the class) to donate to the 2011 Class Gift campaign.
But these are different times.
Today, Dean Elmore sent out a letter to the BU students reminding them of their responsibility to their fellow students. His letter was picked up in the local news which is how I found out about it. In it he makes very clear that, “if you host or attend a large off-campus or on-campus gathering, social or party, you will be suspended from Boston University.”
But he balanced his firmness with an aspirational challenge.
Like you, I’ve been cooped up and, sometimes, felt alone. That’s why I am excited to get reacquainted with my peoples – especially since they are close and not always on a screen. However, in seeing my friends, I’ve incorporated a lot more planning in my socializing to be more thoughtful, less hapless and more diligent about thinking about others. Our actions have consequences. We have got to use our collective power to maintain an environment where we can all live and learn. To succeed, we have to work together.
As places of learning and innovation, colleges and universities will have to learn to live together during this pandemic. Students will create a culture and society that will works for them in our “new normal” and teach the rest of us how to go forward.
