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Life in the Cracks Day (reprint)
From the National Days website: The Festival of Life in the Cracks Day on March 10 celebrates the sprouting of greenery in the cracks of sidewalks and walls to commemorate the coming of springtime. This annual event acknowledges the complexity of the cycle of life and how renewal and rebirth are integral parts of it.…
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Positive signs from the neighborhood (redated)
Jan 13, 2026: For 20 years a vacant apartment building was the worst thing in the neighborhood, constantly squatted and constantly visited by cops who weren’t allowed to do anything. This situation was NOT understandable. The property was owned by an LLC who could afford to fix things if they wanted to. In 2017 the…
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Earbird 2
Taking out the trash this morning, I brushed against the overgrown windbreak. As usual, thought I should try to trim it back. Suddenly noticed I was face to face with a TINY bird in the branches. He didn’t seem bothered by the closeness, just continued walking along the branch. TINY: less than two inches long…
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Is it the Silk Road?
I’ve been wondering why China hasn’t responded to our evil attacks on Venezuela and Persia, two of China’s biggest suppliers. Possible answer from Lile Mo, who is writing a long series of explainers on China’s complex strategy. The internal parts are identical to the New Deal as narrated by Lilienthal of the TVA. The external…
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Same old shit
Via Spokesman-Review: The DEA proudly announced a huge drug seizure in the Kennewick area. The ringleader had set up a network with residences in several cities and salesmen all over the place. He was not only a repeat offender, he was on probation after early release from a previous huge drug trafficking sentence. As fucking…
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FBIOS
Max Blumenthal tells the latest chapter in a very old story. FBI has been creating “terrorists” since 1908. The branding of “terrorists” changes over time, rotating from Communist to German to Islamic to Christian Nationalist. Other brands appear briefly, but these are the old repeated favorites. Communist is the solid default. Blumenthal traces the latest…
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Self-answering question
While I was editing the previous item, WordPress blocked part of the editing area with a ChatGPT popup: “What can we do to improve your WordPress experience?” Answered: “Don’t interrupt me with popups like this!” = = = = = More broadly, people might be less annoyed by AI if it actually improved our experience.…
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Should call it an earbird
Most people call an inner musical repeater an earworm. I call it my mental jukebox. It has a few old scratchy records that the drunk at the bar tiresomely plays every night, plus a much wider row of records that play spontaneously for no obvious reason. Some of these records drop onto the turntable after…
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Worse than Altman’s eyeball
Noticed via New Scientist, which properly considered it as a candidate for the next Ig-Nobels. You thought Altman’s soul-stealing Eyeball was intrusive? How about a new industry devoted to wearable fart detectors? The fartup sees an oppootunity in the well-known hianus of infartmation. Most people aren’t aware of their actual fartquency**, either under or overstating…
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Moore’s Law? No, Less’s Law.
I’ve always figured my own income tax. A long time ago when I had a circle of friends, I often figured taxes for friends because I enjoyed the work. Now I hate it. Why did I enjoy it then and hate it now? Easy. Paper vs computer. Even for a relatively simple situation, tax involves…
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What’s the real diff?
Via NiemanLab, this is a good piece of reporting on a sneaky and obscure part of the tech world. A company called Clickout Media is acquiring many of the sites that write about videogaming. After it acquires a site, Clickout turns it into a front for bitcoin and gambling. Clickout’s specialty has a revealing name:…
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ChatGPT is a blonde.
Some people are having fun testing the limits of AI. ChatGPT has tremendous emotional intelligence but low math and logic skills. In other words it’s more female than male, the classic airhead blonde. No wonder lonely men are treating it as a girlfriend.
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Trying for resonance
We’re running two aggressive pointless wars right now. Both are repeats. We’ve invaded or colorrevolutioned Venezuela many times, and we’ve done the same to Persia at least three times. We never gain any advantage from our aggressive evil wars, we just kill a bunch of people who NEVER ATTACKED OR THREATENED US. Tessa writes a…
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Show, don’t tell.
If you want to sell a product or a religion you have to SHOW the product, not just tell us to buy it. Churches quote the New Testament and then viciously reject lonely and poor people. In 2020 the Democrats talked “resistance” and then lethally assisted Trump’s torture chamber, continuing it for two years after…
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Placebo vs tiredness?
NewScientist covers some recent experiments on sleep, indicating that our internal measurement of restedness is loose and flexible. When we’re convinced that we got good sleep, we feel awake and we perform better. When we’re convinced that we missed sleep, we feel tired and we lose sharpness. This experiment is clever, using a technique popular…
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