May 6, 2021
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.*
Stacey Abrams Contains Multitudes [ungated link] - "Abrams went on to write seven more Selena Montgomery books (one of which, 'Never Tell', is in development with CBS), as well as two nonfiction works under her own name, while pursuing her day jobs as a tax lawyer, business owner, state lawmaker, candidate for governor and voting-rights advocate, to name a few."
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*that famous Annie Dillard line
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*that famous Annie Dillard line
GIANT TROLLS (no, not of the Internet variety)
This summer, five ginormous monsters are taking up residence at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. "Dambo admits that the stories and concepts he comes up with might be lost on visitors. "It doesn't really matter for me," he says. What matters is that his trolls draw people into nature "to have a good experience there." He also hopes they see that garbage can be turned into something big and beautiful. "I like to think that my art can help change people's perspective from trash being something that has no value to something that has a big value," he says." [more inside]
The Man of the Circular Ruins
An engaging overview of the unusual life of mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, by Luca Signorelli. [more inside]
More Details Than You Could Ever Hope For
Efficiency is the enemy
Why people and organizations need to not look busy "Any time we eliminate slack, we create a build-up of work. DeMarco writes, “As a practical matter, it is impossible to keep everyone in the organization 100 percent busy unless we allow for some buffering at each employee’s desk. That means there is an inbox where work stacks up." [more inside]
"I have literally no say in it."
Overall, the goats did well on this hike.
Thursday, August 20, I got back from a 9 day pack trip with my packgoats. I took Grant, Albert, Bryce and Benson. A charming, vaguely anthropomorphic trail review of a person hiking alone with four goats. [more inside]
it might be some kind of a city, and this is true in part
A
Monotown (monocity, моногород), is a local
community dominated by a single company.
There are a
lot of them.
Their architecture is often striking. [more inside]
Japan and Trump's social media
How a fringe religious movement in Japan built a pro-Trump social media Happy Science has adopted American far-right ideology for its own gain, just like Falun Gong.
Paying the Danegeld
The Slander Industry [slNYT] Two NYT reporters investigate "the secret, symbiotic relationship between those facilitating slander and those getting paid to remove it" by having one of them submit himself to a reputation-wrecking website and seeing where else his face and name popped up, then going to the reputation-repair sites. A follow-up of sorts to this article (earlier on the blue). (Via boingboing).
"Shiplap isn’t a neutral material"
From writer Anne Helen Petersen: “Prophets of Place: Centering Waco in the Shiplap Frontier of Fixer Upper” is truly my platonic ideal of an academic article: deeply interdisciplinary, beautifully written, accessible and rigorous. It’s the work of Ph.D. student Rebecca Lea Potts, and I was thrilled when she agreed to talk more about her route to this work, Texas, her mini-shiplap dissertation, and the sort of Christian music that you JUST KNOW is Christian. [more inside]
Unfortunately the obvious pun is already taken
Golf's Missing Links. John and Marie Llewellyn's website gathers together information about quondam community golf courses, mostly focussed on the late 19th and early 20th century in the UK but with some Irish and a smattering of mainland European courses as well. Each course has a few bits of historical documentation, usually some soothingly trivial contemporary local news reports ("[I]n matches like these the score is not the single object. The home club were, I am told, as hospitable as ever...") and occasionally some interesting accompanying photos. [more inside]
![[I]n matches like these the score is not the single object. The home club were, I am told, as hospitable as ever...](https://www.golfsmissinglinks.co.uk/images/club_graphics/wales/stfagans_1.jpg){kind=link}
Zoom Vroom
Politician's Zoom Background Can't Hide Fact That He's Actually Driving — Andrew Brenner, a state senator in Ohio, is getting some heat for driving while participating in a Zoom call earlier this week. The Ohio Senate is currently taking up a bill that would create additional penalties for distracted driving and a local newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch, pointed out the irony of the situation. But local media aren’t discussing perhaps the funniest aspect of this whole minor scandal: Brenner turned on a virtual background to make it appear like he was at home in his office. And he failed miserably., Gizmodo, Matt Novak, 5/6/2021.
cats and their Muslim humans who just would like some peace and quiet
Muslim prayer rugs tend to be rectangular. Cats love bounded areas. You can see where this is going: "the biggest trial in prayer is not the devil, but cats" [translation from Malay. The thread is mainly in Indonesian and Malay, but I trust the visuals are sufficient]. As the second Ramadan in COVID season swings around, many families have to adapt and commit their taraweeh/terawih prayers at home. Last year, a similar thread went viral, with Muslims sharing their compromise prayer rugs for their kitties.
Muslims really do love felines. Per Dr Stephennie Mulder in her twitter thread: 'Cats hold a revered place in Islam', so much so it was worth commenting on by Europeans during the time of the Ottoman Empire.
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