Here is my third triptych of the week, a series of views of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The top one is at sunrise, taken from the Place de la Concorde looking west. The middle one is the same but taken later in the day. The bottom one is midafternoon, taken from La Défense ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"
I read a piece in the Washington Post last night about a couple who took their baby to the ER and subsequently had both their kids taken away by Child Protective Services. Why? Because an X-ray on the kid in the ER showed a healed fracture on his rib cage, which is taken as all ...continue reading "Raw data: Child maltreatment in the United States"
In the same piece about Facebook and wokeness that I wrote about earlier, Matt Yglesias talks about the initial vision of Vox: One of the things that a lot of us old-time blogger types are good at is writing a lot of words across a broad range of subjects....And we thought this was scalable — ...continue reading "Great bloggers are rare, weird, and not team players"
During the early and mid-aughts, I heard endlessly about the power of Facebook over the news industry. But I was working remotely in Southern California and the Mother Jones newsroom was in northern California, so I heard about it only at a remove. (Plus what I read about it, of course.) My takeaway was that ...continue reading "How do you solve a problem like Facebook?"
Here is tonight's occultation of Mars. You can see Mars in the upper right just exiting the occultation. Viewing conditions here in Southern California were ideal: cold, clear, and bright. Unfortunately, I forgot all about it until my sister called around 7:15 pm. But I realized I still had time to get downstairs and see ...continue reading "Mars is occulted but survives"
Over at Vox they're writing about "A Crisis on American Roads." Part 1 is mostly about a mother whose daughter was killed in a crosswalk in Washington DC by the driver of a van. The rest of the piece claims that the increase in vans and big SUVs is responsible for our recent increase in ...continue reading "Our skyrocketing pedestrian death rate remains a mystery. Maybe."
Last week a restaurant in Virginia refused service to a group called the Family Foundation, which opposes gay marriage and abortion rights: “We have always refused service to anyone for making our staff uncomfortable or unsafe and this was the driving force behind our decision,” read an Instagram post from Metzger Bar and Butchery....“Many of ...continue reading "A quick Wednesday roundup"
Today I have another triptych for you. Tomorrow too. This one is an homage to Orange County's tallest skyscrapers, the twin towers of the Irvine Spectrum. They break the tape measure at 20 stories and 323 feet, outclassing the tallest buildings in such California cities as Fresno, Bakersfield, and San Jose.
The comment section has been overwhelmed with spam lately, so I've added a new spam filter. In addition to Akismet, I'm now running Anti-Spam Bee. We'll see how that goes for a day or two and then reevaluate.
"What does ChatGPT mean for _______ ?" You can fill in the blank with law, news writing, college essays, or a million other things. Generally speaking, though, the answer is nothing. I mean no disrespect to the remarkable output of ChatGPT, but Bob Carpenter gets it right: I’m getting that same uneasy feeling I felt ...continue reading "ChatGPT is coming for your job. And I do mean your."
Today Democrats won a 51st Senate seat and the Trump Organization was found guilty of tax fraud. That's a pretty good day! I wonder what Wednesday will bring?
The book is Valley of the Dolls. The year is 1945. Theatrical attorney Henry Bellamy wants his secretary to find an apartment for a younger colleague returning from the war: "Anne will come up with something," Henry insisted. "Try for the East Side. Living room, bedroom, bath, and kitchen, furnished, around a hundred and fifty ...continue reading "How much does a one-bedroom apartment on the East Side cost?"
Chris Hayes thinks we've all calmed down a bit this year: There are *some* ways of measuring this. For instance I'm curious what airline data says about number of disruptive passenger incidents this year v last year. — Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) December 6, 2022 I am officially bored today, so here are the numbers: The ...continue reading "We are slowly calming down on airline flights"
Another admission from the ex-president, who apparently thinks he can take government records because of something to do with @BillClinton’s cat (who denied any wrongdoing) pic.twitter.com/raF0t1NhBA — Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) December 6, 2022
Would you like to take your mind off Twitter and our worries about how they're destroying free speech in America? Then read about India instead, and its last big independent television station: Some Indian observers say that the impending hostile takeover by Gautam Adani, the third richest man in the world, of what in 1998 ...continue reading "Free speech is all but dead . . . in India"
A couple of days ago Jonathan Turley wrote in the New York Post about the big ol' Twitter scandal. Here's a smattering of language from his column: infamous censorship program . . . silence critics . . . hoax . . . biased and even criminal conduct . . . back channel . . . ...continue reading "James Baker, shadowy puppetmaster for the liberal Deep State"
Annie Lowrey has a fascinating short piece in the Atlantic that I missed when it first appeared last month. The subject is our national housing shortage, which various experts tell her is around 4-7 million homes. But then she immediately makes a sensible comment: None of the estimates capture what I’ve come to think of ...continue reading "How many new housing units do we need?"
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