I can’t get enough of this video. Symmetry. Simultaneity. Rocket ships. Very cool.
Check it out.
Category / Cool Things
new default category
#tbt What’s your blues name?
Just call me Bad Boy Jailhouse Washington, at least that’s my name according to a chart that’s floating around Facebook lately.
Here it is:
So what’s your blues name?
My first Amazon order
It’s a thing. On the internet. People have been posting about their very first order on Amazon. Looks like I bought an audio book as a gift for my father eighteen years ago. Reminds me how much I enjoyed Ed McBain’s novels of the 87th Precinct. He wrote dozens of them. Though McBain—which was a pseudonym for Evan Hunter (which was a legal name change, as McBain/Hunter was born Salvatore Albert Lombino)— may also be just as well known for writing the novel Blackboard Jungle, which was made into the 1955 film.
‘Spiritual Puppy Cosplay Kills Cancer’
This is making the rounds on the Internet. Anyone know the source?
‘Spiritual Puppy Cosplay Kills Cancer’ is based on my workphone.
For my landline and my cellphone I get these stories:
- “Holistic Yoga Vibrators Is as Magical as it Sounds”
- “Holistic Vegan Shaming Is the New Feminist Battle Against Trump”
What did you get?
2017 Year in Review in Podcasts
A new podcast for me this year, and for everyone, is Pod Save America, the podcast created by former speechwriters in President Obama’s administration. It acts as a tonic or a resistance in the Trump era. It seems to be a successful rallying cry so far for people who are disillusioned at the current government. It is one of the most popular podcasts now. They are even taking the show on the road. It is released twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, which is a little too much for me. I enjoy the Monday ones the best, probably because the hosts are Jon Lovett and Tommy Vietor, in addition to Jon Favreau, who I think do a better job than for the Thursday show when it is just Favreau and Dan Pfieffer. Favreau is usually in the role of setting things up, kind of the straight man, so it is stronger when there are two people playing off him instead of one (and Pfeiffer does have a hesitating way of speaking that isn’t great for audio). Also, as the show develops further, they have to find a way of better integrating the guest interviews with the introductory news punditry round-up: too often they steal the thunder from their guests, and so why listen to their guests?
You can find the podcast here: https://crooked.com/podcast-series/pod-save-america/
Meanwhile, Russia has made a gun-totin’ robot
The question is: Can it shoot and move? (Doesn’t appear so.)
I don’t think this is how memory works
Or is it? What if your phone alerted you every time a new memory was stored in your mind? Or are memories only embedded in things outside us?
Discuss
A short history of Twitter
2006: The first tweet: just setting up my twttr
2007: Twitter finds users: Everyone at SXSW is doing it, and now #hashtags
2008: Barack Obama blows up Twitter: #YesWeCan
2009: Finding followers becomes a thing followuback #ff fun
2010: One of the most popular accounts becomes @shitmydadsays (it later becomes a short-live sitcom starring William Shatner)
2011: Political activism found a voice in #ArabSpring
2012: Clickbait tweets arrive and you won’t believe what happens next (remember seeing tweets like this? They’ve all but disappeared)
2013: Twitter adds photos, and the #Oreo Cookie Superbowl power outage may have been the greatest of the year
2014: Then came Ellen Degeneres and the famous #OscarSelfie
2015: #LoveWins
2016: Remember when people thought 2016 was the worst year EVAH!
2017: We don’t need 280 characters to say “WE’RE ALL DOOMED!!!”
13 things about my Lolo, Col. Maximiano Saqui Janairo, for Veterans Day
This is my Lolo, Maximiano Saqui Janairo, in a studio photo taken in Manila around 1930, when he was about 24 or 25 years old. On his lapel, you can see the castle emblem of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Note the shoulder patch — the gold carabao on a red field — the symbol of the Philippine Scouts.
Here’s a photo of my Lolo, Maximiano Saqui Janairo.
- 1930 graduate of U.S. Military Academy at West Point
- Commission in the Philippine Scouts
- Chief engineer with the Philippine Army in 1941
- Captured by the Japanese in April 1942
- Survived the Bataan Death March
- Prisoner of War in Camp O’Donnell
- Escaped while being transferred to a hospital for malaria and dysentery
- Joined the guerrilla units fighting the Japanese occupation
- Served in Korea during the Korean War
- Served with NATO in Paris
- Retired as a colonel, stationed at the engineer school at Fort Belvoir
- Awarded Legion of Merit “for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services to the Government of the United States from 8 December 1941 to 9 April 1942”
- Buried at Arlington National Cemetery
