View of a small inlet on the Columbia River, Washington side. Railroad embankment on the right, butte on the left. At center a man stands on the boat ramp. Two people are on the dock.
Camped on the Columbia, osprey eating a salmon a few feet away. Billions of blackbirds. Freight trains. Cool fresh air. Sturgeon cruising.
Although as a Patricia Briggs fan, I did somewhat expect an eldritch Thing coming to feed.
Yeah. Not that we actually engage in diplomacy any more, current gummint seems very likely to outsource defense along with everything else. Wagner worked out so well for everybody, especially Prime Client who didn't have to pay the final bill.
CHUNKY and now I want a Chunky but with dark chocolate
9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.
Points 9, 18 and 19 go after accountability directly. Scrutiny of public figures gets reframed as a kind of cultural sickness driving talent away from public life. The problem becomes the people doing the scrutinising, not the people being scrutinised.
humans are the secondary audience for this document
Didn't Wossisface take Venezuelan oil?
At my (off-date) birthday party, the children gave me and my husband plastic sandwich bags with ice cubes in them.
To clue us in that they are buying us a new cooler.
I blame their father for the cryptic delivery method, he likes to mess with their little minds. Always has.
:)
We had dinner last night at Akadi in Portland and it was, again, superlative.
Three kinds of wings, fantastic lentil samosas, jolof with goat, vegetarian shosho, and mafe with chicken. Phenomenal cocktails. Great staff, diverse customers.
www.akadipdx.com
I was hanging out with printing nerds today, many of whom are library and archives people & therefore super nerds. One was rapt over The Edge of Space-Time and was utterly gleeful that "SHE'S COMING TO PORTLAND!!" @chanda.blacksky.app
<snort> We still get travelers killed because they are stranded on logging roads with no cell service. Nature doesn't care that you meant to be prepared.
ABSOLUTELY.
Minute Maid orange juice was invented in conjunction with space experimentation, how to feed astronauts, how nutrition is affected by vacuum and freezing. Which led to TV dinners & frozen vegetables. That was in the '50s, before manned launches!
Yup. When there was any NASA event, every kid in the school went to the auditorium to see it happen. Eventually they would roll TVs into the classrooms instead. National attention, always.
I went to Huntsville a few years ago. Magnificent stuff.
spelunking=horror
A cardboard box, with three rows of brass type matrices. Each piece can produce one letter or one character, in a specific typeface, in one size. Each matrix is a slice of metal about an inch wide, an inch & a half tall, and just thick enough for the character.
Sorting of two boxes full of matrices, from one type face, completed. I sorted into wooden racks. The left rack holds all the capital letters; the right holds the lower-case letters plus numbers, punctuation, and some decorative pieces. "Lower case" is actually a printing term. Capital letters were kept in an upper rack or case; what we call lower case were stored in a lower rack.
A Linotype machine, invented by Mergenthaler. The operator touches keys and the matrices for the letters, spaces, punctuation and other characters drop down into a line. Then the machine casts the type, and then the matrices move back up to the top of the machine and get automatically sorted back into place. Amazing. Then the type gets put together, line by line, put in a page frame, and then it goes off to the printing press.
I found a secret message in the order of the matrices I was sorting. Mostly there were batches of capital Ws, for example, with some random items mixed in. Suddenly, a batch read "DUES PAID."
Spent the day at the C. C. Stern Type Foundry, sorting & inventorying type matrices. They have Monotype & Linotype, so can cast type one character at a time, or a line at a time. Brilliant technology.
Watching the descent & crying. I remember John Glenn & all the capsules splashing down. It's so important that we get our heads out of our navels and do space science.
Fund NASA.
I remember it. My dad served on a sub in WW2, went on sea trials out of Portsmouth on his boat, and was absolutely gutted. We lived nearby. Terrible tragedy.
Read this. Excellent story of a local politician, Laurie Trieger, and her fierce & eloquent response to an entitled male asshole.
app.lookouteugene-springfield.com/story/263246...
A reminder— for most of the trump-vance era: vast majority of stuff you’ve read about or heard about re: the administration’s mass detention & mass deportation regime? The stuff that appalls you? Gotta keep in mind almost all of it you didn’t see live-streamed. The horrors go on behind closed doors…
The Thompson Elk Statue is back in downtown Portland. A community celebration and official unveiling is set for this Sunday from 1pm-4pm.
I also know/know of many indigenous groups who have successfully used drones and drone-collected data to protect their land and their interests, so, well, it’s complicated. I wrote this back in 2015:
www.slate.com/articles/tec...
Excellent work, well done!
Honestly still in shock by its placement, but my article (and job talk paper), “Indigenous Constitutionalism,” is officially out in the Harvard Law Review. A brief thread on this project🧵
harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-13...
Boy is a policy wonk, lives for Lawfare, and is not easily impressed. He was very impressed that the City and Eugene Police Dept put all recent hires through this solid grounding, & articulated the responsibility to work to serve BIPOC people better.
Sometimes humanity gets it right.
Boy reports he went to a City training on "Belonging" which turned out to be an EXCELLENT day about systematic racism, about the history of race-based economic manipulation, and the powerful effects on how govt is viewed by BIPOC folks. And how to offset that legacy.
My healthcare provider sent a home test. I managed the clean catch no problem. Then I tried to collect a blood sample. Used up both their lancets, used two of my own. Could NOT get five drops of blood out of my fingers. Dehydrated & low pressure.
But FIVE DROPS. Fail. Sigh.
Yesterday I went through all my art supplies and packed up two bags to donate to a local nonprofit. I spent hours swatching watercolors to rearrange my travel palette for Zumwald.
OH: "Some artists manage to work in black and white."
He's Terribly Helpful.
