misc
Sat Jan 7 20:54:04 EST 2017
This afternoon I went out to shovel the sidewalk. We got a little snow overnight. It's powdery, and sweeping would have worked. Since one of the streets at our corner has been narrowed we have more sidewalk now in front of the house. I don't feel compelled to shovel it all clear; just to make a sufficient path. (It does leave less grass to mow.)
I've just gone through the photos I took in late December and renamed them (by EXIF timestamps) and added descriptions and tags. I also found all the Nov/Dec HDR photos and tagged them. I've been doing a lot of HDR lately. I occasionally use it in daylight, but it does wonderous things to night shots.
Sunday 15:26
anniemal asked about laundry a few days ago - was I running out of bike shorts. I told her I had enough to get through the week, but they needed to be washed this weekend. I've seen no signs of her doing laundry, so I've just done them. And some underwear and socks. And looking in the laundry hamper, there's still clothes there from Pennsic (August), and I'd guess all the t-shirts I've worn for bike commuting since then too.
Sunday 17:49
I saw this link at the end of something I was reading:High Society: In Which David Schmader Converses with a Person and They Are Stoned
I didn't follow the link, but my interpretation is that someone threw rocks at David Schmader and his conversation partner. Or they were both high; that doesn't sound like something worth reading. If only one person was high, it is too easy to say that without abusing "They" to be singular - "A Person Who Is Stoned", "a Stoned Person". If the story reveals a gender for the other person, then the link could just use "She" or "He" - many people will assume "He" anyway, and if it's "She" it becomes more interesting and we're more likely to click. ("They" made me less likely to click.)
Maybe David was talking to a queen or king? I probably would have clicked on a link recounting a conversation with a stoned Queen Elizabeth. But if you've got something that good, your link needs to say so. There's way too many links for me to follow everything I encounter.
Sunday 21:55
How times have changed. I just heard a rebroadcast of Challenge of the Yukon's episode "Escape to the North" (ABC, May 02,1949). That's the show with Sgt Preston of the Royal Canadian Mounties and his lead sled dog Yukon King. The main sponsor was Quaker puffed wheat and puffed rice cereals, and they kept saying it was the cereal that was "fired from guns". Sentiments towards guns have changed since then. And at the end there was an ad for (Ken-L-Ration?) dog food that contains lean, red meat - horsemeat. Eating horses has really gone out of favor since then.
Monday 00:03
Some thoughts about items in the news of late....
Russia hacked into the Democratic Party's computer systems and leaked information to hurt the party in the 2016 elections. Trump is blaming the Party for being hackable. What makes him think the Republican Party's systems weren't hacked as well, but for whatever reasons, the Russians chose not to leak any of that? (Or didn't leak it yet?)
Dylann Roof, the self-declared white supremacist who killed 9 African Americans at a prayer service in Charleston, SC (2015/Jun/17), has rejected his defense lawyers for the sentencing phase of his trial to prevent them introducing information about his mental health as a mitigating factor. He could receive the death penalty for his 33 federal hate-crime convictions. (There is also a state trial pending for 9 counts of murder, 3 counts of attempted murder, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.)
Roof would rather be put to death than be declared mentally ill, deficient, impaired, incompetent, or otherwise compromised. I think that's because it's another one of his prejudices - against anyone mentally handicapped. I think being put into this 2nd group that he hates is among the worst things society can do to him, and this no-more-lawyers manouver is his only tactic to prevent that. (Well, proving himself sane would also work for him, but our society as a whole no longer accepts that sane people go out of their way to slay total strangers in a church.)
I'd love for a genealogist to find some black people in Roof's ancestry. Discovering that he himself is part black would probably destroy his world even more than being judged mentally ill.
Roof's objective was to start a race war. He failed. (Some of his victims and their families have even responded with pity and mercy.) His possible futures now are life in prison and execution. A life sentence leaves him little hope of achieving his race-war goal, so he has no reason to live.
Mon Jan 16 01:16:22 EST 2017
Do you think we'll every see Trump's personal tax filings? Didn't he say he'd release them before the election? Can we believe anything he says? Does he believe anything he says?
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/860216.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]
This afternoon I went out to shovel the sidewalk. We got a little snow overnight. It's powdery, and sweeping would have worked. Since one of the streets at our corner has been narrowed we have more sidewalk now in front of the house. I don't feel compelled to shovel it all clear; just to make a sufficient path. (It does leave less grass to mow.)
I've just gone through the photos I took in late December and renamed them (by EXIF timestamps) and added descriptions and tags. I also found all the Nov/Dec HDR photos and tagged them. I've been doing a lot of HDR lately. I occasionally use it in daylight, but it does wonderous things to night shots.
Sunday 15:26
anniemal asked about laundry a few days ago - was I running out of bike shorts. I told her I had enough to get through the week, but they needed to be washed this weekend. I've seen no signs of her doing laundry, so I've just done them. And some underwear and socks. And looking in the laundry hamper, there's still clothes there from Pennsic (August), and I'd guess all the t-shirts I've worn for bike commuting since then too.
Sunday 17:49
I saw this link at the end of something I was reading:High Society: In Which David Schmader Converses with a Person and They Are Stoned
I didn't follow the link, but my interpretation is that someone threw rocks at David Schmader and his conversation partner. Or they were both high; that doesn't sound like something worth reading. If only one person was high, it is too easy to say that without abusing "They" to be singular - "A Person Who Is Stoned", "a Stoned Person". If the story reveals a gender for the other person, then the link could just use "She" or "He" - many people will assume "He" anyway, and if it's "She" it becomes more interesting and we're more likely to click. ("They" made me less likely to click.)
Maybe David was talking to a queen or king? I probably would have clicked on a link recounting a conversation with a stoned Queen Elizabeth. But if you've got something that good, your link needs to say so. There's way too many links for me to follow everything I encounter.
Sunday 21:55
How times have changed. I just heard a rebroadcast of Challenge of the Yukon's episode "Escape to the North" (ABC, May 02,1949). That's the show with Sgt Preston of the Royal Canadian Mounties and his lead sled dog Yukon King. The main sponsor was Quaker puffed wheat and puffed rice cereals, and they kept saying it was the cereal that was "fired from guns". Sentiments towards guns have changed since then. And at the end there was an ad for (Ken-L-Ration?) dog food that contains lean, red meat - horsemeat. Eating horses has really gone out of favor since then.
Monday 00:03
Some thoughts about items in the news of late....
Russia hacked into the Democratic Party's computer systems and leaked information to hurt the party in the 2016 elections. Trump is blaming the Party for being hackable. What makes him think the Republican Party's systems weren't hacked as well, but for whatever reasons, the Russians chose not to leak any of that? (Or didn't leak it yet?)
Dylann Roof, the self-declared white supremacist who killed 9 African Americans at a prayer service in Charleston, SC (2015/Jun/17), has rejected his defense lawyers for the sentencing phase of his trial to prevent them introducing information about his mental health as a mitigating factor. He could receive the death penalty for his 33 federal hate-crime convictions. (There is also a state trial pending for 9 counts of murder, 3 counts of attempted murder, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.)
Roof would rather be put to death than be declared mentally ill, deficient, impaired, incompetent, or otherwise compromised. I think that's because it's another one of his prejudices - against anyone mentally handicapped. I think being put into this 2nd group that he hates is among the worst things society can do to him, and this no-more-lawyers manouver is his only tactic to prevent that. (Well, proving himself sane would also work for him, but our society as a whole no longer accepts that sane people go out of their way to slay total strangers in a church.)
I'd love for a genealogist to find some black people in Roof's ancestry. Discovering that he himself is part black would probably destroy his world even more than being judged mentally ill.
Roof's objective was to start a race war. He failed. (Some of his victims and their families have even responded with pity and mercy.) His possible futures now are life in prison and execution. A life sentence leaves him little hope of achieving his race-war goal, so he has no reason to live.
Mon Jan 16 01:16:22 EST 2017
Do you think we'll every see Trump's personal tax filings? Didn't he say he'd release them before the election? Can we believe anything he says? Does he believe anything he says?
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/860216.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]