An awesome view of the downtown area, looking toward the northwest, with the Mississippi River on the right and the Guthrie Theater in the center of the image. Map. Found in the Stuff about Minneapolis tumblr; photo credit Will Wright.
22 September 2023
"The Song of Lunch"
I found this old (2010) DVD in our library. It is one of the best things I've watched all year. Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman at the top of their game in a brief (45-minute) sketch designed to fill a slot on BBC TV in recognition of National Poetry Month. Visually, it's full of tight shots that make you feel like you are watching the two actors on a London stage from a front-row seat. The ending is a bit "odd" IMHO, but the best aspect is the minimal dialogue with an extended voice-over reminiscent of the writing of T. S. Eliot.
Addendum: streaming now on Amazon Prime.
Women want pockets
A growing movement decrying the lack of proper pockets in women’s clothing has begun to find disciples in the world of high fashion, as well as among mainstream chains...It is even possible, she suggests, that the true “age of the pocket” has now arrived, because everything necessary for daily life has become so small. Cash is of limited use, and address books, diaries and maps are all dead. Phones, and perhaps a lipstick, a key or a comb, are really all a woman needs, and this might mean we are not lumbered with bags any more...“Part of it is just laziness. It’s easier not to design pockets if they are not expected.” Although women’s outerwear has generally improved, fashion designers continue to argue that a pocket ruins the line of a dress... “There are no pockets in girls’ dresses, despite the fact they are not bothered about the line of their clothes. There are still areas where it’s all very retrograde.”..A popular Instagram account GCS, or Girls Carrying Shit, displays images of women who are forced to carry their possessions ("after thousands of years without pockets, non-men have evolved a superior grip to carry their shit.)
Excerpted from an article at The Guardian.
The "Carta Marina"
A visually interesting map from the 16th century. Readers with a Scandinavian heritage may be interested in drilling down to some of the details.
Found at a New York Times article about how whale-hunting may have driven some species to extinction as early as the medieval era.
When your odometer hits 122,667...
... you will need to reset your trip to 000.0 in order to have this satisfaction later.
Image cropped for size from the original at Bored Panda, where I also found this mathematical curiosity:
And the observation that if you die in the same hospital where you were born, your lifetime average velocity will be zero.
Extreme mountain biking captured by drone video
"Dive into the hardest mountain bike race through the eyes of an intense FPV drone shot. The @dutchdronegods followed Kade Edwards down the Red Bull Hardline downhill mountain bike race track, a tough trail that twists down the steep slopes of the Dyfi valley in Wales. It's known as the most difficult mountain bike race course in the world, and just getting down it on two wheels is hard, but to capture it in a single shot drone flight presents a different kind of challenge."
16 September 2023
World Central Kitchen is in Morocco
In early September, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake shook communities all across Morocco’s mountainous center. The earthquake is the hardest to hit Morocco in over a century, sending people all across the country’s central region running for safety. Striking late at night as many families were already asleep, the quake killed more than 2,900 people and injured countless more.WCK’s Relief Team was on the ground within hours of the temblor, using any means necessary to reach the hardest hit areas to provide immediate support. First arriving in Marrakech, our Relief Team is using helicopters and 4x4 vehicles to identify hard-hit communities spread across the region. WCK teams have established a kitchen to prepare hot meals in addition to working with local organizations cooking. This is a quickly evolving situation and we continue to traverse the impacted region to find pockets of need.WCK is first to the frontlines, providing meals in response to humanitarian, climate, and community crises. When disaster strikes, WCK’s Relief Team mobilizes to the frontlines with the urgency of now to start cooking and provide meals to people in need. By partnering with organizations on the ground and activating a network of local restaurants, food trucks, or emergency kitchens, WCK serves comforting meals to survivors of disasters quickly and effectively. We know that good food provides not only nourishment, but also comfort and hope, especially in times of crisis.
I made another donation today. You can do so at this link. I know of no better way to provide assistance from afar to people whose lives are ruined through no fault of their own. More information about World Central Kitchen here and here, including comments from readers of TYWKIWDBI.
Here are a couple photos from a gallery at The Atlantic:
E-mail harvesting in public schools
When I was a student in primary school, we did some fundraising for our yearbook by selling magazine subscriptions. For homecoming football games there were button sales, car washes, concession stands, etc. Apparently nowadays, students are conned into collecting email addresses...
It started Tuesday with an urgent email barrage... from the 5th and 6th grade principal who told parents they needed to send a “Please Donate” message to 10 email addresses so our child would ‘Win’ a prize that could be a piece of plastic, another piece of plastic or some other piece of plastic.All we have to do is send out those 10 email addresses, via the fundraising site, which is run by some fundraising company subsidiary that has a mailing address that tracks to a mailbox at a UPS store in a suburban Colorado strip mall.Seems legit. Or not.10 emails, no obligation to donate, the principal’s email read. The funds raised go to the school! Parents do not learn how much of the cut the strip mall mailbox company earns off the donated money.So sell out the grandparents, the aunts, the uncles, etc. so this company with a mailbox at a UPS store will then have tens of thousands of emails at their disposal. What does the company do with the emails? I work on the Internet, I can make a guess.
There are some Facebook responses but no other details at Outkick. Is this common?
Theater surveillance of the audience
The image embedded above is a screencap from a video in a Newsweek article documenting Lauren Boebert vaping in a performing arts theater.
What is interesting to me is not the misbehavior, but the fact that the video is clearly from an infrared monitor aimed at the audience. I suppose it is not surprising that this occurs, but I hadn't realized it is routinely done in some movie theaters. Apparently the screening room, along with the lobby and corridors etc is considered public space where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. You learn something every day.
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