Blogcation

The Madison (Wisconsin) public library system is outstanding.  I have been a user (and supporter) since arriving in town over 25 years ago.   I routinely monitor the new acquisitions list and place requests.  When you are 27th or 83rd on the wait list there is no way to know when the book will arrive on your shelf at your local branch.  

This week I hit the jackpot.  Suddenly multiple requests were fulfilled all at once.  Foucault's Pendulum is an "old" (1980s) book by the author of The Name of the Rose, and has been called "the thinking man's Da Vinci Code.  Flesh won the Booker Prize for 2025.  Savage Peace; Hope and Fear in America, 1919 is a scholarly study of the post-WWI era in the United States when our society was under surprising and serious stress.  The Overstory, by the author of Playground, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Pulitzer.

Two thousand pages to read.  I'm not a speed-reader because I take notes for possible blogging.  Since there are people waiting for several of these, I need to say good-bye to you guys for a week or more.  There is one room in our house that gets bright sunshine on winter afternoons, and if the cats will let me share it I will spend my time there rather than doomscrolling the internet.  I'll just have to hope that nothing important happens in the coming week.

Photo of the day

A sika deer with the severed head of a rival male that died in their battle skewered on its antler.  Photograph: Kohei Nagira/Wildlife Photographer of the Year.  Via The Guardian.

I find my self wondering how the impaled head became severed from the rest of the carcass.  Almost certainy not from the battle per se.  Did the victor have to drag the carcass around as he grazed until the flesh rotted, or did wolves perhaps scavenge the dead body up top the neck?

Addendum: found the answer in The Atlantic, which also posted the photo: "A local fisherman says the deer dragged the whole body for several days before finally tearing off its head."  Maybe he was able to stomp the neck area with his hooves.  (p.s. - both links have a bunch of excellent wildlife photos)

"Couple flirting on a fire escape" (1946)

Stanley Kubrick: Couple Flirting on a Fire Escape, Park Benches - Love is Everywhere series, 1946

Until I encountered this photo on Miss Folly, I didn't realize that Stanley Kubrick was a photographer before he was a filmmaker. 

Parents are refusing Vitamin K for newborns

"For most of his 10 years as a neonatologist, Dr. Timmy Ho encountered one or two parents per week who didn’t want their newborns to receive a vitamin K injection, a standard step to prevent bleeding.  Recently, in just one week, he saw three or four per day — numbers, he said, that were becoming more common.

One of the babies suffered a type of bleeding in the brain that vitamin K could have prevented, said Dr. Ho, who practices in Boston. He had never seen that before.

Vitamin K plays a crucial role in blood clotting but doesn’t pass to the baby through the placenta effectively, and there isn’t much of it in breast milk. Infants are deficient in it until they can eat solid foods. This can lead to bleeding, from minor oozing from the umbilical cord to potentially life-threatening gastrointestinal or brain hemorrhages.

One injection immediately after birth is very effective at fixing the deficiency, and it has been routinely administered in the United States for more than 60 years.

Now, the shot appears to have been swept up in broader anti-vaccine sentiment, even though it isn’t a vaccine..."

The story continues at The New York Times.

Guttation

I have no doubt I've seen this on plants and assumed it was deposition to dew from the atmosphere.

Guttation is the exudation of drops of internal liquid out of the tips or edges of leaves of some vascular plants, and also a number of fungi... 

At night, transpiration usually does not occur, because most plants have their stomata closed. When there is a high soil moisture level, water will enter plant roots, because the water potential of the roots is lower than in the soil solution. The water will accumulate in the plant, creating a slight root pressure. The root pressure forces some water to exude through special leaf tip or edge structures called hydathodes or water glands. Root pressure provides the impetus for this flow, rather than transpirational pull. Guttation is most noticeable when transpiration is suppressed and the relative humidity is high, such as during the night...

Guttation droplets are consumed by numerous insects of different orders, and is an important and highly reliable source of essential carbohydrates and proteins. Unlike nectar, guttation droplets are present in an ecosystem during the entire growing season.

But note...

Girolami et al. (2009) found that guttation drops from corn plants germinated from neonicotinoid-coated seeds could contain amounts of insecticide consistently higher than 10 mg/L, and up to 200 mg/L for the neonicotinoid imidacloprid. Concentrations this high are near those of active ingredients applied in field sprays for pest control and sometimes even higher. It was found that when bees consume guttation drops collected from plants grown from neonicotinoid-coated seeds, they die within a few minutes

Etymology from the Latin gutta for "a drop," and hence its incorporation into the medical term "guttate psoriasis":

"Gutter" is also derived from gutta, after passing through French and Middle English.  Found the word while doing a crossword puzzle.  You learn something every day.

LED color temperature infographic

Found at Wirecutter (with discussion); saved because I keep forgetting and need to look this up.

"Journey to the West"

I recently read an interesting review of The Monkey and the Monk (Univ Chicago Press, 2006) and found a copy in our library system.  The book is an abridgement (to 500 pages!) of the 16th century Ming dynasty novel Journey to the West.

It is regarded as one of the great Chinese novels, and has been described as arguably the most popular literary work in East Asia. It was widely known in English-speaking countries through the British scholar Arthur Waley's 1942 abridged translation Monkey. It is a progenitor to the Xianxia literary genre that combines martial arts with high fantasy in Ancient China.

The novel is a fictionalized and fantastic account of the pilgrimage of the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang, who went on a 19-year journey to India in the 7th century AD to seek out and collect Buddhist scriptures...

Journey to the West has strong roots in Chinese folk religion, Chinese mythology, Chinese Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoist and Buddhist folklore, and the pantheon of Taoist immortals and Buddhist bodhisattvas are still reflective of certain Chinese religious attitudes today, while being the inspiration of many modern manhwa, manhua, manga and anime series. Enduringly popular, the novel is simultaneously a comic adventure, a satire of Chinese bureaucracy, a source of spiritual reflection, and a rich allegory.

I have no doubt that this book would be an interesting read, but at my age the requisite time commitment becomes a formidable obstacle, and I've reluctantly turned the book back in.

But I do want to save (and share) the opening two pages:

And I'll retype some passages from the scans to make the keywords searchable:

"Before Chaos divided, Heaven tangled with Earth;

Formless and void - this, no human had seen.  

But when Pa Gu broke up the nebula,

Clearing began, the turbid parted from the pure.

Humaneness supreme enfolding every life

Enlightens all things that they become good..."

The text then makes mention of "cyclic time" - a fascinating concept offering echoes of perhaps the Mayan worldview?  Also that "in the order of Heaven and Earth, a single period consisted of 129,600 years."

I am fascinated by "origin stories" that peoples have created to explain the existence of the cosmos, earth, and humans.  In this classic oriental tale...

"At the end of the epoch of Xu, Heaven and Earth were obscure and all things were indistinct.  With the passing of 5,400 years, the beginning of Hai was the epoch of darkness.  This moment was named Chaos, because there were neither human beings nor the two spheres.."

Then the creation process continues.  The firmament acquires a foundation, then "the light rose up to form the sun, the moon, the stars, and the Heavenly bodies."  The earth becomes more firm, and "during the Yin epoch humans, beasts, and fowls came into being..."  Then the world is divided into four great continents...

To me this is fascinating stuff.  I am immediately reminded of the Babylonian concepts of the great depths of time and of course of the Mesoamerican Long Count.

Lady Macbeth

A painting by Charles Soubre (1877).  Judging by the items on the bedside table, I thought maybe this is where she returned the knife to the King Duncan's bedside, but the way she is holding her wrist makes me think this is the sleepwalking scene from the fifth act and she is looking for a place to wash her hands.

Via Miss Folly

"The Coster's Mansion" sheet music cover (1899)

The image will enlarge with a click, but the text is still small, so I'll enter the text of the chorus here:

"If yer wants to see me dining-room or step into me parlour,

     Or me orfice where I contracts all my biz;

If yer wants to see me bedroom, or the place we calls the larder,

    Why, you've only got to stop just where you is."

"Coster" is a shortened version of "costermonger."

This was one of the final images posted by Miss Folly, back in 2014.

A visual history of Mexico City (1300 to now)

This video absolutely blew me away.  I had known from very casual reading that Mexico City originally developed in an area of wetlands, but to "see" the process in timelapse is eye-opening.  I posted a Chicago timelapse earlier this morning.  Go to History Revived to access other similar videos.

Two images of an extrajudicial killing

Hats off to the Minnesota Star Tribune for posting this pair of images side-by-side.  I had seen the photo on the right and wanted to use it for the blog because of the extraordinary clarity of the image, but couldn't find a source to explain how such high resolution could be generated by citizen cellphone cameras.  The Star Tribune explains:

A widely shared image of federal agents surrounding ICU nurse Alex Pretti as one agent holds a gun to the back of his head appears as real as it does horrific.

But a closer look at the photo reveals a headless agent. Such bodily distortion is a red flag that an image used artificial intelligence. In this case, AI enhanced a low-quality screenshot of a bystander video, digital forensic experts said.

It’s the latest altered imagery from Minneapolis to make the rounds online during the federal government’s immigration enforcement surge. Other digitally manipulated images circulated after Renee Good’s killing by a federal agent. The White House also shared a fake image of activist and attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, edited to make it appear that she was crying during her recent arrest for disrupting a church service. Video from the arrest showed there were no tears.

AI-enhanced and manipulated images are a new obstacle in the court of public opinion. Their proliferation online is eroding trust and inflaming divisions...

The AI image of Pretti’s killing is more nuanced than many, Farid said, because it combines something real with hallucinated elements.

In court, the edited image would never be admissible as evidence. But in the court of public opinion, an image that is based in truth but fabricated can make for difficult debates.

If someone calls out a friend for sharing the AI-generated image of Pretti and says, “This is fake,” for example, someone can argue that the person is siding with federal agents when really the person is only pointing out the image is digitally altered...

“The real poison here is not AI, it’s social media,” he said. “AI is just supercharging it. But if people could make these fake images and fake videos and there was no delivery mechanism, I mean, honestly, who cares? The problem is not the content itself. The problem is that these social media platforms eagerly absorb it and amplify it because it’s good for business.”..

At the very least, he advises people to slow down, think critically and look closely at images before spreading misinformation. He said images are made in an instant, often to provoke strong reactions and sow discord.

This article makes important points and should be shared widely.  The top right image will be labeled "fake" to imply altered facts, but the manipulation was done for visual clarity.  The photo of Nekima Levy's arrest was changed to present an alternate reality:

When I first saw it I assumed it was being distributed by a right-wing rag; I was deeply disappointed (but not surprised) that it came from a White House source.

We live in difficult times where visual (and auditory) information can be skillfully manipulated in an effort to manipulate our understanding.  Be careful out there.

Note:  Please limit your comments on this post to the use of artificial intelligence, not on the Alex Pretti killing per se.

"Attention span" problems viewing movies

Excerpts from an interesting essay in The Atlantic:

Everyone knows it’s hard to get college students to do the reading—remember books? But the attention-span crisis is not limited to the written word. Professors are now finding that they can’t even get film students—film students—to sit through movies. “I used to think, If homework is watching a movie, that is the best homework ever,” Craig Erpelding, a film professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me. “But students will not do it.”

I heard similar observations from 20 film-studies professors around the country. They told me that over the past decade, and particularly since the pandemic, students have struggled to pay attention to feature-length films. Malcolm Turvey, the founding director of Tufts University’s Film and Media Studies Program, officially bans electronics during film screenings. Enforcing the ban is another matter: About half the class ends up looking furtively at their phones...

At Indiana University, where Erpelding worked until 2024, professors could track whether students watched films on the campus’s internal streaming platform. Fewer than 50 percent would even start the movies, he said, and only about 20 percent made it to the end. (Recall that these are students who chose to take a film class.) Even when students stream the entire film, it’s not clear how closely they watch it. Some are surely folding laundry or scrolling Instagram, or both, while the movie plays...

In a multiple-choice question on a recent final exam, Jeff Smith, a film professor at UW Madison, asked what happens at the end of the Truffaut film Jules and Jim. More than half of the class picked one of the wrong options, saying that characters hide from the Nazis (the film takes place during World War I) or get drunk with Ernest Hemingway (who does not appear in the movie).

There's more at the link, of course.  I disagree with the suggestion that the inattentiveness is related to "cellphone addiction" or social media withdrawal anxiety.  Another powerful factor is the need to efficiently make use of one's time.

I am a cinema enthusiast, as evidenced by having two subsections of TYWKIWDBI dedicated to "movies" and "video-movies."  But I watch all my movies and streaming series on recordings rather than live.  I want to have the ability to stop the movie, freeze-frame for details, rewind to view for second or third times, and yes to fast-forward through the boring bits.  IMHO life is too short to do otherwise.

The same applies to sports.  A football game with 1 hour of game clock time may require 3 hours of viewing live on television (or at the stadium).  I can view all the content (including highlight repeats) by fast-forwarding a recording.

Timelapse of the development of Chicago

I have lots of concerns re AI, but I have to grudgingly admit that it can generate some absolutely awesome images and videos.  More re the concerns later, but first this embed of Chicago from 1870 to the present.  History Revived has lots of these.  I'll definitely do the Mexico City one later.  

"Daddy, what does 'petulant' mean?"

Perhaps we can illustrate the concept with an example.  The message above expresses a new domestic economic policy presented to the world via social media.  Newsweek looked into this matter:

Newsweek has contacted the White House and Transport Canada, which is responsible for Canadian certification, for comment via email. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) declined to comment, referring questions to the White House.  It is the responsibility of the FAA to certify planes in the United States. The FAA can revoke aircraft certification if it is no longer in an airworthy condition, according to its website, but it remains unclear if it can do so for economic reasons...

John Gradek, who teaches aviation management at McGill University, told Newsweek that it is unprecedented for a government to cancel the certification of an aircraft for trade reasons.

He said: "Such action is typically used to ground aircraft that have been deemed unsafe to operate by the regulatory bodies. This action by President Trump is purely for commercial reasons, that Gulfstream would like to reduce competition for its Gulfstream- series general aviation aircraft by eliminating Bombardier Global Express aircraft from sales in the U.S. In his zeal to further protect the U.S. aircraft market, his stated intention to decertify all Canadian-built aircraft will have a significant impact on the domestic U.S. air travel market. There are over 1,000 Canadian-built commercial passenger aircraft in operation on any given day, a not insignificant number that would severely curtail services to/from regional airports throughout the U.S."

The CBC reports that that this new "policy" is already being walked back: "A White House official told Reuters that Trump was not suggesting decertifying Canadian-built planes currently ⁠in operation."

I hope that example illustrates the word for you, sweetheart.  You can get more information from the Wiktionary, which defines 'petulant' as "childishly irritable" with synonyms bad-tempered, crabby, grouchy, huffy.   All of those would be relevant.   

Weather hell on the East Coast

When I started TYWKIWDBI in 2007, the first post indicated that the purpose was "to compile for the amusement of my friends an eclectic collection of gleanings from the internet..."  That's still the case, so this post today goes out to my schoolmates from the class of 1964.  

I've been exchanging emails recently with Pete W, who for education and career reasons became an expat from Minnesota and now lives in Roanoke, Virginia, near the foothills of the Appalachians.  I thought his comments the other day were informative:

"As far as our weather, I told the man who came to clear our relatively short driveway and spent FIVE hours doing only 70% of it, "I'm from Minnesota and I have never seen anything like this."

Saturday night past we had four inches of snow. Sunday at 1:00 we started 17 consecutive hours of freezing rain. End result was 4+ inches of frozen solid ice anchored to the sidewalks, streets, driveways, and ground everywhere. I've said for many years that 1/2 inch of ice is worse than a foot of snow, but this was 4 full inches of frozen solid (not just the top) ice. My yard is so slick it's truly like a skating rink that has just been Zambonied!  We are still digging out. No mail delivery until we clear access to our mailboxes, and today -- finally after 5 days -- I was able to pickaxe out that ice. Flat out brutal, and being a Gopher was of no use. Amazing. Schools still closed, of course, since buses can't go anywhere."

Apparently more bad weather is heading that way.  Just an FYI to classmates.