Cool graphic of Lake Baikal and the Great Lakes

I don't remember if I've ever featured the Great Lakes profile (right portion of the graphic) in TYWKIWDBI before.  Redditor u/buak added in Lake Baikal for comparison.  There are various inaccurate aspects, but the overall depiction of relative depth and elevation are interesting.

From the discussion thread at the MapPorn subreddit, I learned that Baikal is home to some of the world's only freshwater seals:

The Saimaa ringed seal (Pusa hispida saimensis) is a subspecies of ringed seal (Pusa hispida). They are among the most endangered seals in the world, having a total population of only about 390 individuals. The only existing population of these seals is found in Lake Saimaa, Finland (hence the name). They have lived in complete isolation from other ringed seal species for around 9,500 years and have diverged into a morphologically and ecologically different subspecies of ringed seal.

American neo-Nazis reorganizing

As reported in The Guardian:

The year and a half since the Unite the Right far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, ended in mayhem, the death of a protester and political turmoil, has been a rough time for the public facing and ostensibly political arm of the white supremacist movement in America. Those who marched in Charlottesville have to a large degree retreated, fleeing lawsuits, doxxing and personal scandal. Still, while public marches appear to be fewer and fewer, the period since Charlottesville has also been marred by individual episodes of extreme violence, suggesting that the wave of white supremacy that seemed to crest in Charlottesville is not so much receding as just changing in nature...

“It’s clearly gathering steam,” said JM Berger, an expert on extremism and research scholar at Vox-Pol. “Success breeds success, and we’re seeing people operationalize the self-education process. People are beginning to understand that they can emulate the actions of someone who went before them to work out whatever they want to work out.”

This certainty that evil forces are working against Trump has become prevalent within the far right, breeding conspiracies such as QAnon, which posits Trump is fighting a “deep state” conspiracy that seeks to thwart his patriotic agenda. As such, Trump plays a dual role within the world of rightwing violence: while a “sympathetic” administration can spur a rise in violence, the perceived persecution of Trump – in large part an image created by the president himself – can fuel the paranoid and violent fantasies of people like Hasson.

Both ideas can breed violence, especially if Trump is defeated in the 2020 elections...

Coupled with increased frustration by the limitations of political engagement comes the rise of more terroristic groups such as Atomwaffen Division, a militant neo-Nazi group linked to several murders. They and others have brought a less hierarchical and more disorderly structure to white supremacist activism, which makes them both harder to track and to control. Known as “leaderless resistance”, it has been a tactic of white supremacists for decades and lead to events such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, but has been made exponentially easier by the internet.

“Leaderless resistance totally changes recruitment strategy,” said Belew.

“No longer is the movement trying to generate a mass protest of uniformed members. This movement isn’t interested in a crowd but in a dedicated cell of 12 people that are going to devote their lives to guerrilla warfare.”..

What remains an almost certainty is that Hasson is not alone in his desire to commit atrocities for white supremacist objectives. Others are still out there: armed, dangerous and plotting. Some will likely turn their thoughts into actions.

“My guess is that there are thousands like him,” said Belew. “These people are ideologically connected and preparing similar acts of violence.”

More at the link, if you want to totally ruin your day.

Teacher goes the extra mile

To foster a love of reading, elementary educators tell their students to read a book at night, or have someone read to them. One principal in Texas has made it personal: She snuggles into a pair of pajamas and reads to her students herself.

“I don’t know if they are read to or not at home,” said Belinda George, 42, a first-year principal at Homer Drive Elementary in Beaumont, in Southeast Texas.

George, often in a cozy onesie, opens Facebook Live on her phone each Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. As she reads a children’s book in her living room, anyone who goes to the school’s Facebook page can watch live. She calls it “Tucked-in Tuesdays,” and it’s become somewhat of a sensation at her school...

George said 94 percent of her students come from economically disadvantaged homes, and last year’s literacy tests showed that an average of just 55 percent of her third-, fourth- and fifth-graders were reading on or above grade level.

More at The Washington Post.

"... there are some juveniles involved in the fatality situation..."

I heard that phrase while listening this morning to television coverage of the outbreak of tornados in Alabama.  Public officials often revert to a special cant when speaking publicly, and I fully understand that for law enforcement officials in particular there are legal constraints on what they can say and how they phrase their announcements.

But this one seems particularly convoluted.  "Some juveniles involved in the fatality situation" translates to "some children/juveniles* died" or "some children were killed."   Why can't the statement be offered in the simpler form?  Is it considered too harsh for the ears of the public?

I'm not trying to be coy or sassy here - just don't understand if "being involved in a fatality situation" is standard for some reason, or was this just one person's concoction?

* apparently a child is defined as under age 14, and a juvenile as age 14-17

"Overton window" explained

The Overton window is the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse, also known as the window of discourse. The term is named after political scientist Joseph P. Overton, who claimed that an idea's political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within a range acceptable to the public, rather than on politicians' individual preferences. According to Overton, the window contains the range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office in the current climate of public opinion...

The Overton window is an approach to identifying which ideas define the domain of acceptability within a democracy's possible governmental policies. Proponents of policies outside the window seek to convince or persuade the public in order to move and/or expand the window. Proponents of current policies, or similar ones, within the window seek to convince people that policies outside it should be deemed unacceptable.  [cf also Hallin's spheres]

I had to look up the term (it was unfamiliar to me), because it was featured in a Rolling Stone interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  Herewith some excerpts:

But do you court the controversy? Are you trying to engage in a dialogue where you are going toe-to-toe with Trump?I do think that we’ve been taking it too much. I think we’ve been tolerating the intolerable. And I remember, you know, just being a constituent, like, “Where’s the fight back on some of these issues?” What the president is trying to do is undermine truth itself. Just because I’m pushing back on reporters calling women unlikable doesn’t mean that I think their outlet itself is “fake.” There’s a huge difference between checking a narrative and checking an actual institution. That’s how you get climate deniers being treated just as seriously as venerable scientists.

Would you vote to impeach Trump?Yeah. No question. No question. I don’t even know why it’s controversial. I mean, OK, it’s not that I don’t know why it’s controversial. I understand that some people come from very tough districts where their constituents are torn. But for me and my community in the Bronx and Queens, it’s easy.

You have only been here about a week or so, but have you had any conversations with Republicans about why they stick by him?Well, in the Republican Party, there’s a hostage situation going on. There are a lot of Republicans that know what the right thing to do is — not just on impeachment but on a wide range of issues — and they refuse to speak up.

Because it would be political suicide.Because to them, yeah, they can’t do it. To me, it’s an unacceptable position, because we’re not in the realm of politics anymore. These are not questions of politics. These are questions of society. These are questions of equal treatment. These are questions of civil rights.

Wouldn’t you rather have Republicans in office who know what the right thing is behind closed doors versus those people speaking up and losing their seats to people who are truly in agreement with Trump?The problem is that if they vote the same way, what does it matter? I don’t care what’s in your heart if how you are voting is the same as someone who is actually racist. At the end of the day, they think that their intentions are gonna save them, but the actual decisions you make matter. I am tired of people saying, “I’m gonna vote the same way as bigots, but I don’t share the ideology of bigots.” Well, you share the action and the agenda of bigots. We need to hold that accountable.

How much of what you’re talking about is trying to move the Overton window [the range of ideas accepted in public discourse] so that Democrats can compete with the way Republicans have moved it?A huge part of my agenda is to move the Overton window, because it’s a strategic position. I’m a first-term freshman in an institution that works by seniority. Procedurally, it is kind of like high school. You’re the new kid on the block. So, as a freshman, you have to look at the tools available to you, and in my first term, if we have the opportunity to frame the debate, then that is one of the ways to have the most power. If I’m here for four days, then the most powerful thing I can do is to create a national debate on marginal tax rates on the rich.

Do you worry that [Pelosi]’s been in politics so long that she will be too quick to compromise?I do think that as a party we compromise too much. I don’t think it’s necessarily all on her, because she can only push as much as she can coalition-build. That’s why I see a special responsibility in my role in kind of shifting the conversation, so that all the members feel a little bit more pressure, because we’re amplifying what voters already feel. I was running in a district that was deep blue, and the representation that we were getting was not as progressive as the actual electorate. When [congresspeople] start feeling more of that conversation coming from their districts, they’ll have more liberty to move, which will then give the speaker more liberty to compromise less and push harder. Especially when it comes to the environment, but also on a wide range of issues.

Do you worry about splintering the party, this idea that you’re not just trolling Republicans, you’re also trolling Democrats? You’re doing all kinds of trolling! [Laughs]Well, I don’t worry about splintering the party, but as I’ve said in the past, we can’t just be a party of the most basic rights. It shouldn’t be a political statement to say we should all be treated equally. The fact that that is partisan upsets me. I believe that both parties need to be on the same page when it comes to racial justice, queer rights, marriage equality, all of it. These should not be partisan issues, they should be universal rights. And so we need to champion those things, but we need to go a lot further. Especially when it comes to expanding our rights to economic dignity.

What do you think you know that the old guard doesn’t?One of the things that I bring to the table is a visceral understanding that people under 40 have been shaped by an entirely different set of events. We’ve literally grown up in different Americas. They were shaped by a Cold War America, a post-World War II America; and we are an Iraq War America, a 9/11 America, a hyper-capitalism-has-never-worked-for-us, Great Recession America. People are used to talking about millennials as if we’re teenagers. We’re in our thirties now. We’re raising kids and getting married and having families, and we have mortgages and student-loan debt. It’s important that [Congress is] in touch. People tend to interpret this as me railing against older people and being ageist. But that’s not what this is about. It’s a problem of representation. We don’t have enough intergenerational representation. We largely have one generation. That’s not to say that one generation should be out of power, it’s that others should be here as well.

Do you still have student-loan debt?Of course I do, yeah! I’m 29 years old.

Do you worry that in pushing the Democratic Party more left, you’re only going to polarize the country more?I think it’s wrong to say that what I’m proposing is polarizing the country. What we are seeing now is a ruling class of corporations and a very small elite that have captured government. The Koch brothers own every Republican in the Senate. They own ’em. They don’t cast a vote unless their sugar daddies tell ’em what to do. But 70 percent of Americans believe in Medicare for all. Ninety percent of Americans believe we need to get money out of politics. Eighty-something [percent] believe that climate change is a real, systemic and urgent problem. Sixty-seven percent of Americans believe that immigrants are a positive force in the United States of America. I believe that I’m fighting for the American consensus.

Via Boing-Boing, which described her as "tearing the Overton window out of its frame."

The more I read about this lady the more I like her.  I found this in a HuffPost column yesterday:

One advantage Ocasio-Cortez has over some colleagues is that she consistently attends even the most mundane committee hearings, since she does not spend any of her day calling donors for money. Her online presence is strong enough that she has chosen to rely on it exclusively to raise contributions in smaller increments.

I realize the readership of TYWKIWDBI is diverse (and worldwide, often not interested in U.S. politics), so I think it's only fair that I start treating AOC the way I do Trump - sequestering the bulk (tho not all) of relevant posts to intermittent clusters that can be browsed by those interested, and ignored by those opposed.  I have posted a half-dozen Trump Clumps.  So now I'll start aggregating the AOC material into "AOC potpourris."  And Bernie Sanders too (if I can come up with a good term for those clusters...)

Another source for Shakespeare's writing

As reported by the New York Times:

For years scholars have debated what inspired William Shakespeare’s writings. Now, with the help of software typically used by professors to nab cheating students, two writers have discovered an unpublished manuscript they believe the Bard of Avon consulted to write “King Lear,” “Macbeth,” “Richard III,” “Henry V” and seven other plays.

The news has caused Shakespeareans to sit up and take notice. “If it proves to be what they say it is, it is a once-in-a-generation — or several generations — find,” said Michael Witmore, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.

The findings were made by Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter, who describe them in a book to be published next week by the academic press D. S. Brewer and the British Library. The authors are not suggesting that Shakespeare plagiarized but rather that he read and was inspired by a manuscript titled “A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels,” written in the late 1500s by George North, a minor figure in the court of Queen Elizabeth, who served as an ambassador to Sweden...

The book contends that Shakespeare not only uses the same words as North, but often uses them in scenes about similar themes, and even the same historical characters. In another passage, North uses six terms for dogs, from the noble mastiff to the lowly cur and “trundle-tail,” to argue that just as dogs exist in a natural hierarchy, so do humans. Shakespeare uses essentially the same list of dogs to make similar points in “King Lear” and “Macbeth.”..

In 1576, North was living at Kirtling Hall near Cambridge, England, the estate of Baron Roger North. It was here, Mr. McCarthy says, that he wrote his manuscript, at the same time Thomas North was there possibly working on his translation of Plutarch.

The manuscript is a diatribe against rebels, arguing that all rebellions against a monarch are unjust and doomed to fail. While Shakespeare had a more ambiguous position on rebellion, Mr. McCarthy said he clearly mined North’s treatise for themes and characters.

I think it's essential to note that George North's writings were not published and thus would not have been available to Shakespeare from a public library.  This was a handwritten manuscript

kept in an aristocratic household of someone in Queen Elizabeth's court.  It's hard to imagine the manuscript getting into the hands of a Stratfordian son of a glovemaker and farmer's daughter.  It would not, however, have been inaccessible to Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.

Related: The "signature" of Judith Quiney, nee Shakespeare.

"No rational person would do this" to an apartment door

I could have saved this for two weeks from now, but I'm planning a blogcation then.  Via the funny subreddit.

70-car accident on Iowa interstate highway

YouTube link

This past week there was a 130-vehicle accident here in Wisconsin.  Same conditions -  whiteout weather from snow and/or windy "ground blizzard," plus idiotic driving.

Note that just pulling the car onto the shoulder was not a satisfactory escape mechanism for drivers encountering the pileup.  Some drivers fled on foot as far as possible.

The video is 14 minutes in duration, but not much substantive happens after the first 6:00.

A tip for used-book buyers

I recently decided just for fun to browse a group of books about Edward Gorey, and discovered that in addition to the books written and illustrated by him, there are lots of books by other authors for which he designed the cover.  One writer noted that Gorey enthusiasts like to prowl used-book stores looking for the ones for which he provided illustrations or covers.

So my next step was to get this book from our library:

It turns out there are an abundance of such books, some with "instantly-recognizable Gorey" covers, but more with images that are stylistically related and recognizable, once you familiarize yourself with his work.

There are way too many book covers for me to even attempt embedding here.  The one at the top of this post struck my eye, because it was the cover of a textbook I was assigned to read for my first course in American Literature in college in the 1960s.  Sadly, I recycled that book decades ago, but the cover was unforgettable.

Might this knowledge be useful in some pecuniary way?  Apparently so.  I searched eBay for "Gorey cover" in the "books" section and saw some offered at ridiculous prices.  Then I clicked on "sold" and was surprised to see some of the prices realized.  In my experience, selling books on eBay is largely a futile effort because to sell your precious coffee-table art book you have to compete with sellers offering the same for $3 plus free shipping.

But these Gorey-illustrated books might be worth looking for.  If you can't locate the book shown above, browse this page of results of a Google Image search for "Gorey covers" to familiarize yourself with what to look for.

Additional information from an old Guardian article:

Yet, understandably, less attention is devoted today to the 200-plus illustrated paperback covers and hardcover jackets that Chicago-born, Harvard-educated Gorey (known to his friends as Ted) created while working as a staff artist, art director, editor and freelance illustrator at various American publishing houses for a large portion of his career. In two brief sentences, his obituary tossed aside this impressive output: “After graduation he remained in Boston, illustrating book jackets. Then he went to New York and worked in the art department at Doubleday, staying late in the office to create his own books.”...

Gorey’s covers and jackets were not done anonymously or as mere throwaways, as many others were. Nor was this a strategic compromise until he found and embraced his true calling. Today, this body of work exemplifies his unique contribution to a truly exceptional era of graphic design when book covers and jackets became an innovative genre honoured by exhibitions and awards.

Related:
The correspondence of Edward Gorey
The bizarre humor of Edward Gorey
Selections from "Gashlycrumb Tinies" - updated

Eagle tracked for 20 years

Apparently a Steppe Eagle.  Via the MapPorn subreddit.

Atlantic salmon, farmed in Wisconsin

YouTube link

"[Just] up the hill from an abandoned schoolhouse in the rolling hills of west central Wisconsin about 33 miles southeast of Eau Claire, 3,000 to 4,000 pounds of salmon are harvested each week and 1.5 million pounds of leafy greens each year. And it’s all being sold to grocers, restaurants and wholesalers within a 400-mile radius of Jackson County...

A 3-acre greenhouse, nearly twice the length of a football field, glows purple from its more than 1,100 LED grow lights — a sight that turns the heads of passing motorists on Interstate 94 at night. The lights, with cloud-based software, help mimic California’s Salinas Valley.

Next door, the North Atlantic Ocean is replicated in a one-acre fish house. Thousands of Atlantic salmon, some newly hatched from eggs sourced in Iceland, others nearly 10 pounds after two years, are raised in 22,000-gallon tanks filled with fresh water drawn from a 180-foot-deep well...

With millions of dollars in financial backing from Todd Wanek, the CEO of Ashley Furniture, and his wife, Karen, this is where a team of experts schooled in the minutiae of aquaculture and hydroponics uses water from the fish rearing process to grow vegetables year round on floating mats. It’s all certified organic with no pesticides, growth hormones or other additives."

"Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics. Water in which fish are raised is then used to fill greenhouse tanks to grow plants. The fish waste provides nutrients for the plants, and the water recirculates between the tanks...

Salmon are raised in water that is about 39 degrees. The nutrient-rich water is then pumped to the neighboring greenhouse where the water is allowed to warm naturally to around 75 degrees and can be used to grow baby red leaf lettuce from seed to harvest in 18 to 24 days...

Like hydroponics, aquaponics systems require less land and water than conventional crop production methods, increase growth rates and allow for year-round production... The projects, which use no surface water and emphasize cleanliness including bio-security measures to prevent contamination of crops, are designed to decrease transportation costs and provide locally sourced food...

The Superior Fresh system, which includes about 850,000 gallons of water in the greenhouse, has interior and exterior weather stations that talk to each other and open and close roof vents to help regulate temperatures. On a recent day, with temperatures outside in the mid-20s, the greenhouse temperature was 76 degrees. During the polar vortex, interior temperatures dropped to the upper 50s..."

More details and pix at the Wisconsin State Journal.

Immense courage. North Carolina, 1956.

Dorothy Counts, whose nickname was Dot, was dropped off on her first day of school by her father Herman Count along with their family friend Edwin Thompkins. As their car was blocked from going closer to the front entrance, Edwin offered to escort Counts to the front of the school while her father parked the car. As Counts got out of the car to head down the hill, her father told her, "Hold your head high." The harassment started when the wife of John Z. Warlick, an officer of the White Citizens Council, urged the boys to "keep her out" and at the same time, implored the girls to spit on her, saying, "spit on her, girls, spit on her."

Another video of falling dominoes

YouTube link.

This one shows some truly innovative variations.

One small request to makers of videos like this.  Listening to the sound of falling dominos is interesting and relaxing.  If you feel compelled for some odd reason to add in a musical accompaniment, please choose one that doesn't repeat itself every 15 effing seconds.  Thank you.

Via Neatorama.

How much snow can the roof of your home tolerate?

This extraordinary winter has created much anxiety among homeowners worried about whether their roof can withstand the weight of the snow.  When should you worry?  I had to look it up, and found the answer in Reuben Saltzman's excellent Home Inspector column at the StarTribune (I highly recommend that homeowners bookmark and browse his home inspection blog).

For southern Minnesota, the building code stipulates load-bearing of snow by the roof of 35 pounds per square foot.  But... as anyone who has ever shoveled snow understands, there is a world of difference between light fluffy snow that falls when temps are near zero and the heavy wet snow that falls when the temps are closer to freezing.  The table embedded above sorts this out,

Water weighs 62 pounds/cubic foot, ice just a little less.  Heavy and light snow are shown in the first two columns (from 1/3 the weight of water to 1/20th); this is obviously a continuum, but the two numbers shown are useful to make the point.

The bottom part of the chart translates the numbers into snow depth.  If a roof was built to withstand 20 pounds per square foot, it would be at risk with a foot of heavy wet snow, but can handle over 6 feet of light dry snow.

It gets more complicated, because as snow remains on a roof, it becomes progressively more compact, and note that the tolerance for ice is way less than for snow.

In point of fact, residential roofs rarely collapse from snow.  But here in Wisconsin this week there have been reports of barn roofs and outbuilding roofs on farms collapsing, because building standards for those structures are less rigorous.

And a bigger problem than roof collapse is water penetration from ice dams.

This is a "duck"

The photo shows the Kamil Gulec Library in Turkey - its exterior designed to resemble a shelf of books (there is a similarly-designed library in Kansas City, Missouri).

Today I learned that there is a term for this sort of contrivance -

"Robert Venturi coined the term. He saw a building, literally in the shape and appearance of a Duck and coined the term from there. Buildings that are intended to look like 'things' are therefore referred to as 'Ducks'."

The Longaberger office building comes immediately to mind.  There must be many others.