Beaver

A Latvian dressed as a beaver, rapping in French and English...

Of course I am posting this.

Wuster

The NYT Magazine has an interesting write up on the city/town of Worcester, Mass posted up.

I don't really know anything about the place, beyond the bits gleaned from a couple of coworkers who grew up there.
Sounds like your typical middle American, middle class kind a place...
Which now struggles because we've fairly well crippled growth in those kinda places.

You may not care at all about Worcester or anything going on there.
If you want some decent story telling with a side of economic insights, it's a good read...

Link here.

Framing

Pretty great.
This is audio from a BBC report on one of the Kim's birthday bashes, in North Korea...
Laid on top of video from the Queen's recent similar event.


Kinda emphasizes the need to consider what the motives of your information sources are.
Why are the framing a story one way, or another.
What context in the narrative...


Why am I showing this to you?

Hockney

Well, I have always been a fan of David Hockney.


He has a show soon at the Pace Gallery on work he did five or six years ago in Yosemite...
The Yosemite Suite, as he calls it.


What fascinates me about this is that all of the work was created on an iPad.
Just drawings on an electronic device.

He had to scale gesture on the screen, as this work has been been printed with fairly large dimensions.


I think this advent of technology presents interesting progress and challenges, as a medium.


Anyway, gallery and artist info here...

Tiger Tuesday

Recipes

Do you have those recipes that stick with you, but are usually in the back of your head?

You know, the ones you've made before, liked, tweaked, varied, made again and forget about for a while...
Only to have them show up and wow you again.


My sister shared one with me years ago and we made it together, after a day of market wandering.
(I will spare you my version, it is a lot like this one, by Mark Bitterman,)
The sister version involved whitefish, if I remember correctly.  Maybe that was just there on the plate, along with the pasta, now that I think about it...

Anyway, I made a variation of this over the weekend.
Pretty close to the linked recipe, plus some clams...
It's clam city here, so steaming some Littlenecks off in a bit of veggie broth and butter, then putting that ocean brine broth in the bottom of a bowl with everything else on top - well, it was not bad.


Maybe this post is about sharing recipes or time with others, cooking or something else entirely...

I don't know.

Sherpa

This seems like a reason to sit down in front of the television...


On Discovery, tomorrow, if I am not mistaken.

Growth

How about a vaguely dull article about economic stuff?
That's always fun, right...

I often puzzle over the subject of investor demand for continuous growth.  Sure, it's something that can be fairly easily quantified and then understood.

The demands in imposes are seemingly unsustainable, long term.  Beyond that, is it really and effective measuring tool across models?

This caught my eye, in The Atlantic-

I’ve consulted to multiple Fortune 100 CEOs who have actually broken down in tears as they’ve recounted selling their companies’ few productive assets in order to show growth to shareholders. They are tired of cannibalizing their own businesses, laying off loyal employees, and making their companies less enduring just to satisfy the demands of short-term growth imposed by the market.

Not saying we should institute quarterly pity parties for CEO's, or anything.  There is more to the article than this snippet.  Read it if you want...

Here is a link to the whole article...

Really

Can we lay off the kale bit sometime soon?


I mean, I get it.
It's a healthy green.
It is good for you.


But, you know, just eat the kale and enjoy if for all it's kaleness or whatever.

Let's just stop putting kale in random other things.



Seriously, how much kale goodness are you getting after it's pulped and pumped between chocolate chips and baked in a goddamned cookie?

Yeah

I don't know how I feel about this, but I am posting it anyway...

Details

That is a tidy bit of shovel, there...

Food Trends

Farm to table, if you haven't been someplace that touts that as their restaurant mantra...
Well, you probably need to get out more.


I can't nail down when the trend started or boomed, exactly.
It was bandied about as far back as my time in Seattle...
So fifteen years it has been a catchphrase, maybe?
Still going strong, hell chain restaurants toss it on menus these days.

A friend who now teaches culinary pointed out a great read on the subject (from Tampa but applicable everywhere).

This is a story we are all being fed. A story about overalls, rich soil and John Deere tractors scattering broods of busy chickens. A story about healthy animals living happy lives, heirloom tomatoes hanging heavy and earnest artisans rolling wheels of cheese into aging caves nearby.

More often than not, those things are fairy tales...

Here is a link to the full article.

A longish read, but if you care about what goes in your pie hole probably worth it...

Circles

Ambiance

I really like what you have done with the lighting in here...



It really set the mood.

Baloney

Pretty light week here, when it comes to posts that give you something to think about, I know...

Really, I have other stuff to do.
So, anyway...


How about a link to a bit about Carl Sagan's bullshit detection list?
I mean, I would guess he has heard as much bullshit as most of us...

(Excepting regular Fox news viewers.)

So his rules for cutting through the crap should be pretty good, huh?


Give it a read, full chapter here...

Resurgence

What?
A new Godzilla movie?


That is some summer movie fun, right there...

Which I'll never see on a big screen, because it doesn't feature the acting skills of Matthew Broderick or whatever.

Scoot

That is a cool scooter.





Yes, I just typed about a scooter being cool.
For reals, I actually meant it.

Cool scooter...

Late

Of course this song/video mash happened.
Of course.


Really, though, launching a rocket into space, then landing it on a tiny barge...
That's pretty heavy duty science stuff, right there.

Meat Box Monday

Really?
Five?


So, beef, pork, chicken...

What then?

Fish.  Maybe gator?
Venison, maybe?


I mean, I will try most anything, but not from just anyplace.
That place seems a bit suspect, on the exotic meat front...

Lize

Hear Me Out

Listen, I have always had a bit of a futurist streak in me.

For years, hell, decades even, we have had some random folks working on the whole flying car thing.
All that time, we've heard how many problems it would solve and how liberating it would be and so on...

Honestly, I can't believe we haven't sorted it out yet...
Always thought it would be great, zooming around in my personal air-car like some Jetsons character.

C'mon, admit it, it would be super cool.
Deep down, you probably want one too...


But the other day, I came to a realization...
I am willing to suspend the flying car pipe dream.  Just give up that bit of the grand future, for one thing.


Self-folding laundry.


Think about that, would you...


I mean, we've got all these nano materials in the works.
We already have metals that can be crushed and return to their original state, you know, now and shit.

Could we redirect whatever energy we currently dedicate to flying fucking cars and get a fitted bed sheet that would fold itself?

Please?

Swing

That is a room with a swing in it...



Just consider that.



I venture we would be happier, as a civilization, if we prioritized more access to adult sized swings in our accommodations/living spaces.


If you don't believe me on that, you probably need to go put your ass on a swing for a few minutes...

Then report back to me.

Reason and Morality

Here is a fun little chat on reason and morality...


I have been flipping the grand concept of morality around in my brain for some time.
You know, along the lines of Kant and his bit.
The categorical imperative we all face, if that is even a thing...
(Just nod like you have any care about what I am getting after.)


The release of the Panama Papers provides an interesting abstraction to wonder about the whole concept, doesn't it?
Was it a moral obligation that led to the leak, or some other motive, do you suppose?
The breadth and depth of the information suggests an extended exposure to the information and implications.
Was it reason or moral obligation that pushed those details in front of our eyes?

The fall out is already pretty epic, with Iceland's PM already bailing out of office.


I got on this line of pondering morality a while ago...
The start of the Syrian refugee crisis had me haggling with somebody that, as fellow humans, we have a moral obligation to assist these people fleeing for fear, for lack of base human needs.
That is a fairly simple thought to me, but not to some others.  It seemed fear motivated their urge to ignore a terrible situation, in spite of previous reference to the golden rule in our conversation.
Is just one side of that discourse reasoning to or away from that moral cause.  We may have both been guilty of that, I guess...

The world is full of reasons to examine ones relationship with the categorical imperative, or morality, or whatever verbiage you want to mean that it's better to not be an asshole to people around you.
And then ones flexibility in it's actual application to our collective situations.


Anyway...

It took some digging in the corners of my head to find where those words came from, so I have been casually revisiting some of those texts.  Looking for new strings in those lines of thought.
This little talk, above, has some interesting extensions on the subject.

And the animation is kinda neat...

Opening Day

A day late, but whatever...


Snow sucks.  Opening day snowed out...
(Keep your climate change jokes to yourself.)

So, it's today.
Hell they had games on Sunday, too, which is just weird...


Where is my head on the season?

Red Sox hope, I guess.
Perhaps, I have been assimilated on the front.
My optimism on Betts has been unbroken since seeing him here on the minor's roster.  Dude is good.
The rest of the line up, ehhh, I need to see how all these guys play together, a bit.  There is a lot of talent.
I look forward to the Sox, likely, building up my hopes only to slowly destroy them in mid-August.
Maybe that is just my own pessimism, or emotional defense...

Other coast?
Well, the Giants have their line up pretty well sorted.  They'll get runs, for sure.
The rest of it, I don't know enough about, but they are a damned reliable factory.

What else...

The Phillies, probably not a great season.  Rebuilding and all that, you know...
They'll be fun to watch what evolves from that, maybe.

Christ, couldn't we all just let the Cubbies win one.  We won't talk about it, but maybe?
Astros?  I think they might get somewhere this year, which is something I haven't thought, well, ever.
Maybe Harper carries the Nat's to the series?


Who cares that there are inches of snow on the ground here and forecast temp's in the teens tonight?

It's baseball season - and that is a season of hope...

Abstraction

Well, I am setting you up with another link to one of the sites I keep sending you too, again.

This election cycle I find things so terrifying that I can hardly address it without some manner of abstraction.  Thinking of the larger implications makes it easier for me to not fixate on the outrageous things candidates are either saying or doing, and beyond that how our media reacts to those things.
Sure, it is a veil of denial that I am employing.
Whatever gets you though the night, you know...

Anyway, another article touching on cultural ripples which shape our collective response to politics and politicians, from Bill Bishop.  Here is the sample, for you...

We look for proximate causes for this widespread disaffection and find them aplenty on front pages and Facebook feeds. There’s always another story of things gone bad. But this search is too narrow. Because the roots of our discomfort — and today’s angry politics — won’t be found in bad trade deals, stupid leaders or economic distress. Instead, our personal and electoral dyspepsia is the consequence of modernity itself.

Here is the link.

I do believe this one is worth a couple minutes...

Another

Another image without context.


Go ahead, make up some story about this,  Commit that story to memory then forget to ever tell me about it...

Sure

Why not...

Nope

Coldah & Hawtah

Yeah, I guess this has made national news.
This Rhode Island state rebranding effort, to attract tourists.

So, folks here are absolutely losing their shit over this deal...
Sorta funny to watch, as an outsider.


(Outsider status is a two way thing.  I am not so attracted to their little local club, the locals are in no hurry to embrace me.  I am viewed as a foreigner by most people here.  I'm fine with that...)


Anyway, back to this branding effort, it is a bit of a mess.

They hired some famous designer for that logo.  The "I heart NY" guy did it.
Cooler and warmer, the sail/sharkfin deal is not quite destined for similar icon status, I am guessing.

They made a video/commercial to go along and it featured footage from Iceland, among local shots.
The editors of the video suggest both the skateboarder and cinematographer of the Iceland shot are from here, but yeah.  Oops.

There is, of course, a website to go along with all this.
It doesn't actually use this logo, provides outdated information and points out destinations across the state line.

Sure, it is a mess.
It all comes off as amateurish and a bit dull...

But, honestly, it's been such a blunder that it made the news outside of Rhode Island.
It's, probably, the first time anybody outside of New England has even thought about this place in years.

 Maybe that was the plan from the start...
(It wasn't.)


So, come visit Rhode Island - where the people are cold and their tempers are hot.

Or something like that, I've forgotten the slogan already.