Walking the dog this morning, I wore baggy checked cargo shorts, black calf-length socks, white New Balance sneakers, and my sweat-stained white Tilley bucket hat.
In other words, I was a thirst trap.
Steven Vaughan-Nichols: I’ve used social networks since the 80s. Threads is the most annoying one I’ve tried. (ZDNET)
Threads’s egregious privacy policy (which SJVN provides more information about here) and its current lack of a web interface are the reasons why I’m sitting Threads out. For now at least; I may change my mind at any moment.
I expect I’ll wait until micro.blog supports Threads cross-posting. Either that, or wait until Threads supports ActivityPub, and then I’ll merge my Mastodon, Micro.blog and Threads activity, as I do now with Mastodon and Micro.blog.
Jews, Christians and Satanists are taking legal action to protect reproductive freedom, claiming—rightly—that abortion bans are an imposition of religious beliefs by the state.
Cory Doctorow: “Jewish religious texts clearly state that life begins at the first breath, and that the life of a pregnant person takes precedence over the life of the fetus in their uterus.”
The “religious liberty” angle for overturning the overturning of Dobbs
Everyone Has ‘Car Brain’. “Online communities dedicated to criticizing cars and the people who love them have developed an insult that … kind of makes sense.“ (The Atlantic / Kaitlyn Tiffany)
Twitter is burning, Bluesky is smug. Where is the best place to do your pathetic doomscrolling? (The Guardian / First Dog on the Moon)
What Makes Putin and the World’s Autocrats So Resilient? (WSJ / David Luhnow and Juan Forero)
New York State Built Elon Musk a $1 Billion Factory. ‘It Was a Bad Deal.’ “In terms of sheer direct cost to taxpayers, this may rank as the single biggest economic development boondoggle in American history." (WSJ / Julie Bykowicz and Ted Mann)
What 120 Degrees Looks Like in One of Mexico’s Hottest Cities. Residents of the northern city of Hermosillo struggled to breathe. (The New York Times / Photographs and Video by Cesar RodriguezWritten by Elda Cantú)
Los Angeles’s Bradbury Building is a gorgeous edifice built in 1893. You’ve seen the Bradbury if you’ve seen “Blade Runner;” the Bradbury was the setting for the Toymaker’s workshop. And the building has been featured in a million other movies and TV shows.
From the outside, the Bradbury just looks like a brick office building at the corner of 3rd and Broadway, downtown. It seems unremarkable, but the magic happens when you step inside.
The Bradbury is basically a tall, narrow courtyard, walled in with terra cotta, covered with a glass ceiling, and flanked with two iron, clanking hydraulic-powered elevators. Human conductors still operate them.
There’s a reason the Bradbury is in so many films. Aside from being beautiful, it’s also practical. The balconies allow the crew to shoot from many different angles and create a whole range of different moods for various genres. The Bradbury’s ceiling height can accommodate all the lights and the camera equipment. Also, the Bradbury is located near a parking lot (for all the vans and trailers), as well as places downtown where a film crew can go get lunch.
Lewis Bradbury, a gold-mining millionaire, commissioned the buillding in 1892, from notable architect Sumner Hunt.
As the story goes, Bradbury didn’t like any of the plans that Hunt showed him, and so, disappointed, was on his way out when, for some reason, one of Hunt’s young draftsmen caught his eye. George Wyman, the draftsman, had no professional training as an architect.
Bradbury pulled Wyman aside and asked him to build his very important half-million dollar office building.
Wyman consulted the spirit of his dead brother before deciding to take the offer.
The design of the Bradbury was directly inspired by a novel called Looking Backwards by Edward Bellamy. Written in 1887, the book takes place in the year 2000.
In other words, the design is a 19th Century vision of what a 21st Century skyscraper would look like. And the vision was fulfilled, because the Bradbury is still standing today.
As of the time this article was published, 2015, the Bradbury was being used as office space for the Los Angeles Police Department internal affairs division. And that’s why I called up this article to re-read it: I’m currently reading “Angel’s Flight,” a police procedural murder mystery by Michael Connelly, and some of the action takes place in the Bradbury. The novel was made into a season of the TV series “Bosch”—another place you can see the Bradbury on-screen
… movies don’t shoot in the Bradbury as frequently as they once did. Generally, filming is not as welcome downtown now that people live and work there. These days, film crews can’t blow up cars in the street or have 300 zombies stampede down Broadway in the middle of the workday.
A bad day for local journalism.
LA’s Richest Man Sells Union-Tribune to Feared ‘Chop Shop’ (Voice of San Diego / Will Huntsberry and Scott Lewis)
Update: I emailed Slate to cancel my sub, and they replied promptly and said they had done so. So, points to them for that. But there really needs to be a button on the site.
At the park this weekend I saw a bulldog wearing a pearl necklace. Big chunky pearls, like Barbara Bush used to wear.
The pearls probably weren’t real, but the dog probably was.
Slate Plus is raising its subscription rate from $59 to $119 annually. That’s a nope. I searched the website for 15 minutes to find out how to cancel my subscription and was unable to find a link. That’s sleazy, Slate.
Parakeet Panic. “When invasive parakeets began to spread in New York City in the 1970s, the government decided it needed to kill them all. Today: The offbeat panic about wild parrots, and a history of anxieties about population growth.” (The Last Archive)
An odd ChatGPT conversation
I was trying to remember a quote about writing, but I couldn’t remember the exact words. Something like, “If you can do anything else but be a writer, you should do it." But not quite that—punchier.
I tried Googling the phrase but that didn’t turn up anything.
So I asked ChatGPT, which said the exact phrase is, “If you can do anything else but write, do it,” and attributed it to Elie Wiesel.
I googled the correct phrase with his name attached, but didn’t find results or that either.
So I asked ChatGPT for the source, and ChatGPT responded:
I apologize for any confusion caused. After conducting further research, it seems that the quote I provided earlier attributed to Elie Wiesel may not be accurate. There are variations of this saying that are often attributed to different authors, but there is no concrete evidence that links this particular quote to Elie Wiesel. I apologize for any misinformation. It’s always important to verify the authenticity of quotes and their sources.
Wait, should I not be drinking airline coffee?. On the new Search Engine podcast, PJ Vogt investigates rumors that the water used on airlines is dirty and full of bacteria, and the flight crew won’t drink it, and won’t even use it to wash their hands.
“Harry Milas' sleight of hand skills are so good that he now helps to expose gambling rings. He explains the tricks of the trade and why he hates casinos.”
The Magician Who Catches Card Cheats in Casinos (The Guardian / Sian Cain)