For decades, scientific studies suggested moderate drinking was better for most people’s health than not drinking at all, and could even help them live longer.
A new analysis of more than 40 years of research has concluded that many of those studies were flawed and that the opposite is true.
— New York Times / Roni Caryn Rabin
That kind of bad news will drive a person to drink
I’m supposed to go for a blood test tomorrow morning for life insurance, but the address they gave me on the phone is one number off from the address on Apple Maps, and Apple Maps shows the clinic as permanently closed, and the operator on the phone said the name on the sign is different from the name of the clinic. So now I’m wondering whether I’m going to get my blood taken by a couple of meth-heads in back of a 7-Eleven parking lot.
A bit of family history, from my father’s service in Word War II
My father received these humorous fake orders when he was discharged from the army in 1945, the end of the war.
I found this document while doing some decluttering in my home office yesterday. The paper is brown with age and fragile to the touch. It’s apparently typed and mimeographed.
The document is written in the style of a military memo, instructing the men how to behave when they get back home to civilian life.
In America there are a remarkable number of beautiful girls. These young ladies have not been liberated and many are gainfully employed as stenographers, sales girls, beauty specialists, and welders. Contrary to current practices, they should not be approached with, “How much?” A proper greeting is, “Isn’t it a lovely day!” or “Have you ever been to Chicago?” Then ask, “How much?”
My father served in Burma, which is now Myanmar. I think he also did some time in Taiwan. When he was discharged, he was 21 years old. I think he served several years. A kid from Brooklyn. My father’s native habitat was the New York suburbs; I cannot imagine him in tropical Asia.
I found this document when I was a teenager in the 1970s, investigating the garage of our house on Long Island. I found it again while going through my Dad‘s papers after he passed in 2004. After that, the document disappeared into the clutter of my home office for nearly 20 years until I was decluttering this week, and the papers turned up again.
I’m giving Readwise Reader another try as a read-it-later service after using Matter for several months. Matter is great, but I’m hoping for better search capabilities. I’m starting to do tech news again, on a freelance basis, for Silverlinings, and I want to start building a clippings library.
I have friends who used to go see movies at random. They caught movies the first days the movies were released before they saw trailers or ads or reviews. They would go to a theater, buy a ticket, and see whatever was playing. One of these friends based decisions on movie posters, and solely the posters. Another would drive to the multiplex and see the next movie that was playing after he got out of the car.
Having just seen “John Wick” and “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” I get the appeal of that system. The first half hour of both of those movies are very different from what comes later, and it would have been a delightful surprise to see all that spool out without expectations.
The first half hour of “Everything Everywhere” looks like an arty family drama about a middle-aged woman who’s estranged from her daughter and husband and struggling to save the family business. No science fiction or fantastic elements at all.
In the first half hour or so of “John Wick,” you don’t know he’s a super-hitman. You first get an idea when John Leguizamo recognizes the car. We’ve already seen those Russian young men are extremely dangerous, but John Leguizamo is more afraid of John Wick than of the Russians. We don’t discover John Wick’s full story until Viggo confronts his son.
Back to “Everything Everywhere:” A great thing about that movie is that it really is primarily an arty family drama about a middle-aged woman who’s estranged from her daughter and husband and who is struggling to save the family business. The science fiction serves that story. Saving the multiple universes is the B-plot. 🎥
Today I learned that Fletcher Previn, CIO of $52 billion networking company Cisco Systems, is the son of actress Mia Farrow and composer-conductor Andre Previn. (Computerworld / Lucas Mearian)
Also, while many companies are mandating a return to the office, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said in April 2021 that the company is committed to remote work indefinitely, and they’re standing by that. “Our policy around hybrid work is that we want the office to be a magnet and not a mandate,” says Previn.
The Day Windows Died. By Thomas Bandt.
Jackson Heights: The neighbourhood that epitomises New Yorkl. “Travellers may go to Central Park or Times Square to see New York City, but there’s no better place to feel the city’s DNA and understand how it started than here.” (BBC Travel / Sebastian Modak). I love New York. I grew up on Long Island, about 50 miles from Jackson Heights. haven’t been back in far too long.
Why don’t we have Cher Horowitz’s automated closet from the 1995 movie “Clueless?”. On the Articles of Interest podcast by Avery Trufelman.
I finally got a decent photo of this osprey at Lake Murray.
I’ve seen it a few times a month for a couple of years. The nest is at the top of a utility pole that looks to be about 50 feet tall—far too distant for my iPhone XS to get a good shot.
I’ve been putting off carrying my Nikon with the long lens on my daily long walk with the dog, because it seems like a lot to carry. But I did it yesterday, and it turns out to be very comfortable, so I’ll be doing more walks with the Nikon. Good timing too—spring is when the daisies bloom at the park, which is already starting. And in a few weeks—goslings!
Apple Photos has a feature where you can enter a word in a search box and images matching that word come up. It’s like Google Images search for your own photo library.
I searched Apple Photos for the word “bird,” and this photo from 2014 came up.
We started watching a movie called John Wick tonight. We only had a chance to watch the first half hour, so I don’t know what it’s about. It stars Keanu Reeves and it looks like he’s a widower who learns to love life again with the help of his puppy and a new friend, a young Russian immigrant who shares a love of classic cars.
I’m sure this movie will be heartwarming and in no way violent.
In March 2020, Emily Yang Liu spent hours each day in virtual meeting…. To keep herself engaged, she pinned her work crush, Jacob Michael Klinker, to her screen.
One day in April 2020, the product manager on the team, Ronald Ho, pinged her during the meeting and said, “Why do you have Jake pinned to your screen?” It turns out that Ms. Liu, 36, had a large mirror behind her, and people in the meetings could see the reflection of her laptop – and Mr. Klinker, 29, on her screen as a large square with everyone else in miniature.
Spoiler warning: A wedding photo tops this article.
A Secret Crush Goes Public in a Work Meeting (NYTimes / Sadiba Hasan)
A second woman has come forward to charge San Diego County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher with sexual harassment. (NBC 7 San Diego/Eric S. Page)
People now living could break previous longevity records, and keep on going and going. But not in America, where lifespans are declining. (Brandon Vigliarolo / The Register)
Interestingly, while average longevity has steadily increased for centuries, the maximum lifespan has been relatively unchanged since the 1700s. In other words, most people are living longer, but the longest-lived people today are about the same age as the longest-lived people 200+ years ago. That leads some scientists to believe there’s a hard, biological limit to human lifespan.
Not so, according to new research.
Related: The last living person who was born in the 19th Century in the US was Susannah Mushatt Jones. She was 116 years old when she died in 2016.