Mitch's Blog

LA landlord threatens to evict 300 tenants if they don’t pay rent in full, in violation fo state and local emergency tenant protections. Landlord uses cc instead of bcc, helping tenants organize a web strike. Whoops - Cory Doctorow

Supercut of Fox News hosts insisting coronavirus is no cause concern, a Democratic/MSM conspiracy, etc. Not “ha-ha-weird, nor ha-ha-funny. It’s more ha-ha-Exhibit-A-for-a-future-war-crimes-tribunal” - Cory Doctorow

What did people do before toilet paper?

The ancient Romans wiped their butts with a “tersorium,” a stick with a vinegar- or salt-water-soaked sponge attached, although these may have been used to clean the latrine rather than the person.

Other ancient cultures used small stones, rags on sticks, spatulas, and – for scholars – manuscripts. Yen Chih-Thui, a sixth century AD scholar, said he didn’t dare wipe himself “on the names of sages.”

The Chinese imperial family was using mass produced rice-paper-based toilet paper by 1393.

Inventor Joseph Gayetty introduced the first mass-produced TP in the west in 1857; it was called “J.C. Gayetty’s Medicated Paper for the Water Closet” because they knew how to do product names back then.

By Erin Blakemore at National Geographic.

One month ago today I went to the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club general meeting with a hundred or so of my closest friends. Following that, a small group of us had a light dinner and drinks at Hooley’s

This is a historic event for two reasons: It was the-second-to-last time I spent a lot of time in close proximity to a lot of people, prior to COVID-19 ramping up. The last time was as few days later, when Julie and I went out to brunch. A few days after that: Lockdown!

Since then, it’s just been social distancing.

The other reason this dinner is historic is I sat immediately next to someone who later got sick with COVID-19. We were packed onto that table so he and I were very close, nearly bumping elbows. He later spent a harrowing week or two in the ICU unit. He’s recovering at home now – thank goodness.

Fortunately for my and Julie’s peace of mind, I found out about this gentleman’s hospitalization more than two weeks after the dinner, well past the incubation period for myself and Julie. So we’re safe. Probably. I’m trying not to think about how little science actually knows about the spread of coronavirus, and whether that two-week figure might be simply be wrong.

Lots of things I’m not thinking about right now. I am becoming excellent at compartmentalization – part of me plans and prepares for the worst and part of me just tries to live life as normally as I can, working and spending time with Julie and reading my books and walking the dog and not thinking about the awful things that might happen. Nearly certainly will happen to so many people.

BTW, I realize this is extraordinarily self-centered – here’s this guy in the ICU and I’m all whew glad that wasn’t too stressful for me. I’m prepared to mount a LarryDavidian defense of my thinking.

Earthquake. About 50 minutes ago. Just a minor one, no damage or injury that I’m aware of. But it’s the biggest earthquake we’ve felt in a long time. Maybe ever.

Because life needed to get more interesting.

Help me with a thought experiment here. Those of you who identify as Republican or conservative: What are the values you hold most dear? What should our national priorities be? What should be government’s goals?

If you fell into a deep slumber and woke up in the United States 50 years from now what would you hope it would be like? Assume a cultural and political renaissance where everybody comes around to realize that your beliefs were best after all.

And how well do you think the Trump administration and present-day Republicans are doing?

Aside to my liberal/Democrat/progressive friends and family: Just sit on your hands on this one please. Let’s keep our mouths shut and learn some things.

From Google News a few seconds ago.

Republicans and Democrats perceive parallel universes with completely different realities now. But there is only one real world.

Meet the Xenobots, Virtual Creatures Brought to Life

Xenobots are designed to roboticists using algorithmic evolution in computer simulations.

Joshua Sokol at The New York Times:

Xenobots with a fork- or snowplow-like appendage in the front can sweep up loose particles (in a petri dish) overnight, depositing them in a pile. Some use legs, of a sort, to shuffle around on the floor of the dish. Others swim, using beating cilia, or link up blobby appendages and circle each other a few times before heading off in separate directions….

[Researchers crafted] virtual worlds that would reward particular behaviors by the clumps of repurposed frog. Take walking: First an algorithm produced many random body designs; some just sat there, others rocked or waddled forward. Then the algorithm let the best of the walkers procreate into the next generation; from these, another generation was produced, and so on, each one improving on the best designs. Another simulation, aimed at finding designs that could carry an object, became crowded with bagel-like bodies that had evolved a central cavity to hold things."

Eventually, robots like these could “sweep ocean microplastics into a larger, collectible ball,” “deliver drugs to a specific tumor,” or “scrape plaque from the walls of our arteries…. "

“[W]hatever their intended purpose, their bodies would be designed not by an engineer but by a simulacrum of real evolution built to encourage the right behavior in the target environment.”

Ethicists see possible problems.

Just before the lockdown went in place in California, I had brunch with Julie at Farmer’s Table. The coffee was excellent, so much so that I asked the waitress about it. She said they got the coffee from a place in Barrio Logan (and now I see on Google there is more than one coffee place in Barrio Logan. I think Cafe Virtuoso was the one she said.)

I asked the waitress what equipment they use to make the coffee, and she said just a restaurant coffee machine. Not a fancy pourover. Just a drip coffee machine.

So I remembered that and a while later I was Googling about coffee, and came across an article – which I now cannot locate – about how baristas make coffee for themselves, at home. One of the respondents said he used a Mr. Coffee. Just a Mr. Coffee.

And that intrigued me because the Aeropress, which is how I’ve been making coffee for a couple of years, is a bit more fuss than I like in the morning. Same for a French press. And with a Mr. Coffee you assemble the ingredients, press a button and you’ve got coffee a few minutes later.

I thought about that for a couple of weeks and priced a Mr. Coffee on Amazon and it was $22 for a four-cup version. I discussed it with Julie and we said sure why not and I ordered.

While I was waiting for the delivery, I read the reviews – really should have done that before I ordered, right? I had just looked at the overall rating. But now that I read the reviews, I saw that the four-cup machine didn’t actually make four cups. Mr. Coffee measures a cup at 5 ounces. WTF, I thought to myself. That’s 20 ounces of coffee. I like to have about 24 ounces in the morning. Three cups. Three real cups.

Plus, I realized that, although Julie and I make coffee separately, the reason we do it is because the Aeropress only makes three cups, and even that is pushing it. However, if we had a drip machine I could make coffee for both of us in the morning.

So I’d bought the wrong size.

Or had I? Yesterday, I thought to myself that three cups of coffee is really too much. The caffeine doesn’t bother me (or I don’t think it does – I do sometimes have trouble sleeping, but I do not attribute that to coffee. I attribute that to the world, which was a troubling place even before COVID-19). However, I just don’t enjoy that third cup as much as the first two. Plus, drinking three cups of coffee takes a lot of time. That doesn’t matter when I’m just working at my desk, but it’s annoying when I want to be out and about in the morning and I have to wait to finish my morning caffeine fix.

So fine, I said to myself. I’ll cut down to two cups. And Julie said she’s fine making her own coffee in the morning. So we decided to keep the four-cup Mr. Coffee.

But wait, there’s more to this.

Last night I remembered something. We have a third spigot on our kitchen sink. We have the normal hot and cold, and a third one that dispenses even hotter water, for coffee and tea. And that spigot dispenses water at the perfect temperature for brewing with the Aeropress.

Except I remembered that a few weeks ago I accidentally splashed myself with the spigot and it didn’t hurt. And I said to myself at the time, that should have hurt more. I wonder if the spigot is set hot enough? And I promptly forgot.

I mentioned this to Julie last night and she said she runs the water a few seconds before filling the Aeropress. She waits until she sees steam coming up. I said I used to do that too – why on Earth did I stop? No idea.

So I decided to make myself one more Aeropress this morning before I try the Mr. Coffee tomorrow, just to have a proper baseline for comparison. I made a three-cup pressing this morning because I only got about five hours' sleep last night. I don’t know if I taste much difference in the flavor but it’s hotter than it has been, which I like.

I may make a two-cup batch in the Aeropress tomorrow, just to be comparing like amounts with the Aeropress and Mr. Coffee.

If you’re not nice to the barista, you’ll get decaf.

11 Behind-the-Counter Secrets of Baristas - Shaunacy Ferro at Mental Floss

I’ve been troubled by insomnia for months, but just last night I was thinking how glad I was that I hadn’t had a bout in weeks. Been sleeping soundly every night. Thank goodness for that, I thought last night.

You’ll totally guess what happened!

I’ve seen a bunch of inspiring chalk messages around the neighborhood this week.

ME (grocery shopping while wearing mask, consults shopping list app on iPhone)
MY iPHONE’S FACIAL RECOGNITION: “Who the hell are you?”
repeat several dozen times

I went to the big Von’s on University Avenue to stock up today

I wore nitrile gloves, as I did the other time I went to the supermarket nine days ago. I also wore an N95 mask – my first time out in public wearing one.

I felt self-conscious about the mask, and over the past few days I was mentally rehearsing the conversation I might have with a hypothetical person who might confront me about using the mask when healthcare professionals are doing without. I imagined myself saying, “We bought the masks long before the pandemic; Julie uses them when she cleans the litterbox. We had the gloves too. We’re not hoarding; we have 10 masks and 100-200 pairs of gloves.

“We do not have a large extended family in the area,” I would have said, “so if one of us gets sick the other one takes care of them. If we both get sick, well, we’re screwed.

“By protecting ourselves, we avoid becoming additional burdens on the healthcare system,” I would have said.

“And also, you may be right,” I would have said to the hypothetical person.

Nobody non-hypothetical confronted me.

The supermarket crowd was light, but I would not have found it remarkably light on an ordinary day. Only three or four of us wore masks, and a few more wearing gloves. None of the supermarket staff seemed to be wearing masks, but the pharmacy staff did. The cashier, at least, was wearing gloves, of the type that food service workers usually wear.

One man brought his son, who looked to be about 4 years old. Seems like a bad idea. Maybe he had nobody to watch the kid?

The supermarket had most of the things I was looking for. Plenty of fresh produce, even fresh asparagus for a treat tonight. They did not have Julie’s favorite brand of salad dressing, but that might not have been virus-related as the shelves were full of salad dressing. Maybe they just didn’t carry it.

Also absent: Toilet paper and cleaning supplies. I keep hearing the supply chain is fine with those, and people are just hoarding. So when will that ol' supply chain kick in? Eventually people will run out of room in their houses for toilet paper.

I also was able to find two big bottles of my favorite hand soap, Dr. Bronner’s. That was a pleasant surprise.

5 reasons why people hate Apple

I just got an email this morning.

The email had no context. Just a short two sentences on why the sender hates Apple – he’s an Android user and was using Dark Sky until Apple bought it this week and shut off API access, including Android.

I replied by asking him why he was sending the email to me. But I was still waking up when I sent that reply, because truly I already knew. That article.

I just reread it. It’s a pretty good article. If I were writing it today, I’d spend time discussing Apple’s monopolistic practices. Or quasi-monopolistic – they don’t own the market, but they control a big chunk of it. It’s the same all over the economy; a few big companies control each industry. They compete against each other but mainly they’re concerned with stifling new competition.

I’m still nearly exclusively an Apple user but I have fewer illusions today. When you do business in the current economy, you compromise your principles. Like using Facebook, for example.

Baked potato + kosher-style spicy brown mustard: Good idea? Discuss.

I just did the census. For “origin” I put in “American,” after Julie pointed out that her great-grandparents (and my grandparents and great-grandparents) were from other countries, but she and I are from right here in the USA.

I gave serious thought to putting in “human” for race, because I am becoming seriously convinced that racial differences aren’t just social constructs, they’re toxic bullshit.

But I went with the conventional answer: White.

Although to people who get really exercised about race, Jews aren’t white.

Fellow Americans, take the census today, if you have not already: 2020census.gov. It’s important; it’s how representation and government services will be distributed over the next decade.

In the “Reign of Terror” episode of “I, Claudius,” a character being beaten to death at the behest of a tyrant declares: “I’ve never fully realized before how a small mind, allied to unlimited ambition and without scruple, can destroy a country full of clever men.”

This TV drama is about ancient Rome, and it aired in 1976, so of course this quote has absolutely no bearing on today.

Via the delightful “I, Podius” podcast, with John Hodgman and Elliott Kalan.

The petty tyrant in the above scene is Sejanus, played by a thirty-something Patrick Stewart. Sir Patrick has hair in “I, Claudius” but – I learned in a previous episode of the pod – it’s stunt hair; Stewart has been bald since he was 19.

On a very special shelter-in-place episode of the design podcast 99% Invisible, host Roman Mars describes the history and design of things around the house.

Skimmed and bookmarked for later reading.

Food supply worries farmers in US as coronavirus disrupts their work - CNN

The Effects of COVID-19 Will Ripple through Food Systems - Scientific American