Excitement during the pandemic.
I like that it’s a professional model. Don’t want to use the AMATEUR equipment.
The Saga of Michael Flynn – Politics doesn’t permit nuance. Either Michael Flynn is a hero or a traitor. Either the Justice Department investigation was entirely justified or it was a witchhunt.
Rumors that some horror movies are cursed become their own kind of curse for the people who make those movies
The Curse of The Curse – Great episode of the Imaginary Worlds podcast: filmmaker Jay Cheel talks about his new documentary series “Cursed Films,” which explores why people think movies like The Exorcist, The Omen, and other horror films were cursed – targeted by demonic forces. Also, special effects artist Craig Reardon and director Gary Sherman separate fact from fiction with the alleged Poltergeist curse. And theologian Brandon Grafius, author of “Reading the Bible with Horror,” describes horror’s Biblical connections.
Thoughts following my my first-ever at-home haircut
- I had long, thick hair when I was a young man and I miss it. For years I’ve wondered if I would look good with long hair today, even though my hair is extremely thin now.
Social distancing gave me an opportunity to find out; I went far longer than usual between haircuts.
The answer is that I look terrible with long hair. I am back to number two clippers all over, for good.
- For years I have thought that I could just give myself a haircut, or have Julie do it for me, and save us some money. How hard can it be to cut my hair with number 2 clippers, all over?
Turns out it’s actually pretty hard and I will be going back to a professional barber as soon as it is healthy to do so.
- I have long luxurious ear hair and Julie did not want to trim it out of concern for injuring my ears. It looks awful. But on the other hand it helps keep my AirPods securely in place. 📓
Help Garry Armacost, a Vietnam vet, fight cancer and VA bureaucracy
Garry Armacost, was wounded fighting for his country in Vietnam. Now he’s in the fight of his life, against cancer and the bureaucracy of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Garry is a big, cheerful, quiet 75-year-old who lives in San Diego. He needs cancer surgery for his survival. The surgery is complicated, long, done robotically, and requires sophisticated post-operative care.
Garry has had bad experience with post-operative care at the VA, which proved nearly fatal in 2012. Fortunately, Garry’s son, Chris, is a doctor, and arranged for the head of urology at Sharp Memorial to do the surgery.
But the VA has refused the transfer because they don’t want to cover the cost.
“What price do they put on Garry’s life? Apparently not much,” Garry’s wife, Linda, writes in a Facebook post. “We have called, argued, pleaded, tried to talk with the Director, to no avail. We’re wondering if these will be our last days together. It didn’t need to come to this.”
Garry was wounded in Vietnam, and earned a purple heart. He came home, raised a family, and worked a long career for various railroads in the Northeast. He is now retired and lives with his wife, Linda, in San Diego. Linda is active in local Democratic Party politics, which is where I met her.
Please help Garry and his family. If you have any ideas on who to contact and otherwise how to influence the VA to give him the treatment he needs, let me know and I’ll pass the word. You can contact me directly at mitch@mitchwagner.com.
If you work for the VA or know someone who does, please put in a word to get Garry’s transfer approved. Contact your Congressional representative and apply pressure.
Share this post far and wide on social media.
The VA needs to be held accountable to provide care, not just for Garry, but for every veteran. They were there when we needed them – now we need to be there for them, when they need us.
“It may not work for me," says Garry, “but hopefully another vet will have a better outcome.”
🌕📓
Little Richard, Rock Pioneer Who Broke Musical Barriers, Dead at 87 – He pioneered rock and roll’s gender-bending flamboyance, throat-shredding vocals, and piano-pounding rhythm.
In the years before his death, Little Richard, who was by then based in Nashville, still performed periodically. Onstage, though, the physicality of old was gone: Thanks to hip replacement surgery in 2009, he could only perform sitting down at his piano. But his rock & roll spirit never left him. “I’m sorry I can’t do it like it’s supposed to be done,” he told one audience in 2012. After the audience screamed back in encouragement, he said — with a very Little Richard squeal — “Oh, you gonna make me scream like a white girl!”
The Sopranos: How Would Tony Soprano Handle the Coronavirus? – The dancers at the Bada Bing get furloughed, starting with the lapdancers.
My Facebook profile recently got upgraded to support formatting text: Bold, italic, blockquotes and hyperlinks. I haven’t seen an announcement or news on this. Dave Winer has been — rightly — insisting on the importance of this for years. Makes Facebook ever so slightly more usable and less Internet-hostile.
Today (and yesterday) on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic –
Armed Michigan voters are escorting their state reps to work to protect them from swastika-brandishing white terrorists.
A good-guy hacker wrote a script to flood Ohio’s snitchline where employers are supposed to report workers who refused to come in over coronavirus fears, so those workers can be denied unemployment benefits. Ohio doesn’t have vaccines. effective therapeutics, sufficient ventilators, or adequate PPE/disinfectant, but it has a snitchline.
In a real incident very similar to Lord of the Flies, the kids were very nice to each other and built a lovely little village in the 15 months they were stranded.
By the time we arrived, the boys had set up a small commune with food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gymnasium with curious weights, a badminton court, chicken pens and a permanent fire, all from handiwork, an old knife blade and much determination."
The kids agreed to work in teams of two, drawing up a strict roster for garden, kitchen and guard duty. Sometimes they quarrelled, but whenever that happened they solved it by imposing a time-out. Their days began and ended with song and prayer.
Kolo fashioned a makeshift guitar from a piece of driftwood, half a coconut shell and six steel wires salvaged from their wrecked boat – an instrument Peter has kept all these years – and played it to help lift their spirits.
US public health officials are unenthusiastic about contact-tracing apps. Contact-tracing is extremely effective, but it requires an army of people and lots of shoe leather.
“Re-opening” isn’t about saving ordinary workers and earners. You can’t save someone by infecting them with a deadly disease. In a world without contact-tracing, therapeutics, tests, PPE, santizing products, etc, more contact means more risk of illness and death.
“Re-opening” is about saving investors: the 1% who constitute the major shareholders in large firms whose calculus goes like this: “30% unemployment means that for every worker who dies on the job, ten more will apply to take their place.”
I think I will suggest to Julie that we should watch “The Andromeda Strain” tonight.
Not the 2008 remake. I hear that was fine. But it lacks the glorious microfilm-and-mainframe futurism of the 1971 original.
Wilford Brimley was only 48 when he appeared in “The Thing” and 51 in “Cocoon.”
I learned about Brimley’s age in “The Thing” when I myself was 48. That freaked me out a bit. “I’m as old as Wilford Brimley?!”
As Restaurants and Stores Reopen, What’s Safe? – Are haircuts, going back to work, eating in restaurants, and visiting friends and relatives OK? Experts lay out the options.
Microsoft and AWS exchange poisoned pen blog posts in latest Pentagon JEDI contract spat – Microsoft and Amazon’s fight over the $10B DoD JEDI contract enters the pissing contest stage.
Roaming ‘robodog’ politely tells Singapore park goers to keep apart – A roaming robot dog built by Boston Dynamics is politely telling people in Singapore parks to enforce social distancing.
“Let’s keep Singapore healthy,” the yellow and black robodog named SPOT said in English as it roamed around. “For your own safety and for those around you, please stand at least one metre apart.
“Thank you,” it added, in a softly-spoken female voice.