Mitch's Blog

Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, contends that Americans and the English smile differently. On this side of the Atlantic, we simply draw the corners of our lips up, showing our upper teeth. Think Julia Roberts or the gracefully aged Robert Redford. “I think Tom Cruise has a terrific American smile,” Keltner, who specializes in the cultural meaning of emotions, says. In England, they draw the lips back as well as up, showing their lower teeth. The English smile can be mistaken for a suppressed grimace or a request to wipe that stupid smile off your face. Think headwaiter at a restaurant when your MasterCard seems tapped out, or Prince Charles anytime.

— National Smiles, The New York Times

Question for my micro.blog chums: How do you find old posts about a topic? Imagine you are a fan of the TV show “Severance,” and you write about it occasionally over a few years. One day you want to find all your “Severance” posts — how? Search?

Stop Hacklore is a website to help fight myths about digital security, with advice on using public WiFi (it isn’t dangerous), QR codes (also not dangerous — it’s essentally the same as clicking a link), changing passwords every 90 days (unnecessary — and can actually be dangerous) and more.

ME, WATCHING THE TRAILER OF “PLURIBUS:” “This looks dreadful. Pass.”
WATCHING EPISODES 1-3: “This is depressing and a little boring. In this show, the world has undergone a miraculous, wonderful and terrible transition and the show focuses on an unpleasant middle-aged woman day-drinking and binge-watching ‘Golden Girls.’ Why are we watching this?”
EPISODE FOUR: “Enjoying this now.”
EPISODES 6-7: “I LOVE THIS SHOW SO SO MUCH!!! CAROL IS AWSUM AND SO IS THE PARAGUAYAN GUY!!! I CAN’T STAND TO WAIT A WEEK FOR THE NEXT EPISODE!!!!”

But I do wish we could see more of the world the Plurbs are creating.

Visions of the Future Should Come With an Expiration Date. Charlie Jane Anders: “One thing that strikes me is weird about classic science fiction is how soon many of its predictions came false.”

I’m checking to see how Reddit and Tumblr embeds look on the blog and in the newsletter. They look good on the blog. We’ll see in the morning how they look in the newsletter.

Due to unforseen circumcisions
byu/Final-Ad-2033 inBoneAppleTea

The Articles of Interest podcast with Avery Trufelman is doing a series on U.S. military uniforms and gear, and its cross-influence with civlian style, mostly men’s. Most of the series focuses on the 20th and 21st centuries, but it reaches back to the 1700s and 1800s. Start here with Chapter 1: The American military uniform.

Military gear and civilian outdoor gear are closely linked, and in the late 1700s and 1800s, being a manly U.S. man meant going out and killing an animal, skinning it and making it into an outdoor suit yourself. That was the theory. In reailty, you’d hire a Native American woman to do that.