When “the hero of the two worlds” the Marquis de Lafayette first toured the encampment of the continental army, George Washington apologized for the rough nature of his troops saying it must appear unprofessional to a man brought up in the French national army. Lafayette, who was enamored with the American cause and inspired by our success against the British at the battle of Trenton said:
It is not to teach but to learn that I come hither.
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Facebook Archive (Page 20)
I created a Facebook account in 2012 but didn’t really post much until 2014. In 2018 I deleted my account (for secret reasons). It was a relief to let it go, but also a little sad. I quickly lost tabs of friends and extended family. Of course we still talk now and again, but I am much less aware of what’s going on in their day to day lives. Nevertheless I’m glad I left.
In an act of unbridled vanity, I have archived all the old posts here.
My Posts
[ed: This was posted the day Gene Wilder died.]
I think my favorite Gene Wilder thing is this letter he sent to the director of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with feedback on the costume sketches for his character. What a pro.
“I don’t think of Willy as an eccentric who holds on to his 1912 Dandy’s Sunday suit and wears it in 1970, but rather as just an eccentric — where there’s no telling what he’ll do or where he ever found his get-up — except that it strangely fits him: Part of this world, part of another.
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“Just as it’s important to be sensitive to our black, Arab, and other non-white coworkers, it’s also equally important to be sensitive to our white coworkers’ sensitivity to that sensitivity.”
I laughed.
This is a super hero film I could get behind.
How to make friends in retail:
Cashier: “Do you have a military status?”
Me: “Yes!”
Cashier: “Great! You get a 20% discount!”
Me: “Great! To be clear, my military status is ’non-military’. 🤓”
Cashier: “😡”
United Airlines explains two-factor authentication to their customers. The tech industry weeps. Every piece of this is utterly wrong.
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Gathering resources to help Sophia prepare for her trip to Japan.
Everything happens for a reason. That reason is usually physics. Sometimes psychology. Those might be the same thing but we’re not sure yet.
Dan Carlin of the Hard Core History podcast just posted part three of his “King of Kings” series and it is FIVE HOURS. It’s like Christmas…
I like Forest Whitaker. I’ve always liked Forest Whitaker. Even when I don’t like the movie or the character I still like him. Half the reason I like J.d. Francis is because he reminds me of Forest Whitaker. Maybe more than half*.
* Just kidding JD. Only half.
I kind of love that Gruber keeps a database of outlandish claims by analysts so he can revisit them at the appropriate time.
Man I love stuff like this. So clever. And a reminder that absolutely nothing on a computer is truly secure with a sufficiently motivated, clever, and financed attacker.
Lou Malnati’s: “This feeds three.”
[hands me enough pizza for 11 people]
Phoenix look west at Jupiter and a thin crescent moon. Spectacular.
Can someone please build a 50 foot tall Trump statue in New York so we can have some lasting iconic footage when we the people inevitably tear it down in a few months?
I feel like we definitely don’t need a sixth pizza place in the neighborhood. Huh.
Arizona just turned blue in fivethirtyeight.com’s “nowcast” projection of the presidential election. (This is arguably the least reliable of their forecasts, most susceptible to momentary aberrations and so less predictive, but still interesting.)
Link
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Assorted facts:
I post to Facebook and my wife’s phone beeps less than a second later. I send an email to Australia and it arrives 2.7 seconds later. I ask google for all the pages out of trillions that include the phrase “articulated portal sprocket” and it answers in 200 milliseconds. I speak into the camera on my phone and someone in Georgia sees me talking real time. I transfer money from my E*Trade brokerage account to my checking account and it takes three business days.
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Well now I know why the entrance to my neighborhood is blocked by police. Sad story.
Link
Aside: There is a crosswalk with signal 100 feet north of here (and a block south) and yet I see people crossing mid-block all the time.
Aside 2: Can we get a signal on the crosswalk across 7th street too? That street is 10mph faster, has six lanes, has a charter school, and the crosswalk is barely marked.
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Because I see people tonight actually arguing that Trump’s right that we should get rid of wind energy because of bird deaths. I think we should get rid of cats first. Bonus: they’ll stop scratching my furniture.
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Sometimes they come right out and say it. Sometimes.
Everyone looks cooler in black and white with 70s fashion. Even king of the dorks, Tim Kaine.
Good news: I don’t have tuberculosis.
Related: I didn’t think I had tuberculosis. But now I know for sure. Also, I don’t use illegal drugs. Also, I can now volunteer at the prisons.
Me 2015: Internet trolls are people who’s only motive is to anger you. They’re an unfortunate consequence of online anonymity but for the most part the best policy is to ignore them entirely.
Me 2016: Wait do we still ignore them when they’re running for president?
Do any countries have a tax policy so progressive they have a negative income tax rate at the lowest brackets?
Proposed: We should rename Cottage Cheese. Because it is delicious but that name … 😷
How I learn about the existence of ostensibly popular bands: They come to Phoenix and all you people post to Facebook about it.
It’s a good thing the seat of government isn’t in North Carolina or Hillary wouldn’t be allowed to use the bathroom in the Oval Office.
Addendum to my previous post: It makes my happy that my daughter’s first vote in an election can be, should she choose, for a woman as president of the United States.
Well, I have to say I’m very happy to see our first major party female candidate. All the complexity of this election cycle aside, this is a good day for America.
I don’t know what keeps happening in this city but I’m totally ok with it.
Aside: I’ve only had Lou Malnati’s once yet, but it is in my neighborhood and it was absolutely fantastic.
Sometimes I have this sentimental vision that some day space travel will be so inexpensive that we’ll go around the solar system gathering up all our long-dead probes and rovers and bring them home to make the coolest space history museum imaginable.
Proposed: The two party system is the best defense we have against someone like Trump becoming president. The open primary system undermines the role of parties in selecting and promoting strong consistent competent candidates. We may have thrown the baby out with the bath water with the McGovern-Fraser Commission. You have no constitutional right to pick candidates. Only presidents. Maybe we should roll back some of the democratic processes in the party nominating process.
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Reporters and commentators are supposed to stick to what is conscious and with literal meaning. But most real political discourse makes use of unconscious thought, which shapes conscious thought via unconscious framing and commonplace conceptual metaphors. George Lakoff
Sophia: “Do you like Michelle Obama?”
Me: [answers]
Sophia: “What about regular Obama?”
This is smart commentary on opposing Trump:
[ed: The original link no longer works so I’ve updated this to point to archive.org instead.]
(Aside: If you feel put upon by his language on race, save it. I can’t bear any more middle class educated white christians complaining about how persecuted they are. I’ve reached my limit.)
Do you think 50 years ago when American astronauts were circling the dark side of the moon, and in the silence and isolation, they got to philosophizing together about what the world would be like in 50 years, any of them suggested maybe, 50 years later…
America wouldn’t even have the technology to put a person in space at all anymore?
It must be strange to have had a front seat to that comedown.
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The radio in my newish Honda Accord is far and away the fanciest most advanced version I’ve ever owned. I know it is fancy because:
It’s interface is inscrutable. Case in point, the “main menu” has, among other things, buttons labeled “Audio”, “Audio”, and “Source” all three of which show the same screen. I have no idea what the difference between these is.
Even when you manage to find the right button you are still annoyed by the aggravatingly slow low-frame-rate linear animations.
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I wonder if Joanie still loves Chachi after this.
Aside: Why do we capitalize days of the week? It just seems wrong.
How do you say no to sweet Sophia when she stumbles out of bed and asks for a cheese omelet at 10:30 at night? Especially after she spent hours on Saturday making homemade pizza dough, homemade sauce, and homemade ice cream for Sunday dinner?
The girl loves her cheese omelets.
I feel like this passage from Crime and Punishment says more about politics than about romance.
There’s nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is only the hundredth part of a false note in candor, there is immediately a dissonance, and then—scandal. But with flattery, even if everything is false down to the last little note, it is still agreeable and is listened to not without pleasure; crude though the pleasure may be, it is still a pleasure.
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Look west phoenix friends. Mercury, low in the sky.
Questions Sophia has asked me in the last thirty minutes:
does a dead body count as a person for the carpool lane? does a brain dead person who is technically still alive count? does a body part count? brain in a jar? what if your passenger dies while you’re driving in the lane? if dead people counted would ashes of a person count? would a shrunken head count? would it count if it could talk?
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Today I learned that Bastille Day is not called Bastille Day in France. Happy fete nationale to our oldest friends! 🇫🇷
I think my biggest complaint in life right now is that Safari won’t let you open the web inspector on pages that aren’t showing HTML even though it actually works with those pages if it is already open.
In other words, I live a pretty charmed life.