• • • google suggested • • •
• • • some of the things I read in antisocial isolation • • •
Cartographic Puzzles Are Poised for a Comeback
When nothing in the world seems to fit together, “dissected maps” offer a cognitive balm.
Good luck with the dense details on this 1746 map of London—the image at left is just one corner of the map—based on a survey by John Rocque. Embiggenable.
AS MILLIONS OF PEOPLE HUNKER down at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the humble jigsaw puzzle is enjoying a renaissance. Several puzzle-makers recently told NPR that in March and April, they saw U.S. sales leap by 300 percent or more compared to the same time last year. That means that kitchen tables and living-room floors are probably scattered with bits that add up to all kinds of scenes: litters of kittens, beers of the world, monuments and streets that are now forlorn.
But several centuries ago, jigsaw puzzles were mainly made out of maps—and if you’ve already assembled every last puzzle you have sitting around, you can throw things back to the objects’ cartographic roots by trying your hand at new customizable digital versions made by a team at the London-based map-and-prints dealer Daniel Crouch Rare Books.
This 1766 map of Europe, by cartographer and engraver John Spilsbury, is now in the collection of the British Library. Embiggenable.
Maps were always a natural fit for puzzles, says Daniel Crouch, the outfit’s owner. Geographic boundaries were already irregularly shaped, and boasted interlocking borders. Early jigsaws, known as “dissected maps,” made use of those ready-made attributes: They were often cut along county Iines or other borders, instead of being randomly cleaved.
Jigsaw puzzles made from maps are generally thought to date to at least the 1760s, and are often credited to the London cartographer and engraver John Spilsbury. But it’s hard to pin down who introduced the idea, says Anne Williams, a professor emerita of economics at Bates College and author of The Jigsaw Puzzle: Piecing Together a History. …
WORD OF THE DAY: Cowboyitis
/ kou boi’īdəs/
Noun.
An intentional lack of regard for danger or negative consequences to strategically help yourself. Using cowboyitis is a cunning tactic to provide self gain.
Sales Work Environment:
Client is avoiding purchase a product.
James (sales rep): Why is it you do not want to buy this product?
Clay (customer): Cuz’ man, this is expensive.
James (now irritated after working with this client for 30 mins): Look man, this is the best of the best and there is no other place you can get this product. You either purchase it today or walk away and feel unsatisfied every time you look at women.
Clay (shocked but not offended): Ok you have a point, I’m not going to wait to make this purchase anymore. Ring me up.
James completes the order and walks to Melissa, his sales manager.
Melissa: Give me a high five James, Great Job. That was pure Cowboyitis! Did not know you had that quality.
VE Day: ‘We have won the right to hope’ – archive, May 1945
How the Guardian the reported wartime victory and the ending of hostilities in Europe on 8 May 1945.
A crowd celebrates VE day marking the German surrender in the second world war, May 1945.
Victory in Europe: proclamation to-day
The war in Europe has ended with Germany’s unconditional surrender. Victory will be announced officially by the Prime Minister in a broadcast at three o’clock this afternoon and the King with broadcast at 9 pm.
To-day will be regarded as VE Day, and both to-day and to-morrow will be public holidays.
Explanation of the delay in making the official announcement lies in the importance attached to a simultaneous announcement in London, Washington and Moscow. The first news of the surrender came from German sources. At 2 pm yesterday the Danish radio announced that the German forces in Norway had capitulated and at 2.30 the German Foreign Minister, Count von Krosigk, announced the “unconditional surrender of all fighting German troops.”
Nations rejoice at victory
8 May 1945
Scenes of rejoicing at the United Nations’ victory over Germany were last night reported from many countries.
Rome: bells rang
The great bells of St Peter’s and those of a hundred other Rome churches rang out in jubilation soon after the news that the European war had ended reached the city. Sirens, which had last were heard as a warning of the approach of Allied ‘planes, also sounded for ten minutes. …
The Public Is Astonishingly United
Pollsters have finally found an issue that transcends partisan divides, with the overwhelming majority of Americans siding against President Trump.
A mostly empty restaurant in Smyrna, Georgia, on April 27.
The complaint that Washington is out of step with Main Street has been circulating for roughly as long as each metonym has been in use. But it’s seldom, if ever, been more true than at this moment in the coronavirus pandemic.
The most active debate in politics at the moment—in the White House, in state capitols, and in the press—is about whether and how much to reopen the economy. President Trump has been fitfully pushing for the country to get back to work, has boosted fringe state-level protests demanding that restrictions end, and yesterday took his first trip in weeks, visiting a mask-manufacturing plant in Arizona.
But even as the national political discourse has adopted reopening as the central debate, polls repeatedly show that Americans overwhelmingly back restrictions and do not support reopening most businesses. The consensus is especially notable in an era when nearly every poll question seems to serve as a referendum on Donald Trump, with his supporters lining up against his opponents. Here, despite Trump’s pleas for reopening, Americans are remaining united—and not heeding him. What if government reopened the country, and no one came?
“I’m viewing our great citizens of this country to a certain extent and to a large extent as warriors,” Trump said yesterday. “They’re warriors. We can’t keep our country closed. We have to open our country.”
Apparently most Americans are not eager to think of themselves as warriors—or are simply wise soldiers, with strategy as their strength. A poll from The Washington Post and the University of Maryland released yesterday finds that eight in 10 Americans oppose reopening movie theaters and gyms; three-quarters don’t support letting sit-down restaurants and nail salons reopen; and a third or less would allow barber shops, gun stores, and retail stores to operate. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll last week found similar numbers: Nine in 10 Americans don’t think sporting events should have crowds without more testing; 85 percent would keep schools closed, and 80 percent would keep dine-in restaurants shut. There is no significant difference in views between residents of states that have begun loosening restrictions and those that have not. …
RELATED: It’s Been a Week With Trump, and It’s Only Wednesday
The president’s capacity to astonish even his most jaded viewers is bottomless.
“We never had a more beautiful set than this, did we?” said Donald Trump Sunday night, looking very pleased. He was sitting, implausibly, at the feet of Abraham Lincoln—or rather, at the feet of Lincoln’s statue in the Lincoln Memorial—to take questions for a Fox News virtual town hall. The vast marble chamber was spookily lit to highlight Lincoln’s angled, impassive visage and our current president’s sumptuous corona, if you’ll pardon the expression, of tangerine hair.
The first question came from one of the two Fox anchors, Bret Baier, who wondered what the president would say to the opposing sides of the country’s many cultural fault lines: those who think it’s too early and unsafe to go back to work, and those who think the business shutdowns have gone on too long.
Trump’s capacity to astonish even his most jaded viewers is bottomless. Politicians love to accuse their rivals of “trying to have it both ways,” as if it were a capital offense against logic and leadership. A politician who really does want to have it both ways (and they all do) will scold his rivals for creating a “false choice.” (Barack Obama used the phrase so often, he could make it the name of his fishing boat.) But no politician in his right mind, under any circumstances, would ever dare to—
“I think you can have it both ways,” Trump said. At these moments his insouciance glows about him as brightly as his corona. Then, as a way to explain how that could actually happen, he answered by simply rephrasing the original question at much greater length and ending in midair, dropping to Earth with an authoritative “So I understand that very well.” …
The Story Of Dr. Bronner’s Soap Is Strange
Since we’re all now much more aware of where our hands have been, you might have noticed you’ve touched some pretty strange things throughout your day. But if afterward, you’ve scrubbed your hands down with Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, then we promise it’ll be the weirdest thing you’ve touched all week. That isn’t to say anything against the soap. It’s a great soap as far as we know. What makes Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps so odd is that the story of how it came to be is a Hallmark Movie on acid.
Emanuel Heilbronner was an immigrant soap-maker from Germany who chose to drop the “heil” from his name, much in the same way future generations of Americans will choose to drop the phrases “Trump,” “Donald,” or “Bigly” if attached to theirs. So far, nothing is out of the ordinary, until we learn that Dr. B (not a doctor by the way) had invented a Judeo-Unitarian pop religious philosophy and would put his children in foster homes for stretches of time so he could go spread his message. (We guess being a good father wasn’t part of the belief system.)
It was after a particularly heavy session of proselytizing at the University of Chicago, that he was arrested and sent to a mental institution. Fortunately for all you Bronner-heads out there, he escaped after two months and started his soap business. Bronner would give lectures of his ‘All One’ philosophy and would hand out free soap to the attendees. He quickly began to suspect that people were only coming to get in on all that free soap, which was either a testament to how crazy his lectures were or how good his soap was. Either way, Bronner began to print his teachings on the soap bottles, and thus a tax-exempt (for a time) religious organization/ soap company was born. …
UNRELATED: Why Aren’t More Tech People Like ‘MySpace Tom’?
As life-changing as technology has been over the years, what really ropes people in are the personalities behind it all. Nobody would make a The Social Network movie if Mark Zuckerberg’s dickbaggery weren’t so pervasive that it honestly needs two more films to cover. Nobody would pay nearly as much attention to Elon Musk if he weren’t shooting cars into space or smoking weed with Joe Rogan.
Which brings us to Tom Anderson — better known as your first friend on MySpace. He sold MySpace for about half a billion bucks and has been living it up pretty much ever since. But here’s the key difference: “MySpace Tom” didn’t use that money to start newer, more dystopian misadventures. He’s just taking travel photos around the world on Instagram and playing with his drone. And not even in a weird “tech-bro spying on you” way.
Here’s my new favorite thing — the latest @gopro video of me and @jennleezy enjoying my home, Oahu. I’ve been living on Oahu part-time since I retired in 2010… This video shows you a little bit of why I love this island!! 
Just a week ago I had a moment standing on the Pali lookout… 
Looking out over the vast expanse from Chinaman’s Hat to Kailua, I was just overcome. I’ve never felt so connected to a physical place like I am to Oahu. @john_hook was with me. He can testify, I think I said it out loud even. 🙂 
For those who are paying attention, tomorrow I will announce the winner of the Kauai giveaway! 
And right after that, I’ll start the next give away for another trip to Oahu. Think of this video (made by my man @aj_sjostrom) as a teaser of what you’ll experience if you win the next one. 
And in other news, the airport found my missing bag!! So all my goodies are on their way home to me. Thanks for the all the positive thoughts on my lost stuff! 
I’m sure it helped my gear be discovered 🙂 (It was in the rental car.. doh!) Last thing, I’ve been uploading my InstaStories to YouTube: go check it out, link in bio 🙂
MySpaceTom goes out and generally respects YourSpaces to which he’s traveling instead of, say, using a devastated Puerto Rico for a VR demonstration, a la Zuckerberg. He’s perfectly content, just producing cool photo content. Good for Anderson. Zuckerberg takes his employees on weird-ass field trips around Palo Alto, while Anderson’s out exploring Earth. He really did become the anti-Zuckerberg.
This effectively makes him the only tech guy to do it “right,” in the broadest sense possible. He beat the money game — he started a company and sold it. Unlike some sites<, it’s not currently being used to gather data or ruin people’s lives, and everybody involved effectively got the win. …
Living With Uncertainty
As the chronically ill know, to be alive is to be “in uncertainty.” But American culture—and American medicine within it—largely strives to downplay this fact.
In 2012, I got very sick after several mysterious bouts of bad health. It took nearly three more years to figure out what was wrong with me. Few problems showed up on my test results, so the doctors mostly shook their heads: Without measurable data, they couldn’t even say I had a disease. That is how modern medicine works; it relies on data, measurements, symptoms, all of which constellate into a specific “disease entity,” tightly codified and closely studied. To be ill these days is (typically) to have more certainty about the source of your suffering than humans have ever had before. Your sore throat is caused by streptococcal bacteria; the lump in your breast is benign; the pain in your foot is radiating from a fractured metatarsal. Because I had no answers, I sometimes wondered if the problem was all in my head. Perhaps I was depressed. Slowly, though, I came to accept what my body was making clear: I was sick, very sick, even if no one knew why. Without data, I had to make room for a reality that included my near-total lack of control. I might never get an answer about what was wrong. I might not emerge stronger. I might die. All at once, I had stepped off the path of progress, a deluded narrative to which I—like many a good student—had clung assiduously my whole life.
My life as a patient changed the day I reread a letter by the 19th-century poet John Keats. At the time of its writing, Keats had witnessed his mother die from tuberculosis, then a poorly understood disease with an unclear cause; soon his brother Tom and later he himself would die of the infection. In the letter, Keats—in his early 20s—tried to explain to his brothers the special quality that differentiated a great artist from a good one. “Negative capability,” as he termed it, is the quality “of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
Keats’s words about the necessity of “being in uncertainty” reminded me that I wasn’t living off the known map of human experience. In fact, I thought his formulation of negative capability was not just key to making great art, but to living well in the face of pain. It was a profound insight of the sort that comes from witnessing loss and suffering up close.
As the chronically ill know, to be alive is to be “in uncertainty.” I had felt invisible in my illness, I realized, because American culture—and American medicine within it—largely strives to downplay this fact. A doctor I know told me that in med school he was explicitly taught never to say “I don’t know” to a patient; uncertainty was thought to open the door to lawsuits. In the place of uncertainty, Americans have catchphrases: Just do it. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Muscle through it. Paradoxically, the culture often paints the acknowledgment that some ills are chronic and insurmountable as a luxury none of us can afford—almost verbatim. “I’m about to take this nation to war. Grief is a luxury I can’t afford right now,” says the president on the TV series 24, expressing a sentiment viewers are meant to admire. …
Trump Death Clock seeks to bring ‘accountability for reckless leadership’
A website by an independent film-maker tracks lives allegedly lost during the Covid-19 pandemic by the president’s own inept actions.
Demonstrators protest on 23 April against the Trump administration’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Donald Trump has been accused of personally causing the deaths of 40,000 Americans through his “reckless” handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, in a new website launched on Wednesday under the provocative title Trump Death Clock.
The website, created by independent film-maker Eugene Jarecki, is a conscious echo of the National Debt Clock which since 1989 has given a running score near Times Square in Manhattan of total US borrowing. The Trump Death Clock extends the idea dramatically by providing a tracker measured not in dollars but in lives allegedly lost by the president’s own inept actions.
“I am seeking accountability for reckless leadership,” Jarecki told the Guardian. “We have meticulously isolated just that portion of the US death toll where one can see a specific line between the president’s decisions and actions and the loss of life.”
The Trump Death Clock provides a bald tally of lives that it claims were needlessly lost to Covid-19 that ticks upwards in real time. At the time of reporting this article, it stood at 39,435 – laying responsibility for almost 40,000 American lives at the White House door. …
How ‘Karen’ Became a Coronavirus Villain
A popular joke about entitled white women is now a big pandemic meme.
In the ongoing, tense conversation over how long America has to remain locked down during the coronavirus pandemic, one of the more absurd moments came two weeks ago: Carolyn Goodman, the mayor of Las Vegas, called for the immediate reopening of her city’s casinos, offering her constituents up as a “control group” to test whether stay-at-home measures are actually effective. The notion baffled public-health experts, who maintain that a rigorous adherence to social distancing is essential to overcoming the outbreak. It drew swift condemnation from other Las Vegas officials, who referred to Goodman as “reckless” and “an embarrassment.” And, as is so often the case in public blunders, it received its harshest criticism online. Goodman was called “an idiot,” “an actual monster,” and, maybe most damning, “a real Karen’s Karen.”
On the internet, a Karen is not always named Karen. The title has been used to decry a woman named Diane who attended a protest of Pennsylvania’s stay-at-home order carrying an American flag and announcing, “What do I say to your science? I don’t believe in your science.” It’s been thrown at a woman in a local Facebook group demanding private medical information about a person in her neighborhood, and a woman in Tennessee carrying a handmade sign that read SACRIFICE THE WEAK, REOPEN TN. Becky Ames, the mayor of Beaumont, Texas, was declared a Karen after she was photographed breaking the state’s stay-at-home order at a nail salon.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, “Karen” has been adopted as a shorthand to call out a vocal minority of middle-aged white women who are opposed to social distancing, out of either ignorance or ruthless self-interest. It’s the latest evolution of a long-standing meme. In The New York Times last year, the writer Sarah Miller described Karens as “the policewomen of all human behavior,” using the example of a suburban white woman who calls the cops on kids’ pool parties. Karens have been mocked for being anti-vaccine and pro–“Can I speak to your manager?” They’re obsessed with banal consumer trends and their personal appearance, and typically criminally misguided, usually loudly and with extreme confidence. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
Alfred Reece says the outbreak began when his teacher got sick.
A 60-year-old former accountant serving an 8-year sentence for convictions related to income tax fraud, Reece volunteers in a GED class for prisoners at FCI Oakdale I, a low-security federal prison in rural Louisiana.
From there, according to Reece and other prisoners who spoke with VICE News, the coronavirus spread quickly among inmates and staff. At least seven inmates have died at FCI Oakdale I, including Patrick Jones, a 49-year-old who Reece tutored in the GED class.
THANKS to SHOWTIME and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
After reducing its coronavirus cases to zero in seven weeks, New Zealand is looking to join a travel bubble with its neighbor Australia. On Tuesday, New Zealand health authorities said the country had no coronavirus cases to report for a second consecutive day.
Georgia teens get to skip their driver’s license road tests, a man inks himself to mark each day of quarantine, and Roman seagulls turn savage.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Social Distancing Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
Updated guidelines on wearing a nose and mouth covering while outside to help slow the spread of coronavirus has some people reacting with willful defiance.
Tucker Carlson: Fox News’s free speech and/or civility warrior.
In contrast to the President who appears eager to restart the economy at any cost, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is consistently challenging the idea that a human life is anything other than priceless.
THANKS to CBS and A Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
Aggressive Q & A with @allanaHarkin is back by popular demand and this time we have some bizarre questions but luckily we love that!
THANKS to TBS and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee for making this program available on YouTube.
President Donald Trump tells the story of how he became the most perfect president in the history of the United States.
THANKS to NBC and Late Night with Seth Meyers for making this program available on YouTube.
昨日はこどもの日だったので、久しぶりにちゅーるをあげました。片手にカメラ、もう片方の手に二本のちゅーるを持ったら収集がつかなくなってしまいました。As yesterday was Children’s Day, I gifted snacks to Maru&Hana.
Google’s Translation: It was a children’s day yesterday, so I gave her a long time. I had a camera in one hand and two tulle in the other hand, so I couldn’t collect them.
FINALLY . . .
Tumbleweeds Usually Tumble, But Sometimes They Tornado
Matt McKnight caught a botanical maelstrom on camera in Eastern Washington.
As soon as the vortex passed, Matt McKnight zipped out of the heap that had collected around him, and drove a little ways up the road to pick the plants out of his car.
AT THE END OF APRIL, Matt McKnight was driving Bessie, his Westfalia campervan, on State Route 240 in Washington when he encountered something he hadn’t wagered on: dozens of tumbleweeds whipped into a vortex, and heading right for the van.
McKnight is a Seattle-based journalist for Crosscut, an independent news site, and has been traveling across the state to cover the COVID-19 crisis. Bessie is a good companion on these journeys—McKnight can load her up with provisions and then sleep in the back at night, so that he’s not imperiling himself or the communities he covers. He was driving through a vast expanse of flat land when the tumbleweed storm arrived.
Tumbleweed is the final chapter in the life cycle of Russian thistle (an umbrella term that includes Salsola tragus and several other species), a plant introduced to America from Eurasia roughly two centuries ago. When the plants mature, a part of them breaks off and blows away, sowing seeds as it somersaults. Tumbleweeds are commonly seen on American highways, and they snowed in this stretch of State Route 240 back in December; they had to be cleared away with snowplows. But this was something else. “I’ve lived in Wyoming and Idaho and Utah, and the High Desert of California, so I’m not a stranger to tumbleweeds,” McKnight says. “I’m not a stranger to dust devils, either, but I’ve never, ever in my life seen two of them merge together and then come straight at my face.” McKnight tweeted that the sight looked like a “tumbleweed tornado.”
A few minutes before the bizarre sight, McKnight saw a lone tumbleweed scuttling down the road; he thought it looked cute, and kept driving. “Then I saw kind of a mass of them coming—maybe 15—and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s kinda cool. There’s more.’” He slowed down a little, but pressed on. Then he and Bessie crested a small hill. “I saw a tumbledevil, a tumblenado, whatever you wanna call it, forming on the side.” It seemed like a good time to stop. “I was like, ‘Okay, hell no. I’m not going to be driving into that thing.” …
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Likely, if I find nothing more barely uninteresting at all to do.
Good times!
Need something more barely uninteresting at all to do?
Right now there’s one bird sitting on what appears to be a bunch of eggs. The other bird seems to be away, probably killing something tasty for his partners’ breakfast.
Ed. Yes, that’s a cut-and-paste of another day.