2021 archive
QOTD 0
Caroline Graham, in the voice of Cully Barnaby:
I’ve no problem with with people who are insincerely pleasant. It’s the sincerely unpleasant who get up my nose.
Graham, Caroline, A Ghost in the Machine (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004), p. 221.
Treadmill 0
The Seattle Time’s Danny Westneat writes that, for him at least, the honeymoon with working from home is over. A snippet:
(snip)
The reality of remote work seems, to me, kind of like when people got smart home devices like Alexa in order to access the internet, but it turned out it was the device that was accessing them. Who is it really benefiting?
Recommended Listening 0
Kings, Queens, and Pawns, the Librivox audio book recording of Mary Roberts Rinehart’s memoir of her experiences as a war correspondent for The Saturday Evening Post on the Belgian front during World War I.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Show politeness to your children.
One more time, “accidental” is not a synonym for “negligent” (unless, it seems, there is a firearm involved).
(Spelink error correx. I’m still getting used to the keyboard on my new laptop, as it’s slightly smaller than that of my old laptop.)
“That Does Not Compute” 0
Sam and his crew discuss Larry Kudlow’s inability to do the math.
“The Siren’s (Telephone) Call” 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Matt Johnson looks at research which indicates that even the presence of a “smart” phone, say on a table or in a hand, can distract persons from their current activity, whether that activity is talking with a real live human being, doing a task, or solving a problem.
He sees attributes this to “counterfactual thinking.” Here’s a tiny bit
Follow the link the complete article.
Geeking Out 0
Listening to Agatha Christie’s They Do It with Mirrors from the Old Time Radio Theater in VLC on Ubuntu MATE with the Fluxbox window manager. The wallpaper is from my collection.
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
Cameron Smith thinks we are missing the point. Here’s a bit of his article; follow the link for the rest.
When we confuse governing and entertainment, the boring, tedious art of statecraft takes a back seat to the perpetual campaign.