22 Posts in “Observations”
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Your Ignorance Doesn't Make You An Expert
Wow. Love this article so much. Long read, but full of humor and biting observation. To position yourself as the arbiter of a reality that is right in front of you, and to reject that reality simply because you don’t...
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To be a small thing bobbing in the Ocean
I am so damn lucky to live in New England, in the Ocean State, close to the Atlantic. Could I be in Hawaii or some warmer clime that also has ocean access? Sure, but I would likely have the same...
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Personalization might be the Biggest Problem
A recent article in my feed communicated something that I have been thinking pretty well, so I reproduce it here: …modern maps put everyone at the centre of the world. […] countries put themselves at the centre of world maps....
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Weather Trends
It has been cold, cold, cold for more than a month now. Feels like ever since New Year’s day, we have been under freezing. Nights are in the teens, low twenties and days barely break over 32°. We have had...
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Who is the internet for?
I’ve been thinking along these same lines recently. Chris Butler put it well in a recent article: People lived [in the internet] once, then AI moved in. But we’re still building a house for people. I think we might be...
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Weather Trends
It is November 7th, and yet the past few days have been over 70°. This year’s Halloween was unseasonably warm in the 60s. Many more people were out and about because of it. This weekend was cooler though sunny. I...
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The cultural power of the anti-woke tech bro: The aesthetic of Cybertrucks, energy drinks, and MMA, explained
The “Manosphere” …the parts of the internet where men complain about their lack of access to women and sex and blame society’s present ills on feminism. […] they tend to frame their position as “anti-woke,” or a counterpoint to what...
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Eclipse Witness
Saw a 94% total eclipse today. Ran around like mad yesterday to find a pair of glasses. Finally found some this morning. I expected it to get darker for some reason. Have I experienced an eclipse before? Without the glasses,...
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Day 189: COVID-19
Its fall. Fall descended swiftly, from 80+ degree days in August to low 70s and now 50s overnight. I had to turn the heat on to take the chill off the house in the morning. But by September 26 it...
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Day 119: COVID-19
Its been over 100 days. Oomph officially has no office right now — we are between the former place, whose lease ran out, and the new place which has no certificate of occupancy. We are all officially remote workers. Overall its...
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Day 84: COVID-19
George Floyd was a black man killed by police last week in Minneapolis. An officer knelt on his neck as a control tactic while George pleaded for his life saying (this should sound familiar) “I can’t breathe”. Nine minutes the...
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Day 70: COVID-19
Yup, it’s been 10 weeks now. 10 weeks of grocery shopping with anxiety, very little news watching or listening or reading because of the stress and anger, walking around with masks on and wondering why other people don’t have masks...
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Day 48: COVID-19
I’m trying to get back to a Monday schedule for putting these observations together. So only five days have elapsed between when the last one was put out. This past weekend was the best yet. Warm and sunny all weekend...
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Day 43: COVID-19
Its surprising and its not surprising when our president manages to make strange times even stranger. I’m no fan… primarily because he makes everything about himself. This crisis has been no different. He was trying to tell the American public that...
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Day 37: COVID-19
The strange times continue. It’s Earth Day today. The best thing we all can be doing right now is staying home. The skies are unusually clear all over the country. Smog reports have vanished from places like L.A. and Seattle....
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Day 28: COVID-19
Easter was yesterday… was it yesterday? Yes, yes it was. I think. The morning had an inside egg hunt for the girls and small Easter baskets. There was an online video church service that they were in briefly. It was...
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Day 21: COVID-19
So, yeah… this new not-normal is starting to become normal. I don’t like it. I’ve started reading. It’s bad when I start reading — as in, I know I really need to relax when I am able to focus on a...
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Day 14: COVID-19
It’s been two weeks now. Like the rest of the country and most of the world, we are staying home as much as possible, only venturing out for essential services. A lot has changed but a lot feels the same....
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Day 7: COVID-19
It’s been seven days now. They have been plain days on some ways and exceedingly weird in others. Working from home is pretty much routine. School from home is another matter. Seven days with very few options even if we...
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Day 1: COVID-19
Day 1 of working from home and the whole community being shut down. Quarantine and such started a little bit over the weekend, but this is the first Monday — a Monday in which things should have been normal — that has...
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Let’s Not forget How Weird This Is
It’s about two months into the Coronvirus outbreak that started in Wuhang, China. The media term is Coronavirus, which is actually a broad type of virus, but the medical name for this outbreak is COVID-19. The U.S., generally, was slow...
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What Marc Maron Taught Me
I’ve been listening to Marc Maron’s podcast WTF for a few years now, off and on. Not every episode, because the guy interviews people all the time. Just the people that interest me. He’s a great interviewer and always gets...