It was horrible to have to decide last week whether to unsubscribe
to the Washington Post after Jeff Bezos nixed their endorsement
of Harris. The Post has had its problems but there are good reporters
at the paper and I was happy to be a subscriber for the past six years.
The non‑endorsements of the LA Times and the WaPo struck me as capitulation to avoid possible consequences of being on the wrong side of Tr--p should he win. A wannabe strongman cowing people into submission is an unacceptable state of affairs, to put it mildly. Unsubscribing was a chance to send a message. I'm part of a larger group than I expected:
The non‑endorsements of the LA Times and the WaPo struck me as capitulation to avoid possible consequences of being on the wrong side of Tr--p should he win. A wannabe strongman cowing people into submission is an unacceptable state of affairs, to put it mildly. Unsubscribing was a chance to send a message. I'm part of a larger group than I expected:
More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters. Not all cancellations take effect immediately. Still, the figure represents about 8% of the paper's paid circulation of 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well. The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.Jeff Bezos has a column in the Post today. He said,
Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. ... What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non‑independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it's the right one.One of my favorite satirists on X summed it up:
Republicans don't trust us and that makes us look biased. The only solution is to make Democrats distrust us too.
by Jeff Bezos
This week, Firefox recommended
an article
about Hempstead Turnpike, a.k.a. New York State Route 24.
"Centuries ago it was an idyllic earthen path," the article says.
"Today, it's the most dangerous road for cyclists in America."
When I was 14-15 years old, I was friends with a guy who ran a stereo store. I hung out there a lot and worked on building speakers. I got there by bicycle. The route I took included an eight mile stretch of Hempstead Turnpike, through the thick of the area the article describes as dangerous as hell. I made that trip dozens and dozens of times.
Back in the day, emissions standards were weak and a lot of cars still used leaded gas. Riding in traffic bothered me more for the exhaust fumes than for the prospect of getting hit by a car, although I was certainly not unaware of the danger. Hempstead Turnpike felt about as dangerous as other major roads on Long Island.
For me, the most interesting part of that article was where it reviews the history of Hempstead Turnpike, noting that it was footpath and a bicycle route before it ever saw car traffic.
When I was 14-15 years old, I was friends with a guy who ran a stereo store. I hung out there a lot and worked on building speakers. I got there by bicycle. The route I took included an eight mile stretch of Hempstead Turnpike, through the thick of the area the article describes as dangerous as hell. I made that trip dozens and dozens of times.
Back in the day, emissions standards were weak and a lot of cars still used leaded gas. Riding in traffic bothered me more for the exhaust fumes than for the prospect of getting hit by a car, although I was certainly not unaware of the danger. Hempstead Turnpike felt about as dangerous as other major roads on Long Island.
For me, the most interesting part of that article was where it reviews the history of Hempstead Turnpike, noting that it was footpath and a bicycle route before it ever saw car traffic.
I cancelled my subscription to the Washington Post today after they,
following in the footsteps of the LA Times,
declined
to endorse
a candidate for President this year:
An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision not to publish was made by The Post's owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources.For an example of the kind of courage I wish the Post had shown, see the eloquent response the largest newspaper in Arizona had to death threats they'd received after endorsing Clinton in 2016.
The Columbia Journalism Review,
yesterday:
Mariel Garza, the editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times, resigned on Wednesday after the newspaper's owner blocked the editorial board's plans to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president.Later yesterday from Dr. Pat Soon‑Shiong, owner of the LA Times:
"I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent," Garza told me in a phone conversation. "In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I'm standing up."
So many comments about the @latimes Editorial Board not providing a Presidential endorsement this year. Let me clarify how this decision came about.TOMMYJOURNAL notes:
The Editorial Board was provided the opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation. In addition, the Board was asked to provide their understanding of the policies and plans enunciated by the candidates during this campaign and its potential effect on the nation in the next four years. In this way, with this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years.
Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision. Please #vote.
- it's routine for editorial pages to endorse candidates; the LA Times has been doing it for a long time
- a faux-neutral pros-and-cons comparison would be dopey given that only one candidate is a sex abuser/felon/wannabe dicatator
- Dr. Soon‑Shiong's second paragraph starts with passive voice weaseling, if not as extreme an instance thereof as a letter from the NSA I posted a while back (admittedly a high bar)
GIMPS
announced
a new large prime number today: 2136279841-1.
It was discovered using an
NVIDIA A100,
ending a long run of large primes discovered with Intel CPUs.
I remember telling my math professor in 1978 about 244497-1, a large prime number that had been discovered that year. He said, "Aren't those things for putting on envelopes?"
I remember telling my math professor in 1978 about 244497-1, a large prime number that had been discovered that year. He said, "Aren't those things for putting on envelopes?"
Helpful editing prompt from Google photos:
photo credit:
Kira Od
It's now routine in California to get a ballot in the mail and to return
it either by mail or at a drop box. I got a text message from
the state this morning telling me they'd received and counted my vote.
Compared to some parts of the country where people have stood in line for
hours to vote, this is progress.
That said, I used to enjoy voting in person. I usually recognized at least one of volunteers working at the polling place here in Lone Pine. The interaction was short but always cordial and reflected mutual respect for participation in the process, a respect that transcended partisan politics. One of my neighbors used to work at the polls; I knew she voted Republican, not because she'd told me but because her husband (who voted Democrat) had. "For fifty years she's been cancelling my vote," he said.
That said, I used to enjoy voting in person. I usually recognized at least one of volunteers working at the polling place here in Lone Pine. The interaction was short but always cordial and reflected mutual respect for participation in the process, a respect that transcended partisan politics. One of my neighbors used to work at the polls; I knew she voted Republican, not because she'd told me but because her husband (who voted Democrat) had. "For fifty years she's been cancelling my vote," he said.
hover
cursor over image for action.
In his book The Lives of a Cell,
Dr. Lewis Thomas considered what types of signals
we might transmit into space to initiate communication with
intelligent life elsewhere. He wrote
It would be simpler to announce to aliens that we can do mathematics. It's not much of a stretch to expect a sophisticated alien to recognize a string written with two symbols as a binary number. The metal plaque attached to the Pioneer 10 spacecraft had binary numbers on it, although they were intended to convey measurements rather than pure math. It expressed the digits 0 and 1 with horizontal and vertical lines, respectively.
One number--albeit a large one--would be enough to clearly announce that our species can do mathematics. I have in mind the order (i.e., size) of the Monster Group, a number that came to our attention only about fifty years ago and which has deep connections to several branches of mathematics. Using the Pioneer plaque's style of binary numbers, it reads
Perhaps the safest thing to do at the outset, if technology permits, is to send music. This language may be the best we have for explaining what we are like to others in space, with least ambiguity. I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again. We would be bragging, of course, but it is surely excusable for us to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later.As much as I like the idea of offering the music of Bach to show what humans can do, it presupposes a capacity to appreciate music at all--let alone music whose rhythms and pitches are familiar to our ears. Bach would probably be a good choice though as his music is renowned for being indestructible in the sense of still sounding good no matter what instrument it's played on or at what tempo.
It would be simpler to announce to aliens that we can do mathematics. It's not much of a stretch to expect a sophisticated alien to recognize a string written with two symbols as a binary number. The metal plaque attached to the Pioneer 10 spacecraft had binary numbers on it, although they were intended to convey measurements rather than pure math. It expressed the digits 0 and 1 with horizontal and vertical lines, respectively.
One number--albeit a large one--would be enough to clearly announce that our species can do mathematics. I have in mind the order (i.e., size) of the Monster Group, a number that came to our attention only about fifty years ago and which has deep connections to several branches of mathematics. Using the Pioneer plaque's style of binary numbers, it reads
|----||-|||||-|---||||||-|-|---|----
-||--|---|--|||----|--||||||||-|||--
-|--||---|-|-||--|||--||||----|--|||
||---||||---||----||---|-|----------
------------------------------------
A friend asked if I'd help him capture
an injured heron so he could bring it to a
wildlife rescue organization
in our valley.
Stephen Colbert: | Cats or dogs? |
Elvis Costello: | Cats
or dogs: without question, dogs. Cats are all plotting our downfall. |
House
under construction in my neighborhood.
What's the word for seeing something new
and soon afterwards seeing it all over the place?
I first saw the word colorway about a week ago and have seen it about five times since. Dictionaries tell me it's been around longer than I have but somehow I avoided it for most of my life (or so it seems).
I first saw the word colorway about a week ago and have seen it about five times since. Dictionaries tell me it's been around longer than I have but somehow I avoided it for most of my life (or so it seems).