At the risk of TMI...

Mostly the only time I grow my beard out is when I have a fever blister. That's because the best treatment for that particular malady is just to leave it alone. (All the creams and lotions they sell for it are just growing cultures.) So rather than leave a small patch on the upper lip unshaved I just stop shaving everything above the neck.

The thing is, I don't really like having facial hair. It's itchy and distracting. I'm sure you get used to it. And maybe I'll give it another try one of these days, after the beard I briefly had in college. But at present it's one of those things I look forward to getting rid of, which I'll be able to do tomorrow.

In miniature

I've been perusing the Elizabeth Bishop's Complete Poems. Poetry enriches life. I've learned that trying to reproduce poems with fancy indentation leads to heartache. This one doesn't. Its title translates to "Winter Circus."

Cirque d'Hiver

Across the floor flits the mechanical toy, 

fit for a king of several centuries back.

A little circus horse with real white hair.

His eyes are glossy black. 

He bears a little dancer on his back.

She stands upon her toes and turns and turns. 

A slanting spray of artificial roses

is stitched across her skirt and tinsel bodice.

Above her head she poses

another spray of artificial roses.

His mane and tail are straight from Chirico.

He has a formal, melancholy soul. 

He feels her pink toes dangle toward his back

along the little pole

that pierces both her body and her soul

and goes through his, and reappears below,

under his belly, as a big tin key.

He canters three steps, then he makes a bow, 

canters again, bows on one knee,

canters, then clicks and stops, and looks at me.

The dancer, by this time, has turned her back.

He is the more intelligent by far.

Facing each other rather desperately―

his eye is like a star―

we stare and say, "Well, we have come this far."

I think the poem's rhythm quite suits living toys.

Deep down

 

You don't hear tubas that much anymore. Or at least you don't hear them in that many places. Jazz has gotten away from it, with a few exceptions. It's not often played in rock the way sax has made a kind of home there. For the most part it's exiled to the classical world and high school marching bands. But the tuba can definitely induce a mood.

"I'm from Silicon Valley and I'm here to help."

It's well-known that Ronald Reagan said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." It's less remembered that he said so in the context of announcing a drought assistance plan for farmers. But the idea that government plans can do more harm than good isn't an extremist one.

But beyond a certain point that applies to plans in general. There's a technocratic impulse in both the government and the private sector. It's the idea that as we get more and better data we can make better decisions, and if that "we" means only a small elite, it's incumbent on all the other schmoes to get with the program.

This article on the pitfalls of "smart cities" shows where that kind of haughtiness can lead. The great cities of the Northwest―Seattle and Portland―have turned unfriendly to their residents exactly by means of the scientific measures that were supposed to help them. 

Portland didn’t fail because it lacked intelligence. So far, it’s failed because it forgot to ask what the intelligence was for. The dream of a “New Atlantis” — a city run by science and data — turns dystopian not because of its technology, but because of its values. If citizens are assumed to be liabilities rather than moral agents, then urban design becomes an exercise in containment, not liberation.

Not to beat a dead horse, but the COVID reaction was the final boss of treating citizens as liabilities. For weeks turning to months turning to a couple of years, all unprotected and unmediated social interactions were held to be irresponsible. All because of experts who had convinced themselves they had the best information. 

This also means that it's past time smart people admitted that data isn't everything.

🗡sharp

Sometimes one might sit up late at night and ponder the big questions like: Knife throwing, is that for real? How does it work? What kind of nut would agree to be the throwee?

This first-person article pretty much confirms that it's a genuine thing. Bates apparently teaches it, or at least did back in 2015. He wisely doesn't give away too many trade secrets in the interview. The statement "I’ll also light the knives on fire and throw them while wearing a blindfold." must have been good for luring 'em in.

Windy City cats

I was just looking up stuff about Chicago, I guess out of curiosity over what puts it head and shoulders above other American cities in terms of creating Popes. And I came across this article on Chicago-specific slang. 

What struck me right away was the picture they had illustrating the word "gangway." It's very striking and the cats are beautiful, of course. But I doubt that there were just this many purely black cats hanging out together. I think there was a wrangler involved. Not a superstitious one, obbiously'

The ground under our feet

There's a certain class of Wikipedia edit I used to make. I don't anymore. I still remember how to log in, and I still make some edits, but smaller ones.

What I used to do was find an article that had been flagged for not having any sources. Then I'd find some official sources and include them in the article's bibliography. It's not really doable anymore.

Until fairly recently you could freely surf the websites of most magazines and newspapers. They might try to coax you to subscribe by offering some kind of premium content. Or they might have a limited number of articles you could read in a month, and once you had used them up you had to wait for a new month to begin. But increasingly we're in the "no freebies means no freebies" era. Everything is paywalled. 

You could say that this kind of crackdown was always inevitable. That publishers have to make money. You'd have a point. But some things rankle. For one thing this comes after years of online readers tolerating oftentimes intrusive ads. Also, are the revenues being used to pay writers and bring in more and better journalism? Doesn't seem like it. 

For better or worse the infrastructure of the internet was based on certain things being promised. Now they are quickly being unpromised.