Growing the Apple

It's interesting how borders change over time. When national borders do so it's usually big news. In other cases it might be forgotten.

Not universally forgotten but not known by everyone: Until 1898, New York City was officially only Manhattan. It was in 1898 that it unified with the then-independent towns of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. So Brooklyn wasn't part of NYC when Walt Whitman was growing up there.

Even stranger: Flatbush was another town, which had been a farming community for most of its existence. Brooklyn only annexed it in 1898. Which means that if you were a twelve-year-old living in Flatbush in 1900, you could have lived in three different cities while all the time remaining in one house. That had to be weird.

Getting premillennial

I see from my ventures online that there seems to be a lot of excitement over the upcoming reunion tour of England's Answer to The Black Crowes, But Not As Good. Of course this goes hand-in-hand with nostalgia for Cool Britannia, when the UK was awash in the previously unknown and unseen Union Jack and a radioactive ghoul managed to get elected Prime Minister. (The latter sounds cooler than it was.)

It's all part of the circle of life, of course. The 90s are back―or at least the most mainstream aspects of it are―because a sufficient number of people who were teenagers then have attained high status jobs. I'm a little different though. It's not that I'm immune to nostalgia, but I don't remember the time of my adolescence as being some great lost golden age.

Indie pop the vote

JD Vance is an Xennial. Seeing as how he's the first Presidential or Vice-Presidential nominee on a major party ticket to sport a beard, it wouldn't be too surprising to learn that he has at least elements of being a hipster somewhere in his history. This is panning out, but also getting him some blowback that is sadly typical of the times.

As soon as JD Vance was announced as the Republican vice-presidential candidate, political operatives dug up his Spotify playlists, which includes Death Cab for Cutie, One Direction and The Black Keys. Say whatever you will about JD Vance’s politics or his personality, but his curation of random songs before his fame as a bestselling author and National Conservative mascot has been the least interesting criticism of him. Death Cab for Cutie’s frontman Chris Walla wrote that the songs “centre on connection, and longing, and the fear or pain of loss”, but was baffled by why Vance “can’t – or wouldn’t – work to pay that empathy forward in policy terms, openly, to every person, as the artists do in song.”

To make a sidenote and partial correction of the linked article, Chris Walla is not the frontman of Death Cab for Cutie. Nor is he currently in the lineup. Ben Gibbard is the lead singer and lyricist, and as far as I know he hasn't weighed in on making Sen. Vance's playlist. Whether that's wisdom, caution, or just not finding his way to that particular mic yet I don't know.

The thing is, if you think that your music can actually help people understand "connection, and longing, and the fear or pain of loss”, why would you limit your fandom to one side of the political spectrum. All politicians are self-serving to some (great) extent, but to the extent that they're actually trying to do good for their constituents and the populace, they're going to have different ideas on what's best. Maybe your music (or movies, books, etc.) can help guide them, but it's stupid to demand capitulation.

En plein air

Today I gave a man directions. Or, to be more precise, I gave him information on the route the bus normally takes. When we were on the bus I caught a glance at the pad he was carrying. It appeared he had been painting a watercolor of the Baptist church we'd been standing in front of.

It's not the first time this summer I'd seen a guy doing that. In fact around town I've several times seen men―and they've all happened to be men―doing alfresco watercolors of some landmark or others. I don't know what exactly is behind this trend but I approve of it. Women are welcome too, of course.

Knocked out of contention

This convention overview gives a pretty good view of what I'm guessing Joe Biden must have been feeling at the convention in Chicago. When the summer began I was convinced that the Democrats were going to stick it out with him. If I thought so he must certainly have believed it. As it happens that weird pre-GOP convention debate did him in. He must have a pretty long list of people he trusted and who did him in.

Now the party is left with Kamala and her campaign of Joy. Of course constantly invoking joy during an election where you're insisting―again―that democracy itself is at risk makes you look like those grown-ups on The Twilight Zone who always smiled because they didn't want that kid to wish them into the cornfield. And Trump is a threat because for all his faults, he's still recognizably human. His opponents have had to dust off Bill Clinton because he does sincerity better than anyone else. As in "If you can fake that you can fake anything."

 

I have, on a couple of occasions at least, caught sight of moose in the wild. Just browsing in a green area. I know I've never seen one running up close. It's hard to think of an animal that looks more unhurried. They can certainly book it when they want to or have to, though.

Blindness, blindness and sight

The Scintillating Grid Illusion is visually simple. A black field crisscrossed with grey lines, white dots appearing where the lines intersect. And black dots too? They seem to flash in and out of existence. Of course they're never there at all. Your brain just projects them, for whatever reason.

Optical illusions are often cool, especially when you first notice what's going on. This one is as well. I can't look at it too long, though. It's a little too much like having a floating image in your retina after staring at a blinding light.

Idea!

What they say is that traditional incandescent and halogen bulbs use energy to heat a filament and that this makes them less efficient energy-wise. LED bulbs are more efficient. But where's the proof?

If LEDs are less wasteful then they should be able to take less energy and still produce the same quality of light. But they don't. Back when I had halogen bulbs in my living room's overhead light fixture the light was bright and crisp, reaching every corner, casting beautiful sharp shadows. Now everything is always dull and dingy.

Which makes me think that the efficiency angle is a con. I know, scientists and tech people never lie to us, but hear me out. The energy usage is less. But it would also be less with a lower watt bulb. But with lower watt bulbs you know you're getting lower wattage and probably lower quality. LED is still new territory to many, so it's easier to make people accept lower quality. 

is this

 

This one's short and sweet. You don't generally see magicians do card tricks with only two cards. Or at least only two cards that are readily apparent. It's a clever little switcheroo regardless of how she pulled it off.

Just fluttering by

Second consecutive blog post about insects, this one is a little more positive. Selectively, at least. 

I was waiting at the bus stop and something flew into the shelter. A butterfly, it had black wings with little orange spots. I'm not positive but it looked like it could be a dark morph of the eastern tiger swallowtail, which was kind of cool. Of course I'm sure it found someplace it wanted to be more than the bus shelter.

The fly days of summer

The Cicadapocalypse that they were predicting this year never really happened, at least around these parts. Maybe the birds took care of them. As far as general pest control goes having birds flying around is a system that works.

What we have gotten this year is a larger than usual number of flies and gnats, both inside and out. You can cut down on them by doing certain things, but unless you live in a climate-controlled space entirely cut off from the outdoors I don't think you can keep them out 100%.

In related news I now know what fruit fly pupae look like and that they can grow inside your garbage container. Not something I would have volunteered to learn but useful knowledge for the future nonetheless.

North to Alaska

I've been rewatching Northern Exposure lately. Or in some cases watching it for the first time. I'd never seen the pilot until recently. 

The show is about an overall eccentric small town called Cecily, Alaska. It wasn't actually filmed in Alaska, which I guess might be an inconvenient shoot. Instead they filmed in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State, which is a picturesque area in its own right. You do see totem poles here and there that look to be made by the Tlingit, a tribe with a great artistic tradition.

I have to say that watching it the second time around I have a greater liking for Joel Fleischman, the indentured town doctor played by Rob Morrow. He's certainly tetchy, but he has more nuances than I appreciated the first time. It probably helps that, like me, he has this weird style where he never looks entirely casual or completely formal. And his scenes with Native receptionist Marilyn are quite funny.

No-go

 Downtown Providence:

The tall building that houses my bank on the ground floor is one that you can actually walk through from one end to the other, at least during normal business hours. Cross the narrow side street, however...

This row of buildings has a couple of banks. The largest of these buildings you simply can't enter without security keying you in. That's not how it was a few years ago. Also you can't walk through any of the alleys because they're all fenced off with iron.

Do things always get more restrictive over time? It often seems that way.

Good shepherd

This short, created through stop motion, is really lovely. It's a work of brevity, simplicity, and just the right amount of tenderness. Always a nice surprise to see something like this has been made.

Turns out I can still post videos on the blog, although the way to do that has changed a little. Well, YouTube videos. Still rankles a little that I can't do the same with, say, Vimeo, but what can you do?

 

It builds up

I was just looking up why it feels hotter at night than during the day. Because it's definitely a real phenomenon. It's currently in the high 70s and feels muggier than it did during the day when it was in the high 80s. Apparently it's a matter of the ground absorbing heat during the day and releasing it into the atmosphere at night. Which feels like a reason to be glad days are getting shorter.