Events

When I moved to my current house, I planned to hook up my ancient cassette player to a stereo system in my library. So I got my ancient cassettes out of storage and brought them to the new place. It took a couple of stages (ordering bookshelves, getting the bookshelves, waiting for them to fix the adjustable shelf in the center bookshelf) over a few months. In that last phase it looked like this: You're reading that right. I packed that box of cassettes on 3 January 2005, and put a sticker on it when I...

The Federal Infrastructure Bill that President Biden signed into law in 2021 allocated $66 billion to Amtrak, which they plan to use to bring US rail service up to European standards (albeit in the mid-2000s): Amtrak’s expansion plan, dubbed Amtrak Connects US, proposes service improvements to 25 existing routes and the addition of 39 entirely new routes. If the vision were to be fully realized, it would bring passenger rail to almost every major city in the US in 15 years. (Right now, only 27 out of...

Cassie did not understand why she could not try my Indian food last night: And somehow, with the rudimentary editing controls on my phone, I accidentally turned her into an Andrew Wyeth painting. Huh.

The Screen Actors Guild/AFTRA voted to strike today, halting most TV and film production worldwide (and even ending the Oppenheimer red carpet). The Times explains: About 160,000 television and movie actors are going on strike at midnight, joining screenwriters who walked off the job in May and setting off Hollywood’s first industrywide shutdown in 63 years. The leaders of the union, SAG-AFTRA, approved a strike on Thursday, hours after contract talks with a group of studios broke down. Actors will be...

The first day of a sprint is the best day to consolidate three interfaces with three others, touching every part of the application that uses data. So right now, I am watching most of my unit tests pass and hoping I will figure out why the ones that failed did so before I leave today. While the unit tests run, I have some stuff to keep me from getting too bored: The XPOTUS keeps confirming every theory about his behavior, this time that he only wants to run in 2024 to postpone the consequences of...

The United States has had an explosion of craft brewing in the past 15 years, thanks to relaxed regulations and a nearly-universal revulsion among serious beer drinkers for the mass-produced swill from the InBev/MillerCoors duopoly. One could argue, however, that the first true craft beer in the US came from San Francisco in 1896. Sadly, the 127-year-old Anchor Brewing Co. announced this week that it would cease operations and liquidate this summer: In a press release, Anchor Brewing spokesperson Sam...

Sea-surface temperatures around our embarrassing southern peninsula have passed 32°C, significantly warmer than normal: Not only is Florida sizzling in record-crushing heat, but the ocean waters that surround it are scorching, as well. The unprecedented ocean warmth around the state — connected to historically warm oceans worldwide — is further intensifying its heat wave and stressing coral reefs, with conditions that could end up strengthening hurricanes. Much of Florida is seeing its warmest year on...

Former football coach and mediocre white guy Tommy Tuberville (R-MS), currently fighting for the Dumbest Person in Congress title against several of his Republican colleagues in the House and Senate, has continued his one-man blockade in the Senate against confirming the promotions of general and flag officers across the US military. As a consequence, for the first time in a century, the US Marine Corps has no Commandant: [Commandant General David] Berger, whose four-year tour as the Marines’ top...

New York Times columnist and former Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse summarizes the frightening success of the Religious Right under the Roberts court: Yes, democracy survived [the Supreme Court's 2022-23 term], and that’s a good thing. But to settle on that theme is to miss the point of a term that was in many respects the capstone of the 18-year tenure of Chief Justice John Roberts. To understand today’s Supreme Court, to see it whole, demands a longer timeline. To show why, I offer a thought...

Razib Khan looks at where modern humans came from in light of recent genetic analyses, and how the Toba eruption 74,000 YBP gave our particular lineage an opening our ancestors exploited, wiping out the competing varieties of humans within 10,000 years: The most powerful explosion of the last 2.5 million years, the Toba eruption triggered a decade-long cold snap that wrought havoc even amid the last Ice Age’s already inclement conditions. When the cataclysm hit, Neanderthals had reigned supreme from the...