As you could tell from Airplane Movies 2023, I spent a lot of time on planes last year. A. Lot. Of. Time. All I’ve got to say about that is that having Black Titanium Card status [1], on United ain’t worth much. Sam Elliott did not come out of the cockpit to give me The […]
Tagged airplane movie reviewWhen I made this the tag-line for this widely unread blog, after trying out a few things from Buckaroo Banzai [0] and other cultural references going back to Moby-Dick at least, and arriving at this commentary on unexamined assumptions and selection bias, I had no evidence there might be any truth to it. But since […]
Not going to link to my favorite clueless-hate-read/podcast-listen, but here’s the typical demonstration of the path to right-wing nut-jobbery no-empathy-until-it-happens-to-me-or-mine: “Some of the saddest shit I’ve ever seen are injured climbers who try to keep climbing through their injury. Top-roping warm-ups with only three working appendages has always struck me as a pathetic use […]
One of the things that strikes me at work is the number of folks in the cohort just older than me [1] who have second homes in the mountains – Big Bear, Yosemite, Arrowhead, etc. Not too many ocean, that was always unaffordable for working joes. In my cohort [2], the unmarried of us own […]
Tagged boomer, Gen X, home prices, OWS, tuitionSometime in the distant past, I upgraded from the best bike I could afford when I was in college (Suntour, downtube shifters, Reynolds aluminum, etc.) to a pretty modern CF with 9 gears and brifters! [1] [2] I thought that was pretty sweet, and didn’t ever really see the point in upgrading. Until, after probably […]
Tagged bicycle, bike, old bikeI’ve had noise cancelling headphones for years now, mainly for use when flying [1]. I don’t particularly like in-ear buds though, as I have what are called ‘convoluted’ ear canals; in-ear buds tend to be painful after a while. And I also like to be able to hear a car about to run me down […]
I don’t believe that personal morality and character should be grounded on hope. … We need people who are grounded in the belief that there is a single humanity, and that battles are fought whether or not you can calculate that they’ll be successes. The struggle must be our very existence and we […]
Tagged QotDNow that half the cars are going to kill me because I can’t hear them [1], the other half have gotten even noisier [2]. We’ve gone from a gaussian distribution to bi-modal, and it’s not good. As though the leaf blowers got quieter by setting off small dynamite explosions. In between, it’s really quiet. Then […]
I just read a post with 166 comments at one of the sites [1] with better comments [2] that talked about how drinking and fighting and drugs were the ground on which the era happened, and the article and comments both remark on how kids today don’t seem to do that anymore. Control-F ‘lead’, and […]
“The purpose of a system is what it does.” —Stafford Beer, 2001
Tagged QotDI’m glad to see this blog post comment has caught on a little bit. It stunned me when I first read it, and now I’ve seen it in such disparate places as LGM, Jalopnik, and Charlies’s Diary [1] [2]. Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law […]
Tagged QotDI was raised on The Jetsons. I was promised flying cars, robot house cleaners, and jetpacks. As a splinter GenX/Boomer [1], the color of sky in my youth was that of a television, tuned to a dead channel. The streets of LA were wet, and it rained and the buildings rotted and dripped. I didn’t […]
Tagged ok boomer, rantI killed my first Aedes mosquito today, around noon. It was full of blood, probably mine. I look forward to the return of yellow fever and dengue. Between contested elections, occasional insurrections, half the country taking dog heartworm medicine instead of a vaccine, the roads falling apart because no one wants to pay any taxes, […]
And now Apple, and HBOMax, both have autoplay-with-sound previews while you’re looking through their channels. Did they learn nothing from Netflix?
Spring fever
When I first moved to Los Angeles lo these many years ago, I had spring fever every day. Not too hot, not too cold, not too humid [1]. Anywhere that I had lived previously, if there was a day like any average day in LA, you’d take the day off, because there would only be […]