Though you’d never know it this time of year around here.
As it turns out, there are about 10% more people on disability in 2013 after the greatest recession since the 30s than there were in 1995. And most of that is due to simple demographics – it’s the boomers. Big shock. But by all means, if you want yet more people on disability, raise the retirement age to 67.
Tagged OWSSo Apple maps does this when it’s released, first iteration:
and it’s OMG, Apple Maps fail!
But Google Maps does this six months later:
and it’s art.
All I know is that the week before Apple Maps came out, Google Maps sent me to the wrong location twice in one week, and not for the first time either. Apple Maps has never sent me to the wrong location.
It did not know where Devil’s Punchbowl is, and Google Maps did. But the fail, unlike GMaps, was perfectly clear, and unlike GMaps, did not cost me $10 in parking and being a half an hour late. And before AMaps, I didn’t have audio turn-by-turn directions and always visible maps. Now I do. And also Google is not getting to track my location every time I use it.
Tagged apple, google, mapsThis is not a bike lane. This is an invitation to get hit either by a car or by a door:
This is not a bike lane. This is a stripe painted on the pavement in which cars park, which makes city planners feel better about themselves, but makes both cyclists and motorists angry, because motorists expect the cyclists to be on the other side of the stripe, and cyclists know that it is inevitable death to dodge in and out amongst parked cars. Either by car or by door:
Fuck you, City of Pasadena. This is worse than no bike lane at all. You can put up all the “bike lane” signs and billboards you want. It doesn't make it a bike lane.
This is a bike lane:
Notice how the lane is well clear of both moving cars and doors. This is how it's done! Aside from actual bike trails not on city streets, but I don't see that happening in the US any time soon.
My commute to work is now about 40% safer. Thank you, City of Los Angeles!
Now if Pasadena would repave Raymond, which has a real bike lane, but is so potholed that it's unrideable, or put a real bike lane in on Los Robles, I could make it almost all the way to work.
That said, the three times I've been hit have all been on much less busy residential streets. This four lane thoroughfare with average speeds of 45 mph was already one of the safer sections of my ride, statistically. Though the consequences of getting hit here would have been much more serious.
Tagged bicycle, bike, bike laneSo Chana Joffe-Walt has discovered that, if you work backbreaking menial jobs all your life, and have little to no education [1], it's likely that when that backbreaking job actually breaks your back [2], you will not have the education to go get a desk job. Furthermore, in large parts of the country, especially the rural parts, there simply are no desk jobs.
Chana Joffe-Walt is shocked, shocked, by this! The whole hour-long episode is basically her revelation that much of the country relies on hard physical labor to get by! And that physical labor is hard! That the whole transformation of the economy from manufacturing and farm labor to service and tech has left those are either not suited or unable to get a college degree in a deep dark hole. That the half of the population with an IQ less than 100 might not be able to get a high-tech job, or there might be people who don't want to. Or people who don't want to rip up their families and move all over the country chasing non-existent jobs, and probably don't have the resources to do so in any case. If you're living from pay check (or disability check) to check, paying first, last and deposit on an apartment in a new city might simply not be possible.
The amazing thing is that a large fraction of these people still vote Republican.
And here's another story for CJW – raising the retirement age to 67 might work if you have one of them desk jobs, but if you're working at a fish plant or a factory or a farm or as a janitor, then working another two years is not something to be looked forward to, but rather two more years tacked onto your sentence. It's hard fucking work. I work hard, but it's not the same, and any CEO who tells you that they work harder than everyone else to get their salary needs to spend a couple of weeks digging ditches.
Me, I grew up on a farm/ranch, and that was hard enough that I paid my way through school doing construction. Building houses was way easier. There was no way I was going to spend my life doing either of those. I spent enough time shagging plywood that I could tell that doing it age 50 was going to be no fun. And at age 50, my back feels those eight sheets of plywood every time I stand up, even though I stopped when I was a hale 22.
I also knew that there were people who did tougher jobs than me. My dad tried to use his children as migrant workers, and we lasted about a day hoeing weeds by hand, going up and down the mile-long rows, chopping weeds (he had the field cropdusted at the same time, using the active ingredient in Agent Orange, so there's that). Handling irrigation pipe, driving tractors, digging ditches, shagging plywood – all way easier than being a field hand.
This is yet another reason NPR will never get a dime from me. Those folks need to get out more.
[1] Not least because you quit school to take one of those backbreaking menial jobs in order to help support your family.
[2] Of course, that backbreaking hourly job didn't have benefits.
Unfortunately it seems that climate change has brought, along with the pine beetle, the common street mime to Southern California. Usually confined to northern climes (NYC, SF), these pests have been spotted locally. While they have no natural predators, and like coyotes with dogs, can crossbreed with humans, their population is usually kept in check by the unwillingness of human females to breed with them.
Today I was listening with half an ear as I didn’t go to the gym, and heard this:
“One thing most of us didn’t expect was the Iranians [going] from zero to 60 in about eight months,” Lewis notes. “China, Russia, these are responsible countries. They’re not going to start a war. How comfortable do you feel saying that about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard?”
I dunno, Mr. Cyber Expert James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, maybe it has something to do with the unprovoked cyber-attack upon Iran about three years ago? You see no connection there? Turn in your Cyber Expert card, James Lewis.
And the NPR host saw no need to bring it up, to ask the next question, the hard question [1]. They never do.
The war drums beat. Everything Iran does is unexpected and unprovoked and everything we do is forgotten. The DJIA is at a record high, so now we can turn our attention to drumming up another Middle Eastern war and reducing the deficit, never mind that unemployment (the real U6 number) is still above 10%, and that the banking system is still broken. The bubble has been reinflated and that’s all that matters.
[1] I tried to use a link from NPR, but Stuxnet turns up zero hits on the NPR website. Yet Another Reason why they’ll never get a dime from me.
So not only does it slow down the entire octo-core Xeon machine to unusability, it's just dumb. Mired in 1995 feature. Can I set two alarms for an event? No! What would be the possible use of having an alarm the night before to remind me that I have a 7:30 am meeting? And also have an alarm 5 minutes before to remind me to call in?
And I also can't change the alarm time. If I get invited to a meeting, I can't change the alert to be 5 minutes, or 1 minute, beforehand. No, the host decides that for everyone. Never mind that he's a 15 minute walk away, and I'm a 1 minute walk away. Everyone gets the same choice, which is to say, none.
Yay. I'm so glad that our current CIO came from MS and, surprise surprise, chose the MS infrastructure to chain everyone else to.
Don't even get me started on the stupidity of “vaulting” email.
So we've gone back to Daylight Savings Time, and I paid the price with a couple days of legally induced jet lag. But now we get more light at the end of the day, for those of us whose lives are run by Exchange.
Why do we even change the clocks? Is it to satisfy the farmers? Less than four percent of the population, and shrinking. And thanks to FDR and REA, even cows have electricity now [1]. So they don't care when the sun comes up.
Think of the children! Well, I live next to a school, and I can count on one hand the number of kids who walk to school without a parent in tow. Bicycling? Zero. So the kids don't need it.
So let's just stay on this cycle, and not change back, and just forget about PST and PDT, and call it – Time.
[1] Why isn't internet as essential these days as electricity was in the 30s? I'll believe that the current administration is remotely progressive when universal internet gets a strong push.
Attention. This is a test of the [blank] emergency announcement system. […] If you are unable to hear this announcement, please contact your floor safety coordinator.
I'd call 'em just to fuck with them but it would cause more trouble than it's worth.
In other lack-of-fourth-amendment news, the SC has now ruled that as long as you keep something illegal secret enough, then you don't have standing to challenge its harm to you. Is the NSA wiretapping you? Former techs have sworn under oath, yes. But since you can't prove that they are, you don't have standing. As long as it's secret, no law can touch them.
See also destroyed CIA torture tapes. Another stake in coffin of the fourth amendment, which now looks very like a prickly pear.
There was only one catch, and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and he would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to, but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
“That's some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.
“It's the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.
Tagged another amendment down
Blue screen
So all the techie sites now have leaks, screenshots if you will, of Windows Blue. Windows Blue Screen shots.
If I were a marketing guy, and one of the biggest claims to infamy of my past products was the Blue Screen of Death, would I want to call my new product “Blue”, and know that it was often going to be followed by “screenshots”?
I can't decide if it's meta, or ironic, or embracing and extending, or oblivious. All I know is I keep seeing Windows Blue Screen and my brain fills in the rest.