10p coins, A to Z

From the Royal Mint, ten-pence coins, celebrating British culture from A to Z. The art is sometimes off: F, for fish and chips, is ghastly. But at least T is tea. “Us Brits love a cup of tea,” says the Mint. (Really.) More here: “Q Is for Queuing” (The New York Times).

All Illinois is divided into three parts

I listened tonight to a radio debate among the Democratic candidates for Illinois governor. The most interesting of them, by far: Robert Marshall. Said he: “I have ideas that nobody has.” Though I’m not sure that’s what one might want in a governor.

Among this candidate’s ideas: dividing Illinois into three states. Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, the issues page of the candidate’s website makes no mention of this proposal. And clicking on the link Governor Race yields only the announcement “Content Coming Soon.” But an explanation of the three-state solution can be found in an “introductory news release.”

[Post title with apologies to Julius Caesar.]

From China to Washington

“Advice to Washington from Ancient China,” assembled by Eliot Weinberger. For instance: “A country that can be said to be lost is not one without a ruler but one without laws.”

NYRB sale

New York Review Books is having a winter sale, fifty books at half price. Of those fifty, I can recommend Hans Herbert Grimm’s Schlump, James Schuyler’s Alfred and Guinevere, and Robert Walser’s Berlin Stories. But really, I’d recommend anything from the list. Our household has had worlds of reading open to us via NYRB. See, for instance, the previous post.

From Beware of Pity

Fourteen pages ago, Anton Hofmiller was realizing the importance of meaning something to others. Now things are different:


Stefan Zweig, Beware of Pity, trans. Phyllis and Trevor Blewitt (New York: New York Review Books, 2006).

Related reading
All OCA Stefan Zweig posts (Pinboard)

NeTfLiCks

It’s not just that Netflix has come to resemble TLC. I fear that Netflix has become TLC. In today’s e-mail, an advertisement for another Netflix “docuseries,” The Big Ward :

This reality series follows six New Zealanders on a quest to overcome obesity and qualify for life-saving stomach stapling surgery.

We gave up Netflix for Hulu earlier this week, and I doubt that we’ll regret doing so.

Arf, arf, arf

The New York Times reports that two of Barbra Streisand’s three dogs are clones of a fourth now-dead Streisand dog. For those keeping score, Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett are clones of the late Samantha.

[The threat level to reality is high. Reality is turning into a David Foster Wallace novel.]

“Welcome to the Internet”

[“EarthLink will connect you at up to 56Kbps.” Click for a larger disc.]

I moved a printer and made a discovery. Look at the RAM requirement for Earthlink’s dial-up app: 32, 64, or 128MB. (The Mac I’m typing on has 8GB RAM.) And the operating systems: remember Windows ME, the Millennium Edition? Worst Windows ever. (Shudder.)

This disc has a 2002 copyright date. EarthLink is still in business in 2018, and still offering dial-up service. But it’s time to let this disc go, no?

Link Maker, a Safari extension

I have long searched for a Safari extension that can create a link with a title or selected text from a webpage — something like the now-antique Firefox extensions CopyURL+ and QuoteURLText. The Mac App Store has nothing. But I finally found a useful extension: Link Maker by Chee@CMONOS.

Link Maker offers a vast array of choices for creating links. I configured the extension to create links in just two ways: with a page title or with selected text. If, for instance, I’m writing a blog post and want to link to Lindy West’s New York Times piece “What the White House Knew About Rob Porter,” I can point to the link, right-click, and choose HTML. If I’m reading the essay, I can right-click anywhere, choose HTML, and create a link. If I want to link to text from West’s essay, say, to the phrase “a promised return to some midcentury mirage of American ‘greatness,’” I can highlight that text, right-click, and choose HTML + text. I have added the quotation marks in these links by hand, but it would be just as easy to have Link Maker create links with quotation marks already in place. The menu choices HTML and HTML + text are mine: one could change those names to Link and Link with text, or to anything else.

Link Maker isn’t as efficient as I’d like: it’s still necessary to copy the link it creates to the clipboard before pasting elsewhere. (The old Firefox extensions sent stuff to the clipboard automatically. I’m not sure Safari allows that.) Still, Link Maker makes the work of creating links much less tedious. I’ll probably use my old standby aText. But I like knowing that there’s an extension that can more or less do what I was looking for. Thank you, Chee@CMONOS, for sharing your good work.

[After writing this post, I decided not to multiply entities without necessity. In other words, I’m still using aText to make links. But a link-making Safari extension is so difficult to find that I still wanted to give Link Maker some attention here.]

Pencils in the news

The Guardian reports that increasing number of English schoolchildren are unable to hold a pencil properly. The reason: too much technology. Sally Payne, pediatric occupational therapist:

“It’s easier to give a child an iPad than encouraging them to do muscle-building play such as building blocks, cutting and sticking, or pulling toys and ropes. Because of this, they’re not developing the underlying foundation skills they need to grip and hold a pencil.”

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)