Free Ruler 2.0

For years I’ve made occasional use of the Mac app Free Ruler. It’s a 32-bit app, which means that it will no longer work with the new Catalina operating system. But as of a few days ago, there’s a new version: Free Ruler 2.0, 64-bit, and spiffier in appearance. It’s available at GitHub, and, yes, it’s free. Thank you, Pascal.

No quid pro quo?

“It was a quid pro quo, but not a corrupt one”: spoken by someone familiar with the upcoming testimony of Gordon Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, as reported in The Washington Post. No pressure! Just a perfect quid pro quo!

Today’s Saturday Stumper

When I saw the credit for today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, I thought I’m in for it. Or uh-oh. Or other short words to that effect. Because today’s puzzle is by “Garrett Estrada,” Brad Wilber and Erik Agard. But I did solve it.

I began with a hilariously elaborate clue for an obvious answer: 19-A, three letters, “‘I pity the fool who don’t eat my cereal’ guy (c. 1985).” And then my pace slowed. Two clues that opened up the puzzle’s left: 23-D, four letters, “Siberian railway hub,” and 34-D, five letters, “Gershwin’s Blue Monday.” If I ever find myself in Siberia, I will ask how to get to 23-D, not only because it’s a railway hub but because it’s the only Siberian place name I know. To the right, far from Siberia, 18-A, six letters, “Sea monster of Norse sagas,” and 66-A, eight letters, “Brat’s cousin,” gave me places to start.

So many clever and tricky clues in this puzzle: 9-A, six letters, “Dinner-and-a-show platform.” 29-A, eight letters, “Synagogue props.” 33-D, five letters, “Motion capturer with cameras.” 55-A, eight letters, “Red (or brown or black) snapper.” And especially 45-A, six letters, “Mini bar fixture.” Notice that there’s no hyphen.

Do co-constructors split the payment? I think Messrs. Peterson and Agard should be paid double for this puzzle.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

A World Book cameo

[“As seen on TV.” Specifically, on MSNBC.]

I’m pretty certain the background is a picture. (Elaine says it is.) I’m absolutely certain that the green and white spines belong to volumes of that childhood standby, the World Book Encyclopedia.

Reader, I’d now like to refer you to Nicholson Baker’s essay “Books as Furniture,” but it’s behind the New Yorker paywall.

Other books in the background
T.S. Eliot’s Complete Poems and Plays: 1909–1950 on MSNBC : The World Book in Stranger Things

“Like pasta in a soup”

“Princes here, princes there, princes, princes, everywhere!” Maupassant calls Cannes “the city of titles”:


Guy de Maupassant, Afloat, trans. Douglas Parmée (New York: New York Review Books, 2008).

Afloat (first published in 1888 as Sur l’eau) is something of a daybook, eight long entries purportedly written in the course of a sailing trip along the French Mediterranean, one writer-passenger and a crew of two. Maupassant’s attention ranges everywhere: to social satire (as here), scenic description, writerly double consciousness (which turns the writer’s emotions into something to observe), crowds and mob mentality, a memory of a visit to a household wracked by diphtheria, a story about Paganini’s corpse. The reader’s work: to follow the writer’s attention as it moves from one possibility to another to another.

Also from Maupassant
“La belle nature” : “What was it around him” : “All that has been, is now, and ever will be done by painters until the day of doom” ; “Swept strangely clean”

Ben Leddy hosts The Rewind

Here’s the latest installment of WGBH’s The Rewind, “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” hosted by our son Ben. You can find all episodes of The Rewind at YouTube.

Whoa again, at least a local whoa

Commenting on Donald Trump’s decision to remove U.S. troops from Syria, our representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), told an interviewer, “Pull my name off the ‘I support Donald Trump’ list.” Shimkus called Trump’s decision “despicable.” He later released (where?) a statement:

While my votes will continue to support the president’s domestic policy agenda, because of this terrible foreign policy decision I asked that my name be removed from his campaign’s official list of supporters.

Related reading
All OCA John Shimkus posts

Whoa again

Last night I looked at my phone and said “Whoa.” This morning I checked the news again and said “Whoa.” From The Washington Post:

Two business associates of President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani have been charged with a scheme to route foreign money into U.S. elections, according to a newly unsealed indictment.

The two men [Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman], who helped Giuliani investigate former vice president Joe Biden, were arrested Wednesday night in Virginia, according to a person familiar with the charges. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. . . .

According to the indictment, Parnas, Fruman and other defendants “conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office so that the defendants could buy potential influence with the candidates, campaigns, and the candidates’ governments.”

These are the days of whoa.

*

And more whoa : William Barr has long known about the investigation into Parnas’s and Fruman’s doings. The two men were arrested as they were about to leave the country. Gosh, it’s almost as if someone tipped them off.

*

And more: It would appear that Rudolph Giuliani was also planning a trip, though not with a one-way ticket, to meet these business associates in Vienna.

Nancy, and more Nancy

Highly recommended, two new books from Olivia Jaimes: Nancy: A Comic Collection, which collects the first nine months’ worth of Jaimes’s version of the comic strip, and Nancy’s Genius Plan, a board book that enlists its reader in Nancy’s scheme to sneak a piece of cornbread. Funny, clever, wonderful stuff. Nancy includes an interview with the pseudonymous Jaimes, an appreciation by cartoonist Hilary B. Price (of Rhymes with Orange), and “Fan Art of Nancy,” by Jaimes. Here’s a sample, Ecce Sluggo:



Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[If the Sluggo baffles you, this news item will help. Olivia Jaimes is no doubt aware of Joe Brainard’s Nancy hijinks, which you can see here and here.]

The Idiod

This bit from Stephen Colbert’s monologue last night delighted me:

“In the end Trump may be defeated by his greatest weakness — his Achilles mouth. It's all detailed in the epic poem The Idiod. It’s The Idiod and The Oddity.”

And this black-figure-pottery cover appeared on the screen:



Related reading
Victor Davis Hanson on Ajax, Achilles, and Trump : Agamemnon, Oedipus, Creon, and Trump : Trump, the Iliad, and PTSD : #TrumpBookReport