Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Italy’s Sardines

“They call themselves the ‘Sardines’ — because they want to quietly pack Italy’s main public squares like fish in a can. Organizers say their goal is to stop a far-right, anti-immigrant wave rising in Italian society and politics”: Sylvia Poggioli reports on the Sardine movement (NPR).

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Helicopter campuses

“The dream of some administrators is a university where every student is a model student, adhering to disciplined patterns of behavior that are intimately quantified, surveilled and analyzed”: thus a new trend in surveillance, the use of Bluetooth to track college students’ class attendance and campus habits via their phones (The Washington Post ).

For me, the most dispiriting bit in this article is a comment from a professor about surveillance and attendance: “‘They want those points,’ he said. ‘They know I’m watching and acting on it. So, behaviorally, they change.’” Yep. Behaviorally.

[The surveillance company SpotterEDU would not permit the Post to publish a photograph of its Bluetooth devices, saying that “‘currently students do not know what they look like.’” A curious student might find an image search for iBeacon a useful workaround.]

Domestic comedy

“I can’t believe you walked past that multi-tool display.”

“Where?! WHERE?!”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[Not really multi-tools, after all. Knives and flashlights. With this one, it’s probably easy to figure out who said what.]

Today’s Ticonderoga


[“Nervig Endings.” Zippy , December 24, 2019.]

In today’s Zippy, cartoonist Conrad Nervig seeks a new career. Stand by for the Dixon Ticonderoga no. 2.

Related reading
All OCA Ticonderoga posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Monday, December 23, 2019

Scribbles & Ink

For kids and those who think like kids: Scribbles & Ink, an online game (or drawing environment, I’d call it) to go with the PBS Kids series of the same name.

If you like Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon, you will probably like Scribbles & Ink. Be your own Harold!

Roz Chast, profiled

By Adam Gopnik, in — where else? — The New Yorker. An excerpt:

“Throughout my childhood, I couldn’t wait to grow up. I wanted to be a grownup. Being a child was just not working for me. I didn’t understand little kids. ‘Let’s play! Let’s hit each other!’ Why do you want to do that ? Don’t you want to stay indoors where it’s safe, and read and draw?”
Our household is a Chast-friendly zone.

Related reading
All OCA Roz Chast posts (Pinboard)

Hallmark rising

The New Yorker looks at the Hallmark Channel(s): “How Hallmark Took Over Cable Television.”

Last Friday we tried about half an hour of Christmas in Evergreen: Tidings of Joy, the movie whose making runs through the article. Half an hour was enough. But I came away with a favorite line: “I was just leading a workshop on ornament making.” Sounds to me like the start of a John Ashbery poem.

You’re out

Yesterday our local paper published USDA guidelines for when to toss Thanksgiving leftovers. The USDA’s advice: leftovers can be stored in the fridge for three to four days, or in the freezer for two to six months.

We gave up on our local paper eleven years ago. I look at the paper online once in a while, but there is little news, which is one reason why we ended our subscription. When I look, I am sometimes baffled.

Sunday, December 22, 2019

Robots writing

The Washington Post reports on Handwrytten, a robot-driven card-writing service. The article cites a user who finds the service “cheaper — and easier — than going to the store, picking out a card and paying for postage.” And, the user adds, you can schedule in advance.

I noticed Handwrytten in 2014 and am surprised, kinda, that the company is still going. It must serve a need. But you could also schedule in advance by writing in your datebook: “Buy and mail card.” Or you could schedule and send an e-mail — much cheaper and easier still than setting up an account to pay for robots. But cheaper and easier are not always the point. TV dinner, anyone?

*

I forgot: in The New York Times last week, a counter-narrative, in defense of handwritten notes and cards.

Land O’Lines

In The New York Times, Roger Cohen writes about missing the landline:

I remember my son asking me how I managed to meet anyone in the pre-cellphone era. I could hardly remember. I said you arranged to meet a friend at a certain place at a certain time and you showed up. He was skeptical.
In 2010, also in the Times, Virginia Heffernan wrote a wonderful elegy for the landline.

[Neither writer mentions what any dedicated user of the phone of yore will remember: waiting until “the rates” went down to make a long-distance call. And even then, the astonishing cost of the occasional forty-five-minute long-distance call.]