The Blogger Quick Edit tools

The pencil icon that allowed for quick edits to Blogger posts and widgets disappeared a few days ago, along with the tools icon for editing widgets. But there are ways to get them back. Two posts from Adam at Too Clever by Half, this one and this one, explain.

I took what looked like the path of least resistance: I downloaded the Mac app Cascadea (new to me, $2.99) and created a Blogger Tools style for my blog, typing in my URL and one line of code:

.item-control {display:initial;}

You can also restore the Quick Edit tools so that they display (in unusable form) on any Blogger blog. That change makes it possible to once again delete comments that you’ve left on other blogs while logged into Blogger.

An ideal fix would have the Quick Edit tools visible on your blog alone, and only when you’re logged in and can use them. But to paraphrase Salzberg’s Theory of Pizza, it’s better to have a pencil you don’t want (or can’t use) than to want a pencil you don’t have.

Having just spent more than half an hour trying to figure out how to get Blogger to display side-by-side images with wraparound text, I will agree with Too Clever by Half that Google continues to make Blogger more difficult to use.

January 25: The Quick Edit tools are back. But to have them available in Safari, you have to allow cross-site tracking. (The setting is under the Privacy tab in Safari Preferences.) I’d rather not have cross-site tracking, so I’m going to use the Cascadea modification and just get used to seeing the tools all the time. It’ll be like living in a home workshop.

More about masks

More about masks, from NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, “Not All Masks Are Created Equal: How To Choose The Safest Mask For You,” an interview with Jeremy Howard, a research scientist at the University of San Francisco. Howard is a co-founder of Masks4All.

See also “Why Aren’t We Wearing Better Masks?” by Howard and Zeynep Tufecki (The Atlantic).

A related post
Double-masking

Double-masking

In The New York Times, a suggestion to double-mask:

Double-masking is a sensible and easy way to lower your risk, especially if circumstances require you to spend more time around others — like in a taxi, on a train or plane, or at an inauguration.

I have it from an informed source that double-masking is standard practice for many doctors and nurses: better mask underneath, cheap paper mask on top. Toss the cheap mask, and let the better mask sit in sunlight before using again.

Today’s Newsday Saturday

Today’s Newsday  Saturday crossword, by Matthew Sewell, is not a Stumper. But it’s not that easy either. I started with an answer that I knew had to be right: 15-D, ten letters, “Bound to happen.” I was almost right, right enough to get a few (correct) answers and catch my mistake. I still think my mistaken answer fits the clue better.

Some clue and answer pairs I especially liked:

7-D, four letters, “Close watch.” The answer should have been obvious, and yet it wasn’t.

14-D, ten letters, “Sit-downs.” A nice clash of diction between clue and answer. “Sit-downs” makes me think of Tony Soprano and company. The answer, not so much.

16-A, four letters, “It may be nursed in a nursery.” Aww.

19-A, three letters, “Gull or rook.” Good birdplay.

A clue whose answer I find unconvincing: 65-A, ten letters, “‘Dinner is served’ sight.” Does anyone really say those ten letters? I may need to travel in better circles. Or these days, any circles. Or any shapes.

My favorite clue in this puzzle: 63-A, ten letters, “What those who have had it have.”

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

Hank Aaron and Peanuts

For two weeks in August 1973, Peanuts devoted its daily (non-Sunday) strip to Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, and Snoopy. You can start on Wednesday, August 8, and read through to Wednesday, August 22.

Here’s some context: “Hammerin’ Hank’s 715th Home Run” (Fishwrap). And the New York Times obituary for Aaron.

Thanks to Stefan Hagemann for pointing me to this moment in baseball, comics, and culture.

Naked City Mongol

[Frank Gorshin, Charles Tyner, and a Mongol. From the Naked City episode “Beyond This Place There Be Dragons” (January 30, 1963). Click for a larger view.]

The Mongol seems to be the official pencil of the Naked City, showing up in a number of episodes.

“Beyond This Place There Be Dragons” is one of my favorite Naked City episodes. You can watch this episode, and every other Naked City episode, at YouTube.

Venn reading
All OCA Mongol posts : Mongol and Naked City posts : Naked City posts (Pinboard)

Time passing

From the Murphy Brown episode “Midnight Plane to Paris” (November 9, 1992). Murphy (Candice Bergen) to her son Avery: “A baby’s brain doesn’t even recognize time has passed. You’re kind of like the Beach Boys that way.”

The worst

Writing in The Atlantic, Tim Naftali, historian, says it’s Donald Trump**:

As a result of his subversion of national security, his reckless endangerment of every American in the pandemic, and his failed insurrection on January 6, one thing seems abundantly clear: Trump is the worst president in the 232-year history of the United States.

With all the necessary comparisons.

“Who? Me?”

The narrator is walking with the painter Elstir who — guess what? — is a friend of “the little band,” “the little gang of girls” whose remote beauty fascinates the narrator. Several of the girls come into view at the end of an avenue. Trusting that Elstir will make an introduction, the narrator turns his back, and stoops to look in the window of an antique shop, “as though fascinated by something.”

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. James Grieve (New York: Penguin, 2002).

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Today

President Joe Biden: “This is democracy’s day.”

And: “Democracy has prevailed.”

Yes, and yes.