Thursday, April 8, 2021

Advice from Gabby Giffords

From a PBS NewsHour interview with former Arizona Congresswoman Gaby Giffords, shot in the head in 2011, still continuing her recovery with the help of music:

Jeffrey Brown: “What do you tell yourself when things are difficult?”

Gabby Giffords: “Move ahead.”

Recently updated

Drugs, doing, eating I worked up the patience to do some searches for “I ain’t do no drugs” and “I ate too many drugs.”

Another bedroom

I was in my grandparents’ apartment in Union City. I hadn’t been there in more than forty years. The strange bulge in the kitchen wall, underneath the window — a hinged metal door of some sort, long painted over — was still where it had always been, but the sink was in a different corner. The room layout was the same as always: kitchen, bathroom, “TV room,” living room, bedroom. But now there was another bedroom, dark. I looked in, and there was my grandmother, asleep on a bed. And I realized I had better leave before I woke her up.

So go my dreams in the COVID time, veering from the mundane — see previous dream — to the very strange.

What was that door anyway? A natural refrigerator in cold weather? A milk door? But it was in a fifth-floor apartment. Was there a fire escape outside the kitchen window? I think so. Did milkmen climb fire escapes?

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

[Thanks to Elaine for the suggestion of a milk door. It looked something like the Majestic door on the milk-door page I’ve linked to.]

Lobbying

I was walking through the vast lobby of a nearby arts center. No one else was there, but tables and chairs had been set up for an event.

Yes, that was in a dream.

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Drugs, doing, eating

Re: the day’s developments in the Derek Chauvin murder trial: “I ain’t do no drugs” is something people say. “I ate too many drugs” is not. See your nearest search engine for confirmation.

“I ain’t do” is a construction in Black Vernacular English. (I’m no linguist, but I know enough about language to say that much.) A Google search for "I ain't do no" -chauvin -floyd -trial returns 197,000 results. A search for "I ain't do" -chauvin -floyd -trial returns 4,290,000 results.

A search for "I ate too many drugs" -chauvin -floyd -trial returns 2,320 results, and they appear to reference the trial. A search for "I ate too many drugs" -chauvin -floyd -trial that ends with April 6 returns just twenty-four results, all false hits or references to the trial.

"I ain't do no drugs" -chauvin -floyd -trial returns relatively few unique results — twenty (down from 2,210 with many repeats). But many of those twenty results are transcriptions of hip-hop lyrics. So again: “I ain't do no drugs” is something people say. “I ate too many drugs” is not.

But whatever George Floyd said, it doesn’t change what was done to him.

[I used Google and not DuckDuckGo for these searches because Google searches more of the Internet.]

“Individual meat loaves”

It’s time for more Prem.

[Life, June 23, 1947. Click for a larger view.]

I think the meal follows this logic: The marmalade cuts the taste of the Prem. The cauliflower and buttered almonds cut the taste of the Prem and marmalade. The french fried onion rings cut the taste of the cauliflower and buttered almonds.

All done. Where’s my Jell-O?

Related posts
Name that (Prem) sandwich : What is the plural of meat loaf ?

Recently updated

Name that sandwich Now with the winning name from 1941.

Tuesday, April 6, 2021

American Edge (ugh)

Have you begun to notice vaguely identified television commercials celebrating American “innovation”? They’re the work of the American Edge Project, which, as The Washington Post explained last year, is a Facebook initiative:

Facebook is working behind the scenes to help launch a new political advocacy group that would combat U.S. lawmakers and regulators trying to rein in the tech industry, escalating Silicon Valley’s war with Washington at a moment when government officials are threatening to break up large companies.

The organization is called American Edge, and it aims through a barrage of advertising and other political spending to convince policymakers that Silicon Valley is essential to the U.S. economy and the future of free speech, according to three people familiar with the matter as well as documents reviewed by The Washington Post. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the group because it hasn’t officially been announced.

In December [2019], American Edge formed as a nonprofit organization, and last month, it registered an accompanying foundation, according to incorporation documents filed in Virginia. The setup essentially allows it to navigate a thicket of tax laws in such a way that it can raise money, and blitz the airwaves with ads, without the obligation of disclosing all of its donors. Many powerful political actors — including the National Rifle Association — similarly operate with the aid of “social welfare” groups.
Yes, dark money.

Safari vs. Chrome

From MacSparky, a comparison of Mac RAM usage in Safari and Chrome. And an anecdote about matching MacBook Airs, one of which ran with the fans always on:

They couldn’t figure it out. They thought her machine was a lemon, but it passed every Apple hardware test. Then she switched browsers from Chrome to Safari. Problem solved.
There are good reasons why someone might need to run Chrome. But between the RAM and the fans — phew.

Name that sandwich

[Life, February 7, 1941. Found while looking for something else. Click for a larger view.]

“When you’ve tasted it, names will come easily.” I bet. But I’m not sure this sandwich ever received a satisfactory (printable?) name. There’s no follow-up advertisement.

Here’s a more difficult challenge: devise an appropriate name for this sandwich seventy years after the fact, without tasting. The ingredients: French toast, currant jelly, chopped nuts, and PREM, pan-fried or broiled. The garnishes appear to be black olives and little bits of shag carpet. Okay, it’s parsley.

When it look at old advertisements, I sometimes wonder how the ancestors manage to make it through meals. PREM, to my surprise, is still a foodstuff.

As the ad says, “Rules and entry blanks at your dealer’s.” (Your dealer’s what?) It’d be simpler to leave your suggested name(s) in the comments here.

Enter today!

*

April 6: A reader in New Jersey shared the winning name from 1941: Major Premway, as found in Google Books:

[From Fell’s Official Guide to Prize Contests and How to Win Them (1975). Snippet view only.]

Thank you, reader!

It’s curious that the names suggested by readers in 2021 — Croak Madame, the General Eisenhower (or the Ike), and prem-oh-nosh-in — are, like the 1941 winner, about personal names and puns.

[This post was lost — somehow. I recovered the text and images from the Internet Archive but cannot reproduce the comments.]