A UCSB mega-dorm

Hey, University of California at Santa Barbara: Franz Kafka called, and he wants his idea for a dorm back.

It’s worth creating a free Chronicle of Higher Education account to read the details of this monstrosity.

*

November 3: Here’s a letter of resignation from Dennis McFadden, architect, and adviser to the UCSB committee for design review. And here is an opinion piece that McFadden published in the Los Angeles Times.

Goodbye, Mongol

News from penciltalk: Newell Brands has canceled its trademark for the Mongol pencil.

Related reading
All OCA Mongol posts (Pinboard)

Not from The Onion

Steve Wozniak:

“I got the new iPhone, and I can’t tell the difference really.”

“I got the new watch, I can’t tell the difference.”

“I got the new computer. I’ve been so busy I haven't had time to open it.”

Less Onion-y: a quick diss of Facebook Meta.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday crossword is by Stan Newman. It’s an easy puzzle by Stumper standards. I found my way with two toeholds, 23-D, three letters, “Informal ‘exceedingly’” and 29-A, three letters, “Petition.” And I was off.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I liked:

3-D, eight letters, “Ducks glide there.” Is it okay to call this clue cute?

9-A, five letters, “Breaks into a vault.” The kind of clue that doing crosswords teaches you to understand.

10-D, seven letters, “Canine coats.” See 9-A.

17-A, nine letters, “Pancake purveyors.” Feels very ‘80s to me. But I still like it.

30-D, nine letters, “Étude embellishment.” Three in a row. (Alliterative clues, that is.)

45-A, nine letters, “Heating system component.” Takes me back to earlier abodes.

52-A, nine letters, “Navigational hobbyist.” I didn’t know about this hobby.

53-A, five letters, “Earliest-born Poker Hall of Famer.” I’m out.

If you, too, are having difficulty with the Newsday paywall, you can access the Stumper at GameLab. And if Newsday is listening: please consider offering a crossword subscription. The Stumper has a national audience, and you cannot expect non-Long Islanders to pay $363 a year for a crossword.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Shipping

[Click for a larger view.]

I like this at least semi-dowdy logo, which I noticed on a shipping container in the parking lot of our friendly neighborhood multinational retailer.

See also today’s Zippy.

A serious sign

Fresca noticed a sign outside a liquor store: “BIKES LEFT HERE WILL BE THROWN ONTO LAKE ST.” That store isn’t playing.

Meta

I plan to continue to use the word meta in its traditional (since 1988!) sense. I will not cede this word to Mark Zuckerberg.

[No, thanks.]

I presume the blue loop is meant to suggest infinity. I prefer to think of it as pair of handcuffs. Lemme out, Mark! Or maybe it’s head hitting itself against a mirror. Again, lemme out, &c. Elaine sees a Möbius strip. (Go back two sentences.)

I thought the following image was someone’s joke, but it’s credited to Facebook. Look! Mark is choosing an avatar. And I think of the Bhagavad-Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

[Poverty of imagination, with everything at its disposal. This is progress?]

I doubt that Mark Zuckerberg has read Steven Millhauser’s 1996 novel Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, which might serve as a cautionary tale about the difficulty of replacing one world with another. Talk about handcuffs and mirrors.

[The Zuckerberg presentation is here. But I’m done thinking about the (so-called) metaverse.]

“More traditional”?

I started turning pages in the October 25 New Yorker and found a listing for a Brooklyn jazz festival: Kurt Elling, Cecile McLoren Savant, and others. And then: “the Sun Ra Arkestra — led by nonagenarian saxophonist Marshall Allen — represent more traditional fare.”

What’s up with “more traditional”? More traditional than a singer singing a great American standard? I wondered whether the writer assumed, given Marshall Allen’s age, that the Arkestra is some old-timey outfit. But no, the writer knows jazz. So perhaps “more traditional” is a wink of sorts, given that the Arkestra (which has outlived Ra) has been going since the early 1950s.

I was hoping to see the Arkestra in April 2020: they were scheduled to play a free concert at a theater in east-central Illinois. But everything changed.

“The key to this disorder”

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (1956).

Related reading
All OCA Baldwin posts (Pinboard)

PLEASE

[A genuine sign.]

I photographed this sign in a medical building some time ago. Tororo’s photograph of a mirror under repair made me think of this photograph, look for it, and post it.

This sign must have been meant as a warning to employees with deconstructive tendencies. Hands off the signifier and the signified! Notice the tape at the top: this sign about a sign must have been a placeholder for an even more portentous signifier.

Related reading
All OCA signage posts (Pinboard)