Thursday, April 14, 2022

Genius

Buy large amount of stock. Refuse board seat. Express lack of confidence about management. (If management is so lousy, whydja buy so much stock?) Offer to buy company. Threaten to sell stock if offer is not accepted, thus tanking stock.

Man, that Elon Musk must be a genius. Who could ever have seen through these tactics?

[Context: Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter.]

Min

Min for macOS: “a fast, minimal browser that protects your privacy.” So minimal that even its name is minimal. Too minimal to serve as a default browser, I think, but excellent for getting a few things done quickly.

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Recently updated

Outtakes (9) A reader sussed out the identity of a mysterious store appearing in two NYC tax photographs.

“Just ‘music’”

David Collyer, twenty-nine, forester and Labour Party organizer:

Ronald Blythe, Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village (1969).

Also from Akenfield
Davie’s hand : Rubbish

More Stranger Things

I dunno — this trailer appears to promise a season devoid of all the charm that has made the series worth watching. But as Elaine said, we need to be good Americans and watch anyway.

I have enjoyed seeing a Chock full o’Nuts can, the World Book Encyclopedia, and a pocket notebook in previous seasons of Stranger Things.

[As the trailer makes clear, you-know-who is still alive.]

Lost bookstores

From The New York Times, a tour in photographs: “Remembrance of Bookstores Past.” In 1950, there were an estimated 386 bookstores in New York City. In 2022, fewer than 100.

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Rubbish

Leonard Thompson, seventy-one, farm-worker:

Ronald Blythe, Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village (1969).

Also from Akenfield
Davie’s hand

Motive in prisons

“Big prisons in small towns”: that’s the focus of the third season of the WBEZ podcast Motive. The stories are Illinois-centric, but Illinois here is a stand-in for a nation.

Monday, April 11, 2022

From Akenfield

He is identified only as Davie, born in 1887, “who cannot read or write a word and who insists that he has nothing to say”:

Ronald Blythe, Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village (1969).

Some unusual “some rocks”

[Nancy, June 20, 1949. Click for a larger view.]

Today’s yesterday’s Nancy has some unusual “some rocks.”

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts : “Some rocks” posts (Pinboard)