Th’ foist

[Nancy, March 20, 1950. Click for a larger view.]

Sluggo has raced to tell the good news: “HEY NANCY,” he shouts. He slips on ice and falls. He falls with such force that enormous quantities of snow are shaken loose from a strategically positioned roof. And thus spring begins.

No snow here. But it’s 27°, feeling like 17°.

This spring strip ran earlier this month.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

NPR, sheesh

This morning on Weekend Edition Sunday: “In Greek and Roman mythology, Venus is the goddess of love.”

Related reading
All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

Southern Boulevard spect-op

  [2421, 2423, 2425, and 2427 Southern Boulevard, The Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click either image for a much larger view.]

The post title is inspired by David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which makes reference to “public spectation opportunities” or “spect-ops,” opportunities for “standing live witness” to events happening in real life, not on a screen.

The only question I have about these photographs is which came first. Click for much larger views and you’ll understand what I mean. It’s a sweet little surprise.

I can imagine a dialogue:

“Excuse me mister, whaddaya doin’?”

“Takin’ pictures for the tax records.”

“Whaddaya, gonna make me pay more taxes?”

“No ma’am, it’s just for the records. It’s a WPA project.”

Google Maps shows these residences and the garage still standing in 2022, all now sided or partly sided. The buildings in the distance are standing too. The two men standing in the doorways must be long gone.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stella Zawistowski, and it’s tough. It look me a bit less time to finish (thirty-seven minutes) than some recent Stumpers, but it felt far more difficult. I started in the southeast with 36-A, three letters, “Fell”; 38-D, five letters, “Freegan’s bane”; and 41-A, four letters, “Brit’s bean.” After that, I was more or less stuck, trying an answer here, an answer there.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

8-D, eleven letters, “Where a tiny cart is kept.” To my mind, carts are still kept only in supermarkets, or in their parking lots, or on the porch of a thief.

16-A, four letters, “Save for posterity, perhaps.” Stumpery.

22-D, eleven letters, “Middle management successes.” Very clever.

25-D, four letters, “What Patton called his colleague.” I guessed right.

29-A, six letters, “Famed farce’s title troubles.” I thought first of The Perils of Pauline, though that’s not a farce.

31-A, ten letters, “Scorekeeper?” Nice one.

33-A, nine letters, “Gotcha.” The answer sounds a tad passive-aggressive to me.

34-D, seven letters, “Mermaid in the pool.” I am mermaid-, pony-, and unicorn-conscious.

39-D, six letters, “Times up.” I like the pun.

52-A, ten letters, “Fully firm.” Pretty oblique. I guessed (and spelled) coreectly.

58-A, eight letters, “The buck stops here.” HARRYTRUMANSDESK doesn’t fit.

One oddity in today’s puzzle: 9-A, four letters, “Cubo pequeo.” Something must have gone wrong with the typesetting.

One clue I don’t understand: 30-A, three letters, “Quad wheels, for short.” I looked up “quad wheels” and the answer, but I still don’t get it. [Later: a comment at Crossword Fiend might be the explanation.]

My favorite in today’s puzzle: 28-D, five letters, “What I will always be?”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“In her wavering, collapsing script”

Arthur Grumm is playing Monopoly with his friend William Mainwaring. But Arthur’s mind is on “her.” That is, Eleanor Schumann. One of my favorite passages in this novel:

Steven Millhauser, Portrait of a Romantic (1977).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Unhelpful reporting

The New York Times reports that the COVID-19 pandemic may have originated with raccoon dogs for sale at a market in Wuhan, China. Which raises all kinds of questions: What are raccoon dogs, and why were they being sold at a Chinese market? Are they specific to China? Are they caught in the wild? Are they bred and sold for food? Or as exotic pets? The Times article offers just a single brief appositive to clarify: “fluffy animals that are related to foxes and are known to be able to transmit the coronavirus.”

A Wikipedia article can tell you much more about raccoon dogs, which are found in Asia and Europe (in Europe, they are considered an invasive species):

An investigation by three animal protection groups into the Chinese fur trade in 2004 and part of 2005 asserts approximately 1.5 million raccoon dogs are raised for fur in China.

And it seems that they’re sold for food. Wikipedia makes no mention of that. A 2022 Times article seems to imply it:

In stall after stall of the poorly ventilated space, he saw live wild animals — snakes, badgers, muskrats, birds — being sold for food [in October 2014]. But it was the raccoon dogs that made him pull out his iPhone.

Fur? Food? Either way, today’s article is some remarkably unhelpful reporting, New York Times.

Saint Patrick’s Day 1913

[St. Patrick’s Day Parade, c. 1910—1915. From the George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress). Click for a much larger view.]

That’s You-know-who’s Cathedral. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to all.

[Leddy is an Irish name. And yes, the parade moves up Fifth Avenue. And the date written across the top has to be 1913.]

Printer-buying advice

At The Verge, Nilay Patel offers printer-buying advice:

Here’s the best printer in 2023: the Brother laser printer that everyone has. Stop thinking about it and just buy one. It will be fine!

Our household recently acquired a Brother HL-L2395DW, which replaces the HL-2270DW that we used for twelve or thirteen years. We chose to buy a new printer when the old one began to leave a grainy track on the right margins of pages and we realized that for the price of a toner cartridge and a new drum we could buy a new printer.

Searching my blog, I see that I don’t have a single post mentioning our Brother printers. There’s not much to say about them: they work, and they’re far cheaper to operate than ink-jet printers. And while settting up a printer in 2023 is still a bit of a pain, it makes the set-up of years past seem comically convoluted.

And speaking of comically: Patel includes (for a laugh) a ChatGPT-generated guide to buying a printer. Enjoy.

Parts going their own way

The elusive Eleanor Schumann:

Steven Millhauser, Portrait of a Romantic (1977).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Chomsky et al. on ChatGPT

In The New York Times, Noam Chomsky, Ian Roberts, and Jeffrey Watumull consider (with examples) “the false promise of ChatGPT”:

ChatGPT and its brethren are constitutionally unable to balance creativity with constraint. They either overgenerate (producing both truths and falsehoods, endorsing ethical and unethical decisions alike) or undergenerate (exhibiting noncommitment to any decisions and indifference to consequences). Given the amorality, faux science and linguistic incompetence of these systems, we can only laugh or cry at their popularity.

All OCA ChatGPT posts
A 100-word blog post generated by ChatGPT : I’m sorry too, ChatGPT : Spot the bot : Teachers and chatbots : Imaginary lines from real poems : ChatGPT writes about Lillian Mountweazel : Rob Zseleczky on computer-generated poetry : ChatGPT’s twenty-line poems : ChatGPT on Edwin Mullhouse : A reporter’s “conversation” with ChatGPT