Screen apnea

“The disruption of breathing many of us experience doing all kinds of tasks in front of a screen”:The New York Times reports on what Linda Stone calls “screen apnea.”

I recall what Stone wrote some years ago about what can happen to breathing when one checks e-mail, and now I’m wondering why I didn’t post about it. Perhaps because I was under the influence of continuous partial attention — that’s another term Stone coined.

How to improve writing (no. 112)

I made it almost through a New York Times article, and then I hit this single-sentence paragraph:

Mr. Trump has used a political action committee that is aligned with him, and that is replete with money he raised in small-dollar donations as he falsely claimed he was fighting widespread fraud after the 2020 election, to pay the legal bills of a number of allies, as well as his own.

There’s something odd about the phrase “replete with money.” The bigger problem though is that “that is aligned with him, and that is replete with money he raised in small-dollar donations as he falsely claimed he was fighting widespread fraud after the 2020 election” is just too much to position between “Mr. Trump has used a political action committee” and “to pay the legal bills.”

Better:

To pay his legal bills and those of several allies, Mr. Trump has used small-dollar donations to a political action committee that he falsely claimed was fighting widespread fraud after the 2020 election.

But making two sentences is better still:

To pay his legal bills and those of several allies, Mr. Trump has used funds from a political action committee that he falsely claimed was fighting widespread fraud after the 2020 election. The funds were raised mostly as small-dollar donations.

I like keeping the detail about small-dollar donations in a separate sentence, making it what we used to call a zinger.

E.B. White’s advice:

When you become hopelessly mired in a sentence, it is best to start fresh; do not try to fight your way through against the terrible odds of syntax. Usually what is wrong is that the construction has become too involved at some point; the sentence needs to be broken apart and replaced by two or more shorter sentences.

True that.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 112 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. The passage from E.B. White appears in The Elements of Style, in “An Approach to Style,” the chapter White added when revising William Strunk Jr.’s book.]

Domestic comedy

[Trump’s lawyers have been moaning about how many documents they have to read: War and Peace seventy-eight times a day, &c., &c.]

“Don’t these people have staffs? Or staves?”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[Only the composer in our household would think of the musical plural.]

A plumbing story

Anent this post: my friend Stefan shared a link to a great plumbing story: John Jeremiah Sullivan’s “Man Called Fran.” It’s short — 3,741 words. Just read it, before it disappears behind a Harper’s paywall.

Thanks, Stefan.

[I like to use the word anent every few years.]

The plumber’s reward

[Click for a larger beer.]

A month or so after replacing the toilet fill valve in our upstairs bathroom, I replaced the valve in our downstairs bathroom — fifteen minutes or so of awkward work that means a quicker fill and a farewell to the bizarre float ball that always ends up needing adjustment. The bottle of A Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ was my self-chosen reward.

In advance of doing the work, I opened my dad’s toolbox to get a smaller pliers wrench (which, it turned out, I didn’t need). The smell of Dial soap is still strong inside.

[The Fluidmaster was recommended by one of the smart employees at our local Ace Hardware. An excellent recommendation.]

Sardinecore

“From romantic lunches at eye-watering prices to must-have T-shirts and covetable clutch bags, the humble sprat is having a massive moment”: The Guardian reports on sardinecore.

Thanks, Fresca.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Nancy adds a wall

Nancy trompe l’oeil.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Gowanus scaffolding

[267-269 Third Avnue, Gowanus, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Just another Third Avenue corner, taking its place with Ralph Bozzo’s restaurant and Nick’s Diner.

When I saw this photograph, I thought that’s all of New York now. Yes, I exaggerated. But 400 miles of New York City sidewalks are now coffined in scaffolding, aka sidewalk sheds. The sheds make walking an adventure in claustrophobia. Mayor Eric Adams has a plan for their removal. For now, I recommend watching an episode of How To with John Wilson: “How to Put Up Scaffolding” (Max).

No. 267 has more recently been the address of a Super 8 providing quarters for unhoused single men. If the building is still a Super 8, Google Maps shows it losing its identifying sign between November 2020 and May 2022. And there’s no scaffolding.

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

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Steve Mossberg, which means it’s a tough one. Yes, it 4-D, eight letters, “Stymies, so to speak.” I got it with a clue here, a clue there.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, eight letters, “Echoic acknowledgment.”I’m surprised to see that the answer as spelled is far more common than I thought.

3-D, five letters, “Numbers past a certain point.” A nice example of this puzzle’s fancy clueing.

8-D, eleven letters, “Madame Bovary or Jane Eyre.” Gosh, I haven’t heard any form of the answer in ages.

17-A, five letters, “Logging site.” Clever.

18-A, five letters, “Inspiration for Eliot’s 61 Across.” This clue baffled me a bit, as 61-A is not a title.

20-D, four letters, “Fuller shape.” I first thought “Brush?” But the clue didn’t fool me for long.

26-D, ten letters, “Personality pair addendum.” Answers that baffle me usually make sense when I begin typing out their clues. But here, I’m lost.

32-A, ten letters, “Short-term rental.” A novel answer.

46-A, four letters, “[More people should come here].” Or not!

54-D, three letters, “See reverse, shortly.” Well, this is arcane. No, it’s probably not.

61-A, eight letters, “Eliot opus misnomer.” Now I get it.

One clue-and-answer I take issue with: 9-D, six letters, “New York’s Angry Orchard, e.g.” I just don’t see how the answer goes with the brand name. And that was because, as Wittgenstein said, the limits of my language mean the limits of the world.

My favorite in this puzzle: 11-D, ten letters, “Short-term offerings.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

More 1232 Madison

The Poe scholar Thomas Ollive Mabbott was not the only academic to have resided at 1232 Madison Avenue, the building whose WPA tax photograph starred in an OCA post this past Sunday. In 1926, Lawrence Buermeyer, who taught philosophy at New York University, resided in a 1232 apartment, where he was soundly beaten by his friend Joseph Carson, who taught philosophy at Columbia University.

[The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 20, 1926. Click any image for a larger view.]

[Brooklyn Citizen, October 24, 1926.]

[The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 22, 1926.]

The story attracted considerable attention, with a lengthy article in the The New York Times — “Teachers’ Fight Is Laid to Drink” — and another in Time, with the terse title “Jag.” The Time report, partly available in front of the paywall, suggests that something more than philosophical questions was at issue between the two men. At any rate, this incident makes the perhaps apocryphal story of Wittgenstein’s poker seem positively mild.

I don’t know what became of these fellows. Buermeyer (1889–1970) had at least two books to his name. Carson had at least two book reviews — one, another — to his.

One never knows what might go with a particular address. Thanks, Brian, for finding this strange story.