A Very British Cult

“The sinister life coaching company that takes over your life.” From BBC Sounds, it’s A Very British Cult, an eight-episode podcast by Catrin Nye. Absolutely chilling, and the group’s website — I won’t link to it — makes clear that any former member who dares to speak out does so at great cost.

Plenty of nothing

Champaign-Urbana’s News-Gazette reports that millions in federal money are going to projects in downstate Illinois. But nothing for Mary Miller’s congressional district. Miller refuses to do earmarks.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

“Not the odds, but the stakes”

New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen (via kottke.org):

“Not the odds, but the stakes.”

That’s my shorthand for the organizing principle we most need from journalists covering the 2024 election. Not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences for our democracy. Not the odds, but the stakes.

And not long after, on MSNBC:

“Donald Trump may be the runaway favorite for the nomination, but a brand-new poll suggests there could be an opening for three other candidates.”

Turgenev understood the flow state

Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Children, trans. Nicolas Pasternak Slater and Maya Slater (New York: New York Review Books, 2022).

Compare Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990):

The safest generalization to make … is to say that during the flow experience the sense of time bears little relation to the passage of time as measured by the absolute convention of the clock.

And:

Most flow activities do not depend on clock time; like baseball, they have their own pace, their own sequences of events marking transitions from one state to another without regard to equal intervals of duration. It is not clear whether this dimension of flow is just an epiphenomenon — a by-product of the intense concentration required for the activity at hand — or whether it is something that contributes in its own right to the positive quality of the experience. Although it seems likely that losing track of the clock is not one of the major elements of enjoyment, freedom from the tyranny of time does add to the exhilaration we feel during a state of complete involvement.

Flow states aside, I highly recommend Fathers and Children. Great social satire — like a Jane Austen novel if Jane Austen had written about nihilists. And it so happens that Maya Slater’s fiction is Austen-centric.

Two more Csikszentmihalyi posts
Boredom and attention : “The flow of the mind”

Goodbye, (dumb) TV

Last week our household stepped into the world of today. We bought a smart TV, suspecting that the endless freezes we were experiencing with our dumb TV and a Roku Stick might disappear with a new machine. And they have.

It is difficult to find a home for an old TV. Our Habitat for Humanity ReStore won’t take them, dumb or smart. Elaine’s offer on Facebook found no taker. So we put the TV and its remote out on the grass: “Free, works fine.” Both were gone within a couple of hours. (We kept checking.)

Goodbye, (dumb) TV. Thank you for your service. Stay away from landfills.

Transit Diner (?)

[342 Third Avenue, Gowanus, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Just one more Gowanus corner, taking its place in these pages with Ralph Bozzo’s restaurant, Nick’s Diner, and an empty building clad in scaffolding.

A list of Brooklyn diners of the past has a diner at 344 Third Avenue from 1938 to 1950. In 1936 a liquor license was granted to an establishment at 342. In 1959 a license was granted to the Transit Diner at this address. Was 342 the Transit Diner all along? Reply hazy, try again, says the Magic 8 Ball.

[Brooklyn Times-Union, July 6, 1933. Click for a larger view.]

[Brooklyn Daily, April 6, 1959. Click for a larger view.]

The name Michael Tolopka appears in a 1941 news item:

[The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 11, 1941.]

I think that’s our man: a Daily News article from the same date, partially visible behind a paywall, identifies Tolopka as “lunch wagon proprietor” and identifies Russo as “his old [something-]hood pal.” If the Michael Tolopka in this news item is the one found here (1897–1944), I think neighborhood is the better fit. But child- would appear to better fit the column of newsprint.

I can imagine someone asking Mr. Russo, “How could you rob an old pal like that?” The only possible answer, no Magic 8 Ball needed: “It was easy!” But it’s not easy to imagine $1240 as a day’s receipts from this diner.

One last detail: I like the way the Pepsi-Cola sign on the truck and the Coca-Cola sign signs on the diner become one harmonious celebration of soda. A reader got it right: the Pepsi-Cola sign just looks as if it’s on the truck. Both signs are on the diner. The truck carries rock salt.

Google Maps shows something under construction at this address in June 2022. Before that it appears to have been a parking lot for Verizon employees and trucks.

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

Recently updated

“Sure, Jan” Now with the Kubrick stare.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by “Lester Ruff,” the puzzle editor Stan Newman offering an easier Stumper of his creation. It begins with a choice: 1-A, five letters, “It’s much higher than a D.” Are we talking grades or notes? By the time I got to 62-A, five letters, “It’s not much higher than a D,” everything was falling into place.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, eight letters, “Story-telling follower.” Sweet.

15-A, eight letters, “‘Pay less for college. For real.’ sloganeer.” Would that it were true.

18-A, nine letters, “Employer of ushers.” Rereading the clue makes clear that it’s a bit tricky.

26-D, seven letters, “Progress report of a sort.” An unexpected answer.

29-A, three letters, “Word associated with jumps and umps.” Nicely Stumper-y, a plain answer enlivened by a thoughtful clue.

31-D, six letters, “Part of the KFC logo.” Slightly bizarre.

32-A, twelve letters, “‘Ditto!’” I’m so tired of seeing ASAMI and ASDOI in puzzles.

40-D, eight letters, “Letter-reading rituals.” Gentle misdirection.

41-A, twelve letters, “Bat man’s specialty.” I read too quickly and first thought CRIMESOLVING.

48-A, three letters, “Writer next to Jung on the Sgt. Pepper cover.” I knew it right off, but it’s fun to try to name other three-letter writers.

50-D, five letters, “Not fancy at all.” I wasn’t fooled.

My favorite in this puzzle: 25-D, five letters, “It’s home on the range.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Zippy draws Nancy

He’s almost got it: “Sluggo Objects.”

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Groats, grits, grout, Grote

Another word from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, found right next to saveloys : groats, or in German, Grützen. “Usually plural in form but singular or plural in construction,” says Merriam-Webster, which defines groats as “hulled grain broken into fragments larger than grits“ or “a grain (as of oats) exclusive of the hull.”

Its origin:

Middle English grotes, going back to Old English grotan, masculine weak plural, presumably a variant of the neuter noun grot “particle, whit” (also glossing Latin pollis “finely ground flour”), probably going back to Germanic *gruta-, noun derivative of *greutan- “to grind, crush.”

Groats is related to grits, which M-W defines as “coarsely ground hulled grain,” “especially : ground hominy with the germ removed.” Like groats, grits is plural in form, singular or plural in construction.

Its origin:

late Old English grutta “bran, coarse meal,” going back to Old English grytt “finely ground flour,” going back to Germanic grutjō- or grutja- (whence also Middle Dutch gorte “groats, grits” [with metathesis], Middle Low German grütte, Old High German gruzzi), noun derivative from zero-grade of *greutan- “to grind, crush.”

(Reader, do you take pride in your grits?)

And there’s a connection to grout, “thin mortar used for filling spaces (such as the joints in masonry).”

Its origin:

Middle English grut, grout “crushed grain for malt, infused malt, thick, dark ale, mud, slime,” going back to Old English grūt “coarse meal, dregs, spent malt after brewing,” going back to Germanic *grūta- (whence also Middle Dutch grute, gruut “herb mixture used in beer brewing,” Middle High German grūz “a grain, grain of sand”), lengthened zero grade noun derivative from *greutan- “to grind, crush.”

M-W adds a complication about this meaning of grout:

Sense 1, which first appears in the seventeenth century, is of uncertain relation to the earlier senses and perhaps of independent origin. Oxford English Dictionary, first edition, suggests a connection to Middle French (Limousin) grouter “to rough-cast,” Limousin Occitan greutā, but this isolated word, itself of unknown origin, is of unlikely relevance.

The entries for groats, grits, and grout all say “more at GRIT,” and the entry for grit suggests that the reader check out grits, groats, and grout. I think I’m on pretty solid ground in thinking of these words as close relations.

And by the way, if you’re ever having tile work done in your residence, it’s pronounced /ˈgrau̇t/. Like this. It’s never/ˈgrüt/.

I’m not sure what to do with Old Grote.

[The parenthetical question, if you don’t recognize it, is from My Cousin Vinny.]