Sunday Bag o’ Sputnik
I have an older but sharper memory of Grandfather Estes dragging me and my sister Sue outside one night to see something that had never seen before. It was October 1957, and the Russians had just launched Sputnik.
"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
What’s going on in my life
I have an older but sharper memory of Grandfather Estes dragging me and my sister Sue outside one night to see something that had never seen before. It was October 1957, and the Russians had just launched Sputnik.
I’ve been reading about the content moderators who review objectionable content posted to social media, and the psychological toll constant exposure to “the Internet’s panoply of jerks, racists, creeps, criminals, and bullies” takes on them.
I joined a closed Facebook community called “A Group Where We Pretend to be Boomers.” As you’d expect, members are baby boomers who make fun of themselves by posting as if they don’t understand the first thing about computers, email, the internet, and social media. To me, that’s more of a “greatest generation” thing, but I do know boomers my age who fit the stereotype well. But hey, isn’t Facebook mostly a boomer thing anyway? Aren’t all the youngsters on Snapfilter or whatever?
If I had a rant in me this morning, I’d lay into NPR for its slavish commitment to normalizing Trump, arguably not the worst unelected occupant of the White House (George W. Bush still has that distinction IMO), but certainly the most abnormal.
I’m just waiting for someone to tell me those are coyote tracks, because I have some very literal-minded friends who never understand when I’m joking, and of course I know those are coyote tracks because that’s why I took the photo, innit?
Don Martin was drawing for Mad in 1958, with his floppy-footed characters and wet-your-pants hilarious farty sound effects like “FLEEN!” and “FOOSH!”
Yesterday was a day for being pigeonholed … strangers sized me up correctly after one glance. That shouldn’t annoy me, but it did.
Here are Pima Air and Space Museum’s F-15 Eagle and F-16 Viper. When I went in Monday they were missing from their regular places. Looking around, I spied them on the wash rack in front of the restoration hangar, drying in the sun after getting a good cleaning. By the time I go in next Monday, […]