Tumbling Bill Panton, RIP (Updated 7/31/19)
Bill Panton, aka Tumbling Bill, passed earlier this week.
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.
Thursday Bag o’ Psychological Toll
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.
Air-Minded: Histories & IDs
“All this virtue, and no witnesses.”
Here Be Bitmojis
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?
Evangelical Pigs … in Spaaace!
I’ve always loved movies and TV shows like “Starship Troopers” and “The Expanse,” which depict futures where men and women have become truly equal in every field, no assumptions made and no questions asked. And believe me, that’s the future I want, the one I grew up believing it and still dream is possible.
Tuesday Bag o’ Normalcy
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.
Sunday Bag o’ Background Noise
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?