2025
It was a treat to see my granddaughter and other adults in her life this weekend.
Word of the day is ‘catch-fart’ (17th century: an obsequious individual who will always follow the political wind).
– Susie Dent (@[email protected])
Now that I’m more than 20 years older than Martin Luther King, Jr., ever had a chance to become, his youth at the time of his murder is much clearer to me, much starker. It makes his achievements seem that much greater and his death all the more painful.
Pictured above: photos of two buttons and a poster from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, The New York Public Library, image IDs 57281864, 57281854, and 58250348.
Sherrilyn Ifill, “It Is MLK Day. Do Not Despair. This Year Especially, We Have Work To Do.” sherrilyn.substack.com…
One of the pieces I linked to in my previous post is a “must read” about scientific speculation and its selective dissemination in the media. Sam Kean, “The Comet Panic of 1910, Revisited,” Distillations Magazine, January 16, 2025, www.sciencehistory.org…
Colón-Vásquez’s drawing remains a prime example of how interactions between scientists and the public can go wrong: the prestige and imprimatur of science is such that people take even wild speculation at face value sometimes. It’s easy to chuckle over the sillier manifestations of the 1910 panic—comet pills, insurance scams, and the like. But the record left by a frightened teenager also helps Méndez and Acosta-Colón appreciate the “blend of fear, fascination, and artistic expression that such events can provoke.”
This funny old German postcard about “the end of the world” caught my attention because of tomorrow’s big event in Washington, DC, Orange Oaf’s return to the White House. The card feels somewhat prophetic, but the earlier threat it references was celestial, not human. Many people were panicking because Earth was expected to pass through the tail of Halley’s Comet on May 19, 1910.
One of the signs to the right in the postcard advertises “Airplanes for rent | Deliverance from the apocalypse!” The other offers big jugs of gasoline, each containing enough to reach (reichend ) the moon, or pungent enough for the odor to carry (riechend ) that far. The airplanes, dirigibles, and hot air balloons for escaping to the moon look as fanciful as their purported purpose.
Source: Newberry Library, John I. Monroe collection of fantasy postcards, NL116N96.
Democratic heads of state often see their departures from office as an opportunity to build on their leadership legacy. The authoritarian regards the end of being adulated by followers and controlling everything and everyone as an existential threat.
– Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen (Norton, 2020), chap. 10.
📺 Smart analysis by Anders Puck Nielsen on the dangers of unrealistic expectations for forthcoming talks to end the Russo-Ukrainian War: youtu.be (10 min).
Poster: Cartoon of the German and Italian dictators trying to cobble together what was left of their obscene project in 1945.
Source: Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2015646607.
I have some sympathy for Orange One’s fear of the cold. He’s an emperor with no clothes, after all.
“Proposed Legislation Threatens a Backslide on U.S. Democracy” by Samantha Karlin, newlinesmag.com…, January 16, 2025.
Lede: “A new House bill purports to counter terror financing, but it reads a lot like the ‘foreign agent’ laws used to quash dissent in Russia and Hungary.”
News told in the future tense or conditional mood does nothing but increase my anxiety about our uncertain future, and I can do that all on my own without the media’s help. I would prefer more stories in the past tense.
Feeling sick about next Monday, January 20. Fortunately, I’ll be with family and nowhere near a TV.
📽️ I am surprised by how much I enjoyed “Jojo Rabbit,” dir. Taika Waititi (Fox Searchlight, 2019)—its overall sensibility; the fine acting of the kids, whose lives are at the center of the film; the adults as more peripheral, with the exception of the mother, and even she appears well after the film begins, and she departs before it is over … The ten-year-old Jojo gets by in his alone time with an imaginary friend, Hitler. And then he discovers a Jewish girl hiding in his house.…
The new version of MacPaw’s CleanMyMac (the successor to CleanMyMac X) is unusable for me. The features sound good, but the animations are so busy, so intrusive, as to make it impossible to look at the app without feeling disoriented. Where is the option to turn all that nonsense off? I need a utility, not entertainment.
I’ve cancelled my subscription. When I offered the requested feedback about why, all I got was an automated follow-up request for more details so they can help me make the app work. This is the problem with automated systems that don’t allow for a “none of the above” and “human” option. My problem is accessibility, but whether that message ever gets through is doubtful.
For now, the old version still works, so I went back to it. But this preview of an entshittified future with MacPaw has made me lose faith. To be fair, though, I’ve been losing faith in a lot of products that have unnecessary stuff crammed into them, including MacOS. When my Mac ceases to be supported by Apple security updates, I might just switch over to a basic Linux install.
Color photo by Jack Delano of kids skating and playing hockey on a pond in the vicinity of Brockton, Massachusetts, in December 1940.
Source: Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017877371/.
