Tag: newsD
Cristastamuses!🌲🎄⚠️Remembering the War of the Trees
Merry Xmas! Please beware of “suicide cables”!🎄🔌🙅♀️
‘Tis the season to hang your Xmas lights—and, for many people, to hang one strand backwards and instead of pulling it down, head to the hardware store in search of an “adapter” that is colloquially referred to as a “suicide cable.”
DO NOT DO THIS!
I’m not kidding around. If you don’t kill yourself with such a arrangment, you can easily kill some hapless person who stumbles across your work later.
Recommended Consideration: Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast
These aren’t always great and I don’t agree with everyone he features (in fact, I super-duper disagree with ever listening to some of these nutbags). But Rubin is a always a wonderful and honest interviewer, so the episodes are often quite revelatory about art and human thinking (at the very least).
This one with Rory Sutherland is quite good and worth your time (even at 3 hours!)
I also really like the two-parter with Tyler Cowen. The first half is also on YouTube (embedded below) while the second isn’t (maybe because of copyright? It’s dedicated to Cowen talking about and offering samples of music he finds interesting and is available here):
VERDICT: Extremely interesting, and honestly worth the time, despite extreme length.
$10 will erase $1000 of Medical Debt in Michigan RIGHT NOW! 💸
We are facing a lot of terrifying problems right now: climate disaster, civil unrest, labor injustice, opioid abuse, the profusion of hate and extremism.
Most problems cannot be solved by throwing money at them. Medical debt is one that can.
I’m collaborating on a project to erase $1 million of medical debt in Michigan.
Fortunately, because of the way this debt is bundled, it’s possible to buy it extremely cheaply on the open market, for just a penny on the dollar (i.e., $1 buys $100 of bundled medical debt). If bill collectors buy that debt, they will hound the debtor for the full value of the debt, even though they only paid 1/100th of that.
But if we buy the debt, we can just forgive it and clear the books for someone who had some bad luck and didn’t have the insurance to cover it.
Incidentally, in Michigan this burden hits Black communities especially hard; buying and erasing debt here is thus a “Good Deed twofer”: one donation relieves a family’s economic woes AND strikes a blow for racial and economic justice.
A bunch of you have already given (we’re over 76% of the way to our goal!), and that’s amaaaaazing! The more you give, the more we can forgive. THANK YOU!
Touché, Michael Lewis
Washington Post: “Play it again, Sam: Inside Bankman-Fried’s last year in the crypto game” by Michael Lewis (gift link 🎁)
Before I listened to this, I had no opinion of SBF, apart from the assumption he was yet another contemptibly oblivious man-child “genius” (and mild embarrassment that he’s a Jew, like me).
When I started listening to this, my contempt was swiftly confirmed. But man, by the end, I was goddamned compelled. Fuck you, Michael Lewis; you win again.
jargon
I’ve always loved this “jargon” gag (is that Chris Hanson‽)
… but never knew it was actually a cover! (BONUS: The original has a fun Detroit connect—as does Chris Hanson!!!) Here’s the original:
From the original creator:
I shot this in the late 70’s at Regan Studios in Detroit on 16mm film. The narrator and writer is Bud Haggert. He was the top voice-over talent on technical films. He wrote the script because he rarely understood the technical copy he was asked to read and felt he shouldn’t be alone. We had just finished a production for GMC Trucks and Bud asked since this was the perfect setting could we film his Turbo Encabulator script. He was using an audio prompter referred to as “the ear”. He was actually the pioneer of the ear. He was to deliver a live speech without a prompter. After struggling in his hotel room trying to commit to memory he went to plan B. He recorded it to a large Wollensak reel to reel recorder and placed it in the bottom of the podium. With a wired earplug he used it for the speech and the “ear” was invented. Today every on-camera spokesperson uses a variation of Bud’s innovation. Dave Rondot (me) was the director and John Choate was the DP on this production. The first laugh at the end is mine. My hat’s off to Bud a true talent.
Incidentally, I’m not 100% convinced that the infamous EPCM PSP “Turnaround” video is not simply an ornate “jargon” gag. Straight talk: she is waaaaay too amused by scheduled off-stream events in industrial processing plants. Feels like a set-up.
Halloween Treat: An American Werewolf In London🍬🎃
Full and uncut, courtesy of our friends at the Internet Archive!
Incidentally, nothing profound here, but I’d totally forgotten what a Jewish movie this is (I sorta love Jack more than anything else in this movie).
(More on Jews and werewolves.)
An American Werewolf In London : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming
A fun halloween read!🎃👻⚰️🔒
A fun read for those interested in revenants, vampires, European history, grave robbery, and quixotic Jewish funeral rites—SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE!!!
(gift link below)
🚨 LAST CHANCE🚨 to get “There Was No Sound of Thunder: A Time Portal Novel” for 99-cents!
My latest darkly comic scifi novel goes to full retail price tomorrow; get it while it’s still cheaper than basically anything else you might treat yourself to:
- Amazon: https://amzn.to/3P3gxlu
- Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1363713
- Apple: https://books.apple.com/us/book/x/id6446331978
- Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/Search?Query=9798215710852
“An intriguing take on minimum wage employment and how it can be made to pay.”
John Fairhurst
What if your great new job had dire consequences for space-time integrity?
Fresh out of college and unsure what’s next, Taylor has lucked into a cushy job in human resources. Most companies keep costs down by outsourcing and off-shoring. Taylor’s bosses are different. They’re committed to staying “100% MADE IN AMERICA”—by bringing in cheap labor using a time portal. But their latest batch of “New Guys” aren’t like the others…
“The movie pitch to the Sci-Fi Channel would be Breaking Bad meets Connie Willis’s The Doomsday Book. If this all sounds a bit grim it is anything but. Like Breaking Bad this has a strong streak of black humour running through it and is very entertaining.♥♥♥+”
SF Magazines
Can Taylor untangle himself from corporate HR, domestic terrorists, the problem of “Too Many Hitlers,” and threats to space-time integrity?
- Amazon: https://amzn.to/3P3gxlu
- Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1363713
- Apple: https://books.apple.com/us/book/x/id6446331978
- Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/2940166031594
- Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/Search?Query=9798215710852
- Scribd: https://www.scribd.com/search?query=9798215710852&language=0
“The big pleasure of this story is watching all the pieces come together. Rating: ★★★★★ Fun story with a sophisticated plot.”
Rocket Stack Rank