I have a new job! I’m happy to say I started work this week as a senior writer at Oracle, getting out the good word about what Oracle and its customers are doing in the cloud. I’m working with former colleagues and a team of others that I’m looking forward to getting to know.
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
William Shatner’s “Get a Life” sketch from Saturday Night Live in the 1980s. dai.ly/xmagzq I’d never seen it before. In an interview on Gilbert Gottfried’s podcast, Jason Alexander describes meeting Shatner, when Alexander was starring on Seinfeld and Seinfeld was a hit. Alexander, who’s an enthusiastic Trekkie, was thrilled. www.gilbertpodcast.com/jason-ale… Shatner told a story about how he had trouble getting work after Star Trek, and hated being typecast. He hated the fans too.
Monday, June 8, 2020
I literally squeed when I saw a mother baboon carrying her baby. “Oh my god it’s a baby baboon!” I exclaimed in a high pitched squeal like an 11 year old girl. The baby dropped off the mother, stood on his hind legs a wobbly moment, then looked puzzled and fell over. Who would not squee at that? =-=-=- Dawn river cruise. Instant coffee from metal camp cups at sunrise, mixed with hot water from a Stanley insulated bottle
Julie received a text message that just said, “Mom I’m sorry.”
It was a wrong number.
Julie did not respond because, she said, every response she could think of seemed cruel. “Wrong number.” “I don’t have any children,” etc.
Sunday, June 7, 2020
About 10 days ago a video went viral of Amaurie Johnson, a young African-American man, apparently being bullied by police at a transit station here in La Mesa, a suburb of San Diego where Julie and I live. Charges dropped against Amaurie Johnson after controversial arrest in La Mesa www.cbs8.com/article/n… As I understand it, the incident was, sadly, unremarkable. The kind of thing African-Americans have to go through every day. Nobody was injured physically.
Sunday, June 7, 2020
Yesterday was our first full day really in Africa, when we got out of the airport/hotel complex in Johannesburg to the Chobe Game Lodge in Botswana . This place is posh, with a vaguely colonial style and dozens of staff, smiling and jumping to attention. Indeed, service is both overly attentive and not quite what we wanted.Four or five people serve us at each meal, and yet service is slow and it can be difficult to find someone if you need something.
Seen at the supermarket: a woman wearing a mask and tiara.
Consumer reports: How to safely and effectively record video during a protest www.consumerreports.org/audio-vid…
Saturday, June 6, 2020
We arrived at Kasane Airport, a small airport outside Chobe National Park in Botswana, yesterday, and when we stepped outside the airport that is when our trip really began. A driver from the resort met us, a dark-skinned black woman wearing a navy medium weight coat and wool beanie hat despite 80-plus degree heat. We loaded aboard our vehicle, which was not the shuttle bus I’d expected, but rather a flatbed truck with high sides and padded bench seats.
Friday, June 5, 2020
From my travel journal, lightly edited for typoes: We’ve been in transit nearly 2 days now. And we are almost there. We left the house at 8 AM on Monday. Our flight was more than four hours from San Diego to Atlanta. I barely remember it now so I guess it was fine. We had a 90 minute connection to Johannesburg. Julie was having a little bit of difficulty with baggage, so we grabbed one of those golf cart things and were chauffeured around the airport in style, coming apparently close to bowling over pedestrians a couple of times, which made the drive more enjoyable.
Friday, June 5, 2020
I fell down an Internet rabbit hole this morning. I received an email from someone signing himself as “Alan Tarica.” It read: “How do you have nothing to say? Idiots like you need to be exposed for having no critical thinking or meta cognition and no integrity.” I had no idea what this was about. I thought it might be related to one of my political posts, but experience tells me that it could be about _anything.
📷 Baked potato, deli turkey breast, spicy brown mustard. Delicious!
📷 Jacaranda
Thursday, June 4, 2020
On Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic pluralistic.net/2020/06/0… Ella Jones is Ferguson’s first black mayor. =-=-=- Why do protests become violent? …police escalation leads to violence. Sending police to protests in riot gear begets riots. Tear-gas begets violence. These are the findings of scholars and blue-ribbon panels alike. They are roundly ignored by police. There’s a feedback loop: violent suppression of protest leads to militancy among protesters; this is the pretence for more violent suppression.
Wednesday, June 3, 2020
I finished reading “Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic,” by Mike Duncan www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/mi… Duncan, who is the voice of the History of Rome and Revolutions podcasts, traces the decline of the Roman Republic from the mid-2d Century to the mid 1st Century BCE — from around the time of the Gracchi brothers to the death of Sulla. The Republic was straining as the middle class and poor struggled against domination by a small, wealthy elite.
Wednesday, June 3, 2020
QAnon believers, united in a battle against what they see as dark forces of the world, reveal where the internet is headed. The Qanon community is united in the belief that they can use the Internet to make the world better, and build personal connections and friendships I do not believe the fundamental tenets of Qanon, which are as I understand it that Hillary Clinton, Obama and their allies are part of a conspiracy dating back at least 50 years, which includes a child sex ring operating out of a pizza restaurant.
Wednesday, June 3, 2020
Democrats control the House, many state Houses, governors’ offices, and the City Halls of major cities. There’s a lot they can do — right now, if they have the will. 1 - Stop giving Trump more police power. Stop working with Republicans to revive the Patriot Act. sirota.substack.com/p/10-thin…
How ‘antifa’ became a Trump catch-all www.politico.com/news/2020…
Antifa isn’t an organized group and there’s no evidence they’re responsible for rioting but you do you, Republicans.
Wednesday, June 3, 2020
Triplett’s father, Mose, fought for the Confederacy and then joined the North and fought as a private. After the war, he had “a reputation for orneriness.” [He] kept pet rattlesnakes at his home near Elk Creek, N.C. He often sat on his front porch with a pistol on his lap. “A lot of people were afraid of him,” his grandson, Charlie Triplett, told the [Wall Street] Journal.
75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice medium.com/equality-…