Things I saw while walking with the dog this morning. 📷
I’m happy to support the Kickstarter for the audiobook for Cory Doctorow’s next book, “The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation,” a guide to breaking up tech monopolies and incidentally saving the planet. Backing the project supports the great work Cory does on his blog and podcast.
Maybe you’re saying I should watch where I’m walking more carefully. And maybe you’re right. But I’ve lived with cats nearly forty years and the dog for ten and it hasn’t been a problem before. I have suddenly acquired dog poop and cat throw-up bad karma.
In recent weeks I have cleaned my shoe soles of great masses of dog poop twice and an extraordinary quantity of cat throw-up once.
I have become a reluctant expert on this subject. Warm water and dish soap. Easy peasy.
Minnie says good night.
This is what it’s like to spend your life in prison.
Listening to the men in the short Opinion Video above is like encountering visitors from another planet. They are serving life sentences at Angola prison, in rural Louisiana, with little to no hope for release. Many are elderly; they have not seen the outside world, or their families, for decades. They do not face execution, but they have been sentenced to death all the same, their lives spooling out endlessly on the cellblock and in the cotton fields, then ending in a prison hospice bed.
My essential and useful Obsidian plugins
I’m working on an article about Snowflake Inc. and trying to get in just the right amount of puns about snow and winter.
Yesterday afternoon, I went into the sunroom to lie down for a few minutes, and found that Minnie had peed all over the daybed in there. She had been extremely difficult to potty train when we first got her 10 years ago—many, many accidents for about the first 18 months we had her—but she hasn’t had an accident in years. She has been rock solid. But she broke that record yesterday. And boy this was a big one.
We keep a canvas cover on the daybed for just such accidents as these, and also because Minnie can be a high-energy dog at times and she goes in and out of the backyard all day and we want to keep the daybed clean and unshredded. The canvas cover was allegedly waterproof. It is not—not the least little bit. Minnie’s urine soaked through the canvas cover, and into the blankets and sheets.
So, no nap for me, and Julie cheerfully pitched in and took the lead on the clean-up for which I was and am grateful.
I brought the canvas cover out back and hung it on the fence and sprayed it down with Urine Destroyer (great product name) and hosed it down and went back inside. Around nine at night, I went out back to check to see if the canvas cover was dry, and on the way back to the house, I stepped in a big pile of dog poop. I was wearing the only shoes I have that I like to wear with shorts and no socks.
This morning, I went to let the dog out and looked for the key to the backdoor. A few days ago, I decided I didn’t like the place I usually keep the key, and put it somewhere else. I didn’t like that place either, so I put it in a different place. I didn’t like that place either, so I found a third place for it. And now I can’t find the key anymore.
And how is your week going so far?
Fortunately, we have had no repeats of indoor doggy accidents. And I found another pair of no-socks-shorts shoes that turn out to be quite comfortable and look better than the ones I had been wearing.
I started reading “Pursuit of the Pankera,” which is I think the only book by Robert A. Heinlein I have not read. I am enjoying it so far. I’m finding it a pleasant surprise.
The book was initially published in 1980, as “The Number of the Beast.” The first third of “Pankera” is the same as “Number,” and then they go off in different directions. They are two different novels with the same beginning, and many of the same characters throughout. “Pankera” disappeared for 40 years, and was finally published in 2020.
So far, I’m still in the first third, which is the same as “The Number of the Beast.”
I read “Number of the Beast” when it first came out. I was 19 years old. I was and am an avid Heinlein fan–he was and is my favorite writer by far.
“Number” was Heinlein’s first novel after a hiatus of six or seven years, nearly as long as I’d been reading real books (as opposed to children’s picture books). So the availability of “Number” was a big deal for me.
Like many fans, I found “Number” very disappointing.
Now I see something I managed to miss then: The book is an action-comedy. I think many critics missed that too. The situations and much of the dialogue are ridiculous, but they’re supposed to be. Their ridiculousness is not a failure of the book.
The Life I Never Intended to Love: Dog Owner. Katherine Bindley: “During the pandemic I chose a breed often compared to a velociraptor. It ruined my life–until I discovered that he’s the best dog who’s ever lived.” www.wsj.com/articles/…
I can absolutely relate. Minnie is a high-energy dog. She’s mellowed now, but in her first few years she ran us ragged. Even today, I walk her for more than 90 minutes a day and she’s ready for more. Many times when we get home from walks, she does zoomies just for the heck of it.
And she’s 10 years old. In dog years, that’s the same age as I am. I do not do zoomies.
Also, Minnie is a hybrid between a german shepherd and basenji. German shepherds are highly trainable, which is the reason why so many of them are working dogs. Basenji are among the most stubborn, hardest-to-train breeds. You might think that would even out and make Minnie average in trainability. But no, she swings wildly from one extreme to the other. Sometimes it seems like she can read my mind and does exactly what I want as soon as I think it. Other times we give her commands and she knows exactly what we want, and she says nope.
So yeah in several ways Minnie was a poor choice for us as sedentary first-time dog owners … but we would not part with her. There’s a lesson about life decisions in there.
The Criminal podcast: A Glamour and a Mystery.
In the summer of 1917, 16-year-old Elsie Wright took a photograph of her 9-year-old cousin, Frances Griffiths. It was the first photograph she’d ever taken – and it became the source of a mystery that lasted for most of the 20th century.
The girls' photos appeared to show them interacting with fairies: winged humans a few inches tall. Spiritualists worldwide, including Arthur Conan Doyle, were fascinated. More than a half-century later, one of the girls, now an old woman, admitted the thing was a hoax (although she said one of the five photos were real). She said the girls only intended to fool their family for a couple of hours.
The Cottingley Fairies en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cott…
Related: The Fox Sisters were three sisters from Rochester, New York, who became worldwide celebrities when they claimed to be in communication with ghosts in 1848, launching the spiritualism movement. In later life, the Fox sisters said they made it all up. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_…
When posting memes, is it a good idea to put the text of the meme in the alt-text of the image? Can screenreaders read the text of a meme, if the text is in a simple, legible font?
Things I saw walking the dog this morning. I like the lines of that building, and the stone facade. There was a shopping cart in the way of the shot, so I moved it.
The Eagles are the ultimate 70s band, and “Take it Easy” is their ultimate song.
Ringo looking groovy and other oddly satisfying and mildly interesting things I saw on the internet
A surprising number of you seemed to enjoy the video of Minnie walking down stairs. Here is another.
On my walk with the dog this morning, I saw this gentleman living his best life.
You are Atlas. You hold up the sky. If no one is on this page, the sky will fall. youareatlas.com via waxy.org