This Morning's Mashup
06:49 Friday, 9 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 70.86°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 59
From Quotations speed-date:
What is this place where thought is useless? Knowledge and emotion cannot fathom it! - Yunmen’s reply to the question of a certain monk.
and
Art always has something of the unconscious about it. - D.T. Suzuki
This particular pairing is unsurprising because a lot of the quotations are related to Zen.
But it's sweet, anyway.
✍️ Reply by emailThe Efficiency of Electric Vehicles
09:10 Thursday, 8 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 72.36°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 1.99mph
Words: 247
This is a nice piece that points out the inefficiencies of fossil fueled vehicles, just in delivering the fuel to the pump.
I love my Maverick, but I'd love it even more if it were a plug-in hybrid. If it were all-electric, that would probably be ideal. There are some interesting things happening with small truck EVs, but they're not ready yet.
I'm just over 1100 miles (1107, just checked on the Ford Pass app) on the Mav right now. I've only put gas in it twice. Mileage at last fill-up was 806.7, so I've gone 300 miles on a little less than half a tank of gas. (Needle's above the mid-line, app says 55%.) The calculated mpg on the last fill-up was 39.6, which was less than the 43.6 I calculated on the first tank. But I think I did more highway driving (less efficient) on the second tank. Plus, wasn't using "Eco" mode each time, because I didn't know you have to select it each time you drive the car. (Really dumb idea Ford. Didn't Ford used to think they had better ideas? They did.)
Once we get more or less permanently situated at Winterfell (I'm guessing two years), I think I'd be a good candidate for a small EV truck. Hopefully, they're available and reasonable. We'd use the EV for most local driving, and the RAV4 for long-distance stuff. At least while gas is still available, that is.
✍️ Reply by emailPotatoes, Peas, Sugar Beets and Spinach
08:59 Thursday, 8 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 72.03°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 96% Wind: 0mph
Words: 37
A bit of agriculture that one might be wise to study.
We're all in this together, and nobody's getting out of here alive.
So maybe, in the mean time, we can all try to help each other.
✍️ Reply by emailConservation of Energy
07:03 Thursday, 8 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 68.45°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 399
Going to try this Quotations speed-dating thing. (I haven't written the function yet. I'm still doing this manually, like an animal.)
Therefore, good and ill are one. Heraclitus
And
Action is doing something, reacting is having it happen. Syd Field
I didn't like this pairing at first, but I guess the idea is to kind of think about this random juxtaposition of ideas and see what comes to mind. So here goes...
"Good and ill are one," is the same as, "Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
Thought is a reaction to an event. It is the subjective evaluation of the consequences of an event (an "action"), which, depending on the observer's point of view, may be either "good" or "ill," or both, if two or more observers have different points of view, or if a single observer subscribes to no particular point of view, and can see both "good" and "ill" in the consequences of an event.
Action is the necessary antecedent to reaction, though I suppose that, at some scale, they may be thought of as being simultaneous. At any rate, it brought to mind Newton's third law of motion, every action has an equal an opposite reaction.
"Binding opposites" was another idea from Heraclitus. (From the strain of binding opposites comes harmony. Fragment 46) Similar, perhaps, to yin and yang, good and ill.
Syd Field was likely describing an aspect of screenwriting, but it's interesting in a broader context. (Or someone wouldn't have made the effort to jot it down as a quotation. I don't recall where this particular one came from. Likely Zen and the Art of Making a Living.)
Being and nothingness, binding opposites. Being is perhaps the negation of nothingness. An equal and opposite reaction, momentum is conserved, energy as well. Zero sum in a one frame, sound and fury in another, depending, I suppose, on the observer's point of view.
Ideas that were explored by Nishida Kitaro.
Nishida writes about experience, reality, good and religion. He argues that the most profound form of experience is the pure experience. Nishida analyzes the thought, the will, the intellectual intuition, and the pure experience among them.[4] According to Nishida's vision as well as to the essence of Asian wisdom, one craves harmony in experience, for unity.[5]
Everything is connected.
Maybe a productive exercise.
What do you think?
✍️ Reply by emailFurther to the Foregoing
12:00 Wednesday, 7 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 86.43°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 66% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 57
This has been in the news locally lately. It's not the first time. And I know someone whose brother was murdered in custody in Texas. And it's been in the news in New York recently too.
As human behavior goes, it seems to be fairly universal. Abu Ghraib.
Seems like we'd have this figured out by now.
✍️ Reply by emailSomething New
11:07 Wednesday, 7 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 84.61°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 73% Wind: 3.96mph
Words: 472
I need a bit of distraction these days. There's plenty of work to do, but that gets dizzy after a while. What stays here? What goes there? Do I need this?
Oh? There's an alarm from the hot water heater? Yikes. Weeping union. $190 and all should be well now. Wait for everything to dry out. Of course, just as we're trying to sell the place.
I have this Tinderbox file with about 500 quotations in it. Last Saturday during the meetup, we talked about how to facilitate "discovery" in Tinderbox. That reminded me of something Beck Tench had mentioned in the Forum, six years ago! (Oy!). So this morning I figured I'd try to implement one of the solutions offered to automate selecting two notes at random and presenting them within a container.
It worked, and I've run it a few times. It does offer some stimulus for thinking.
Here's the most recent run:
I was so full of sleep at the time that I left the true way. Dante
And
It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved. Irwin Edman
The first is from Dante's Inferno.
(Summary from Safari: The article describes a journey through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. The narrator encounters various mythical creatures and souls, including a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf. The journey serves as a metaphor for the human experience, highlighting the challenges and temptations that individuals face in life.)
Irwin Edman was an American professor of philosophy who died relatively young, at 58.
So, inspiration? Thoughts?
Of course, our present crisis informs my reaction to these two quotations.
The Right's "War on Woke," is the path to Hell. We get failed game show hosts as presidents because men are moved by myths and fables and symbols, which is pretty much Trump to a "T."
But myths and fables and symbols can move people in any direction. Depends on who's putting on the show, I guess.
We may prefer sleepwalking through life. Dreaming, we can't turn our conscious attention to ourselves and our shortcomings.
What I want to do now is to modify this, perhaps turning it into a function that runs each day, copying the $Text of each quotation into a new note that I can copy and paste into the marmot and then riff off of whatever surfaced.
Gives me something to do.
The preceding post was one of the quotations I added to the file when I was reading In The Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson. Diels was Rudolf Diels, former head of the Gestapo. Something to be said for his observation, given our experience with the number of people dying in custody in jail, and deporting children undergoing cancer treatment.
✍️ Reply by email"Freud might explain it." or, "ICE, ICE baby"
09:28 Wednesday, 7 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 78.85°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 85% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 188
In a conversation with a British embassy official that occurred at about this time, quoted in a memorandum later filed with the foreign office in London, Diels delivered a monologue on his own moral unease: "The infliction of physical punishment is not every man's job, and naturally we were only too glad to recruit men who were prepared to show no squeamishness at their task. Unfortunately, we knew nothing about the freudian side of the business, and it was only after a number of instances of unnecessary flogging and meaningless cruelty that I tumbled to the fact that my organization had been attracting all the sadists in Germany and Austria without my knowledge for some time past. It had also been attracting unconscious sadists, i.e. men who did not know themselves that they had sadist leanings until they took part in a flogging. And finally it had been actually creating sadists. For it seems that corporal chastisement ultimately arouses sadistic leanings in apparently normal men and women. Freud might explain it."
Erik Larson
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
✍️ Reply by emailBetween Here and Gone
08:35 Monday, 5 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 68.61°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 81% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 28
This is that awkward time, between here and gone. Packing, shuffling, selling, giving away, saying goodbye.
Wondering. Waiting.
Wanting.
This too shall pass.
And the beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailClimate Is What We Expect
08:23 Saturday, 3 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 71.71°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 87% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 516
Weather is what we get.
Except, our historical climate expectations are now mostly worthless. The climate that we boomers grew up in no longer exists. Our present climate has never existed before on this planet.
That's a pretty remarkable statement, but I seldom hear anyone talking about it. I am seeing references to the "old climate," but I haven't seen much discussion about the fact that this climate has never existed before on Earth.
Yes, there have been periods where carbon dioxide levels have been this high, but not with polar ice caps. Not with the landscape altered by human activity.
And as a complex, non-linear dynamic system, it's impossible to make accurate predictions of what trajectory it'll take going forward. Especially as we keep altering atmospheric chemistry through the emission of greenhouse gases, and, soon I expect, the deliberate emission of reflective aerosols in an effort to geo-engineer a solar shade.
Science is inherently conservative. It lags the data. Its predictions are conservative. They lag the phenomena. That should suggest to you that things may get much worse, much faster. How much? If I knew, I could get rich.
Just know that it is happening now, and it is only going to accelerate.
That should be one of the predominant conditions that informs your thinking as you consider your future.
Also know that, while the process is already underway, the likely outcome, a series of accelerating stepwise shocks that ultimately lead to the collapse of this civilization, hasn't permeated the larger consciousness yet.
But it will. And when it does, the available options become fewer, as competition for them increases and only those with the most resources will be able to secure them.
That argues for considering a "first mover" advantage. It does incur a somewhat higher initial cost, in terms of capital and personal disruption and inconvenience. If you're in your prime earning years, with a home, school age children, a good job, it's highly disruptive and costly to relocate. But it gives you the advantage of more choices with regard to where you might wish to go, and how expensive that will be.
You may want to think in the long term here. A place where you can settle. You don't want to have to do this twice. (You probably won't be able to.)
While you may consider housing that is smaller and more sustainable, you may wish to consider having enough space to house relatives, themselves perhaps fleeing a climate catastrophe of some kind, either temporarily or permanently.
If you're a senior, you may wish to consider whether you wish to create a legacy asset. A safer place to pass on to your kids. This gets complicated with blended senior families with several adult children and grandchildren. But it is an asset, and you'll be past caring when it comes time for them to sort it all out. Presumably you can alleviate some of that with wise estate planning.
The point is, the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.
The second best time is right now.
✍️ Reply by emailPro-Social
12:20 Friday, 2 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 81.88°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 58% Wind: 4mph
Words: 615
A few more ideas about how to get to know your neighbors and acquire a few friends along the way.
If you live in a community with a "summer kitchen" amenity, start dropping by there Friday evenings around five o'clock. Bring some snacks. If the rules permit, perhaps some cold adult beverages. If they don't, maybe just some cold beverages. To share.
If you have mad grill skills, make something that smells great. Make enough to share. Show up every Friday. Become a fixture. Add infrastructure slowly so as not to spook the herd. Maybe a bluetooth speaker. Later, some spare napkins or paper plates. Eventually, you'll have a "party box," and you'll be the unofficial host of "happy hour."
People will come down to grill and you'll chat. Get to know a little something about each other. People will get used to the idea that there's usually a group, and more will show up to see what's going on. Sometimes it can get a little awkward as there are people who will welcome this like a drowning person, clinging to you for dear life. So patience, kindness and grace are sometimes necessary and always appropriate. They usually mellow out as they get used to being "around people."
Wrap it up around nine. Enjoy the sunset. That's you, don't chase anyone off. Let it do its own thing. Just don't be the last one to leave unless you're taking responsibility for everything that goes on, which can get weird. Especially if there's a hot tub.
Don't ask.
Got a dog? Get a dog! Walk the dog. You'll meet lots of people.
I guess it can partly depend on the geography of your neighborhood. This place is fairly dense for single family homes. There are a number of Friday driveway happy hours on our street. People bring lawn chairs or beach chairs and sit out a driveway and talk, drink, smoke or whatever.
If your neighborhood is less dense maybe the amenity is a better approach. A single spot where people can gather, if they have a reason to gather, and get to know one another. Similarly, if you're widely spread out, people probably expect to keep their dogs in their yards. But maybe there's a dog park?
We had a little theater at the clubhouse at my condo. I ran "movie night" on Thursdays. Wasn't huge attendance, but I think it only seated 18. But we'd get a fair number of people over time, and some folks who otherwise might have been isolated. Particularly some of our older residents.
I guess people meet at church too. Not my jam, but I've heard good things.
Anyway, I think it's like rain. Need a little nucleating dust particle to gather condensation.
Happy hour at the condo was a lot of fun, and a little bit of trouble now and then. It wasn't always the same folks, but there was a core of regulars, and a rotating cast of other residents who would drop in once in a while.
For those more open places, like at the pool or summer kitchen, you do have to kind of steer clear of politics, or ignore it when it comes up. If you get to know the people well enough, from time to time you might have an opportunity for a civil conversation. It did happen, but it always felt a little fragile. And there were a couple of sharp exchanges now and then. But I think we all knew we had more to lose by that point, than there was to gain by arguing.
Because we're all in this together, and none of us is getting out of here alive.
✍️ Reply by emailA Note to Chris
11:48 Friday, 2 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 82.26°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 56% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 448
Chris is wondering how to find some new friends. Maybe some dude friends, not just couples friends.
Some ideas that worked, mostly, for me. I'm not the best at being a friend, though. Moving from the condo to this place was a setback for a while. And having a close friend who was also a condo investor turned out to be a mistake. But, that said, some ideas:
Trivia night. You could start out as a couple because it's probably easier to join another team as a couple, and get to know everyone. Then you could choose whether or not you wanted to go as a couple once you were on a team. From there, you can sometimes discover common interests, or someone has an idea for a different activity. But trivia is fun by itself, and it can springboard into other activities.
Join a club. Photography. Astronomy. My neighbor, Pete, is a pretty good friend. They lived right next door, but then sold their place to buy a bigger place in the development next to ours. So we still hang out, just not as easy. He joined the Jacksonville Astronomy Club and they have various programs and observing nights that Pete has invited me along on. He's also into photography a bit. I'm more into it than he is, but I took a class with him to hang out and maybe learn something.
Pete and his wife bought some property up in the Finger Lakes, so we'll still be seeing them in the summers up north! (Pete's also a volunteer snake wrangler, which is a good thing to know in Florida.) Oh, and he's also a retired Physician's Assistant, also a plus.
Got a garage? Buy a dart board. Stand outside at night with the garage door throwing some darts as the neighbors walk by with their dogs. The magic will happen. Maybe a few beers in a cooler can help.
Know your neighbors? Get to know your neighbors. Find "your people." Have round-robin dinner parties with themes.
I'm leaving Florida for many reasons, but lack of friendship isn't one of them.
Investing in social capital is a bit of a skill, and if you're out of practice, it can feel awkward at first. But figure out something you'd like to do. Find the people that do that thing. Join them.
To be honest, Mitzi is the real engine in our social machine. I'm fairly extroverted, but she's a dazzling lighthouse. They like me, but they love Mitzi. So do I, so it's cool.
Anyway, we're all going to be needing friends in the years to come. Best investment you can make in these uncertain times.
✍️ Reply by emailA Good Read
08:17 Friday, 2 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 68.34°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 149
This was pretty interesting this morning. (Go ahead, click on the link. Yes, it's a bit of tease. Just open it and leave the tab open if you don't feel like reading it now.)
I have stuff I ought to do, but the past several days have been pretty busy. I'm going to do what I want today.
Probably nothing.
Well, read. Watch some YouTube.
On the last part of the ride this morning, on my street, three deer bounded across the street in front of me. So close that they startled me and I briefly worried about hitting them. (Never would have happened, they were too far away. But still, pretty close.)
The thing that was amazing was how silent they were. No sound. Just three large, brown animals bounding across the road in the darkness. A remarkable moment, herein remarked.
I think my blinking headlight startled them.
✍️ Reply by emailRandom
07:05 Friday, 2 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 62.74°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 96% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 31
The security camera is a never-ending source of amusement.
✍️ Reply by emailJames Reeves
06:48 Friday, 2 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 63.64°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 94% Wind: 0mph
Words: 27
When I read James Reeves, I seem to hear Springsteen's State Trooper in background in my mind. (My "mind's ear"?)
Hi-ho Silvero
Deliver me from nowhere...
✍️ Reply by emailWe Love Our Gear
06:01 Friday, 2 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 64.67°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 0mph
Words: 559
This is a paean to Olympus/OMDS micro-four thirds equipment. It's not going to be to everyone's taste. I have no quarrel with it, though I don't feel insecure about my choice in sensor format or manufacturer. I do feel that intimate connection with the cameras though.
Since forever, it seems, people have complained in the various camera forums about Olympus' menu system. I never had that problem. I learned it and it just became how you configured the camera. I can relate to the experience of unfamiliarity people encounter, because I've tried a couple of Panasonic bodies and I couldn't figure the menu system out.
Which is the same sort of unfairness people exhibit to Olympus. I didn't want to figure the menu system out, because I already had a camera system that delivered similar or better results. (Panasonic jpegs back in those days were always a little on the green side to me.)
I started digital photography with a 1MP Kodak point and shoot, quickly throwing dollars at a series of Kodak compacts and "bridge" cameras before I became dissatisfied with the limitations of the small sensor and a fixed lens. (Though I did love that Kodak color.) Searching for a DSLR to switch to, Olympus seemed to offer the most value for money, so that's where I started in 2008 with the E-520, and I've never looked back.
I do think Olympus, now OMDS, does have a corporate culture that embraced a particular point of view, which wasn't one that seemed to align with the rest of the industry. It was never so successful a brand that it could rely on cachet to keep it afloat, like Leica. It leaned into the advantages of a smaller sensor, the four thirds format, to build a system that was compact, but could still deliver professional results.
Some people will object to that, because some people will object to anything. But professionals made their living with Olympus cameras, "equivalence" debates notwithstanding.
Anyway, I have way too many cameras. Nearly all of them by Olympus or OMDS. I've gone through periods of shedding certain bodies or lenses, but still acquiring new ones, the latest being the OM-3. I haven't been shooting as much lately. I expect that to change when we move.
Were we to stay here, I think I'd have to embrace "the obstacle is the way," and use my new truck to get out of this bourgeois, old-age ghetto and find something to catch my eye that didn't depress me. Perhaps that's unfair to "over-55 communities," because there are many nice people who live here. But it's a bubble, and you can feel it.
Listing goes live today. Photos turned out well. I think the house shows well, in that sterile, inoffensive marketing sense that hides the fact that anyone actually lives here. In one of the garage shots, I noticed one of my old magnetic campaign signs was stuck to the workbench. I'd removed the ones on the hot water heater. Missed that one. I don't recall if the realtor is going to use that picture or not. I kind of like it, but who knows if it's wise in these days of hyper-partisanship?
Anyway, the shutter clicks, the image is stored and the counter advances.
The beat, it goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailBike
05:34 Friday, 2 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 64.69°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 0mph
Words: 334
Yesterday's walk was probably a mistake. Achilles was more painful than it's been in some time. So this morning I rode my bike at 0500, figuring I'd see less traffic. Not so much, about the same as at 0530. But only one car passed me in the right lane, adjacent to the bike lane. (There's an entire left lane with no traffic in it they could have used.)
I worked up a sweat, but I guess the "intensity" was only "moderate," according to my watch. I don't know if "moderate" equates to "vigorous," but if you asked me, I'd say it felt like it. Apparently you only need ten minutes a day of "vigorous" exercise to keep from losing your mind.
Or something.
At any rate, it was 25 minutes, so maybe it'll count anyway.
Meanwhile, if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber (my subscription renewed before Inauguration Day) they have a mini series, The Road to Pearl Harbor, from 1978, which is excellent. It's kind of a proto-Ken Burns series. Lots of photos and film from the period. Individual episodes are only 24 minutes long, interrupted by commercials, so it's easy to watch only one or a few.
I've seen film I don't recall ever seeing before. Unlike Ken Burns' documentaries, you do see the narrator, Eric Sevareid in this case, and he uses the first person pronoun when he discusses the Spanish Civil War and London during The Blitz.
I'd say the biggest omission I noticed, and it's a rather gaping one in these more enlightened days, is the world's treatment of the Jews trying to flee Germany. But other than that, I thought it touched on many topics overlooked by more recent efforts.
I have have yet to watch the final episode, so perhaps some of that omission will be addressed, but I suspect it'll be focused on the Pacific, given the title.
Much of the early part of the series covers events which will feel very resonant with the present.
✍️ Reply by emailMay
Current Wx: Temp: 71.33°F Pressure: 1021hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 3.44mphWords: 504
Achilles was feeling pretty good this morning, so I tried to go for a walk. I was able to pick up the pace a bit, though it did start to complain a little past a mile. It's barking at me now.
So, slow progress I guess. Better than no progress!
I went out fairly early, it's a beautiful morning, hoping to maybe see a bird or two. I had the 12-200mm super-zoom on the OM-3. Pretty much shut out on wading birds. Plenty of mockingbirds, but I've seen enough of them. The only thing that was semi-worth pointing the camera at was this swallow-tailed kite grooming itself.
It was on the other side of the street from me, so it wasn't backlit for once. But it was pretty far away, so I crossed the street to get as close as I could. Its back was to me, which didn't help. I spent several minutes waiting for it to lift its head up and got a few frames.
This is a bit of a crop, tweaked in Photos. Unremarkable except for the fact that it was the only thing I saw. I wouldn't say the 12-200 is a birding lens, but it was the longest one I had that was easy to carry on a long(ish) walk. Ideally, I'd have had the 75-300, but that's up at Winterfell.
I'm looking forward to getting this tendon healthy, and some new scenery.
Photo shoot went smoothly yesterday. Listing should go live tomorrow. I've made arrangements to fly back to Florida on May 31st. The uncertainty in that plan is in getting to the airport. I've requested a ride to pick me up at 0400. There are two potential problems, one of which is, who wants to get up that early? The second is all the mapping apps don't have our address properly mapped. It'll take you to the house next door.
Hopefully, there'll be some communication the day before and I can brief the driver on the discrepancy. In my experience, that only works about 50% of the time. We tell drivers coming to our place here to not listen to their map app, because it'll take them to the back gate, where they can't get in. Only about half of them ever listen, and then they even tell us that they went to the back gate, even after we told them not to listen to gps.
The good news is the flight wasn't terribly expensive. Not cheap, but it didn't feel like a ripoff. I bought insurance too, because it's late spring and who knows what the weather is going to be? I'll be flying through Detroit, which I suspect may work in my favor. And I'll be getting into Detroit early in the morning.
Mitzi and I will drive the RAV4 back up to New York later in June, where we'll await a contract and closing, if it doesn't happen sooner than that.
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by email