An Eberhard Faber album
Here’s a short video tour of an Eberhard Faber sales-rep’s album (circa 1915). Must be seen to be believed.
Orange Crate Art
Vaccination and persuasion
From The New York Times : Onesimus, Cotton Mather, Benjamin and Deborah Franklin, vaccination, and persuasion.
New directions in compensation
“In the COVID-19–induced chaos of spring 2020, the University of Missouri system quietly added a section to its rules and regulations that allows for individual tenured faculty salaries to be cut by up to 25 percent.”
Things in books
In The Paris Review, Jane Stern writes about strange things she has found in books.
Things in tins
The Guardian reports on the British public’s growing appreciation of tinned fish.
“The Other Mr. President”
From This American Life, a compilation of old and new stories about Vladimir Putin.
Charge!
Q Okay. Just so I understand, Dr. Eastman, you're invoking your Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to question whether this opinion and commentary piece with the byline John C. Eastman, you’re invoking the Fifth Amendment right to not answer that question? A On advice of counsel, I’m invoking the Fifth.
Screenshots and fair use
“How does fair use work for screenshots?” (PennState University Libraries).
A sit-com trio
Bill Daily, Isabel Sanford, and Davis Roberts in a Mary Tyler Moore Show episode.
Recently updated
Mary Richards and technology.
Clicks
Tristan Snell: “Remember, the media industrial complex has a strong interest in raining on every Joe Biden parade — and giving Trump oxygen — so they can try to recapture the ratings and clicks they had when Trump was president.”
No more weeks
President Joe Biden, a few minutes ago in his State of the Union address: “We’re done talking about infrastructure weeks.”
Blogger images, side by side
My secret formula for getting images to display side by side.
Separated at birth
Alexis Smith and Elisabeth Moss.
Recently updated
New (new to me) info about Saul Chandler, who may or may not have been a violin prodigy.
Seven movies, five seasons
Movies, and five seasons of The Mary Tyler Moore show.
One Wordle
I find it tiresome when people post their Wordle result day after day after day. That’s why I’m posting mine just once.
Outtakes (4)
People in streets, in outtakes from the WPA’s New York City tax photographs, c. 1939–1941. With identification of a mystery storefront.
Zuckerberg and Beckett
I regret that the Zuckerberg video doesn’t depict bodies partly buried in the sand itself. No matter — they’re already trapped.
Mary Miller stands alone
The Chicago Tribune reports that Mary Miller (our household’s representative in Congress) is the only member of the Illinois congressional delegation not to denounce Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“‘Magnificent ’ (what Aldrin called the moon).”
Another Lumbly
PBS is re-airing a documentary tonight, Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool. The narrator is the actor Carl Lumbly. “Lum-blee” was my toddler pronunciation of Columbia, Miles’s record label.
At a kitchen table
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Supreme Court nominee, in her remarks this afternoon: “My father made the fateful decision to transition from his job as a public high-school history teacher and go to law school. Some of my earliest memories are of him sitting at the kitchen table reading his law books. I watched him study, and he became my first professional role model.”
A wine–whine merger
The shift from /hwēt/ to /wēt/ is an instance of what’s called the wine-whine merger, aka glide cluster reduction.
No cookies
“Are those fresh candy-cane cookies I smell?”
“A great piece of land”
Not a culture, not a history, just “a great piece of land,” with a lot of people on it, and a good price — just “two dollars” in sanctions. It’s the same mentality that let the defeated former president see Greenland as something to buy (or trade Puerto Rico for), and the same mentality that lets him see women as parts to be grabbed at will.
The History Channel
Admiral James G. Stavridis (ret.), on MSNBC a few minutes ago: “Sometimes you’re watching the History Channel in real time. This is one of those times.”
Recently updated
Who owns Henry Darger? There’s a delay.
A cartoon from Ukraine
“This is not a ‘meme’, but our and your reality right now.”
DuckDuckGo
The New York Times reports on conspiracy theorists turning to a different search engine.