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shadowkatAfter getting into a heated and rather futile argument with a couple of dingbat male cycling enthusiasts - I took a well-deserved walk around Greenwood Cemetery.
[Edited to Clarify: The argument was on Facebook not in the Cemetery. It's winter - so not really around. And there's gatekeepers at the Cemetery and security at all the entrances. They check everyone who enters - to ensure they are following the rules and stop those who don't. I've seen them stop cyclists and make them leave their bikes at the gate. And they ask drivers of motor vehicles why they are coming in, and inform them of the rules. Also check to see if people are wearing masks.]
[ Greenwood Cemetery in its over 168 years of operation has never permitted bicycles. (Oh people have snuck them in on occasion, and done dumb things, reinforcing the Cemetery's reasons for prohibiting it. The idiotic cyclists thought it was ridiculous Greenwood prohibited this. I don't know why I felt the need to debate the topic with them - none of us have any control over it. Also convincing folks of stuff on social media is kind of impossible at the moment. All that happens is everyone gets angry at each other. I tend to jump off just before it turns into a pissing match - or when my hands start shaking, and my blood pressure rises. Greenwood is a private cemetery and a historic landmark. It doesn't have to let people walk through it. I've talked to the gate keepers about it. These idiots can whine all they want, sign petitions, what have you - it's not going to change the Cemetery's perspective. Prior to the pandemic, the Cemetery didn't open any gates but the main entrance on weekdays. I'll keep my walker's paradise blissfully free from evil cyclists. No worries.]
There's another winter storm coming - should arrive around 6 AM tomorrow, and last until 9 PM tomorrow night, hit South Eastern New York and Northeastern NJ along with some of the Atlantic States. It's not supposed to go any further than that. And will most likely go out to sea.
In other news, mother informed me that my brother is having a tad more difficulty than expected disentangling himself from various items that contain his email address' domain name.
Me: Not as easy as he thought, eh?
Mother: Well, apparently he was on the phone with AT&T forever to get them to change it. And there's all these security protocols. Even after four hours, he got nowhere.
Me: Yeah, it can be problematic.
Mother: His wife told her daughter - "Our music streaming service is screwed up due to your father's greed."
I laughed. I know I shouldn't find it funny, but I do. Yes, changing ones email is a lot harder than it looks. And his domain name is connected to his email and his daughters and their finances, and his work, and his streaming.
Oh, my poor little brother.
I've decided it is physically impossible to take a bad picture of Greenwood Cemetery. Also the light and sky today were amazing - due to the on-coming weather system. It was also in the upper 40s.
There were people and cars, but not that many. I was able to walk for about fifteen minutes or twenty minutes without them nearby. I realized as I was walking and listening to the birds, and occasional conversations, that I'd walked the breadth of the pandemic through the Cemetery. I've seen the seasons change and shift during in it. And so have you, in a way, since I've posted pictures. I have seen every season in that cemetery unfold with all its permutations...
I'm thinking of donating more money to Greenwood and thanking them for prohibiting cyclists. I've grown to despise cyclists during this pandemic.
Decided to stop whinging and call my niece. Niece is lovely for putting up with her crazy old Auntie. We talked or chatted for a bit, then her Dad called her - and we hung up. It helps push the loneliness at bay - not that I'm truly THAT lonely. I tend to like to be in my own space for the most part. But it helps at times to hear another voice.
Apparently she, and her Mom are furious with my poor brother - for selling their email domain name. Now they all have to change everything.
Other news?
* I listened to an article in the NY Times Magazinethis morning about how the classics field needed to be changed and possibly disbanded - because of how it had increasingly presented a racist and white supremacist ideologue.
At first, I disagreed, but as I listened, I changed my mind realizing a few things along the way: 1) I've never been fond of the classics. 2) How information is presented, matters. Often it's the teacher not the subject matter - and if a teacher doesn't question the subject matter and provide a counter-argument? Also, how one portrays the classics could be the problem? I'm not sure they justify or endorse a slave-based society nor do they push racism, if anything the opposite - if you look deeply enough and critique it. Shakespeare kind of did in his plays, as did others. It's like any work of art - it doesn't exist in a vacuum - how we choose to critique and relate to it is important too.
* This article in Time Magazine is a rather interesting take on why we didn't end up with a coup or violence post the November election. Everyone, including Trump, was expecting it to happen. But nothing did. All that happened was celebrations and expressions of relief - across the land and around the world (with a few exceptions.) Also, I know a good portion of my readers were involved in this campaign, I know I was - I sent money and support to it. And I know there were people from church, family and friends who wrote postcards, did phone-banking, everything possible to ensure the election went off without a hitch and it was the cleanest and safest one on record as a result. We, together, protected our democracy.
There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.
The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.
Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. “The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.
And it was bi-partisan in its effort. And went across all lines.
* They Stormed The Capital - Their Apps Tracked Them
Hee Hee.
A source has provided another data set, this time following the smartphones of thousands of Trump supporters, rioters and passers-by in Washington, D.C., on January 6, as Donald Trump’s political rally turned into a violent insurrection. At least five people died because of the riot at the Capitol. Key to bringing the mob to justice has been the event’s digital detritus: location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing.
It's scary. But also...funny. You can turn it off by the way. But people are dumb.
* A Martian Marathon with China, United Arab Emigrates, and the US this month
Be curious to see what happens once they all get there. [It's kind of disturbing to realize that science fiction authors are better at predicting the future than expected.]
A small fleet of spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates, China, and the United States will reach Mars this month after launching from Earth last year. The march to the Red Planet marks a marathon of firsts: it’s the UAE’s first foray into deep space, China’s first independent attempt to land on Mars, and NASA’s first shot at deploying a Martian helicopter.
The rare convoy of Mars-bound spacecraft launched off Earth in a slim, roughly two-month window last summer when Earth and Mars lined up just right in their orbits around the Sun. This planetary alignment only happens once every two years, and three countries took advantage of it in 2020, just as outer space reemerged as a playground for scientific discovery and displays of national power.
“These governments do these missions for the sake of exploration,” Bill Nye, CEO of the Planetary Society (and famously, The Science Guy), told The Verge. “As we like to say, there is no business case for exploring the Martian regolith.”
“However, it leads to this extraordinary workforce development in these countries, and this national pride and sense of community that’s priceless,” he said.
First in line to reach Mars this month is the Emirati Hope orbiter. After launching seven months ago on a Japanese H-IIA rocket, the car-sized Hope probe will arrive in Mars’ orbit on February 9th. It will spend nearly two years surveying the planet’s atmosphere to study daily changes in Martian weather. It puts the UAE on track to be the first Arab nation to deploy an interplanetary probe and join a small group of spacefaring countries that have done the same.
“For the science community, it’s where things start,” Sarah al-Amiri, the deputy project manager for the Emirates Mars Mission, said of Hope’s injection into Mars orbit in an interview. The week Hope reaches Mars orbit, UAE researchers will begin to analyze their first trove of interplanetary data, al-Amiri said.
Crazy people doing outdoor dining in the middle of winter in little shacks on the sidewalk.
That was a new restaurant doing it - or the Thai to Farm Kitchen, the other one, Angelique's, has appeared to have given up for the time being.
Ah well...enough rambling for tonight. Last night I feel down the youtube rabbit hole - watching an Oscar roundtable with George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Michael Fassbender, Charliz Theron, Christopher Plummer and Viola Davis.
Did I already post this picture? I forget. Oh well, it will be gone in a month anyhow. [I did, I'm changing it.]
[Edited to Clarify: The argument was on Facebook not in the Cemetery. It's winter - so not really around. And there's gatekeepers at the Cemetery and security at all the entrances. They check everyone who enters - to ensure they are following the rules and stop those who don't. I've seen them stop cyclists and make them leave their bikes at the gate. And they ask drivers of motor vehicles why they are coming in, and inform them of the rules. Also check to see if people are wearing masks.]
[ Greenwood Cemetery in its over 168 years of operation has never permitted bicycles. (Oh people have snuck them in on occasion, and done dumb things, reinforcing the Cemetery's reasons for prohibiting it. The idiotic cyclists thought it was ridiculous Greenwood prohibited this. I don't know why I felt the need to debate the topic with them - none of us have any control over it. Also convincing folks of stuff on social media is kind of impossible at the moment. All that happens is everyone gets angry at each other. I tend to jump off just before it turns into a pissing match - or when my hands start shaking, and my blood pressure rises. Greenwood is a private cemetery and a historic landmark. It doesn't have to let people walk through it. I've talked to the gate keepers about it. These idiots can whine all they want, sign petitions, what have you - it's not going to change the Cemetery's perspective. Prior to the pandemic, the Cemetery didn't open any gates but the main entrance on weekdays. I'll keep my walker's paradise blissfully free from evil cyclists. No worries.]
There's another winter storm coming - should arrive around 6 AM tomorrow, and last until 9 PM tomorrow night, hit South Eastern New York and Northeastern NJ along with some of the Atlantic States. It's not supposed to go any further than that. And will most likely go out to sea.
In other news, mother informed me that my brother is having a tad more difficulty than expected disentangling himself from various items that contain his email address' domain name.
Me: Not as easy as he thought, eh?
Mother: Well, apparently he was on the phone with AT&T forever to get them to change it. And there's all these security protocols. Even after four hours, he got nowhere.
Me: Yeah, it can be problematic.
Mother: His wife told her daughter - "Our music streaming service is screwed up due to your father's greed."
I laughed. I know I shouldn't find it funny, but I do. Yes, changing ones email is a lot harder than it looks. And his domain name is connected to his email and his daughters and their finances, and his work, and his streaming.
Oh, my poor little brother.
I've decided it is physically impossible to take a bad picture of Greenwood Cemetery. Also the light and sky today were amazing - due to the on-coming weather system. It was also in the upper 40s.
There were people and cars, but not that many. I was able to walk for about fifteen minutes or twenty minutes without them nearby. I realized as I was walking and listening to the birds, and occasional conversations, that I'd walked the breadth of the pandemic through the Cemetery. I've seen the seasons change and shift during in it. And so have you, in a way, since I've posted pictures. I have seen every season in that cemetery unfold with all its permutations...
I'm thinking of donating more money to Greenwood and thanking them for prohibiting cyclists. I've grown to despise cyclists during this pandemic.
Decided to stop whinging and call my niece. Niece is lovely for putting up with her crazy old Auntie. We talked or chatted for a bit, then her Dad called her - and we hung up. It helps push the loneliness at bay - not that I'm truly THAT lonely. I tend to like to be in my own space for the most part. But it helps at times to hear another voice.
Apparently she, and her Mom are furious with my poor brother - for selling their email domain name. Now they all have to change everything.
Other news?
* I listened to an article in the NY Times Magazinethis morning about how the classics field needed to be changed and possibly disbanded - because of how it had increasingly presented a racist and white supremacist ideologue.
At first, I disagreed, but as I listened, I changed my mind realizing a few things along the way: 1) I've never been fond of the classics. 2) How information is presented, matters. Often it's the teacher not the subject matter - and if a teacher doesn't question the subject matter and provide a counter-argument? Also, how one portrays the classics could be the problem? I'm not sure they justify or endorse a slave-based society nor do they push racism, if anything the opposite - if you look deeply enough and critique it. Shakespeare kind of did in his plays, as did others. It's like any work of art - it doesn't exist in a vacuum - how we choose to critique and relate to it is important too.
* This article in Time Magazine is a rather interesting take on why we didn't end up with a coup or violence post the November election. Everyone, including Trump, was expecting it to happen. But nothing did. All that happened was celebrations and expressions of relief - across the land and around the world (with a few exceptions.) Also, I know a good portion of my readers were involved in this campaign, I know I was - I sent money and support to it. And I know there were people from church, family and friends who wrote postcards, did phone-banking, everything possible to ensure the election went off without a hitch and it was the cleanest and safest one on record as a result. We, together, protected our democracy.
There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.
The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.
Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. “The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.
And it was bi-partisan in its effort. And went across all lines.
* They Stormed The Capital - Their Apps Tracked Them
Hee Hee.
A source has provided another data set, this time following the smartphones of thousands of Trump supporters, rioters and passers-by in Washington, D.C., on January 6, as Donald Trump’s political rally turned into a violent insurrection. At least five people died because of the riot at the Capitol. Key to bringing the mob to justice has been the event’s digital detritus: location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing.
It's scary. But also...funny. You can turn it off by the way. But people are dumb.
* A Martian Marathon with China, United Arab Emigrates, and the US this month
Be curious to see what happens once they all get there. [It's kind of disturbing to realize that science fiction authors are better at predicting the future than expected.]
A small fleet of spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates, China, and the United States will reach Mars this month after launching from Earth last year. The march to the Red Planet marks a marathon of firsts: it’s the UAE’s first foray into deep space, China’s first independent attempt to land on Mars, and NASA’s first shot at deploying a Martian helicopter.
The rare convoy of Mars-bound spacecraft launched off Earth in a slim, roughly two-month window last summer when Earth and Mars lined up just right in their orbits around the Sun. This planetary alignment only happens once every two years, and three countries took advantage of it in 2020, just as outer space reemerged as a playground for scientific discovery and displays of national power.
“These governments do these missions for the sake of exploration,” Bill Nye, CEO of the Planetary Society (and famously, The Science Guy), told The Verge. “As we like to say, there is no business case for exploring the Martian regolith.”
“However, it leads to this extraordinary workforce development in these countries, and this national pride and sense of community that’s priceless,” he said.
First in line to reach Mars this month is the Emirati Hope orbiter. After launching seven months ago on a Japanese H-IIA rocket, the car-sized Hope probe will arrive in Mars’ orbit on February 9th. It will spend nearly two years surveying the planet’s atmosphere to study daily changes in Martian weather. It puts the UAE on track to be the first Arab nation to deploy an interplanetary probe and join a small group of spacefaring countries that have done the same.
“For the science community, it’s where things start,” Sarah al-Amiri, the deputy project manager for the Emirates Mars Mission, said of Hope’s injection into Mars orbit in an interview. The week Hope reaches Mars orbit, UAE researchers will begin to analyze their first trove of interplanetary data, al-Amiri said.
Crazy people doing outdoor dining in the middle of winter in little shacks on the sidewalk.
That was a new restaurant doing it - or the Thai to Farm Kitchen, the other one, Angelique's, has appeared to have given up for the time being.
Ah well...enough rambling for tonight. Last night I feel down the youtube rabbit hole - watching an Oscar roundtable with George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Michael Fassbender, Charliz Theron, Christopher Plummer and Viola Davis.
Did I already post this picture? I forget. Oh well, it will be gone in a month anyhow. [I did, I'm changing it.]
no subject
Date: 2021-02-07 12:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-07 02:43 pm (UTC)One of the two guys on Facebook Neighborhood Page - declared that not being able to ride bikes through the cemetery was ridiculous - and well you can imagine the rest. They seem to think because they aren't polluting the environment with exhaust that they are righteous and just.
used to be one, but I now despise them too, having gone for a little bike ride and been nearly knocked off by a gang of competitive cyclists whizzing past me. They think they're entitled to go anywhere, and damage habitats. Also, in a CEMETERY?!?! Very disrespectful to anyone visiting the graves of their loved ones.
Exactly. It's one of the many reasons I've not tried to bike again.
They tried to use "What-about-ism" with me - but that just pisses me, it's a lazy debating tactic that bullies use to win arguments.
FB cycling enthusiasts: What about cars, cars are allowed? They are noisy and speedy. Bikes are better for the environment.
ME: Cars can only go on the roads, it's impossible for them to drive anywhere else. They are monitored, and you need them to bring in coffins and mourners.
Sigh. I gave up finally - because they'd learned how to debate on Twitter or social media via Trump.
No matter what I said - they made it about cars. What they don't get - is by using that tactic they proved to me that they weren't worth talking to, and they wouldn't behave themselves in the park.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-08 01:03 am (UTC)I can imagine, I'd be pretty put out too if I had to go through everything for which I've used my emails before to change them, particularly since those would be one authenticating factor for virtually any account.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-08 01:33 am (UTC)