Beijing passes law that makes protesting in HK punishable with lifetime in jail. This is on the cherry on top of the CCP... you know... murdering people.
The opposing party has disbanded, everyone has deleted twitter/facebook accounts and there is a pro-CCP politician offering reward money to people who turn in HKers who light out for new countries.
As a nod to our host at Ole Miss, I am trying to recreate pecan whiskey - albeit a drier version than their boozy pancake syrup version. I bought a pound of pecan and a whole vanilla bean. Now I gotta find a store that sells Everclear.
As a follow up to the flag issue, the MS state legislature agreed to abandon the old flag. The new flag is not yet set. However, as part of a compromise to get the good-old boy on board with the bill, they added the compromise that the new flag must include "In God We Trust" on the flag. Reddit did it's thing:
The consolidation and mix of P5/G5 schools isn't a bad idea, but 1 non-confidence match locked in for four years? Disastrous. Non-con regulation is probably needed in some regard but I'd much rather have cycled seasons that be locked into playing BYU for years. It'd be a disaster from a rankings perspective.
Working my way through my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry by Fredrik Backman. Not liking it as much as A Man Called Ove by the same author but it's getting better as I get more into it.
To Mars with Love by Dr. Pat Straat, about her experience as a scientist on the Mars Viking Biology Team, and how it is possible they detected life in 1976. Also about the fun times she had as a young woman.
Michele Obama's Becoming
Just started The Day the Sun Died by Yan Lianke. Seems like it's going to be strange.
On another note, after "finishing" one thousand piece puzzles, 3 o 4 of which were missing one or two pieces, I'm stuck on yet another one.
I am currently reading "Heritage" and "South" by chef Sean Brock. Chef Brock's approach to Southern cooking has some overlap to my main theories of food (ie, there are waaay more delicious things to eat than the standard things in your grocery store.). As a result, I just bought stuff like rabbits, weird types of beans, benne, Carolina Gold rice, and spices that I don't normally eat. My latest project is experimenting with different corn meals - different corn varieties, different milling techniques, soaking, pre-roasting. I've been tickled pink at how wonderfully fun corn meal is to cook with.
Nah, I buy from the local store & mail order. My cornbread I did last night was really intriguing. It used Bob's Red Mill coarse grind. The coarser the grind, them more intense the corn taste (allegedly). I heated up a cast iron skillet on a 15,000 BTU stove first and put in a sheen of ghee. It made the freaking best cornmeal crust I have ever had. But the coarse grind is a little gritty for the middle part of the bread. So I'm trying again today, but soaking the cornmeal in buttermilk first.
i have been reading more than average. i try to reclaim the time that i would otherwise be commuting on the train to NYC (my regular reading time).
wake up about 630a-700a. make coffee and read until 800a w/o checking phone or internet first.
currently reading The Old Drift which is a fictional account of the history of Zambia written by a Cal prof that i met a while back at a public lecture, back when those things were still happening.
i have also started all these trilogies .. need to decide when to double back and read parts 2/3.
- enders game
- golden compass
- fifth season
- my brilliant friend (unlikely to read the rest unless someone convinces me)
also there are three or four books about what happens to the rest of his compatriots from the first book. They are adequate, but lean too heavily on the clearly genius children not learning from mistakes when one goes nuts.
They're pretty decent for the most part. Bean's a pretty interesting character despite his annoying "am I human with a soul" introspection. Definitely more thriller-ish than sci-fi.
Interesting about My Brilliant Friend. I have always heard good things about Elena Ferrante, and I love Italy, but I have never really been tempted by these books.
an amazing book about Italy is Christ Stopped At Eboli.
a memoir by Carlo Levi, published in 1945, giving an account of his exile from 1935-1936 to Grassano and Aliano, remote towns in southern Italy, in the region of Lucania which is known today as Basilicata. In the book he gives Aliano the invented name 'Gagliano' (based on the local pronunciation of Aliano).
"The title of the book comes from an expression by the people of 'Gagliano' who say of themselves, 'Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli' which means, in effect, that they feel they have been bypassed by Christianity, by morality, by history itself—that they have somehow been excluded from the full human experience."
I thought I might read some more books this year. I’m about to give up since Scootie is already more than 30 books ahead of me (I’m not counting idle re-reads over lunch)
Embarking on a three-week backpacking trip and bringing Slaughterhouse 5 and one Kingsolver book. Looking forward to some hard-to-come-by reading time on this trip.
John Muir Trail with my 13 YO daughter, two of her friends, and 2 other parents. My coworkers have been giving me a lot of grief about being gone for that long.
Oh yes, three of them: Red's Meadow, Florence Lake, and Onion Valley. The grief is how long I am gone so jealous, I guess. Most of them would probably spend the three weeks on the couch...
My friend recommended The Color of Law, but I'm horrendous at non-fiction. So, I procrastinated on starting it until the last day of the loan period from the library (ebook) and got to chapter 8 before it expired. Now I have to wait until the library checks it out to me again.
The premise of the book is that "white flight" is typically considered de facto ("hey, it just happened!"), but it was in fact de jure (extensive and systematic legislation either extended segregation or enacted segregation in places that weren't previously segregated). The author discusses how it's unconstitutional (even pre-Reconstruction Amendments), so it's not just that "white people owe Black people to rectify," it's that all Americans owe ourselves to uphold the Constitution.
I hadn't gotten to the 60s and 70s before the book expired. What I did read about was that banks didn't want to issue mortgages that weren't insured by the government. And, the government refused to insure any loans to Black people. If someone wanted to build a development, he could only get approval and financing if his plan was whites-only or Blacks-only, not integrated. (And, of course, the same financing laws applied to the Black neighborhoods.)
On top of that, you had the real estate agents who would hire a Black woman to push a stroller down the street of a white neighborhood, or hire a Black man to accompany the agent in knocking on the doors of white neighborhoods to ask if any houses were for sale. Combined with other scare tactics, they were able to convince white people to sell their houses for less (in a panic), and then hike the prices to sell to Black people once the white people started moving out.
Separately, I learned that Ford used to be in Richmond. They needed too many people NOT to Black workers, but even then, it was difficult for Black people to find housing. Eventually, Black people were able to live in one small corner of Richmond, and then Ford moved everything to Milpitas. Milpitas was unincorporated until the white people there saw that Black workers would move to be closer to their jobs. Then, Milpitas quickly incorporated and set up a city council to enact laws that would prevent Black people from moving in.
I am reading 'An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago: by Alex Kotlowitz, whose 'There Are No Children Here' about life in the Cabrini-Green projects was exceptional.
I keep picking up and putting down The Goldfinch. I think the 800+ page length is intimidating me.
I’ve been doing a lot of doomscrolling and I have to interact with the family occasionally... plus I got a stack of worthy but not necessarily fun books to read. Currently stalled in Jo Nesbo’s re-imagining of MacBeth and a book about WW2 through the prism of food and food supplies (very interesting)
The main downside to the length of The Goldfinch was that I wanted to look up what the painting looked like, but I was worried that if I looked it up, I would get spoilers for the book. Normally not an issue, because I don't mind waiting a day to look things up, but obviously it took longer with The Goldfinch.
I watched a conversation between The Fug Girls and Jasmine Guillory (hosted by The Ripped Bodice), and they were discussing how their first drafts are usually much longer than the actual book. Jessica Morgan said that one of their first drafts was 800 pages. Their editor said, "This is pretty long." Jessica said, "Hey! The Goldfinch is 800 pages!" Their editor pointed out, "Uh...this isn't exactly The Goldfinch..."
Travels with Charley is so good. This book and a collection of essays called Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs by Stegner really opened my eyes to the homogenization of culture in the US and instilled a loathing within me of franchise establishments and branding.
That's too bad that Booker lost. But it'll be interesting to see how McGrath does against McConnell. I'm curious if everyone voted in Ky what the outcome would be.
Barcelona is playing Real Madrid today at 1600 EDT - i had hoped to have that on while doing paperwork but it’s increasingly likely that I’ll be in a conference call instead 🤷🏼♂️
Cal won this instagram challenge of best squad in NFL (Rule: 4 active plus 1 retired).
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCE7CPNl7wO/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet
My favorite political candidate is footloose, fancy free and out of the pokey. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Leland-Yee-convicted-in-2015-corruption-scandal-15378045.php
Will you vote for him in November? :D
Food art in Japan https://www.facebook.com/japanandextra/posts/1196596634008941?__xts__[0]=68.ARCxUkNVrCukCXJiV_ehY8jDLbyH1EQFC8FXerPGyU6lEjAAq270wJpM0qVxFELPezPLJLWTnMgs4Kap4pWxaTv0FOuV3Oa5vI0hU_C_bd72V5fcSPcpByUwKp_zID56OHBOYoBD7OIJZhFh5kz9ggoogQzAu2Ej9poQTHwGYXegXNwVOOO3RMLTZ3PSO9FA-M44g3aOeA5puG3FbEBtOc_m9-rznckR8zlJ_S3TFbNVmyfK8ToBJ-fhBYQNRNysnf5uC7sl0KWerwU7ep32vc_iEkvhDjSSH2F0aJv5dZMXpTuoxowMdyyALBQEvEqFcXsYsOZbxBLxwzA4jWVQOsNYcc54QVheg3GRBTSSgDfhmbTYHA&__tn__=H-R
One Country, Two Systems falls apart.
Beijing passes law that makes protesting in HK punishable with lifetime in jail. This is on the cherry on top of the CCP... you know... murdering people.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-hongkong-security-legislation/hong-kong-security-law-unveils-strict-penalties-broad-beijing-powers-idUSKBN2412NR
The opposing party has disbanded, everyone has deleted twitter/facebook accounts and there is a pro-CCP politician offering reward money to people who turn in HKers who light out for new countries.
Technically speaking, the halfway point for 2020 is at the end of July 1.
There are 366 days in 2020. One half of 366 is 183. The 183rd day of 2020 is July 1
January = 31 days
February = 29 days
March = 31 days
April = 30 days
May = 31 days
June = 30 days
January 1 through June 30 = 182 days.
Therefore, July 1 is the 183rd day and the end of July 1 marks the end of the first half of 2020.
A Reddit post about the death of Carl Reiner led me to this tweet: https://twitter.com/georgeshapiro/status/1277090348003557376?s=20
Mississippi
As a nod to our host at Ole Miss, I am trying to recreate pecan whiskey - albeit a drier version than their boozy pancake syrup version. I bought a pound of pecan and a whole vanilla bean. Now I gotta find a store that sells Everclear.
As a follow up to the flag issue, the MS state legislature agreed to abandon the old flag. The new flag is not yet set. However, as part of a compromise to get the good-old boy on board with the bill, they added the compromise that the new flag must include "In God We Trust" on the flag. Reddit did it's thing:
https://i.redd.it/0yjud2z1nt751.png
Does this say something upside down? I feel like I'm missing something beyond it just looking like Saudi Arabia's flag
I think that's all there is to it.
Could it Happen?
https://www.si.com/college/cal/news/realignment-relegation
This is a proposal that has zero chance of adoption, created by someone who had time on his hands, and pressure to create click-bait.
The consolidation and mix of P5/G5 schools isn't a bad idea, but 1 non-confidence match locked in for four years? Disastrous. Non-con regulation is probably needed in some regard but I'd much rather have cycled seasons that be locked into playing BYU for years. It'd be a disaster from a rankings perspective.
unlikely, since it would only fly if there were not individual school/conference media and other revenue deals.
Books
Working my way through my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry by Fredrik Backman. Not liking it as much as A Man Called Ove by the same author but it's getting better as I get more into it.
I've now finished two of the 3 books of the Remembrances of Earth Trilogy. Starting Death's End yesterday.
I loved that series.
Recently read:
To Mars with Love by Dr. Pat Straat, about her experience as a scientist on the Mars Viking Biology Team, and how it is possible they detected life in 1976. Also about the fun times she had as a young woman.
Michele Obama's Becoming
Just started The Day the Sun Died by Yan Lianke. Seems like it's going to be strange.
On another note, after "finishing" one thousand piece puzzles, 3 o 4 of which were missing one or two pieces, I'm stuck on yet another one.
Reading "Gettysburg" by Stephen Sears - it's quite good.
I am currently reading "Heritage" and "South" by chef Sean Brock. Chef Brock's approach to Southern cooking has some overlap to my main theories of food (ie, there are waaay more delicious things to eat than the standard things in your grocery store.). As a result, I just bought stuff like rabbits, weird types of beans, benne, Carolina Gold rice, and spices that I don't normally eat. My latest project is experimenting with different corn meals - different corn varieties, different milling techniques, soaking, pre-roasting. I've been tickled pink at how wonderfully fun corn meal is to cook with.
I hope we get more corn updates--it's a cool project!
do you have all the tools to mill and roast? sounds cool
Nah, I buy from the local store & mail order. My cornbread I did last night was really intriguing. It used Bob's Red Mill coarse grind. The coarser the grind, them more intense the corn taste (allegedly). I heated up a cast iron skillet on a 15,000 BTU stove first and put in a sheen of ghee. It made the freaking best cornmeal crust I have ever had. But the coarse grind is a little gritty for the middle part of the bread. So I'm trying again today, but soaking the cornmeal in buttermilk first.
i have been reading more than average. i try to reclaim the time that i would otherwise be commuting on the train to NYC (my regular reading time).
wake up about 630a-700a. make coffee and read until 800a w/o checking phone or internet first.
currently reading The Old Drift which is a fictional account of the history of Zambia written by a Cal prof that i met a while back at a public lecture, back when those things were still happening.
i have also started all these trilogies .. need to decide when to double back and read parts 2/3.
- enders game
- golden compass
- fifth season
- my brilliant friend (unlikely to read the rest unless someone convinces me)
Ender's Game is actually part of a quartet/quintet/ever expanding series.
My thoughts on the books after it:
Speaker for the Dead - great book, should read
Xenocide - ok book with a really bad moral
Children of the Mind - pretty decent
Ender in Exile - haven't read it because it's clearly unnecessary
Ender's Game was enough for me.
me too
also there are three or four books about what happens to the rest of his compatriots from the first book. They are adequate, but lean too heavily on the clearly genius children not learning from mistakes when one goes nuts.
They're pretty decent for the most part. Bean's a pretty interesting character despite his annoying "am I human with a soul" introspection. Definitely more thriller-ish than sci-fi.
Thanks to webinars, I've attended way more public lectures during shelter-in-place than I did in the Before Times.
Interesting about My Brilliant Friend. I have always heard good things about Elena Ferrante, and I love Italy, but I have never really been tempted by these books.
an amazing book about Italy is Christ Stopped At Eboli.
a memoir by Carlo Levi, published in 1945, giving an account of his exile from 1935-1936 to Grassano and Aliano, remote towns in southern Italy, in the region of Lucania which is known today as Basilicata. In the book he gives Aliano the invented name 'Gagliano' (based on the local pronunciation of Aliano).
"The title of the book comes from an expression by the people of 'Gagliano' who say of themselves, 'Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli' which means, in effect, that they feel they have been bypassed by Christianity, by morality, by history itself—that they have somehow been excluded from the full human experience."
I thought I might read some more books this year. I’m about to give up since Scootie is already more than 30 books ahead of me (I’m not counting idle re-reads over lunch)
Embarking on a three-week backpacking trip and bringing Slaughterhouse 5 and one Kingsolver book. Looking forward to some hard-to-come-by reading time on this trip.
where is this backpacking trip? 3 wks sounds amazing ...
John Muir Trail with my 13 YO daughter, two of her friends, and 2 other parents. My coworkers have been giving me a lot of grief about being gone for that long.
sounds amazing. are you getting a food drop?
what is the grief for? lack of working? or just jealous ..
Oh yes, three of them: Red's Meadow, Florence Lake, and Onion Valley. The grief is how long I am gone so jealous, I guess. Most of them would probably spend the three weeks on the couch...
i am doing 3 days w/ the younger one and a younger cousin. we are going to Seneca Rocks/Spruce Knob in WV near the end of Jul.
My friend recommended The Color of Law, but I'm horrendous at non-fiction. So, I procrastinated on starting it until the last day of the loan period from the library (ebook) and got to chapter 8 before it expired. Now I have to wait until the library checks it out to me again.
The premise of the book is that "white flight" is typically considered de facto ("hey, it just happened!"), but it was in fact de jure (extensive and systematic legislation either extended segregation or enacted segregation in places that weren't previously segregated). The author discusses how it's unconstitutional (even pre-Reconstruction Amendments), so it's not just that "white people owe Black people to rectify," it's that all Americans owe ourselves to uphold the Constitution.
When your eBook loan is about to expire, just set your Kindle to airplane mode until you're done.
Thanks
But it did just happen as well. There weren't any laws that forced white people to move out of inner cities in the 60's & 70's.
I hadn't gotten to the 60s and 70s before the book expired. What I did read about was that banks didn't want to issue mortgages that weren't insured by the government. And, the government refused to insure any loans to Black people. If someone wanted to build a development, he could only get approval and financing if his plan was whites-only or Blacks-only, not integrated. (And, of course, the same financing laws applied to the Black neighborhoods.)
On top of that, you had the real estate agents who would hire a Black woman to push a stroller down the street of a white neighborhood, or hire a Black man to accompany the agent in knocking on the doors of white neighborhoods to ask if any houses were for sale. Combined with other scare tactics, they were able to convince white people to sell their houses for less (in a panic), and then hike the prices to sell to Black people once the white people started moving out.
Separately, I learned that Ford used to be in Richmond. They needed too many people NOT to Black workers, but even then, it was difficult for Black people to find housing. Eventually, Black people were able to live in one small corner of Richmond, and then Ford moved everything to Milpitas. Milpitas was unincorporated until the white people there saw that Black workers would move to be closer to their jobs. Then, Milpitas quickly incorporated and set up a city council to enact laws that would prevent Black people from moving in.
I think white-only deed covenants lasted into the 60s. Such a huge part of the equation.
That's the structural racism part; White Flight doesn't start until the structural racism part breaks down.
But I've only just started #33?!?
I am reading 'An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago: by Alex Kotlowitz, whose 'There Are No Children Here' about life in the Cabrini-Green projects was exceptional.
I keep picking up and putting down The Goldfinch. I think the 800+ page length is intimidating me.
I’ve been doing a lot of doomscrolling and I have to interact with the family occasionally... plus I got a stack of worthy but not necessarily fun books to read. Currently stalled in Jo Nesbo’s re-imagining of MacBeth and a book about WW2 through the prism of food and food supplies (very interesting)
The main downside to the length of The Goldfinch was that I wanted to look up what the painting looked like, but I was worried that if I looked it up, I would get spoilers for the book. Normally not an issue, because I don't mind waiting a day to look things up, but obviously it took longer with The Goldfinch.
I watched a conversation between The Fug Girls and Jasmine Guillory (hosted by The Ripped Bodice), and they were discussing how their first drafts are usually much longer than the actual book. Jessica Morgan said that one of their first drafts was 800 pages. Their editor said, "This is pretty long." Jessica said, "Hey! The Goldfinch is 800 pages!" Their editor pointed out, "Uh...this isn't exactly The Goldfinch..."
Currently working on a few, some as preps for the 2020 Coast to COVID Road Trip...
Miles - Miles Davis Autobiography
Travels with Charley - John Steinbeck
Pivotal Battles of the Civil War - Edward Bearss
The Immortal Irishman - Timothy Egan
I just picked up 8 different audio books for the trip...120 hours worth of listening...
Travels with Charley is so good. This book and a collection of essays called Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs by Stegner really opened my eyes to the homogenization of culture in the US and instilled a loathing within me of franchise establishments and branding.
Our Crumbling Democracy
And now the narrative of American Exceptionalism has been officially flipped:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/29/europe/eu-travel-ban-us-coronavirus/index.html
Guess you can't blame them, as Americans currently kinda suck...
We’re exceptionally diseased
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K1YSziWyww
McGrath officially defeats Booker.
https://www.axios.com/kentucky-senate-primary-amy-mcgrath-385fc095-48d3-4dd0-92c0-acbd3890fba0.html
The idealist in me supports a person like Booker, the realist in me knows that McGrath is the only choice to give McConnell a run for his money.
That's too bad that Booker lost. But it'll be interesting to see how McGrath does against McConnell. I'm curious if everyone voted in Ky what the outcome would be.
Today in COVID-19
[The-No-then-WellHangOn-meme.jpg]
https://i.redd.it/0qpx06778o751.jpg
Pro
Barcelona is playing Real Madrid today at 1600 EDT - i had hoped to have that on while doing paperwork but it’s increasingly likely that I’ll be in a conference call instead 🤷🏼♂️
No call but I misread the listing - it’s Athletico Madrid. Oh well.
Imposters Madrid!
Cal
Go Bears!
Signs are pointing toward getting a new FB commit this Saturday. If it is who I think it is, he's good. Really, really good. 4-star WR.
Can you post a link to the signs you are interpreting?
https://247sports.com/PlayerInstitution/JMichael-Sturdivant-at-Marcus-233573/CurrentExpertPredictions/
reading the tea leaves...
Re: the question in the post: because spicy pork is delicious, obviously
I have some left over pork fried rice in the freezer. Will set it aside for this evening's repast.