TRUMP’S MUG SHOT IS HIS TRUE PRESIDENTIAL PORTRAIT
He might be angry in the mug shot; he might even be scared.
But he damn sure doesn’t look surprised. Nobody is.
– Vinson Cunningham writing for The New Yorker magazine
Wednesday/ at the museum ⚔️
The National Nordic Museum is a museum in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, dedicated to the Nordic history, art, culture, and the heritage of the area’s Nordic immigrants.
Here are a few pictures that I had taken inside of the museum, and of items on display.
Tuesday/ curiosities 🧟♂️
A thousand curiosities are to be found at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop (founded in 1899) on the Seattle Waterfront’s Pier 54.
Monday/ clear enough 🌝
The surface smoke from the wildfires in Canada and the Pacific Northwest that hung over the city on Sunday, had cleared enough by Monday morning so that the amigos could go out and play a little pickle ball.
Sunday/ at the zoo 🐻
These creatures are all from Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo.
The zoo opened 124 years ago, in 1899.
Top to bottom: Grizzly bears, Langur, Gray wolf, Canadian lynx, Kookaburra, Asian small-clawed otter, Western Low-land gorilla, Jaguar, Toco toucan, White-naped crane, Reticulated giraffe, Hippopotamus, African lion, River otter.
Saturday/ Seattle Center ✨
Here is a smattering of pictures that I took at Seattle Center: from the Space Needle, from inside the Chihuly Garden and Glass and from inside the Museum of Pop Culture.
Happy Friday ☀️
Happy Friday.
Cool marine air pushed in from the Pacific Ocean this morning, and made for a beautiful day (78 °F/ 26 °C).
Thursday/ shopping for electronics 📺
I ran out to Best Buy today to pick up one more Google Chromecast*, for the TV in my guest room.
*A device that plugs into the HDMI port of a TV and then creates an on-screen user interface with a range of TV services, for watching shows or movies (such as Netflix, Hulu, or YouTube TV), listening to music (like Spotify or YouTube Music), and more.
(A metaphor for me? A dinosaur that can still install a little bit of technology in his house 🤗 . )
It has gotten rave reviews and gold star ratings from camera experts, but has forever been sold out in stores, and online. (Forever= for more than three years).
I never did get to see one on the shelf in any of the camera stores in Tokyo.
Best Buy does not have any in stock either (of course not), but hey, at least one can hold it and fiddle with the buttons and settings.
Wednesday/ Stan the Man 👨
There is tennis in Cincinnati, Ohio this week: the Cincinnati Open (also going by its sponsor’s name, the Western & Southern Open).
The hardcourt season is in full swing, in the run-up to the year’s last Grand Slam tournament that starts on August 28— the US Open in New York City.
Action from last night: Stan ‘The Man’ Wawrinka (Switserland, 38 yrs old) rolls back time by ten years with this incredible pickup way, wa-ay out wide.
He outplayed Francis ‘Big Foe’ Tiafoe (USA, 25) in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4.
[Screenshot from TennisTV streaming service]
Tuesday/ shunning the sun🚪
It was 94 °F (34 °C) outside, and besides— I had my biannual checkup at the ophthalmologist and my eyes were very sensitive to light.
Monday/ he was racketeering in Georgia 🩻
“We hear they’re shredding thousands and thousands of ballots,” Trump said on the call.
“Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, they — people can say anything,” Raffensperger replied.
Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on November 3, 2020.
One of the states he lost was Georgia.
Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.
That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the State of Georgia, and in other states.
– Introduction of the indictment against Trump and 18 others brought in Fulton County, Georgia
And there it was, late Monday night— the fourth indictment, long expected, and a sweeping one, that documented all that Trump and his allies did in Georgia to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election results there.
Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis, has extensive experience with bringing racketeering cases, and 18 other conspirators were charged along with Trump.
Sunday/ sunny and warm ☀️
It was warm today, and it will remain warm until Thursday (highs up to 92 °F/ 33 °C).
Granted: residents of the South or places like Phoenix or Las Vegas are allowed to say ‘Yeah— that’s not warm’.
Phoenix had seen highs of 110 °F/ 43 °C for 18 days straight, this summer.
Saturday/ a meteor shower 🌠
Here is the news
Coming to you every hour upon the hour
Here is the news
The weather’s fine
But there may be a meteor shower
– From Electric Light Orchestra’s 1982 concept album “Time”, about a man from 1981 travelling into the far off future of 2095 and having to deal with the stresses and setbacks of the future.
In this song, a news program is playing all the hourly (and quite depressing) headlines, some of which do have basis in reality.
It is a great year to look for Perseid meteors entering Earth’s atmosphere (and burn up), and this weekend is the peak time to do that.
There is a crescent moon in the sky, meaning the sky will be dark.
The best time to catch them is just before dawn— around 3:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. local time (eek!).
One can expect to see a Perseid every minute or so, or roughly 40 to 50 an hour during the peak, though rates could be even higher under ideal viewing conditions.
[Photo by Steve Ringman, published in The Seattle Times, 2010]
Friday/ a funhouse mirror🪞
Happy Friday.
I took this ‘funhouse mirror’ picture 8 years ago (Aug 16, 2015) at the EXPERIMINTA Science Center in Frankfurt, Germany.
Thursday/ here, and gone 📸
There was a Rivian R1S electric SUV parked in front of my house today.
I went back into the kitchen to tend to dinner on the stove.
When I went back to take another look at it, it was gone.
Wednesday/ Hawaii is burning 🔥
This summer is no exception when it comes to apocalyptic scenes of fires and floods, worsened by the changes in the planet’s climate.
There is very bad news out of Hawaii, as well, now— of destructive firestorms that started yesterday and continued into today.
Thomas Fuller, reporting for the New York Times:
From the air, the town of Lahaina looks incinerated. Charred palm trees are reduced to slender matchsticks protruding into the smoky sky. Homes are ash. Streets are deserted.
The firestorm that tore through the western shores of Hawaii’s Maui island on Tuesday and continued on Wednesday has killed at least six people and forced the evacuation of more than 2,000, the authorities said. It was the deadliest wildfire in the state’s history, according to Clay Trauernicht, a tropical fire specialist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
[Photo by Matthew Thayer/The Maui News/AP]
Tuesday/ asters 😊
The pretty little asters in my front yard are starting to bloom.
Monday/ another mega-jackpot 💰
The estimated $1.55 billion Mega Millions jackpot for the Tuesday night drawing is one of the largest in U.S. history.
The odds to win the big prize is about 1 in 302.6 million.
Yes, you could buy 10 tickets and make it 1 in 30.26 million, but you would still be much more likely to be killed by an asteroid (1 in 1.6 million).
Update Tue 8/8: The largest jackpot in Mega Millions history, worth an estimated $1.58 billion, was secured in Florida on Tuesday night.
The winning ticketholder can choose between the massive $1.58 billion jackpot paid in annual payments or a one-time cash option worth an estimated $783.3 million.
The winning numbers were 13, 19, 20, 32, 33, and the gold Mega ball 14.
– From the New York Post.
Should one take the lump sum, or the annuity option? From CNBC: Andrew Stoltmann, a Chicago-based lawyer who has represented several lottery winners, says 95% choose the lump sum option, which he describes as a “big mistake.” There are three “big drains” on lottery winners: bad investments, relatives who ask for money and overspending, according to Stoltmann.
Sunday/ Sweden, by a hair 🙈
Of course: one could argue that it should not have come to a penalty shootout in the first place— that the US team should have bested Sweden by at least one goal in regular time, or in extra time.
[Images from Fox Soccer @FOXSoccer on X]
Sweden won the penalty shootout, 5-4, to eliminate the United States from FIFA’s 2023 Women’s World Cup.
The American team was billed by some as the favorite to win yet again, after winning two consecutive champion-ships, in 2015 and 2019.
[Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images]
Saturday/ something lost 😢
“I am trying to be philosophical about it, given the scope of so many people’s problems, but it’s been pretty crushing,” Mr. Anthony said. “There must be a word to describe those peculiar things that happen to us as a result of the most mundane little mechanical intricacies of life.”
“I think I feel better having lost this myself than I would had it been stolen,” he said. “And I remind myself that people lose all sorts of valuable things, including loved ones in floods and fires. I suppose, ultimately, on a certain level, this was just a piece of paper with signatures on it of people who were, and are, no more intrinsically valuable than any of us.”
– Historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony (64), describing his feelings to NYT reporter Michael Levenson, after inadvertently losing an engraved card he had had for decades, with signatures of US presidents and of their spouses, on.
Further reporting from the NYT:
After he had collected the card with Mr. Biden’s signature at the White House Historical Association on July 24, he said, he walked across the street to Teaism. He was holding the manila folder gently, careful not to crush the card inside, he said.
Mr. Anthony, who lives in Los Angeles, was in Washington to read and sign copies of his latest biography, “Camera Girl: The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy.”
After lunch, he walked along H Street to St. John’s Church. It was hot, and he stopped inside for a rest and sat in a pew where President Lincoln had sat, in the back corner.
He then walked to McPherson Square, where he stopped to take a photograph of the equestrian statue of James B. McPherson, a Civil War general, with birds perched on its head. It’s possible the signed engraving slipped out there, he said.
He continued to walk to Thomas Circle, where he stopped to take another photo, this time balancing a bag of salty oat cookies from Teaism and the manila folder in one hand and his camera in the other. He thinks that was most likely where he dropped it.
When he got back to his hotel room, at 1400 M Street, Northwest, he went to admire the engraving again and saw that it was gone.