a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
On World AIDS Day, we raise a red ribbon to remember how far we’ve come, the work that’s left, and those devastated by this disease, particularly the LGBTQI+ folks and people of color who endured the brunt of this epidemic instead of being seen.
Let’s finish this fight.
– President Biden on Twitter
Parts of the city of Seattle had a little snow on the ground on Tuesday morning (the first of the season), and there was more on Tuesday night.
Rain and a 4°C high melted most of the snow today, but there may be more snow tonight, and during the next day or two.
DOHA, Qatar—Before Matt Turner became a star for the U.S. men’s national team, he was famous for the one and only thing that a goalkeeper never wants to become associated with: an all-time howler.
The goal Turner gave up in 2013 was so astonishing that a Fairfield University soccer clip went viral. Videos of the play—which began with a shot that ricocheted off the crossbar, popped into the air and then rolled off Turner when he tried to collect it, into his own net—rapidly spread across social media and the nightly news. Turner rode the bench for the rest of the season while seemingly everyone watched his mistake over and over.
What has unfolded in the years since is somehow even more remarkable. Turner went from fighting for a job at a small Jesuit college, through the hinterlands of low level soccer, all the way to the English Premier League. And now he’s America’s best shot at reaching the knockout stage of the World Cup.
-Reported by Andrew Beaton in the Wall Street Journal
Brazil, Portugal and France are through to the knockout stage.
It’s go big (win) or go home, for the United States, in their Group B match against Iran tomorrow (Tuesday).
The young and talented US team has the youngest captain in the World Cup: Tyler Adams (23)— and the man nicknamed Captain America, Christian Pulisic (24).
Pulisic was featured in 60 Minutes in 2017, in a segment called ‘Can Christian Pulisic become the first U.S. soccer superstar?’ I believe the answer is ‘Yes’.
We had sun and blue sky today, and I went down to Pioneer Square station to do a another little self-directed architecture tour.
These pictures are from around Capitol Hill here in Seattle.
It’s the third Black Friday after the start of the pandemic, and we are in an economy giving off wildly mixed signals with inflation hopefully past its peak— but with a recession still not out of the question.
Retailers are hoping that despite all the discounts that they offer, they will move enough merchandise to put them in the black, of course.
It’s officially the holiday season at Westlake Park after Friday evening’s Tree Lighting Celebration in downtown Seattle.
[Caption from the Seattle Times and photo by Kevin Clark / The Seattle Times]
‘With football, I know it’s perhaps bad to say it, but you’ve got to have a drink, and you’ve got to have a good time as well’ said Tyrone Fowler, 28, a food delivery driver from Newport, South Wales, who was headed to Tenerife this week. ‘It’s about building the atmosphere.’
– Jack Williams reporting for the NYT
Wales has only ever qualified for two World Cups: in 1958 and this year, 2022. The trip to Qatar and the related expenses were too just much for many fans, so a large contingent has decamped to sunny Tenerife* at around a quarter of the cost, reports the New York Times.
*Tenerife is the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands, off West Africa.
The rain is back after 14 days, an unusually dry stretch for November.
As of Monday, only 1.67″ had been recorded this month.
On average, November in Seattle sees 6.31″ of rain.
I walked down to the Capitol Hill library just before sunset today. (At 4.30 pm, the gray sky promptly turned pitch black).
On the way back, my Apple Watch buzzed on my wrist with the ‘It looks like you’re working out’ message (offering to record it).
A few minutes later at home, I found this cartoon in The New Yorker magazine that I had taken out at the library. 🤗
[Picture by Associated Press]
Here’s ex-BBC reporter Matt Slater’s (somewhat irreverant) summary of the opening match. He writes for The Athletic.
Ecuador were all over Qatar, who have spent the past six months in camp together, training like a club side. A League Two club side by the looks of it.
Valencia would get his goal after 16 minutes when he went around Al Sheeb, only to be felled by a textbook tap tackle. There was to be no reVARsal of this decision and the 33-year-old, now with Fenerbahce in Turkey, picked himself up and tucked his penalty away. The watching Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan would have enjoyed that.
Ecuador’s night got better on 31 minutes, when Qatar’s stage-frightened defenders fluffed another clearance — right-back Angelo Preciado put the ball in the mixer and Valencia’s forehead did the rest.
That, in terms of the football, was pretty much that. Ecuador 2, Qatar 0.
My footnotes:
League Two is the third and lowest division of the English Football League (EFL), below League One, which is below Championshop League.
Valencia is Ecuadorian professional footballer Enner Valencia (33).
Al Sheeb is Saad Abdullah al-Sheeb (32), the Qatari goalkeeper.
Tap tackle is to dive at the other player’s feet and, with an outstretched arm, deliver a tap or hook to the player’s foot (or feet) causing the player to stumble.
VAR stands for Video Assistant Referee, a match official who reviews decisions made by the referee on video.
Fenerbache is Fenerbahçe Spor Kulübü, a Turkish professional football club based in Istanbul, Turkey.
Mixer a way of describing the penalty area, the box, especially when it is crowded with players.
The city of Buffalo and its neighbors experienced potentially record-breaking snowfall, as officials said that more than 70 inches fell in Erie County — with more expected.
-Brendan Bannon for The New York Times
It was another day with nary a cloud in the sky.
The day’s high (47 °F / 8 °C) permitted outside activity, and the amigos were at it, on the Mount Baker pickle ball courts.
Is Elon Musk bent on killing the blue tweety bird?
The one he paid 44 billion dollars for? Many more departing employees signed off on Thursday by sending the salute emoji — the new symbol for departing at Twitter.
‘Hundreds of Twitter employees refused Thursday to sign a pledge to work longer hours, threatening the site’s ability to keep operating and prompting hurried debates among managers over who should be asked to return, current and former employees said’ reported the Washington Post on Thursday after a deadline for reporting at the office for work came and went.
A Twitter manager reportedly said: Those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway.
A reader commented: All the great coders I know, possess exceptional logical thinking abilities, such as —
if I stay
then my life will be miserable (working for a tyrant that may fire me on a whim)
else (I get 3 months pay) and (a chance to find a good place to ply my trade)
The leaves on this little Japanese maple close to my house is a crimson red in the morning sun.
It’s a long road to Nov. 2024, but this should never have happened. Trump should have long been impeached (and found guilty) or have been indicted.
What a sorry shambles for the Republican Party, the Department of Justice, and for the citizens of the United States.
I put on my extra jacket, my scarf, my gloves and my skullcap as I headed out of the house today. It was actually semi-decent outside, with 47 °F /8 °C.
At the Capitol Hill train station, I put my mask on as well. A severe flu season is underway here in the US.
At the second-hand book store in U-district, I bought a book about the greatest unsolved problem in mathematics: The Riemann Hypothesis.
It’s now official: the Democrats are holding the Senate.
News broke late on Sat. night that Catherine Cortez Masto (D) from Nevada has enough votes to hold her Senate seat.
So the Democrats have reached 50 in the Senate, and there is still the run-off election in Georgia on Dec. 6.
The House is still a toss-up.
Trump is toast, no matter what his ‘big announcement’ next Tuesday may be.
It was Veterans Day in the United States today, the day to honor the the veterans that had served in our nation’s armed forces.
Wars end, but their costs— in blood and treasure— go on for a very, very long time.
The estimated amount of direct Afghanistan and Iraq war costs that the United States has debt-financed as of 2020: $2 trillion.
The estimated interest costs by 2050 to pay for health care, disability, burial and other costs for roughly 4 million Afghanistan and Iraq veterans: Up to $6.5 trillion.
[Data reported in the Boston Globe in Aug. 2021 from a study by Linda Bilmes of Harvard University’s Kennedy School and from the Brown University Costs of War project].
