Willem's Planet

February 9, 2022February 9, 2022

Wednesday/ the Gazpacho Police .. are coming for our mazel tov cocktails

Marjorie Taylor Greene loves to propagate conspiracy theories, even though she is actually a sitting member of Congress. She represents Georgia’s District 14 in the House of Representatives. Hey Georgia: you can do better than this. November 2022 is your chance.

New: House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene is railing against Pelosi’s “gazpacho police” — intending to refer to the Nazi Gestapo, itself a nonsense comparison, but instead referring to a cold tomato soup.
-Hugo Lowell @hugolowell on Twitter

Just to clear things up, @RepMTG
Gazpacho: a vegetable-based Spanish cold soup
Gestapo: Nazi Germany’s secret police
-The Republican Accountability Project @AccountableGOP

With the Gazpacho Police, every crime is a cold case
-Adam Blickstein@ AdamBlickstein

I hope all you Progressos out there are having a fun time
-George Conway aka Oficial de Policía de Gazpacho Conway @gtconway3d

I’ve met some members of the gazpacho police. They are consommé professionals.
-Danielle Decker Jones @djtweets

The Gazpacho Police have just chopped an unarmed tomato.
-Wajahat Ali@ WajahatAli

It won’t be funny when the Gazpacho police give you the burp walk.
-JoeReynoldsChief @JoeReynolds2020

Marjorie Taylor Greene, in condemning the harsh conditions facing the insurrectionists arrested on January 6, is comparing what they’re experiencing to what she read in Solzhenitsyn’s monumental work The Goulash Archipelago*.
-Peter Wehner @Peter_Wehner

*Greene contended that Washington DC jails are ‘DC gulags’.
The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, Arkhipelag GULAG) is a three-volume non-fiction text written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It was first published in 1973, and translated into English and French the following year. It covers life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet forced labor camp system, through a narrative constructed from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and Solzhenitsyn’s own experience as a Gulag prisoner.

February 8, 2022

Tuesday/ will Putin, or won’t he?

Will Putin invade Ukraine?
President Biden is vowing to stop the start-up of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if he does, even though it’s unclear how much power Biden has to do this.

From the Washington Post:
What is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and why does it matter to Russia?
The project is a natural gas line from Russian fields to the German coast, spanning 764 miles under the Baltic Sea. The $11 billion line will double the capacity of the original 2011 Nord Stream, which runs parallel to the new project. The line will supply gas to Germany — a nation heavily dependent on gas and oil imports — at a relatively low cost as the continent’s production capacity decreases.

The new pipeline is entirely owned by Russian energy company Gazprom, which is majority government-owned. The company also owns 51 percent of the original Nord Stream pipeline. A group of European energy companies, including Shell and Wintershall, paid half the construction costs.

Construction was completed in September, and the pipeline has been filled with gas since late December. Before it becomes operational, though, it needs regulatory approval from Germany and a review by European Union authorities. The head of the German regulatory body said in December that a decision would not come until the second half of 2022 at the earliest.

Absorber columns at the Gazprom PJSC Slavyanskaya compressor station, the starting point of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, in Ust-Luga, Russia, on Jan. 28. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg News)

From the Washington Post: Ukraine and Poland vehemently oppose the pipeline. Ukraine has long been an energy middleman nation, with Russian companies feeding much of Europe’s gas supply through Ukrainian soil and paying the country transit fees in the process. Critics think Russia, in bypassing Ukraine, aims to weaken and isolate the nation.

February 7, 2022February 7, 2022

Monday/ Belgium’s new passports

Belgium’s new passports (issued as of today) have pages in that feature images from the country’s comic book heritage.

The characters making an appearance are Lucky Luke, The Smurfs (yes, the Smurfs were created in Belgium in 1958), and Hergé’s Tintin.

A passport ready for space travel? Sophie Wilmes, Belgian Foreign Minister, shows the new Belgian international passport with its drawing of the rocket from the Tintin adventures **Objectif Lune** (‘Destination Moon’, first published 1953) and **On a Marché Sur la Lune** (‘Explorers on the Moon’, 1954).
[Photo: Benoit Doppagne/ DPA]

Visa pages in the new Belgian passport with a background drawing by Hergé, from **Les Sept Boules de Cristal** (‘The Seven Crystal Balls’, 1948). The figures walking towards the chateau are Captain Haddock, Tintin and Snowy.
[Photo: DPA]

February 6, 2022February 6, 2022

Sunday/ sun and blue skies

It was a beautiful day here in the city.
At the highs of the day (52 °F/ 11°C) it felt a little like spring.

Madison Street is a bit of a mess. It’s getting a makeover, as the new ‘Rapid Ride G’ bus route from downtown to Madison Valley.
It will have Bus Only lanes and Bus Priority stops at traffic signals, new curbs, and curb ramps, crosswalks, sidewalks and bike lanes.
I like that storm drain filter sock in the foreground. It stops the worst of the construction contaminants to end up in the storm drain, and eventually in Puget Sound.

February 5, 2022

Caturday/ bodega cat

bo·de·ga
/bōˈdāɡə/
noun
1. (in the US) a small grocery store, especially in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood.
2. (in a Spanish-speaking country) a wine shop or wine cellar.

Photos from @Bodegacats_ on Twitter.

February 4, 2022

Friday/ the show that is called the Olympic Games

From the New York Times, as reported by Chris Buckley and Andrew Das:
In a climactic moment to end the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, China chose two athletes — including one it said was of Uyghur heritage — to deliver the flame to the Olympic cauldron and officially start the Games.

The moment was tinged with layers of symbolism — a man and a woman working together, a nod to China’s Olympic history — but it was the choice of Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a cross-country skier who the Chinese said has Uyghur roots, that confronted head-on one of the biggest criticisms of the country’s role as host.

The Chinese Communist Party state has conducted a mass detention and re-education campaign targeting Uyghur Muslims in the western region of Xinjiang that the United States has declared as genocidal. It was among the reasons that several countries, including the United States, took part in a diplomatic boycott of the Games.

Dinigeer Yilamujiang, left, and Zhao Jiawen, both Chinese Olympians, helped light the cauldron.
[Photo Credit: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times]

February 3, 2022February 3, 2022

Thursday/ a bridge too far?

The City of Rotterdam’s plans to dismantle the middle part of the historic railway bridge De Hef (‘The Lever’) later this year, to allow Jeff Bezos’s new superyacht* to pass under, is not sitting well with everyone (of course not).

The deck of the bridge can be lifted 130 ft, but that will not suffice for the tallest of the yacht’s three masts.

Bezos will reportedly pay for the dismantling and reassembly of the bridge deck. So what is the problem? 🙂

*A three-masted schooner made of aluminum and steel, the $ 500-million, 417-feet Oceanco Y721 yacht will be the largest sailing yacht in the world when completed.

My photo from the Euromast Tower in Rotterdam, taken in Feb. 2019 in the ‘Before Times’. I was paying much more attention to the Erasmus Bridge (‘The Swan’) and my namesake bridge Willemsbrug* (‘Willem’s Bridge’), but I see I did catch a far-away glimpse of the historic 1927 De Hef/ Koningshavenbrug (‘King’s Harbor Bridge’) in my photo.

February 2, 2022February 2, 2022

Wednesday/ 2.2.2022

There are lots of two’s in today’s date (with another one to come on the 22nd of February, of course).

My current Apple Watch face is the kaleidoscope. Every time you look to get the time, the watch face lights up from dim to bright, the image morphs for a few seconds into a different one, and then it stops again as the watch face dims.
This is just one of the standard patterns. I’m going to create a few custom ones with my own pictures.

February 1, 2022

Tuesday/ Happy Lunar New Year

Happy Lunar New Year.
It’s the Year Of The Tiger.

My collection of tigers. Rowrr 🐯!
Left to right: 2010 Starbucks ‘Bearista’ Year Of The Tiger bear; 2015 Schleich 14729 Tiger Figurine; 2010 Year Of The Tiger piggy bank by Walmart China; ‘2010 Year Of the Tiger’ stuffed tiger in silk; 2010 Year Of The Tiger plush tiger.

January 31, 2022February 2, 2022

Monday/ 5 years of construction

It’s been so long, that I had forgotten that this stately old house used to be on the corner of Thomas and 17th Avenue. It was constructed in 1906, and named Dunshee House when it became the home of the Seattle Area Support Groups & Community Center (SASG). It was sold to a developer and demolished in 2017.
[Source: Google Streetview]

The townhomes at Thomas St and 17th Avenue East are done, five years hence from the start of their construction.

There are 4 new townhomes on 17th Avenue, and 2 that are facing Thomas Street. I’m not sure if they are all the same size. One is listed for sale on Redfin & Zillow for $1.4 million: 2,000 sq ft, 3- bedroom, 3.5-bath, detached garage and extra parking space.

Here’s 17th Avenue looking south towards Thomas Street.

January 30, 2022January 30, 2022

Sunday/ congrats to Rafa

“Huge respect for beating me, because I tried my best”
-Daniil Medvedev (Russia, age 25) after losing to Rafael Nadal (Spain, 35) after a marathon Australian Open final that lasted 5 hours and 24 minutes

Medvedev was two sets up to none, at 3 am Pacific Time this morning, as I was watching the 2022 Australian Open Mens Final. I turned off the iPad and thought: ‘Looks like Medvedev has it’.

Several hours later on the other side of the world though, the scoreboard read 2-6, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-4, 7-5 in Nadal’s favor. Quite a comeback from two sets down, and from a chronic foot injury that had him contemplating retirement late last year.

Nadal hugging his father, Sebastián, after the match.
[Photo Credit: Martin Keep/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images]

January 29, 2022January 30, 2022

Saturday/ snow galore in Boston

Wow .. two feet of snow in Boston.
Here’s a snowy picture for Caturday (not from Boston).

This picture is from Dec 31, from Aaron Taylor @Tippen22 on Twitter. As far as I can tell he lives in central Alberta, Canada.
Says he: ‘Starlink works great until the cats found out that the dish gives off a little heat on cold days .. they have a heated cat house, with water and food, but -25°C and they decide to sit on the Starlink dish. When the sun goes down, they head back to their house.’
(The Starlink dish still works with the all the fur on; it’s just a little slower). Someone else replied ‘Looks like the dish can handle CAT5 but not CAT6’. (CAT5 and CAT6 are standards for twisted pair cables for computer networks).

January 28, 2022January 28, 2022

Friday/ feeling 7 years old again

My passport renewal application form with photo & check was ready to send in on Thursday.
I could fill out the form on the computer to print it. All good.
I practiced a few times to make a recognizable signature with my right hand’s four fingers; signed the form, and signed the check.
I enlisted the help of friends to fill out the rest of the check, and to neatly write the date on the form.

There was no mercy at the post office, though: I had to fill out my own address and the passport center’s address three times with my left hand (on the priority mail envelope, and in teeny-tiny letters on the certified mail slips).
It was hard work!

The bane of the left-handed writer: smudging ink that is not completely dry. Hopefully the letter-sorting machine is smart enough to make out my squiggles.
For a few minutes there, I felt 7 years old again, concentrating hard to get the letters right :).

January 27, 2022

Thursday/ sunset: now at 5.02 pm

Our Pacific Northwest sun now sets after 5.
Tonight there was a photographer at ‘my’ East Thomas St/ 14 Avenue spot, good for looking west towards the Space Needle with the profile of the Olympic mountains.

January 26, 2022January 27, 2022

Wednesday/ a brisk walk

It was only 38 °F (3 °C ) as I walked back home today after getting a haircut.
It was good to get out of the house, though .. and hey! I thought: might as well try my luck to get another passport photo taken.

The kiosk at the Bartell pharmacy* at Broadway & Pike had me in and out with great photos in 5 minutes.

*Officially Bartell Drugs or the Bartell drug store. Yes, I know it’s prescription drugs —but it still doesn’t sound right to my ears.

There was a crew cleaning up the main entrance of the beleaguered **Kelly-Springfield Building** on 11th Avenue. As it was getting ready to open is office spaces (most of it leased by WeWork), the pandemic came. And then in June 2020 the Capitol Hill Organized Protest and its graffiti and vandalism happened right there (half a block away) as well.

A little further north on 11th Ave. on Capitol Hill, is the **Central Lutheran Church** building. It is boasting new white paint on its gothic-styled main entrance. The Capitol Hill location’s land was purchased in 1901 for $2,300, according to the Central Lutheran archives. The building must have been constructed soon after that.

Nearby the Central Lutheran Church, is the **German United Church of Christ**, its building also more than 100 years old. It was founded in 1881 by early German settlers, calling themselves “The First German Reformed Church of Seattle.” Today they are largely supported by private donations, and the “German Heritage Society”, the “Plattdeutscher Verein” and the “Frauenverein”.

January 25, 2022January 26, 2022

Tuesday/ COVID-19 testing 101

I entered my address into the new Washington State COVID-19 test kit page on Friday.
Just yesterday, two 2-pack test kits landed on my porch.

The manufacturer’s website says these test kits correctly identify positive specimens in 94% of tests, and negative specimens in 98% of tests.

The test kits are for doing a so-called lateral flow test for COVID-19 antigens (proteins from the virus).

Doing the test seems pretty straight forward.
The test strip looks the same as the strip in a pregnancy test kit.
C stands for ‘Control’ and T for ‘Test’.

If both lines are colored (the T line may be very faint), the test is positive.
If only the C line is colored, the test is negative.
(If no line is colored, you did something wrong and the test is invalid.)

Here’s a table that I compiled of the types of COVID tests.

Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) ('Molecular')	Antigen	Antibody
Detects genetic material from the virus.	Detects proteins from the virus.	Detects immune system antibodies (a spike protein test or a nucleocapsid test).
The gold standard to test for an active COVID-19 infection.	Not as sensitive as PCR tests.	Not suitable to diagnose an active COVID-19 infection.
Nasal swab sample processed by a lab.	Nasal swab sample processed by lab or with home test kit.	Blood sample processed by lab.

January 24, 2022January 27, 2022

Monday/ scowling at the camera

[Note: I realize this is a first world problem: waiting a little ‘too long’ in a store to pay, or for a service that is rendered].

It is time to renew my passport, and I needed passport photos. (I had tried to snap & print them at home a previous time, but it’s not that easy.) So off to Walgreens two blocks from my house I went. A mom and her teenage son were being helped at the photo kiosk. The attendant had his back turned to me, and took so long at the ATM-style screen & photo printer that I pressed the button on the desk nonetheless, just to announce: ‘Hey, just so you know: you have another customer’.

Didn’t matter. By the time he had the teenager pose a fourth time in front of the white screen, a third person seeking passport photos had shown up. Two more people had been waiting a long while at the kiosk’s desk to pick up copies and photos. The copies had been made wrong, and the photographer says he will shred them and redo them ..

An aeon had passed and now it was my turn.

I march up to the white screen. Yank off my N95 mask. Give the camera a withering look. ‘Step forward’, is all the photographer offers —no ‘Thanks for your patience’ or ‘Relax a little’ or ‘Maybe fix your hair’. Snap. He looks at the photo on the printer’s screen, asks ‘Do you want to take a look and try another one?’. ‘NO!‘ I say. ‘Please print the picture and let me pay’.