Even though I watch almost no cable news programs anymore, it feels as if the news is the same for many weeks at a time.
Are the Olympic Games done? No.
(So the Russian skater blames her grandpa’s meds for her failed drug test. Hard to believe. Shout-out to the IOC for their on-going mismanagement of Russia’s 2014 state-sponsored doping scandal. The Russians should have been banned for oh, 10 years).
Have the truckers in Ottawa gone home? No. Arrest them. Law and order, right, conservatives?
Is Russia going to invade Ukraine? We still don’t know .. but tomorrow is a new day, and time will tell.
Oh boy. People think that waving a flag while you’re doing something illegal, makes you a patriot.
It’s been a ‘dry’ February so far, here in the city.
Only ¼ in. has been recorded, and February gets almost 4 on average.
There was a little rain today— of the kind that does not make the ground wet under the big trees.
A little bit of blue sky on 19th Avenue, at about 4.45 pm. It was just warm enough to go for a walk: 46 °F (8°C). I cannot put my right hand in a glove or in my pocket; best I can do hold it against my chest inside my jacket.
Here is a young Marlon Brando (31) with his cat, from a write-up in Look magazine from May 17, 1955. ‘I live in my cat’s house’, said Brando at the time.
Brando was nominated for an Academy Award seven times, and won the Award twice: for Best Actor in ‘On the Waterfront (1954)’ and for Best Actor in ‘The Godfather (1972)’.
Another software update for my car came through tonight.
I can drive my car, but just around the neighborhood.
No freeway driving or long distances until my arm & wrist is out of the cast.
Every time I see ‘Release Notes’ like here on my car’s display screen, I think of the Release Notes for the SAP enterprise software system that I had worked with for so long. I can now change the color of the car icon on this screen to anything I want (a trivial update, and I guess I could pick black or white or gold .. but why would I?). Other updates are much more practical: regenerative braking will now activate at lower speeds, making for a more consistent driving experience.
I found a puzzle (wonder what had happened), and R2-D2 depicted on a card, on my walk today.
I was too far from my house to pick either up/ clean it up*, and besides that: I only have one hand. 🙂
*If it’s on my block, especially on the sidewalk or street at the front of the house, it doesn’t matter what it is; I feel compelled to clean it up. Broken beer bottle, dead crow, dog poop, empty cannabis packets.
Was there a tug-of-war between two people, with the puzzle in the middle, and the box was torn open? Who knows.R2-D2 (say Artoo Deetoo) is a fictional robot character in the Star Wars franchise created by George Lucas. He has appeared in eleven of the twelve theatrical Star Wars films to date.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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]
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).
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 :).
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.
