[Original is in the National Museum of American Jewish Military History, Washington DC, United States. Picture from Google Arts & Culture]
Above is the plaque awarded to Sgt. Andrew Segal.
At the top it reads “COLUMBIA GIVES TO HER SON THE ACCOLADE ON THE NEW CHIVALRY OF HUMANITY”.
The inscription below reads “Andrew N. Segal Sgt. Co. G 316th Inf. SERVED WITH HONOR IN THE WORLD WAR AND WAS WOUNDED IN ACTION”, with President Woodrow Wilson’s signature.
Wednesday/ night mode
I took these pictures on 15th Avenue here on Capitol Hill tonight with my iPhone 13Pro. Perfectly lit and sharp night pictures are really hard to take with my big Canon EOS 7D Mk II DSLR camera— even when using its automatic program mode.
Here’s how Apple described what happens in ‘night mode’ when it debuted on iPhone11 (it’s a lot!):
‘Night mode comes on automatically when needed — say, in a candlelit restaurant. When you tap the shutter, the camera takes multiple images while optical image stabilization steadies the lens.
Then the camera software goes to work. It aligns images to correct for movement. It discards the sections with too much blur and fuses sharper ones. It adjusts contrast so everything stays in balance. It fine‑tunes colors so they look natural. Then it intelligently de‑noises and enhances details to produce the final image.
It all adds up to night shots that stand apart — with more detail, less noise, and an authentic sense of time and place’.
Tuesday/ my iPhone setup is done
The easy data transfer method (to set up my new phone) shown in yesterday’s picture stumbled, and I had to give up on it.
So I did a full iCloud backup of my old phone*, and an iCloud restore to the new phone, and that worked out fine.
*The backup took a while. Could it be that I have that many apps, and that much data? I wondered. It turned out most of the 22 Gb of backup data were photos, even though I had marked photos as excluded from the backup. I also deleted the 5,000+ pictures I had on the old phone, and deleted them from the ‘Recently Deleted’ folder as well, but they were still swept into the backup. They made it onto the new phone into the ‘Recently Deleted’ folder. Ah well, no harm done. They will disappear from there in 30 days.
There is still a little work after all the apps & data had been transferred to the new phone, to make sure everything is good to go.
• Check if home screen, main apps, phone contacts look OK.
• Log onto e-mail accounts, messaging apps, credit card & banking apps, and check that the Apple Wallet is set up correctly (vaccination card was missing).
• Request a new QR code for my Washington State vaccination card to put into the Apple Wallet.
• Connect my Tesla’s key card to the new phone.
• Download my preferred Siri voice onto the phone.
• Use iTunes on Windows (I have no Mac or MacBook) to sync my CD music collection into the Apple Music app & add my PC photo albums to my phone’s photo albums. It’s a known issue that the artwork for the CD albums sometimes get scrambled with the sync. All right, so I could not have that. Deleted all 4,105 synced songs and the Apple Music app (! – to get rid of invisible files & indexes). Downloaded the app back to the phone, and did the sync again. Issue solved.
Below are pictures shot with each of the phone’s three lenses: wide angle, standard and close-up.
(Note: These are 2560×1920 pixels. The blogging platform automatically scales them down from the original 4032×3024 pixels).
Monday/ here comes the sun, and my phone
There was sunshine all day.
My new iPhone was out for delivery, and I had to wait for the FedEx guy to show up before I could venture outside. He showed up shortly after 1 pm.
Sunday/ darkness comes quickly
There was a break in the weather by 3 this afternoon, and I went down to Pike Place Market just to get out of the house for a while.
It is skull cap, scarf and glove time: 44 °F (7 °C) with a little wind chill.
*Which is really 3.38 pm Pacific Standard Time. I forgot to turn off the Daylight Saving Time setting in my big Canon DSLR camera (it has no built-in Wi-Fi).
*A real estate firm bought the building for $580 million earlier this year.
Saturday/ Daylight Saving Time: does not save Time, does not save Daylight
It’s that time of the year again in the United States, when we attempt to outsmart the universe.
We have to set our clocks back by one hour tonight.
Can we please pick one time and stick to it?
As David Policansky writes in The Washington Post: “The people of Fairbanks, Alaska, show that it is possible to adjust to very early sunsets or very late sunrises. There just isn’t much advantage in shifting daylight around when you have only three hours and forty-two minutes of it on the shortest day. But in the Lower 48, in the mid-latitudes where most of us live, we complain”.
[Infographic by the National Geographic at nationalgeographic.com]
Friday/ the week looks better
What started as a bad week for the Biden Administration/ the Democrats, looked much better by late Friday night.
There were good October jobs numbers out this morning, and the Housed passed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that includes transport, broadband and utility funding, sending it to the President’s desk.
Writes Neil Irwin for the NYT: ‘Employers are paying more to get those workers, it’s worth noting. Average hourly earnings for private-sector workers were up 0.4 percent in October, and are up 4.9 percent over the last year. That is high by recent standards, but probably a bit below the inflation rate in that span. October inflation numbers are not out yet, but for the 12 months ended in September the Consumer Price Index was up 5.4 percent.’
[Graphic from the New York Times]
Thursday/ the earthworms are happy
It rained most of the day. It is November after all, and so it rains a lot.
We are also coming out of a very wet October.
The rain gauge at Sea-Tac airport recorded 5.76 in of rain in October, two inches more than the average of 3.76 in.
Wednesday/ a rough Election Day
Tuesday was a rough odd-year Election Day for Democrats, not boding well for next year’s mid-term elections. Trumpist Republican Youngkin won the Virginia governor’s race. Democratic governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, barely won his race.
Why has President Biden’s support, and that of the Democratic Party in general, been declining?
I guess it doesn’t help that the pandemic is dragging on. Republicans and their supporters fight the vaccine and mask mandates, though.
People don’t know, don’t care, don’t believe— that we have now lost 750,000 Americans. That’s more than the population of Alaska, or Vermont, or Wyoming.
Should the Democrats ring the alarm bell and finally pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework & Build Back Better legislation?
Maybe it will help, but maybe not much. Paul Kane of the Washington Post writes ‘If history is any guide, Democrats will pass this massive agenda in the weeks or months ahead — and it will have little to no impact on their political standing in next year’s midterm elections’. He mentions several cases where the party in power passed transformative legislation aligned with its values (Obama 2009: Affordable Care Act, Trump 2017: Tax Cuts), only to be pummeled at the midterm elections thereafter.
Tuesday/ the third shot
It’s been six months since I had my second shot, and so today it was time for the third one*. The pharmacist put a Spiderman band-aid on my arm afterwards. They must be gearing up for the influx of 5-11 year-olds that will come in for their shots from tomorrow.
*Pfizer’s booster shot is the same dosage strength as their primary series. Moderna’s booster dose is half the strength of its primary shots.
African person: “Which preconditions?” (Sign says ‘Africa needs vaccines’)
Big Pharma: “Wealth”
[Cartoon by Swiss cartoonist Patrick Chappatte]
Monday/ a closer look at Climate Pledge Arena
Sunday was a beautiful blue-sky day.
I took the No 10 bus to Westlake Center, and from there, the Monorail to the Space Needle, so that I could walk around Climate Pledge Arena.
Sunday/ happy Halloween
A belated ‘Happy Halloween’ to everyone.
[Picture Credit: NBC/ The Today Show]
Saturday/ a geomagnetic storm
It’s too late now, but I should have driven out some dark elevated area outside the city (Seattle) to see if I can spot some aurora borealis light resulting from Thursday’s X-class* solar flare.
*X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. Flares that are classified X10 or stronger are considered unusually intense.
We’re in Solar Cycle 25, which started in Dec. 2019. (Extensive recording of solar sunspot activity began in 1755). Each solar cycle lasts roughly every 11 years. The Sun’s magnetic field goes through a cycle after which it completely flips: the north and south poles switch places. Then it takes about another 11 years for the Sun’s north and south poles to flip back again.
[Picture Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory]
Auroras were seen around the world, those in the northern hemisphere as far south as the Caribbean; those over the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. were so bright that the glow woke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning.
People in the northeastern United States could read a newspaper by the aurora’s light.
Friday/ walking along Broadway
I took the No 12 bus to the hairdresser today. We only got to 51°F (11°C) today, but the rain had stopped, and I walked back home from there. Here are a few pictures.
Says local public radio station KUOW on their website: Nikkita Oliver is an educator, attorney, and activist who wants deep systemic change to move the city further to the left. Sara Nelson is a small business owner who thinks the current City Council is already too far left and needs to move closer to the center.
*We vote by mail, so many votes are already in; mine is as well.
Thursday/ soaked
It has been a good day for pluviophiles: it rained all day around Puget Sound. We had recorded 1.58 in. by early evening here in the city, says NWS Seattle @NWSSeattle on Twitter.
Update Fri 10/29: The final numbers are in. For Sea-Tac, it was a daily record-setting reading of 1.99 in. on Thursday. It was the wettest October day since the all-time wettest day in Seattle history (5.02 in. on Oct. 20th, 2003).
Wednesday/ two beers at Two Beers
I had a picture of my vaccine card ready as we stepped into Two Beers Brewing Co. in Seattle’s industrial district, tonight. As of Monday, proof of a coronavirus vaccination —or a negative test— is required at most indoor businesses in King County.
Checking for one’s proof was done at the counter serving the beers, and even then it was very cursory. The place was busy and they seemed a little short on staff, as is the case in most places these days.
Tuesday/ Denny Way construction
Here are a few pictures that I have taken today— of the ongoing construction on Denny Way.
Monday/ TSLA’s big T market cap
Hertz said on Monday that it would convert more than 20 percent of its rental fleet to Tesla’s electric cars by the end of next year, an announcement that helped propel Tesla’s stock value beyond $1 trillion for the first time.
Tesla’s stock closed at $1024.86, up more than 12% on the day and giving the company a market value of $1.03 trillion.
The Wall Street Journal notes that the market caps of the biggest nine automakers need to be added to get to Tesla’s market cap.
Yes, Tesla sells 1/10th the number of cars that Volkswagen does, but it will deliver double the cars this year, compared to what it had delivered in 2020. And the stock market bulls argue that Tesla is technically not a car company: it’s a technology company.
Sunday/ a bomb cyclone
A very large ‘bomb cyclone’ storm system in the northeast Pacific Ocean generated an atmospheric river of rain that hit northern California today. Most of the West Coast had storm winds and rain as well.
There are reports of flooding and mudslides from California, but the good news is that the storm has brought the 2021 wildfire season to an end.
With those 30-50 ft swells, I hope there were no containerships in the area. One near Vancouver Island had lost 40 containers overboard, a day or two ago, even before the storm was around.
[Still from Accuweather video clip]
Saturday/ Kraken 2, Canucks 4
Well, that was disappointing, and we will file this one in the ‘Too Bad’ folder.
It would have been great for the Seattle Kraken to win their first-ever game in their new home, but it was not to be. The home team was up 2-0, but in the end, succumbed to the Canucks with 2 goals to their 4.
