Nuts and bolts

Tuesday. Lots of people on the road.

Here’s everything you need to know about botulism.

Infrastructure is important. People seem to support it. But it’s boring. Ideally, politics should be boring – just not this boring. David Siders reports on the inability of Democrats to excite voters (at a time when Republicans are pulling on every string.)

This is bad news if you want to get an early start on shopping for Black Friday: Target won’t be opening on Thanksgiving.

One interesting thing I found in David Brooks’ report from the National Conservatism Conference was that conservatives now see themselves as the anti-business party. Especially big business. David Gelles digs a little deeper and finds a developing pattern of brand partisanship.

And HBO is looking for an actor with a ripped bod who isn’t afraid to show it off. Too bad I’m busy that week.

History redux

Today is Wednesday. Downhill to the weekend.

Would reducing the charging time of electric vehicles to less than 5 minutes dramatically open the market for EV’s to be competitive with gas cars? I think it would. Now would be a good time get the grid fixed.

Michelle Wu was sworn in yesterday on the Bible of the Revolution. Right out of the gate there’s much talk about her making history although, really, Kim Janey did that. But Wu could be the first to enact a progressive agenda and take a hard line on contract negotiations with the police unions. Wait, Tom Menino already did all that. Affordable housing? Marty Walsh. So what’s left? Plenty, actually. Wu can make her mark. But first we need to turn down the hype machine and let her get her feet on the ground.

Continuing on with yesterday’s theme of Democrats being in trouble for the midterms, Thomas Edsall doesn’t think the party should be worried. He believes they should be in a state of abject terror.

We were going to be back on the moon by 2024. But it turns out that that aspirational goal was just a tad bit unrealistic.

And the story of the tilting Millennium Tower in San Francisco is a fascinating cautionary tale. An engineer’s nightmare. The moral is, don’t build a skyscraper on shifting clay.

Strictly for the birds

Happy Monday. Travel day.

A potato so big it has a name. Hint: it’s not MacKenzie.

Some folks from the GOP are up in arms about a public health announcement from Big Bird on vaccinations. Talk about triggered. Then, the NBC News article on this goes on to explain that there’s very little research on how Covid affects birds and chickens as if Big Bird is actually a… big bird. It’s going to be one of those weeks.

Here’s more on the Rivian truck from Chris Taylor. It’s a head turner, he says.

The pillow guy is at it again.

Benjamin Balthaser writes about his uncle’s Bronx accent. But there’s more here than that. His uncle sounds like a guy I would get along well with. It’s one of the best things I’ve read in a long time.

And another asteroid is coming to destroy the earth. Paging Chicken Little. Someday one of these things will be real.

The new Boston

It’s Tuesday! Election day. Today’s word is passel.

Scientists studying body temperature say we’re getting cooler. But also lazier.

James Aloisi looks at some of Boston’s defining moments of the past and sees this election as right up there with them. Familiar face Bill Galvin doesn’t think there will be a big turn out. But the candidates spent the Friday night before the election talking to college students, so somebody thinks at least they will come out to vote. And Jack Thornton lays out the three ballot questions, two of which are big deals. Questions 1 and 3 are directly related to mayoral authority and accountability. So here we go.

Joshua Eaton at FiveThirtyEight writes about firearm trafficking and the huge gaps in data about where the guns used in crimes come from.

The pandemic is over. But it’s not over. But it is kinda. But not really. The Washington Post looks at the complexity of getting past Covid. How can we miss it if it won’t go away?

And Facebook just isn’t cool anymore. Kids don’t want to join. But there’s this new thing. It’s called the Metaverse.

Reality check

Monday. November arrives.

Apple’s hottest product – its thinnest yet – is a piece of cloth. A $20 dollar piece of cloth. It’s actually backordered. And as they usually do with Apple products, iFixit has a teardown.

When I heard about the Southwest pilot mocking Joe Biden over the PA, I thought it was way out of line. I still do. But Matt Taibbi has a solid point about fair play. The world was a better place when politics wasn’t so engrained in our culture.

Pulling people over just to bring in revenue is a bad policing. Eliminating this practice is the kind of defunding I can get behind.

News Flash: Billionaires want to start a new media outlet to combat disinformation. About billionaires probably. Actually, the Bezos-funded Washington Post has had a pretty good record of providing reliable information. As far as the Henry-funded Boston Globe goes, the jury is still out.

And Spiders are much smarter than you think. Not. Welcome. News.

Top heavy

Sunday. Today’s word is mirage.

Here’s another reason you don’t want to get Covid, even if you’re young and healthy: memory impairment.

In Massachusetts,the incumbent advantage gets a boost from how names are listed on the ballot. Margaret Monsell examines the practice, unique to this state, of always putting the incumbent’s name at the top.

Blogging about blogging: Brandon Quakkelaar writes about his love/hate relationship with social media (I can relate) and why you should just use blogs and RSS to get your information. Kev Quirk is on the same page. Stop writing multiple tweets, he says. Just make a blog post. They’re both right but I’m afraid the ship has sailed. Doomscrolling is here to stay.

A BU student looks at drug use on campus. It’s ubiquitous, writes Antonia Lehnert in the Daily Free Press, and schools need to offer more prevention and support.

And Albert Burneko is buzzing over a ridiculous new way of making coffee. We’ve come a long way from Folgers crystals. Or, maybe not.

Collateral damage

Friday has arrived. Seems like it was a long week.

La Niña is back. The forecast is for a cold, snowy winter.

There’s some good news on the Covid-adjacent front: the flu has been squeezed out during the pandemic. Masks, social distancing, etc. have caused some influenza varieties to become extinct, which could make development of the flu shot more effective in the future.

David Zucker writes that comedy is in an dire state and it needs to be resuscitated, hopefully before the 50th anniversary of Airplane!. It’s a few years away but he seems to want to get ahead of it.

According to Dominic Cummings, the UK never intended to abide by the terms of BREXIT regarding the Northern Ireland Protocol. Now, right on schedule

And it looks like police are going on strike in Chicago. I thought that was illegal.

Promises, promises

If it isn’t Thursday already. It’s the day Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier.

Tara Sullivan thinks the Sox can go all the way.

In his recap of last night’s mayoral debate, James Pindell described Michelle Wu’s performance as a word salad. She talked but didn’t actually say anything. Kind of like a Belichick press conference, not very illuminating. Essaibi George tried to get Wu to be more specific but, like the reporters facing Belichick, she didn’t press hard enough.

Researchers may have found a new method to improve solar power cells, making them 1000% times more effective. That’s a lot!

A house in Dorchester is being considered as an historic landmark. It has distinctive architecture and was built in the 1880’s by John Fields (of Fields Corner). But that’s not why it’s being singled out for landmark status. It’s the former home of New Kids on the Block. That’s why.

And get ready for the latest wireless technology, wifi 6e. Bigger, better, faster.

The conventional wisdom

Wednesday, the pinnacle of the week.

Jolyon Helterman didn’t want to be that restaurant reviewer who slams a restaurant during the pandemic. Nonetheless.

Polls put Michelle Wu way ahead of Essaibi George for mayor. Apparently we haven’t learned our lesson about polls. I think this race might be closer than those polls suggest. And tonight is the debate. Let’s see how that goes.

A rude awakening from outer space? It can happen.

4.3 million people quit their jobs in August, an all-time high number. Why? Jeff Cox reports it was “because of health concerns and child care issues unique to the pandemic’s circumstances.” Time to put that government handout story to bed.

And, once again, everything we know is wrong.

Can’t get there from here

Mid week. Wednesday. Coffee Day.

What a way to win a marathon. When the frontrunners took a wrong turn, the guy trailing them stayed true to course – and won the medal.

The MBTA is getting dangerous. Crashes, derailments, bloody escalator incidents. And that’s just this week! There seems to be something systemically wrong. Filling the vacancies on the Board of Directors would help, as would better day-to-day management and financial control. The mayoral candidates also chimed in on the apparent chaos, according the the Globe, calling for more investment. Which might be hard to do if you’re also calling for cutting revenue. Every dollar counts.

The critics seem to like the new Bond movie. But he really should get a better phone from Q.

Why are supply chain bottlenecks so persistent? It’s complicated but Michael Cembalest of J.P. Morgan breaks it down to supply, demand and shipping costs. Apparently it’s more profitable for Chinese shipping companies to return containers empty than it is for them to refill them with all the stuff on the dock waiting to be exported.

And I always enjoy reading those clickbaity science headlines. Something ‘is happening and experts don’t know why.’ Sounds mysterious and a little scary. In this case, it turns out that the reason we don’t know why is because we don’t have any data to compare against. No mystery after all. But they did get me to read the article.