Can’t get there from here

Wednesday. Today’s word is cerebral.

The Times looks at how museums are dealing with questions about the origins of some artwork. The MFA even has a curator for provenance.

With all that federal money for transportation infrastructure in the mix, lawmakers decided that it was time to connect the western part of Massachusetts with the eastern part. Currently it’s easier to get to western Mass by train from New York than it is from Boston.

The DeSantis slap at Disney reminds me of Curley trying to slap Moe and instead smacking himself. Why you…

How does Ukraine intelligence continue to beat Russia at their own game? Looks like they’re getting a little help from their friends.

And this website allows you to enter a phrase and have it translated into ten different languages and then back to English. It’s fun for a while. I entered “synergizing backward overflow.”

Following tracks

Tuesday. The word is disheveled.

Trailways and Greyhound airlines are merging into one airline. Actually it’s Frontier and Spirit. Christopher Muther has some ideas on what the new carrier should be called.

Adam Gaffin breaks a story on Universal Hub about a lawsuit against the Globe by a California man who is upset about Facebook ad tracking, which he alleges is a violation of federal law.

Harold Meyerson writes about the state of long haul trucking and the demise of unions.

Brian Krebs reports that spammers and phishers are exploiting a LinkedIn feature called slinks (great name for what it’s turned into) that allows third parties to leverage what looks like an official LinkedIn URL to market their own products. It would look like this, linkedin.com/slink?, with a potentially nefarious redirect code coming after the “?“.

And a guy playing slots in Vegas became frustrated when the machine locked up. After a while he lost patience and walked away. When the casino did maintenance on the slot machine it discovered why it had locked up: it hit a quarter-million dollar jackpot. By that time the guy was back home and the casino had no idea who he was. But there’s a happy ending to the story.

Eggs in one basket

Happy Wednesday. Ulysses is 100 years old today.

Devra First writes about breakfast cereal the way Tom Wolfe wrote about New York society. A nice treat on a dreary morning.

Bruce Mohl reports on the current fragility of the New England power grid. The power companies bet big on the natural gas pipeline from Canada to Massachusetts. But that plan was thwarted when Maine voters rejected running it through their state. New technology that would help bridge the gap is years away. For now, if we want to keep the lights on, the only options we’re left with are building more transmission lines, bigger LNG terminals and using more No.2 oil. And wearing more sweaters.

If you thought people were driving worse than usual, lately, you might be on to something.

Andrea Campbell, as expected, is running for Attorney General to replace Maura Healey, who is running for governor. And just like that, she’s the front runner. Campbell was one of the most effective and hard working city councillors in Boston so I expect she would make a very good AG.

And Super Sunday is not only about football. There are also puppies.

A sense of urgency

It’s Wednesday. And it’s National Cupcake Day.

Yes, Virginia, there is no Babbo Natale.

Eric Adams doesn’t assume office until January 1st but he’s already outpaced Michelle Wu in naming a police commissioner. Other than a discussion about opening the process to public comment, it’s unclear if she’s even put a search team together. “We’ll be announcing details of that soon,” she told the Globe in mid-November.

A lot of big businesses and government agencies run on Kronos for scheduling and payroll. Many are now left hanging as the company’s cloud service has been the target of a major ransomware attack. Not the best time of year for people to be missing their paychecks.

Are cargo bikes the pickup trucks of the future? I’d be down with that.

And if you want to write a daily blog but are a pen and paper person, there’s now a solution. A paper website. It’s actually a thing.

Cottage foods

Good Sunday morning. It’s Isaac Bashevis Singer‘s birthday. Also Björk.

Rock is dead. Mick Rock, photographer to the stars.

Selling homemade foods in Massachusetts is a regulatory nightmare. That might change thanks to a bill filed by State Rep Erika Uyterhoeven. It seems to make sense to loosen things up, but as always, the devil will be in the details on things like allergens and sanitation.

It’s not just the US that’s gone loopy. The Dutch are rioting over Covid rules.

Cara Buckley writes in the Times in praise of roundabouts (or rotarys as we call them.) Intersections are digital. Roundabouts are analog. It’s all about the flow. Of course there are exceptions.

And forget the Facebook Metaverse. The Meatverse is the place to be. It’s “the logical next step in human evolution, connecting people at a scale never attempted before.” Well then. Pass the gravy.

Take a left at the Dunks

It’s Monday. Once again.

Jim McBride reports from Patriots training camp. It’s the Cam Newton / N’Keal Harry show.

Moving around Boston is hard. A Californian takes issue with our roads and transportation systems and gets a history lesson that reaches from the horse and buggy to the Big Dig.

Is this dizzying Emirates ad real? I was skeptical, as were others, but apparently it happened. Here’s a short behind the scenes video. Tom Cruise would be proud.

Rodents are inundating parts of Australia. Farmers are waging war, killing them en masse. But, as The Times Yan Zhuang points out, some Australian rats are getting a different treatment: The tickle treatment.

And there’s dumbness and there’s stupidity. One, apparently, is better than the other.

Fit to print

Monday the 21st. If it seems like a long day, that’s because it is.

Boston to New York in an hour and a half and a train to Revere Beach. Now that’s what I call infrastructure.

The mayor of New Bedford believes that every city needs a functioning local newspaper. So he helped to create one – with a little help. Welcome to the New Bedford Light, a non-profit online paper not driven by click-throughs.

The Verge has a few good TV deals for Prime Day.

Some Catholic bishops are cautioning the president on abortion rights, appearing to threaten his ability to take communion. Karen Tumulty provides a history lesson on mixing politics and religion. In any case, this won’t go anywhere.

And running an airline is hard. Booking a flight on American this weekend was even harder.

Big Brother in motion

It’s Thursday. Don’t forget to eat your vegetables.

James Aloisi says it’s time to lose the masks on public transportation.

The Globe reports on couple of local tech companies that are joining up to track driver behavior for insurance companies. “Both companies’ core products are apps on smartphones that use the sensors in the phones to collect data about how people are driving, such as whether they are speeding, frequently braking hard, or picking up their phones to text when they should be paying attention to the road.” Uh-oh. Some people are going to get a big premium hike.

Brian Krebs tells the strange tale of Alla Witte, a 55 year old mother of two who was writing the code for a ransomware gang. A real-life Walter White.

New polling for Boston’s mayoral race shows the power of incumbency. Kim Janey now leads slightly over Michelle Wu. Then again, another poll puts Essaibi George in the lead. So it’s really too early to tell. But the front runners are at least starting to come into focus. Adam Gaffin rounds up other election news.

And advertisers want into your dreams. You might want to move that smart speaker out of the bedroom.

Change from within

Wednesday. We’re at the hump.

Bruce Mohl ran the numbers on Uber and Lyft ridership during the pandemic. It wasn’t pretty.

PERF’s Chuck Wexler calls it an evolving crisis. Across the country, police are opting for early retirement, enmasse. At the same time, violent crime is rising. Sure sounds like an evolving crisis. And as they say, crisis is just another word for opportunity. It seems to me that people who feel strongly about police reform should now be submitting applications to their local departments, so they can be the change. We haven’t seen much of that so far. Or maybe the feds could set up a Peace Corps-like program for recruitment, training and certification that local police can hire from. (Right now, the military serves that purpose but that’s not sustainable.) In any case, we shouldn’t let this ‘crisis’ go to waste. There are some real opportunities at hand.

Remember BloggerCon? Dave Winer does. I do too. The first two were held at the Berkman Center at Harvard. Those were heady days. Then came Facebook and Twitter, etc. The rest is history. But some of us dinosaurs are still plugging away at independent blogs.

Eric Adams, the ex-New York cop who’s running for mayor, wants to stand out from the incumbent. But he still may get de Blasio’s endorsement, whether he wants it or not.

And meet the new Windows. Looks a lot like the old Windows.

Transportation doublethink

Saturday, the first day of May. It’s Calamity Jane‘s birthday.

There’s a chicken shortage. And the price of wings is going through the roof.

Should city bus fares be free? In a healthy, financially self-sustaining system that might make sense. But the MBTA is not that and introducing free bus service brings lots of hidden costs. One transportation analyst interviewed by the Globe, Phineas Baxandall, says that those costs are not really costs. “You can define that as a cost, or you can define that as an enormous policy achievement,” Baxandall said. “In the face of possibilities of actually increasing transit ridership, it shouldn’t be seen as just a cost.” That sounds a lot like me trying to justify a new camera purchase to my wife.

Some voices are more soothing than others. (Gilbert Gottfried comes to mind as an exception that proves the rule.) The BBC explores the role our voices play in social settings.

Fireworks season is coming. The City Council is going to handle it this year.

And a group of folks in Japan decided to carry 6 ordinary stones around for 1300 years (scroll down for English). They started the project in 2014. Only one thousand, two hundred and ninety three years to go.