Inundated

Marathon Monday.

Ahh, spring. Sadly, that means it’s shooting season, locally and around the country. (overflow)

I’ve been using email since before Gmail was invite-only and spam is worse now than it’s ever been. It’s a fire hose. Unsubscribing doesn’t work in many cases (I’m talking to you MLB). Something has to give.

Billy Baker surveys the woods. Old folk in New England still get excited when we see a deer or eagle.

Justin Franz goes planespotting with the aviation geeks.

And Better Call Saul, maybe the best TV series ever, is back today with the beginning of the end. You only have a few hours to catch up on Netflix.

One throat to choke

Saturday. A day to drink red wine and eat crackers over your keyboard.

A major Christian organization has fired its spokesman for encouraging people to consider vaccination. In other religion news, Harvard, in a “milestone of inclusion,” has installed an atheist as its head chaplain. Modern America in a nutshell here.

The Globe Editorial Board comes down on the side of an appointed school committee. They’re right on that. In principle, an elected committee seems more sensible for purposes of accountability and representation. But in reality, and historically as the authors point out, that isn’t the way things actually happen. The elected school committee was a disaster in Boston. The best approach is the current one. Let the Mayor be responsible for selecting the committee members and be then be accountable to voters for the results.

Squatting is big business in Barcelona. Removing squatters is also a big business.

Matthew Gilbert goes out on a limb to pick the best episodes of TV series from the 2000s, the heyday of quality television. I agree with most of his picks. I loved that first episode of Lost. But I was wondering why he didn’t pick the final episode of Mad Men – until I realized that it aired in 2015. Duh.

And Hurricane Ida is heading towards New Orleans, expected to make landfall as a Cat 4 on the anniversary of Katrina. Batten down the hatches.

Photo finished

Today is Thursday. Hot fun in the summertime.

There’s plenty of quality ice cream in the Boston area. An aestival bounty.

Meg Irons reports that the Janey campaign has gained the support of the Arroyo family, which should help with the large, mostly undecided Latino vote in Boston. Also, in a report that Jon Santiago dropped out of the race earlier this week, the Globe mistakenly ran an accompanying photo of still-in-the-race John Barros, rather than Santiago. Ouch.

Windows as a cloud service for business makes sense. It would have made even more sense in 2015.

J.B. Smoove thought he was signing up for an appearance on Shark Tank. But it was really Shark Week. He explains: “It was relayed the wrong way, and then re-relayed the wrong way, and then it was relayed the right way but I still wanted to hear the relay of the wrong relay, you know what I’m saying? So in my mind, even though I heard Shark Week, I still wanted to hope and pray that it meant a weeklong version of Shark Tank.” …That actually makes sense to me. I can relate.

And Ted Lasso was the perfect show for 2020. It was just what we needed. Now it’s back for a second season, starting next week. The question is, do we still need cheering up?

Swag bag

Happy Wednesday. On this day in 1911, Harry Atwood flew from Boston to DC, landing on the South Lawn to meet a waiting President Taft.

Mickey Donovan received a warm welcome from Boston Fire this week.

Jon Santiago came out of the gates strong in the mayor’s race last winter with a bunch of statewide endorsements. But his prospects and polling have faded since then and now he’s dropped out. In other election news, frontrunners Kim Janey and Michelle Wu are selling t-shirts. Annissa Essaibi-George said she’s giving hers away for free.

REvil was one of the most active ransomware gangs in operation. And, poof, now they’re gone. It’s a mystery wrapped in an riddle wrapped in an enigma.

It’s marching season in Northern Ireland. Unionists are flexing and Sinn Fein is pushing back. Same as it ever was.

And NASA is reporting that a wobbly moon might put us under water. Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

Going off track

Monday comes quick. And it’s Flag Day.

Here’s more on the Delta flight that was diverted because of a disruptive passenger who turned out to be an off-duty flight attendant. It’s getting pretty rowdy up there.

Danielle Allen is considering a run for governor. She’s a professor of ethics at Harvard. Ethics and government… an interesting combination. It’s one thing to study the Trolly Problem, another to handle a different real-life version of it every day.

Next year‘s covid could be crime.

I think most people at any given time would say they want to leave their jobs, so I wouldn’t read too much into the surveys quoted in this story about the coming great resignation. But even if only some of the sentiment is true it could signal a new era of employment benefits and work/life balance. Meanwhile, on Nantucket, 8th graders might be pressed into the workforce due to a worker shortage.

And it’s official: Mayim Bialik is the new champion at hosting Jeopardy. At least as far as I’m concerned.

A flattened curve

Happy Tuesday. It’s Name Your Poison Day.

So now we know who reached in and took back all that bitcoin from the hackers that shut down Colonial Pipeline. It was us.

These are very good numbers: Almost twenty thousand new vaccinations and only 89 new confirmed cases. I think we should have a good summer.

Clarence Williams III has died. He played Linc on the Mod Squad in the 1960s. He was also a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne.

Kim Janey has fired Dennis White. Joan Vennochi suspects a connection between Dennis White and Kevin White – in that they both relied on George Regan to mount a scorched-earth media strategy.

And The Big Texan Steak Ranch says that if you can eat one of their enormous 72 ounce steaks in an hour, you get to eat for free. A 120 pound woman ate three of them in 20 minutes. Also sides. Burp.

Card carrying

Today is Monday. It can’t be helped.

Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Except, apparently, light. Now I’m really confused.

I’ve always admired the ACLU, even when I disagreed with what it defended. Now, according to some prominent members, the ACLU has broken with its mission. (And they rebut). I can’t say I disagree with those that say the group has gone astray, at least locally. I remember a Boston ACLU that would offer advice and guidance for certain law enforcement initiatives and when the advice was taken, provide qualified support. In other words, a group that would put the work in to make things better. Today I see a group that draws a line in the sand. But then again, groups that work out compromises aren’t as successful at fundraising as groups that take sides on the issues of the day.

HBO offers some great shows but its web interface is horrible. On top of that they’ve now broken the Apple TV app. They really need to hire some competent coders.

Today begins Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. The company has had a rough ride recently in its relationship with developers. So it will be interesting to see how they handle things.

And El Salvador is considering adopting bitcoin as legal tender alongside the US dollar, which is the official currency. Interesting. Let’s see how this turns out.

Gravity vs comedy

Today is Tuesday, June 1st. CNN is 41 years old today.

A spirit of bipartisan cooperation is taking hold. At least when it comes to aliens.

The Mare of Easttown finale wrapped things up in a satisfying way. It was some of the best TV I’ve seen in awhile. And it nailed the accents, Rolling Rock and cheesesteaks. Philly got this amazing show and all we got was City on a Hill. Where’s the justice?

The market for cameras and lenses is changing. Since the low-end has been taken over by smartphones, manufactures are focusing on the high-end, emphasizing quality at a higher price. So the costs are rising for the people who still like to take photos with cameras, but the gear is getting better.

“Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this.”* Hiawatha Bray writes about a local firm that makes software that will allow a computer to read a person’s emotional state. No word on whether it can also read lips.

And here’s the column Bill Gates wrote describing the iPhone over ten years before his rival, Apple, introduced it. Very prescient (and a huge missed opportunity.)

Reinventing the wheel

Sunday morning. Clouds and rain. Happy birthday to Wolfgang Pauli.

David Smith hacked Ted Lasso’s shortbread recipe.

An array of experts is proposing a novel idea for police reform in Boston: Focus more on community engagement and less on arrests for minor offenses. I wonder where I’ve heard that before.

Apple supplier, Quanta Computer, was hacked. It was, of course, a ransomware attack. The hackers were demanding $50 million dollars. What happens if the ransom is paid but the data isn’t restored? Well, you can’t get your money back. Ransomware is a crap shoot. So if we can’t eliminate ransomware can we at least make it more reliable? Matthew Green has some suggestions.

The Times reports a huge reallocation of IP addresses formerly managed by the Pentagon. I’m sure this makes sense to the people involved but I’m a little confused as to what’s going on.

And Gene Weingarten has some ideas on how to lose weight. Only eat foods that taste horrible. “Hot sauce is legal, but you have to use too much of it. You may also use salt, but only if you over-salt and over-pepper, and add three other emphatically flavored spices that notoriously quarrel: Mix and match among garlic, fennel, basil, cloves and cinnamon.” Sounds like a plan.

A tour de force of dropped r’s

It’s a bright, sunny, spring Sunday morning.

The New Horizons spacecraft, launched in 2006, is now over 5 billion miles from earth. It just cleared the orbit of Pluto and it’s still taking photos and sending them back to us. Amazing.

The Showtime series City on a Hill, starring Kevin Bacon, was given a $3 million dollar tax break in 2018. Since then they’ve mostly been filming the series set in Boston somewhere other than Boston. What’s supposed to be Bromley-Heath looks a lot like New York. Without the local scenery all we’re left with is the overacting, over-the-top accents, bad writing and cartoonish portrayal of an important chapter in Boston’s history. I look forward to it each week.

Matthew McConaughey for governor of Texas? The polls say yes. Could be the role of a lifetime.

Prince Phillip was carried to rest in a Land Rover rather than a hearse, per his wishes. He was a big fan of Land Rovers. But his original car was a British Standard that he bought for 12 pounds in 1940. It still runs.

And according to Zoe Carpenter, misinformation is destroying our country. As they say, the remedy for misinformation is more misinformation. Unfortunately the article is behind a paywall.