from Bruce
Anecdotes
Good Deeds
• In October 2011, six-year-old Justice Wadsworth lost a teddy bear when she got sick while her family was driving along Interstate 90 on their way to Sedro-Woolley, Washington, after staying with a friend. Somehow, the teddy bear got left behind along the side of the Interstate. This was not just any teddy bear. Justice got it when she was little, and it was a gift from her father, a military man who serves overseas. Justice calls the teddy bear “Daddy Bear,” and she said that “it makes her feel like she’s cuddling with her daddy.” Justice’s mother, Christa, said that when the teddy bear turned up missing, “We searched the bedrooms. We called the friend we [had been] staying with. We cried and cried.” Justice’s grandmother posted a notice on Facebook about the lost teddy bear. The Washington Department of Transportation then tweeted about the teddy bear, including the location where it had been lost. Two Department of Transportation employees, Harry Nelson and Terry Kukes, went looking for the teddy bear and found it along the Interstate. They even drove, on their own time, to present the teddy bear to Justice in person. Justice said, “I was hoping” that someone would find the teddy bear. Christa said, “I’m so grateful,” to Mr. Nelson and Mr. Kukes.
• When John Adam was an eight-year-old boy, he and his younger sisters wanted to buy their mother a flower for Mother’s Day. To raise money, they collected 18 soda pop bottles and got two cents for each bottle (a refund of the deposit). In addition, young John had three cents saved, and so they had a total of 39 cents. All together they walked to a florist shop, and young John put the money on the counter and asked if that would be enough to buy a flower for their mother for Mother’s Day. The owner of the shop, young John remembers, “came over, looked us over, and said, ‘Just a minute.’ He went in back and came out with a geranium plant with gold foil wrapping around the pot. He took my three dimes, a nickel, and four pennies, and said, ‘Thank you very much.’ I had no idea that the cost was about four times as much. And we went proudly home carrying a flower plant for Mom.”
• A woman who uses the name “Jaybird” when posting on HelpOthers.com tells of a woman who worked at a local convenience store where Jaybird and her husband bought gas. One day the woman was not wearing her glasses because she had broken them and could not afford to buy a new pair. Unfortunately, the woman really, really needed eyeglasses. Jaybird and her husband thought about how they could help the woman, so they turned to their own optometrist, asking him to call the woman and have her come in for an eye exam and glasses and they would pay for everything. The optometrist did that, telling the woman that anonymous donors were paying for everything. The optometrist also waived the fee for the eye exam and reduced the price of the eyeglasses by 50 percent. The woman enjoyed telling her customers in the convenience store the story of how she got her new glasses.
Guns
• Dave Marr and Tommy Bolt used to play against each other after making a friendly wager. Dave often lost, but despite not having much money, he was always able to pay off his losses by using merchandise he had won in amateur matches. After yet another loss to Tommy, Dave remembered that he had a shotgun in his trunk that he won at an amateur contest recently, and he thought that Tommy might be interested in it. So he got the shotgun and walked back to the clubhouse. Dave relates, “Tommy took one look at me coming through the door with a shotgun and almost died on the spot.”
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Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Golden Youth"
Album: FIGURE IT OUT
Artist: Bonesetters
Artist Location: Started in Muncie, Indiana in 2009; ended in 2017 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Info:
“Thanks for the support and enjoy the work.”
Bonesetters were:
Cody Davis
Drew Malott
Sam Shafer
Dan Snodgrass
They have made much of their work FREE on Bandcamp.
Price: FREE DOWNLOAD
Genre: Alternative.
Links:
FIGURE IT OUT
The Bonesetters on Bandcamp
Audiotree Music Discovery
Other Links:
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David Bruce's Blog #1
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Michael Egan
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Project Veritas Ruling
NYT
A New York judge has upheld an order preventing The New York Times from publishing documents between conservative group Project Veritas and its lawyer and ruled that the newspaper must immediately relinquish confidential legal memos it obtained.
The decision Thursday by State Supreme Court Justice Charles D. Wood in Westchester County, released Friday, comes in a defamation lawsuit Project Veritas filed against the Times in 2020.
Months after the lawsuit was filed, the newspaper reported that the U.S. Justice Department was investigating Project Veritas in connection with the theft of a diary belonging to Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter. In that story, the Times quoted the memos, leading Project Veritas to accuse the newspaper of violating attorney-client privilege.
Wood upheld his earlier order preventing the Times from further publishing the memos, and also ruled that the newspaper must turn over physical copies of the documents and destroy electronic versions.
The newspaper reported it would appeal the ruling and seek a stay in the meantime. Publisher A.G. Sulzberger decried the ruling as an attack of press freedoms and alarming for “anyone concerned about the dangers of government overreach into what the public can and cannot know.” He also said it risked exposing sources.
NYT
Dark Back-Story
It's a Wonderful Life
When we think of Christmas movies it's hard not to conjure up in our minds' eye the classics: Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Carol, and of course It's a Wonderful Life. Most Christmas movies follow a similar enough pattern: something dire happens and only a Christmas miracle can save the day.
In the case of It's a Wonderful Life, that miracle actually came many years after the film's initial debut. When the movie bowed in 1946, it was such a flop that it ended up closing down the studio and, more or less, ending director Frank Capra's career.
It's a Wonderful Life is based on a novel of the same name by Philip Van Doren Stern, written in 1938. When no publishers responded to the story, Stern instead printed it on Christmas cards which he then sent to friends and family. One such card wound up in the letterbox of film producer David Hempstead, who showed it to movie star Cary Grant.
Enamoured with the story, Grant brought it to RKO movies – the studio with which he frequently collaborated. After much back and forth, however, the story was sold to Liberty Films for $10,000 and starred James Stewart.
Far from granting the studio its angel wings, It's a Wonderful Life ended up being the death knell for Liberty Films.
It's a Wonderful Life
Donates 25 Tiny Homes To Homeless Vets
$chwarzenegger
“This is what Christmas is all about,” wrote Arnold Schwarzenegger on Twitter yesterday after personally donating 25 “tiny homes” to Los Angeles-area homeless veterans. Schwarzenegger was on hand at the unveiling, tweeting photos and his own thoughts on the process.
“All of you have the power to do something for someone else this holiday season,” he wrote. “It doesn’t have to be big. Just give a few minutes of your time to help someone else.”
Anyone who lives in Los Angeles knows the city has a housing problem that has, in part, led to a broadening homelessness crisis. According to an annual count by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, from 2019 to 2020 homelessness in the county increased by 12.7 percent to 66,433 unhoused people. The number of those people who are also veterans is about 4,000, according to Village for Vets which helped execute the tiny homes project.
Those numbers are almost certainly an undercount because the Homeless Services Authority census, which is conducted each January, was not done in 2021 due to the pandemic.
Schwarzenegger provided $250,000 for the homes and of course a little star power to the project. Village for Vets made the project happen. It sounds like the initiative also had some help from the U.S. Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs Denis McDonough and American Veterans, a Congressionally-chartered service organization representing the interests of 20 million veterans.
$chwarzenegger
'Boomer'
Candace
Right-wing podcast host Candace Owens (R-Delusional) says former president Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up)’s recent vocal support for Covid-19 vaccines can be explained by his generation’s experience with inoculations and his lack of familiarity with the internet.
During an appearance on Owens’ podcast and YouTube show on Wednesday, Mr Trump defended the effectiveness of the jabs in preventing hospitalisation and death.
After Owens — who has called the lifesaving vaccines “pure evil” and claimed that one would “never” be injected into her — said people were “questioning” the shots’ effectiveness, Mr Trump interrupted her to defend the jabs developed with funding from his administration under “Operation Warp Speed”.
Owens was widely mocked for her part in the exchange by a number of prominent conservative personalities, including former The View co-host Meghan McCain, who wrote that it must “sting” for Owens’ “golden god” to call out her “antivaxxer bulls**t”.
In a Friday livestream, Owens claimed that Trump’s embrace of the Covid-19 vaccines is the result of his reliance on mainstream news sources, which she said had left him unfamiliar with unsubstantiated theories that question the vaccines from more obscure websites.
Candace
Tactics Under Scrutiny
LAPD
Not long after Los Angeles police killed a teenage girl while firing at a suspect in a North Hollywood clothing store Thursday, Albert Corado started getting texts from friends and jumped on the phone with his father to process the familiar emotions together.
The similarities to the fatal LAPD shooting of his 27-year-old sister, Melyda "Mely" Corado, as she worked a shift at a Trader Joe's in Silver Lake in July 2018, were clear, he said — and infuriating.
Much about the fatal LAPD shooting of 14-year-old Valentina Orellana-Peralta — who was at the Burlington store with her mother trying on dresses for a quinceañera when she was shot through a dressing room wall — remained unclear on Christmas Eve.
But it has already sparked widespread anguish and outrage, particularly in a year in which shootings by Los Angeles police officers increased after years of declines. The violence has also brought scrutiny about the tactics used by the responding officers and whether there were ways to de-escalate the situation without opening fire or at least not putting Valentina in harm's way.
A heavy metal lock was recovered near Elena Lopez, police said, but no gun. Video posted online appeared to show a man smash a front glass window of the store with a lock on a chain and then enter the store shortly before multiple police vehicles arrived and officers began walking toward the entrance with guns and projectile launchers drawn.
LAPD
Globa Shortage
Chips
News of the global chip shortage has been so far-reaching this year, it's become a meme. "I'm sorry I forgot to do the dishes, there's a global chip shortage." But as with many online jokes, there's a kernel of truth to it. The semiconductor chip crisis is real, and it's had a serious impact on our lives. Cars are more expensive and harder to build. Computer makers are rushing to keep up with an insatiable consumer demand for remote work and school devices. And countless products have been delayed, with release dates being pushed like dominoes throughout 2021 and into the coming years.
While it's an issue that affects practically everyone, the chip shortage has been particularly painful for gamers. A year after the PlayStation 5's launch, it's still practically impossible to order one. (At least, not without paying an exorbitant markup, or following stock bots like a machine.) And PC players itching to upgrade their GPUs, who have already gotten used to dwindling hardware supplies and skyrocketing prices, will have to live with their old video cards a bit longer.
As Forrester Analytics' Glenn O'Donnell tells Engadget, the issue is mostly a simple supply and demand problem. You can point to several reasons for that: carmakers lowered their hardware orders at the start of the pandemic, with the assumption that consumers wouldn't be interested in buying new vehicles. It turns out the opposite was true – the overwhelming demand has pushed used car prices up significantly. Chipmakers were also forced to keep up with a rising demand for PCs, game consoles and a wide assortment of gadgets while also dealing with production slowdowns amid COVID lockdowns and other precautions.
"I'd like to say things have improved, but they actually have gotten a little bit worse, and I'm not surprised," O'Donnell said in a recent interview with Engadget. In April, he argued that the global chip shortage would continue throughout 2022 and into 2023. Now, he's even more convinced that we won't see any major relief until then. While future chip fabs from Intel, TSMC and Samsung could boost supplies, it will still take at least two years from when those companies break ground to when they're up and running. Intel began construction on its two Arizona chip factories in September, and it doesn't expect to have them operational until 2024.
Basically, get used to chip shortage, as we'll be suffering through it for a while. In an interview with Nikkei last week, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger also confirmed that he expects the situation to last until 2023. "COVID disrupted the supply chains, causing it to go negative," he said during a press event in Malaysia, where the company is investing $7.1 billion in manufacturing and packaging lines. "Demand exploded to 20 percent year-over-year and disrupted supply chains created a very large gap ... and that exploding demand has persisted."
Chips
Year Of Wildfires
Numbers
2021 proved another disastrous fire year for the American west.
Amid a historic drought and record-breaking heatwaves, wildfires that erupted across the US burned close to 7.7m acres. Some broke records that had only recently been set. And while the amount of land burned this year didn’t reach 2020 levels, a troubling new trend emerged: fires are getting harder to fight.
The statistics tell the story of a fire season that now stretches far into the year, fires that have grown more ferocious, and climatic conditions that are causing the blazes to behave erratically and dangerously.
Wildfires used to be largely confined to a four-month period but the threats are now felt through the year. By 21 June, close to 29,000 wildfires had already ignited across the US – roughly 4,000 more than average years according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
The threats didn’t subside after the summer and autumn. Blazes burned through Montana and Colorado into December this year and fire weather warnings prompted power safety shutoffs in southern California over the Thanksgiving holiday in late November.
Numbers
The Dreyfus Affair
France
It’s been more than a century since the Dreyfus affair first electrified France.
But when a museum dedicated to the infamous saga flung open its doors recently on the banks of the River Seine, it seemed to carry an unwelcome resonance.
The false accusation that a Jewish army captain was a German spy divided France at the time but has long stood as a symbol of the nationalist fervor that swept the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This new effort to memorialize the episode was launched amid fresh fears of far-right success — and a renewed fight over French identity and history.
Éric Zemmour, a firebrand TV pundit turned presidential candidate who is himself Jewish, shocked many in the country and beyond by questioning the innocence of the wrongly convicted Alfred Dreyfus, according to local media reports, and by claiming that France’s wartime Vichy regime had “protected” French Jews while handing over foreign ones. Zemmour has said he wants France to be proud of its history. “Our glorious past speaks in favor of our future,” he said in a video announcing his candidacy last month.
But the pundit’s revisionism and rapid rise in popularity left mainstream French figures concerned that ideas once consigned to the fringes were increasingly becoming mainstream and that in seeking to relitigate these old battles, a more emboldened far right might once again legitimize the politics of hate and exclusion.
France
At 100
Watts Towers
A hundred years ago, in what was then the semi-rural farming community of Watts, a 40ish-year-old Italian immigrant laborer named Sabato Rodia bought a little home on a dead-end block by the railroad tracks and started collecting junk.
The roar and rattle of Pacific Electric Railway red cars was almost constant, but that didn't bother Rodia. Perhaps he was already envisioning what would become National Historic Landmark No. 77000297, casting its otherworldly spell on such admirers as Charles Mingus, Betye Saar, Buckminster Fuller and Nipsey Hussle. The train traffic might have annoyed Rodia's wife, but it gave him a daily audience for the building of the wonder we know now as Watts Towers.
Before long, Rodia was filling his three-sided yard with rebar, concrete, wire mesh, broken Fiesta ware and Bauer ceramics, cast-off Malibu and Batchelder tiles, stray shells and bottles. He called the project “Nuestro Pueblo” (which translates to "our town" in English), perhaps as a nod to the neighbors in a mixed community of Latino, white, Japanese American and Black families.
By the end of 1921, his towers were well under way to becoming one of Los Angeles' most admired and least understood landmarks.
Are the towers open on the centennial of their birth? Officially, no. They have been closed for restoration since 2017, but people still come to marvel at Rodia's work. The fences around the lot are low, the towers soar nearly 100 feet high, and there's more to see than the structures themselves.
Watts Towers
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