[y66]

Feeding the Hungry, One Wholesome Meal at a Time

Quote

In recalling the events of her own life, and in plumbing those memories for meaning, Ms. Quinn prods readers to find meaning in their own struggles, to recall the too often overlooked beauty in their own lives.

[y66]

David Gerard, author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain said:

Just assume the El Salvador Bitcoin thing is absolutely as dumb as it looks, and you’ll make correct predictions.

https://davidgerard....-a-tether-scam/

[y66]

From a conversation between Terry Gross and Michael Pollan (2018):

Quote

GROSS: When we started our interview, you were telling us how you gave up coffee cold turkey when you were writing your book "Caffeine" because you wanted to know what's it like - what impact does caffeine have on you and, to find out, you stopped it to see what the difference was. And to see how addictive it was, you did it cold turkey, so you could get the full force of ending your addiction.

POLLAN: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: And then after how many months you decided to start drinking?

POLLAN: After three months, yeah.

GROSS: And...

POLLAN: It was three months on herbal tea.

GROSS: And when you started drinking it again, was that still part of the experiment, or just 'cause...

POLLAN: Yeah.

GROSS: ...You couldn't bear to live without it anymore?

POLLAN: Oh, no. No, it was part of the experiment. I went as long as I could. But I knew before I finished the book that I would want to describe, you know, getting back on caffeine. I fully intended to get back to it. There - I didn't learn - you know, aside from the sleep issue I mentioned earlier, there are not a lot of reasons to avoid caffeine. I mean, there are a lot of health benefits to drinking coffee and tea in moderation. Coffee and tea are protective - appear to be protective against several kinds of cancer, Parkinson's disease, cardiovascular disease. There's been a suspicion that coffee must be terrible for you. From the very start, in the 1600s, they claimed that it reduced male potency. And...

GROSS: (Laughter).

POLLAN: But it's been cleared of that, too. So there isn't a good reason not to drink it unless you have a problem with it - it makes you jittery, or, you know, your doctors told you not to. So I fully intended to get back on it. And I looked forward to the day, and I planned it very carefully. Initially, I thought I'd go to the original Peet's, and that would have a kind of poetic logic to it, but it's a little strong for me.

So my wife and I, Judith, we went to this local cafe where we used to go every morning before I had my fast, and I got my coffee and sat outside. It was a Saturday morning, and it was kind of a beautiful day. And there were lots of dads with little kids, you know, eating pastries. And I had this cup of coffee, and it was mind-blowingly good.

GROSS: (Laughter).

POLLAN: I just - I - you know, I just had this sense of well-being suffusing my body that, you know, rose to the level of euphoria. And I was like, wow. And it seemed like I had taken some kind of illicit drug, that this was cocaine or something. And that lasted for maybe 20 minutes, and then I got a little jittery and a little tetchy. And there was a garbage truck that was, you know, violently shaking these garbage cans into it across the street, and I was like, let's get home. I have to - I want to get some stuff done.

And I felt this incredible surge of almost compulsive desire to get to some - get some stuff done. And I sat down at my computer, and I unsubscribed from about hundred listservs that were really bugging me (laughter) that - you know, these things come up on your computer every day, and you never have time to deal with them. Well, I dealt with them. And then I turned to my closet, and I saw that the pile of sweaters was all scrumbled (ph), and I organized all my sweaters. And I was incredibly productive for a couple hours.

Anyway, the experience made me realize that getting back on coffee and tea is very different than having your maintenance dose. And so I thought, is there a way I could hold on to the power of this drug experience? Otherwise, I was going to slip back into the ranks of, you know, normal caffeine addicts. So for a long time, I said, all right, just have coffee on Saturdays. And for a long time, I did that, and it worked pretty well. And I looked forward to Saturdays. I got a ton of stuff done. But eventually, the slippery slope intervened.

GROSS: So what is caffeine doing for you now?

POLLAN: What caffeine is doing for me now is kind of organizing the rhythms of my day. I mean, something, you know, I missed when I was off caffeine is there is that - you know, that morning surge and that sitting down to work and having that kind of real focus as you attack whatever you're doing for the day. And then even - I enjoyed even the subsiding after lunch and that lull that you got around 3 o'clock, and you could have a cup of tea and that would kind of restore your energy for another hour or two. It just - the rhythm of the day was shaped by ingestion of this molecule. And it's doing that for me now, and I understand that rhythm, and I can - you know, I thread my work through that rhythm, and it works for me. And I did miss it. You know, would I do another fast? I might. I mean, it - you know, I have to say that the pleasure of breaking that fast (laughter) was so great that it's almost worth the work.

GROSS: So some people say, in comparing coffee and tea, that coffee is such an upper that it gets you to lose focus, whereas tea gets you to increase focus. What do you think?

POLLAN: I think it all depends on how you kind of titrate it. When I have a cup of coffee by my side and I'm writing, I don't take a bunch of sips because you can get - you're right; you can kind of overrun yourself, outstrip your mind and get a little too forward, get ahead of yourself. So I think though that we kind of automatically do that. I mean, if you look at when people take a sip of coffee, something's going on. It's not just that they're thirsty. They're reaching - you know, there's some rhythm of the experience that they're modulating, and we do this subconsciously. I think you can do the same with coffee or tea. I don't think it's inherent. But for me, writing, sipping coffee is, you know, really helpful. I didn't feel the same when I was doing that, certainly with herbal tea. You know, I say in the book, what masterpiece has ever been produced on chamomile tea?

(LAUGHTER)

[y66]

From She Fell Nearly 2 Miles, and Walked Away by Franz Lidz at NYT:

Quote

“For my parents, the rainforest station was a sanctuary, a place of peace and harmony, isolated and sublimely beautiful,” Dr. Diller said. “I feel the same way. The jungle was my real teacher. I learned to use old Indian trails as shortcuts and lay out a system of paths with a compass and folding ruler to orient myself in the thick bush. The jungle is as much a part of me as my love for my husband, the music of the people who live along the Amazon and its tributaries, and the scars that remain from the plane crash.”

Before 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic restricted international air travel, Dr. Diller made a point of visiting the nature preserve twice a year on monthlong expeditions. Much of her administrative work involves keeping industrial and agricultural development at bay. She estimates that as much as 17 percent of Amazonia has been deforested, and laments that vanishing ice, fluctuating rain patterns and global warming — the average temperature at Panguana has risen by 4 degrees Celsius in the past 30 years — are causing its wetlands to shrink. A recent study published in the journal Science Advances warned that the rainforest may be nearing a dangerous tipping point.

“After 20 percent, there is no possibility of recovery,” Dr. Diller said, grimly. “You could expect a major forest dieback and a rather sudden evolution to something else, probably a degraded savanna. That would lead to a dramatic increase in greenhouse gas emissions, which is why the preservation of the Peruvian rainforest is so urgent and necessary.”

Under Dr. Diller’s stewardship, Panguana has increased its outreach to neighboring Indigenous communities by providing jobs, bankrolling a new schoolhouse and raising awareness about the short- and long-term effects of human activity on the rainforest’s biodiversity and climate change.

“The key is getting the surrounding population to commit to preserving and protecting its environment,” she said. “Species and climate protection will only work if the locals are integrated into the projects, have a benefit for their already modest living conditions and the cooperation is transparent.” And so she plans to go back, and continue returning, once air travel allows.

[pilowsky]

Yesterday I was unable to do my banking because Akamai technology broke the internet.
Fortunately, they had a backup computer - here is a rather prolix description of it. http://bit.ly/WaterComputer.

[y66]

Good read: Noah Smith interviews Marc Andreessen

[y66]

From William Poundstone's review of "Turing's Cathedral" by George Dyson

Quote

Von Neumann was no stereotypical mathematician. He was urbane, witty, wealthy and (literally) entitled. At his 1926 doctoral exam, the mathematician David Hilbert is said to have asked but one question: “Pray, who is the candidate’s tailor?” He had never seen such beautiful evening clothes.

[kenberg]

 y66, on 2021-June-23, 08:42, said:

From William Poundstone's review of "Turing's Cathedral" by George Dyson

Thank you.I will buy it. I will even read it.

While I was in high school I toured Remington Rand in Minneapolis. This would have been in 1955 or 1956. Huge vacuum tube computers.

A couple of years later I was in college taking a programming course. The review cited above speaks of using numbers both as numbers and commands. Yep. And locations. The idea was to take a number stored in one location, add it to a number stored in another location, and ut the result in a third location. So the command to add was part of what was written in numbers, then the various addresses where the various numbers were to be found.

This was all done by punch cards in binary. We would write up the sequenceof commands and give the list to a secretary. To make life easier, the secretary learned how to convert octal to binary, so we could write our programs in octal.


I can't quite say that I was there at the beginning, but thinking back at what was so stunning in the mid-50s and what it has all come to is a kick.

Von Neumann and Turing and Godel. No fiction writer could make this up.

A completely irrelevant personal note. Remington Rand was a computer tour. Earlier in life, I toured the Ford Motor Company and the Pepsi-Cola bottling company. And a sewage treatment plant. I remember it all as a lot of fun.

I look forward to reading this book. Thanks again.

[y66]

Dan Neil said:

The Plaid’s signature trick: the instant, seamless, soft-singing surge of scarcely endurable thrust, from whenever, until you see Jesus. On a deserted road in Nevada, I romped it from a slow roll to 160 mph in less than 18 seconds and I wasn’t even at 100%. Good brakes, too.

https://www.wsj.com/...=hp_featst_pos3

[y66]

Past, present and future walk into a bar. The situation was tense.

[Winstonm]

 y66, on 2021-June-29, 13:04, said:

Past, present and future walk into a bar. The situation was tense.

But was it perfect?

[Winstonm]

Donald Rumsfield passes into the known unknown.

[y66]

re: kids and grandkids, I love this this line from Giri/Haji:

Quote

It's a long walk around the garden of my pride.

The protagonist mentions it to describe his feelings for his rebellious teenage daughter and adds that his mother used to say these words about his brother but never him.

The writing is uneven but there are some really good performances. On Netflix.

[y66]

Zaila Avant-garde, the winner of the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee.Scott McIntyre for The New York Times

Ms. Avant-garde has also set Guinness world records for her basketball skills.

More.

[y66]

Camila Alves at her wedding to Matthew McConnaughey said:

I don't want nothin', just all you got to give.

[y66]

Mark Tallentire, Sydney Morning Herald said:

Collin Morikawa is the British Open champion, the young Californian with the cool demeanour and intelligent outlook chasing down playing partner Louis Oosthuizen and holding off the resurgent Jordan Spieth to become the first man to win the world’s oldest major at his first attempt since Ben Curtis in 2003 on the same course. He seems destined to win many more.

https://www.smh.com....719-p58atp.html

[y66]

Seth Meyers said:

By the way, it turns out the beds were not made of cardboard to discourage sex, but to encourage people to recycle, which is another way to discourage sex.

[pilowsky]

What does this map show?

[kenberg]

 pilowsky, on 2021-July-21, 18:10, said:

What does this map show?

Well, whatever it is, apparently Minnesota and Wisconsin are similar, which seems reasonable, but then California and North Dakota are also similar which is more puzzling.

I give, what is it?

[Gilithin]

 kenberg, on 2021-July-21, 18:52, said:

Well, whatever it is, apparently Minnesota and Wisconsin are similar, which seems reasonable, but then California and North Dakota are also similar which is more puzzling.

I give, what is it?

This