In English, “What did one statue say to the other? Don’t move!”
On a kindergarten level, this is already funny, because statues are known for
their ability to not move.
But what makes it a pun is that, in a Chilean accent, movái is a homophone of
Moai, the well-known Easter Island statues.
In fact, anywhere else in the Spanish-speaking world you would say “No te
muevas” (or in Argentina “No te movás”), which would ruin the joke. But in
the Chilean voseo form, this becomes “No te movái.” And Chileans, who often
drop consonants, especially v’s, and even more so when getting all
voseo-folksy, would say “No te moai.”
Idea for an app: You ask questions, it gives you answers. If it is wrong, you get $5. It is allowed to say “I’m not sure, but here is my best guess,” in which case there are no guarantees.
For Independence Day, we had tickets to the Dodgers game, and my daughter was
excited about the prospect of a fireworks show. The fireworks were great,
although it was a little awkward as tens of thousands of fans had to sit
through an 18-1 blowout just to get to the end of game celebration.
The ceremonial first pitch was thrown out by Rick
Monday, Dodgers royalty who, as a
player, was before my time but who is known more broadly for his work on the
radio broadcasts, which I rarely listen to. Not enough to have any personal
feelings toward him as a person or personality.
The July 4th tie-in was the time that Monday “heroically” saved an American
flag from a center field protest in 1976 at Dodger Stadium.
I grew up in Idaho, in the 90s, as a member of the Boy Scouts, surrounded by
Vietnam veterans. So I absorbed a lot of the content-free “disrespecting
America should be illegal” discourse that always completely sidestepped the
ideologies of the protests and treated the protesters as rabid America haters.
But I also heard the personal stories of men who went through hell, telling
themselves that their country needed their sacrifice, only to arrive home and
find out that the situation was more nuanced than that.
So I was understandably skeptical about the whole rah-rah America attitude,
especially while a whole segment of our leaders are intent on destroying our
institutions and calling it patriotism, while a large portion of the population
is intent on respecting their authority and calling it patriotism. Of course,
it didn’t help that Monday paired up with election
denier
Blake Treinen to throw out the first pitch. And I wasn’t terribly surprised to
find
out
that at one point Monday tried to save the American flag from Colin Kaepernick
as well.
Kudos to the Dodgers, however, for picking Lauren
Evans to sing the national anthem.
In a time when mediocre white men are shameless enough to claim with a straight
face that the existence of a minority in power is evidence of anti-White
racism, it is good to be reminded that a Black woman can match and beat their
“patriotism”.
And while the Dodgers, mercifully, don’t generally follow the “God Bless
America”
tradition,
they made an exception for Independence Day. But once again, they asked Lauren
Evans to sing, and it was good to be reminded that this is her land, her
home, my land, my home, their land, their home, and not just Trump’s land,
however much he wants to claim it for his own.
I like to think someone in the organization planned the whole thing to piss
Rick Monday off. They even managed to show him on the video boards, standing as
Evans sang for blessings on our mountains and our prairies, looking bored out
of his mind.
Shoseien Garden, Kyoto
Kumatakasha, Fushimi Inari Shrine, Kyoto
Lotus Flower at Shinobazu Pond, Ueno Park, Tokyo
Yanaka Cemetery, Tokyo
Inspired by Nate Anderson, we started reading Lord of the Rings seven months ago and finished today. Various members of the family participated from time to time, but most devoted was my six year old, who didn’t miss a session.
Honestly the most damning part of the Apple revelations are that Tim Cook was personally involved in figuring out the wording of the scare screen. Does he write the Notification Spam too?
We have a half dozen Kobo readers in our family, and the Kobo Libra 2 only comes
in two colors, so you don’t always know whose is whose.
By default, the Kobo will show the cover of the book that you are reading, but
you can override this by putting a PNG image into the folder
.kobo/screensaver. The Libra 2 has a screen dimension of 1264 by 1680, so
ideally you match this aspect ratio. You may need to modify some of the energy
saving settings; I actually had to make sure that “show current read” and “show
book covers full screen” were both set to On.
Then I had ChatGPT make a cartoonified image of each of us reading a book in
some setting. Here is mine, which I told it to make “Lord of the Rings” themed.
It is goofy but serves its purpose and makes me laugh.
I had a flight from Tokyo that departed on Tuesday and arrived on Monday, so
of course I took advantage of the opportunity to stress test some apps.
Resaonable handling by Day One (pictured). Very poor handling by Apple’s sleep
tracking (not pictured because I don’t even understand where it went wrong).
