rashbre central
fun going forward
Wednesday 6 November 2024
ain't no sideshow now
Tuesday 5 November 2024
Monday 4 November 2024
twitter abandoned at last
Sunday 3 November 2024
rookie cleat mixup
Thursday 31 October 2024
Desolation of Smug
Friday 25 October 2024
Unredacted Steele
A curious book, in which Christopher Steel reveals much of his life story. From school to post-Trump legal battles. I was expecting more new stuff, but I think I'd desk researched much of it previously, so the surprises were limited.
Wednesday 23 October 2024
a few more days
I've mainly tuned this one out. It was shouty enough when I was in New York recently. Christopher Steele's book considers the Trump win a catastrophe. A "new world disorder".
Saturday 19 October 2024
Wobble the market
Goofing around, I thought I'd try this little micro-economic exercise in the FT. Interesting...I got it close to the balanced numbers but had to break a couple of Fiscal Rules that the government recently declared. The effect was to make the markets wobble, but I think it says more about the vacuousness of the markets holding the economy in their thrall.
It takes about 5 minutes to set up the parameters for a round. Fascinating.
Tuesday 15 October 2024
Chunks of German with the fabulous Anja
I'm always the one who protests at having to learn all of those tables of 'der, die, das' and so on and say it interferes with speaking to one another. I say I prefer a 'Lego block' approach to a language where I can assemble pre-formed phrases to make longer sentences.
Well, it turns out that Anja agrees and she calls it 'chunking' - from the British Council origination of the word - although I can't help thinking about tinned carrot jokes.
Anyway, yesterday was a case in point where I was on a one-hour 'party' call with Anja and then jumped off the call onto Zoom with my Stammtisch buddies. For personal reasons I've missed several of the Stammtisch calls and they were surprised to see me return. However, I was immediately asked if it was alright to be tested on definite and indefinite articles and found myself in a world of nominative musculine singulars and so on.
Now I'm more of a bluffer, so I'll admit my word-endings can sometimes come out wrong, but on the whole I go for what I think 'sounds right'. Anja has the precision to know the grammatical underpinnings and will correct mistakes, but I think we both agree it's better to have a go at the sentence rather than to remain quiet. Here's an introduction...
Sunday 13 October 2024
a Rorschach of my crash - Rachel K.
Rachel's on the left with Emily, in a Photo Booth in Woolworth's. It's not now.
I'm mad keen on Kushner's The Flamethrowers and also just read (I'll do it again) Creation Lake. I'll review it sometime, - spoiler- five stars.
Because of Creation Lake, I also read The Hard Crowd, which comprises essays from Kushner on many topics from her life. Starting with the Los Cabos bike race, the Baja 1000, where she's injured as she crashes a 130-mph bike when someone pulls out in front doing 30 mph. The essay evokes the grit, oil and attitudes of the riders. Something of Reno's wipe-out on the salt flats in Bonneville. With a 20-year old's perspective, so not all-knowing.
The inspirations for The Flamethrowers crop up a couple of other times in the collection, notably when she describes some pictures, which I could recognise as the novel's cover art. Weirdly I checked the current cover and found it was something different.
Kushner is one of the coolest friends you'll meet. From Eugene, Oregon, to San Francisco, working in nightclubs, with the biggest rock bands, mentored by Don DeLillo, time in Cuba, also Jerusalem, New York, France and Italy. And an interior worldview packed with intelligent and provoking outlooks.
Always on and challenging. High stakes.
Saturday 12 October 2024
The internet
- I see a friend pop up on Facebook - I'm alerted via email. I try to read his message, but it suddenly wants a recovery code. I request one, but nothing appears. I don't respond to my friend.
- I want to check something in my medical records, yet find that all the older ones have mysteriously vanished from the system.
- One email system stops working mid-September, yet doesn't issue an alert.
- My electricity supplier has recently installed two new smart meters but can't pick up their data in the internet control panel. I have a new home display but find it inscrutable.
- I try to bookmark an article but the subscription service it is from tells me incorrectly I have used my free download limit. Yes, I'm signed on.
- A service that I use swamps me with marketing messages becasue it hasn't separated out tranactional responses.