Departing the Sensory

I'm going to start posting about tech junk, and I'll start with this observation. Microsoft's OneDrive is pretty terrible. I tried to move a large number of files to the cloud (I have 1TB OneDrive storage), and it has proven basically impossible to accomplish. The OneDrive app crashes my network, and it's not even clear what it's doing in the background because the UI is garbage. It's constantly reporting different file numbers and total file size to be synced to the cloud, but the two numbers don't seem to work in concert with what's actually on my physical SSD.  Also, you can't upload files from an external drive, that doesn't work. So if you have a 500GB SSD in your ultrabook, it's essentially impossible to use your full 1TB on the cloud. Yes, technically you can probably move a block of files from the external drive to your local drive, sync those up to the cloud, set the files to stream on demand rather than be stored locally, delete the...

  (Lola in Idaho) I can say with much confidence that Lola was a once in a lifetime type of dog. Lola loved her pack. Lola’s pack were people, particularly—I hope—John and me. I say “I hope” because Lola loved all people. She licked babies' faces. She crawled onto the laps of friends and family. And on countless occasions, she jumped into the beds of overnight house guests. What was remarkable about Lola’s indiscriminate love for all humans is that in her early years, humans betrayed her. We don’t know much about Lola’s background, but are nearly certain she was abused. She had scars on her paws, and when I first adopted her, she cowered at the sudden movement of a hand. Still, despite the betrayals of her early years, Lola continued to love both the stranger and friend alike. This, I believe, is a testament to her inherent forgivingness. We witnessed her forgivingness in more simple ways as well, such as her willingness to let me cut her nails despite my repeatedly cutting her q...

Lola “Beastie” McCallum got her last scratch behind the ears on February 9, 2021 as snow fell softly outside. Born perhaps in West Valley City, Utah to unknown parents, she led a rough and tumultuous existence for three or so years before winding up in a Salt Lake City orphanage with many others of her kind. She was rescued from that circumstance by her gentle demeanor and the fine taste of her rescuer. The two were inseparable, immediately. Lola rolled in the marrow of life. She adventured with her companions in the mountains and in the desert, in forest and in sand and in snow. She treed squirrels in the Tushar Mountains and visited Pando, the largest living thing. She watched from the zone of totality in the Wind River Range as the moon blocked the sun during the Great American Eclipse, and she listened as the woods grew silent in awe. She explored the source of the Green River, and swam in the cold jade waters that give the river its name. She watched the full moon rise over the ci...

 [Below is a lightly edited email I sent to a friend recently. We were discussing journalism generally, and particularly the major print and Internet houses. I was trying to make the point that fair & objective reporting doesn't require journalists to treat all political statements as potentially valid -- being "fair" doesn't require ignoring truth or falsity. -- Ed.] * * * I'm so old I remember when HRC said "you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables," and everyone flipped the fuck out. HRC's own internal expert concluded , for example, that that particular comment caused the biggest shift in undecided voters of the election. (Sidenote. While I buy the comment induced a big swing in undecided voters aspect, I don't buy related analysis that the comment was what got Trump elected. The EMAILZ!!!1! non-scandal and the late Comey letter were much more important in that regard, because the election ...

Hilling Black Aztec with my father's widest hoe, I cut weeds and pull chocolate earth to hills of four and five stalks. It's not easy work and best done early. Halfway on my last row I found myself not unlike Black Aztec with roots in another soil and still with memory of the network of mutuality. And as I hilled this seed crop, I felt my core strength building, stronger together, the only way I know how to live in this America that holds no container capable to contain our grief. We can no longer escape. We are the world once again.

Source: CDC / WHO There are two ways to beat the novel coronavirus. One is to take sufficient social steps to get R0 (reproduction rate, or "r naught") down low enough so that the virus burns itself out for want of new hosts. Estimates vary wildly, but current data suggests an R0 of around 2.5. We need to get it down to somewhere as low as 0.3, from what I understand. Doing so requires meaningful testing, contact tracing, and quarantine. The other way is to achieve herd immunity, either via vaccine or via acquired immunity after infection or some combination of both. It's pretty clear at this point that the U.S. is going for herd immunity rather than suppression of R0, given the Trump Administration is doing literally nothing that suggests the latter (and is in fact advocating for the former, albeit not explicitly). Basically the U.S. is doing what Sweden is doing, but without the honesty and without the social safety net and national healthcare system. Herd immunity requ...

Elmwood in a Queen Atlantic Now this is a stick of unsplit elm, damn near taking up the entire firebox, just added to a bed of elmwood coals. Elm is the perfect burning wood for this lowery spring. Despite what has been written about elm burning "like churchyard mold," I have found that if you cut your elm standing dead, and when the bark has just begun to slip, but not yet falling off in sheathes, and you cut it stove length and put under cover, you'll have the perfect cheery spring fire, enough to drive away the dampness, but not enough to drive you out! In 1976, we joined Bertha O'Brien, her granddaughter Grace, and their boarder Leland Smith, a retired teamster who had spent the better part of his life doing the field work for farmers in the area. Bertha had lived in the house her entire adult life and was about 94 at the time. She was in charge of the cooking. It was a ham dinner, from one of their own pigs. The only cooking stove in the old low po...