deathmtn

We got through two birthday parties in one day! We finished the The Wild Robot Escapes. But also we're now wiped, and I bought a kid guitar at a yard sale this morning that I have just learned is untunable.

So much had happened recently that when we were talking about a school open house with some other parents that I was shocked to hear that it was yesterday morning. It felt like three days ago.

We got The Wild Robot Escapes yesterday evening. We're four chapters from the end already. The guy said he "really wants to know what happens next in the book." It's quite the feat of children's book writing!

Jessica Hess's oil paintings. That last grassy alley painting is so fantastically balanced in terms of color, land and sky, and the natural and artificial.

10-4-4-4-4-4. Might have to start using a counter for sets. Was only sure about the number of sets by noting which way I was walking after the last set and the fact that I alternated walking direction after each set in order to conclude it was probably six sets.

Wikipedia on Another One Rides the Bus:

Brian May, the guitarist of Queen, found the song amusing, and said in an interview, "There's been a few cover versions [of 'Another One Bites the Dust'] of various kinds, notably 'Another One Rides the Bus', which is an extremely funny record by a bloke called 'Mad Al' or something in the [United] States—it's hilarious."

Mad Al!

We got The Wild Robot Escapes!

Dag, lost count of sets. 5-5-5-2-5 maybe?

11-4-4-4-3-3 today. Nice weather meant the bike path was swarming with coworkers, and I prefer not being seen doing pull-ups, so I had to be surreptitious.

I just thought of a pretty good curse: For the rest of your life, a guy shits next to you, no matter what you're doing.

A good refresher from Kara Swisher:

He [Trump] can monitor (yes, that’s definitely a creepy word) and watch all he wants, but it will not matter one bit. Because the First Amendment requires only that the government not make laws that restrict freedom of speech for its citizens.

Here’s the whole text if you need a refresher — and anyway, it’s kind of short: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Basel, Switzerland-based art collector and curator Klaus Littmann will plant 299 trees in the Wörthersee Stadium in the Austrian city of Klagenfurt as a statement on climate change. For Forest: The Unending Attraction of Nature, a temporary intervention scheduled to open on September 9, will be Austria’s largest public art installation to date.

It's a cool statement, but worth it just for creating the experience. I'd definitely go to a stadium to look at some trees.

Some cool old shirts. Particularly striking is that sans serif font (maybe Arial, actually) that Deicide used to use. Great contrast with their flamed-up logo. It has a really stark, along with that very sober trifixion that has partial pentagrams connecting them. It's almost like a math book diagram.

Bad weather was a primary cause of the Great Famine:

Between 1310 and 1330, northern Europe saw some of the worst and most sustained periods of bad weather in the entire Middle Ages, characterized by severe winters and rainy and cold summers. The Great Famine may have been precipitated by a volcanic event,[4] perhaps that of Mount Tarawera, New Zealand, which lasted about five years.[5][6]

Changing weather patterns, the ineffectiveness of medieval governments in dealing with crises and population level at a historical high made it a time for little margin for error in food production.

That it was possibly precipitated by a volcano on the other side of the world is astounding.

ViaJoe Gregorio.

RIP another malapropism: The guy now says "restaurant" instead of "restronaut".

I didn't know this: The EU started as more of an industry-council-type thing, more like the G8 than a democratic body.