Had events unfolded just a bit differently, America's most famous highway might have followed another route entirely—or carried a number like U.S. 60 or U.S. 62. Somehow, I doubt Bobby Troup's song would have been quite as catchy if it had been called (Get Your Kicks on) Route 62.How U.S. 66 got its name is actually one of the more interesting—and surprisingly little-known—chapters in Route 66 history. Here's how it happened.A New Way to Number HighwaysBefore the 1920s, most long-distance roads…
Graphic Red, Lululemon – New York, New York My wife and I went into a Lululemon on 5th Avenue, and they were celebrating the US Open Tennis Championships going on at that time. They even had a game set up on the second-floor balcony. I noticed some very graphic red tennis outfits and a matching staircase. It was great for a visual pop. The store was sufficiently bright inside that the Camp Snap took fantastic pictures. As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve found a way to soften the overly sharp…
Get your Q Tips out of the bathroom and meet me back here. You're going to learn how to hand pollinate plants. Because our friend the bee can only do so much and certain plants are notoriously bad pollinators. I'm looking at you cucurbits. This is our friend the bee. You may know him by...Read More
“‘Most kinksters don’t want to buy their shit from some random place on the Internet.’” Adult stores, AI, and adult verification. Read my report from educational seminars at the 2026 Adult Novelty Manufacturers Expo.About I My Book | Consulting I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Email
Instead of the forecasted 20kn of wind, much of the night was hovering around 10kn. While this did hurt our day distance, it did make for smoother motion. As consequence, we both got pretty good sleep. In the morning the wind picked up again, and we’ve been barreling through the big and now a bit splashy waves towards Tahiti. Skies have remained leaden, giving little solar output. At least the hydrogenerator helps some. Point Venus 73NM, 253°. Distance today: 100NM Lunch: pea soup Engine hours:…
Tennis ball rocker feet on my KICKR CORE 2. Last winter, after getting a Wahoo KICKR CORE 2 trainer and designing some variable height feet to level the bike I kept thinking about tennis ball feet. These provide a bit of give, allowing the trainer to rock and pitch a bit, reportedly making it more comfortable to ride. (And yes, for some reason I sat on this post for half a year before finishing it up.) I’ve never really noticed an issue with the static positioning of any of my trainers, but…
(As I’m sitting down to write this, I’m noticing the report and quote I’m reacting to — spotted on Facebook a week or so back — is actually from back in March, during Spring Training, and not at all recent. That said, I’m pressing on and writing it anyway, because I need a July article, and we’re coming out of the All-Star break, so baseball is topical!) Scrolling through Facebook a week or so ago, I spotted a quote, attributed to umpire Richie Garcia, about the Automated Balls and Strikes…
Writing for the world is something which has ebbed and flowed for me over time. I’ve always liked sharing my thoughts, starting with websites all the way back when I was a kid. In times when I sustained it, I had various “blog”-like things for technical projects which would often veer into sharing personal beliefs as well. It’s been a year since my latest attempt at what I expect to be a lifelong endeavor. So I’ve been reflecting on how it’s gone, and that’s led me to make some decisions on how…
[Equations in this post may not look right (or appear at all) in your RSS reader. Go to the original article to see them rendered properly.] You’ve probably seen somewhere that the density of Saturn is less than that of water. If there were a bathtub big enough to hold it, Saturn would float. I think I first read this in one of Isaac Asimov’s collections of science essays. If you do an image search, you can easily find many illustrations of Saturn floating in water. Most of these show no more…
fast enough for harmony the oven timer has found a new voice it's mixed in with the old fast enough for a new frequency the oven timer has an undertone now it's dropping in and out it's fast enough for tension the oven timer has found a new voice a new mix of frustration enough for the reliable three minutes fast the oven timer is tired of it all, maybe, of timing my tea fast enough the oven timer would love a lasagne or even just pasta, all those i simply play by ear it's always just tea other…
Managed a shower, with improvised adjustments so I could sit down (though the shower is designed for a standing person) and also cope with a — surprise! — low-flow shower stream. All very edgy. Then began some attack on the books, which are all mixed up, arranged on shelves in totally new ways in new places. As with pruning my library way down for the move, this requires handling large numbers of heavy books, so that my hands now barely work, cramp up, and hurt like hell. Constantly having to…
The other day I finally checked out a farmer’s market that’s started up nearby, and brought back (of all things) a hardcover of Les Misérables from the local Friends of the Library booth. (Yes, I got food too. No, not from the library.) It’s the Modern Library edition of Charles Wilbour’s 1862 translation, the same one that I’ve seen as an eBook. Somehow I’d never gotten around to picking up Les Mis as a hardcover. In any translation. I’ve got the battered old Denny paperback of course, and the…
This is my best attempt at formulating the thoughts that have been tumbling around my head for the past two years. It’s a bit pessimistic but I think that is kind of appropriate. AI != LLMs. This is one of my biggest annoyances with the current state of “ai”. Every company wants to add some fancy new ✨ AI ✨ feature into their product and most of the time either they would be better served with a more traditional ml or rl model or even worse it could litterally be a tiny bit of good old…
Out on an errand run, I grabbed this shot of an orange dot of a sun trying to burn through the smoke and haze blowing through the US from Canadian wildfires. Forgot to grab my mask as I headed out for the short trip, so traveling from two parking lots into two stores, my throat and sinuses dried up with that burning taste in a hurry. Seeing very little in town traffic for this time of day, it sounds like most folks are heeding warnings and staying inside. Wish I had. Stay careful out there.…
I recently had a good time at a sea music festival. I’ve listened to a variety of nautical music on YouTube and Tidal, and even seen the Longest Johns play at a bar, but I’d never been to a festival like this before, and I didn’t know what to expect. I ended up feeling like someone who had only read about RPGs before, going to my first con and getting to play. It’s much more of an interactive, in-person hobby than I expected. I was struck by just how similar the folk tradition of shanties and…
Baby carrots: the Keto Cheetos. My daughter, after my increasingly poor vision thought a baby carrot she was holding was a Cheeto.
I was thinking of doing laundry, but then think the air will make my clothes uninhabitable on the way back.
Would’ve made a good One Battle After Another double-feature. A wanted couple is staying on the move, low on resources and comrades. Their teenage daughter is starting to become a liability, acting impulsively and attracting attention. In increasing order of importance, the daughter just wants: cigarettes, stability, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, trip-hop. A boy she meets tells her about his parents vacant modernist house, so the family moves in and plans one more bank job. Surely if they can pull…
Waiting for the doors to open for Semisonic with Humbird opening.
Power Cat: Strip 300 2026-07-16 Strip 300
When I want to be immersed in music, I usually listen alone, in those rare moments when life allows the kind of deep listening that evokes images, emotions and dreams. But like dreams, they're intensely meaningful to the person having them, and intensely boring to everyone else. Live music is supposed to be one of those rare moments. At least based on the ticket prices. You get the immediacy, a more all-encompassing sonic and maybe visual experience, shared with a crowd of dozens to thousands.…
Backpacking is limited this year due to the fires. But some opportunities for camping exist in some local-ish peaks. Read More ... Continue reading Local-ish at PMags.com.
Once a year, a little less than 4000 Microsoft MVP's have minor breakdowns, on what some just call "F5 day" (because they are obsessively refreshing their inbox), while others barely notice something is going on until all kinds of group chats wake up from hibernation in the middle of a lazy summer. This year, this day was July 15, and I'm happy (and judging from the myriad of LinkedIn posts the lingo is "humbled and honored") to be renewed for another year. Same category, same technology area,…
The tide rolls in and the ride rolls out. Read More ... Continue reading The Once and Future Bears Ears at PMags.com.
LOST ON MOUNT TAMALPAIS. Gustav Herz Spends Three Days and Two Nights in the Dense Underbrush. He Missed the Trail and Became Hopelessly Astray in the Ravines of the Range. AWFUL HOURS OF DESPAIR. A Seasoned Traveler, He Attempts to Descend to Bolinas, but Was Overtaken by Darkness and Could Not Retrace His Steps - He Was About to Lose Hope When He Found a Fence, and Followed It to the Cabin of Portuguese Cattle Herders and Safety. After wandering for three days and two nights in the ravines…
Given the good weather there are quite a lot of butterflies around this week. This one looks like an old one that has been in the wars, black faded and very ragged. I wonder what tales it could tell. My butterfly by month page is building nicely.
My first harvesting of the year with Glorious Grasslands, and we returned to the same place where we had been two years ago to the day. One of the memorable features of the last harvest here was the huge swirl of hawksbeard seed which really irritated the eyes, and marked the point where safety glasses became a standard part of my harvest PPE. However, today the hawksbeard had mostly blown away. There were five of us today and two harvesters. It was pretty full on from the off, especially as a…
A year ago I was working in the basement for my job of 37 years, today I am in a coffee shop in Loveland, Colorado casually drinking a latte and reading. Nothing more than realizing how my life has changed.
