Tag: uspol

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Photo of a well worn 1916 dime in a metal and plastic case with the text: "NEUTRON IRRADIATED - AMERICAN MUSEUM OF ATOMIC ENERGY"

This was one of those weeks that felt like it was dragging at times, but flew by. Yes, a total contradiction, but maybe you know what I’m talking about. Maybe “flew by” is my excuse for not having anything top of mind to write about. I didn’t even take a random picture this week, so we’re digging into the archives.

The irradiated dime pictured here turned up while we were packing earlier this year. I had thrown it in with a pile of other, random coins at some point and forgotten about it. These irradiated dimes were a popular souvenir in the 1950s and 60s. My grandparents had visited the American Museum of Atomic Energy in Oak Ridge, TN during that time. Years later, I was given this encased coin to help fill out my meager coin collection.

Grandma didn’t have a lot of information about this dime other than where they got it. She certainly wasn’t prepared to answer any safety questions about a potential radioactivity. We didn’t have the Internet back then, so I was instructed to do what people did before they could just search it up: Write a letter.

To my—and perhaps my parents—surprise, someone from the museum wrote back. They included some history of these irradiated dime souvenirs, and assured us that the dime was safe to handle. While this was surely a relief for my Mother, I had hoped that it was still a little radioactive. The idea that this old dime was shooting out invisible energy was kind of cool.

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Photo of a snow yeti in a blue and yellow shed decorated with holiday lights in front of a Brooklyn brownstone. The yeti is holding a sign with text: "We're all in this together ♥".

This week ended with what looks to have been an execution of an American citizen by federal agents on the streets of Minneapolis. In Heather Cox Richardson’s comments about The Killing of Alex Pretti, she says that 16 people have the power to put a stop to this nonsense immediately. All of us should be putting pressure on our elected officials in Washington now—especially if those officials are Republicans.

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Photo of a framed painting of a black cat holding a toucan in it's mouth, which, in turn, is holding a pint of stout in its mouth. The text reads "Lovely Day for Grimness".

I’m a full week late on this post. Partially because I’m having trouble not thinking about the events in Minneapolis and elsewhere. I’ve been asking myself if I should I bother writing about little side projects and such when government agents are murdering people with impunity?

This is the compromise I’ve made on this impasse: I’ll say my piece here, then move on to the typical, lighter fare in my next post. If you’ve had enough of people’s takes on this administration’s antics, feel free to stop reading now.

Continue reading →

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Photo of a green moving truck parked on a Brooklyn street with the text "Otter Moving & Storage" and an animated Otter carrying a cardboard box.
Don’t otters crack things open on rocks?

Another relatively quite week around here allowed time to continue some projects. I reached a good stopping point on the jukebox project while waiting for the required hardware. The software, complete with a serviceable web UI, is done (for now). I loaded up 200 tracks and meant to press it into service for New Year’s Eve. However, on the night, I was too lazy to connect it to the Hi-Fi. I’m sure they’ll be another opportunity to test it soon though.

In the meantime, I moved onto another project I mentioned here almost a year ago. Embarrassingly, I did little with since. One of the many things on the todo list is to reliably source real time subway data. This MTAPI project should be better than what I had done previously. I added the service alert data to it and I hope the project owner pulls in my changes soon. That will allow me to swap out my old data source for this one.

Between the projects, a bit of socializing, some good food & drink and an excellent Friday evening jam, it was a great start for the new year. Until…

After just three days, my hopes of this year being less interesting have been dashed. The actions of the current administration in Venezuela fly in the face of international law, have killed innocent people and put us all on a path of uncertainty. Per usual, Heather Cox Richardson provides some good context.

We are living in interesting times, indeed.

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Spent some more time on the personal newsletter script I started back in July. It’s in a pretty good place right now and I like getting the updates every morning. I’ll post a quick write-up on my projects page shortly.

This week’s Jamulus jam was just two of us. Thankfully, we weren’t plagued with the same connection/sound quality issues as last week. We started messing around with an original song by the lead singer. It has a lot of potential, I just need to come up with a grooving bass line.

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