Category Archives: Curiosities

October 25, 2024 · 23:33

The Stupidest Timeline

If you live off in the country or a rural-ish area or even a small city where things are a bit more normal and less “cool,” you might be lucky enough to not yet have seen one of these abominations in person.

In Los Angeles, we’re not so lucky. I present to you the Tesla Cybertruck, officially the ugliest, most useless, most disfunctional piece of shit ever put on the American roads.

For months now I’ve been seeing them almost daily just driving to the office and around down, but this was the first time I had seen one parked (at my office) and got up close to it. It’s worse up close, just hideous.

From all of the constant reports of massive recalls, to social media postings about how fragile and troublesome they are, to just the simple ugliness of everything about them, it’s astonishing that there are Elon Musk cult brodudes that are paying $100K to $120K or more for them, only to have them be broken and useless at the drop of a hat.

We are indeed living in the stupidest timeline. Even aside from the politics of the day, the MAGAts, the new American Nazis, and everything involved with our deteriorating and collapsing society, THESE are the clearest sign that we’re devolving into a dystopian nightmare.

My money says that the Venn diagram comparing Cybertruck dudes to MAGA cult members is a perfect circle…

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Filed under Curiosities, Los Angeles, Photography, Politics

March 25, 2024 · 22:33

Sixty-Eight & Six

I have rarely gotten too agitated about birthdays, but there was definitely something going on with this one. For the last month I’ve just had this growing “itch” at the back of my brain whenever I thought about last week’s birthday coming up, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure it out. Until last weekend, just before my birthday.

In short, last Tuesday I turned sixty-eight years old. Today it’s six days after that birthday. But last weekend, I realized that my father had died of a massive heart attack five days after his sixty-eighth birthday.

I’ve always thought that the human brain and consciousness is pretty amazing and there are depths there that we haven’t begun to plumb. But having my subconscious brain apparently be aware of that connection (which is what I firmly believe was going on) while my conscious brain was clueless is just bizarre. And how my subconscious finally got the message across to my conscious side is even more bizarre.

Let me state for the record that I’m not a believer at all in ghosts, the afterlife, spectral messengers, and the like. The Long-Suffering Wife is a believer and she has her own opinion on what happened. We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that. But still…

Two days before my birthday, I woke up in the middle of the night with an extremely vivid dream. In the dream I was doing my upcoming drive to Texas for the eclipse and I had stopped after dark in a remote, almost empty diner. The only other patron in the diner was a sad, lonely woman who wanted to talk to me while I ate, then wanted to come with me to see the eclipse. Her name was Connie Navarro.

Her name was important in the context of the dream, important enough so that I wrote it down when I woke up from the dream, then went and Googled it when I got up. I did not recognize the name at all, don’t know anyone by that name, and to the best of my knowledge I have never heard it before.

Surprise! “Connie Navarro” brings up a LOT of hits online, almost all about one woman. She and a friend, Susan Jory, were both murdered in 1983 in Bel Air by a jealous boyfriend when she broke up with him. He was convicted and given the death sentence, later commuted to life without possibility of parole. Connie’s notable also because of her son, Dave Navarro, who was a guitarist with Jane’s Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

One of the websites I found near the top of the search results was highlighted. You know how the link is purple instead of blue when you’ve been to that site before? The website was for the FindAGrave.com and it had a memorial page for Connie Navarro. I went to it and then I was curious where I had ever gone to this site before. I didn’t remember that. But there was a “login” button and it found an account for my email address. When I connected, it took me to information about my father’s gravesite in Orange County. Which had his birthdate and date of death. And his age at death – 68.

Um… yeah.

That will leave you sitting there thinking for a few. On the one hand, it’s good to finally understand what’s been tickling your subconscious. And the sense of relief that swept over me left little doubt that I had indeed found the answer to the puzzle that I didn’t even know I was solving. On the other hand…

Twilight Zone | Twilight zone, Twilight, Twilight zone episodes

You can’t make this shit up. Okay, yeah, you can, but I didn’t.

So.

Today it’s the sixth day after my 68th birthday. I’ve officially lived longer than my father did. And I’ve had either an extremely fascinating experience or an extremely spooky one. Probably both.

One thing I remember my dad always mentioning, usually with a bit of humor mixed in, was to be cautious and pay attention whenever I feel “an impending sense of doom.” (You need to hear that phrase in the kidding-around-with-a-five-year-old-son “dad voice,” which I’m sure most of you did already.) I learned what he meant and I’ve often had experiences where something’s “off” that I can’t quite put my finger on. Usually that’s something relatively minor, like messing up a report or attaching the wrong file to an email. I’ve gotten good at hitting the brakes, listening to my subconscious, and doing a last double check to catch those kinds of errors. It has paid off.

This was bigger. More doom. Better quality doom. Nothing but the finest doom for my sixty-eighth birthday!

I’m listening. I just wish my subconscious would take a more simple, more direct route to tell me what’s up.

On the other hand, did I mention that for my birthday I found a truly excellent stick? I didn’t see that coming either.

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Filed under Curiosities, Deep Thoughts, Family, Paul, Photography

February 6, 2024 · 23:39

North Side

I noticed something surprising with all of this rain. You know that big tree out in the back yard that you see all the time in my pictures?

It’s turned green.

It’s moss. I’m guessing that it’s always been there, but it’s normally dormant and dry — and brown.

I’m not a botanist, so it’s a total guess, pure speculation (if anyone actually knows, please chime in to confirm or correct), but being soaked for four days straight might have “activated” it finally.

I thought at first it might be a trick of the light. It hasn’t been sunny, or well illuminated, out here in days. Nope. There’s green stuff growing all over the bark.

And not just green stuff, but also what seems to be purple stuff as well. But in the end, I’m not 100% convinced on that. It could be that the “purple” is just the same old brown in bad lighting in contrast to the green stuff all around.

A google search for “purple moss” gives you a type of sea weed that’s sold as a food supplement, but no actual purple mosses, so that’s one strike.

For the record – all of this moss *IS* on the north side of the tree.

Long ago I learned (incorrectly) that moss grows only on the north side of trees, a trick you can use if you’re lost in the woods. It turns out that’s not true, moss is only more likely to grow on the north side of trees and rocks because it’s shadier and cool, and that’s only in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere… Well, let’s leave that as an exercise for the student.

 

 

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Filed under Curiosities, Photography, Weather

December 18, 2023 · 23:44

A New Volcano In Iceland

The new volcano in Iceland near Grindavik has finally erupted tonight. It was threatening since late October and was one of the locations and settings that inspired my failed attempt at the 2023 NaNoWriMo.

I find it fascinating to watch. To the point where I can watch for hours and then all of a sudden say, “Shazbatt, it’s 23:34, and I had better post something to keep my consecutive days streak going!” It would be easy to just be watching and then have my watch beep for midnight – I would say bad words.

My favorite solo camera view is here.

The multicamera view is here.

There’s a map of where the eruption and the cameras are here.

The news (in Icelandic, but your browser should be able to translate it into English) is here.

Unlike the eruption of a couple years ago, first indications are that this will NOT be a tourist-friendly eruption. Stay home, watch it on the webcams.

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January 31, 2023 · 23:48

Paul’s Septuple Slit Experiment

If you’ve studied physics, or even have a casual layperson’s interet, you’ve probably heard of Young’s double-slit experiment. It’s an early exploration into the nature of light and demonstrates some effects of quantum mechanics.

Now in my backyard I seem to be accidentally creating a far more macro-scale experiment of my own.  Soon after it started to drizzle and rain lightly, I noticed that underneath this lawn chair it was still dry. Shouldn’t SOME of the rain drops get through the slits in the chair’s webbing, leaving wet strips instead of one big dry spot underneath?

There are seven openings in the webbing, so instead of a double slit experiment it’s a septuple slit experiment.

Underneath the far side (better seen in the first picture), between the front and back right-hand legs, there are seven spots or holes, spaced about right for the seven slits. I’m guessing that’s from the heavy rain recently, where water is accumulating and dripping down into the dirt from the seven straps?

I’m also guessing that I’m easily amused. But that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone reading this site for very long, now, should it?

 

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April 3, 2022 · 22:50

It Was, Of Course…

Part of my daily breakfast is a hard boiled egg, so every Sunday night I prepare six of them using this handy, dandy hard boiled egg maker that my wonderful daughter got for me a few years back.

Sometimes, not often, but sometimes an egg will crack a little and a bit of the cooked egg will spill out.

Tonight there was a “CRACK!!” like a rifle shot that could be heard across the room, with this result.

It was, of course…

An EGGPLOSION!!

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October 10, 2021 · 23:58

Gobsmacked Today

I’m a little tired and fried tonight (been an odd weekend for lack of a better term) so I’ll share one mind-blowing factoid that I learned this weekend. I even double checked to make sure it wasn’t a silly meme thing designed to see how many folks would fall for it. Ready?

Historically and chronologically, Cleopatra lived closer to today than she did to the building of the Great Pyramid at Giza.

Wow!

I know that in a very general sense, I figured they were sort of concurrent. At least, within a few hundred, maybe a thousand years. That’s a pretty broad range. And I’m handicapped by having an American education.

But Cleopatra lived from 69 BCE to 30 BCE, roughly 2,180 years ago (to her birth). Where the Great Pyramid of Giza was started around 2,550 BCE, and finished about 2,500 BCE.

Gobsmacked!

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August 13, 2021 · 22:49

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

The photo isn’t from today, but seems appropriate for a Friday the 13th.

Things seeming a bit wonky today? My iPhone knew how you felt.

Not edited or Photoshopped – just…off

May your Saturday the 14th go smoothly!

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Filed under Computers, Curiosities

October 24, 2020 · 23:56

An Extremely Fine Line, Indeed

A friend from high school sometimes referred to certain “odd” classmates as “easily amused.” It seemed appropriate at the time.

On the other hand, especially as I’ve gotten into my later decades, I’ve developed a major appreciation for the ability to maintain a childlike sense of wonder, particularly in regards to some of the simple things in life.

Today I had an experience that I initially thought was full of childlike sense of wonder, but my brain shouted at me that I was just easily amused, and it occurred to me that the difference between the two states might be an extremely fine line, indeed.

The subject in question was water temperature. Specifically, water temperature gradients in an insulated sports bottle.

Here’s a quick, crappy picture of said insulated sports bottle:

(This is my Angels bottle – don’t worry, OF COURSE I have a Chiefs bottle! But this is the one that amused/amazed me today.)

So, fill it with ice and water (or any other fluid) and it will keep it nice and cold for hours. Ditto for hot chocolate or soup, they’ll stay hot for hours. Thermos bottles have been around since I was a kid, had one in my lunch box in first grade way back before most of you were born. It works as expected and designed.

Let it sit for a day or two and forget that you put ice and cold water in it and you’ll have 18 ounces of room temperature water. As expected.

But somewhere in the middle there…

I’ve noticed a number of times that there’s a middle ground where if one picks it up without undue jostling, pops the top, turns it over and chugs it, you can very distinctly taste the room temperature water first, then getting several degrees colder, and then by the end getting much colder water.

On the one hand, that’s what I would expect as well in a “big picture” sense. Fundamental fluid dynamics says hot fluids or gasses will rise, cold ones sink. So it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that the top water in the bottle, which I drink first when I turn it over, is warmer, and the bottom water, which gets drunk last, is cooler.

What DOES surprise me is that the temperature difference is so distinctly noticeable. It’s not a subtle difference. Secondly, I’m surprised that the water stays differentiated by temperature even as the bottle is picked up, opened, and upended. I would think that there would be enough disturbance there to mix the water and destroy the effect.

Yet the effect is there – I notice it all the time.

So – childlike curiosity and wonder at the simple facts of our bizarre existence on this dust mote in the infinite cosmos? Or, “You’re easily amused!”

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February 8, 2017 · 23:10

Reality’s A Bitch

…some days more than others.

Why is it that on the day when you wake up late, are supposed to be in a few minutes early, have a blinding headache, get blocked through two cycles of the stoplight by the fire trucks being parked and blocking traffic on Fallbrook, then get stuck behind some clown who can’t figure out what a freakin’ green left turn arrow means…

(cleansing breath – in through the nose – hold it – …three, four, five – let it out slowly through your mouth – all the way out – squeeze it out – now hold it – …three, four, five)

Why is it that on that morning, reality decides to screw with your brain?

Did anyone else know that Lincoln, one of the premier luxury car models in the United States, the dudes with Matthew McConahey being emo in a tuxedo to pitch their cool and trendy and ever-so-desirable cars, yes that Lincoln — sells a pickup truck?

I spent all day thinking that either I was hallucinating badly (and not one of the good kind of hallucinations) or it had to be some sort of joke, a custom job done by someone with a bizarre sense of humor and more money than God.

Nope.

What’s next? It’s madness, I tell you!

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