this week i

rented a uhaul to havre de grace to center city to blackwood to brigantine.  aunt ro traded her guest bedroom furniture for the set joseph morinelli bought my mother on his cutter's salary, i passed out after the first pinocchio cuckoo clock scene with a stomach full of cheese steak and root beer

what do you want to do tonight?  recline.

did we tell you about the girl who dresses as a mermaid every day?

where's mauritania?

south of morocco, it was the last country to make slavery illegal

i guess someone had to be the last

 lit a morning bonfire in the weber

11/26

this week i

updated our estimates of the uninsured

spotted a dark-eyed junco

 

live through this convulsion of technology.  for 999,500 years, our species had been playing in the dirt.  we'd all been peasants and pursuants.  in the past 500 years, we've transitioned from a society where everybody hunts or harvests their own food into this new age of cultural complexity.  in the past 500 years, we've let go of thoughts about our next meal.  in this modernity, the security of a full belly has broken loose of our ability to fish or to farm.  for 999,500 years, humanity focused on solving one problem.  suddenly we've shifted to start solving all the others.  exciting to be here

read about mathematizing human behavior and psychographics.  to conquer humanity, artificial intelligence only need be smarter than humanity 

 everything, one day, might be predictable, and everyone, every human mind, simulated, each act anticipated, automatically, and even driven and directed, by targeted messages as unerring as missiles

if you're reading on a device, your reading behaviors will be correlated with those of multitudes of other people.  if someone who has a reading pattern similar to yours bought something after it was pitched in a particular way, then the odds become higher that you will get the same pitch

overlapped magellan's voyage at three points so far.  columbus visited the americas twice before western europeans confirmed a seaway to india

believe teeth the feature of our anatomy most likely responsible for our first realizations that the human body does not last forever.  if a manhattanite born 150 years ago walks fifth avenue today, they'd be less shocked by the crowds and bright lights than the share of the elderly

saw my father's obituary in print

Rocco D'Amico, child-welfare specialist

Rocco D'Amico, 77, a specialist in child-welfare systems who ran a consulting business as president of the Institute for Human Services Management, died Aug. 25 at his home in Bethesda, Md. The cause was hypertensive cardiovascular disease, said a son, Anthony D'Amico.  Mr. D'Amico was born in Philadelphia and had lived in the Washington area since 1964. He was a welfare systems specialist at what is now the Department of Health and Human Services, the Urban Institute and the American Rehabilitation Foundation before going into business for himself in 1981 as a consultant in such child welfare issues as foster care. He retired in 2008. 

 

11/19

this week i

published on the health of next year's privatized medicare and prescription drug marketplaces

answered gettysburg college alum brendan's call, he said thank you, we spoke 52 seconds, glad he called.  impersonal campaign, our smiles masked

ask to turn off the fire hydrant.  the american media gave this president the space for his voice to amplify.  throw him out of office, then off of the front pages.  our society hasn't yet figured out the guardrails needed for electronic dialogue, and so corporations driven by click metrics created this diseased deluge.  de-escalate the presence of disinformation in our daily media algorithms.  remove the liars, the bullshitters from the front pages.  never hold microphones in front of someone who you don't believe unless you're allowed to ask questions after every statement.  no god above truth

enjoy a life born of the american experiment.  "bronx" sounds like the contestant lost a gameshow noise.  birds of mid-atlantic childhood sound like

recall my parents' cocktail hour restaurant in the etcetera nightclub.  benson ordered lunch, my father confused hollandaise sauce with vichyssoise

cooked salmon tacos, in town for the coda of their first life outside portland.  do you have a rolling pin?  if not, we'll use a bottle of wine

paraphrase mitch hedberg: "i used to be awkward.  i still am awkward, but i used to be, too"  will aliens wrap up 2020?  cooper's hawk hello

read about silo trespassers in university and our transactional world

harvard economist raj chetty..demonstrated that at elite universities there are more students today from the top one percent than from the bottom 60 percent

much of the chinese labor force is close to slave labor.  free unions are not permitted, and norms of compliance bind workers to enterprises; a troublemaker who protests abusive working conditions risks dismissal or arrest

as louis brandeis was said to have remarked, "we may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both"

11/12

this week i

drove to harrisburg to knock on doors.  can't spell patriot without riot. mtk on c-span saturday night, h.r. mcmaster more personable than expected

every thirty seconds, a young latino becomes eligible to vote

saw lon chaney walkin with the queen.  this configuration keeps me up at night, maryland the original swing state.  curiosity the healthiest emotion

hiked hawk rock, where the juniata joins the susquehanna.   autumn the best season for the same reason friday afternoon the best time of week

tried out a laptop replacement.  unlikely my grandparents were born into homes with electricity, my father's first home lacked telephone

11/5