I learned a new word: bumf, meaning “reading materials (documents, written information) that you must read and deal with but that you think are extremely boring.”
According to the Merriam-Webster site, it’s of British derivation, short for toilet paper or (pardon me) bum fodder.
You’re more than welcome.
Lewis & Clark
Is Physics out of ideas? The Nobel Committee just gave a Physics award to a COMPUTER SCIENTIST! What does this say about the state of modern Physics?
Source: Geoffrey Hinton, the Godfather of Deep Learning, wins Nobel Prize in Physics! – Daniel Lemire’s blog
Listening to: Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman by Alan Rickman 📚 Starting from a few years after his screen debut in Die Hard, these entries skate across the surface of his life, but Jesus, so much surface, such a busy life. I like his tart, terse reviews of plays, movies, and people.
Finished listening: Sense of Wonder by Bill Schelly 📚 Mainly for comics enthusiasts, a memoir of Schelly’s growing up in the Silver Age of Comics and his involvement in comics fandom. So far, so ordinary. Yet his ordinary life includes his growing awareness of his homosexuality, fathering two children with a lesbian couple, and pouring enormous amounts of energy into a quite marginal artform – fanzines – that nevertheless was a lifeline for marginalized personalities like his own: artistic, nerdy, introverted, and – because of their love of comics – pretty socially isolated.
Daniel Lemire on how the current system of producing PhDs is backward and unsustainable. As he says,
“…[T]his system works like a charm as long as universities are expanding. But what happens when they hit the brakes? You guessed it – a PhD glut.”
During my year in PhD land I was always astonished by stories of the medieval personnel management practices and politics, and the infantilization of the PhD holder: stand before us every few years to justify your existence and why we should let you stay in the club.
A few personalities are well-adapted to the system and succeed in staying themselves while climbing their ambition’s ladder. But too few.
Most of what I write about here is minutia about me. So … me-nutia?
Across these differences, their food and service are so dependable that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) consults an informal “Waffle House Index” to determine the severity of a storm’s impact on a community, where “Red” corresponds to a closed Waffle House, “Yellow” corresponds to a limited menu, and “Green” indicates an open Waffle House.
Source: The Photographer Capturing the South From Waffle House Booths - Gastro Obscura
“It is a most wonderful comfort…”
Found by Liz: Lake Street Dive Plays “I Want You Back” On a Boston Sidewalk
The unchosen thing is what causes the trouble …
I had no job. I was about to have no house, I still hadn’t found a boat. I had jumped into all of this without any kind of a backup plan. Every other accomplishment in my life had been part of a sane, linear progression. Now I faced a series of unknown what-ifs. What if my house deal fell through? What if I couldn’t find a boat I could afford? What if I couldn’t handle a boat? What if I got sick or ran out of money? All I could do, I realized, was surge ahead, clear one hurdle at a time, and keep on believing that I would be okay.
It wasn’t much of a game plan, but it was what I had…
Mary South, The Cure for Anything is Salt Water
Currently reading: My Father, the Pornographer by Chris Offutt 📚. Well-told, great details, and he takes his time unfurling the discoveries and weaving them in with his memories. But God, what a harrowing childhood he and his siblings had. Told with a tone of rather tired remembrance; there’s love there, sometimes (for his friends, his siblings, his mother), but little joy.
These are not serious people, and their proud and weaponized indifference is another reflection of their hollow rottenness and their desire to inflict their flaws on all of us to do a tremendous amount of damage, quickly. These days, some of the stupidest things are often also the most frightening.
Source: Florida’s Commissioner of Education thinks Jane Austen was an American. ‹ Literary Hub
“Proud and weaponized indifference” – Yes, this.
Finished audiobook: I Must Say by Martin Short 📚 We’d started listening to this last year and I finished it solo last night. Audiobook is the best way to experience Short as he does the voices, the characters, the singing, and his timing is exquisite. The middle career years are a bit of a slog, though he tipped me to some movies of his I’d never heard of. But the book’s heart is his relationship with his wife of 30 years, Nancy; the book’s last long sections detailing her cancer treatments and death were hard, tender, and full of love. I was so moved by his last conversation with Nancy that closes the book, and how his relationship with her was neverending (the book was written four years after her death). Come for the great showbiz stories, yes, but stay for the heart and the person.
A local online news service staffed by Duke journalism students recently started using AI to identify and draft news stories of interest. The AI has surfaced strong local content, but the articles need vetting and editing. More: Early lessons from 10th Street - 9th Street Journal
Good Lord…
Local exposure to poor individuals reduces support for redistribution among the well-off. In other words, wealthy people are more likely to favor government programs helping the poor if they never see poor people. Source: Science and Technology links (May 25 2024) – Daniel Lemire’s blog