Cranky Old Man #85
a frothy mix of leftovers and links
“Now, come on. What was I supposed to do? He was out of town, and his two friends were sooo fine!”
I chuckled all through this hour-long podcast that explains everything you probably never wondered about, about making The Macarena. My favorite part was a brief interview with a woman whose name is Macarena — a nice name before the song came out, she says, but less so after.
The ‘check engine’ light came on in 2009, so I took it to the shop because that’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s one of those rare shops that don’t try to shake every dollar out of your bank account — Seversin’s, on Milwaukee Street — and they told me they couldn’t find anything wrong. They simply reset something so the ‘check engine’ light went off. No charge.
It came on again a few hundred miles later, though. This time I ignored it until the car needed some other work I’m incapable of doing, and told them, “Please fix the blah-blah, and also, the ‘check engine’ light is on again.” They fixed the blah-blah, and again couldn’t find any other issues to repair, so once more they dimmed the ‘check engine’ light.
It came on again, a few hundred miles later, and since then, the car’s been in the shop several times — I told you, it’s a Chevrolet — but I’ve stopped mentioning the ‘check engine’ light. After 13 years, it’s just part of driving the car, an indication that the motor is running.
Is there a point to this story? Yeah, but it’s not particularly sharp, only this:
There are serious problems in life that should never be ignored. Also, there are false alarms. Determining which is which can save you lots of time, trouble, and money.
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Some dedicated or demented soul put serious work into this project, for which I’m glad. You go to this website, and it tells you what time it is (your local time), via a literary quote, properly credited.
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“You are who you say you are,” was famously the motto of Loompanics, but I believed it instinctively, before I ever heard it put into words. You’re lots less free without the freedom to name yourself.
Luckily for me, in my era it was still possible to be who you said you were, and there are people who knew me for years — some still do — without knowing me as anyone but Doug Holland. That’s not the name on my birth certificate, though, which is why I’m not a big fan of the birth certificate. It proves who you are and cannot be changed — that’s the whole idea. I never knew, though, that birth certificates came from outlawing child labor.
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I’ve never dabbled in social media except at Reddit, but I remember how things worked when Reddit was hands-off with controversial material. It became an unflushed toilet, overflowing with hate and racism and other assorted stupidities. When Reddit decided they didn’t want to be in the unflushed toilet business, they banned the most offensive and dangerous groups and contributors. After that, it got better.
Substack has an anything-goes philosophy, similar to early Reddit, so it’s predictably becoming an unflushed toilet where all turds are welcome — QAnon, white nationalists, COVID deniers, and anyone deplatformed anywhere else.
[Substack’s] founders have outlined a strongly pro-free speech vision of content moderation which — as they acknowledge in the post — is strikingly similar to those espoused by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in the past, prior to those platforms’ significant evolution in content moderation over recent years.
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Corpses dating back thousands of years are switching genders.
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Every state gets two Senators, which gives mostly barren places like Nebraska and Alaska the same power as California and New York. It’s minority-rule, by design.
Between 1800 and 1860 the will of the voting majority was repeatedly expressed in the House, which passed eight antislavery bills. The will of the slaveholding minority was repeatedly enacted in the Senate, which stopped those measures. In the first half of the twentieth century, the majoritarian House passed multiple civil rights measures—from antilynching bills to abolition of the poll tax. Each time, those bills were killed in the Senate.
In my opinion, the founding fathers fucked up.
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A rare look inside the Smithsonian’s secret storerooms
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Ana de Armas fans sue for $5-million because she was cut out of Yesterday
In which I learn who Ana de Armas is.
♦ ♦ ♦ One-word newscast:
• macaque
• Republicans
• Starbucks
They’re dead, Jim:
• Ricardo Bofill
• Israel Dresner
• Lusia Harris
• Yvette Mimieux
• Fred Parris
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Mystery links — Like life itself, there’s no knowing where you’re going:
Tip ‘o the hat:
All Hat No Cattle • Linden Arden
BoingBoing • Captain Hampockets
Follow Me Here • John the Basket
LiarTownUSA • Messy Nessy Chick
National Zero • Ran Prieur
Vintage Everyday • Voenix Rising
Extra special thanks:
Becky Jo • Name Withheld • Dave S.
and always, Stephanie
1/23/2022
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