A friend uses “Gladys Kravitz” to describe a certain type of busybody, and that is much better than calling these people “Karens.” I have known many Karens — actual women named Karen — and I can’t recall ever having a problem with any of them.
Indeed, if you’re starting a new job and being introduced to your teammates and one of them is named Karen, remember that person. She is a good egg and will be your friend. She will show you how things work, give you credit for your work, cover for you when you screw up, and occasionally bring delicious banana bread.
How do you solve a problem like a paywall?
The current state of paywalls means everybody loses, writes journalist CT Jones. Readers find it difficult to gain access to articles. News organizations, who are desperate for readers, are pushing those readers away. AI and SEO slop fills the gap — as does propaganda.
Journalists need to get paid or journalism doesn’t happen. Jones writes about his experience with “paywall backlash,” which taught him yet again that “some of the loudest critics [of paywalls] don’t see reporting as labor at all. They see journalists and writers as obstacles, standing in the way of what they already believe. It’s why people were upset that I said writing my article was hard and it’s why they chastised me for assuming people would read past the paywall or even click on the article. Because they didn’t see my article as work.”
A partial solution would be to make it easy for readers to pay a nominal amount for just one article. In the days before the Internet ate journalism, I could walk into a newsstand, browse the racks, find a single issue of a magazine or newspaper with an interesting article, and buy that one issue. There is no equivalent on the Internet — you have to subscribe and ending the subscription is painful.
For a business event, I stayed for one night at the Tree House Inn in Sunnyvale, Calif., a delightful and playful boutique hotel with a rustic theme, like an upscale Catskills resort with a sense of humor. Every room has a crate of old records in it. Though I was at the hotel for only 13 hours, I took some time to photograph every album in the crate in my room.
When I was checking out, the desk clerk told me that guests could request a record player and play the records.
Japanese architect Tadao Ando designed and donated a floating children’s library.
In a letter to the children, Ando writes: “I hope they will travel around the world aboard a ship of hope, equipped with the knowledge and imagination to do so. I hope that, by reading many books aboard the Children’s Library: Hon no Mori-go, children will discover a special book of their own, cultivate the ‘strength to live,’ and joyfully spread their wings from the Seto Inland Sea toward the great ocean of the wider world.”
I took Minnie back to the vet to check on the progress of her ulcerated eye and find out if we can stop giving her eyedrops and take the cone off her. The vet tech took her in back and I sat in the waiting room until they were done.
Two women came in with a chihuahua-terrier, who took one look at me and jumped up on the bench next to me. I gave him head-skritches and he curled up pressed against me at my side as if we had known each other our whole lives.
His name is Bear. I am now a king. Bear says so.
As for Minnie: Alas, she needs another week of the eyedrops and cone. We’ve only been doing the eyedrops-cone routine for a week. It took me a few days to get the hang of the eyedrops – it was a struggle getting her into position and I got more of the fluid on the side of her face than in her eye. I got good at it after a few days, but then I had to go out of town overnight and Julie had to start from scratch.
As for the cone: She only seemed interested in scratching at her eye occasionally, so we kept the cone off her when she was supervised. However, I think she was scratching her eye when we weren’t looking. So we will enact tighter cone discipline and take advantage of my exceptional eyedrop skills and hopefully all this will be behind us soon.
HPE lands first AMD Helios order in $1.2B Vultr deal. HPE’s first AMD Helios order, from Vultr, flexes the merged HPE-Juniper’s capabilities as a full-stack provider. My latest on Fierce Network.
Attack of the Night People [Cautionary Tales/Tim Hartford]: ‘If you tuned in to late-night WOR radio in 1950s New York, you’d enter the secret world of Jean Shepherd. Shepherd’s nonconformist style, off-beat humour and love of pranks gathered a small but loyal following. These “Night People” loved being in on the joke, while the oblivious “Day People” were often the butt of it. Shepherd’s show is long gone, but his spirit lives on in corners of the internet. Today, though, Night People go by a different name.”