Real. — Recently visited for a weekend during a month-long trip through Spain. Everything grandiose, lots of plazas, lots of history, Christmas lights (one night only), amazing olives, poor lighting, world-class art, Islamic influence, lines to leave a museum, touristy, siestas, late dinners, vermouth before meals, snacks with drinks, always eating and…

From the programming world. — Bikeshedding To devote way too much time and energy working on and optimizing trivial issues — that are often hypothetical future problems that don’t exist yet — instead of focusing on what’s actually important right now. The term comes from a story in which a group of engineers, architects, and scientists…

We’re not working from home, we’re living at work. — From May 8, 2020 to June 13, 2021. Over a year in real-time, but only half a year spent in New York — the rest was spent eating my way through the South! Covid allowed us to work remotely and experience living in other cities. Living out of a suitcase…

Snippets. Misc Enocide: “Unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.” “Feeling soft and open, I experience a mental quiet I have never known before. I’m able to have one…

Gem Mint. — About With the recent resurgence of the card market, this post attempts a narrow empirical comparison between the two largest card grading providers — BGS and PSA. Grading exploded in 1998 and again in 2020. Between 1991 to 1998, PSA graded roughly one million cards. From 1998 they graded at least…

The island of enchantment. — “It had the unmistakable stamp of the Brooklyn neighborhoods I’ve lived in for many years, though not in the form they take today but as they were five or ten years ago: scrappy but sophisticated, in that sweet transitional spot where it was still possible to feel in on a…

Bites. — Misc Only four presidents have lacked a Christian denominational affiliation, the most recent one in the 1880s. There have been 0 non-religious presidents; one of the 535 members of the current Congress; and about a dozen of all 7,383 state legislators. From 1967 through 2011, California was governed by former movie…

Nuggets. — Aging Well TED Talk. 80-year Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the world’s longest studies of adult life. Scientists eventually expanded their research to include the men’s offspring, who now number 1,300. During the intervening decades, the control groups have expanded. Among the original recruits were eventual President JFK and longtime…

Nibbles. — Misc The term Thomassons was coined by Japanese artist Genpei Akasegawa, and is used to describe any architectural feature that serves no purpose but is still maintained (such as stairs leading nowhere). …