I’ve known about some of Google’s special operators for years, but librarian Hana Lee Goldin goes through all of the ones she knows about that supercharge search results beyond the usual five paid results and AI Overview at the top of the page. Bookmarked!
Listening to a podcast this weekend, I heard a mention of Wire by U2 featured in a first-season episode of Miami Vice scoring a nighttime car chase, and the host said that it was the most 1985 thing he’d ever heard or seen. I would agree. I have long loved this song, my favorite off an album full of fantastic tracks, and it appears on every driving playlist I’ve ever assembled—at the risk of inspiring a speeding ticket. Now I’m binging the first season of the series (available on Tubi) and it is totally taking me back to middle school.
Apparently they don’t play it much live, which is a crime; this is a clip from a 1985 performance during the Unforgettable Fire tour.
“Broadcast is an ice cube that is melting, OK?” Mr. Bilton said, saying the show had to adapt. “Bari loves this institution,” he added. “She loves ’60 Minutes.’”
At that, Mr. Pelley interrupted.
“She is murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” the correspondent said. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”
Bari Weiss, the controversial new head of CBS News, who was hired with no previous broadcast journalism experience, hired a controversial new producer for 60 Minutes: Nick Bilton, a writer with no previous broadcast journalism experience. In an all-hands meeting with 60 Minutes staff (directly after firing the previous executive producer and two longtime correspondents) he was challenged by Scott Pelley, longtime senior correspondent, who challenged him to explain why these changes were made. Thankfully, he didn’t pull any punches. For 6 years, senior officials facing challenges by MAGA or DOGE have quietly resigned in “protest” without doing or saying anything else, as if just leaving is going to make a difference. Bullies do not like when there is pushback. It’s about time someone actually pushed the fuck back.
Bravo, Mr. Pelley. Thank you for showing us the way.
Update: Predictably, the stooges fired him.
Update to the Update: Dan Rather weighs in:
Going forward, every interview, every story, every shot should come with an asterisk superimposed on the screen right next to the CBS eye: *“This story was approved by Donald Trump.”
In the scathing post, there is also a brief glimmer of hope:
The “60 Minutes” formula is replicable, with the right people, enough money, and a platform willing to air it. We have heard from a former “60 Minutes” insider that such discussions are in the works. Fingers crossed. Until then, we are left with a sanitized “60” that will play well for an audience of one.
Inferno was released on Friday, and I really like it. It’s definitely an evolution of the BoC sound, but still works within the soundscape they pioneered 2+ decades ago. This album features drums on select tracks in a way their previous albums didn’t—tracks like Blood in the Labyrinth, All Reason Departs, and Arena Americanada put them much further forward than I remember. The sound of this album is much more….upbeat? than Tomorrow’s Harvest, their last album. I’ve currently been streaming it, but once I’m past the first-of-the-month bills, an out-of-network cancer checkup bill, and prep for IH Nationals, I’m going to buy the CD (remember those?)
* * *
The weather here has been absolutely perfect since the rain broke last week, and I spent as much time as possible outside not sweating and not freezing. I can see why people visited California and never left. The tomatoes in the greenhouse continue to thrive, which makes me stupidly happy. I took advantage of the weather to rent a tow dolly and swap the Scout 800 for the CR-V at Brian’s garage, and I’m happy I didn’t have to sweat my ass off to get it done.
I’ve got a brand-new MacBook Air on my desk after some delays in shipping from Vietnam, and overall I’m very happy with it. I sprung for the larger 15″ model, and it’s taking some time to get used to the new form factor in relation to my old 13″ model (and even my work 14″ MacBook Pro). I used it to finish up and export a video this weekend and I was happy with the smoother previews and speed. It didn’t take long to set up and install my various accounts and software suites—I don’t migrate settings, but prefer to do clean installs—and with only a few short hiccups where I couldn’t immediately lay hands on a serial number, it only took a few hours. Then I carefully wiped the drive on my old machine and cleaned it carefully with cotton swabs before packaging it up for trade-in. I added both of these to the technology list along with the Chromebook.
Along with that, I dropped another, heavier package off at the post office: I was contacted on the Binder Planet about some of my spare soft top hardware, and made a deal to ship a bunch of duplicate steel to a nice guy in South Carolina so that he can make one good top out of a bunch of parts. With that, I’m headed to Nats with $600 in my pocket for any shiny parts I might need.
I heard Regret by New Order at the pharmacy earlier this week and haven’t been able to shake it. Back in the day I had no idea this was the same band that released Blue Monday or had any connection to Joy Division; they were completely off my radar until I was in college. (Remember, I was raised in the State of Classic Rock, in the county of Hair Metal). This song features Peter Hook’s bass melody prominently, which is As Things Should Be, but another great song off this album is World (Price of Love), where he’s conspicuously absent.
Related: one of the books on my library list is Shadowplayers: the Rise and Fall of Factory Records, which chronicles the birth and death of their music label—and the Manchester club they essentially underwrote.
The number 21 is burned into my brain for some reason. I don’t understand why. For as long as I can remember, my neocortex has insisted that my wedding anniversary is on May 21, NOT May 22, the correct date. Thus, I went out last night to find proper flowers for my bride, and after some dead ends I found tulips in a lovely shade of coral and surrounded them with alstroemeria. I had to do this on the bench in the basement quietly so as not to alert Jen; I still have a long way to go in my career as a flower arranger, but I think the overall effect comes across OK.
In any case, Happy Early Anniversary, blondie.
The temperature has been bouncing up and down for the last couple of months, but now that everything is green again we’re well into yard sale season. It’s been pretty slim pickings around here for the last five years or so. I think that a lot of the older families cleaned out and moved on when Finn was a toddler, which spoiled me for variety—walking through the sales with her in the backpack I was always able to drag home good toys, clothes, tools, and other excellent finds. I don’t recall being able to find much of anything last year, and the opening sales this year were just as meager: lots of glassware and kids’ clothes but not much else.
I wrote about my Boy Scouts finds a few weeks ago, and yesterday I hit a community yard sale a little north of here. Within a couple of minutes I scored a free(!) steel wheelbarrow from a couple who’d just sold their house and were looking to get rid of stuff. I’ve repaired our plastic wheelbarrow twice now and it’s on its last legs, so I can make one good solid unit out of two easily. Up the street I found a brand new portable Manfrotto tripod, which will replace my larger travel tripods, and a set of stainless steel restaurant steam pans. Those are great for car fluids of different kinds. As usual there were a lot of clothes and glassware, but I was happy with the stuff I found, and Hazel snoozed patiently in the passenger seat while I walked around.
* * *
My tomatoes are going nuts in the greenhouse, which is a pleasant surprise. All I did was mix some new soil in with the old stuff left over from a couple of years ago, add Tomato-Tone, and drop the plants in. Each one is growing fast, they’ve all started flowering, and three of the four have set fruit as a result of my hand-pollinating. It’s all I can do to keep myself from buying more plants to put out there, but after reading that tomato prices are supposed to spike upward, I’m second-guessing my hesitance.
Meanwhile, the peach tree I bought Jen last fall is covered in fruit, which is a great sign. We planted it on the top of the hill at the west side of the backyard and surrounded it in deer fence over the winter. It came back bigger and greener, and our nightly visitors haven’t been able to nibble on it, which means it’s going to grow big and strong, and my girl will have fresh peaches to make her happy.
* * *
Later in the day I dusted off my black suit and got myself churched up for a trip into DC with the family: my sister-in-law’s PhD hooding ceremony was scheduled for the same day as the Pimlico horse race and a Nationals/Orioles game along with about twenty other graduation events, so traffic was heavy. We got there just in time for the start of the event, and met up with the family at a Fogo de Chau to eat lots of delicious meat until we were all stuffed.
I realize I’ve been doing a poor job of updating this feed with EV swap updates, so here’s a whole pile of them to lower your productivity to a crawl on an overcast Thursday! The newest is at the bottom, which covers Brian and I modifying the battery tray and the spline collar to mount the EV powerpack to the transmission, then doing some welding to mount the three sections together.
I stopped in to Hopkins today for my 18-month checkup, which is the second-to-last one I need to do before they declare me completely clear. Everything is looking good so far; my overall numbers are down most likely because I gave blood about three weeks ago (I did the Power-Red donation, which is geared towards NICU and cancer patients) and that brought my numbers down. Jen was able to come with me this time, and we stopped at Trinacria for our traditional celebratory lunch.
Back in the day, Dad was given a red nylon windbreaker from Ciba-Geigy in his early sales career. It was a very mid- 60’s design: a square band collar work jacket with two pockets. It had design elements that I came to love when I found it in the closet behind his other stuff: a black and white vertical racing stripe on the right breast with a Ciba-Geigy patch on the left. I think that early nylon must have shrunk over time, because it was marked as a medium but was definitely a small, and it fit me perfectly. When I found it, there was no way it would ever have fit on Dad, so I asked him for it. I had it for several years after college and took very good care of it. One night I wore it to a party, and it got pinched when I wasn’t looking. Heartbroken, I’ve looked for a replacement ever since.
Facebook is definitely reading my mind, because this amazing vintage Gulf jacket showed up in my feed yesterday for the eye-watering price of $175, size small. If I was stupidly rich, I’d have already bought it, but I’m not that much of a slave to fashion. I’m sorely tempted, though.