confusion
I ask the newts and the nesting chickadees what they think about the current government shenanigans. They possess a wisdom beyond my own, and I take a page from their indifference. However destructive and threatening to all Life, modernity is a brief flash, perhaps best ignored by those who intend to stay for the long haul.
Tom Murphy, posted in Hall of Mirrors [dothemath.ucsd.com] on Do the Math
I covered the details of my trip trip the US in my 2024 Recap [confusion.cc] post. So I won’t rehash that, but I wanted to post some of the photos I took in New York. I’ll get to Minnesota in another post.
I didn’t take a ton of photos, I was only in the city for a few days. I did take a walk from my hotel, south of Penn Station and Times Square, up through Central Park and spend a few hours at the Guggenheim Museum. And I made my way to MoMA for an afternoon.
At the Guggenheim there was an exhibit in the rotunda by Jenny Holzer titled “Light Lines”. It was interesting, the LED displays spiraling up the ramp showing various quotes was interesting to watch. And I enjoyed some of the political pieces – redacted documents related to the “war on terror” and Trump tweets make for interesting material for sculpture. You have to see it.
My favorite piece of Jenny Holzer work that was on display was a small, easy to miss, plaque near the very top of the spiral. A simple plaque you might see in any building with some label or name on it. But this one said “Laugh hard at the absurdity of evil”. Given the current state of the world, that just too close to home.
Meanwhile, over at MoMA there is a giant blob of rainbow colored stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling with smaller “moons” of stuffed animals, each moon a different color…
Also, van Gogh’s Starry Night [flickr.com], and Picasso’s Ladies of Avignon [flickr.com]. And much more, MoMA is big. I spent like 5 hours. It’s not Louvre big but it’s much bigger than the Guggenheim. But between the Guggenheim and MoMA I saw a lot of “modern” art in a few days.
Anyway, I only had a few days in NYC, so modern art was most of what I did. Other than that I caught up with A█████, aka F█████, as I mentioned in my 2024 Recap post. And, I enjoyed some proper New York pizza and bagels.
I also swung through NYC on the way out but was just there for one evening. I stayed in the TWA Hotel [twahotel.com] at JFK. There I met M███ in the most random fashion, as covered in the Recap post. But I also had time to explore the TWA Hotel itself and admire —and photograph— the 1960 architecture and decor. Including the “Rainbow Room” or “Hidden Alcove” where the Beatles hid before, or after, their famous press conference in 1964 when they first landed in America.
Anyway, that’s enough for this post. Just remember:
Laugh hard at the absurdity of evil
Jenny Holzer
You can view the whole New Your City, New York, USA, May 2024 [flickr.com] photo set on Flickr.
Late last year as I was rushing to get my 2023 Italy photos posted, I ran unto a problem. I was looking include a link to something I wrote a few months before, but for the life I me I could not find it using the editors built in search. The editor’s insert link tool allows you to enter a link or to search for links, usually used to find existing posts or pages on your site. But when I entered the actual name of the post it did not show up. I tried several different combinations, checked spelling, and finally gave up and opened the site in a browser to grab the link.
But the post was not there.
After much scratching of the head and reloading the list of posts that are published, in draft, and even trying the recently deleted I could not find the post and another one too.
I know I posted them as I linked to them via social media posts. But those links now 404.
I think I know what happened. The editor app —Jetpack— has an annoying habit of showing posts having “local changes” when I draft posts and edit them at some point in both the Jetpack app and in the WordPress admin interface. The thing is the app is convenient but not full featured. There are things I cannot do in the app that I do in posts. So I often start the post in the app and finish it in via the webpage. I also move between devices a lot. And the post showing up in the drafts section with “local changes” in the Jetpack app is annoying. So I deleted them. I’ve done it before but —as far as I know— I’ve never lost a post, but this time I lost two.
I have automated backups of the DB but they are 10 day rolling and this appears to have happened longer ago than 10 days. I don’t remember when I did it, other than it was a while ago…
I checked the Wayback Machine, but it did not seem to have the posts either. It has several site craws between when I published when the missing posts were uploaded and when I searched but the ones that load didn’t show the posts and several didn’t load. The Internet Archive was a bit rocky at the time due to the hack they suffered. So after a few days I checked again and the missing posts were there. So, after a temporary bout of amnesia, once again, the internet never forgot. [confusion.cc]… Though there is so much uncrawlable material on “social media” that I really should revisit that statement… the open internet never forgets, capitalism does strange things to that memory.
In any case, the missing posts were restored from the Wayback Machine’s crawl. And I doubt anyone noticed they were ever gone, such is my readership ;-).
This seems like a good time to remind everyone that the mission of the Internet Archive is valuable. Not so I can restore a few missing posts, but for long term historical preservation and promoting open access to information. So much of what is hosted on Archive.org would otherwise be lost or hidden just because it was hard to find.
Once again, for my birthday, I’m going to look back at the past year briefly. I don’t like to dwell on the past but it’s good to take stock as I celebrate another revolution around the sun.
The best of the year was both my daughters passed their big tests. Olivia passed the PLSE with results she was happy with and got accepted to the secondary school that was her first choice. And Victoria did well on her O-Levels, more than good enough to apply directly to a foundation year program she wants. Congratulations to them, they did well and made it through a stressful year (for them as well as for my wife and I!)
I also visited America for the first time since 2017. I went home for a simple ceremony to bury the ashes of my maternal grandparents. It was the first time I have been home, to Charlottesville, since my dad died in 2017. And the first time I’ve been to Pipestone, where my mom grew up, since 2014. I saw a lot of people, family, I have not seen in years —several decades in some cases. My family is very spread out with people living or working in the far corners of the US —Minnesota, Oregon, Arizona, Virginia, even Alaska. And I don’t know if any are there these days but for a while there were some in Europe, both the eastern and western parts.
On the way I also got to see two old friends in New York. I had planned to see A█████, which was great. We met up in the city and caught up on each other’s lives after a long time. It was great to reconnect with someone I haven’t really spoken with in years. Then I had the most random encounter. While I was sitting in the café of the TWA Hotel [twahotel.com] at JFK, someone came over and said “hello”. I wasn’t paying attention, reading a book so I didn’t notice until they said something. It was M███! Of course! It could only be M███ (see here [confusion.cc]). She just so happened to be in the TWA Hotel as a friend was flying through and had a long layover (the result of M███’s years as a flight attendant). M███ was waiting on the café to brew a new pot of coffee and only saw me because she was waiting around, had there been a fresh pot she would have never seen me. The last time I saw M███ was in like 2013. We spent a few hours chatting before she head to head out and I needed to get ready for my flight.
Anyway, I will put up a proper post of my trip to the US once I get a chance to clean up the photos I took. Nothing much but a good excuse for some photos and a post.
I’m not going to talk about the alarming (in my opinion) shift to the right wing on global politics. I’ve said enough what I think of right wing populism and its evils focusing on the US election (here [confusion.cc], here [confusion.cc], here [confusion.cc], here [confusion.cc] – and even in a timely book review here [confusion.cc]) and more post over the last year that are at least, tangentially, political. It is what it is. Four more years of Trump as president. I hope the world survives.
What else?
I read a lot more last year than I have been. I worked at incorporating a daily 30 minutes or so, many more than I review on Confusion. Let’s see, in 2024 I read:
I also too the time to play some video games. I spend several hundred hours exploring The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and I replayed Hollow Knight getting past 100% (it’s a thing, it goes to 112%).
And of course, as usual, I took an end-of-year holiday. Back to Japan this year to Kyoto and Osaka. I’ll get around to that. Sometime.
Ok this post is long enough. That’s a decent summary of my 2024, focusing on good things. The world might be a dumpster fire but I’m not doing too bad.
Goodbye 2024.
I took this photo while I was in Kyoto on holiday with my family. Sunset on December 16th from Inari mountain, behind Fushimi Inari-Taisha, the shrine with all the torii. The sunset was amazing, I took a lot of photos with the big camera, but this one is an iPhone panorama, edited in Lightroom mobile.
Here is the full photo on Flickr:
Many more photos from Kyoto and Osaka to come, when I get around to cleaning them up. Hopefully it won’t take until the whole year like it did with my Italy photos from 2023.