A few days ago, this symbol showed up on the dashboard of my new Tacoma. I added the red circle to highlight the symbol of interest. The symbol is cryptic and persistent, so the dashboard photo was taken so I could look it up.
What is it trying to tell me?
It looks a little like a teepee or a campfire, so probably something about native Americans.
Pew Research: Americans’ Social Media Use 2025
Polls like this are interesting because social media keeps changing, and most of use don’t want to join everything to figure out which ones are worthwhile.
Sparky needs his exercise, but I’ve got a head cold, so don’t want my exercise. Running shuttles is a good compromise.
When traveling, I never thought to visit old libraries. The Old Library at Trinity College Dublin looks impressive. I’ve not been to Ireland, so this doesn’t count as a missed opportunity.
NYT: How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch
Minnesota is a shit show, and that Walz was almost vice president.
The fraud scandal that rattled Minnesota was staggering in its scale and brazenness.
Federal prosecutors charged dozens of people with felonies, accusing them of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a government program meant to keep children fed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Anybody who could figure out that Somalis aren’t Scandinavian, would have seen this coming.
The episode has raised broader questions for some residents about the sustainability of Minnesota’s Scandinavian-modeled system of robust safety net programs bankrolled by high taxes.
Predator: Badlands, is more like Predator: Bad Families, since it’s all about family dynamics. The synthetic human, predator and indigenous creature become a found family because their real families aren’t up to it.
Since I’m a little bit sick and drowsy, I’m watching Prehistoric Planet 2.
David Attenborough is narrating as a more earnest version of his brother Richard Attenborough, who played the crazy old dinosaur enthusiast in Jurassic Park.
The production values are very good, and the prehistoric creatures seem lifelike and convincing, but I can’t help thinking that they are making up some shit.
That’s Sparky’s WTF face.
Sparky wants to know if the whole system has gone to hell, and we aren’t even trying anymore.
NY Post: First images from inside fire-ravaged Hong Kong high rise as death toll rises to 146
A big fire at an apartment building in Hong Kong won’t get much coverage in the US, but it seemed strange to me because everything is built of concrete in Hong Kong. Apparently it was the scaffolding.
Ten years ago, I took this photo of construction at the Hong Kong university where we worked. Bamboo poles are lashed together. On top of the scaffold, a blue tarp is spread for workers to walk around on. They step on the bamboo poles to not fall through the cracks.
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