News of the World, perhaps better known as "that movie that Tom Hanks was making when he caught COVID-19 on the set", turned out quite well, I thought.
It's nowhere near as good as the book, but I think that it did a very good job of capturing the essence of the book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
It is a bit hard to see, but the diagram below, from the CA State COVID-19 dashboard, shows that the Alameda County count of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 is down to 68 patients.
Not only does that represent a 30% drop in patient count in the last 12 days, but perhaps even more importantly it is the lowest count of hospitalized patients in Alameda County since the counting began, back in March of 2020.
I haven't read any detailed analysis of this data, but I've certainly been watching these numbers every day for months, wondering if and when the hospitalization count would ever drop (note how stubbornly it hovered at ~ 100 patients for the last 2.5 months, even as daily case counts plummeted during that time).
Hopefully this is a real finding, and represents real progress.
I have an iPhone 6, meaning I'm locked on iOS 12.
I recently learned about the existence of Silence Unknown Callers.
That one feature, right there, might be enough to get me to finally buy a new iPhone.
This is what public health success looks like (from the May 25, 2021 state dashboard page):
Now, 618 new cases and 8 new deaths in a single day is still a tragedy. Hospitalization numbers remain high, and vaccination numbers are still a long way from where we'd like them to be.
But as recently as early March, California was still reporting more than 2 thousand new cases a day, as well as more than 100 new deaths a day, so the progress here is dramatic.
I hope the state is able to continue to drive millions more vaccine doses through under-served communities, and the overall progress continues at this rate.
I love Professor Bret Deveraux's blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry (ACOUP).
And I love Paradox Studio's epic, gigantic, exhaustive, exhausting computer game of world history, Europa Universalis IV.
So when ACOUP decided to dive into EU IV, you would have to know I'd love the results, as well:
A friend gave me T. Kingfisher's The Hollow Places.
Generally, the horror genre isn't my thing, but the book pulled me in quickly and kept me turning the pages.
Kingfisher is a pen name, obviously at least partly an homage to Stephen King, and Kingfisher's novel reminds me of a King work. I liked the quirkiness of the setting; I liked the fortitude of our two bumbling, stumbling main characters; I liked the roller-coaster pace of the book.
I breezed through the book in about 3 days, probably faster than it deserved, but it was right for me.
The City of Oakland has accepted a proposal from Houston-based Hines Corporation to build a 622-foot-tall office building in Oakland: Mega office tower proposal in downtown Oakland hops ahead.
The tower, if built, would be 50% taller than any other office tower in Oakland, so this is a dramatic step for downtown Oakland real estate, and the Oakland planning commission seems to be bubbling over with enthusiasm:
“It is about time we had some truly tall buildings here,” Planning Commissioner Leopold Ray-Lynch said. “If we can get more of these, we can truly make Oakland a city that’s on the move, more than it is now.”
Hines, who are probably best known in these parts for the (somewhat controversial) million-square-foot Parcel F project in the city, certainly have the chops to pull this off.
But will they? It's not the first time that major Oakland real estate projects have been proposed, and many in the end were never completed or were completed after being reshaped in significant ways.
Yet Oakland has dramatically changed in the last five years. Perhaps now really is the time?
One thing that's not clear from the article is if this project would mean the shuttering of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory's Oakland Scientific Facility, which currently occupies this site, I believe. The supercomputers won't care, of course, they can probably just be trucked to some new location.
The site is just across the street, cater-corner as they say, from my wife's office. I suppose if it happens, she'll have a front row seat to the project!
Our hearts are broken as we say goodbye to our family dog.
My granddaughter grew up with Penny. Or maybe it was Penny who grew up with Hannah. Or I guess we all grew up together.
She always thought she was a lap dog, though 80 pound Labrador Retrievers can take up the entire couch.
She was always up for a selfie.
Best. Dog. Ever.
I'm sure I'll have more to say about Penny later, when the hole in our lives isn't such a gaping wound as it is today.
So for now, let me share with you a poem, written by the lovely poet Tom Luce, titled Buy a Dog.
As is often the case with poetry, this poem isn't actually about a dog.
I had a dream, it was a good dream
you were there and so was I.
We were so happy
I did not want to open up my eyes,
and we were driving down a road;
it was a long one.
There were signs all over;
the signs said "welcome to your life".
I looked over and you were smiling.
You had a great big smile going.
You turned to me, you turned and you said:
"all your life, all your life, I got your back."
So if you want to try
we'll make it you and I
we'll never be alone
we'll buy a dog and bring him home
he'll jump up on the bed
we'll be the best of friends
I think that we should try
I picture you and I...
I had another dream
I know you think, "how convenient"
but I swear it's the truth:
we were there, yeah, I was me and you were you.
We had a good long life on this planet
when we died we went to heaven,
saw that god was really Elvis!
Anyway, our souls were in the right place,
our souls were in the right place..
So if you want to try
we'll make it you and I
we'll never be alone
we'll buy a dog and bring him home
he'll jump up on the bed
we'll be the best of friends
I think that we should try
I think that we should try
And we'll take him on walks with us everyday
(underneath the summer sun).
He can ride in the back of our car when we go away
with his head outside of the window frame
and his tongue out.
It's a miracle that we're even here and alive.
Let's buy a dog and bring him home.
