One man’s fight to prove he’s alive

via Depths of Wikipedia

Cray vs Raspberry Pi

In 1978, the Cray 1 supercomputer cost $7 Million, weighed 10,500 pounds and had a 115 kilowatt power supply. It was, by far, the fastest computer in the world. The Raspberry Pi costs around $70 (CPU board, case, power supply, SD card), weighs a few ounces, uses a 5 watt power supply and is more than 4.5 times faster than the Cray 1

(via Slashdot)

Four years ago

It’s four years to the day since a doctor in China privately warned colleagues about pneumonia cases related to coronavirus (which turned out to be COVID). His message was leaked, and went viral on social media, leading to his arrest by authorities for spreading fake news. A few months later he contracted COVID and died, aged 33 (via Kevin Beaumont on Mastodon)

Jimmy the Raven

Random fun film fact: The crow in It’s a Wonderful Life seen in the Building & Loan that Uncle Billy kept as a pet is the same crow that flew on Scarecrow’s arm in The Wizard of Oz whom he was unable to scare. His name was Jimmy and he was a raven who first appeared in You Can’t Take It With You directed by Frank Capra who went on to cast the bird in every subsequent movie he made.

Via John Pinter on Mastodon

Ma Vie en Bling

A poem by Anne Boyer, found via Matt Bogle’s excellent newsletter Pome, which sends used to send you a new poem every day (alas, Matt recently announced the Pome newsletter is on hiatus):

“Did I explain that those days were the days when the people wrote on machines that connected to machines that connected to machines that connected to people who wrote on machines?

Those were the days when we believed in information.

And I was a person in those days, but I did not believe in information. I liked to imagine the interfaces that would make the public private and make the private okay.

Privacy was not an effect, exactly, of confession, which in those days was buying stock in the public company. Those were the days of crude luxury and genteel sorrow. Those were the days I loved to delete.”

Anne Boyer (2015)

Here are the things you clicked on the most in 2023

Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. Before we begin, I realize that the “year-end round-up” newsletter has become so ubiquitous that you may have no room in your life for another one. But the round-up has become a time-tested tradition in the media business for some pretty compelling reasons – for one, the period between Christmas and New Year’s is kind of a dead zone, and round-ups are relatively easy to pull together when you are a) understaffed, b) tired c) hungover d) lacking in motivation or e) all of the above.

I am not immune to these kinds of pressures myself, I confess. But on top of that, I also find it kind of fascinating to look at which of the links I include here get the most clicks. That’s why when I started this newsletter, I also installed an open-source link-shortening service called Yourls, which lets me create custom links for the articles I share. It comes with built-in analytics that track the clicks on those links, in much the same way Twitter and other services do. I don’t really do anything with this information – I don’t sell it to advertisers, or pick different links to include based on whether they might get more clicks (at least not consciously). I just find it interesting! And maybe you will too.

This sample is obviously weighted with respect to time, in that the links I included in early versions of the newsletter have had time to accumulate more clicks. But I’m not sure how many people go back and look at previous versions of the newsletter, so it’s hard to say how much of an impact that has. Anyway, without further ado, here are the 10 most popular links since January, 2023:

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

How Jon Bon Jovi wound up on a Star Wars Christmas album

From TheForce.net: “Here’s how that came about: My co-producer was Tony Bongiovi. Jon Bon Jovi was his little cousin and by little I mean we were all in our 30s and early 40s but Jon at that time was 17 years old. And we were in the studio called Power Station, which is the studio that Star Wars built by the way. So, here you have his little cousin who was on salary sweeping the floors. And I was stuck on this one song. I had three different people come in to sing it and I didn’t like the way any of them sounded. Tony says to me, “Why don’t you try little Jon?” And after just the first few notes out of his mouth I said, “Yes! This is him. This is the one! This is the one who should sing it!”

The Alcott anarchist experiment in Massachusetts and why it failed

From Katrina Gulliver at JSTOR Daily: “From communes to cult compounds and new religions, different groups have tried to create alternative models of society. Bronson and Abigail Alcott (parents of Louisa May Alcott), for example, established such a community, called Fruitlands, in Massachusetts in the 1840s. Together with Bronson’s friend Charles Lane and their families, the Alcotts attempted to live out a vision of agrarian self-sufficiency. The Fruitlands experiment was also an example of both anarchism and veganism. But like many intellectuals who have attempted such self-sufficiency, the Fruitlanders had failed to anticipate the amount of labor involved in agricultural work.”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Bodies were donated to Harvard then went missing

From Brenna Ehrlich for Rolling Stone: “After Adele Mazzone died at age 74 of complications from a stroke, her remains had been handed over to Harvard as part of the Anatomical Gift Program, a donation-based initiative in which people can leave their bodies to the school for students to use during their studies. Harvard Medical School is among the top in the country, ranking number one for research in 2023, and Mazzone’s selfless last act would help to train the future of American medicine. Then Cedric Lodge, the manager of a morgue at Harvard Medical School, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Pennsylvania on charges of conspiracy and interstate transport of stolen goods – namely, body parts from corpses donated to the Anatomical Gift Program.”

After twenty years, America’s first female lighthouse keeper hangs up her bonnet

From Diana Cervantes for Hakai: “For 20 years, Snowman has served as the keeper and historian of the 307-year-old Boston Light. Dressed either in a coast guard uniform or a costume inspired by what a lighthouse keeper’s wife wore in the 18th century, she’ll ascend the 76 spiraling stairs up the lighthouse to clean the windows and polish the lenses of the light that keeps mariners from smashing into rocks; mow the grass that, in the summer, can reach her knees; check for anything needing maintenance; and clean. For most of her tenure, she lived on the island, giving tours to visitors on Fridays through Sundays.”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Our mistake

She stole $54 million from her town and no one noticed

From Kathy Gilsinan at Politico: “It was the spring of 2012 and nearly three weeks had passed since police had marched Rita Crundwell, the town’s well-liked comptroller, out the door of that very same building in handcuffs. In that time, the magnitude of her betrayal had grown clearer, and more dumbfounding: At first the feds believed she’d “misappropriated” $30 million from the coffers of this small town of about 16,000, but now the figure was close to $54 million. The place previously best-known as Ronald Reagan’s childhood home, site of the Petunia Festival and the Catfish Capital of Illinois, was now also the home of the largest municipal fraud in United States history.”

A guide to sabotaging meetings written by the precursor to the CIA

From Authentic Communications: “A document that was declassified by the CIA contains instructions on how to disrupt meetings, designed to guide sympathetic citizens of Axis countries in how to help the war effort. It was written by the OSS, the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency, who created it during the run up to the Second World War. It includes advice such as: “Make “speeches. Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your ‘points’ by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.” Other recommendations include: “Slow it down: advocate caution, avoid haste” and “Where possible refer all matters to committees (never fewer than five).”

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.