AdamSmith

...In a subsequent salvo Trump compared Bloomberg to his 2016 Republican nomination challenger Jeb Bush. “Mini Mike Bloomberg is a LOSER who has money but can’t debate and has zero presence, you will see. He reminds me of a tiny version of Jeb ‘Low Energy’ Bush, but Jeb has more political skill and has treated the Black community much better than Mini!” Twenty minutes later, Bloomberg returned fire, drawing attention to doubts that Trump is not as wealthy or as successful as he likes to portray himself. “@realDonaldTrump – we know many of the same people in NY. Behind your back they laugh at you & call you a carnival barking clown,” Bloomberg said in a posting. “They know you inherited a fortune & squandered it with stupid deals and incompetence.” Bloomberg, whose wealth Forbes estimates at $61.8bn, continued: “I have the record & the resources to defeat you. And I will.” The financial data businessman has spent at least $350m on his campaign to date and said he plans to spend up to $1bn on the race... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/13/donald-trump-mike-bloomberg-insults-twitter

This is a little bit dense, difficult, but I find ultimately rewarding-to-unravel meditation on death, its meaning, its consequences for the living, and perhaps much more. The Owl in the Sarcophagus Wallace Stevens I Two forms move among the dead, high sleep Who by his highness quiets them, high peace Upon whose shoulders even the heavens rest, Two brothers. And a third form, she that says Good-by in the darkness, speaking quietly there, To those that cannot say good-by themselves. These forms are visible to the eye that needs, Needs out of the whole necessity of sight. The third form speaks, because the ear repeats, Without a voice, inventions of farewell. These forms are not abortive figures, rocks, Impenetrable symbols, motionless. They move About the night. They live without our light, In an element not the heaviness of time, In which reality is prodigy. There sleep the brother is the father, too, And peace is cousin by a hundred names And she that in the syllable between life And death cries quickly, in a flash of voice, Keep you, keep you, I am gone, oh keep you as My memory, is the mother of us all, The earthly mother and the mother of The dead. Only the thought of those dark three Is dark, thought of the forms of dark desire. II There came a day, there was a day--one day A man walked living among the forms of thought To see their lustre truly as it is And in harmonious prodigy to be, A while, conceiving his passage as into a time That of itself stood still, perennial, Less time than place, less place than thought of place And, if of substance, a likeness of the earth, That by resemblance twanged him through and through, Releasing an abysmal melody, A meeting, an emerging in the light, A dazzle of remembrance and of sight. III There he saw well the foldings in the height Of sleep, the whiteness folded into less, Like many robings, as moving masses are, As a moving mountain is, moving through day And night, colored from distances, central Where luminous agitations come to rest, In an ever-changing, calmest unity, The unique composure, harshest streakings joined In a vanishing-vanished violet that wraps round The giant body the meanings of its folds, The weaving and the crinkling and the vex, As on water of an afternoon in the wind After the wind has passed. Sleep realized Was the whiteness that is the ultimate intellect, A diamond jubilance beyond the fire, That gives its power to the wild-ringed eye. Then he breathed deeply the deep atmosphere Of sleep, the accomplished, the fulfilling air. IV There peace, the godolphin and fellow, estranged, estranged, Hewn in their middle as the beam of leaves, The prince of shither-shade and tinsel lights, Stood flourishing the world. The brilliant height And hollow of him by its brilliance calmed, Its brightness burned the way good solace seethes. This was peace after death, the brother of sleep, The inhuman brother so much like, so near, Yet vested in a foreign absolute, Adorned with cryptic stones and sliding shines, An immaculate personage in nothingness, With the whole spirit sparkling in its cloth, Generations of the imagination piled In the manner of its stitchings, of its thread, In the weaving round the wonder of its need, And the first flowers upon it, an alphabet By which to spell out holy doom and end, A bee for the remembering of happiness. Peace stood with our last blood adorned, last mind, Damasked in the originals of green, A thousand begettings of the broken bold. This is that figure stationed at our end, Always, in brilliance, fatal, final, formed Out of our lives to keep us in our death, To watch us in the summer of Cyclops Underground, a king as candle by our beds In a robe that is our glory as he guards. V But she that says good-by losing in self The sense of self, rosed out of prestiges Of rose, stood tall in self not symbol, quick And potent, an influence felt instead of seen. She spoke with backward gestures of her hand. She held men closely with discovery, Almost as speed discovers, in the way Invisible change discovers what is changed, In the way what was has ceased to be what is. It was not her look but a knowledge that she had. She was a self that knew, an inner thing, Subtler than look's declaiming, although she moved With a sad splendor, beyond artifice, Impassioned by the knowledge that she had, There on the edges of oblivion. O exhalation, O fling without a sleeve And motion outward, reddened and resolved From sight, in the silence that follows her last word-- VI This is the mythology of modern death And these, in their mufflings, monsters of elegy, Of their own marvel made, of pity made, Compounded and compounded, life by life, These are death's own supremest images, The pure perfections of parental space, The children of a desire that is the will, Even of death, the beings of the mind In the light-bound space of the mind, the floreate flare... It is a child that sings itself to sleep, The mind, among the creatures that it makes, The people, those by which it lives and dies. https://jerimadeth.livejournal.com/2466.html

Barney’s liked to puff your own self-importance gene to successfully get outsized prices. For usually well made product, admittedly. But, again, sometimes we paid HOW MUCH for WHAT?! And as you say, OTC at that.

My routine is founded on a good breakfast — taken in a few little stages. Like oatmeal, then an hour at the desk reading/writing, then a nice piece of fruit;!then a walk around the block (ca. 0.75 mile), back to the desk... As with your lesson you’ve shared here before, keep moving!

Joan Rivers of all people said a very sensible thing for weight control: ‘Eat whatever you want, within reason, but stop at 3:00!pm.’ Then just a snack of a little bit of steamed broccoli or some such at dinner.

Yes! Lipids in the bloodstream and then on down come primarily from refined carbs/sugar consumed, not from healthy fats eaten in moderation.

That was a big unexpected mess. Informative.

My experience from 40 years ( ) studying engineering-design software is likewise that the how-to-use documentation provided by the developer is almost always incomplete, out of logical order, emphasizes the wrong things, glosses over the key stuff that is truly difficult (not wanting to admit same), etc etc. That is too blanket a statement, but not by much. Thus users set up independent user-group online forums, sometimes even annual meetings in person, to share best (and worst ) best practices for working around all that.

CLIMATE, GENERAL EARTH INSTITUTE, HEALTH How Climate Change Is Exacerbating the Spread of Disease https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2014/09/04/how-climate-change-is-exacerbating-the-spread-of-disease/

Also: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/nov/28/breakfast-health-america-kellog-food-lifestyle

Turns out this travesty which privileges (processed) carbs uber alles was secretly supported by ‘research’ from a nincompoot ‘expert’ paid by the breakfast cereal industry, which after WW2 ended was desperately seeking what to do with its now unneeded capacity for producing troop food (K9) rations. So General Foods & General Mills found this great feeding trough available to them of breakfast cereals! Worst way possible health-wise to start our day.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/02/opinions/trial-witness-snl-senate-impeachment-obeidallah/

The world is very strange...

Pretty good. What I learned watching Bernie and Biden for hours on end Biden is a creature of the Senate. Sanders is a creature of the campaign trail. Seeing them back to back in these two settings clarifies the choice. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/30/biden-sanders-2020-election-109416At

‘I am that I am...’ The Jewish god defining himself. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_that_I_Am

No question but that he is winning this war that he — not started, you above identify multiple causes thereof — but added much fuel to the fire therefrom.

Absofuckinglutely. For a long time I thought Warren was our last best hope. But now I now think Bloomberg may just emerge as our new J. Robert Oppenheimer in this battle for the nation’s soul.

Eco''s great precursor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce

A Theory of Semiotics From one's professor Umberto Eco. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco ..". the greatest contribution to [semiotics] since the pioneering work of C. S. Peirce and Charles Morris." -- Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism..". "...draws on philosophy, linguistics, sociology, anthropology and aesthetics and refers to a wide range of scholarship... raises many fascinating questions." -- Language in Society.. ". a major contribution to the field of semiotic studies." -- Robert Scholes, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.. ". the most significant text on the subject published in the English language that I know of." -- Arthur Asa Berger, Journal of CommunicationE "Eco's treatment demonstrates his mastery of the field of semiotics. It focuses on the twin problems of the doctrine of signs -- communication and signification -- and offers a highly original theory of sign production, including a carefully wrought typology of signs and modes of production." https://books.google.com/books/about/A_theory_of_semiotics.html?id=RaFrAAAAIAAJ

Rather very useful concept... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abuse_of_notation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_equation

I don't know. I think we are now in the age of 11th-dimensional politics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory And I think Nancy has sensed and mastered this mode more than any other of either her colleagues or her competitors. Again, 2020 will tell.