2021.07.DisappearingMoment
Yo!
Welcome to July 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it.
Podcasts
- Aack Cast (I Loved It): Comedian Jamie Loftus tells the story of the Cathy comic. Its creator, Cathy Guisewite, is cooperating. A perfect subject for a singular podcaster.
- Blindspot (I Loved It): Superb, Slow Burn-style narrative-based history. Season 1 covers the lead up to 9/11, and Season 2 tells the story of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre.
- Murder at Ryan’s Run (I Liked It): It started as a show about police violence against MOVE, a Philadelphia-based Black liberation organization. It became a show about cults, exploitation, and murder.
Nerdy Software
Checking your device’s upload and download speeds used to involve ugly, intrusive websites. No longer: LibreSpeed is elegant, free, open source, and accurate.
Bougie Products
Trader Joe’s has the best deal on nuts and seeds. My weekday lunch always includes Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, pepitas. pistachios, sunflower seeds, and walnuts.
Personal Finance and Investing
Fidelity’s HSA is fee-free and has unsurpassed investment options. Even transferring funds to Fidelity is free, assuming your HSA doesn’t charge you.
Reading
- Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way (1988) (Worth My Time): It’s humbling how little I know about my lifelong religion. From the lovely, poetic “Yitzi” Greenberg, I’ve learned that experts seem to know even less.
- Kevin Price, “Leaving MOVE” (I Liked It): A series of essays by former MOVE members and supporters. This is a companion publication to the Murder at Ryan’s Run podcast.
Lists I Have Loved
- The Book of Lists by David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace, and Amy Wallace
- The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract’s 100 Greatest Baseball Players
- Baseball Prospectus’s annual Top 100 Prospects list
- Satchel Paige’s How To Keep Young
- Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
- The Village Voice’s annual Pazz & Jop poll
- Chuck Klosterman’s Ten Most Accurately Rated Artists in Rock History
- Siskel & Ebert’s annual selection of their Top 10 Movies (more Siskel than Ebert)
- The New Yorker’s first 20 Under 40 (from June 21, 1999; I was 29 when it was released, and a college classmate made the list)
- Directory of ALA-Accredited and Candidate Programs in Library and Information Studies and the Historical list of accredited programs
- S.R. Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science
- Maimonides’ Eight Levels of Giving
- Douglas Lackey’s What Are the Modern Classics? The Baruch Poll of the Greatest Philosophy in the Twentieth Century
- The Yamas and Niyamas
- Atul Gawande’s Checklist Manifesto
- Warren Buffett’s The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville
- Expired Domains
- Never Marry Someone Who… (a list I created, solely for myself, ca. 1995)
- Hasn’t had her heart broken
- Drives when she can walk
- Eats fewer than three meals a day
- [Redacted. While still true, Beth doesn’t like when I share this one.]
- Smokes
- Wants children
- Won’t dance
- Doesn’t laugh at your jokes
- Wants to get married
- Would change her name if she got married
- A friend of a friend entered a contest, sponsored by Sunsweet, to come up with a marketing slogan for prune juice. His entry:
- Prune juice is delicious.
- Prune juice makes you feel great.
Thanks for spending a few moments with me. I look forward to corresponding again next month.
Brett
No large language models were used in the production of the Disappearing Moment newsletter or website (inspired by RFC 9518 Appendix A ¶ 4 and Tantek Çelik).