{"id":5167,"date":"2024-01-03T14:12:44","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T21:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5167"},"modified":"2024-01-03T16:12:21","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T23:12:21","slug":"odd-lots-346","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5167","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Happy New Year, gang! My prediction: 2024\u2019s gonna to be a wild ride across the board. If popcorn weren\u2019t so fattening I\u2019d buy a pile of it.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/interestingengineering.com\/science\/meteor-shower-with-potential-fireballs-to-dazzle-night-sky-on-jan-3-4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Quadrantids meteor shower is tonight<\/a>. The shower\u2019s characteristic behavior is having a brief peak but an intense one. The predicted time of the peak is 7:53 AM EST, which would be 6:53 CST and 5:53 MST on 1\/4\/2024. That may sound awfully early to some of my night-owl readers, but Dash typically wakes us up by that time. I intend to be out watching for it, even though we have a first-quarter Moon\u2014and it might rain. Hey, if you don\u2019t play you can\u2019t win.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/James_Webb_Space_Telescope\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The JWST<\/a> has begun showing us how many odd chunks of stuff are drifting around the galaxy without actually orbiting stars. Some of these rogue planets are in pairs, orbiting one another. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/rogue-worlds-throw-planetary-ideas-out-of-orbit-20231113\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fascinating long-form piece on the phenom<\/a> if astrophysics\u2014or writing science fiction\u2014is your thing.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/weather\/topstories\/icelandic-volcano-erupts-watch-the-moment-it-happens\/ar-AA1lIJWB?cvid=9ef0b246c80540549518039dbe03f1ff&amp;ei=54#image=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Here\u2019s a dazzling video of a volcano erupting in Iceland<\/a>. It\u2019s unique because it shows the very beginning of the eruption, which almost resembles a sunrise. But then, <em>boom!<\/em> It gets spectacular!<\/li>\n<li><em>Sports Illustrated<\/em> was buying articles generated by AI, with authors also invented by AI, right down to the author headshots. <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/sports-illustrated-ai-generated-writers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Futurism called them on it, and all questionable articles vanished<\/a>. That doesn\u2019t mean a few weren\u2019t so ridiculous as to stand out and may still be there.<\/li>\n<li>Old timers like me will recall text user interfaces (TUIs) which, when we got started in computing, were what was on the menu. (It was a one-line menu.) <a href=\"https:\/\/blogsystem5.substack.com\/p\/the-ides-we-had-30-years-ago-and\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Here\u2019s a fun Substack piece about TUIs<\/a>, and how in truth, modern GUI programming editors in IDEs don\u2019t really give us much that we didn\u2019t already have back then. Hell, when I was at Xerox in the early 80s somebody was passing around a Pac-Man game written in text mode for a 24X80 display.<\/li>\n<li>Alas, Bill Gladstone, who founded Waterside Productions, passed on to higher realms on 12\/27. Waterside is the agency that represents my book-length nonfiction via agent Carole Jelen. We acquired a fair number of books through him during the Coriolis years. He knew what he was doing, and the world could use a few more agents with his savvy.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/scitechdaily.com\/the-inflammatory-question-red-meat-might-not-be-so-bad-for-you-after-all\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New research suggests that red meat is not fatal<\/a>. Body weight, not meat consumption, appears to cause the inflammation behind much cardiovascular disease. It&#8217;s carbs that put the weight on, as I&#8217;ve found over my past 25 years eating low-carb.<\/li>\n<li>Back before Christmas I was over at Total Wine buying vino to honor the Bambino, and was standing in the (long) line for the checkout beside a spinrack of hard liquor shooters. Most were things I\u2019d heard of. But there\u2026does that little bottle say it\u2019s peanut butter and jelly sandwich whiskey? Yes, it did\u2014so I bought one. Hey, 99c is cheap thrills. Carol and I tasted it when I got home. I expected to spit it out, but\u2026it wasn\u2019t half bad. From Skatterbrain, though Total Wine tells me it\u2019s no longer available. Maybe the shooters were market research, and it flunked. So it goes. Alcohol is a volatile business\u2026<\/li>\n<li>Cheap thrills? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vivino.com\/US\/en\/sheep-thrills-red-blend\/w\/4784021\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">There\u2019s a cheap ($10) red blend called Sheep Thrills<\/a>, which was vinted in Italy but bottled here in the US. I bought some. Like PB&amp;J whiskey, it wasn\u2019t awful, but I still don\u2019t recommend it. Too thin, too dry.<\/li>\n<li>I assumed that Skatterbrain\u2019s PB&amp;J whiskey had to be the weirdest whiskey in America. Silly boy. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/foodanddrink\/foodnews\/doritos-rolls-out-65-bottle-of-nacho-cheese-flavored-liquor-that-tastes-like-the-real-thing\/ar-AA1ls8UR\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Have a look at this<\/a>. Sorry, I\u2019ll pass.<\/li>\n<li>If you\u2019ve ever wondered what shallots were, well, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/foodanddrink\/foodnews\/what-is-a-shallot-and-how-exactly-is-it-different-from-an-onion\/ar-AA1jS73V\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here\u2019s how to tell a shallot from an onion<\/a>. I like the notion of shallots as heirloom onions (imaginary band name alert!) and Carol and I are going to try a few recipes that might tempt Tennyson\u2019s Lady of Shallott. Ok, sure, it\u2019s the Lady of Shalott. Maybe that\u2019s the British spelling. Or Tennyson\u2019s spellchecker wasn\u2019t working. Yes, ok, I\u2019ll shut up now.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happy New Year, gang! My prediction: 2024\u2019s gonna to be a wild ride across the board. If popcorn weren\u2019t so fattening I\u2019d buy a pile of it. The Quadrantids meteor shower is tonight. The shower\u2019s characteristic behavior is having a brief peak but an intense one. The predicted time of the peak is 7:53 AM [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[118,41,39,189,260,13],"class_list":["post-5167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-ai","tag-astronomy","tag-health","tag-volcanoes","tag-whiskey","tag-wine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5167"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5169,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5167\/revisions\/5169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}