{"id":5241,"date":"2024-06-28T09:02:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T16:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5241"},"modified":"2024-06-28T09:02:00","modified_gmt":"2024-06-28T16:02:00","slug":"odd-lots-349","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5241","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Spooky or creepy music in SF\/Fantasy\/Horror flicks is assumed to rely on the theremin. I just discovered the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ondes_Martenot\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ondes Martenot<\/a>, which sounds like a theremin but is easier to play. Furthermore, it&#8217;s been around for most of 100 years. Not sure how I got into my 70s without ever stumbling on it. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=v0aflcF0-ys\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Good link on YouTube<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Carol and I don&#8217;t go out to the movies much anymore. We stream or buy a DVD for anything we want to see. This writer offers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/the-luxury-multiplex-is-whats-wrong-with-america\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a cogent explanation for why theaters are largely to blame<\/a> for this phenomenon. (Crappy movies are the rest of the explanation.)<\/li>\n<li>This sounds a little (or more than a little) grandiose: A <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Meteotsunami\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">meteotsunami<\/a> subjected the shore of Lake Michigan in Holland, Michigan to\u2014<em>oh, no!\u2014<\/em>a 2-foot wave. When I was a kid <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxweather.com\/extreme-weather\/meteotsunami-lake-michigan-holland\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this phenom<\/a> was called a <em>seiche<\/em>, and Chicago got its share, rare though they might be. Certain types of bad weather including strong winds and rapid changes in atmospheric pressure are to blame. Again, I\u2019m surprised I made it to my 70s without ever seeing the word.<\/li>\n<li>No small number of people have claimed that &quot;return to office&quot; mandates are back-channel layoffs, a way to reduce headcount by having heads quit voluntarily. Now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/2024\/06\/09\/rto_quit_study\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">some research seems to indicate that this is the case<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Ok, this is mondo weird: I spun through the McD&#8217;s drive-thru not long ago for an iced coffee and got two pennies (and some other coins) in change. <em>Both pennies were 1981-Ds.<\/em> What are the <em>chances<\/em>?\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/2Pennies1981-D.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"2Pennies1981-D\" style=\"display: inline; background-image: none;\" border=\"0\" alt=\"2Pennies1981-D\" src=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/2Pennies1981-D_thumb.jpg\" width=\"510\" height=\"301\" \/><\/a><\/li>\n<li>I was looking for Revolutionary War flags and stumbled upon <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_flags_of_the_United_States\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a list of flags on Wikipedia<\/a> that would do Sheldon Cooper proud.<\/li>\n<li>Beethoven was a classical music composer, but his body was full of heavy metal, specifically, lead. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/shots-health-news\/2024\/06\/27\/g-s1-5433\/beethoven-toxic-lead-poisoning-deafness-hair-samples\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Mayo Clinic analyzed a few strands of the maestro\u2019s hair<\/a>, and found 64 times the lead found in a typical American today. This likely led to the many medical problems Beethoven had, including deafness.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/forum.lazarus.freepascal.org\/index.php\/topic,67439.0.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lazarus 3.4 is now available<\/a>, built with FreePascal 3.2.2. It&#8217;s a bugfix release and there isn&#8217;t a lot of New Stuff, but get it anyway! There&#8217;s nothing else quite like it in the OSS universe.<\/li>\n<li>A few days ago I received an email inviting me to the\u2014wait for it&#8211;Lane Technical High School Milwaukee World Naked Bike Ride. I thought it was a hoax but no\u2014naked bike rides are evidently a thing in big cities. Now, Lane Technical High School (which I attended 1966-1970) is in Chicago, not Milwaukee. <a href=\"https:\/\/chicagonakedride.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">There is in fact a World Naked Bike Ride in Chicago<\/a> on my 72nd birthday tomorrow, but they didn\u2019t invite me. I don\u2019t own a bike, and I\u2019m a long damn way from Milwaukee, or Chicago. That said, I doubt there will be a World Phoenix Naked Bike ride any time soon. It was 113 the other day. People would <em>die<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spooky or creepy music in SF\/Fantasy\/Horror flicks is assumed to rely on the theremin. I just discovered the Ondes Martenot, which sounds like a theremin but is easier to play. Furthermore, it&#8217;s been around for most of 100 years. Not sure how I got into my 70s without ever stumbling on it. Good link on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-noneoftheabove"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5241","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=5241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5242,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5241\/revisions\/5242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}