sharks & elegant technique are not yet a matter of indifference
ps I maintain a calendar of NYC events that I find interesting nowadays
2024 was an exceptionally calm year for shark bites, so that’s nice.
“People surf where there are good waves, and where there are good waves, there’s turbidity, and where there’s turbidity, there are often bait fish that attract sharks. The turbidity also reduces visibility in the water, making it harder for sharks to see. Some of them make mistakes”
Some sharks make mistakes! Well. If sharks can err, can’t we all.
Also in shark facts: We’re more sensitive to the smell of petrichor1 (well, the geosmin part of it) in the air than sharks are to blood in the water.
Also in tragedy facts: Clearly the solution to wildfires is figuring out how to market smokey wines produced from impacted grapes (ScienceDaily)
Also also in shark facts: There’s a bit of ocean in the middle of nowhere where white shark like to loiter, bobbing up and down for months. This is known as White Shark Café.
“Ticking sticks” is an elegant technique for measuring a piece of wood to cut perfectly to fit an odd opening with impossible recesses. It is beautiful and it is right.
I haven’t read Roth’s The Radetzky March [yet], but I’m obsessed with this article by his translator, Michael Hofmann.
“I don't know what I'll do when all the possible books are done. Perhaps I'll retranslate other people's translations; perhaps I'll retranslate my own. The fact is, I can no longer imagine a life without Roth.
It's a plight I don't recall having read about, though someone like Borges might easily have written about it. Someone who loses or, better, waives their identity, and cedes it to someone else. A small country soliciting adoption or absorption by a larger power.”
I’m always in awe, and perhaps a bit envious, or people who are that intensely subsumed by one passion for such an incredible length of time. And one suspects there are worse subjects to allow yourself to be consumed by than Joseph Roth:
“In the years before the Great War, at the time the events chronicled in these pages took place, it was not yet a matter of indifference whether a man lived or died. When someone was expunged from the lists of the living, someone else did not immediately step up to take his place, but a gap was left to show where he had been, and those who knew the man who had died or disappeared, well or even less well, fell silent whenever they saw the gap. When a fire happened to consume a particular dwelling in a row of dwellings, the site of the conflagration remained for a long time afterwards. For masons and bricklayers worked slowly and thoughtfully, and when they walked past the ruins, neighbours and passers-by alike recalled the form and the walls of the house that had once stood there. That's how it was then! Everything that grew took long to grow; and everything that ended took a long time to be forgotten. Everything that existed left behind traces of itself, and people then lived by their memories, just as we nowadays live by our capacity to forget, quickly and comprehensively.”
- Joseph Roth
Alfred Wolff invented modern air conditioning in 1899.2 The NYSE started using it in 1903. And from then on, the Dow Jones stopped going down whenever the weather got too darn hot.
“Using daily weather data for New York City and the daily indices of the Dow Jones Average (DJA) from 1885 to 1914, we find that the stock return was significantly negatively correlated with the excessively high temperature before the installation of the cooling system, whereas this correlation was insignificant thereafter… After considering the calendar anomalies, such as the May to October effect, the Monday effect, and the macroeconomic conditions, we obtain consistent results on the diminishing mood effect of temperature after the cooling system was installed.”
Which I guess is why I keep so many spare hoodies at the office.
And speaking of work, I maintain a calendar of NYC events that I find interesting (but probably won’t actually manage to attend) nowadays, initially created for the sake of folks on my team who relocated recently and don’t know how to find fun stuff to do around here yet. maybe you’ll find it helpful too, shrug
“In 1964… chemists Isabel Bear and R.G. Thomas coined ‘petrichor’ from the Greek ‘petros’ (stone) and ‘ichor’, the blood of the gods.” - American Council on Science and Health, Geosmin: Why We Like The Smell Of Air After A Storm
Sort of. Alfred Wolff installed the first comfort cooling system in 1903. The first HVAC school opened in 1899. But Willis Carrier solved the humidity problem.