How the wind blows
This is what happens to a tree growing up on Ireland’s so-called ‘Wild Atlantic Way’.
Quote of the Day
”Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.”
- Robert Louis Stevenson
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Randy Newman | Birmingham
Wonderful song.
On This Day 23 Years Ago…
I still think that Jeff Jarvis’s memoir is the best thing written about that terrible day.
Yes, I am blessed to be alive.
I was a block away from the World Trade Center, at Broadway and Liberty Street, when the first of the two towers collapsed yesterday morning. Completely engulfed in its debris, I joined a mob running away, screaming, unable to see, unable to breathe anything but the black cloud.
As the first of the tidal wave of debris bore down on us, some people crouched behind large concrete planters, believing they would protect them. But I kept running. I fell. Others fell around me. I got back up and kept running. I heard large pieces of the destroyed building hitting cars on the street. I heard more terrified screams.
There was no air. I breathed through my handkerchief and even so, my mouth, nose and lungs were filled with black. There was no light. I could see nothing, only black. I slammed into a building, and a tree, and another building.
I heard people and asked where we were. No one answered. I kept going and finally saw light at Chase Plaza II, where the building managers opened the doors, letting us refugees and much smoke inside…
Keep reading.
My commonplace booklet
How Joe Biden Engineered Apple’s New AirPods
Interesting blog post by Matt Stoller.
Apple said that after FDA clearance in the fall, the hearing features will be available via a software update. The AirPods Pro 2 will cost $249.
To set up hearing enhancement, users can take a hearing test inside the Apple Health app that’s based on the pure-tone test used by audiologists. The results of the test automatically adjust your AirPods’ sound levels, or you can download the test as a PDF to show an audiologist. (You can also input existing hearing test results into the Health app.)
Apple engineers turning AirPods into hearing aids is wonderful, but it’s not a uniquely difficult endeavor. In fact, what’s happening here is that a set of elected leaders opened up a market closed off by a cartel that had secured a comfortable position, shielded by the Food and Drug Administration. And engineers, many of whom care deeply about hearing, acted in this new legal space to create tools to help people live better lives…
Joe Biden’s administration enabled this, in other words.
There’s a general lesson here. It is that lots of worthwhile things that can be done (in the sense that they are technically feasible) are not being done because doing so would threaten the comfortable rents being extracted by incumbent companies — especially ones that have captured regulators in their industries.
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