Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

For anyone in what rydra_wong tags as Watergate fandom, Here's Jay Kuo's write-up of the Thursday night massacre. [Since someone asked, the "massacres" here are metaphorical.]

The article is about current political news, both the Trump administration and current New York mayor Eric Adams.

naomikritzer has posted her annual guide to buying gifts for people you're pressured into buying something for: "to help you express your dislike with all the tact of Joe Biden writing an epitaph for Henry Kissinger."

Like every year, Naomi notes both that many of these would be good gifts for someone else, and that unfortunately a lot of people are in situations where not getting something for certain relatives or acquaintances could lead to fights they don't want to have. At least once in the past, I have read one of her descriptions and thought it sounded delightful, because one person's eye-searingly bright color is another's favorite.

This year, Naomi says that her new book, Liberty's Daughter, would be the perfect gift for a certain sort of Libertarian blowhard. Similarly, Waubgeshig Rice's novel Moon of the Crusted Snow is about people surviving an apocalypse in northern Ontario, and could be given to "white dude gun-collecting survivalists," who would almost certainly be home from the family gift-exchanging event before they got far enough into the book to realize that people like them are the bad guys here. (Disclaimer: I have read neither of these, though Naomi's is on my kindle, along with some other things that I will get to after reading Permutation City for my online book club.)

Someone posted last week about long, unpronounceable generic names for drugs. This morning I found, via vass, a WHO website about choosing those names, including the meanings of a large assortment of stems (things like -micin and -mab). Some of the entries are things like "-tredekin (see -kin)" followed by an explanation of what the longer stem means.

The handbook also says to avoid the letters H and K, and use I instead of Y, to make pronunciation easier in various languages. That makes sense, and also reduces the number of possible names.

I am reminded here of "Exxon," a name carefully chosen not to mean anything in any language. If I recall correctly, there's only language that uses "xx" in words, Maltese, and "is 'exxon' a word in Maltese" was relatively easy to answer, compared to something like "is 'mitepunac' a word in any of the languages spoken anywhere we might be doing business?"

A Christmas-themed xkcd story with, as noted in the additional tags, canon-typical obscure references:

https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2022/works/43662427

I'm saving the four "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" fics for later; one of them is also a Voynich manuscript fic.

What is almost certainly the longest footnote in history: 173 pages about Hadrian's wall, going into detail to prove that it is in fact Hadrian's wall, not Severus'.

The author made it a footnote because he considered it off topic for the detailed history of Northumberland he was writing, but wanted to get it into print before he died.

(via andrewducker)

The New York Department of Health says that the UN General Assembly building is a convention center, and that proof of vaccination is therefore required to enter. (The requirement is for least one dose, of any vaccine approved by either the FDA or WHO.)

The Russian ambassador is furious, it's not clear whether he objects to the requirement itself, or to the NYC government claiming the authority to enforce that or any requirement.

I am amused by this because, when I was growing up, annoying foreign governments, and especially the Soviet government, was a sort of hobby of the New York City Council, which at that time had almost no real power. So the street corner nearest the Soviet embassy to the UN was named Sakharov-Bonner corner, after the Soviet dissidents Andrey Sakharov and Yelena Bonner.

I am not a lawyer, but it looks as though the extraterritorial status of that bit of Manhattan isn't relevant here. A little googling and a look at Wikipedia tell me that except as specifically provided, federal, state, and local law still apply.

A new study shows that coelacanths are long-lived and have the longest gestation period of any known animal.

The previous estimate was a lifespan of 20 years, which this study corrects to a century. The estimated gestation period is five years. The previous record-holder was the frilled shark, with a gestation period of about three and a half years; the mammal with the longest gestation period is the elephant, which carries its young for two years.

These are all estimates based on museum specimens (as was the previous number), but the new values fit better with what's known about other fish that live in similar habitats.

Tens of millions of Americans are eligible to get $50/month from the US government to help pay for their Internet service for the next few months. Eligibility for the "Emergency Broadband Benefit" includes people with low incomes, anyone who lost a job or significant income during the pandemic, people who are getting other benefits including food stamps, Medicaid, and Supplemental Security Income, and anyone who is already getting subsidized or low-income Internet service.

The FCC estimates that the application process should take about ten minutes, but you do have to apply. You can start at https://getemergencybroadband.org/how-to-apply/

The law authorizing this was passed in December, and the FCC now has it up and running in most of the United States.

Apropos of nothing in particular, Mike Ford doing Wodehouse doing Borges.

The CBC website has an article, from the Associated Press, on a Georgia investigation of Trump's attempts to steal the election.

The Fulton County District Attorney has written to the state's governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and attorney general to preserve all records relation to the election. (The Secretary of State is the person who was recorded telling Trump that no, he wasn't going to "find" him votes or otherwise change the election results.)

The DA's spokesperson doesn't explicitly name Trump, but did say "the matters reported on over the last several weeks are the matters being investigated." Also, the DA's letters say they "have no reason to believe that any Georgia official is a target of this investigation."

Meanwhile, here in Massachusetts, perennial losing candidate Shiva Ayyadurai is suing our secretary of state in federal court, demanding that he order Twitter to reinstate his account. No, that makes no more sense in context. In context, the state's lawyers have asked the judge to throw out that lawsuit, both because he's in the wrong court (the Eleventh Amendment* means he'd have to take this to a state court), and because he isn't suing Twitter and therefore the court couldn't order Twitter to do anything, even if his claims weren't nonsense.

*It's one of the obscure amendments, which sorted out some jurisdictional stuff early in US history. You didn't sleep through something important in history or civics class. The Eleventh Amendment sharply limits lawsuits against state governments (which is why the University of California, can get away with violating people's copyrights), and specifies that if one state sues another, over something like who owns Ellis Island, the case goes directly to the Supreme Court