5 Intriguing Things
1. The body-cameras-for-cops movement is gaining steam.
"The U.S. Border Patrol will begin wearing cameras this year at its training academy, a test to see if the technology should be used in the field to blunt criticism about agents' use of force. R. Gil Kerlikowske, who has led the Border Patrol's parent agency since March, announced the plans Tuesday to a small group of activists who have pressed for cameras, according to a person who attended the briefing and spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussion was intended to be private. Testing will occur at the Border Patrol academy in Artesia, New Mexico." (abcnews.go.com)
2. The postmodern economy, a sketch.
"As the cleaner laid out his tools, we made small talk, and I asked him where he lived. 'Well, right now I'm staying in a shelter in Oakland,' he said. I paused, unsure if I'd heard him right. A shelter? Was my house cleaner — the one I'd hired through a company that has raised $40 million in venture-capital funding from well-respected firms like Google Ventures, the one who was about to perform arduous manual labor in my house using potentially hazardous cleaning chemicals — homeless? He was, as it turned out. And as I told this story to friends in the Bay Area, I heard something even more surprising: Several of their Homejoy cleaners had been homeless, too." (nymag.com)
3. Huh, so we don't know exactly who is running the 21 phony cell towers around the US.
"On August 29, Popular Science published a map of interceptor towers -- surveillance devices that masquerade as cell phone towers to intercept voice and data transmissions from every cell user in an area. 19 of the interceptors were found in the United States in August, and two more popped up on September 5: one in Garden City, NY, and another in downtown Las Vegas. They were spotted by owners of the CryptoPhone 500 device, a roughly $3,500 ultra-high-end phone that allows ordinary, if well-heeled, citizens to see surveillance invisible to standard phones... A shroud of secrecy surrounds the technology, with the government trying to avoid admitting usage of interceptors, even in criminal trials where cell phone surveillance has provided key pieces of evidence." (popsci.com)
4. FSG has put the first chapter of John Darnielle's Wolf in White Van online.
"I went inside and I puttered around on the computer, trying to finish up something I’d been working on, a little corner of a detour hardly anybody ever cared about. Most weekends I try to put my work aside, but there wasn’t anything else to do. Then I checked my bank accounts, a nervous habit: I’m not rich, or even that comfortable, but my grandmother opened up a savings account for me after my accident, and she kept putting a little into it every month for ten years until she died. It’s a security blanket now. I look at what’s in there whenever I start to worry that my own savings or the insurance payments or my work won’t be enough. It’s like checking a lock on a door: just making sure no bad guys are going to get in. And then I played some music, old music, and it sounded awful, and I loved it, I loved it so much." (fsgworkinprogress.com)
+ "As the creator of Trace Italian—a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail—Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America."
"Even though it sounds weird, Ticker-tape synesthesia is actually my ‘favorite’ synesthesia. And, it’s also my ‘strongest’. I love it, since it helps me remember things better. Since it’s a rare type of synesthesia, it’s not really well know. Well, basically, when somebody talks, I see ‘subtitles’ of the words they are speaking. It can get annoying when either I just don’t want to listen to someone, or that TOO MANY PEOPLE ARE TALKING AT THE SAME TIME. When too many people are talking at the same time, I’m like : asdfghjkl; and my ticker-tape goes WILD, and I have a hard time concentrating on one of the conversations." (synesthesiaandsuch.wordpress.com)
Today's 1957 American English Language Tip
colossal in the sense not of enormous (as in colossal folly &c), but of indescribably entertaining or delightful or ridiculous is a Germanism not deserving adoption; the similar use of IMMENSE, though we do not name it honoris causa, is at least of native development.
Some Music, Old Music