Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1446
Tolkien's Notion Club Papers, Celestine V, District Heating Systems, Walkart, Carmel Delites, kerning catastrophies, dirt
Good morning hello oh man I am so tired. Stayed up too late last night - 11:06PM. Was reading Tolkien and got to the Notion Club Papers, an unfinished “time travel novel” that nominally has to do with the fall of Numenor. Except I never got to that point, having to plow through a frame, and another frame. It’s not uninteresting, but it is not Middle-Earth. Lotta talk about the dawn of Sci-Fi, and how they can’t get enough of it. They call it “Scientifiction.” There are only like 10 novels for them to read: Stapleton, Wells, apparently CS Lewis wrote some space ship stuff? Lotta debate about Space Ships as a plot device. Utter lack of imagination about what Sci Fi could become, but kind of cool to read about people talking about it like it’s the hot new thing, like Tik Tok or something. Anyway I tried to get to the point where they “Time Travel” (via a method roughly akin to Lucid Dreaming) to Numenor, but, man, it just kept going. Buncha Oxford Dons pontification.
One fun fact, though, is that Tolkien seems to have accurately predicted the Great English Typhoon of 1987, within a couple months. So props to him for that.
Also the footnotes were a mix of Christopher commenting on the manuscript, and the in-frame “editor” also commenting on the manuscript and it was hella confusing but also kind of fun and immersive.
But I just wanna get to Numenorrrrr, maaaan.
Listening to my Spotify Release Radar this morning, cuz I have no new album to listen to oh wait the new Bob Mould is out today will get to that. It’s mostly bands I never heard of, though it does have a (so-so) new Black Country New Road song and a great new Ezra Furman track. And a great track by someone named Esmé Creed-Miles that is super solid I wonder what her deal is.
It is a weird feeling to listen to new artists you don’t know and worry that they are “fake.”
Just back from Walmart and I have much to report:
Distraction-free hours still going strong. Walmart may have scaled back on their DEI initiatives, bastards, but at least they are still catering a smidge to the neurodivergent.
They were out of Turkey Chomps, a recent vice of mine, but that’s okay because when I was in Alaska I had a pack of my old childhood Beef Jerky and it sent me to heaven and I realized I can get it via mail order so I guess I am a beef eater again which kind of sucks but also childhood memories, maan.
Still no Caffeine-Free Diet Mountain Dew anywhere, except in 20-oz plastic bottles, which is a non-starter. I miss the cans. It’s like they are only catering to the gamer kids who need to sleep eventually, and not guilt-ridden GenXers not able to completely shed their toxic upbringings.
Emma is kind of (not unreasonably) obsessed with the waste of flavor packets from my ramen noodles when I make my own broth, and had me look into packs of noodles without flavor packs. They do make them. They are $4.11 for six packs, unclear quality. Conversely, you can get 40 packs of Manchurian for $3. Not worth it. These are also curly noodles, not, like, nice, straight, posh ramen noodles. I gotta go to the Asian grocery for that. Someday.
They do not sell giant Magic Markers anymore, just some “king size” Sharpie that is a pale imitation of the giant markers of yesteryear. Gimme my markers shrouded in actual steel, at least an inch thick of a chisel, smelling like toxic chemicals, man. I am trying to mark up OSB here. And give them to me local. Sharpie does make the MAGNUM but a) not locally available and b) plastic. Something like this. But bigger. And metal. And smelly. And local.
Tons of new non-alcoholic beverage brands, all kind of interesting. They sell ritual gin now which is cool. They have an aperol spritz, but it was sold out. An agave beverage. A fake whiskey and cola I might try? NA whiskey is always a crap shoot. Ritual Gin is good, though, so I may downgrade to that from my custom Ish/Monday blend in favor of shopping local.
Also Fever Tree (non-diet) tonic is constantly sold out at Walmart. Like 3 out of 4 weeks a month. Mysterious.
There was exactly one bag of perlite and it was small so I will go to the localy-owned Pittsboro farming supply shop sometime and buy another one of those garbage-bag sized bulk perlite bags I love them so much.
Semi-related my soil brand has been discontinued. I think this might be related to it performing especially well in a recent viral Youtube video that had me feeling well-chuffed because I knew it was the best soil, even though it’s a shitty corporate brand and not the hipster stuff the Youtube gardeners use. It is the Miracle Gro Performance Organics. But it’s gone. They have made a new (non-performance) organic and I bought some at Lowe’s and it is okay but not the same. When I was doing my delivery order for studio building materials this week, I tried to order 30 bags of it from the Chapel Hill Lowes (as opposed to the Pittsboro one where I shop in person) because they said they had 100 in stock but then they emailed me back to say “ha ha we were lying” and cancelled that part of the order.
I mean I was embarrassed to buy Miracle Gro, even if it was organic, so I guess now I have that removed from my life.
Friend, pilot, and GMHHAY reader Mark Slavonia chimed in on my offhand comment about “why do city potholes not steam anymore” and boy did he kill it. First off, pointed out my goof: I meant manholes, not potholes. What can I say the thought had just popped into my mind. I was just commenting on 80’s and 90’s cinematography tropes, but it’s actually pretty interesting. Lets hear from Mark:
Steaming manhole covers are generally a feature of places with centralized district steam heating systems. I think they're an interesting and under-appreciated public utility and they've fallen out of favor for interesting reasons. Around the same time that cities built water, gas and electricity networks, many also built centralized heating systems that delivered steam to buildings instead of each building having its own boiler. The Manhattan one run by ConEd serves the entire area up to 96th Street and has been working since the 1880s.
Visible steam can come from manhole covers in two ways, as I understand it - first (and most dramatically), if there's a non-critical leak in the steam pipes some steam escapes from the system directly. That might be why we associate steaming manhole covers with cities that have somewhat run-down infrastructure. Second, even in a system that's not leaking the manhole covers can be warmed by the warmer air down near the steam pipes, and when it rains the warmer manhole cover can produce (a lot less but still visible) water vapor.
District steam heat systems work so well that they're not well understood. Most of us don't know when we're crossing a boundary from a centralized system into a distributed system. They're less commonly built these days because we're mostly building in places that either already have them, or we're building in lower density where they're not efficient - blame the car, and especially parking. Also modern distributed heating systems ARE better than they used to be - heat pumps etc - so it may be that the advantages of district heating are lower compared to alternatives. But there are tons of district heating systems still our there working fine.
A thing that haunts me about district heating systems is that if they stop working they stop working for everyone, everywhere. This doesn't seem to have happened on a large scale in the US, ever, but imagine if the Manhattan steam heat system stopped working. Get to New Jersey any way you can, fast.
Then Mark said it would be great if a newsletter we both like, The Prepared, did an edition on it. Then Spencer, the editor of The Prepared, chimed in and said they had, and included this great photo.
So, you know. Good day for private Slack groups.
Speaking of which!
Join the GMHHAY slack! Reply to this email and ask for an invite if you’re a human who likes chatting with other humans about topics such as these within!
That didn’t happen in the GMHHAY slack, though. That happened in the WITI Slack. But still. Private groups! The new internet hotness! No trolls!
Guess we’re gonna wrap up the week here with a GMHHAY edition that has a lot of long quotes. Because yesterday I got really obsessed with Celestine V, great pope. Let us quote some shit from his Wikipedia page:
He was elected pope in the Catholic Church's last non-conclave papal election, ending a two-year impasse. Among the few edicts of his to remain in force is the confirmation of the right of the pope to resign; nearly all of his other official acts were annulled by his successor, Boniface VIII. On 13 December 1294, a week after issuing the decree, Celestine resigned, stating his desire to return to his humble, pre-papal life. He was subsequently imprisoned by Boniface in the castle of Fumone in the Lazio region, in order to prevent his potential installation as antipope. He died in prison on 19 May 1296.
…
When sent for, Pietro obstinately refused to accept the papacy, and even, as Petrarch says, tried to flee, until he was finally persuaded by a deputation of cardinals accompanied by the king of Naples and the pretender to the throne of Hungary.
You gotta wonder how painful his imprisonment was, given that he wanted to be alone and go live in a cave anyway. Presumably he was one of the few people annoyed with the quality of his prison.
Also he gave good quote. When explaining why he was quitting the papacy, he referenced:
"The desire for humility, for a purer life, for a stainless conscience, the deficiencies of his own physical strength, his ignorance, the perverseness of the people, his longing for the tranquility of his former life"
Today we have Jane gymnastics and I THINK it’s one of our last gymnastics Fridays before she moves up to the next class, which is on Wednesdays. This is all fine but the reason I am writing this is I would like to register my strong disapproval at the abyssmal kerning on their new shirts. Just a complete abdication of graphic design responsibility. Horrifying. Behold:
The worst part is they have a GOOD logo, presumably made by an actual designer. Okay it’s not good, but at least it’s freakin kerned.
The entire Triangle region seems to be out of Carmel Delites, so I only got three boxes of my order of 12. So if you want Carmel Delites and you live in the NC Triangle, you gotta mail order ‘em. Which sucks cuz the shipping is a lot. But time is running out, so last call for ordering cookies online. We’ll be bringing some boxes to Boston for Spring Break if you live there, but no Thin Mints, no Carmel Delites, so, you know. BE PREPARED.
I would like to close out by congratulating Jane. Yesterday after girl scouts she kicked off her shoes — an annoying habit I can’t get her to stop but that’s not the point here. The shoe went flying and hit me right in the junk. It hurt. I yelped. And Jane just came over and said sorry, right away! It ruled! Apparently they had been talking about “responsibility” in Girl Scouts and it stuck. Just a quick apology. So excellent. I was so proud.
Got a shoegaze playlist for you today. I have begun trying to explain shoegaze to Jane but I gotta explain guitar pedals, reverb and a lot more. But we are getting there. I think everything is new on this playlist except Amusement Parks on Fire man they were so good and operating in the period where there wasn’t much shoegaze - the late 90’s, early oughts. Only got to see them once but they ruled. New bdrmm is so good.
Have a lovely weekend.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.