These fascinating vessels create the most interesting animal sounds when filled with a little bit of water and tilting them.
How do they work? They use some cleverly designed chambers that create the different effects. Steve Mould does a great analysis below:
Tens of thousands of people arrive at the coastal city of Durban South Africa for the annual Durban July – Africa’s biggest horse-racing and fashion event. Much like the pomp surrounding the Kentucky Derby, Durban also turns into an impromptu fashion show.
In 2020, Oregon voters passed the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act in 2020 which decriminalized possession of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other drugs.
So how is it going?
Oregon still has among the highest addiction rates in the country. Fatal overdoses have increased almost 20% over the previous year, with over a thousand dead. Of 16,000 people who were picked up in the first year of decriminalization, only 0.85% entered treatment. But around 60% of them accepted free needles.
Steve Allen, behavioral health director, said that they needed millions more and more time for the “bold and transformative approach.” Unfortunately, experts like addiction researcher, professor at Stanford University, and former senior adviser in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy Keith Humphreys said, “If there is no formal or informal pressure on addicted people to seek treatment and recovery and thereby stop using drugs, we should expect continuing high rates of drug use, addiction and attendant harm,”
The key piece that seems to be missing is enforcement. Places like Europe that decriminalized drugs also heavily enforce requiring addicts get into treatment programs, shut down drug dens, and still put people in jail if they don’t seek help. Even with all of that, the approach also still has some conflicting results.
It seems like Oregon’s picked the worst of the policies – legalization with no enforcement and no consequences. Unfortunately, the real losers are the thousands of addicts that are now dead. Sadly, it seems that our politicians are more interested in making shows of public policy instead of actually saving lives.
I thought this a really interesting term and article: the End of the Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy. Many young people have grown up in a world in which they have never had to pay the real costs of things. How? Venture capital has been helping Silicon Valley companies run with big losses for over a decade now. The goal was growth at any cost – and cost overruns were not a problem with basically 0% interest rates and venture capital and stock market investors pouring money into tech and growth stocks. With rising interest rates however, the last 20 years of free money seem to be slamming shut. The real cost of the Uber trips, complementary next day shipping, cloud storage, free apps, and cheap eats are starting to come out.
Venture capital companies are warning startups that the money is drying up and they need to act fast. Across the entire startup landscape, VC money is dropping by double-digit percentages and costs must be cut. Even Facebook and Google are issuing dire earnings reports that show that the party is likely over. You can read lots of articles on Inc about this rapid change and it’s causing scores of startups to rescind offers and even lay off substantial amounts of their staffs – often 20% or more at a time.
Time will tell if we ever return to the heady days of 2% interest rates. Until then, I think a lot of young people might start experiencing things that many lived through in the late 70’s and 80’s – high inflation with just as high interest rates. Much like the Ghostbusters did:
I grew up in a family that owned a few houses. Besides the house we lived in my dad saw owning a few rental properties as good investments. The reality turned out to be a lot more work than I ever expected. I remember spending whole summers and free weekends painting or fixing various issues on the houses.
Fast forward to the 2000’s and I saw others try the same thing. Then many of them moved to simply buying and flipping. Why? Because actually owning homes is expensive and not ‘passive’ at all. It can, as I learned as a kid, become a major investment of your time and energy.
I found this article to be pretty much spot-on to what I saw us go through.
I think we forget the amazing collections of historical artifacts we have on the internet. The limitations of Covid has left me doing a lot of traveling and bucket list visits to famous places via Youtube and online streamers.
I started looking up filming locations for a favorite movie of mine – The Grand Budapest Hotel. Pre-soviet eastern block countries had amazing architecture. In my searching, it turns out Wes Anderson tried to capture the feel for the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel from old Photochrom prints.
The Photochrom Print Collection is available for free from the Library of Congress and has thousands of early prints of European and North American images from the 1890’s to 1910’s.
It makes me wonder what amazing artistic creations people can make using just the free resources we have at our fingertips today – plus some imagination.
Paper sculptures and art have become quite amazing as of late. Laser cutters have made some pretty interesting creations possible. Now there’s a new book by Gingko Press called Paperists: Infinite Possibilities in Paper Art that covers a lot of the different methods artists are using.
Do you feel you were robbed because you were born too early to catch Pink Floyd live concerts? Brit Floyd is probably the closest you’ll ever get to experiencing them live. The sound is nearly perfect. I hope I can see them.
Staying on top of the latest shows, music, bands, plays, and events in your area often involves digging around on lots of venue sites. It’s time consuming and error prone. I definitely have missed some of my favorites when they came into town – only to hear about the show a month later.
Besides the really cool app NearHear that finds local shows within a radius of you, Portland Theater website also offers a very comprehensive list of shows so you don’t have to dig around on various venue websites only to find out the show you wanted to go to was sold out days ago.
Anyone who’s done any OpenGL graphics is familiar with the ubiquitous Utah teapot. It’s been a staple in everything from OpenGL to Pixar movies to countless other shows.
As the story goes, Martin Newell needed a simple mathematical model of a familiar object. His wife suggested modelling their tea set since they were sitting down for tea at the time. He sketched the teapot free-hand using graph paper and a pencil. Following that, he went back to the computer laboratory and edited bézier control points on a Tektronix storage tube, again by hand.
The teapot shape contained a number of elements that made it ideal for the graphics experiments of the time: it was round, contained saddle points, had a genus greater than zero because of the hole in the handle, could project a shadow on itself, and could be displayed accurately without a surface texture.
The good news is that that now you can own your own. The original teapot was made by the German company Friesland. Apparently they were not aware of how famous their teapot had become, but restarted production – even giving it the ‘Utah’ name.
If you want to own your own Friesland Teekanne 1,4l Weiß Utah Teapot – just go to their website and order one today! The original teapot was the white 1.4L model – but other sizes and colors are available.
Update Jan 2024:
A great tragedy. It appears the Friesland factory that made the teapots was destroyed in a major fire.
On June 29, 2023, decades of German porcelain history and tradition were destroyed during a major fire on our company premises. For this reason, we are unfortunately unable to supply you with any of our old series pieces . It was simply: EVERYTHING was destroyed .
However, we are looking forward optimistically and are doing everything we can to build a new factory at the old Varel location . Parts of our popular series Jeverland white, Ecco and La Belle as well as the Walküre series Alta and NYNY are already partially available again.
I sent them an email and asked if they would have the teapots back in stock. There is no eta on when it, or any of their legacy series, will ever come back. Here was their response:
From: Service | Frieslandversand.de
Date: Jan 5, 2024, 12:43 AMDear Mr. Fife,
[Until now] we don`t know when this year we are able
to deliver the teapots. Until now we don`t have a production
here after the great fire in June and we are making test at other sites
in Germany for the production of these articles.With kind regards
The team of Friesland-Porzellan
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