bookofjoe

São Paulo 1943 — 'The fastest growing city in the world'

82 years ago.

1940 population: 1,326,261.

Current population: 22,806,700.

'Who's on First?' — 'Best comedy sketch of the 20th century'

Abbott and Costello perform their classic "Who's on first?" baseball sketch in their 1945 film "The Naughty Nineties." It was originally part of their stage act.

Radio version here.

Monopoly — World Edition

It came out in 2008 but news travels slowly to Podunkville.

22 cities are featured in the global edition.

Detailed back story here.

$50.

'I wish I could read like a girl' — Michelle Slatalla

Her New York Times Styles section column was always entertaining.

The one below, way above and beyond the usual "trials and tribulations of a San Francisco Bay area mom of three girls" subject matter, instead reflected on how it came to be that she somehow, in the transition from girl to adult, lost the ability to be completely transported by a book to the point where nothing else really mattered.

The Times piece follows.

I Wish I Could Read Like a Girl

For weeks now, I have been watching my children endure life in the fishbowl of the holiday season. On hiatus from school, they swim patient laps around one another in the cramped space of a family.

I don't envy this. I know from personal experience that the last thing you want, in that awkward decade when you are trying to figure out who you are and where you are headed, is the pressure of being under the constant observation of cranky grown-ups who wonder why you aren’t unloading the dishwasher for them more often.

My daughters cope with having to live around me in much the same way that I remember dealing with my mother. They sleep in. They stay up very late. They put gasoline in the car just often enough to neutralize criticism.

Watching these delicate negotiations makes me glad to be past that stage of life. Most of the time. But there is one thing I notice my daughters doing when they hang around the house that makes me ache, with a terrible yearning, to be young again. They read.

Or more precisely, they read like I did when I was a girl. They drape themselves across chairs and sofas and beds — any available horizontal surface will do, in a pinch — and they allow a novel to carry them so effortlessly from one place to another that for a time they truly don’t care about anything else.

I miss the days when I felt that way, curled up in a corner and able to get lost in pretty much any plot. I loved stories indiscriminately, because each revealed the world in a way I had never considered before. The effect was so profound that I can still remember vividly the experiences of reading "Little Women" (in my bedroom, by flashlight) and "Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris" (in a Reader's Digest condensed version at my grandmother's) and "The Diamond in the Window" (sitting cross-legged on the linoleum amid the stacks at the public library). And a thousand others. After each, I would emerge a changed person.

This has nothing to do with the way I "read" these days, with piles of books sitting forlornly on the night table, skimmed and dog-eared and dusty as they wait listlessly for me to feel a compelling urge to return to them, to finish "Beginner’s Greek" or "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"or even, God help me, "Midnight's Children."

That I can be sitting here now in another room two floors away from those half-digested stories and be engaged, without longing for them, in an entirely different activity is not something I would have believed possible when I was young.

I am not sure when or exactly how I started merely reading books instead of living in them. I could make the usual excuses about how I no longer have the luxury of time to give in to my imagination; when I sit down with a book, I feel the pressure — of unfinished work, unfolded laundry, unpaid bills. But I suppose the true reason is sadder. It's an inevitable byproduct of growing up that I formed too many opinions of my own to be able to give in wholeheartedly to the prospect of living inside someone else's universe.

Unfortunately there is only a narrow window of time, after one learns to read but before one gets old enough to read critically, to fully appreciate the sweet sadness of "Mick Harte Was Here" or the orphan's longing in "Taash and the Jesters" — I read that one eight times the summer I was 10 — or the trapped restlessness of being the teenaged "Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones."

Among my three daughters, whose ages are 19, 17 and 11, I see signs of an inevitable progression toward being skeptical readers.

I fear Zoe, the oldest, has completely lost the childhood gift of being able to suspend disbelief. Last week, in an attempt to delay the transition, I dug out for her one of my favorite frothy romances — an Elinor Lipman novel called "The Inn at Lake Devine."

But results of that experiment were mixed.

"How was it?" I asked a few days later.

"I couldn’t stop reading it," she said, before adding, with regret, "but I knew from the beginning how it would turn out."

Ella, my middle daughter, has been taught in high school to be an analytical reader. I have mixed feelings about this: good preparation for taking standardized tests, but bad for someone who is trying to revel without reservation in the absurd plot twists of "The Time Traveler’s Wife." It took me hours to persuade her it was O.K. to turn her back on everything she had learned in science class about the time-space continuum.

Clementine, who is 11, is the luckiest. She's still young, so she was able to leave the rest of us behind for whole days this year when she was off somewhere else, inhabiting the world of a sign-language-knowing chimp in "Hurt Go Happy."

Currently, she totes around the house one or another of the doorstopper-heavy volumes in Stephanie Meyer's vampire-loves-mortal-girl series. She comes to the dinner table wearing the hollow-eyed, devotional expression of someone who has just glimpsed something wonderful in a distant land.

Although there is much about the vampire books to make an adult reader roll her eyes — Edward is too controlling and Bella has the sort of low self-esteem mothers hope will never plague their own daughters — I understand the appeal. At Clementine's age, I too would have been able to smell Edward and feel the delicious iciness of his breath on the back of my neck. And at several hundred pages apiece, the series of four easily would have carried me through winter break.

The World's Fresh Water by Country

[via Visual Capitalist]

Pinsqueaks Push Pins

From the website:

Honey I shrunk the pins!

These mini versions of push pins are small but not pinsignificant.

Fun tip: You can paint them different colors. I did white!

Pin Size: Approx 16mm x 5mm x 5mm

Included: 5-pack of push pins

Material: Stainless steel

$8.

And you thought your first day back was tough...

[via Milena]

'A Duty of Care' — Gerald Seymour

Just published this year, the latest novel by my favorite writer in the world — hey, it's not just me: he's "The best thriller writer in the world" according to the Daily Telegraph.

This is his forty-first, and to my delight it's as good as anything he's ever done.

Seymour's first novel, "Harry's Game," published in 1975 — 50 years ago! — was named by the Times of London one of "The 100 Best Crime Novels and Thrillers since 1945."

You could look it up.

What's remarkable to me is that at age 83 he continues to create compelling narratives, which wasn't the case with John le Carré who in his eighties still produced highly enjoyable novels, though not at the impossibly rarified levels of excellence of those in his prime.

Autobahn No Speed Limit Sign

From websites:

If you've been fortunate enough to drive on the Autobahn you'll smile when you see this sign.

It tells drivers pedal to the metal, go as fast as you dare.

We can only dream of such freedom here in the States.

Hang it in your garage in front of your car, sit in the driver's seat, and take a little fantasy ride.

12" diameter.

$10.50.

Over nine feet of passwords!

Long story short: decades ago I, like everyone else, started writing down my passwords as the number of websites requiring them exploded.

Most people have long since switched to password managers and their ilk: not Luddite moi.

I just kept adding page after page after page to my handwritten, many times corrected/modified/revised/updated list, to the point that I have every.single.password. I've ever used written down on an over nine-foot-long scroll of taped-together yellow legal pad pages, as any fool can plainly see in the videos above and below.

Works great.

Less filling, too.

heh

Advertising, Bangkok style — 'Tangles? Switch to Rejoice Conditioners'

From Oddee: "Tangled phone lines are a common sight on the streets of Bangkok, so Procter & Gamble decided to take advantage of how they resemble long strands of tangled hair. To promote P&G's line of Rejoice conditioners, a large green comb was placed on the telephone lines, reading: 'Tangles? Switch to Rejoice Conditioners.'"

[via Alistair Why]

Knife Blade Guards

I wonder how many ER visits happen because someone put their hand in a drawer and cut themselves on an exposed knife blade.

I bet hundreds, maybe thousands every year.

From websites:

With our blade guards you can safely store knives in a drawer.

They will protect your fingers when you're rummaging for an item.

Ideal if you don't have enough wall space or prefer not to use a magnetic knife strip with exposed blades.

These guards slide on easily and protect both the blades and your fingers.

Four-pack for 10" Slicer, 8" Chef's, 6" Utility, and 4" Parer includes guards measuring 10½, 8½, 6¾, and 4¾ inches long.

Features and Details:

• Durable translucent black VC enables you to see protected knives

• Perfect for drawer storage or on-the-go chefs

• Blade entry notch, soft felt lining

• Made in Thailand

$19.95.

(Mostly) Abandoned Blogs

Res ipsa loquitur.

"a social network but I am the only user" — LOVE IT!

I looked for mine among the 154 featured but couldn't find it.

I did find this:

touch grass — 'reduce screentime'

Wrote Clive Thompson:

Ever worry that you're doomscrolling too much?

touch grass is an iPhone app that will lock your access to social-media apps, and unlock it only if you take a photo of yourself actually touching grass.

As the creator tells Fast Company …

"I was sick and tired of my reflex in the morning being to reach for my phone and scroll for upwards of an hour," Kentish says. "It didn't feel good and I wasn't getting anything out of it."

Currently, the app uses Google's image-labeling Cloud Vision API to verify that the grass has, indeed, been touched.

However, Kentish says, the app has gone so viral that he's considering training his own image-detection model for cost-reduction purposes.

Pretty cute! It’s probably easy to fake — you just submit a picture of yourself previously touching grass.

It'd be more algorithmically solid if the app required you to show live video of your hand gently stroking the green turf of a lawn... but I suspect that would jack up the visual-recognition costs pretty high.

Relatedly, while suburbanites and rural-dwellers might have ready access to grass — me, here, in Brooklyn?

Man, I'd need to travel several blocks before I could find a piece of sod.

That might be a feature, though, and not a bug.

James Bond's Cane

Let's see, Bond was 33 when Ian Fleming brought him to life in "Casino Royale" in 1953.

Which would make him 105 today.

So you can see that our hero might want to have a little something extra on hand just in case resentful descendants of those archvillains of yore decided to seek revenge.

From websites:

Retractable Tip Ice Cane

Push a button and the retractable pointed ice tip extends and sinks into ice, snow, or frosty ground to provide an extra measure of safety on your way to the mailbox or your car.

Comfortable soft foam grip and traditional round-top handle.

Adjustable from 30" to 39" in 1" increments.

Contructed of bronze anodized aluminum.

Weight capacity 250 lbs.

$21.71.

One more thing: I'm so tired of the endless debate about who should be the next James Bond.

For a long time it's been obvious to me: Idris Elba.