For over a century, American Jews have eaten American Chinese food on Christmas. This pastime has evolved to a near-holy tradition, parodied on Saturday Night Live, analyzed in academic papers, and reaffirmed by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.
Perhaps the foremost expert on the practice is Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut, PhD, executive director of American Friends of Rabin Medical Center, rabbi of Metropolitan Synagogue in New York, and author of A Kosher Christmas, the premier (and only?) comprehensive study of what Jews do at Christmastime.
I spoke to Plaut about Chinese food on Christmas, and why he used to sit on Santa Claus’s lap.
I knew about this tradition (and have partaken of it myself) but just assumed was just that. I didn’t realize there’s an actual, “logical” reason for it.
The photo, taken from high on the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai, shows the surrounding landscape in stunning detail. From your virtual perch many stories above the ground, you can zoom in so far that you can read the license plates on cars and spot smiling faces greeting each other on the sidewalk.
The image itself is way too large to post here, but you can visit the company’s website and use their online tool to enjoy it for yourself. It’s a bit like a treasure hunt, and you can easily lose some serious time just trying to find new and interesting things to check out.
It’s an incredible image. See if you can spot the Shanghai Apple Store. Thanks to Les Posen for the link.
For the Christmas tree vendors of Gopher Broke Farms, the day begins at 8 p.m. when a truck from Quebec carrying upwards of 800 Christmas trees will roll up to the corner of 124th and Madison. A crew of five workers will scamper to the top of the large piles of Fraser firs and balsams and begin slangin’ trees — tree-vendor slang for throwing trees, essentially — from that truck into other trucks destined to travel throughout Manhattan. “Tree!” the workers shout as they throw them from the seemingly endless pile.
Selling Christmas trees is a wildly logistical process, involving growers in Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Vermont.
As a native son of a province that is one of the largest Christmas tree suppliers, I love these stories of how the tree gets from that farm in Nova Scotia, Quebec or Vermont to the streets and parking lots of your hometown.
With version 4.0 released today, Darkroom has emerged as a photo editing force to be reckoned with on iOS. The app’s combination of thoughtful design and platform-aware functionality together enable Darkroom to scale its full suite of tools gracefully from iPhone to iPad, which makes it an excellent choice for mobile photo editing.
One of the things that sets Darkroom apart from a photo editor like Lightroom CC is its tight integration with iCloud Photo Library. Instead of requiring you to manually import images, Darkroom accesses your iCloud Photo Library directly.
I’ve used Darkroom and this new version makes a great app even better.
We recently tested four smart speakers by asking Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortana 800 questions each. Google Assistant was able to answer 88% of them correctly vs. Siri at 75%, Alexa at 73%, and Cortana at 63%. Last year, Google Assistant was able to answer 81% correctly vs. Siri (Feb-18) at 52%, Alexa at 64%, and Cortana at 56%.
Interesting that all four smart speaker systems got smarter over time.
Some 200 to 600 octillion microbes live beneath our continents, suggests an analysis of data from sites all over the world, and even more live beneath the seafloor. Together they weigh the equivalent of up to 200 million blue whales — and far more than all 7.5 billion humans. Subterranean diversity rivals that of the surface, with most underground organisms yet to be discovered or characterized.
As scientists continue their studies, the organisms they find are challenging and expanding the tree of life.
I remember as a kid learning about all the “cooties” that live in our body and being really creeped out about it. I’m not creeped out by the thought of octillions of creatures living beneath our feet but it’s equally as amazing.
…As I am today, given everything I’ve learned about cinema and the universe, I can’t help but refuse and reject this picture in the strongest possible terms. It is a brilliant film that is also, unfortunately, a total mistake.
I’m not interested in films that plunge themselves headlong into violence any more. I’m not interested in the manipulation of multitudinous evidence to tell a simple, linear story. I’m not interested in British soldiers fighting Germans on the Western Front, telling stories about their time in the trenches. I came to the film looking for a story I hadn’t seen or heard before, and those stories were nowhere to be found.
This is a really interesting essay arguing against the film. I’ve seen the trailers and am still looking forward to seeing the film but this gives me something additional to think about as I watch.
My thanks to Bare Bones Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. Do you sling code or compose with words? Whether you’re an app developer, web developer, systems admin or just want a powerful writing tool that stays out of your way, BBEdit is worth checking out.
I’ve been using BBEdit since 1995, so I know first hand that it can handle any job I throw at it.
BBEdit is crafted in response to the needs of writers, web authors, and software developers, providing an abundance of high-performance features for editing, searching, and the manipulation of text.
Dan Riccio, Apple’s vice president of hardware engineering:
Relative to the issue you referenced regarding the new iPad Pro, its unibody design meets or exceeds all of Apple’s high quality standards of design and precision manufacturing. We’ve carefully engineered it and every part of the manufacturing process is precisely measured and controlled.
This iPad Pro bend is a real head scratcher for me. Apple is so diligent and precise in every aspect of manufacturing that it seems impossible that this could happen, but yet it has. I haven’t seen this with my iPad Pro and we don’t know how prevalent it is beyond the few pictures we’ve seen online.
Apple is committed to your privacy and being transparent about government requests for customer data globally. This report provides information on government requests received.
For the last 8 years I’ve been shooting in the San Francisco area I have been absolutely obsessed with the fog. Night and day it’s what I live for and what defines my photographic style. I check the cams, satellites, and other forecasts to always be able to just get up and go. We even have a small group of about 20 of us known as, “Fogaholics” where we keep each other updated all the time as soon as we see it roll in.
These are beautiful, almost surreal images. The technique to create them is actually fairly simple. But the knowledge required to get images like these is not easy to teach or come by.
The army has been called in to help with the ongoing crisis at Gatwick airport, where drones flying near the runway have kept planes grounded for over 12 hours.
The airport has been closed since Wednesday night, when the devices were repeatedly flown over the airfield in what police and the airport described as a deliberate attempt to disrupt flights.
Tens of thousands of travellers have been affected, with 110,000 passengers on 760 flights due to fly on Thursday. Eurocontrol said Gatwick would not re-open before 8pm at the earliest.
This is an issue that is only going to get worse as more and more consumer drones are used and get in the hands of idiots who fly unsafely.
Multiple AirPods sharing audio on the same device, getting back at package thieves, and the bend of the new iPad Pro are among the topics Dave and I tackle on this week’s show.
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Apple has confirmed to The Verge that some of its 2018 iPad Pros are shipping with a very slight bend in the aluminum chassis. But according to the company, this is a side effect of the device’s manufacturing process and shouldn’t worsen over time or negatively affect the flagship iPad’s performance in any practical way. Apple does not consider it to be a defect.
The bend is the result of a cooling process involving the iPad Pro’s metal and plastic components during manufacturing, according to Apple.
And:
My 11-inch iPad Pro showed a bit of a curve after two weeks. Apple asked if I would send it their way so the engineering team could take a look. But the replacement 11-inch iPad Pro I received at Apple’s Downtown Brooklyn store exhibited a very slight bend in the aluminum as soon as I took off the wrapper.
And:
Those who are annoyed by the bend shouldn’t have any trouble exchanging or returning their iPad Pro at the Apple Store or other retailers within the 14-day return window. But it’s not clear if swaps will be permitted outside that policy.
Tricky. Is this really normal? Look at the image in the linked article. Certainly seems like a manufacturing defect to me.
Past as prologue, can’t help but imagine a lawsuit brewing somewhere.
Glenn Fleishman, writing for Smithsonian Magazine:
At midnight on New Year’s Eve, all works first published in the United States in 1923 will enter the public domain. It has been 21 years since the last mass expiration of copyright in the U.S.
And:
“The public domain has been frozen in time for 20 years, and we’re reaching the 20-year thaw,” says Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain. The release is unprecedented, and its impact on culture and creativity could be huge. We have never seen such a mass entry into the public domain in the digital age. The last one—in 1998, when 1922 slipped its copyright bond—predated Google. “We have shortchanged a generation,” said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. “The 20th century is largely missing from the internet.”
And:
We can blame Mickey Mouse for the long wait. In 1998, Disney was one of the loudest in a choir of corporate voices advocating for longer copyright protections. At the time, all works published before January 1, 1978, were entitled to copyright protection for 75 years; all author’s works published on or after that date were under copyright for the lifetime of the creator, plus 50 years.
Apple tweaked their App Store review guidelines from:
Apps should not directly or indirectly enable gifting of in-app purchase content, features, or consumable items to others.
To:
Apps may enable gifting of items that are eligible for in-app purchase to others. Such gifts may only be refunded to the original purchaser and may not be exchanged.
It’ll take time to see this, as apps need to implement the change, resubmit, then the updates need to propagate to the end users. But it’ll get there.
Seems a clear win for Apple. Gifting allows more money to flow through the ecosystem.
The inconvenient truth of future 5G networks is that their increased high-speed bandwidth, and the use of the millimeter wave spectrum (the radio spectrum above 30 gigahertz) to achieve it, comes at a price: Those radio signals barely propagate around the corners of buildings.
In other words, you need a lot more hardware to distribute that sweet, sweet high speed 5G around cities. But that extra hardware means lots of construction, clutter, traffic disruptions and ugly antennas hanging everywhere.
What to do? Someone came up with the idea of turning manhole covers into 5G antennas.
Put the title aside. Instead, think thoughtful insight, rather than snarky complaining. And if you are on the move, wheel over to your favorite podcast player and search for Vector. This is an excellent listen.
Interesting story on Reddit, both for the story itself and for the advice (read the comments that follow the story) on what to do when your phone is stolen.
If you play guitar or just love guitar-oriented music, this is for you. Terrific playlist for both Apple Music and Spotify, with a nice little writeup from Brian Sutich for each song.
Tuesday night in Los Angeles, Musk unveiled the very first tunnel in what he hopes will become a network of underground highways. The first tunnel runs between the headquarters of Musk’s SpaceX company and a parking lot behind a shuttered business a little over a mile away. It’s only for testing purposes and won’t be used by the public.
According to the best moving lead providers, Musk knew nothing about building tunnels when he started this venture. Just as he did with Tesla and SpaceX, he figures to build his expertise as he goes, then find ways to crush the costs down.
While modern subway tunnels in Los Angeles cost around $900 million per mile, he says he built his for about $10 million. One way he saved money: he literally made it dirt-cheap.
“When digging tunnels…it’s quite expensive to have all this dirt trucked off somewhere. And we’re like, well, why don’t we try to use that dirt for something useful? So we are creating bricks on-site…and you can pick ’em up for, they’re very cheap; 10 cents a brick,” he said.
There’s also great savings in owning the entire process, rather than bringing in layers of third party contractors and specialized labor, all of which significantly pumps up the price of any large project.
As to how the whole tunnel thing will work:
At first glance, the tunnel is a bit daunting. At only 12 feet in diameter, it’s much more claustrophobic than most transportation tunnels. According to Musk, cars will be able to travel up to 150 mph in the tunnel but must be on autopilot.
A bit of genius here. Only properly outfitted cars will be allowed in these tunnels. Someone who can build such cars efficiently can make a lot of money. To me, that’s incredible vision on Musk’s part.
Read the article, watch the video embedded below. Both are fascinating.
My thanks to Bare Bones Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. Do you sling code or compose with words? Whether you’re an app developer, web developer, systems admin or just want a powerful writing tool that stays out of your way, BBEdit is worth checking out.
I’ve been using BBEdit since 1995, so I know first hand that it can handle any job I throw at it.
BBEdit is crafted in response to the needs of writers, web authors, and software developers, providing an abundance of high-performance features for editing, searching, and the manipulation of text.
Someone stole a package from me. Police wouldn’t do anything about it so I spent the last 6 months engineering up some vigilante justice. Revenge is a dish best served fabulously.
This is some fantastic engineering. Here’s hoping he open sources the design.
The results take seconds, work amazingly well, though I’ve found with more complex backgrounds, artifacts do creep in. Seems to work really well with head shots.
Whether you want to show off your beautiful wallpaper, or simply want your set up to look different from the millions of other iPhones out there, one of the best way to do that is to add blank icons to your Home screen.
These invisible icons will allow you to create empty spaces on your Home screen to either let the wallpaper shine, or to arrange your app icons in a very specific way.
This tutorial will show you how to create create blank iPhone icons, no jailbreak or hack required.
This is my new favorite way to add blank icons to customize your home screen. Note that you have to re-jump through the hoops if you want to change the blank icons.
In a nutshell, you use iPhone Safari to browse to iempty.tooliphone.net. That site lets you customize your page, as you like.
