Nov12

indistinguishable from magic.

Posted on November 12, 2026 by beth

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what a long and wild ride

asked one of my daughters

to help me to figure out

why one of my streaming channels

was only displaying a black screen with red letters

had been doing it for a few weeks

no way to sign in or out no picture no sound

i’d followed all instructions/suggestions offered online

tech is not my superpower and likely my kryptonite

what ensued over the next hour plus

is hard to explain

we worked together

two phones, emails, calls, listening, explaining

responding to texts, laptop, user names, model number

entering codes, serial numbers, passwords,

which phone number, whose name

turn things off, turn things on, unplug, count

shut everything down, find a secret button

reset the wifi reset the wifi reset the wifi

go up down left right with my remote

with just the right number and pattern

of ups, downs, and overs

so many different dance steps and people involved

trying to solve this problem

our phone calls

required us to do battle with AI

to override it

insist again and again

to speak with a live human

‘you do not have to worry’

kept getting crazier and crazier

funnier and funnier

tried really hard not to laugh out loud

i started taking messy notes

quotes from the live humans

questions arose

still just black and red?

roku, tcl, netflix, sling?

what/who is causing the issue?

is it me? is it you?

still just black and red?

what is firmware?

there’s really a secret button?

where do i find that?

still just black and red?

yes, still just black and red

what is she asking us to do?

what do you see now?

did it work?

still just black and red?

is this the model number of serial number?

is it 8325 or S325?

what?!

comments

numbers

moments of disbelief

drew a system of arrows

to illustrate

what we were

asked to do with the remote

it struck me

as a possible absurd long game tech prank

in the end

they decided it was my tv

not them

who were to blame

began a whole new cycle

of instructions/possible solutions

final solution

they had to remotely

factory reset my entire tv

got my one channel back

still just black and red?

no, not still just black and red

i now have to reset

every app/channel on my tv

i’ve decided to

add one a day

back into the mix

after

thanking my daughter

for riding along

on this bumpy twisty road with me.

‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’

*arthur c. clark

*Sir Arthur Charles Clarke ( 1917- 2008) was an English science fiction writer, inventor, undersea explorer and TV series host.He popularized space travel and wrote many books and magazine essays. In 1961, he received the Kalinga Prize, a Unesco award for popularizing science. Clarke’s science and science fiction writings earned him the nickname “Prophet of the Space Age.” His sci-fi writings also earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, and he became one of the leading figures of the genre. Clarke co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, regarded as one of the most influential films of all time.

Nov11

thank you for your service.

Posted on November 11, 2026 by beth

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caring for veterans shouldn’t be a partisan issue.

it should an american one.

– jennifer granholm

( a reminder on veterans day and every day)

Nov10

reclusive rebel’s ‘sinister magic. ‘

Posted on November 10, 2026 by beth

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Nighttime cityscape featuring a crescent moon, illuminated street lamps, and shadows of buildings under a deep blue sky.

‘City Street in Moonlight’ – Lewis Eilshemius, 1908

Born into wealth and privilege on a New Jersey estate in 1864, Louis Eilshemius wasn’t your typical New York City painter. The income his father made from an importing business gave him the means to travel through Europe, study at the Art Students League, and ultimately settle down and spend the bulk of his reclusive life in his family’s brownstone at 118 East 57th Street.

Inside this gaslit anachronism of a house, Eilshemius raged at an art establishment that mostly ignored him and wrote endless letters to New York City newspapers attesting to his genius.

He also painted. Shunning the artistic trends of the era, he created darkly romantic, almost surrealistic nudes and landscapes that reflected a “sinister magic,” according to one critic covering a retrospective of his work in 1977.

One luminous example is the nocturne above, from 1908, plainly titled “City Street in Moonlight.”

Where is this scene? It’s almost impossible to know for sure, as Eilshemius wasn’t a documentarian but an artist who reshaped reality with his own idiosyncratic vision and imagination.

But if I had to guess, I’d say Times Square.

Broadway had streetcars in 1908, and the streetlamp and billboard on top of a tall structure in the distance would have been characteristic of Times Square’s early 20th century emergence as a center of entertainment and nightlife.

Though his work continues to be largely unknown, by the end of his life in 1941, Eilshemius had earned the appreciation of critics he’d previously eschewed.

“A feisty rebel and a tireless iconoclast, he never painted to satisfy the fashions of his day, but only to please his own strange and sometimes nightmarish vision,” stated his New York Times obituary.

That long and detailed obituary also described him after his death from pneumonia in a Bellevue psych ward as “penniless, bitter, and famous.”

—

Source credit: Ephemeral New York, Esther Crain

‘Chronicling an ever-changing city through faded and forgotten artifacts.’

ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com

ephemeralnewyork·Ephemeral New York·Oct 12, 2026

Notes: This is a repost of from one of the most fascinating blogs I read. I never fail to be amazed by native New Yorker, Esther’s detailed histories and backstories behind the nooks and crannies, signs, treasured buildings, people and places in New York. Her site has given rise to two books, 2014’s New York City in 3D in the Gilded Age and The Gilded Age in New York, 1870-1910.

Nov9

the pale blue dot of earth.

Posted on November 9, 2026 by beth

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The Pale Blue Dot of Earth “That’s here. That’s Home. That’s us.”Image: NASA / JPL
Taken on February 14, 1990, by Voyager 1 from about 6.4 billion kilometers away at Sagan’s request,

the photograph shows Earth as a tiny speck of light suspended in a sunbeam.

—

‘Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

—

on Carl Sagan Day, which honors the birthday and scientific legacy of Carl Sagan.

Carl Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, and author famous for popularizing science and the cosmos

(1934-1996)

Nov8

beauty everywhere.

Posted on November 8, 2026 by beth

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a rainy day walk in the woods, ann arbor

—

‘if you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.’

*laura ingalls wilder

*Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder (1867 – 1957) was an American writer, teacher, and journalist. She is best known as the author of the children’s book series Little House on the Prairie, published between 1932 and 1943, which was based on her childhood in a settler and pioneer family.