Althouse

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• Sunrise — eastern and western view.
• "Maybe paying people more to be unemployed than to work has consequences? I've been out to eat with 2 waiters working an entire establishment."
• "In the span of two years, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has gone from one of President Joe Biden’s most prominent surrogates — important enough to get vetted as a potential VP pick..."
• Influencers strive to explain their decision to euthanize Bowser after he bit their 1-year-old child.
• "Mr. Gates was already working on his dream home before marrying Ms. Gates in 1994.... The place was 'a bachelor’s dream and a bride’s nightmare'..."
• "Frustrated by the lack of drugs available to carry out lethal injections in their state, South Carolina lawmakers are on the cusp of a controversial solution..."
• Pinkness.
• MIT News presents a robot to brush your hair.

Sunrise — eastern and western view. Posted: 07 May 2021 08:56 AM PDT At 5:48, looking right into the sun:    At 5:55, looking west:    The western view shows something that I've mostly ignored all my life: The spring foliage on the trees is varied in color like fall foliage. It's not just green. There's gold, orange, and brown along with a wide range of greens.

"Maybe paying people more to be unemployed than to work has consequences? I've been out to eat with 2 waiters working an entire establishment." Posted: 07 May 2021 08:19 AM PDT "No one wants to work now. Same thing with Lyft and gig work. Bring back proof of looking for employment and curtail unemployment benefits when we have this many job openings. Helicopter money is temporary, not permanent." That's a high-rated comment at "The Jobs Report: The Boom That Wasn't/April's anemic job creation was so out of line with what other indicators have suggested that it will take some time to unravel the mystery" (NYT).  From the article:  Employers added only 266,000 jobs last month, the government reported Friday morning, not the million or so that forecasters expected. The unemployment rate actually edged up, to 6.1 percent.... These numbers are consistent with the story many business leaders are telling, of severe labor shortages — that demand has surged back but employers cannot find enough workers to fulfill it, at least at the wages they are accustomed to paying.... Back in 2010, the Obama administration introduced one of the more unfortunate economic messaging concepts of recent decades, announcing that a "Recovery Summer" was underway. It became a punchline, because while the economy was expanding, Americans were still far worse off than they'd been before the 2008 recession, and improvement was coming very slowly. That's one outcome the Biden administration desperately wants to avoid. (To comment, email me at annalthouse@gmail.com.)

"In the span of two years, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has gone from one of President Joe Biden’s most prominent surrogates — important enough to get vetted as a potential VP pick..." Posted: 07 May 2021 07:59 AM PDT "... to abandoning what once was considered a shoo-in re-election bid.... [A] 60% spike in homicides and accusations that she had become disconnected from the community seriously complicated her chances.... [Bottoms's statement] lacked... any sort of explanation about why she isn't running. So her allies are filling the void. They say she genuinely believed she could have won a second term, but passed because she felt her motivation sapping.... Will she run for another office? Bottoms didn't rule it out, and several statewide offices are up for grabs next year. Your Insiders are skeptical of this possibility. If she faced a tough citywide re-election bid this year, a statewide race with a more conservative electorate would objectively be an even heavier lift." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.  Here's an AJC article from January: "Atlanta's deadliest year in decades has city on edge and demanding change":  Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms was hailed after her response to destructive rioting in May after protests over the death of George Floyd devolved into chaos. Glamour featured her in its Women of the Year issue.... Former APD investigator Lakea Gaither said Bottoms has "lost the confidence of the officers." An 18-year veteran saluted as Officer of the Year in 2013 and Investigator of the Year in 2015, Gaither was one of 37 officers who either retired or resigned in a single month, August of last year. More than 200 officers quit in 2020. Many left after Erika Shields stepped down as chief in June, shortly after former Officer Garrett Rolfe shot Rayshard Brooks after a scuffle in a Wendy's parking lot near downtown. After Bottoms quickly announced that Rolfe had been fired and then-Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard announced criminal charges, hundreds of officers staged an unofficial "blue flu" in protest....  Bottoms says pinning blame on her for Atlanta's historically high homicide tally is "misplaced frustration." One 2020 shooting left a man dead near her southwest Atlanta home even as a patrol car sat outside her house, she noted. "Even if we had officers on every single corner — and in this instance an officer was literally on the block — homicides can happen," she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Wherever people would like to place blame, (that) doesn't get us any closer to the solution. This is a challenge across the country and we're all trying to wrap our arms around it." (To comment, email me at annalthouse@gmail.com.)

Influencers strive to explain their decision to euthanize Bowser after he bit their 1-year-old child. Posted: 07 May 2021 06:26 AM PDT   It's all very influencer-style — not the sort of thing I'd ordinarily watch — but I'd read "Family Vloggers Euthanize Their Dog, Prompting Collective 'Why?'" at New York Magazine...  Several influencers, including Jaclyn Hill, Jeffree Star, and Tana Mongeau, have commented on the situation. YouTuber LaurDIY, who also owns a bull terrier, posted an entire reaction video, in which she says, "They failed to set boundaries for their child and their dog, who has obvious past, unaddressed trauma that was their responsibility to correct and rehab." ... and I just wanted to say that this couple did the right thing in putting the dog down. Whether they should have made this long video reenacting their angst is another matter. (To comment, email me at annalthouse@gmail.com.)

"Mr. Gates was already working on his dream home before marrying Ms. Gates in 1994.... The place was 'a bachelor’s dream and a bride’s nightmare'..." Posted: 07 May 2021 05:12 AM PDT "... with 'enough software and high-tech displays to make a newlywed feel as though she were living inside a video game.'... After six months of discussions about whether the entire project should be scrapped, Ms. Gates decided to influence further construction by incorporating her preferences — and insisted on making the place a home for a family and not a lone tech wizard.... Perhaps Mr. Gates may now recommit himself to designing and building a smart house (though that may not be a challenging project for him today, now that connected devices are everywhere). Because despite the changes she made to the couple's home, Ms. Gates recently expressed misgivings about continuing to live there. 'We won't have that house forever....I'm actually really looking forward to the day that Bill and I live in a 1,500-square foot house." From "Who Gets Xanadu 2.0, the Gates Family Mansion? Melinda Gates, at least, has been open about her desire to live in a smaller house" (NYT). A 1,500-square foot house. I guess I can give this post my "tiny house" tag. How big is the "Xanadu" mansion? 66,000 square feet. That's 44 times the size of the house she purported to dream of. In a house so big, why worry about your estrangement from the other person? So easy to avoid them. Even hard to find them. Or I guess there were electronic devices to help you find them — in case you ever want them. It's beyond separate bedrooms. You're living in a place the size of a small town. Go live in another part of that town. (To comment, email me at annalthouse@gmail.com.)

"Frustrated by the lack of drugs available to carry out lethal injections in their state, South Carolina lawmakers are on the cusp of a controversial solution..." Posted: 07 May 2021 04:39 AM PDT "... forcing death row inmates to face the electric chair or firing squad when lethal injection is not possible. A bill proposing that change, approved by the State House this week, appears almost certain to become law in the next few days, and is being lauded by Republicans, including Gov. Henry McMaster, who have been vexed by pharmaceutical companies' refusal to sell states the drugs needed to carry out lethal injections. The lack of drugs, they say, is a key reason South Carolina has not executed anyone in 10 years. Opponents are appalled by the bill, which would make South Carolina the fourth state — along with Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah — in which death by firing squad is an option for the condemned.... The firing squad measure was proposed by State Senator Richard A. Harpootlian, a Democrat and former prosecutor, who argued that it was more humane than the electric chair.... 'an extraordinarily gruesome, horrendous process... where they essentially catch on fire and don't die immediately.'" The NYT reports. (To comment, email me at annalthouse@gmail.com.)

Pinkness. Posted: 06 May 2021 03:23 PM PDT In the Arb...

MIT News presents a robot to brush your hair. Posted: 06 May 2021 07:44 PM PDT   We're told: "With rapidly growing demands on health care systems, nurses typically spend 18 to 40 percent of their time performing direct patient care tasks, oftentimes for many patients and with little time to spare. Personal care robots that brush hair could provide substantial help and relief."  So you've got someone who can't brush her own hair. You're going to need to position her next to the robot. I can't believe that's not harder than just brushing her hair directly. But maybe there's a robot to move the patient around into range of the hair-brushing robot. By the way, I have hair, and I brush it, and I can tell you for sure that hair-brushing robot isn't accomplishing hair-brushing at all in that video: The robot is equipped with a camera that helps it "see" and assess curliness, so it can plan a delicate and time-efficient brush-out.  Yes, that's the problem. It's too wary and timid about getting into the hair! (It's there near the top of the sidebar — "To comment, just email me at annalthouse@gmail.com.)

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