CNN has an article about how Victorinox might create new Swiss Army Knives without knives. I stopped carrying mine after 9/11 when security tightened and kept forgetting to leave it at home. Personally, I’d love a knife-less multitool that I could attach to my keys.
My wife is about to start a PhD program. She has a Dell PC for work, but her home computer is an iPad with a keyboard case. It works for what she needs now, but looking ahead to grad school, some of the apps she’ll need won’t run on the iPad. We’ll get her a Mac, but if Apple wants people to use iPads as primary devices, they need to lift some of these restrictions to allow for more complicated computing needs.
Just had a fun conversation with my girls about how Gen X and Gen Z use social media differently. They are baffled about what I post to Instagram. I didn’t even try to explain how I use Micro.Blog. 😂
I’ve always picked up wiper blades from my local auto parts store, but I have two really short blades on this Buick that are hard to find. So I went to Amazon and found a company that will assemble a set of all three blades specifically for my car. Massive timesaver and significantly cheaper.
Now that the semester is over and I’m not teaching classes or taking classes, I’m really looking forward to working on some personal projects. I want to do a little more customization to my Micro.Blog theme, I’ve got some fonts to finalize, and some merch to design.
Connections Puzzle #329
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I haven’t been playing Connections lately, but today, I got them all, but from the hardest answers to the easiest. Never done that before.
Not all saves are caught with the stick. Ryan ended up making this save by trapping it between his arm and his body
Strands #61
“A shade envious?”
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I’ve been playing the NY Times’ Strands for a couple of months. Still in beta, but a lot of fun. Didn’t need any hints today…
Got these installed today just in time for commencement this weekend. Look forward to seeing all the graduate photos.
Bad Batch finale was wonderful. Loved every moment.
Glad to see Instagram is trying to shut down the accounts that simply rip off original content. I’m interested to see how well the algorithm changes work.
I’m noticing a tension growing between national organizations and their local affiliates. Just three recent examples that have crossed my path:
I was once an AIGA1 chapter president and stepped down to go back to graduate school, but I was also disillusioned with the mission and how the national organization treated its chapters. Now AIGA National is struggling with finances and relevance, while member’s loyalty (and all the value of the membership) is tied up at the local level.
Churches are going through the same thing. When the massive Methodist church near us left the denomination, they didn’t join one of the new organizations. They essentially became a non-denominational church. And pointed out in the news article that they get to keep all of the money they used to send to the churchwide organization.
The organizers of the local NaNoWriMo2 group in our area became frustrated with the national organization, and essentially became an independent writing support group. They were running a year-round organization anyway, and didn’t see the need for the national organization. Their Facebook group wiped all mention of NaNoWriMo
National organizations were once necessary to provide credibility, structure and support. Local organizations could provide local services and the relationship was mutually beneficial. Over time, that equation has shifted. Less value is provided by the national organization. Loyalties are with the local clubs, churches or groups. If the local leadership and the national leadership disagree, the local leadership has the leverage to take their organization independent. And in many cases, that seems like it’s happening.
I do think there is value in national organizations, but organizations like AIGA need to better understand what value they bring to the table and strike a new balance with their local partners. Or risk becoming irrelevant.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
Every time I’m reading online and a “subscribe today” box pops up over the top of what I’m reading, I just leave the page.
Explaining to my teenage daughter what microfiche is, and how we used it for research before the internet.
Today was rough. Not sure why, exactly. Nothing particularly significant happened. It just sucked the life out of me.
Behind home plate for the Columbia Fireflies – I mean – Carolina Grits. #letsglow
My inlaws were getting “Breaking News Alerts” from Messenger. Someone was sending them “news” through Facebook, and because they have notifications on, they looked like legitimate news updates.. But they were a bunch of MAGA nonsense that was probably actually Russian disinformation.
Two weeks ago, Liz and Ryan were driving to school early in the morning in a midst of a rain storm when a pine tree blew into their path and impaled their 2020 Buick Envision. The tree was about 24 feet tall, passed through the headlight, through the engine, through the firewall, through the dashboard and extended several feet into the passenger cabin, between the front headrests.
By some miracle, Liz needed only four stitches on her hand, caused by a ring that had to be cut off her thumb. And my 12-year-old son, who was in the front passenger seat, was completely untouched. Numerous people from firefighters and policemen to tow truck drivers and insurance adjusters have said they’ve never seen anything like it.
After people processes the shock of the accident, and the relief that everyone is okay, most people look at the picture of the interior and have the same reaction: “Wait, why didn’t the airbags deploy?”
The airbags did not deploy. And everyone has a theory about why.
Theory #1: The airbags didn’t deploy because they failed. The airbags should have deployed, but must have been defective. Most people who believe this want me to share a picture of the damage with Buick and complain. “They should have to compensate you” is a common refrain. “You should sue.”1
Theory #2: The airbags didn’t deploy because the tree missed the sensors. This theory was floated by the tow truck operator. Because the tree went through the headlight where there are no airbag sensors, the airbags didn’t deploy. In this scenario, the headlights are essentially a weakness in the car’s safety design.
Theory #3: The airbags worked as designed. They should not have gone off because the accident wasn’t a typical head on collision. The car was immediately spun around in a lateral motion. The physics of the accident were weird and disorienting. It’s worth noting that my wife’s iPhone’s crash detection didn’t trigger either despite the fact that it was thrown to the floor from the center console. Several people have theorized that the force of the airbags could have made injuries worse.
My gut reaction is that the airbags behaved as designed, but I also could understand if the car wasn’t engineered to withstand such a strange, one-in-a-million accident.
Here’s the thing, though. I don’t know how airbag systems work. Most people don’t, but that hasn’t stopped us all from speculating. We imagine the airbag systems in modern cars to be this protective cloud that inflates around us, but I know it’s more complicated than that. We want to know why the airbags didn’t deploy because we want to be reassured that if it happens to us, we’ll be safe. But it’s just not that simple. There are too many variables.
We’ll never know why the airbags didn’t deploy, but Liz and Ryan are lucky to be alive and I’m incredibly thankful for that.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
That’s not at all how this works. ↩︎