A serious and sometimes not so serious personal blog
This was the 5th of July at about 5:15 AM. The Verrazano Bridge is partially obscured by a haze of smoke that I thought was from Canada, but turned out to be from fireworks. It was kind of a Bronx firecrackers or gunshots moment.
The humidity and low wind took the AQI up to about 300 that night, but thankfully it cleared up by the end of the day. I want some normalcy. Except for traffic. It’d be great if that’d stay low like it has been all week.
Moving to the Bronx was the right move at the time, but it came with some costs. One of those costs was the inconvenience of having to go somewhere else to do anything and everything, because let’s face it, the Bronx isn’t really that fun or friendly a place, and that’s especially true for bike riding.
That wasn’t so much of an issue when we had a car with a bike rack, but thanks to someone who slammed into it while it was parked and totaled it, we have a new car with no hitch and no rack. Between that and the pandemic, our outings to go cycling basically came to an end for quite a while.
Then we discovered folding bikes that actually ride well. We can throw them in the trunk of the car, pull them out, unfold them and be riding in less time than it used to take me to strap up our full sized bikes onto the old Allen rack we had. Granted, folding bikes have different capabilities and limitations, but it’s opened the door for us to get outside and do something we both enjoy again.
There are some great views of New York City from the waterfront there. I particularly enjoy seeing the old piers mixed in with the new ones. Some are only visible at low tide.
I went ahead and deleted my Twitter account tonight. I haven’t been using it much at all for the last few months, and even before Elon took over the platform, I realized that it wasn’t adding any positive value to my life anymore. Every time I opened it, I became enraged within minutes. The platform is designed to illicit an emotional response to keep you clicking and keep you engaged, but it went wrong somewhere and started feeding into the most negative things possible.
I’ve known for years that I wanted to be done with Twitter. I started deleting posts older than a certain number of months, because the platform was regularly weaponized against people when social mores changed. Then, in March of 2021 I created a Mastodon account to start weaning myself off the outrage algorithm, and this weekend I realized that I just didn’t feel like opening the app or website anymore, so it was time for it to go.
It’s weird. I opened that account in 2009, when I was living in Singapore, and it’s been with me ever since. Now, like MySpace and Friendster, I’m letting it fall by the wayside. Thanks for the fun, but I’m done.
Man, I think I’m going to enjoy this one even more than Diablo III. The graphics look a lot better, the storytelling has been great so far, and I’m enjoying that they put in the effort to have so much voiced dialogue. I’ve tried all of the character types except the sorcerer, and so far my favorite is the necromancer.
The intro to the game was great too. It had some serious The Last of Us vibes in the first encounter with people.
I also like the MMO elements, where you run into random players while out in the world. That’s a nice touch.
You can keep Legend of Zelda. This is the game I’m going to be putting time into.
Central Park, New York City. July 2019.
This panel is from James Tynion’s comic “Nice House on the Lake”, which is great by the way, but I love looking for scenes like this in shows and movies, where book spines are visible and you can get further reading ideas.
I look at it like a reveal by the author or director of what they think are great books to read. In this case, it’s an awesome list and I see quite a few books that I’ve either already read or will definitely read in the near future.
At Pier 64 – Hudson River Park
In 2019, I was in pretty good shape but I kind of let that all go because of the pandemic. I’d like to get back to where I was, but my issue now is time. I have a long commute, so I have to figure out where to squeeze in the workouts. I’ll find a way to make it work.
January 7th, 2021
January in New York City is always rough looking and the Bronx being what it is, it looks especially hellish at that time of year. This was shortly after riot season ended. There was a water main break and a lot of businesses along this stretch were flooded.
There’s been a lot of new development along Jerome Ave and I had this idea that the arson along these two blocks and the flooding shortly after were part of a coordinated effort to get small businesses to move out so bigger developments could move in. Honestly, it would be better if that happened. The area could use some new buildings with new businesses that aren’t car audio shops.
I don’t understand why there are so many car repair shops and audio shops along this stretch of road. It turns traffic into a mess, is noisy, isn’t attractive, and prevents more worthwhile businesses from opening up that would make the neighborhood more livable, like restaurants, cafes, departments stores, gyms… hell… anything at all but more car oriented shops.
I took this photo outside my office in south Brooklyn today around 2 PM. What’s supposed to be the heaviest of the smoke from Canada’s wildfires reached New York City today.
In retrospect, I wonder why we were even at work. The air quality index hit the low 400s today on a scale that maxes out at 500. Some people had windows open in the building as well so the air inside wasn’t much better than outside. I feel like this is going to have a real impact on my health later in life, but there’s not much I can do about it now.
It was impressive though, in a bad way. The situation reminded me of sand storms that I experienced in Iraq in 2003. When the first sand storm rolled in, we were in full NBC gear and we put on our masks to protect ourselves from the dust in the air. I wish I had that mask today.
Bradley's Old Fashioned Weblog 