A drone photographer captured the wild moment when a shark charged into a giant school of stingrays off the coast of Florida.
Although there appears to be thousands of them, the shark went away hungry.
Delos Alcatraz
Cabel Sasser went down a Disneyland rabbit hole to discover the code name for Disney’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge area and its crowning attraction Rise of the Resistance.
This is a very short post about a very short journey. It starts with a new (to me, as of today) theme park fact:
The code name for Disney’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge area was “Delos”, and the code name for its Rise of the Resistance attraction was “Alcatraz”.
The interesting part (if you’re into Disneyland minutiae) is the steps he took to discover this bit of trivia.
Truth and Reconciliation
September 30th is Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The holiday is also sometimes called Orange Shirt Day and recognizes the legacy of the Canadian Indian residential school system. Wearing an orange shirt on this day honours both the indigenous children who never returned home and also the survivors of residential schools, as well as their families and communities.
The schools in Lethbridge (and across the country) have been doing activities and presentations all week building up to this day. I think it’s so important that we continue to collectively acknowledge the harm that residential schools caused.
Both my son (4) and daughter (5) have been very concerned about the stories they’ve heard about the woman1 who had her orange shirt taken away and not given back. They seem to have a pretty good, age appropriate, understanding of the traumatic impact these schools imparted.
I want to point out though, as Canadians share in the collective guilt of the day, one glaring omission is the often-overlooked, deeply disturbing role that the Catholic Church played in the atrocities committed at residential schools. While the reprehensible actions of the church in exploiting children within its congregation are widely acknowledged, it is equally vital to recognize the dark chapter of history where indigenous children, torn from their families, were also subjected to the church’s predation.
I don’t doubt there were also many abuses in residential schools outside Catholic control, but from the sounds of things2, that’s where the bulk of the sexual exploitation happened. I think acknowledging the church’s role should be a a major part of the truth in “Truth and Reconciliation”.
As we come together to commemorate Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and wear our orange shirts in honor of those affected, it’s essential that we acknowledge the elephant in the room — the painful role played by the Catholic Church in these grievous acts.
- Phyllis Webstad has written multiple books depicting her experience with the Indian residential school system[
] - The Daily episode State-Sponsored Abuse in Canada from July 16, 2023 covers it[]
Dan Mangan at the Yates
Last night Andrea and I hit up the concert of two time Juno award winning musician Dan Mangan at the Yates here in Lethbridge. He puts on a fantastic show. About halfway through the night he explained that the show was being recorded and a link would be sent out so that we could all have a copy if we want to listen again later. In the age of (basically) free digital storage… why not?
Guest Teaching
I’m back into the swing of things as a substitute teacher. I don’t have much to say about it other than now that I’m back teaching high school I remember what it’s like to really love what you do.
On that note, here’s an inspirational cartoon I saw in the class I was subbing in today:
Old Hard Drive Images
The other day, while looking through an old hard drive of mine, I found a folder called “Random Internet Fun”, which was full of random comics and animated gifs that I suppose I collected over the years. I’ll post them here for posterity…
Writer’s Strike Ends
From Cynthia Littleton, Kate Aurthur, Matt Donnelly, Gene Maddaus writing for Variety:
Hollywood heaves a sigh of relief. The WGA and major studios and streamers have reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract that promises to end the 146-day strike that has taken a heavy toll across the content industry.
Negotiators for the Writers Guild of America and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers reached the finish line Sunday after five consecutive days of negotiations.
…
”What we have won in this contract – most particularly, everything we have gained since May 2nd – is due to the willingness of this membership to exercise its power, to demonstrate its solidarity, to walk side-by-side, to endure the pain and uncertainty of the past 146 days. It is the leverage generated by your strike, in concert with the extraordinary support of our union siblings, that finally brought the companies back to the table to make a deal,” the negotiating committee wrote in its message to members.
Now it remains to be seen how long it will take until my favorite shows are back in the air. As much as everyone hated the strike, good on the writers and their guild for sticking it out.
Meanwhile, the ongoing actors strike is entering its third month. So while late-night and daytime talk shows are expected to make a quick comeback, scripted shows that require actors will take longer to return.
The Bad Review Revue
The Expend4bles: “‘The Disposables’ would describe it better.” — Brian Lowry, CNN.com
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3: “This awkward threequel is one wedding you’ll wish you didn’t RSVP to.” — Fay Watson, Total Film
Retribution: “The only jaw-dropping this thriller induces is yawning.” — M.N. Miller, Hidden Remote
Sound of Freedom: “It’s bizarre, unsettling and yet – in the filmmaking equivalent of turning wine to water – bracingly dull to boot.” — Ed Power, Daily Telegraph (UK)
Golda: “It’s not that insightful into who she was… Generally, it’s just a history of the Yom Kippur War, and it assumes you know a whole lot about it already.” — Andy Klein, FilmWeek (KPCC – NPR Los Angeles)
Meg 2: The Trench: “It’s a relief, after almost two hours of this silliness, to come up for air.” — Brian Viner, Daily Mail (UK)
Two Ways to Improve Gmail
Dave Winer posted to ask if anyone had a suggestion on how to quickly create new email addresses that can be forwarded to his main address. I wrote him with a suggestion and at the same time realized I’ve never posted the techniques1 here.
Gmail has a feature where you can add a + to the end of your email address and create a new address that goes to your original address. For example, jeff.milner+newaddress@gmail.com will appear to the service you are signing up for as a different address than jeffmilner@gmail.com but they both go to my inbox.
The only downside is that some services see the + as being not a valid email address.
The other feature I want to highlight is that gmail ignores periods. Mail sent to jeffmilner@gmail.com or jeff.milner@gmail.com will both arrive in my inbox. Same with j.e.f.f.m.i.l.n.e.r@gmail.com. Gmail doesn’t care about the periods but each iteration is a different email address to the service you are signing up for.
- I first learned about these features in a Gmail Blog post from 2008.[]
12 Things to Do First with iOS 17
MacRumors has 12 suggestions for what to do now that you’ve updated your iPhone.