While rooting through our attic, Ruth‘s brother Owen just found a mystery cable. It almost certainly belongs to me (virtually all of the
cables in the house, especially the unusual ones, do), but this one is a mystery to me.
End #1 of the cable is a 13-pin male serial connection with 6 connected pins, spring-loaded. It seems to be designed to screw in at one end. The screw is worn.
The more I look at it, the more I feel like I’m slowly going mad, as if the cable is some kind of beast from the Lovecraftian Cable Dimension which mortal minds were not meant to
comprehend. It’s got three “ends” and is clearly some kind of signal combining (or separating) cable, but it doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before (and don’t forget, I
probably own it).
On the other side of the split, end #2 of the cable terminates in a fine metal mesh (perhaps concealing a microphone, small speaker, or temperature/humidity sensor). It has a
“push-to-talk” style clicker switch and a “tie clip” on it.
Every time I look at it I have a new idea of what it could be. Some kind of digital dictophone or radio mic connector? Part of a telephone headset? Weather monitoring hardware? A set of
converters between two strange and unusual pieces of hardware? But no matter what I come up with, something doesn’t add up? Why only 6 pins? Why the strange screw-in connector?
Why the clicker switch? Why the tie clips? Why “split” the output (let alone have cables of different lengths)?
End #3 looks like a fibreoptic audio terminator. Or perhaps a part of an earpiece. It, too, has a “tie clip” on (do I clip it to… my ear?)
In case it helps, I’ve made a video of it. You’ll note that I use the word “thingy” more times than might perhaps be justified, but I’ve been puzzling over this one for a while:
Can you help? Can you identify this mystery cable? Prize for the correct answer!
The group is considering dropping God from its meetings guidance. This is the new religiosity, says the Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins
The Quakers are clearly on to something. At their annual get-together this weekend they are reportedly thinking of
dropping God from their “guidance to meetings”. The reason, said one of them, is because the term “makes some Quakers feel uncomfortable”. Atheists, according to a Birmingham
University academic, comprise a rising 14% of professed
Quakers, while a full 43% felt “unable to profess a belief in God”. They come to meetings for fellowship, rather than for higher guidance. The meeting will also consider
transgenderism, same-sex marriage, climate change and social media. Religion is a tiring business.
I am not a Quaker or religious, but I have been to Quaker meetings, usually marriages or funerals, and found them deeply moving. The absence of ritual, the emphasis on silence and
thought and the witness of “friends” seemed starkly modernist. Meeting houses can be beautiful spaces. The loveliest I know dates from 1700 and is lost in deep woods near Meifod,
Powys. It is a place of the purest serenity, miles from any road and with only birdsong to blend with inner reflection.
The Quakers’ lack of ceremony and liturgical clutter gives them a point from which to view the no man’s land between faith and non-faith that is the “new religiosity”. A dwindling 40%
of Britons claim to believe in some form of God, while a third say they are atheists. But that leaves over a quarter in a state of vaguely agnostic “spirituality”. Likewise, while well
over half of Americans believe in the biblical God, nearly all believe in “a higher power or spiritual force”.
What these words mean is now the subject of intense debate…
I wasn’t fast enough to get an order in on the first (hugely-oversubscribed) print run and had to wait on both the reprint plus international shipping.
This self-proclaimed “better Bundo book” tells a different (educational and relevant) story: in it, Marlon Bundo falls in love with another boy rabbit but their desire to get married is
hampered by the animals’ leader, the Stink Bug, who proclaims that “boy rabbits can’t marry boy rabbits; boy rabbits have to marry girl rabbits!” With the help of the other animals, the
rabbits vote-out the Stink Bug, get married, and go on a lovely bunnymoon… a cheery and uplifting story and, of course, a distinctly trollish way to piss off the (clearly anti-LGBT) Mike Pence. This evening, I decided to offer it as a bedtime story to our little
bookwork. At four years old, she’s of an age at which the highly-hetronormative narratives of the media to which she’s exposed might be only-just beginning to sink in, so I figured this
was a perfect vehicle to talk about difference, diversity, and discrimination. Starting school later this year means that she’s getting closer to the point where she may go from
realising that her family is somewhat unusually-shaped to discovering that some people might think that “unusual” means “wrong”, so this is also a
possible step towards thinking about her own place in the world and what other people make of it.
Our little bookworm, along with bookworm-junior and their mother.
Her initial verdict was that it was “sweet”, and that she was glad that the Stink Bug was vanquished and that Marlon and Wesley got to live together happily-ever-after. I explained that
while the story was made-up, a lot of what it was talking about was something that really happens in this world: that some people think that boys should not marry boys and that girls
should not marry girls, even if they love them, and that sometimes, if those people get to be In Charge then they can stop those people marrying who they love. I mentioned that in our
country we were fortunate enough that boys can marry boys and girls can marry girls, if they want to, but that there are places where that’s not allowed (and there are
even some people who think it shouldn’t be allowed here!). And then I asked her what she thought.
This is amazing, and I’ve no idea how it’s only got (at the time of writing) ~28,000 views. Seriously: push on through the first two minutes and pay atention to how the effects and
filming are executed. Then keep watching.
This month I produced almost no original content, but I shared a number of interesting content from elsewhere around the web, including an explanation of the power of compound interest (and why saving for a pension early is often more-important than saving lots), a curious poem, and a short film about what would happen if all the
cautionary tales your parents told you were true. More are below.
All posts
Posts marked by an asterisk (*) are referenced by the summary above.
Reposts
Reposts marked with a dagger (†) include my comments or interpretation.
Spectacular example of why when saving (e.g. for a pension) it’s often more important to save early than it is to save lots. So get saving! Even with an understanding
of compound interest, these numbers can surprise you.
The only time better than today would have been yesterday, and you already missed that boat.
the other day i was thinking about the term pyramid scheme, and why they called it pyramid scheme and not triangle scheme
and i asked you what you thought
you thought it added a certain gravitas, and linked the idea of economic prosperity
with some of history’s greatest architectural achievements
unconsciously suggesting a silent wealth of gold and heat
a triangle is two dimensional, and therefore
a less striking mental image than the idea of a third dimension of financial fraud
which is how many dimensions of financial fraud the term pyramid scheme suggests
but i had to pause for a second at the financial fraud part
because it occurred to me i didn’t know what pyramid schemes really were
i knew they had something to do with people getting money from nothing
like
the person at the top of the pyramid scheme, or more accurately
triangle scheme, acquires a number of investors and takes their money
and then pays the first lot of investors with the money from another bunch of investors
and so on and so forth
all the way to the bottom of the triangle
or pyramid face
which is the kind of stupid thing that happens
if you keep your money in a pyramid and not a bank account
although if you ask me banks are the real pyramid schemes after all
or was love the real pyramid scheme? i can’t remember
maybe it’s better to keep your money in a pyramid than a bank
and i should shop around and compare the interest rates on different pyramids
maybe i should open up a savings pyramid
with a whole bunch of trapdoors and malarias
to keep the financial anthropologists
i mean bankers out
my emeralds cooling under the ground like beautiful women’s eyes
i think this was supposed to be a metaphor for something
but i can’t remember where i was going with it
and now it’s been swept away by the winds of
whatever
but knowing me, it was probably love
that great dark blue sex hope that keeps coming true
that cartoon black castle with a single bird flying over it
i don’t know where this poem ends
how far below the sand
but it’s still early evening
and you and I are a little drunk
you answer the phone
you pour me a drink
i know you hate the domestic in poetry but you should have thought of that before you invited me to move in with you
i used to think arguments were the same as honesty
i used to think screaming was the same as passion
i used to think pain was meaningful
i no longer think pain is meaningful
i never learned anything good from being unhappy
i never learned anything good from being happy either
the way i feel about you has nothing to do with learning
it has nothing to do with anything
but i feel it down in the corners of my sarcophagus
i feel it in my sleep
even when i am not thinking about you
you are still pouring through my blood, like fire through an abandoned hospital ward
these coins are getting heavy on my eyes
it has been a great honor and privilege to love you
it has been a great honor and privilege to eat cold pizza on your steps at dawn
love is so stupid: it’s like punching the sun
and having a million gold coins rain down on you
which you don’t even have to pay tax on
because sun money is free money
and i’m pretty sure there are no laws about that
but i would pay tax
because i believe that hospitals and education
and the arts should be publicly funded
even this poem
when i look at you, my eyes are two identical neighborhood houses on fire
when i look at you my eyes bulge out of my skull like a dog in a cartoon
when i am with you
an enormous silence descends upon me
and i feel like i am sinking into the deepest part of my life
we walk down the street, with the grass blowing back and forth
i have never been so happy
