Veepstakes 2020: The choice is imminent they say. I am hoping for Elizabeth Warren, but politically, the selection seems kind of marginal for Biden. No matter who he selects, half the critics will say she is disqualifying, the other half will rail that the person they wanted him to pick was clearly a better choice. This will all be very loud and will feel very important. But in the end, electorally at least, it is not. Presidential Elections come and go, but one truth seems to always remain: No one votes for Vice President.
A few years ago a book I was reading piqued my interest in the origins of the elements (nucleosynthesis). I was floored by the idea that the ‘Big Bang’ produced Hydrogen and Helium (and some Lithium I guess) but that the rest of the elements–all those forms of matter represented on the periodic table, Oxygen, Gold, Uranium, etc.–were built later from those basic elements (mostly Hydrogen and Helium). The deep time and mind-boggling forces behind each element that we see under foot or in our environment fascinated me immensely. I bought a periodic chart, assembled it, hung it on my office wall so I could continue referencing atomic numbers easily as I read various titles on stellar evolution or astronomy as they discussed elemental outcomes arising from the interplay between gravity and stellar fusion. I wanted to remember the process that created each element, but perhaps not enough to do the maintenance to keep it all in working memory.
Enter Jennifer Johnson. A professor at Ohio State University who has created the Periodic Table of the Elements I always wanted — a nucleosythetic version providing the origins of each element!
This chart is simple enough to glance at, but really does quite a bit of work and is the first easy compendium I’ve ever encountered on nucleosynthesis. She really has done an amazing thing with this, imho.
“To abolish child labour you first have to make it visible”
GMB Akash is a photographer and photojournalist who does seriously good work. 
The image above is from a series he did exploring child labor practices in Bangladesh. He tends to captures the dignity of people who find themselves in fairly dire plights amid a system of inequality that spans the globe as he turns up in Greece, Indonesia, Myanmar and elsewhere.
If you had some time to quietly sit with a photo essay or two, I recommend his work.
Ed Yong has been doing the lord’s work in The Atlantic as of late. How the Pandemic Defeated America is a standout piece of writing that offers a clear eyed assessment of how the US has failed as a nation. He compiles mistakes and missed opportunities, squandered advantages, failures of policy, and ultimately, a failure of leadership. He also writes among the most damning appraisals of Presidential leadership I have ever seen:
No one should be shocked that a liar who has made almost 20,000 false or misleading claims during his presidency would lie about whether the U.S. had the pandemic under control; that a racist who gave birth to birtherism would do little to stop a virus that was disproportionately killing Black people; that a xenophobe who presided over the creation of new immigrant-detention centers would order meatpacking plants with a substantial immigrant workforce to remain open; that a cruel man devoid of empathy would fail to calm fearful citizens; that a narcissist who cannot stand to be upstaged would refuse to tap the deep well of experts at his disposal; that a scion of nepotism would hand control of a shadow coronavirus task force to his unqualified son-in-law; that an armchair polymath would claim to have a “natural ability” at medicine and display it by wondering out loud about the curative potential of injecting disinfectant; that an egotist incapable of admitting failure would try to distract from his greatest one by blaming China, defunding the WHO, and promoting miracle drugs; or that a president who has been shielded by his party from any shred of accountability would say, when asked about the lack of testing, “I don’t take any responsibility at all.”
He follows with:
Trump is a comorbidity of the COVID‑19 pandemic.
In other news:
A good idea in life is to simply start with the facts. And as it so happens in this criminal complaint against licensed securities broker and financial representative Michael Carter, the facts begin on Page 4.
Financial advisor broke the law with some clients. Stole some money, probably going to jail. Sounds boring, right? Srsly… check it out. It is astonishing.
Again… the facts start on page 4.
What a tangled web…
Finally, about twenty five years ago I heard a live version of a jazz/ragtime/big band ensemble belting out Some of These Days and fell in love with the song. The source must have been the radio, because it sent me down a rabbit hole searching for THAT version again – a quest I’m not sure I ever successfully completed. It was perhaps the first song I ever made a sustained and considered effort to hear from as many sources as possible (although it is possible that ‘Round Midnight might have come first for me). Recently, after not hearing this song in many years–perhaps a decade or more–a version crossed my path that was so well done and unique that I feel compelled to share. It is just so good, so pure. Please enjoy:
currently reading: Capital and Ideology, Thomas Piketty
last full listen: Obscured by Clouds, Pink Floyd
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griff.works 