Mossy Character sends in: Notre Dame's resurrection: Its chief architect on rebuilding France's 'heart' in 5 years.

I guess after Notre Dame burned down, Macron declared that it would be re-built within five years. And good news, everybody! It burned down on April 15th, 2019!

But as the reopening fast approaches, Villeneuve confessed his lingering anxiety.

"I'm not calm -- not at all. I'm completely stressed out," he said. "This was not just about restoring a building. This was about restoring the heart of France."

Here's a different link with some photos of the shiny new interior.

I'm even a little surprised at the amount of schadenfreude surrounding the murder of the United CEO:

Only about 50 million customers of America's reigning medical monopoly might have a motive to exact revenge upon the UnitedHealthcare CEO.

Heh. And I'm seeing lots of it on social media, too.

Also:

Last November, the estates of two former UHC patients filed suit in Minnesota alleging that the insurer used an AI algorithm to deny and override claims to elderly patients that had been approved by their doctors.

The algorithm in question, known as nH Predict, allegedly had a 90 percent error rate -- and according to the families of the two deceased men who filed the suit, UHC knew it.

So yeah.

John Paul Bremmer of ¡Hola Papi! with My Heinous Gift Guide for Sworn Enemies:

Target Pride Blazer: Befuddle your heterosexual bête noire or outright offend your homosexual antagonist by gifting them this outdated rainbow blazer from Target's Pride Collection in 2022, a year or two before Target agreed that being gay isn't quite normal. This Rorschach test of a gift registers as a threat to a straight person, telling them, "dress up like the Rainbow Riddler, or you're a bigot," and an insult to a gay person, to whom it says, "this is what you all look like to me, Skittles." It's a lose-lose, perfect for the cursed Christmas vibes you're angling for.

The whole thing is a delight.

We got a weird letter a month ago from the city, saying something like, "We don't know anything about the pipes connecting the street line to your house, but if you do, let us know!" I honestly can't remember, and don't have it in front of me.

Anyway, I ordered a water sample test kit and sent off the results, to see if we have lead in our pipes. The results just now came back, and they're slightly elevated? I'm having trouble putting them in context.

Our water* came back as 0.00177 PPM, or 1.77 µg/L = 1.77 ppb.

The EPA has a non-enforceable maximum contaminant level of zero lead, and seems to have an enforceable contaminant level of 15 ppb. Because our level is over 0, the lab has flagged it. (The threshhold for the lab to report it is 0.001 ppm, I think.)

I don't want to overreact, but I also don't want to underreact. I want to react just right.

*I did the version of the test where you sample the water that has been sitting in the pipes, because I wanted the worst case scenario.

Mossy Character writes: Volkswagen to Exit China's Xinjiang Region After 12 Years

That other time, they also actually stopped.

The carmaker made the announcement at the same time as saying it would extend its partnership with Chinese partner SAIC by a decade to 2040

Heebie's take: I think I learned my lesson about trying to correct anyone, ever.

I am in no way endorsing the book behind it, but I like this quote:

One was Ronald Purser, who is professor of management at San Francisco State University. He introduced me to an idea I hadn't heard before--a concept named "cruel optimism." This is when you take a really big problem with deep causes in our culture--like obesity, or depression, or addiction--and you offer people, in upbeat language, a simplistic individual solution. It sounds optimistic, because you are telling them that the problem can be solved, and soon--but it is, in fact, cruel, because the solution you are offering is so limited, and so blind to the deeper causes, that for most people, it will fail.

However, when I look up "cruel optimism", it seems like it's from a 2011 book that conceived it a little differently:

A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren Berlant describes the cruel optimism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the social-democratic promise of the postwar period in the United States and Europe has retracted. People have remained attached to unachievable fantasies of the good life--with its promises of upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and durable intimacy--despite evidence that liberal-capitalist societies can no longer be counted on to provide opportunities for individuals to make their lives "add up to something."

Or as one of the commenters - a Doctor Moss - at the Amazon link puts it:

Lauren Berlant characterizes the term "cruel optimism" in various ways, but the one that spoke most clearly to me is "a projection of sustaining but unworkable fantasy."

The idea behind cruel optimism is a condition in which the happiness we've subscribed to as an ideal, when attained, isn't happiness and yet we continue to subscribe to it. A circle of frustration that seals its own exits.

The turn of phrase fits more neatly to the Ronald Purser version, but both versions are interesting to think about.

Two things that freak me out:

1. The next generation of cell phones will make it extremely easy to modify photos however you want.

2. What happens when official accounts are modified/cleaned up/distorted from what actually occurred?

I would love a clear-headed reason why I shouldn't panic.