Catching up and Open Tabs

Hey all. I haven’t gone anywhere but I’ve been away.

Let’s start this with “this just in”: Ye, or Yo, or Yuck, or whatever ex-Kanye Whoever calls himself now, has just been dropped by CAA, one of Hollywood’s big-three talent agencies.

Good. Glad to hear it. What he said recently which got him into this latest biggish trouble was, aw, man, let's just describe it: ridiculous, insulting, and stupid. It’s not the first thing he’s said nor the first thing he’s done which shows he needs some mental health assistance.

On to other stuff.

Everyday I have the privilege, because I live in the U.S. (a bit dramatic but nevertheless true), of receiving and being able to peruse the content of a couple’a dozen news and content-specific aggregators.

It’s a privilege because some of the world's populations are provided only with news and current events manipulated, altered, or created by a the population’s government or ruling class. As opposed to here in the U.S. of A., where a viewer or user can dial up just about anything, true, false, inflammatory, or indifferent.

There are many stories on any given day that reinforce how lucky we are to have this continuous, free flowing data and content and, everything…

Okay, That's the upside; the downside is that it’s too much. And it’s all over the place, wackiness abounds, and slanted perspectives are so severe ya’ gotta turn your device on its side to see a normal picture. That goes for Fox certainly, but MSNBC is right on the line of that also.

Apologies. I digress.

I find story upon story and, knowing I could spend an entire day reading and reading…and reading, I park content for later.

I’m referring to browser tabs, those place holders that line up along the top of my browser’s window and, I confess, may stay ready and waiting for weeks, or, confessing again, longer. Some will never be read. Sometimes there’s an app or system update and the browser(s) need(s) to reboot. Mac’s Safari reliably brings back all tabs and windows when the update is complete. Firefox, not always.

Sometimes I’m cleaning my digital house and an open tab just has to go.

So, welcome to my every now and then feature, Open Tabs. I’ll share what’s waiting to be read that’s important, entertaining, or mystifying (magically or in a WTF kind of way). This is not an original idea; a decent-sized proportion of my content providers do this, aggregating content from other sources to inform a particular audience.

The aggregators do it for one of the same reasons I’m doing it now: to provide access to a story of importance or interest that might not otherwise reach someone who would give a damn about it, because there is just, so, much, content.

So much.

While my Open Tabs aggregates (not ‘aggregate,’ because herein the two words are a title, not actual tabs. But I digress, again…) links to things of interest to me — science, medicine, guns, writing, books, art, animals, happy events, sad events — I figure there are at least one or two of interest to you. And yeah, if a link is too old and you get a ‘there ain’t nothin’ here’ page, sorry. Yep, that’s all I got, an apology for you to use now, for a perceived or real slight later.

The Open Tabs linked stories are at the end of this missive.

Wait, there's more!

If Steve, Then Steph is, oh shoot, was, an Amazon #1 New Release.
That statement is true. But hoo-eee, there’s context needed for accuracy. Even so, I’ll take a #1 designation from the dominator of the book and media content industry, even as I go on to slightly disparage it. Many of us are in a similar hate/like/love relationship with Amazon. It is dominant and powerful. It’s not every writer’s friend.

Even though it sometimes can be.

With or without Amazon, the +17,000-word, in-depth piece that is If Steve, Then Steph does exist. With Amazon, though, comes the freakin’ enormous exposure provided to any writer, of any skill level, from (almost) anywhere.

It’s a place for If Steve, Then Steph to get exposure for a good story about a unique creative partnership. And at lease an unknown number of readers agree, or have at least purchased it. Amazon categorizes everything; it probably categorizes its categories. Last week I checked the Amazon page and saw the #1 New Release designation, and then the category: Business & Technology Management History.

Start moving up the category tree from that and eventually you see category info and data that provide some “ah” context, like yep, it was the #1 New Release down there right behind how to program your cat app, but up at the top is the Kindle Store with every Kindle book and the overall rank is somewhere in the range of 250,000th…

The piece also hovered between 10th and 14th position under the Theatre Direction and Production. Honestly, that category ranking does a lot more for me. Now the story is in the mid-fifties. Ah, so fleeting…

A handful of my followers, which is really all of you, first read the story here. If you’re a paid subscriber and didn’t get the chance to read it when the post was active (beause it's since ben removed), drop me a line — mwhsecure at protonmail.com — and I’ll furnish you a Kindle-format file you can open on your Kindle or on your Mac device of choice.

In the Pipeline

In another week or so I’l be putting up some words about my work with Michael Jackson from late August to December 1987. This time 35 years ago we had just finished a month in Japan and were prepping for a month in Australia. I’ll annotate an extensive piece I previously did on the 25th anniversary of the Bad tour.

I’m always working on something, usually more than one somethings, and often the somethings are very long term projects, but I’ll start sharing some work here that’s both part of a project and worthy of some standalone time. For now, links from Open Tabs follow.

Thanks for reading.

MWH

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Open Tabs:

It finally happened to me — I’m an old dog
In a citizen science project, thousands of pet dogs are helping scientists to understand what happens to memory and cognition in old age.

Sometimes a pull quote can be WTF crazy but true, like this one…Beijing is well positioned to strike mining deals with the Taliban.

A not quite as crazy pull quote, but still a head scratcher…Most notably, geochemists still aren’t sure what Earth’s core is made of.

Something that a bunch of us already know — “Oh, that ain’t gonna work…”
Quality control measures seem insufficient for most select dietary supplement products. The public has a right to know that they are buying what is stated on the label. This case series study analyzed 30 dietary supplement products purchased from Amazon.com with claims related to immune health. Seventeen of 30 products had inaccurate labels; 13 were misbranded, and 9 had additional components detected but not claimed on the label.

And, sadly, something else that’s no surprise — Kids and tobacco create a damn funky situation A significant association was found of early-age initiation of tobacco use with lower crystalized cognition composite score and impaired brain development in total cortical area and volume...initiation of tobacco use is associated with inferior neurocognitive functions.

And let’s end with something cool, as in “If I had that kind of dough, that’s what I’d do too…” Rewilding — what a friggin’ cool thing.

MWH