Conversational Potpourri

Reading the story about the plight of the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca made me realize that I've never been there. And there's a lot of other places throughout the region, or even closer to home, that I still haven't been to. What's a popular local place that you've never been to before? Is there a good reason for it or you just haven't gotten around to it?

Experts at SUNY’s Center for Vector-Borne Diseases are expecting a tough tick season. They say they’ve already seen a lot of early-season tick activity, despite the cold winter and spring. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's tick bite tracker shows that emergency room visits for tick bites in April are the highest they've been this time of year since 2017. According to the data, the Northeast is seeing the highest rates of ER visits for tick bites in comparison to other parts of the country. So far this year, more than a third of the ticks that have come into SUNY's Tick Lab are carrying a disease. In the North Country, Lyme disease is still the most common t…

by Tanya D. Marsh Nearly two-thirds of Americans now opt for cremation – a figure that has been steadily increasing over five decades. On the surface, that proportion tells a simple story: The nation has embraced cremation, while its preference for casket burials has fallen off. But as a scholar of funeral and cemetery law, I decided to dig deeper into this trend. I wanted to know whether people were embracing cremation because they actually preferred it, or if they were rejecting casket burial for one reason or another. I also explored whether consumers were open to new options in death care, like water cremation and human composting. You’re dead – what’s next?With fundi…

Enshittification is described as "the gradual degradation of online platforms and services, where user experience is sacrificed to maximize profits for advertisers and owners." Coined by author Cory Doctorow in 2022, it refers to a three-stage decline: being good to users, abusing users to reward business customers, and finally, exploiting both. Online examples are far too easy to find: YouTube, Netflix... the list goes on and on. But enshittification is prevalent in the real world as well. For example, this: Became this: What are some other examples of enshittification can you think of, either locally here in Chemung County or in America in general?

What do you think about this list? Is there someone that belongs on this list that isn't? What's your favorite guitar riff of all time?

August 6, 2000 Read the rest of the article here. Question: Is there a celebrity that you would drive across the country to meet? If so, who and why?

I saw a clip from this on Facebook of all places. It's a very interesting listen, especially starting around the 20:00 mark. ( NSFW Language )

Fifty years ago today.