June 21sts
6/21/1824
Cross-written letter from Anne Lister, Shibden Hall, to [Sibbella] Maclean of Coll, Tobermory.
6/21/1998
Father's Day and the summer solstice. The event happened at exactly 9:03 a.m. and I took a walk around town celebrating the celestial turning points, hoping that perhaps metaphorically the changing of seasons may mean a change for me as well.
I like the concept of "experience designer" rather than music performer.
6/21/2004
Interesting: The "ghosty" photos of Edmund Teske. He was photoshopping images even before Photoshop, and they still look interesting.
Private rocket goes to the edge of the atmosphere. (Boundary exploration). Even though most of us will never experience it, it's good to know someone's done it. Possibility creates possibility.
6/21/2009
Bought the iPhone. When you get one of these, they become a body organ you can't live without. It remains to be seen if it informs life or becomes another distraction.
6/21/2011
Summer solstice 12:15 which I totally missed. Solstices are a spiritual experience for me.
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Social behavior has grown progressively callous over the past few years. Social media is changing our wiring in fundamental ways, just as TV did 60 years ago.
[6/2024: The general consensus among scientists that have been studying the history of the smartphone is that 2011-2012 seems to be the inflection point, also in context with the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, which used the new technology as a democracy tool, but it’s backfired, or has had bad side effects severely affecting teens, but adults as well.]
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Nasty storm PM. Tornado warnings. Went out to do some field recording of approaching storm. Just missed sirens.
6/21/2012
Sunset shadows, train platform:
6/21/2014
Field recording at Lurie Garden. There are three spatial layers: sound of birds (foreground 1), human voices (foreground 2); mechanical noises (background 1), wind, traffic and other white noise (background 2). There are some birds that sound like mechanical noises which is an interesting juxtaposition.
6/21/2018
What I always thought was interesting about AI is that in the process of making something artificial you learn more about being human. From a purely mechanical standpoint, emotions can be quantified, then interpreted by machines, but human-to-human will never be the same as human-to-machine. Why would we want it to?
6/21/2021
It's quite an interesting start to summer. Soon after the summer solstice there was a tornado that came through the area—albeit 20 miles south of here. It was getting pretty scary because nowadays whenever there's some kind of an alert, even a really minor one, you get very loud alerts on your phone.
[6/2024: Regardless of climate change effects, smartphones also give use the illusion that if we’re always checking all the notifications and alerts that we’re somehow safer. That could be the case is a small number of incidents, but notifications on phones (or constant monitoring of social media) has made us all more anxious, and less safe in that we feel less safe.]
6/21/2022
Summer solstice and record-breaking heat, 100 degrees.
Day 4 of 1/6 hearings. I still can't believe this kind of thing is happening in the US.
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Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn have been aligning in order this month for the first time in 18 years. Also, McCartney at 80, Watergate @50.
6/21/2023
Solstice 9:57A. Perhaps they'll find the sub at this moment. Banging noises heard. It's magical thinking, like seeing "11". (Thought of Gavin Bryars' "Sinking of the Titanic") People must be using it as a metaphor.
First day of summer. One never tires of the memory or the feeling.