news items

1. Another stupid GPS story.

So this guy is attempting to drive home across the Sierra Nevada, from Grass Valley to Truckee. But he can't take the freeway, I-80, because it's closed due to snow. So he chooses to go the long way around, on state highways 49 and 89 through Downieville and Sierraville. Narrow, twisty roads, but well-marked state highways.

But just before he gets to Downieville, his GPS, on which he's relying because he doesn't know this route (and apparently doesn't trust himself to read signs or to have checked where the route goes before he takes it) tells him to turn off onto a side road. So he does.

Why did it do this? Maybe it thinks the back route is shorter? More likely, the 49/89 route is also closed due to snow - Truckee Summit east of Sierraville is only 500 feet less high than the Donner Pass on I-80 - and it sends him off onto the side road because that doesn't have an official CalTrans snow closure marked on it.

But the back road wouldn't be on CalTrans's list at all, and of course it's not plowed at all, and the man gets stuck in the snow, miles from anywhere or anybody. Fortunately he's driving a camper and can survive; after a week he's able to get a cell phone signal and calls for help. (I don't know how he managed that: my battery wouldn't last nearly that long.)

Another case of over-reflexive reliance on GPS. Most people I know who live up in those parts know better than to try to cross the mountains at all on snow days.

2. Something I've always wanted to read about: Mr. Rogers as a musician. I knew he was professionally trained as a musician, I knew he wrote all the music for his show, but I didn't know how he functioned as a musician or his feelings about the craft. Now I do. (Thanks to Alex Ross.)

3. I no longer have the link to the clearest version of this point, although Dahlia Lithwick is always good, but it's notable how AOC's personal story of the terror she was put through on 1/6 is being belittled and shrugged off by Republicans. As AOC herself points out, this is exactly the language that sexual abusers use to try to deny the reality of abuse. That they would do this in the face of such a clearly-documented terrorist attack is horrifying. They are scum, they are slime.