2026-02-20

There's a publication in Milwaukee called the Shepherd Express. They have a section called "News of the Weird", from which I culled the following:

Christopher Carroll, 36, was suspended from his job as a paramedic with the Baltimore County Fire Department and is facing 23 criminal charges following inexplicable behavior at work and elsewhere, WSFA-TV reported on Feb. 7. Investigators said Carroll urinated in different spots all over his workplace, including on his supervisor's keyboard, in a pot of chili, in coffee creamer and in an icemaker. Prosecutors said Carroll "urinated into the ice, wiped on a scoop and used the scoop to mix the urine throughout the ice" -- all while filming himself. Other targets were someone's ChapStick, a can of vegetables and a carton of orange juice. Officials believe Carroll was making the videos to post to online subscription services. He was denied bail.

And, on a slightly more heart-warming note:

Former college design professor Don Glickman was 93 and dying when he and his daughter discussed how he wanted to be memorialized, The (Spokane) Spokesman-Review reported on Feb. 9. Leah Glickman said her father faced his fate head-on: "We never used words in our house like 'he passed,'" she said. "We said, 'he died.' No one gets out of here alive." She and her dad came up with a clever idea: Send out postcards to family and friends, announcing his death. On the front is a photo of Glickman and the text, "If you're reading this, I'm dead, and I really liked you," with a small sketch of him that had become his signature. On the back, Leah wrote, "After 94 years on this planet, my dad has departed. ... In a last act of design and Glickman ethos, he asked that this postcard be created, photo and text chosen by him." Glickman died on Nov. 11. Former student Jason Snape, 56, got a postcard. "It made me laugh really hard because it was just so him," Snape said. "It's unusual, it's sweet, it's straightforward."

Yesterday, I figure out how to connect the 4000+ notes that I have in Obsidian to the Claude desktop app. I am no one's idea of an AI evangelist, but playing around with the newer Claude releases this week has been eye-opening - as a brainstorming partner, Claude is now astonishingly good.

On that subject, a New Yorker article on Anthropic this week is well worth a read: What Is Claude? Anthropic Doesn’t Know, Either | The New Yorker