a stupid website
October 28, 2024
(if you want to you can view this in your browser.)
I made a stupid website.
I also did that pompous thing where I decided to add a bunch of people whose work that I admire, or who I think should be subscribed to this newsletter, as subscribers to this newsletter. So if you’re getting it mysteriously for the first time that’s why. For everyone: remember you can always unsubscribe by sending an email to newsletter-unsubscribe@newsletter.charliemacquarie.com. And if you’re too annoyed to do that you can even just respond to me here and tell me to take you the hell off this list and I absolutely will not be offended. I might even have added you out of spite and so when you tell me to take you off I’ll say to myself “I knew they wouldn’t want to be on – I was right about them…” but that’s a way different problem than my being offended and is a pretty good sign you were right to unsubscribe. [a joke – I promise I didn’t add anyone out of spite – but you probably have been added to a newsletter out of spite in the past, do you ever think about that?]
Anyway, the stupid website – it’s a kind of utilitarian yet poetic portrait of the San Francisco Bay Area created from the radio traffic passing between the ships in the Bay. It’s actually a great website (IMHO), but it is a little excessive. It’s called Barge Greater Than because tugboats moving barges greater than a certain tonnage (they’re usually carrying petroleum here on the Bay) must check in to the Vessel Traffic Service before getting underway, and announce that they are “pushing a barge greater than 1600 gross tons,” but in the interest of brevity the tonnage is usually left off the radio transmission and they announce simply “pushing a barge greater than.” I find that constantly unfinished transmission so strangely captivating, and it’s three words that are undeniably marvelous together. My friend Jared Stanley once bravely tried to explain poetry to my 4-year-old – he said it was “when you put words together to make them sing.” I find myself thinking about his definition a lot as I read through the transmissions of the Marine Radio Frequency band, now conveniently captured for YOU on this website. There is a lot of unexpected singing.
This was also a chance to purchase the domain I’ve been wanting for years, see it for yourself at https://rocksrocksrocksrocks.rocks/barge-greater-than.
It’s also a fascinating data source for all kinds of unexpected things about the Bay. Want to know the number of tons of petroleum products moving across these waters on a weekly basis? The number of whales that have been sited over the past month? The frequency of regatta happenings? The predominating origins of cargo destined for northern California? It’s all here. It’s also a way to examine en masse the way that maritime labor, guard labor, technicians, and functionaries talk about their work, which is fascinating in itself. I’ve been dipping my toe into consulting and contracting on practices and infrastructure (physical and digital) for acquisition, processing, and analysis of radio data. Is this something you or an organization you work with might have use for? Or, not sure if you have use for it but curious to know more? Get in touch! It’s been tremendously rewarding even at this early stage, and I’d like to do more of it.
Changing gears, I also made an overly-long video about petroleum radio, extraction, and energy transition. I was going to present this at the Petrocultures Conference in Los Angeles many months ago but my co-panelists and I canceled our presentation in solidarity with student organizers against the genocide in Palestine calling for a boycott of University of Southern California (where conference was happening) in honor of Nakba Day. I’m glad we could stand in solidarity with fellow humans resisting genocide, and it also means that literally no one has watched this video. If you’d like to watch, please, check it out: https://charliemacquarie.com/sharing/petrocultures/telephone-hills_charlie-macquarie-2024.mp4
Hyping up some other people:
My good dude Kel Troughton has released an awesome new font called Parch, which is based on the very particular way outdoor vinyl lettering shrinks after years of sun exposure. You like fonts, right? Well then you’re gonna love this. Go purchase this one and use it on some dope stuff!! https://store.overlaptype.com/fonts/parch
I had the joy lately of [formally, I guess?] talking to Kelly and Anna Pendergrast of Antistatic Partners about, well, nothing in particular (actually everything in particular) and it was just great and their work is just great. You can hire them, if you’ve got money. You should hire them as they are simply a joy to hang out with – if I could I’d hire them just to hang out with me. I was introduced to the many different versions of “Drivin’ on 9” – see, for example, this and this – and they set me down a path of trying to catalog all the songs that mention my home town of Carson City, Nevada. Do you know any?? Send them to me if so!
My friend Leora Fridman has a new book – Bound Up – that just came out. I have just barely started it, but so far I am struck and moved by her engagement with that oh so human urge to look into the darkness, both literally and figuratively, and keep looking and looking and looking and not stop, even when Nazi Furries begin to make their appearance. It’s about way more than this – get a copy yourself and check it out! Or, might I suggest that you request your public library purchase a copy? Then you can read it and a bunch of other people can too! https://wsupress.wayne.edu/9780814351598/
Last year (or maybe, several years ago??) I took a class on Archives and Climate Change from my friend Eira Tansey, who is brilliant. Several people on this list had asked about that class, but felt uncertain if they were the right learners because they weren’t professional archivists. I wanted to make EVERYONE aware that she is also teaching a class directed exactly toward non-archivists: Fun with Archives. Unfortunately I think this newsletter is going to arrive too late to register for the upcoming session, however if you’re interested in this I recommend you sign up for her newsletter because she may teach it again and because I guarantee you want to know what Eira and Memory Rising are up to anyway.
Do Not Stop Here, Read On!!
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This edition we’re getting into saline minerals. Both of these were collected at Gem-O-Rama, the now permanently-canceled (:sob:) raucous collecting field trip in Trona, California, in which hundreds of gem and mineral collectors, geology students, desert freaks, and general rubberneckers would convene to crawl across the evaporation ponds of the Searles Valley Minerals company in search of barely-believable crystalline specimens.
PINK HALITE
Halite is table salt, but in some extremely-salty lacustrine (it means “in a lake”) environments, high concentrations of the tiny micro-organisms haloarchea turn the water pink due to the carotenoid pigments in their cells, which are presumed to protect them from UV light. This is the same stuff that makes flamingos pink as it moves up the salty food chain. Anyway, these same haloarchea thrive in the evaporation ponds of Searles Valley Minerals, and they cause the legendary color of the massive salt crystals that form in the ponds – an unintentional byproduct of the brine-evaporation mining process. Pink Halite, apparently a stone of the heart chakra, “pushes one to love every ounce of themselves and who they truly are,” but the tag-line of the corporate precursor to Searles Valley Minerals was “You can’t eat our salts,” so do not attempt the dangerous Searles Valley initiation ritual of a pink-halite margarita, even out of self love.
H A N K S I T E
Hanksite, though perhaps less showy, is no less remarkable. The mineral contains Sodium, Potassium, Sulfate, Carbonate, and Chlorine, and is notable for being one of the relatively-few minerals that is both Sulfate and Carbonate and also for these totally unbelievable massive crystals that it forms as it is birthed deep under the mud of Searles dry lakebed. To facilitate the collection of hanksite during Gem-O-Rama, the mining company would go the day prior to dig up the mud of the lakebed with excavators and lay it out primed and ready for collectors to scramble over and through in search of crystals. They would also set up long troughs full of salty brine from the lake in which to wash the crystals, since both hanksite and halite are water-soluble salts that will dissolve if washed in fresh water. I still have my apple juice container full of Searles Lake brine and it remains – especially now that Gem-O-Rama is canceled and lake access is foreclosed upon forever – one of my most prized possessions.
OK you can stop here.
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Charlie Macquarie's newsletter. Sent from Oakland, California, Lisjan Ohlone Land.
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