FWIW, the context of the Franklin quote is him defending the ability of the legislature to tax a family that was trying to bribe/lobby the governor to do otherwise.
The quote is in defense of the government: WITTES: It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means.
̶N̶e̶t̶s̶c̶a̶p̶e̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶i̶m̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶G̶I̶F̶s̶. Edit: Netscape added looping to animated GIFs per reply. She apparently led that effort. The press is misreporting her actions as having invented GIF in the first place, which is wrong. That happened at CompuServe in 1987.
GIFs already had animation. Netscape added an animation loop counter.
For a rough idea of the complexity involved, when I wrote a GIF decoder and renderer a few decades ago, implementing the loop counter extension took me about 10 minutes.
It varies by city. In some cities, mayor is barely more than a figurehead.
But regardless of power, what the NYC mayor does is widely reported and it's often a political stepping stone (if not always successful) to something greater.
Mamdani in particular is a celebrity right now, and with the reputation of the Democratic party in shambles, many eyes are on him.
> But regardless of power, what the NYC mayor does is widely reported and it's often a political stepping stone (if not always successful) to something greater.
The only "greater" things any recent NYC mayors have done are bankrolling presidential campaigns and failed coup attempts.
Looking back at it, the last NYC mayor who held a notable political position after their mayoral term was Robert Wagner.
In fact, the last mayor I can find who served in a superior political office after their mayoralty was John T Hoffman, who was mayor from 1866-1868 and then NY Governor from 1869-1872.
> WWVB clocks running off the 60KHz pretty much solve the clock problem in the US.
YMMV depending upon location. I've never gotten a WWVB clock to work in North Carolina. On the East Coast, the signal maybe sorta works for a few hours overnight:
T̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶n̶s̶i̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶D̶S̶T̶ ̶a̶u̶t̶o̶m̶a̶t̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶,̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶p̶u̶l̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶w̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶ ̶u̶n̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶U̶S̶ ̶l̶o̶c̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶a̶d̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶D̶S̶T̶ ̶s̶i̶l̶l̶i̶n̶e̶s̶s̶. Edit: My bad, they can switch in/out of DST automatically, at least when they can work at all.
I have a few WWVB clocks. The ones that are on the north/south walls will never sync on their own, but east/west walls will sync just fine. I just take down the north/south clocks twice a year and lean them on a west facing wall and they'll sync overnight.
I think that most WWVB clocks just don't have the size to have an omni-directional antenna.
If I have to take the clock off the wall and move it outside, I may as well set it by hand. In any case, I've tried leaving one outside facing west and it still doesn't work. I've literally never had one of these clocks work from NC.
Meanwhile, the WiFi NTP clock I purchased just works, like I always hoped the WWVB clocks would have.
We do, but I've never had a WWVB clock work for me in North Carolina. I've tried a few of them. The US is a big place and for whatever reason, there aren't that many clock signal transmission towers (AFAIK, the only one in the US is in Colorado).
This is great. I spent years looking for an affordable battery-powered WiFi clock that syncs via NTP since where I am, the WWVB clocks never pick up the radio signal.
I never considered making my own. Anyway, about two years ago this option popped up on Amazon. I've been happy with it:
Thanks for sharing this. I, too, have spent years trying to find an analog-style clock that is completely hands-off for adjustments (power outage, DST, drift correction) and it looks like this one handles it all.
It feels like in 2026 this should be something default and assumable, but alas, it is not.
The quote is in defense of the government: WITTES: It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means.
https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
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