Happy 100th birthday to David Attenborough! In a world that seems to grow meaner and more cynical by the day, Mr. Attenborough stayed busy showing us the marvels of the natural world. Is there anyone here who doesn't recognize that mellifluous voice immediately? We owe you a huge debt of gratitude, sir.
"If a person with an identical profile applied to be your manager at work, would you be comfortable hiring him?"
I haven't had a real job with pay in decades, but I do read, and I don't think most employees get to hire their own manager.
Also, if he's trying to say that a United States Senator is like the individual manager of the state's voters, who are subordinate employees, that's just totally dead wrong.
Any employer I have ever had, had some recourse for reporting improper behavior by supervisors. That included the military (albeit with a bit more degree of difficulty than a civilian employer).
Having mechanisms to report improper conduct by those in authority (whether the mechanisms work or not, see, "Write to the Bishop") is different from getting to choose the person for the position.
In a way, voting for Senator is like hiring an employee, because he works for you, the State's residents, but you're not "hiring" your own boss.
If you're thinking of your priest, his relationship to the Bishop is not exactly an employer-employee relaationship. But yes, you virtually never get to choose your supervisor.
It depends on the situation: while the final hiring decision is almost never with non-management employees, good managers often pay attention to inputs from employees. Our secretary (now retired) gave excellent feedback on red flags she observed in job candidates. We turned down many job applicants due to red flags observed by other faculty, staff, the secretaries, etc.
Lol, when she was asked if I'd be a good dept chair, she laughed out loud, I was too disorganized. But after five years she admitted I actually did well, she just had to manage me differently. She knew to schedule meetings for 30 minutes, but to blocl out at least 45 minutes, stuff like that.
Where are the moderate Dems we keep hearing about, and why do they let this stupid stuff keep happening? The argument applies to both parties of course, but Dems fancy themselves intellectuals and it’s pretty easy to see how stunts like making anti-Zionism a top issue mostly appeals to the extremists in the party.
coincidentally, I read this link after I read a true accounting of a story about Lothar Hermann who was born in 1901 in Quirnbach, a small town in the Westerwald region of Germany. He grew up, trained as a merchant, worked in finance, and in the 1930s began quietly smuggling currency across the border into France to support Jews trying to reach Palestine. In 1935 the Gestapo caught him. They sent him to Dachau, where the beatings were severe enough that he lost the sight in one eye, and eventually the other. When he was released, he emigrated to Argentina with his wife and his daughter Sylvia.
Long, long story short, he & his daughter were instrumental in finding & hunting down Eichmann, when finally on May 11, 1960, Eichmann was arrested, put on trial, found guilty on all 15 counts. On June 1, 1962, he was hanged — the only time Israel has ever carried out a death sentence. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea, so there would be no grave, no marker, no place for anyone to come. All because of a blind man & the help of his daughter.
What would the liberals of today do with this story?
I was just barely old enough to understand this at the time the trial happened. Fortunately Life Magazine explained it, in a PG fashion but enough so we got that there can be accountability.
I was listening to a bunch of reporting and analysis this weekend, as well as scrolling on X among people I consider reasonable and level-headed. Many are pointing to a possible push from the D-party base to make “anti-zionism” into a major priority for the next presidential elections. That is, not opposing the Rs on pocketbook issues, inflation, gun control—the types of things that has significant (not overwhelming) appeal among centrists and non-partisans. No, they seriously want to prioritize the biggest, most important issues of deep concern to campus radicals and activists…
If the Ds strive for that level of monomania, the Rs will be completely free to go as nutty as they can in whatever lunacy follows (logically?) from Trump/MAGA.
Primaries are the biggest part of the problem. Typically only the most "impassioned" (that is, extremist) party members take part.
Party leaders used to vet candidates and weed out kooks and those not broadly electable. I would love to bring back state party conventions, complete with "smoke filled rooms" where that happened!
David's argument is the ends don't justify the means.
Sadly, what he neglects to say is that there are still other candidates in the Dem primary; perhaps if he had reminded Maineacs of that, it might matter. Perhaps if he had told them they still had a choice beside the Totenkopf candidate. But he chose not to.
The tattoo of his that worries me more is the black square tattoo. Platner had plenty of room on his body elsewhere for it, but the black square tattoo decided it needed more lebensraum so it occupied the Totenkoph's space. If he gets elected, what will he do with Aroostock; will he reignite war with Canada so hard working Maineacs have more space?
I do have a mild disagreement with David when he implies that we should not hold Senators to lower standards. While I get his point, the fact is a single corrupt or extremist Senator is less an issue than a corrupt or extremist President. Both should be avoided, but one is only one of 100. The other has a lot fewer checks on his power.
Of course he could be worse. Collins at least voted to convict on the 1/6 vote. Platner? Who knows? He's emblematic of all the things I now question about our representative democracy.
BTW - no where logical to put the following, so dropping here. Walter Kirn on X recently has gotten awful. A mix of X-files like hints that he knows that they know that he knows they are lying to us (about UAPs), but he's not going to say what he knows. But he knows.
What a shame. I've a lot of respect for some of his professional work - novels and especially The County Highway print paper he publishes with David Samuels. It is really fantastic. But he's crossed the line in social media to outright kook provocateur. He and Matt Taibbi had some falling out recently and parted ways. And Taibbi's Racket News is a crumbling hot mess too.
The thing about the tattoo is that having it and then making up stories about why/how it's there exposes the lie to the marketing that he is a good hearted, man of the people type. Otherwise, I wouldn't care either. Just another closeted bigot.
I really don't know. True? Not true? Lying? Evil conniving weasel? How does anyone know if his stories are made up? They can't.
I still don't care. No one knows anything about what he'd be like as an elected official. It's all part of my general disaffection with our representative democracy. Who are these people?
Definitely worth the read. Among other things, David is calling out Democrats (that is, the New York Times readership) for their 2024 election loss, running first the senile Joe Biden then his incompetent VP to oppose Trump.
It would be really interesting to me to know the voting patterns of the mothership readership. Or at least the frequent commenters. No judgement, just observation. My guess is roughly 50/50 - with many who have always been left of left of center. Which is fine.
Yes. I gave up the NYT a few months ago. I used to shake my head after reading the comments section. But as you point out it’s obviously no different than the MAGA diehards.
I rarely go into comments sections. Both the NYT and the WSJ....it's disheartening to read the comments. They reinforce most of my worst misanthropic tendencies.
I served on academic senate for four years. The liberal arts had more representation than merited. I heard so much nonsense from them. And a complete lack of understanding statistics. They view Graham Platner with suspicion because he served in the military; what if he is a spy of them? 🙄
They had a professor of theology do a survey on discrimination in student evaluations. She did some simple tables to "prove" (her words) women are discriminated against! One of my colleagues got her survey data, and ran a regression: not statistically significant. He was called sexist for that.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that women are discriminated against, because I often see that they are.
I both believe and disbelieve statistical analysis ever since I had a client that was the chief statistician for the CEO of one of those international banking Goliaths tell me he could "prove" whatever he wanted to prove...so to speak.
I view Platner with deep suspicious because anyone that would want to swim in that snake pit must be awful on at least a few levels. My misanthropic tendencies are running strong nowadays.
Ditto. And then ditto the ditto. What a bunch of idiots.
Right wing populism's what got us here in the first place in large part. So, now the fringier Ds figure let's just start pushing our own brand of that crap with candidates like this Planter guy.
True to form, after some recent electoral success by relatively "normal" candidates in special elections and a few others (and still almost daily being handed political gift after gift after gift for free by Trump and his Rs), now far too many of the apparently brain-dead numbskulls in the party seem more than determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by playing to the concerns of a limited, fringy constituency. Which will surely end up dragging them *all* back into the gutter of leftist identity politics, cancel culture and wokeism in the public's eye.
God forbid that they make a serious and sustained effort to win over the broader, more centrist demographic concerned about the pressing domestic issues that they ran on and which brought them those successes over the past months. Oh, hell no. Let's get behind a guy with a "Nazi" sign now hung around his neck by an old tattoo on his chest.
With the wind at their backs, they just can't seem to keep themselves from turning around and spitting into it.
The people pushing these so-called progressive populists and who think moving "left" is the winning ticket have the attention spans of gnats and the electoral analytical abilities of...
Never mind. Their actions speak louder than my words about them can.
Last week I had an exchange with a guy who said “this is a dictatorship.” When I asked how Dems have won some pretty important special elections the last few months if we have a dictatorship, he said “they’re consolidating power.” How do you have a reasonable discussion with that?
You can't. Any more than I expect that you could have a reasonable discussion with the guy who told me at the end of last summer, "The domestic auto industry is run by a bunch of left-wing radicals."
I'm guessin' you probably did not know that.
Don't feel bad. It was news to me, too. And I'd worked directly in and around the domestic auto industry for half a century!
What's so pathetic about this is that the guy in question is not "stupid".
He's a former employer of mine, just a few years younger than me and an owner (along with two younger brothers) and manager of a successful job shop that's been selling custom built machines and tooling to the auto industry and other manufacturers since his father started the business from scratch more than six decades ago.
I'd stopped into his shop - in which I'd worked part-time for the last couple of years of my nearly 5 decades as a skilled tradesman - to see a young guy who'd been on an apprenticeship there when I was there, and whom I'd helped out with a few things from time to time. I'd learned that he'd finally graduated, and I went to give him a small gift to mark the occasion and to offer to take him out to lunch sometime later to celebrate.
While I was there, I saw the owner and passed a few pleasantries with him. I then made the mistake of asking him if he thought the end of the government tax subsidies for buying EVs - which were fast approaching at that point - would have much of an effect on his business since, while I'd been working there not all that long before, quite a number of things being made there had been related to domestic EV production at GM and Ford.
I'd known from the day I interviewed for a job with this guy that he was a Trump supporter. He didn't have to tell me; the Trump 2020 campaign sign that I spotted on a back wall of the place was sort of a clue when he gave me a tour after the interview.
I almost didn't take him up on his offer of a job on very favorable terms to me because of that sign, never even once having seen such an overt political display in any shop I'd ever worked in over the years, which added up to a baker's dozen at that point. I didn't care about his politics all that much; I just didn't want to be hearing about them at work.
But we never spoke of politics in the 2+ years that I worked there, since one of the things I'd told him about myself in that interview was that I absolutely did *not* talk about two things at work: religion and politics... a rule that had, with only a very few exceptions, stood me in good stead for nearly half a century and which I broke only under extraordinary circumstances, and then only briefly when absolutely forced to do so by others who didn't share the same value I placed on appropriate topics for discussion in the workplace or respect my desire to be a-political while on the clock.
But what was a simple "business" related question sparked by mere curiosity on my part that day evoked the political response I noted, which was the beginning of a political rant which quickly posited that, among other things, tariffs would have no effect on most businesses - including his, of which steel and aluminum are an absolute basic necessity and major cost, even without any added burdens - and that certain people and the media were "just mad because now we have a *real* president."
How should I put this? I liked this guy and always got along with him. As an employee, he'd treated me better than I'd expected over the time I worked there, and had rewarded me financially rather handsomely in ways not discussed when I hired in, since he apparently appreciated my "old school" skills and the quality of my work, along with my dependability and willingness to "go the extra mile" when needed to get a job done and out the door.
Like I said, I liked this guy when I was working for him. And you can't really be stupid and have the success he's had with that shop through thick and thin. So, I guess I'll just say that those were some of the dumbest things I ever heard come out of a smart guy's mouth. A disappointment to me, to be sure.
I quickly begged off and disengaged myself from his rant and headed for the door, thinking it would be a long time - if ever - before I drop in for another visit, and all the while biting my tongue to keep from saying, "I'll bet that Mary Barra (GM's CEO) and the Ford family would be more than a little surprised to learn that they're left-wing radicals."
Good morning. 44 degrees now with a high in the 60s. The mothership is covering the Louisiana lawsuit to ban the abortion pill mifepristone from being shipped across Tate lines. An appeals court decision in their favor, which would have applied last week, was stayed by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. That stay expires at 5PM today unless he or the full COurt extends it.
I'll start by sharing I am Pro-Life. I'm also a realist who knows that outright bans will never get passed nationwide post Dobbs; so getting the best deal you can in each state is the optimal strategy.
Having said all that, FWIW, I am of the opinion that Mifepristone should not be administered without a doctor present. We know complications occur with telehealth already, but we're risking killing women by permitting this. Women have already died or needed medical attention afterwards. I get frustrated by the comparisons to aspirin or Tylenol, as they are apples to oranges. I ask those folks to do a hazard rate model (and not Cox-partial likelihood), with the age of the mother and of the child as risk factors. than does Tylenol. I suspect other risk factors are at play as well. Remember with Covid, age and a co-morbidity mattered dramatically to survival rates.
Mifepristone increases in risk the farther into the pregnancy you go. I'm worried Telehealth with a liability shield means they have less incentive to check on women when they prescribe it.
I am a pro-lifer who has spend time on the sidewalk in from the local Planned Parenthood abortion facility, trying to dissaude women from abortions (very occasionally, succeeding). But you are correct. The ultimate solution will not be political, but cultural.
And it is also correct that, with its risk factors, mifepristone would never be approved for telehealth prescriptions, were it not for the politics of abortion.
But the current court case may fail for the same reason the last attempt at a Mifeprestine-by-mail ban failed — the technical legal requirement fore “standing”. That is, you can’t file a legal action as a plaintiff unless you can show you are “injured” in some way. Long story short, that is shaky in this case.
my neighbor is a retired pediatric physician. She also has an extremely horrific history of her husband, then became ex, but retained joint custody, took their 2 yo son, & committed murder/suicide. Anyway, she's seen a lot. We recently had a similar discussion, not about Mifepristone, but about Pro-Life. She's Pro-Life, but then there's this but... she said many of the kids who aren't aborted, if abortion isn't available, become abused. She states this as fact. She claims she can give links to facts. She wishes those children would be given up for adoption, but they aren't for some totally unknown/many? reasons.
I don't think your argument plays into her statement. She's apparently just stating statistics, based on some facts she claims to have about actual women who claim that they would have aborted if they would have had the choice, but have been found guilty of abusing the child they were 'forced' to have.
And she did in fact, & I agreed, that there are many prospective adoptive parents for newborns, than healthy newborns available.
Speaking of exploring dark places: It turns out the kitten adventure wasn't quite over.
Yesterday afternoon, satisfied the kitten had escaped, my daughter went to clean her car. When she reached under the passenger seat to detach the car seat covers, she was hissed at.
She is not an animal person.
I attempted to reach up under the seat to grab it, it moved, hissed, moved, hissed. And then there was no more moving or hissing and no kitten to be seen. It had found refuge further up into the seat, in places where I couldn't imagine spaces.
Eventually, we called my son's girlfriend, who is an animal person and who has experience with cats. In short order the kitten was located, and with patience (and petiteness and flexibility) it was rescued.
We spent the afternoon trying to feed it and get it to drink but eventually realized it hadn't progressed beyond nursing.
So for Mother's Day I got to hang out with my son's girlfriend and, later, meet her mother. We had a nice time.
An official Happy Monday to all! A "folk song" performed by a professional choir gives off a self-contradictory vibe.
60Fs and cloudy here, might rain by midday or maybe not, and then it will be warmer. Nothing on the calendar until evening. Maybe I'll take Teengirl to get her hair trimmed.
It's wet here. I spoke to my nephew who farms and he has 2 fields remaining to plant. He's hopeful for Wednesday, but if not, forecast suggest another week yet.
I would imagine the Bulgarian group consists of hobbyists, which is something that’s found in Yurp—probably akin to Civil War re-enactors in the US.
Also, I just found there’s a European Folklore Association (they use “folklore” and “folk” interchangeably) that has competitions along with performances. The national association of Bulgaria held theirs earlier this year.
"The Balkan mountain range is located in the eastern part of the Balkan peninsula in Southeastern Europe. It is conventionally taken to begin at the peak of Vrashka Chuka on the border between Bulgaria and Serbia. It then runs for about 560 kilometres (350 mi), first in a south-easterly direction along the border, then eastward across Bulgaria, forming a natural barrier between the northern and southern halves of the country, before finally reaching the Black Sea at Cape Emine. The mountains reach their highest point with Botev Peak at 2,376 metres (7,795 ft)."
And that reminds me of this song, which we used to sing around the campfire when I was a medieval reenactor:
The Yayla mountains in Crimea, just outside of Cebactopol are beautiful. They appear to run to the sea. There are places where it is hard to see where the sky ends and the sea begins. Which must be scary to a pilot, but we stayed on the road so there was no issue.
we had very loud thunder last night, so I'm assuming we had a lot of rain. It's gone now, but will remain cloudy, w/ highs in the upper 70's, & humid, which I don't like.
That was very interesting. It reminded me of this book, which I must have read in the 1990s. I recall that I didn't like it very much, but I had to get to the end to find out who the murderer was.
Today is a wonderful National Day: National Twilight Zone Day!!! It was created, written, and narrated by Rod Serling. It premiered on October 1, 1959 (so I don't know why this day was selected?). The episodes were wildly popular, stretched the imagination, and captivated viewers. The show aired from 1959-1964. Rod Serling also created the show's spin-off called Night Gallery.
And today I will be Farkeling w/ 11 other friends at another house, where that friend will surprise us w/ whatever snacks she decides on & beverages, which always include white & red wines. We each bring $5, sit at 2 tables, play 3-4 games. Winners at the end of each game switch tables. At the end of the day, totals are totaled. Top 3 winners split a %age, bottom loser-loser gets her $5 back, the rest of the middle folks go away w/ $0 but an afternoon of fun. I'm almost always in that middle group. And today I have to stay to gather up all the supplies to take home w/ me 'cause we take a break for the summer, start up again next Sept, when I'll be the hostess w/ the whatever I decide. When I get home, I'll be happy not to have to cook 'cause we'll have leftovers from Sat = briskett & ribs.
haha, hubs just woke up, we both greeted each other with 'Good morning, w/ an included first name', then I hope I had a typical smile on, 'cause then he said "I see a Farkel sparkle in your eyes" 😃
I loved that!!! What I don't love is that, at the age I am now & with my diving buddies, who are older than me, no longer diving, I'll no longer go scuba diving. I've never been under ice - that would require different wet suits than I've ever used!! Oh, but the world down there is so wonderfully marvelous!!
LISTEN UP: It’s not every day that Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr release a duet together. “Home To Us” is about growing up in Liverpool and (not surprisingly) sounds very Beatles-ish -- albeit a bit hollow without John’s more thoughtful writing (video, 3:12): https://youtu.be/bLRV8hRRUHo
My second daughter, who has a beagle named Ringo, was excited about the rescue of the dogs. Ringo himself was a rescue beagle of sorts, having been abandoned to the streets of Baltimore and picked up by an animal shelter.
"A person swims in the Sky Pool, a transparent, acrylic swimming-pool bridge between apartment blocs, on a sunny day in South London, May 2, 2026."
First, that person is clearly a woman. Second, that looks absolutely terrifying, but maybe it's like that elevator down the gorge in China (from a few weeks ago), and it's not actually terrifying when you're doing it.
I've been to the CN tower in Toronto, where they have a glass floor. It's, meh. People on the sidewalk look like ants.
At the Newport Aquarium they have a 3' square glass floor. My youngest, about 15 months old at the time, loved it, jumping up and down on it for several minutes.
Dogs wearing goggles at the tulip farm! We were there (not at the tulip farm, but in Niagara-on-the-Lake) last evening to catch a show at the Shaw Festival, our first visit this year. It's less than two hours from Rochester. Did not see the dogs.
But we did see Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, a comedy based mostly on The Code of the Woosters. I thought it was a really clever show, although it's hard to be objective since I know Wodehouse so well.
The playwright incorporated one of my favorite Wodehouse jokes, in which Bertie Wooster makes an accidental allusion to Percy Shelley's poem "The Sensitive Plant." In the play (as in the novel), Bertie and Madeline Bassett are discussing the timid, diffident personality of Madeline's fiance, Gussie Fink-Nottle:
Bertie: A sensitive plant, what?
Madeline: Exactly. You know your Shelley, Bertie.
Bertie: Oh, am I?
Judging from the scattered snickers, I think only about three of us in the audience caught the joke. It flew by pretty fast and I think it's works best on the printed page.
You had me at Wodehouse. Some may assume that sort of thing doesn't count as literature. But he elevated comic writing to that level. His command of the English languag--and for that matter the entire body of English literature--may not look impressive on the surface, but it really is, no less for being brought to bear on funny stories that are thoroughly satisfying..
How right you are. I read Wodehouse over and over.
My days of reading to my grandchildren are coming to a close (they're too big), but the last story I read to the two youngest (who are 11 and 13) a couple months ago was Wodehouse's "Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit".
The exposure to British English and society of past times can't hurt, either. Cultural literacy embraces understanding of people and places and times other than our own. Are they into Harry Potter?
Oh, yes, definitely into Harry Potter, these two. Also into Roald Dahl and C. S. Lewis. Their parents (my son and DIL) done better, in good part by example, at making reading a big part of their lives than my other daughters and husbands have.
And these two (boy and girl) are anxious to visit England. Several years ago my wife and I took two of their older cousins to London, and I think these two are hopeful that that will happen to them.
Thanks, for each, altho I won't give any applause for the Russians.
I enjoyed McCartney & Ringo (interesting how I always use the last name & 1st name); but then along the side bar, I noticed an interview w/ McCartney about Harrison, who was my favorite. I'm saving that to listen to later)
The sky pool is cool!! And the peeking horse is cute! The Qicai Danxia Scenic Area, also known as Colorful Danxia Scenic Spot, at Zhangye National Geopark is very pretty.
Thalassophobia...the fear of deep, dark, vast and mysterious bodies of water. Thankfully, I don't have it, but I do have an irrational fear of being trapped under ice...which is unsurprisingly easy to avoid by not going into water covered with ice.
I was looking for the line when he descended. I love being out on the ice but only after I’ve stuck my hand in an ice fishing hole to confirm its thickness. It’s really weird being out there and hearing all the creaking/groaning.
I've never been ice fishing, altho scouting son has.
When I was a kid in CO it was very easy to drive a short distance into the mountains to find a lg pond or lake to ice skate on. We would either take our own shovels to scrape off the snow or some owners of the property would do that & let folks on w/out charge. I seriously doubt that would be safe these days - nor allowed - I'm not sure if the ice would be getting thick enough that close to town/edge of the mountains, right past the foothills.
when I was a cub scout leader, I took the troop to several caves around the area for guided tours, where the general public didn't go. There were tight squeezes, areas you'd have to climb up to, to get over to the other side, all single file. I loved it. It could get fairly strenuous. Except we stayed overnight, in a large cavern that echoed, w/ all the people snoring. One time, the dad of a scout went (all scouts had to be accompanied by at least one adult) - the dad was a physician who did operations. He came up to me, eye-to-eye, soon after we started, too late to back out, very angry w/ me, saying I didn't tell him what he was getting into - he was scared he was going to damage his hands. One part was called Bubblegum Alley, cause the 'floor' was covered w/ sticky, gooey mud. Everyone had been told to wear tight-fitting shoes. One younger sibling of a scout had been enjoying himself until his shoe got sucked off! Then he started wailing! The guide came back to reach waaay in to retrieve the shoe.
This type was really fun, w/ a guide talking to us, giving us history, etc. But I couldn't do an unguided, unknown cave.
We were going to go to a cavern in Southern Indiana; it had a bunk room, which would have been fun. It got cancelled due to a rainstorm, which made some of the tunnels dangerous. We never rescheduled, due to Covid.
no bunks - we all brought sleeping bags or blankies 😉for the floor, w/ troop # attached, cause different troops went in at different times. The tour folks took all the stuff into the cavern room to have waiting for us that evening in our designated area. I don't remember how many troops? Maybe 5?
It's never too late - wouldn't you & Katie love to go!!
Yes. I’ve only been in a couple such spots. Face down, cheek-to-cheek with pillbugs, spiders, mouse and rat poop. Trying to figure out how to manipulate a hammer in that narrow plane…
I'm not claustrophobic, but if spelunking into tight spaces I would worry I'd get somewhere & have to back out &/or get to a spot, a dark, deep-looking spot & have to decide to go down 'there', into the Twilight Zone.
A former girlfriend had brothers who were ice divers in the Great Lakes. They ribbed me about joining them. I've done some diving, strictly tropical waters. I've been in a wet suit once on a dive below the thermocline(s) at an Arkansas lake and didn't like it a bit. A dry suit just seems even more unpleasant. I could have made cave dives with my step-dad, a dive master. But I never wanted to be anywhere there wasn't an easy up. All things concerned, I like my dives to look like a tropical aquarium and as stress free as possible.
When I was a kid, we lived near a natural area where there was a small stream. My brother & his friend dug out a cave, put in a few boards for supports. It was large enough for 4 to sit comfortably but not stand. They made a flat area out front so we could sit outside. In the winter we'd slide down on plastic tarps & cardboard, down close to the water. We spent a lot of time in that cave. Always took flashlights 'cause there were plenty of snakes, majority of 'em were harmless, but there were sightings of an occasional rattlesnake. We're probably pretty lucky we didn't have a cave-in.
We used to go windsurfing in January on Lake Michigan, dodging ice flows. 5mm dry suit, I could jump in ice water and not feel a thing, but when the ice water hit my face, it was a shock.
I came across this this morning and thought it was interesting:
https://calnewport.com/easy-is-overrated/
That was quite interesting. It's as though LLMs are the actual "Content-Free Sentence Generator" that I've imagined for many years.
Happy 100th birthday to David Attenborough! In a world that seems to grow meaner and more cynical by the day, Mr. Attenborough stayed busy showing us the marvels of the natural world. Is there anyone here who doesn't recognize that mellifluous voice immediately? We owe you a huge debt of gratitude, sir.
There's nothing like "Blue Planet" to put a whole room full of kids to sleep.
Solution: more jump scares!
https://youtube.com/shorts/v8pNagbWajo?si=DOH0_pWEGPEVWTXF
I'm fine without that, actually.
It's that voice!
And the ocean-sloshing sounds.
Worth Your Time II: 'The Platner Trap' -- David French
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/10/opinion/graham-platner-democrats-senate-maine.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hlA.qe2m.Pa01N887m6hP&smid=url-share
Courtesy JohnM at the mothership
Graham Platner is the Leftist Democrat (with a Nazi tattoo) who forced Maine’s Democratic governor out of the primary for Susan Collin’s Senate seat
"If a person with an identical profile applied to be your manager at work, would you be comfortable hiring him?"
I haven't had a real job with pay in decades, but I do read, and I don't think most employees get to hire their own manager.
Also, if he's trying to say that a United States Senator is like the individual manager of the state's voters, who are subordinate employees, that's just totally dead wrong.
Any employer I have ever had, had some recourse for reporting improper behavior by supervisors. That included the military (albeit with a bit more degree of difficulty than a civilian employer).
Having mechanisms to report improper conduct by those in authority (whether the mechanisms work or not, see, "Write to the Bishop") is different from getting to choose the person for the position.
In a way, voting for Senator is like hiring an employee, because he works for you, the State's residents, but you're not "hiring" your own boss.
If you're thinking of your priest, his relationship to the Bishop is not exactly an employer-employee relaationship. But yes, you virtually never get to choose your supervisor.
It depends on the situation: while the final hiring decision is almost never with non-management employees, good managers often pay attention to inputs from employees. Our secretary (now retired) gave excellent feedback on red flags she observed in job candidates. We turned down many job applicants due to red flags observed by other faculty, staff, the secretaries, etc.
Lol, when she was asked if I'd be a good dept chair, she laughed out loud, I was too disorganized. But after five years she admitted I actually did well, she just had to manage me differently. She knew to schedule meetings for 30 minutes, but to blocl out at least 45 minutes, stuff like that.
To be fair, Maine's Democratic governor is 78. She should not be running for Senate, period.
C'mon, she's younger than Joe Biden!
Although, come to think of it, several countries are as well as are two US states!
And younger than Donald Trump!
No More Geezers!
Funny, that's what VA Democrat are saying about their state Supreme Court. They want to lower mandatory retirement age to 54. 🤦♂️
Lol!
Where are the moderate Dems we keep hearing about, and why do they let this stupid stuff keep happening? The argument applies to both parties of course, but Dems fancy themselves intellectuals and it’s pretty easy to see how stunts like making anti-Zionism a top issue mostly appeals to the extremists in the party.
The moderate Dems are out back tending to the unicorns!
Are those female, male, or none of the above?🤔
Do imaginary creatures have gender fluidity? 🤣
Well, as Reagan joked about Democrats:
“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
The real test of the “moderate” Democrats, if they exist, will be in 2028. I’m a bit skeptical.
coincidentally, I read this link after I read a true accounting of a story about Lothar Hermann who was born in 1901 in Quirnbach, a small town in the Westerwald region of Germany. He grew up, trained as a merchant, worked in finance, and in the 1930s began quietly smuggling currency across the border into France to support Jews trying to reach Palestine. In 1935 the Gestapo caught him. They sent him to Dachau, where the beatings were severe enough that he lost the sight in one eye, and eventually the other. When he was released, he emigrated to Argentina with his wife and his daughter Sylvia.
Long, long story short, he & his daughter were instrumental in finding & hunting down Eichmann, when finally on May 11, 1960, Eichmann was arrested, put on trial, found guilty on all 15 counts. On June 1, 1962, he was hanged — the only time Israel has ever carried out a death sentence. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea, so there would be no grave, no marker, no place for anyone to come. All because of a blind man & the help of his daughter.
What would the liberals of today do with this story?
They might huff and puff about the death penalty.
I was just barely old enough to understand this at the time the trial happened. Fortunately Life Magazine explained it, in a PG fashion but enough so we got that there can be accountability.
I was listening to a bunch of reporting and analysis this weekend, as well as scrolling on X among people I consider reasonable and level-headed. Many are pointing to a possible push from the D-party base to make “anti-zionism” into a major priority for the next presidential elections. That is, not opposing the Rs on pocketbook issues, inflation, gun control—the types of things that has significant (not overwhelming) appeal among centrists and non-partisans. No, they seriously want to prioritize the biggest, most important issues of deep concern to campus radicals and activists…
If the Ds strive for that level of monomania, the Rs will be completely free to go as nutty as they can in whatever lunacy follows (logically?) from Trump/MAGA.
Sometimes I think primaries might be the problem here. I suspect few sane Maineact party elders would have selected Graham Platner as their nominee.
I gotta be honest, I've never understood antisemitism. It just seems flaky to me.
Primaries are the biggest part of the problem. Typically only the most "impassioned" (that is, extremist) party members take part.
Party leaders used to vet candidates and weed out kooks and those not broadly electable. I would love to bring back state party conventions, complete with "smoke filled rooms" where that happened!
"No, they seriously want to prioritize the biggest, most important issues of deep concern to campus radicals and activists …"
Because nothing says, "We're the party of normalcy," like, "Kill the Jews!"
David's argument is the ends don't justify the means.
Sadly, what he neglects to say is that there are still other candidates in the Dem primary; perhaps if he had reminded Maineacs of that, it might matter. Perhaps if he had told them they still had a choice beside the Totenkopf candidate. But he chose not to.
The tattoo of his that worries me more is the black square tattoo. Platner had plenty of room on his body elsewhere for it, but the black square tattoo decided it needed more lebensraum so it occupied the Totenkoph's space. If he gets elected, what will he do with Aroostock; will he reignite war with Canada so hard working Maineacs have more space?
I do have a mild disagreement with David when he implies that we should not hold Senators to lower standards. While I get his point, the fact is a single corrupt or extremist Senator is less an issue than a corrupt or extremist President. Both should be avoided, but one is only one of 100. The other has a lot fewer checks on his power.
What will he do? Nobody knows. Could he possibly be worse than the current scum?
Yes, he could be worse than Susan Collins. As Douglas Adams once described earth, he'd say she's "mostly harmless".
Believe it or not, as bad as RatPutin is, there's a good chance his successor will be worse there....
Non sequitur...neither of them is RatPutin.
Of course he could be worse. Collins at least voted to convict on the 1/6 vote. Platner? Who knows? He's emblematic of all the things I now question about our representative democracy.
The current senator is Susan Collins, who is snooze and 73 years old.
Maybe the other candidates were marginal enough as to not be worth mentioning?
I don't care about his tattoo or what David thinks, even a teeny bit.
I think Plattner's words are much more important than that tattoo.
But what's your beef with David French?
Plattner and French are two very different persons.
I don't "have a beef" with David. I think he's become irrelevant. I never cared much what he thought and now I don't care at all.
But you have to let us know you don't care. 🙂
There’s a reason it’s called a comments section. It’s for comments, and to be clear, I don’t “have to” do shit. Don’t poke the bear.
BTW - no where logical to put the following, so dropping here. Walter Kirn on X recently has gotten awful. A mix of X-files like hints that he knows that they know that he knows they are lying to us (about UAPs), but he's not going to say what he knows. But he knows.
What a shame. I've a lot of respect for some of his professional work - novels and especially The County Highway print paper he publishes with David Samuels. It is really fantastic. But he's crossed the line in social media to outright kook provocateur. He and Matt Taibbi had some falling out recently and parted ways. And Taibbi's Racket News is a crumbling hot mess too.
Taibbi went off the rails years ago. I used to love his stuff, but he's a nut.
The thing about the tattoo is that having it and then making up stories about why/how it's there exposes the lie to the marketing that he is a good hearted, man of the people type. Otherwise, I wouldn't care either. Just another closeted bigot.
I really don't know. True? Not true? Lying? Evil conniving weasel? How does anyone know if his stories are made up? They can't.
I still don't care. No one knows anything about what he'd be like as an elected official. It's all part of my general disaffection with our representative democracy. Who are these people?
Definitely worth the read. Among other things, David is calling out Democrats (that is, the New York Times readership) for their 2024 election loss, running first the senile Joe Biden then his incompetent VP to oppose Trump.
It’s unbelievable to me that they don’t seem to have learned a single lesson from getting hammered, and not just Harris.
After arguing online with some of them, I can say they are about as ideological as MAGA Republicans, unable to see beyond their partisanship.
I despised Bill Clinton, but he never made that mistake.
It would be really interesting to me to know the voting patterns of the mothership readership. Or at least the frequent commenters. No judgement, just observation. My guess is roughly 50/50 - with many who have always been left of left of center. Which is fine.
I subscribed for about 3 years and was active in the comments, and my sense is the same as yours. Balanced like that is good.
Yes. I gave up the NYT a few months ago. I used to shake my head after reading the comments section. But as you point out it’s obviously no different than the MAGA diehards.
I rarely go into comments sections. Both the NYT and the WSJ....it's disheartening to read the comments. They reinforce most of my worst misanthropic tendencies.
It's entirely believable to me. Live around enough Dems for long enough, it's painfully believable.
I served on academic senate for four years. The liberal arts had more representation than merited. I heard so much nonsense from them. And a complete lack of understanding statistics. They view Graham Platner with suspicion because he served in the military; what if he is a spy of them? 🙄
They had a professor of theology do a survey on discrimination in student evaluations. She did some simple tables to "prove" (her words) women are discriminated against! One of my colleagues got her survey data, and ran a regression: not statistically significant. He was called sexist for that.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that women are discriminated against, because I often see that they are.
I both believe and disbelieve statistical analysis ever since I had a client that was the chief statistician for the CEO of one of those international banking Goliaths tell me he could "prove" whatever he wanted to prove...so to speak.
I view Platner with deep suspicious because anyone that would want to swim in that snake pit must be awful on at least a few levels. My misanthropic tendencies are running strong nowadays.
Yup. I'm as fed up with the Dems almost as much as I am the Pubs.
Ditto. And then ditto the ditto. What a bunch of idiots.
Right wing populism's what got us here in the first place in large part. So, now the fringier Ds figure let's just start pushing our own brand of that crap with candidates like this Planter guy.
True to form, after some recent electoral success by relatively "normal" candidates in special elections and a few others (and still almost daily being handed political gift after gift after gift for free by Trump and his Rs), now far too many of the apparently brain-dead numbskulls in the party seem more than determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by playing to the concerns of a limited, fringy constituency. Which will surely end up dragging them *all* back into the gutter of leftist identity politics, cancel culture and wokeism in the public's eye.
God forbid that they make a serious and sustained effort to win over the broader, more centrist demographic concerned about the pressing domestic issues that they ran on and which brought them those successes over the past months. Oh, hell no. Let's get behind a guy with a "Nazi" sign now hung around his neck by an old tattoo on his chest.
With the wind at their backs, they just can't seem to keep themselves from turning around and spitting into it.
The people pushing these so-called progressive populists and who think moving "left" is the winning ticket have the attention spans of gnats and the electoral analytical abilities of...
Never mind. Their actions speak louder than my words about them can.
Last week I had an exchange with a guy who said “this is a dictatorship.” When I asked how Dems have won some pretty important special elections the last few months if we have a dictatorship, he said “they’re consolidating power.” How do you have a reasonable discussion with that?
You don't, and back away slowly looking for the door.
So you’re saying I’m not bringing them around to my viewpoint? Well that’s disappointing.
You change the subject, is about all you can do.
In Shrek, the guards held up cue cards for the crowd to know how to respond. Today we call that social media!
That's a good one. Social media is the public riot.
You can't. Any more than I expect that you could have a reasonable discussion with the guy who told me at the end of last summer, "The domestic auto industry is run by a bunch of left-wing radicals."
I'm guessin' you probably did not know that.
Don't feel bad. It was news to me, too. And I'd worked directly in and around the domestic auto industry for half a century!
What's so pathetic about this is that the guy in question is not "stupid".
He's a former employer of mine, just a few years younger than me and an owner (along with two younger brothers) and manager of a successful job shop that's been selling custom built machines and tooling to the auto industry and other manufacturers since his father started the business from scratch more than six decades ago.
I'd stopped into his shop - in which I'd worked part-time for the last couple of years of my nearly 5 decades as a skilled tradesman - to see a young guy who'd been on an apprenticeship there when I was there, and whom I'd helped out with a few things from time to time. I'd learned that he'd finally graduated, and I went to give him a small gift to mark the occasion and to offer to take him out to lunch sometime later to celebrate.
While I was there, I saw the owner and passed a few pleasantries with him. I then made the mistake of asking him if he thought the end of the government tax subsidies for buying EVs - which were fast approaching at that point - would have much of an effect on his business since, while I'd been working there not all that long before, quite a number of things being made there had been related to domestic EV production at GM and Ford.
I'd known from the day I interviewed for a job with this guy that he was a Trump supporter. He didn't have to tell me; the Trump 2020 campaign sign that I spotted on a back wall of the place was sort of a clue when he gave me a tour after the interview.
I almost didn't take him up on his offer of a job on very favorable terms to me because of that sign, never even once having seen such an overt political display in any shop I'd ever worked in over the years, which added up to a baker's dozen at that point. I didn't care about his politics all that much; I just didn't want to be hearing about them at work.
But we never spoke of politics in the 2+ years that I worked there, since one of the things I'd told him about myself in that interview was that I absolutely did *not* talk about two things at work: religion and politics... a rule that had, with only a very few exceptions, stood me in good stead for nearly half a century and which I broke only under extraordinary circumstances, and then only briefly when absolutely forced to do so by others who didn't share the same value I placed on appropriate topics for discussion in the workplace or respect my desire to be a-political while on the clock.
But what was a simple "business" related question sparked by mere curiosity on my part that day evoked the political response I noted, which was the beginning of a political rant which quickly posited that, among other things, tariffs would have no effect on most businesses - including his, of which steel and aluminum are an absolute basic necessity and major cost, even without any added burdens - and that certain people and the media were "just mad because now we have a *real* president."
How should I put this? I liked this guy and always got along with him. As an employee, he'd treated me better than I'd expected over the time I worked there, and had rewarded me financially rather handsomely in ways not discussed when I hired in, since he apparently appreciated my "old school" skills and the quality of my work, along with my dependability and willingness to "go the extra mile" when needed to get a job done and out the door.
Like I said, I liked this guy when I was working for him. And you can't really be stupid and have the success he's had with that shop through thick and thin. So, I guess I'll just say that those were some of the dumbest things I ever heard come out of a smart guy's mouth. A disappointment to me, to be sure.
I quickly begged off and disengaged myself from his rant and headed for the door, thinking it would be a long time - if ever - before I drop in for another visit, and all the while biting my tongue to keep from saying, "I'll bet that Mary Barra (GM's CEO) and the Ford family would be more than a little surprised to learn that they're left-wing radicals."
Good morning. 44 degrees now with a high in the 60s. The mothership is covering the Louisiana lawsuit to ban the abortion pill mifepristone from being shipped across Tate lines. An appeals court decision in their favor, which would have applied last week, was stayed by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. That stay expires at 5PM today unless he or the full COurt extends it.
I'll start by sharing I am Pro-Life. I'm also a realist who knows that outright bans will never get passed nationwide post Dobbs; so getting the best deal you can in each state is the optimal strategy.
Having said all that, FWIW, I am of the opinion that Mifepristone should not be administered without a doctor present. We know complications occur with telehealth already, but we're risking killing women by permitting this. Women have already died or needed medical attention afterwards. I get frustrated by the comparisons to aspirin or Tylenol, as they are apples to oranges. I ask those folks to do a hazard rate model (and not Cox-partial likelihood), with the age of the mother and of the child as risk factors. than does Tylenol. I suspect other risk factors are at play as well. Remember with Covid, age and a co-morbidity mattered dramatically to survival rates.
Mifepristone increases in risk the farther into the pregnancy you go. I'm worried Telehealth with a liability shield means they have less incentive to check on women when they prescribe it.
I am a pro-lifer who has spend time on the sidewalk in from the local Planned Parenthood abortion facility, trying to dissaude women from abortions (very occasionally, succeeding). But you are correct. The ultimate solution will not be political, but cultural.
And it is also correct that, with its risk factors, mifepristone would never be approved for telehealth prescriptions, were it not for the politics of abortion.
But the current court case may fail for the same reason the last attempt at a Mifeprestine-by-mail ban failed — the technical legal requirement fore “standing”. That is, you can’t file a legal action as a plaintiff unless you can show you are “injured” in some way. Long story short, that is shaky in this case.
I don't know enough about this case to know about the standing issue. I just know that we're putting lives at risk for cultural issues.
my neighbor is a retired pediatric physician. She also has an extremely horrific history of her husband, then became ex, but retained joint custody, took their 2 yo son, & committed murder/suicide. Anyway, she's seen a lot. We recently had a similar discussion, not about Mifepristone, but about Pro-Life. She's Pro-Life, but then there's this but... she said many of the kids who aren't aborted, if abortion isn't available, become abused. She states this as fact. She claims she can give links to facts. She wishes those children would be given up for adoption, but they aren't for some totally unknown/many? reasons.
The problem with her argument is selection bias. You don't know how the children that were aborted would have turned out. So I'd disagree with her.
There are more prospective adoptive parents than there are children available to adopt. It's a supply issue, not a demand issue.
I don't think your argument plays into her statement. She's apparently just stating statistics, based on some facts she claims to have about actual women who claim that they would have aborted if they would have had the choice, but have been found guilty of abusing the child they were 'forced' to have.
And she did in fact, & I agreed, that there are many prospective adoptive parents for newborns, than healthy newborns available.
But what was the percentage of abuse by mothers who aborted their children? We don't know.
I have no doubt some women shouldn't become mothers, but it's hard to quantify it.
Speaking of exploring dark places: It turns out the kitten adventure wasn't quite over.
Yesterday afternoon, satisfied the kitten had escaped, my daughter went to clean her car. When she reached under the passenger seat to detach the car seat covers, she was hissed at.
She is not an animal person.
I attempted to reach up under the seat to grab it, it moved, hissed, moved, hissed. And then there was no more moving or hissing and no kitten to be seen. It had found refuge further up into the seat, in places where I couldn't imagine spaces.
Eventually, we called my son's girlfriend, who is an animal person and who has experience with cats. In short order the kitten was located, and with patience (and petiteness and flexibility) it was rescued.
We spent the afternoon trying to feed it and get it to drink but eventually realized it hadn't progressed beyond nursing.
So for Mother's Day I got to hang out with my son's girlfriend and, later, meet her mother. We had a nice time.
And they found someone to foster the kitten.
Oh, I'm sure glad your story didn't end in a dark place.
Me, too!
that's a nice ending!
I'm an animal person, but don't like hissing kitties or cats. They can do damage.
That sounds like a nice Mother's Day to, get to spend time w/ son, his girlfriend & meet her mom.
A sudden plot twist leading to a successful resolution.
An official Happy Monday to all! A "folk song" performed by a professional choir gives off a self-contradictory vibe.
60Fs and cloudy here, might rain by midday or maybe not, and then it will be warmer. Nothing on the calendar until evening. Maybe I'll take Teengirl to get her hair trimmed.
We need rain. May has been quite dry after the pummeling we received in April.
It's wet here. I spoke to my nephew who farms and he has 2 fields remaining to plant. He's hopeful for Wednesday, but if not, forecast suggest another week yet.
We're still behind on rainfall, but not as bad as a week ago.
How was the Midwestern humorist show?
He was funny, I'd give him a 4/5. His opener was a rotund Iranian comedian who came here when he was 8. He was probably mid 30's. He was really funny.
“Folk” probably in the sense of “traditional”. The song “Stara planina” means “Old Mountain”, Google Translate tells me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fiT1qw6PE4
I would imagine the Bulgarian group consists of hobbyists, which is something that’s found in Yurp—probably akin to Civil War re-enactors in the US.
Also, I just found there’s a European Folklore Association (they use “folklore” and “folk” interchangeably) that has competitions along with performances. The national association of Bulgaria held theirs earlier this year.
https://eaff.eu/en/news/2026-05-08-over-100-folklore-groups-take-the-stage-at-balkan-folk-2026-in-veliko-tarnovo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_Mountains
"The Balkan mountain range is located in the eastern part of the Balkan peninsula in Southeastern Europe. It is conventionally taken to begin at the peak of Vrashka Chuka on the border between Bulgaria and Serbia. It then runs for about 560 kilometres (350 mi), first in a south-easterly direction along the border, then eastward across Bulgaria, forming a natural barrier between the northern and southern halves of the country, before finally reaching the Black Sea at Cape Emine. The mountains reach their highest point with Botev Peak at 2,376 metres (7,795 ft)."
And that reminds me of this song, which we used to sing around the campfire when I was a medieval reenactor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jfmLwy9Ly0
The Yayla mountains in Crimea, just outside of Cebactopol are beautiful. They appear to run to the sea. There are places where it is hard to see where the sky ends and the sea begins. Which must be scary to a pilot, but we stayed on the road so there was no issue.
we had very loud thunder last night, so I'm assuming we had a lot of rain. It's gone now, but will remain cloudy, w/ highs in the upper 70's, & humid, which I don't like.
That was very interesting. It reminded me of this book, which I must have read in the 1990s. I recall that I didn't like it very much, but I had to get to the end to find out who the murderer was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Star_(novel)
Today is a wonderful National Day: National Twilight Zone Day!!! It was created, written, and narrated by Rod Serling. It premiered on October 1, 1959 (so I don't know why this day was selected?). The episodes were wildly popular, stretched the imagination, and captivated viewers. The show aired from 1959-1964. Rod Serling also created the show's spin-off called Night Gallery.
And today I will be Farkeling w/ 11 other friends at another house, where that friend will surprise us w/ whatever snacks she decides on & beverages, which always include white & red wines. We each bring $5, sit at 2 tables, play 3-4 games. Winners at the end of each game switch tables. At the end of the day, totals are totaled. Top 3 winners split a %age, bottom loser-loser gets her $5 back, the rest of the middle folks go away w/ $0 but an afternoon of fun. I'm almost always in that middle group. And today I have to stay to gather up all the supplies to take home w/ me 'cause we take a break for the summer, start up again next Sept, when I'll be the hostess w/ the whatever I decide. When I get home, I'll be happy not to have to cook 'cause we'll have leftovers from Sat = briskett & ribs.
I loved Twilight Zone and still enjoy reruns once in a while.
haha, hubs just woke up, we both greeted each other with 'Good morning, w/ an included first name', then I hope I had a typical smile on, 'cause then he said "I see a Farkel sparkle in your eyes" 😃
I loved that!!! What I don't love is that, at the age I am now & with my diving buddies, who are older than me, no longer diving, I'll no longer go scuba diving. I've never been under ice - that would require different wet suits than I've ever used!! Oh, but the world down there is so wonderfully marvelous!!
LISTEN UP: It’s not every day that Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr release a duet together. “Home To Us” is about growing up in Liverpool and (not surprisingly) sounds very Beatles-ish -- albeit a bit hollow without John’s more thoughtful writing (video, 3:12): https://youtu.be/bLRV8hRRUHo
THOUSAND WORDS: It’s Monday, so here are the best photos from The Atlantic. I liked the beagle: https://www.theatlantic.com/photography/2026/05/photos-week-met-gala-beagle-rescue-power-nap/687091/?gift=GJ8BttuoXrtu1ZXQn6tAifDfsg28SjvDgB9TrGaZaA8&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share You gotta give those Russians credit. They do know how to put on a military parade: https://apnews.com/photo-gallery/russia-victory-day-parade-security-moscow-photos-120462ef2f94acb5bb6458f4211bfe76
The beagle story is huge here, the farm is 30 mi from my house. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/pets-animals/article/the-beagles-of-ridglan-farms-were-released--and-are-becoming-social-media-stars-203554798.html
My second daughter, who has a beagle named Ringo, was excited about the rescue of the dogs. Ringo himself was a rescue beagle of sorts, having been abandoned to the streets of Baltimore and picked up by an animal shelter.
Wow! I had no idea. Ahhhhh for so many of those rescues.
Thanks, Wilhelm. Drone aerial photography has been a very welcome innovation in that profession.
You're most welcome.
The "rice-paddy painting" and the "sand portrait" of David Attenborough are high-effort ephemera.
"A person swims in the Sky Pool, a transparent, acrylic swimming-pool bridge between apartment blocs, on a sunny day in South London, May 2, 2026."
First, that person is clearly a woman. Second, that looks absolutely terrifying, but maybe it's like that elevator down the gorge in China (from a few weeks ago), and it's not actually terrifying when you're doing it.
There are two kinds of people, those who enjoy being terrified and those who don't see the point. I am one of the latter.
I've been on several of those glass bridges in China, where you look through the glass and it's 1000' down. My knees wobble.
I've been to the CN tower in Toronto, where they have a glass floor. It's, meh. People on the sidewalk look like ants.
At the Newport Aquarium they have a 3' square glass floor. My youngest, about 15 months old at the time, loved it, jumping up and down on it for several minutes.
It's scary but doable for me.
walking across logs or small swinging rope bridges across rivers are much more terrifying for me
Dogs wearing goggles at the tulip farm! We were there (not at the tulip farm, but in Niagara-on-the-Lake) last evening to catch a show at the Shaw Festival, our first visit this year. It's less than two hours from Rochester. Did not see the dogs.
But we did see Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, a comedy based mostly on The Code of the Woosters. I thought it was a really clever show, although it's hard to be objective since I know Wodehouse so well.
The playwright incorporated one of my favorite Wodehouse jokes, in which Bertie Wooster makes an accidental allusion to Percy Shelley's poem "The Sensitive Plant." In the play (as in the novel), Bertie and Madeline Bassett are discussing the timid, diffident personality of Madeline's fiance, Gussie Fink-Nottle:
Bertie: A sensitive plant, what?
Madeline: Exactly. You know your Shelley, Bertie.
Bertie: Oh, am I?
Judging from the scattered snickers, I think only about three of us in the audience caught the joke. It flew by pretty fast and I think it's works best on the printed page.
You had me at Wodehouse. Some may assume that sort of thing doesn't count as literature. But he elevated comic writing to that level. His command of the English languag--and for that matter the entire body of English literature--may not look impressive on the surface, but it really is, no less for being brought to bear on funny stories that are thoroughly satisfying..
How right you are. I read Wodehouse over and over.
My days of reading to my grandchildren are coming to a close (they're too big), but the last story I read to the two youngest (who are 11 and 13) a couple months ago was Wodehouse's "Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit".
The exposure to British English and society of past times can't hurt, either. Cultural literacy embraces understanding of people and places and times other than our own. Are they into Harry Potter?
Oh, yes, definitely into Harry Potter, these two. Also into Roald Dahl and C. S. Lewis. Their parents (my son and DIL) done better, in good part by example, at making reading a big part of their lives than my other daughters and husbands have.
And these two (boy and girl) are anxious to visit England. Several years ago my wife and I took two of their older cousins to London, and I think these two are hopeful that that will happen to them.
I like the terraced rice paddies in Guizhou. I've been to the Longji terraces in Guanxi which are similarly amazing.
Thanks, for each, altho I won't give any applause for the Russians.
I enjoyed McCartney & Ringo (interesting how I always use the last name & 1st name); but then along the side bar, I noticed an interview w/ McCartney about Harrison, who was my favorite. I'm saving that to listen to later)
The sky pool is cool!! And the peeking horse is cute! The Qicai Danxia Scenic Area, also known as Colorful Danxia Scenic Spot, at Zhangye National Geopark is very pretty.
Thalassophobia...the fear of deep, dark, vast and mysterious bodies of water. Thankfully, I don't have it, but I do have an irrational fear of being trapped under ice...which is unsurprisingly easy to avoid by not going into water covered with ice.
I was looking for the line when he descended. I love being out on the ice but only after I’ve stuck my hand in an ice fishing hole to confirm its thickness. It’s really weird being out there and hearing all the creaking/groaning.
I've never been ice fishing, altho scouting son has.
When I was a kid in CO it was very easy to drive a short distance into the mountains to find a lg pond or lake to ice skate on. We would either take our own shovels to scrape off the snow or some owners of the property would do that & let folks on w/out charge. I seriously doubt that would be safe these days - nor allowed - I'm not sure if the ice would be getting thick enough that close to town/edge of the mountains, right past the foothills.
Given a choice between diving under ice and spelunking into tight spaces, I think I'd pick diving under ice. I guess I am claustrophobic.
I pick none of the above.
No way could I ever go spelunking. Just the idea terrifies me.
when I was a cub scout leader, I took the troop to several caves around the area for guided tours, where the general public didn't go. There were tight squeezes, areas you'd have to climb up to, to get over to the other side, all single file. I loved it. It could get fairly strenuous. Except we stayed overnight, in a large cavern that echoed, w/ all the people snoring. One time, the dad of a scout went (all scouts had to be accompanied by at least one adult) - the dad was a physician who did operations. He came up to me, eye-to-eye, soon after we started, too late to back out, very angry w/ me, saying I didn't tell him what he was getting into - he was scared he was going to damage his hands. One part was called Bubblegum Alley, cause the 'floor' was covered w/ sticky, gooey mud. Everyone had been told to wear tight-fitting shoes. One younger sibling of a scout had been enjoying himself until his shoe got sucked off! Then he started wailing! The guide came back to reach waaay in to retrieve the shoe.
This type was really fun, w/ a guide talking to us, giving us history, etc. But I couldn't do an unguided, unknown cave.
We were going to go to a cavern in Southern Indiana; it had a bunk room, which would have been fun. It got cancelled due to a rainstorm, which made some of the tunnels dangerous. We never rescheduled, due to Covid.
no bunks - we all brought sleeping bags or blankies 😉for the floor, w/ troop # attached, cause different troops went in at different times. The tour folks took all the stuff into the cavern room to have waiting for us that evening in our designated area. I don't remember how many troops? Maybe 5?
It's never too late - wouldn't you & Katie love to go!!
Some crawl spaces are bad enough. 😬
I've been in several dozens that were doozies. Stomach in the dirt, back pressed against the floor joists, nasty places.
Yes. I’ve only been in a couple such spots. Face down, cheek-to-cheek with pillbugs, spiders, mouse and rat poop. Trying to figure out how to manipulate a hammer in that narrow plane…
I'm not claustrophobic, but if spelunking into tight spaces I would worry I'd get somewhere & have to back out &/or get to a spot, a dark, deep-looking spot & have to decide to go down 'there', into the Twilight Zone.
A former girlfriend had brothers who were ice divers in the Great Lakes. They ribbed me about joining them. I've done some diving, strictly tropical waters. I've been in a wet suit once on a dive below the thermocline(s) at an Arkansas lake and didn't like it a bit. A dry suit just seems even more unpleasant. I could have made cave dives with my step-dad, a dive master. But I never wanted to be anywhere there wasn't an easy up. All things concerned, I like my dives to look like a tropical aquarium and as stress free as possible.
I’m claustrophobic so that kind of diving has about as much appeal to me as being in a cave. I did that a few times as a kid but no more.
When I was a kid, we lived near a natural area where there was a small stream. My brother & his friend dug out a cave, put in a few boards for supports. It was large enough for 4 to sit comfortably but not stand. They made a flat area out front so we could sit outside. In the winter we'd slide down on plastic tarps & cardboard, down close to the water. We spent a lot of time in that cave. Always took flashlights 'cause there were plenty of snakes, majority of 'em were harmless, but there were sightings of an occasional rattlesnake. We're probably pretty lucky we didn't have a cave-in.
We used to go windsurfing in January on Lake Michigan, dodging ice flows. 5mm dry suit, I could jump in ice water and not feel a thing, but when the ice water hit my face, it was a shock.