Jonah has a "placeholder" G-file up, to say there won't be a G-File tonight. I don't mind it when he does that. We still get to make comments and tell him it's OK to take a break when he's overscheduled, and also to kid around and react to each other's jokes.
I dunno about that. I think he is making a big deal of us supposedly being "mad," but it could just be for effect, especially since every time he does this he gets a lot of replies saying "Don't worry about it, Jonah, thanks for thinking of us, take care of yourself." He has previously admitted to a tendency to personify his whole audience as one random guy, and to various other misperceptions that flow from the partial and distorted two-way communications inherent in this setup.
However, I believe a fair number of eggs are involved in pastry making, and with what those babies cost, you might have to go to an auction just to buy a plain old doughnut before too much longer.
Thanks for this info. Huge Beethoven fan and hadn't found these.
I think it was in the Atlantic: an essay that YouTube has "the best comments section" on-line. Of course, I couldn't agree, but it was interesting to learn there is another "public" space to read.
In the comments for classical music videos, there are always people pointing out how they would interpret the passage starting at 4:32 differently. At Spanish Christian music videos, commenters say they'll be performing the piece at X church in Y country.
On the mothership today, I see too many people talking past each other or focusing on side issues. Well, I have things I need to get done today.
EDIT: Also, on the mothership there's a Trumpist troll holding forth. At least that is my conclusion after reading a bunch of her stuff. Some prefer to give her the benefit of the doubt, drawing a distinction between a troll and a "true believer." Well, I don't want to give them oxygen either.
EDIT: On Jonah's Wednesday article (from Monday's LA Times) there are appearing some assigned sanewashers, perhaps a third variety of troll. One of them has commented for the very first time. I hope everyone ignores them.
A bank or credit union can probably direct you to someplace local.
I inherited a few Kuggerands. I knew of a place in SF that had the word "Numis" in it, and called them. They were lovely people and the transaction rather fun. They have a machine that assays the coins first to determine the actual gold content and, since these were Kuggerrands, to authenticate them.
I was, of course, disappointed that the price they buy the Kuggerrands at is not the daily market price they are being sold at, but I still received a significant amount per coin.
Sadly, most of the money went to pay for plumbing problems instead of a sunny resort with drinks that have umbrellas in them.
Car repairs. I know my mom had some Krugerrands - I remember seeing them in the 1970s - but they aren't in the batch my brother brought. Maybe she sold them.
But if I had to sell some, rather than starting with the "sell online" route I might approach a local jeweler or antique appraiser and ask them in general what kind of company is best to deal with if one has some gold coins to sell.
In general, it seems to me that one should either avoid asking an entity that would have a vested interest, or else compare two or more competing sources.
Based on my first efforts with Google, it's hard to find an appraiser who isn't interested in buying and reselling your coins. Therefore, the "competing sources" route will be required.
When I settled my father's estate, I found a boat load of old U.S. coins and folding money in his safe deposit box. Nothing in gold, but lots of silver dollars and other silver coins and bills of various face values from just after the turn of the 20th century to the late 70s.
I was lucky in that at the time I knew a guy at work who was, in addition to being a skilled tradesman, also a more than credible numismatist who had even been on a TV program a few years before about collecting coins and the pitfalls of the hobby / vocation. And he appraised the whole lot for me for free with no pressure to sell to him at all.
The results were more than a little surprising. A lot that had a total face value of less than $100 had an appraised value of nearly 20 times that much. The cool thing was that I got a formal written appraisal including a description and price for each piece, along with the piece's history and why it was valuable beyond its face value.
Of most interest to me were two sets of several bills each in $1, $5 and $10 denominations, one set having a couple of the otherwise normal U.S. bill features inked in red and the other set with the same features in brown, which I'd much wondered about since I first laid eyes on them. Turned out they were WWII "payroll bills", with, if I recall correctly, the brown-featured bills having been used to meet military payrolls in the Atlantic theater and the red in the pacific theater. Which made perfect sense, since my father had sailed in both the Atlantic and Pacific during his nearly 4 years of service in the war.
Anyway, you might try to find a reputable numismatist to look at what you have and give you a value on it. Or maybe a trustworthy coin shop, if you have one in your area. A jeweler would be my last choice, unless you know them personally and feel sure they'll give you a square deal.
Out of curiosity, I took my father's lot to a coin dealer after my friend had put a value on it, paid them I think it was $40 (this was 25 years ago) for a detailed written appraisal and was given a figure about 20% less in total than my friend gave me. I don't know what they might have offered as a purchase price, but I ended up selling all but a few pieces I wanted to give to my daughters to my friend for what I knew was a more than fair price.
We have only one antique coin. The others are US gold eagles. The web says sometimes the annual proof coins in their boxes are worth more than their bullion value because collectors try to get complete sets.
Yes. My friend told me some of the coins I had him appraise were more valuable than you would think specifically due to collectors looking to use them to complete a "set" of one kind or another.
We'll eventually have to figure out similar questions to resolve my mom's estate. We're still in the "what even is the estate?" phase, though. Mom was an attorney, who apparently didn't come to grips with how fast her health was failing her, nor did we – apparently, like certain orange folks, she was pretty good at hiding cognitive decline behind irascibility. Her estate depends on estates that she was entrusted to resolve, but didn't.
On the bright side, at least my brother *can* execute the estate now. It took nearly a year to get that far, since Mom had listed, as executor of last resort (if all her previous executors were dead, which they were – she didn't think to list her children in the last will of hers we could find, made when we were just tots), a bank that refused to execute – and also refused to cough up permission *for us* to execute until Cook County probate (which is notoriously slow) forced it to.
Oy. My mother, who was a tax accountant and financial planner, set up her affairs with a revocable trust, which, we hope, will result in there being no estate to probate. It's still going to take a year or more for everything to percolate through the trust, and meanwhile, my sister-in-law is sorting through papers having to do with all the stuff Mom was hiding from her lawyer and financial adviser in the last couple of years.
Marque, thank you for that video. Absolutely incredible!
When I took piano lessons my my youth, I played some of those pieces. I remember especially "Fur Elise". But others, I had forgotten Beethoven had wrote them.
There was a story that the inspiration for the opening of the Fifth Symphony (the most famous 4 notes in classical music, I suspect), was the rapping on his door of a landlord wanting to collect unpaid rent. Disappointing to learn that Beethoven was already deaf at the time,
I was bit disappointed by Vinheteiro's interpretation of the Ninth Symphony 4th movement ("Ode to Joy"). Otherwise, he is an accomplished piano player. But I prefer to listen to the Ninth in its original form. it is impossible, IMO, to listen, and know that Beethoven was totally deaf, without recognizing his absolute genius.
One almost weeps. My piano lesson book had a story that at the premiere performance of the 9th Symphony, someone next to Beethoven tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the the audience so he could see their standing ovation.
There is an interesting book called "Beethoven's Hair" about the long saga of what happened to some of the hair that was snipped off his head after he died. My daughter sent it to me because it turns out my college has one of the largest Beethoven memorabilia collections in the world, and won some of the hair at an international auction--who knew?
I never got the final movement of the Moonlight Sonata up to speed :-)
My husband is the far better pianist. He points out I'm the only one of the two of us people've ever paid to hear play (during a benefit concert), but the hours of practice it took me to master that one measly piece – whew! – then, the whole time I played it on stage, the piano was slowwwly rolling away from me. I'm glad it was a short piece!
My eldest is fond of Lord Vinheteiro – I thought I recognized the name!
It's inspired me to try to put a short playlist together of my own compositions suitable for Lent.* Unlike either lord (Vinheteiro or Ludwig), I'm an excessively mediocre keyboardist, so I rely on typesetting my compositions (which are usually choral, anyhow) with software and having a MIDI play 'em. Today's virtual orchestras are excellent! – for everything but voice (whoops!). Nonetheless, MIDI "ah"s and "ooh"s usually get the basics across.
There are MIDI "voices" that'll pronounce text, but their robotic effect is disturbingly "uncanny valley". See, for example, this page (shape-note hymn suitable for Ash Wednesday), and play track #6 in the little black box:
* I hope to get around to this today, but there's still wet basement stuff, a sick kid... Plus, I'm feeling mighty hungover, not from alcohol (I may never have had an *alcohol* hangover) but maybe just from having a not-great day yesterday. That (or enough sugar, or starch – which I don't *think* I had yesterday) could do it.
Breaking News: Record Breaking Windstorm Hits D.C. Overnight
A hot air storm of epic proportions raged in the U.S. Capital last night, felling a quarter of a century old record for superheated atmospheric disturbances and providing ample evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt to naysayers that climate (and administration) change is a real thing with predictable consequences...
NOAA and the NWS were offline and unavailable for comment as to the severity of the storm, or for forecasts about possible future disturbances, due to staff losses from the hurricane-force idiocy presently endemic in the country's government. But seasoned weather observers predict a return event of equal or greater magnitude... wait... magnitude... that's earthquakes, isn't it? Well, no matter. Those guys are probably already out of business or soon will be... of equal or greater force on or around this date in 2026.
Stay tuned for more details as they become available, provided the power stays on in your part of the country...
Sort of a BS blizzard with hurricane conditions…blinding brownouts… only about 1400 more days of it to go—assuming no putsches, it goes without saying.
RE: "...deserves to be metaphorically blown away."
A metaphorical sawed-off shotgun will work quite well for that. It's such a target rich environment you needn't really aim. Just point in any direction and pull the trigger. Can't miss, even with your metaphorical eyes closed.
Well for that matter, I might look into the Acme Company's "Metaphorical Collection" of explosive declarations that thoroughly destroy implausible constructs.
@DougAz....I saw you comment on Noah's piece today. He's missing a very major point.
A country does not rise to its highest innovative ideas. It falls to its lowest industrial commons. Innovation in the things he's talking about don't burst forth from nothing. It takes a lot of time to develop the educational and industrial infrastructure for innovation capability to flourish. China is just getting to that point of development where the type of innovation in new ideas he's talking about is getting real traction.
He's descending into that space where having to develop a daily blog drains to randomness. There's a reason the old model of a newsroom was healthy. Lots of individual workers developing good content. Newsrooms are currently tanking because of ideological bias taking over, not because the idea of a newsroom was a bad idea.
In the current Substack mode of thousands of individuals trying to make a go of it, he's running out of gas. Not to take anything away from him, but a non-pejorative, non-snark, honest comment on him...he doesn't know what he's talking about. He's probably doing homework, but that homework isn't apparently informing him.
There is some credible story that Eli didn't invent the cotton gin. One of his slaves did, and he liked the idea. Let everyone argue...I like that story. I don't care if it's true. It's true that it's a story.
I can believe it. Why not invent something to save your own labor !! There are quite a number of examples of misappropriated invention, development and scientific discoveries.
Traffic lights here have timers that display how long the green is going to last, with a 3 second yellow (also displayed) before going red. The timers on the traffic lights are synchronized with the GPS map system everyone uses here...Gauda Maps...so you can glance at your phone and see when the lights are going to change.
I thought the original assembly line was in the meat packing plants in 1890-ish Chicago. At least, the idea of the work moving down a line to the worker was instituted there first....the workers stood there and the carcasses were hung from a chain drive that came to them.
Some of this is probably wrong. I train my CoPolite :) and double and cross check. Like ID all college grads.
The NI - ie, Nascent Intelligence - missed at least a DOUBLE Alumni of your's truly. William D. Coolidge was an MIT grad, got his doctorate in Germany, and was head of GE's Research Center. He invented x-Ray machines, advanced tungsten, and esstentially, medical radiology. I forgot this :) haha
There is something to be said about we are only as strong as our lowest "commons" - not just industrially speaking ! Last night was a glorified "LOW COMMON". Of course, many conservatives disagree - but I say the conservative, private school movement has created a very un and under educated class. I've commented many times on a full on public education upgrade - billions for new large schools, with VoTech for machining, Tech, etc etc. And Hire and Fire at will - no Unions in my New Ed Deal.
As to innovation. Almost all of America's innovation thru 1930 - was from 8th grade to HS educated men (can't think of much in this timeframe from the ladies until Curie).
Excellent public education is absolutely necessary for the survival of our form of government. Structured by geography, so neighborhood children go to school with each other.
Re 8th Grade to HS Education before 1930: There is no comparison between education then and now. By the time children arrived at the school house, they already knew a great deal more about the activities necessary to survive in their world from living in the midst of the family economy. They had helped in the kitchen, in the shop, on the farm, started training in basic skills necessary to contribute to the family as soon as they demonstrated the maturity to learn.
"Education" meant learning to read and write and cipher, to formally communicate information necessary to conduct the family business and read the Bible for themselves. Public school wasn't expected or intended to teach everything. It wasn't for learning, it was for "book learning."
(In contrast, when our daughter started school there were conversations with teachers that indicated one could not assume anything about what had been learned at home to prevent adverse impacts due to socioeconomic disparities.)
As to "last night", all you really need to know was posted above just a few minutes ago by an intrepid, independent reporter of the utmost journalistic integrity who not only doesn't work in a newsroom but doesn't even have a Substack blog of his own. He figures why go to all that trouble when he can just use this one?
Good morning. 55 here, will dip to the 40s later, and windy. Both the mothership and the FP are covering the Trump rally last night, that happened to take place in a joint session of Congress (which I foolishly set through — all 100 minutes).
To those who observe it have a blessed Ash Wednesday and a blessed Lent. As we are reminded today, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” That is worth remembering, not just to examine our lives, but to remind ourselves that this world, with all its difficulties, is fleeting. What is important is Eternity.
We have a tornado warning. I'm telling the youth to come downstairs, just in case, although it appears Fang can't be awaked and "will have to be the sacrifice to the tornado gods," as his brother Vlad says.
Hope you and your family and friends are OK, Cynthia. Tornado watches, and the occasional warning, are common here in the spring. Last spring was bad, with the EF-3 that hit Russell’s Point in NW Ohio, killing 2.
When I was 6 years old, a tornado passed within 100 feet or so of the farmhouse where I slept with my parents and family. I remember it as a very windy night. The next morning we discovered the roof was blown off an outbuilding that had farm machinery.
Speaking of nuclear war.... All development in urban China is underpinned by vast underground parking garages, often 2-3 stories down. In the older 90's buildings, each level of the parking garage is equipped with nuclear blast doors...heavy solid iron doors with those locking mechanisms like you see on submarines in the movies. None of them have apparently been operated in decades, but it's interesting to think that development design used to take nuclear war into account.
The bunker in Norman was under the elementary school at the end of our street. My friend who still lives there said the school system won't let the public shelter there anymore.
Lots of coal. LOTS. I think I read somewhere they're bringing new coal fired power plants online...oh, I forget and am too lazy to look it up...they're going nuts building new coal fired plants and have renewed construction on a few hundred GW of plants that were on pause.
OTOH, if you believe the Manhattan Institutes study on this (I do), if the US is going to have a snowball's chance in Hell of achieving CO2 reduction, we have to lean into traditional power generation (gas and coal) to keep the economy humming at a level that might allow us to develop alternatives....which is what China is doing.
The idea that we can just do a switcheroo is fatuous.
You could have an interesting conversation. Thor is very intelligent and a great wit. He might even think someone who lives in China knows more than his magnificent self.
That would be unlikely. The more one knows about China and tries to impress that knowledge on folks, the more those that don't know much believe themselves to be more knowledgeable. It's like an inverse relationship. For reasons I don't understand, folks that read a book about China or spend 7-10 days visiting, feel confident that they know what's going on.
And sometimes tortured. I noticed Rev Julia's comment below about Chopin. I recall a chapter on him in a college music history class I took a lifetime ago. A troubled soul in many respects both physically and emotionally for various reasons. I recall a quote in the college text supposedly from him... "My life is a story with no beginning and a sad end", or something close to that, though a Google search doesn't produce any results as relate to him on that quote, so I may be misremembering it. Hell, I may be misremembering going to college with all I fail to remember at my age.
Good morning, everyone. As planned, after drinks with Thor last night, I went to bed as soon as I had the dishes and laundry squared away, and this morning I feel like I was out in the woods yesterday breathing pollen, because I was. Achoo!
Jonah has a "placeholder" G-file up, to say there won't be a G-File tonight. I don't mind it when he does that. We still get to make comments and tell him it's OK to take a break when he's overscheduled, and also to kid around and react to each other's jokes.
It really galls him that the paying subscribers expect to be informed when the content will not be provided.
I dunno about that. I think he is making a big deal of us supposedly being "mad," but it could just be for effect, especially since every time he does this he gets a lot of replies saying "Don't worry about it, Jonah, thanks for thinking of us, take care of yourself." He has previously admitted to a tendency to personify his whole audience as one random guy, and to various other misperceptions that flow from the partial and distorted two-way communications inherent in this setup.
Yes, that could be it.
Not saying you're completely wrong either. I don't always understand how my own head works.
If you want to see some pastry art check out pastrychef_am on Instagram. He’s mesmerizing.
I like edible art. I'm just not willing to pay top dollar for it like some folks with more money than brains are...
https://www.cnn.com/style/duct-taped-banana-maurizio-cattelan-auction-hnk-intl/index.html
However, I believe a fair number of eggs are involved in pastry making, and with what those babies cost, you might have to go to an auction just to buy a plain old doughnut before too much longer.
Thanks for this info. Huge Beethoven fan and hadn't found these.
I think it was in the Atlantic: an essay that YouTube has "the best comments section" on-line. Of course, I couldn't agree, but it was interesting to learn there is another "public" space to read.
In the comments for classical music videos, there are always people pointing out how they would interpret the passage starting at 4:32 differently. At Spanish Christian music videos, commenters say they'll be performing the piece at X church in Y country.
On the mothership today, I see too many people talking past each other or focusing on side issues. Well, I have things I need to get done today.
EDIT: Also, on the mothership there's a Trumpist troll holding forth. At least that is my conclusion after reading a bunch of her stuff. Some prefer to give her the benefit of the doubt, drawing a distinction between a troll and a "true believer." Well, I don't want to give them oxygen either.
EDIT: On Jonah's Wednesday article (from Monday's LA Times) there are appearing some assigned sanewashers, perhaps a third variety of troll. One of them has commented for the very first time. I hope everyone ignores them.
Does anyone know anything about selling gold coins?
A bank or credit union can probably direct you to someplace local.
I inherited a few Kuggerands. I knew of a place in SF that had the word "Numis" in it, and called them. They were lovely people and the transaction rather fun. They have a machine that assays the coins first to determine the actual gold content and, since these were Kuggerrands, to authenticate them.
I was, of course, disappointed that the price they buy the Kuggerrands at is not the daily market price they are being sold at, but I still received a significant amount per coin.
Sadly, most of the money went to pay for plumbing problems instead of a sunny resort with drinks that have umbrellas in them.
Car repairs. I know my mom had some Krugerrands - I remember seeing them in the 1970s - but they aren't in the batch my brother brought. Maybe she sold them.
Nope, but I found this article that may help point you in the right direction--or at least away from the wrong direction.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gold-prices-how-to-sell-your-gold/
But if I had to sell some, rather than starting with the "sell online" route I might approach a local jeweler or antique appraiser and ask them in general what kind of company is best to deal with if one has some gold coins to sell.
In general, it seems to me that one should either avoid asking an entity that would have a vested interest, or else compare two or more competing sources.
Based on my first efforts with Google, it's hard to find an appraiser who isn't interested in buying and reselling your coins. Therefore, the "competing sources" route will be required.
When I settled my father's estate, I found a boat load of old U.S. coins and folding money in his safe deposit box. Nothing in gold, but lots of silver dollars and other silver coins and bills of various face values from just after the turn of the 20th century to the late 70s.
I was lucky in that at the time I knew a guy at work who was, in addition to being a skilled tradesman, also a more than credible numismatist who had even been on a TV program a few years before about collecting coins and the pitfalls of the hobby / vocation. And he appraised the whole lot for me for free with no pressure to sell to him at all.
The results were more than a little surprising. A lot that had a total face value of less than $100 had an appraised value of nearly 20 times that much. The cool thing was that I got a formal written appraisal including a description and price for each piece, along with the piece's history and why it was valuable beyond its face value.
Of most interest to me were two sets of several bills each in $1, $5 and $10 denominations, one set having a couple of the otherwise normal U.S. bill features inked in red and the other set with the same features in brown, which I'd much wondered about since I first laid eyes on them. Turned out they were WWII "payroll bills", with, if I recall correctly, the brown-featured bills having been used to meet military payrolls in the Atlantic theater and the red in the pacific theater. Which made perfect sense, since my father had sailed in both the Atlantic and Pacific during his nearly 4 years of service in the war.
Anyway, you might try to find a reputable numismatist to look at what you have and give you a value on it. Or maybe a trustworthy coin shop, if you have one in your area. A jeweler would be my last choice, unless you know them personally and feel sure they'll give you a square deal.
Out of curiosity, I took my father's lot to a coin dealer after my friend had put a value on it, paid them I think it was $40 (this was 25 years ago) for a detailed written appraisal and was given a figure about 20% less in total than my friend gave me. I don't know what they might have offered as a purchase price, but I ended up selling all but a few pieces I wanted to give to my daughters to my friend for what I knew was a more than fair price.
We have only one antique coin. The others are US gold eagles. The web says sometimes the annual proof coins in their boxes are worth more than their bullion value because collectors try to get complete sets.
Yes. My friend told me some of the coins I had him appraise were more valuable than you would think specifically due to collectors looking to use them to complete a "set" of one kind or another.
We'll eventually have to figure out similar questions to resolve my mom's estate. We're still in the "what even is the estate?" phase, though. Mom was an attorney, who apparently didn't come to grips with how fast her health was failing her, nor did we – apparently, like certain orange folks, she was pretty good at hiding cognitive decline behind irascibility. Her estate depends on estates that she was entrusted to resolve, but didn't.
On the bright side, at least my brother *can* execute the estate now. It took nearly a year to get that far, since Mom had listed, as executor of last resort (if all her previous executors were dead, which they were – she didn't think to list her children in the last will of hers we could find, made when we were just tots), a bank that refused to execute – and also refused to cough up permission *for us* to execute until Cook County probate (which is notoriously slow) forced it to.
Oy. My mother, who was a tax accountant and financial planner, set up her affairs with a revocable trust, which, we hope, will result in there being no estate to probate. It's still going to take a year or more for everything to percolate through the trust, and meanwhile, my sister-in-law is sorting through papers having to do with all the stuff Mom was hiding from her lawyer and financial adviser in the last couple of years.
I just sent my sister-in-law a wine basket.
Marque, thank you for that video. Absolutely incredible!
When I took piano lessons my my youth, I played some of those pieces. I remember especially "Fur Elise". But others, I had forgotten Beethoven had wrote them.
There was a story that the inspiration for the opening of the Fifth Symphony (the most famous 4 notes in classical music, I suspect), was the rapping on his door of a landlord wanting to collect unpaid rent. Disappointing to learn that Beethoven was already deaf at the time,
I was bit disappointed by Vinheteiro's interpretation of the Ninth Symphony 4th movement ("Ode to Joy"). Otherwise, he is an accomplished piano player. But I prefer to listen to the Ninth in its original form. it is impossible, IMO, to listen, and know that Beethoven was totally deaf, without recognizing his absolute genius.
One almost weeps. My piano lesson book had a story that at the premiere performance of the 9th Symphony, someone next to Beethoven tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the the audience so he could see their standing ovation.
There is an interesting book called "Beethoven's Hair" about the long saga of what happened to some of the hair that was snipped off his head after he died. My daughter sent it to me because it turns out my college has one of the largest Beethoven memorabilia collections in the world, and won some of the hair at an international auction--who knew?
I never got the final movement of the Moonlight Sonata up to speed :-)
My husband is the far better pianist. He points out I'm the only one of the two of us people've ever paid to hear play (during a benefit concert), but the hours of practice it took me to master that one measly piece – whew! – then, the whole time I played it on stage, the piano was slowwwly rolling away from me. I'm glad it was a short piece!
Life lesson learned: Always chock your Steinway! 🤩
Chock it since you sure as heck can't chuck it!
🤣🤣🤣
My eldest is fond of Lord Vinheteiro – I thought I recognized the name!
It's inspired me to try to put a short playlist together of my own compositions suitable for Lent.* Unlike either lord (Vinheteiro or Ludwig), I'm an excessively mediocre keyboardist, so I rely on typesetting my compositions (which are usually choral, anyhow) with software and having a MIDI play 'em. Today's virtual orchestras are excellent! – for everything but voice (whoops!). Nonetheless, MIDI "ah"s and "ooh"s usually get the basics across.
There are MIDI "voices" that'll pronounce text, but their robotic effect is disturbingly "uncanny valley". See, for example, this page (shape-note hymn suitable for Ash Wednesday), and play track #6 in the little black box:
https://sacredharpbremen.org/33t-weeping-savior/
* I hope to get around to this today, but there's still wet basement stuff, a sick kid... Plus, I'm feeling mighty hungover, not from alcohol (I may never have had an *alcohol* hangover) but maybe just from having a not-great day yesterday. That (or enough sugar, or starch – which I don't *think* I had yesterday) could do it.
Breaking News: Record Breaking Windstorm Hits D.C. Overnight
A hot air storm of epic proportions raged in the U.S. Capital last night, felling a quarter of a century old record for superheated atmospheric disturbances and providing ample evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt to naysayers that climate (and administration) change is a real thing with predictable consequences...
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/2025/03/05/trump-breaks-clinton-record-longest-congressional-speech/81501019007/
NOAA and the NWS were offline and unavailable for comment as to the severity of the storm, or for forecasts about possible future disturbances, due to staff losses from the hurricane-force idiocy presently endemic in the country's government. But seasoned weather observers predict a return event of equal or greater magnitude... wait... magnitude... that's earthquakes, isn't it? Well, no matter. Those guys are probably already out of business or soon will be... of equal or greater force on or around this date in 2026.
Stay tuned for more details as they become available, provided the power stays on in your part of the country...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/canadian-province-leader-threatens-to-cut-off-energy-to-3-us-states-imposes-25-surcharge/ar-AA1Afl20?ocid=BingNewsSerp
Sort of a BS blizzard with hurricane conditions…blinding brownouts… only about 1400 more days of it to go—assuming no putsches, it goes without saying.
Should we be exercising our Second Amendment rights, in case?
I'm certainly going to exercise my First Amendment right to take rhetorical aim at anything that deserves to be metaphorically blown away.
RE: "...deserves to be metaphorically blown away."
A metaphorical sawed-off shotgun will work quite well for that. It's such a target rich environment you needn't really aim. Just point in any direction and pull the trigger. Can't miss, even with your metaphorical eyes closed.
Well for that matter, I might look into the Acme Company's "Metaphorical Collection" of explosive declarations that thoroughly destroy implausible constructs.
Caveat emptor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8bVNO4mnO8
@DougAz....I saw you comment on Noah's piece today. He's missing a very major point.
A country does not rise to its highest innovative ideas. It falls to its lowest industrial commons. Innovation in the things he's talking about don't burst forth from nothing. It takes a lot of time to develop the educational and industrial infrastructure for innovation capability to flourish. China is just getting to that point of development where the type of innovation in new ideas he's talking about is getting real traction.
He's descending into that space where having to develop a daily blog drains to randomness. There's a reason the old model of a newsroom was healthy. Lots of individual workers developing good content. Newsrooms are currently tanking because of ideological bias taking over, not because the idea of a newsroom was a bad idea.
In the current Substack mode of thousands of individuals trying to make a go of it, he's running out of gas. Not to take anything away from him, but a non-pejorative, non-snark, honest comment on him...he doesn't know what he's talking about. He's probably doing homework, but that homework isn't apparently informing him.
Not one of these foundation innovations was made by someone with a college degree from a university in the United States.
Cotton Gin - Eli Whitney (1793)
Steamboat - Robert Fulton (1807)
Telegraph - Samuel Morse (1837)
Sewing Machine - Elias Howe (1846)
Revolver - Samuel Colt (1836)
Safety Elevator - Elisha Otis (1852)
Telephone - Alexander Graham Bell (1876) - degree from Edinborough
Phonograph - Thomas Edison (1877)
Electric Light Bulb - Thomas Edison (1879)
Automobile - Henry Ford (1908)
Airplane - Wright Brothers (1903)
Typewriter - Christopher Sholes (1868)
Vulcanized Rubber - Charles Goodyear (1839)
Refrigerator - Jacob Perkins (1834)
Motion Picture Camera - Thomas Edison (1891)
Radio - Guglielmo Marconi (1895) - degree from Florence
X-ray Machine - William Coolidge (1913)
Vacuum Cleaner - Hubert Booth (1901)
Air Conditioning - Willis Carrier (1902)
Zipper - Whitcomb Judson (1893)
Electric Washing Machine - Alva J. Fisher (1908)
Traffic Light - Garrett Morgan (1923)
Helicopter - Igor Sikorsky (1939) - degree from Kyiv
Ballpoint Pen - John J. Loud (1888)
Assembly Line - Ransom E. Olds (1901)
Henry Ford made the first automobile affordable for the masses, but automobiles were made, in the US and elsewhere, before Ford.
Several people figured out electric lights with glowing filaments. Edison figured out how to make it work properly. Which is what matters.
There is some credible story that Eli didn't invent the cotton gin. One of his slaves did, and he liked the idea. Let everyone argue...I like that story. I don't care if it's true. It's true that it's a story.
Eli Whitney worked together with Catharine Greene, the widow of Revolutionary War General Nathaniel Greene.
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/catharine-greene-1755-1814/
ETA: Whitney was not, himself, a plantation owner. He was an itinerant mechanic.
Well then… that adds another layer to the story.
I can believe it. Why not invent something to save your own labor !! There are quite a number of examples of misappropriated invention, development and scientific discoveries.
Traffic lights here have timers that display how long the green is going to last, with a 3 second yellow (also displayed) before going red. The timers on the traffic lights are synchronized with the GPS map system everyone uses here...Gauda Maps...so you can glance at your phone and see when the lights are going to change.
There were autos before Henry Ford. They weren't necessarily internal combustion gas powered. I think a couple of them were steam power.
Yes. I was going to at Mr. Otto and the diesel engine. Also it says Olds developed the assembly line, but I'd favor Herr Ford for that one
I thought the original assembly line was in the meat packing plants in 1890-ish Chicago. At least, the idea of the work moving down a line to the worker was instituted there first....the workers stood there and the carcasses were hung from a chain drive that came to them.
Some of this is probably wrong. I train my CoPolite :) and double and cross check. Like ID all college grads.
The NI - ie, Nascent Intelligence - missed at least a DOUBLE Alumni of your's truly. William D. Coolidge was an MIT grad, got his doctorate in Germany, and was head of GE's Research Center. He invented x-Ray machines, advanced tungsten, and esstentially, medical radiology. I forgot this :) haha
Never trust an AI. Absolutely, never give your AI control of your satellite defense system, or the pod bay doors on your spacecraft. 🙂
I place my faith in the coming Singularity!
🫣🫣🫣🍺🍺🍺🐾🐾🐾🐾🐪☄️☄️
Will that Singularity be fully clothed or in its birthday suit?
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/naked-singularity-movie-review-2021
BTW...
I gave this thing 👍👍👍👍 and a half👍s out of 👍👍👍👍👍
There is something to be said about we are only as strong as our lowest "commons" - not just industrially speaking ! Last night was a glorified "LOW COMMON". Of course, many conservatives disagree - but I say the conservative, private school movement has created a very un and under educated class. I've commented many times on a full on public education upgrade - billions for new large schools, with VoTech for machining, Tech, etc etc. And Hire and Fire at will - no Unions in my New Ed Deal.
As to innovation. Almost all of America's innovation thru 1930 - was from 8th grade to HS educated men (can't think of much in this timeframe from the ladies until Curie).
Excellent public education is absolutely necessary for the survival of our form of government. Structured by geography, so neighborhood children go to school with each other.
Re 8th Grade to HS Education before 1930: There is no comparison between education then and now. By the time children arrived at the school house, they already knew a great deal more about the activities necessary to survive in their world from living in the midst of the family economy. They had helped in the kitchen, in the shop, on the farm, started training in basic skills necessary to contribute to the family as soon as they demonstrated the maturity to learn.
"Education" meant learning to read and write and cipher, to formally communicate information necessary to conduct the family business and read the Bible for themselves. Public school wasn't expected or intended to teach everything. It wasn't for learning, it was for "book learning."
(In contrast, when our daughter started school there were conversations with teachers that indicated one could not assume anything about what had been learned at home to prevent adverse impacts due to socioeconomic disparities.)
Agree. Thanks!!🦎🦎☕️☕️
And yeah...I didn't watch. I figured I could skim the news and get the gist of it.
As to "last night", all you really need to know was posted above just a few minutes ago by an intrepid, independent reporter of the utmost journalistic integrity who not only doesn't work in a newsroom but doesn't even have a Substack blog of his own. He figures why go to all that trouble when he can just use this one?
I could get on board with that.
Note: "Vinheteiro" means "winemaker" in Portuguese. I was thinking "wine mixer" or "mixed wine," based on the roots.
Excellent piano music. The way the guy stares at the camera is a little off-putting, though.
Tiffany Poon is my favorite pianist. I've been following her for at least 12 years, maybe longer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NULdpwoj1N4
RE: following her for at least 12 years
She's probably not too hard to follow, is she? I meant how fast can she go while dragging that Steinway around with her, even if it is on wheels?
Very amusing.
Thanks. I was going for amusing. But "very" adds a nice note to it. 🎹
That's the key!
I like the deadpan look.
Nice link!
Good morning. 55 here, will dip to the 40s later, and windy. Both the mothership and the FP are covering the Trump rally last night, that happened to take place in a joint session of Congress (which I foolishly set through — all 100 minutes).
To those who observe it have a blessed Ash Wednesday and a blessed Lent. As we are reminded today, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” That is worth remembering, not just to examine our lives, but to remind ourselves that this world, with all its difficulties, is fleeting. What is important is Eternity.
It’s 50 here, with horizontal rain.
That speech would have been enough for me to cancel cable service if I’d had it still. Wonder if Trump will turn out to be the death of C-SPAN…
We have a tornado warning. I'm telling the youth to come downstairs, just in case, although it appears Fang can't be awaked and "will have to be the sacrifice to the tornado gods," as his brother Vlad says.
Hope you and your family and friends are OK, Cynthia. Tornado watches, and the occasional warning, are common here in the spring. Last spring was bad, with the EF-3 that hit Russell’s Point in NW Ohio, killing 2.
When I was 6 years old, a tornado passed within 100 feet or so of the farmhouse where I slept with my parents and family. I remember it as a very windy night. The next morning we discovered the roof was blown off an outbuilding that had farm machinery.
The warning has expired with no tornado appearing on us. Guess the gods didn't want Fang 😊.
I've been in 3 tornadoes, one in which the house I was in took a hit. It was educational.
We went to the nuclear war shelter in Norman, OK, in 1999, along with a thousand or so of our closest friends.
Was it a tour or an alarm? I don’t remember 1999 as a tense time (except for Y2K).
Tornado. Very big tornado.
Speaking of nuclear war.... All development in urban China is underpinned by vast underground parking garages, often 2-3 stories down. In the older 90's buildings, each level of the parking garage is equipped with nuclear blast doors...heavy solid iron doors with those locking mechanisms like you see on submarines in the movies. None of them have apparently been operated in decades, but it's interesting to think that development design used to take nuclear war into account.
The bunker in Norman was under the elementary school at the end of our street. My friend who still lives there said the school system won't let the public shelter there anymore.
Good morning. Sounds like you started your penance early.
Well played, ma’am! 🤣
I had to listen to Thor telling us that China is doing things right vis-a-vis Climate Change.
I thought PR China still burns a lot of coal and may still even be building new coal power plants.
Lots of coal. LOTS. I think I read somewhere they're bringing new coal fired power plants online...oh, I forget and am too lazy to look it up...they're going nuts building new coal fired plants and have renewed construction on a few hundred GW of plants that were on pause.
OTOH, if you believe the Manhattan Institutes study on this (I do), if the US is going to have a snowball's chance in Hell of achieving CO2 reduction, we have to lean into traditional power generation (gas and coal) to keep the economy humming at a level that might allow us to develop alternatives....which is what China is doing.
The idea that we can just do a switcheroo is fatuous.
I support natural gas more than coal.
So did I.
I could have an interesting conversation with Thor. He would take issue with my perspective.
You could have an interesting conversation. Thor is very intelligent and a great wit. He might even think someone who lives in China knows more than his magnificent self.
That would be unlikely. The more one knows about China and tries to impress that knowledge on folks, the more those that don't know much believe themselves to be more knowledgeable. It's like an inverse relationship. For reasons I don't understand, folks that read a book about China or spend 7-10 days visiting, feel confident that they know what's going on.
Love Beethoven!!
Thanks!
At one time I could play the 1st and 2nd movements of the 8th and 14th. And on occasion muddle the 3rds. Self taught coming from the oboe
Genius is awe inspiring.
And sometimes tortured. I noticed Rev Julia's comment below about Chopin. I recall a chapter on him in a college music history class I took a lifetime ago. A troubled soul in many respects both physically and emotionally for various reasons. I recall a quote in the college text supposedly from him... "My life is a story with no beginning and a sad end", or something close to that, though a Google search doesn't produce any results as relate to him on that quote, so I may be misremembering it. Hell, I may be misremembering going to college with all I fail to remember at my age.
Sometime this century, I read a biography of Chopin.
Well, I read about him *last* century, otherwise I'd have been more sure about that quote. And a few other things, probably.
Yes, we sat together in Bio for Poets with all the athletes.
That was you? Damn.
Good morning, everyone. As planned, after drinks with Thor last night, I went to bed as soon as I had the dishes and laundry squared away, and this morning I feel like I was out in the woods yesterday breathing pollen, because I was. Achoo!
One time during a hike, I took a direct hit in the face from a heavily pollinating White Pine. Pine sap is highly toxic; I was whacked for a week.
I remember Lenten walks where I’d watch the pine pollen smoking. It’s beautiful, if sneezy.
Apparently, pine pollen’s edible —
https://foragerchef.com/pine-pollen/
not that I (achoo!) should try it.
I’ll just have a glass of turpentine…
This is an unexpected and welcome interlude. Thanks much.