Well, I'm glad I came here now. I've been searching in my spam, in my trash in case I accidentally deleted... so now I find y'all here! Yay! But now I have to get ready to go to the conference room at the shop so they can set me up to log on to the website so I can get my hours logged. I've sent them several emails about it. One I rec'd an automated 'we'll get back to you in 24 hours'. 24 hours passed by more than 24 hours, so in the same back & forth of emails, I said such. They finally got back to me saying when they'd be in the conference room. Then they said it was the first time they heard from me. I replied back, saying when I'd be there, & said I wondered how they saw the last one since it was connected to all the previous ones....???
Dues are also due, so perhaps that might be why they're responding to folks....????
I’m baaaakk! Took a long time but I’m glad ‘cause it shows I wasn’t a dummy. I didn’t work with the head of IT - I’m glad. I worked with another woman I hadn’t met before & at the end of our time I could honestly say that I was so glad to meet her & spend some 1 on 1 time with her. She was as puzzled by my situation as I was & had to have a lengthy conversation with the providers of our new platform. We’re guessing - well, I had already figured it out a few weeks ago - it’s cause I have moved down in ranks from an ‘official logger on of other people’s hours with a special email’ to now a pion, which I love, using my personal email.
I left happy, logged on my hours, paid my dues but others were coming in saying they had been logging in fine but now having probs… I put my hands over my ears - lalalalala can’t hear ya
Good morning, everyone. Happy Thor's Day from humid Camp Grimes and its insect population! One of the girls had a staghorn beetle in her hair last night.
As a complement to scout camps and my earlier post on the difference between rural and urban, the closest to "rural" life that Trump will come to, might be this evening when he will be at Versailles (another of the cities of my youth).
It is not only the place where some of the treaties related to the independence of the USA was signed (in addition of the one signed in Paris on the same day), but it is also where Marie Antoinette had setup her own girl scout camp, with a fake farm at the Trianon, where she could play being a peasant girl: the hamlet of the Queen.
My oldest went to Philmont in 2008, he was 14. It was an incredible experience for him, but not easy whatsoever. The leaders let him go, but recommended he wait until he was 17-18 to go. And whenever I look at photo, he's the smallest kid in the photo.
They hiked, didn't go horseback, so that may be a very different experience. But it is a tough climate.
Northern New Mexico is beautiful this time of year. I never went to Philmont, but I had a couple of grand uncles who ranched outside of Questa, north of Taos, and I've spent many happy days roaming the Sangre de Cristos.
middle son enjoyed his Philmont time. That was before girl Boy Scouts.
His troop had to complete 50 mile hikes in order to qualify for Piedmont - I don't remember the mileage build-up, but it wasn't anything like 1 mile a day for 50 days, if ya know what I mean. Anyway, several of the guys in his troop were going to Philmont, so a scheduled hike on Fiery Gizzard Gorge in TN was planned to help some of them complete the needed 50 miles. Son had completed nearly all of his, but he wanted to go anyway. I went too, because he also had a school-sponsored trip to Moab immediately following that & immediately preceding Piedmont. So he & I hiked the roughest part of Fiery Gizzard where the troop had the permit for backcountry camping. Next morning son & I went back the way we came, while the rest of troop finished the entire trail; I was told it was much easier but the timing wouldn't have worked for us. I had to get him to the airport in time for the Moab trip. Then the Moab group got him to the airport for the Piedmont trip.
Fiery Gizzard was awful, altho the weather was beautiful. I rented a one-man tent. When I returned it, the woman at the shop, w/ a smile on her face, asked where I went. She immediately said "That's the worst trail ever!! All you see are rocks, cause as you're hiking you have to look down!" One other woman w/ us fell forward, cracked her front tooth. Another man fell backwards & truthfully was saved because his backpack got lodged be/n 2 boulders; otherwise he would have cracked his skull. The scouts had to climb down, undo his backpack & help him get back up on the trail & get his backpack unlodged.
It looks like a Philmont is very close to the Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway we were supposed to bike in 2023. We woke up to cold and rain so we trekked a few miles to a rental car company and drove it instead. It was beautiful. I was very glad we opted not to bike that day. Some of the roads were very curvy and narrow.
I googled “when were girls allowed at Philmont?” They were allowed to do some hiking beginning in 1971 but it wasn’t until 2019 “following the opening of Scouts BSA to girls, Philmont officially welcomed female troops to register for full high-adventure backpacking treks.” A physician at the clinic here used to take a group of Boy Scouts to Philmont every year. We would always see him training because he would walk around town with a heavy backpack. I hope teengirl has a splendid time.
this camp sounds a lot of fun for "urban" people, although it sounds like everyday for those who like me at the moment, for the past few years, live in the "back of beyond" (I have lived in a few capitals around the world).
There was a few days ago an amusing article (even if inconsequential) in The Dispatch, about the meaning of "rural" https://thedispatch.com/article/rural-definitions-geography-culture/ (for some unknown reason, I received an email about it and had access to it). Where a lot is made on the difference between "urban" and "rural" and various official definitions, and other related vocabulary (city, town, township, village, etc.), which come either from Latin/French or Germanic/English.
These questions are not just specific to the USA, but reflect everywhere in the world different patterns of occupation at different periods.
There were times when the difference between a "village" and a "ville" could be consequential, as during the negotiations in 1659-1660 of the Treaty of the Pyreneans, and the definition of the frontier between France and Spain.
A county (Cerdagne) which belonged to Spain was roughly cut in half, with the Northern part attributed to France, with all the "villages" and "bourgs", and the Southern part remaining Spanish.
It so happened that there was in the Northern half of Cerdagne a place called Llívia, which claimed the status of "ville": to this day, this is a Spanish enclave in France, with a "neutral" road, roughly a mile long, on French territory allowing free passage to Spanish people (no longer relevant today).
Incidentally, the population density in the administrative unit (commune) where I live is 10 inhabitants per square miles: it is definitely rural, as there are more wild boars than people living there.
Although women in the US say there are more wild pigs in the sports bars than there are men! 😡
I didn't think I was THAT messy with the chicken wings. 😢
I grew up suburban. Our subdivision had 50 houses, all surrounded by cornfields. Most are now other subdivisions or golf courses. The house sits a mile from the Muncie city limits.
Katie grew up 8 miles from Rockville, IN (population 8,000). Terre Haute is a 45 minute drive, Indianapolis west side is an hour and 10 minutes. She lived on the farm in Coloma, which has a church and 6 houses, including hers. Bloomingdale (5 miles away) has perhaps 100 homes in it. No stop lights, just stop signs.
I would consider her to have lived rural.
today we live in Eaton (population low 8,000), which is semi-rural, semi-small town, semi suburb. We are 12 miles from the east side of Richmond (12 miles from Culvers, Chick-fil-a, and Uranus Fudge Factory), 25 miles west of downtown Dayton, and 50 minutes from the Cincinnati interstate loop.
I do not really have experience of sports bars in the USA, but once, when I started to work around Philadelphia with an IT company specialized in the pharmaceutical company, the welcome diner organized for me by the company took place at Hooters... 🤔
Years ago, I had a student who worked at Hooters. She came to class wearing overalls. One could easily see orange shorts and a midriff cut t-shirt underneath it. Never having been to a Hooters before, I innocently asked her at the end of class about it.
She winked at me, and undid her overalls, letting them slide to the floor in front of many guys, proudly announcing "I'm a Hooters girls; come in and get ya some wings"...She gave me and the guys in class coupons for free appetizers.
Years later I went...once. I was at a conference and wanted an evening meal. That was the only open restaurant. i thought it was okay....I prefer B-Dubs wings....
In Philadelphia I would rather go for a hoagie. Although not a gourmet dish, I have had some good experiences there (but not always... over a 6 months period, there are necessarily some bad tries).
I'm curious what the options for internet access are in a rural area such as that. I have friends / family living in farming / ranching areas of Texas that rely on Starlink. Even where I live, in a well populated area, the cellular service remains so spotty I'm starting to wonder why Starlink might not take over everything. As an aside, some analysts say that's a more promising reason to project SpaceX enormous profits than dreamy space data centers.
Regarding Starlink and other similar systems, they will suffer as soon as they are popular enough: they will experience the usual problems of bandwidth, as well as overpopulation of satellites in space: it is not a long term investment, except for very remote locations.
Where are all the satellite dishes which were ubiquitous some years ago, even in towns and cities?
They have been replaced with fibers.
Almost everywhere, where there is currently an electrical connection to a grid, there will be a possibility at some point to be connected to a fiber network.
Satellite internet access will be limited to very remote areas: the exception and not the norm.
I have no expertise in these areas, but see the coming of larger re-usable rockets, able to send bigger payloads, with more frequency, with more sophisticated equipment, powered by solar or even nuclear, laser communication back to land based data centers, more redundancy, etc. Time will tell, but I'd not bet against that. On the other hand, I did not and would not bet on SpaceX either. Both because it is all a bit too fantastical to financially bet on, and because Musk is a crazy person with 80% voting shares.
In the Cibolo Creek Canyon of the Chinati Mountains, where I live, we have similar cell phone dead zones due to topography. Go two or three miles either way on the highway, and you can get reception. Curiously, I've had high-speed internet at home in Shafter for fifteen years (fiber optic for the last two years). Texas requires that all public schools have access to high-speed internet, and when the local internet provider, Big Bend Telephone, ran an internet line from Marfa to Presidio, they wired Shafter in. I pay $120 a month for unlimited fiber optic internet and a landline telephone with unlimited long-distance. It is my window on the world.
This sounds very expensive to me: I believe that basic unlimited fiber optic connection in France would be around 25 euros per months.
For a 5G capable mobile connection with 300GB of data during weekdays, and unlimited during the week -end (free calls in the EU), I pay 35 euros per months.
30 years ago, one could still go to the USA and find goods less expensive than in Europe, on average, but the increase in GDP that people like Kevin X Williamson are so proud of, seems to be, at the level of families, mostly due to a hike-up in prices far bigger in the USA than in Europe, and in artificial IT business profits, which do not "trickle" down to ordinary people: not representative of the actual quality and experience of living.
In all fairness, given that I live in one of the most remote and sparsely populated places in America, the cost seems more than reasonable to me. Here I sit at my kitchen table in a ghost town in one of the most remote spots in the country, chatting with an acquaintance in Europe. Later this afternoon I'll spend a few hours reading an ebook that was instantaneously delivered. I can research any subject I like with a few key taps. I read every day with my granddaughters who live in Arkansas. I'm in need of a few household supplies which I'll order online and can expect to have delivered to my doorstep in no more than five day's time. Tonight I'll watch TV for a while via streaming video. Given that I'm over three hours drive from the nearest settlement that might be called a city, $120 a month for all of that sounds like a bargain to me.
But in France, the cost of data transfer is like the cost of electricity: once you have the physical connection to the network, wherever you are, the cost is the same. Where you pay more, when you are in a remote location, is for the connection itself.
4G coverage is very capricious, and it depends of being properly oriented on the proper side of the hills; almost inexistent when at the bottom of deep valleys; and also dependent of the operators and of the meteorological conditions.
At some point, I had 3 different SIM cards from different operators. It has improved since, I get by with one operator, knowing that as I walk the dog, I will often lose coverage (I download in advance if I want to listen to something during a 2 or 3 hours walk).
5G is almost inexistent, except at very rare moments: I have to go to the nearest bigger village, 15 kms away.
Fiber has been installed for many houses in the main village, but I have not yet taken the time to request connection, although the fiber post is adjoining to my property: something that I will decide in the next couple of years. I am in no hurry.
Fiber is the future for non remote areas. Some of the farmland areas, it is low priority. Starlink works well there, now. I'd get fiber for our farm if it ever gets run, but nothing is planned for awhile.
In France, the government policy is that wherever there used to be a telephone land line, at some point there should be a fibre optic connection. This will still leave a few percents of more remote households without physical connections.
No doubt Teengirl (lucky girl) will get far more and better exercise in Philmont than Sigrid and I got hiking miles every day around London and Paris, but still . . . I see this morning that I shed nine pounds over the last three weeks in Europe.
Monday was our last day. We logged miles in the Bois de Boulogne, the big Paris park that's more than twice as big as Central Park. I had wanted to see it for a long time because so many characters in books I've read spent time there.
Well, since you departed, DJT came to replace you in France as representing the USA. 😊
There are two main wooded parks around Paris where Parisians used to go, the Bois de Boulogne to the West, surrounded by rich areas (16th arrondissement, Neuilly), and the Bois de Vincennes to the East, which is surrounded by areas which are more working class.
The Bois de Boulogne is where the "grand monde" (high society) and the "demi-monde" used to go to display themselves in their horse carts during the 19th and early 20th century (as I recall, the movie Gigi is quite representative). This is why it is so present in the literature of the time. For a Parisian, "aller au Bois", usually means Bois de Boulogne.
Both offer a mix of activities, ranging from culture to amusement (including during the night, prostitution).
I grew up not far from the Bois de Boulogne, but as a child we used to go to the much bigger and less civilized forests of Saint-Germain-En-Laye, and Marly-Le-Roy, although they were all at about the same distance.
We did our best to represent America well while we were in France! I haven't read yet about how Trump may have embarrassed us at the summit -- I hope not too badly.
I wish Sigrid and I had had more time. So many more places we'd like to see, even though this was our fourth time in France. And the Bois itself is so large that we got only a taste of it.
We were startled to see a flamboyantly and scantily clad woman sitting calmly on a bench along one of the paths of the Bois, waiting for business. This was early evening. She was not at all like Zola's Nana.
We did spent a day in Saint-Germain-En-Laye! Although we didn't have time to hike any of the forest. We spent time at the Maurice Denis Museum -- back long ago when Sigrid and I first started seeing each other, the first art exhibition we went to together featured the Nabis painters, including Denis, Serusier, Emile Bernard, Gauguin, so we like to see more of them when we can. Also stopped in to see the Debussy museum (pretty small, didn't take long), as well as the big chateau that now houses the archaeology museum, and the church opposite it. We liked the town. Also, it was nice to be in a place where we weren't tripping over zillions of other tourists.
I will need to pull out my DVD copy of Gigi and see it again now that I have a sense of the Bois. What I remember best from previous viewings is Maurice Chevalier sitting in the park watching the parade of young women.
"Thank heavens for little girls for they grow up in the most wonderful way." 😉
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, is where I went to school. I used to go to the museum around noon, almost everyday, instead of going to the canteen of the Lycée.
So many memories there... but it was a long time ago, in the 60s and 70s.
The working girls in the Bois de Boulogne, used to often be from Brazil, and not actual "girls". 😉
In the forest of Saint-Germain, around the parc of the castle, there used to be in addition of some working ladies, some satyres who displayed themselves.
People used to know which areas to avoid both in the Bois de Boulogne and in the forest of Saint-Germain, unless they were specifically looking for it. 😇
Well yes, those are "something". But, I thought the question was about making, or returning, college sports to something resembling an ethical admirable situation. Imagining a central authority can regulate and enforce something that is local, regional, or otherwise fractured into incredible numbers of varying components is nonsense. Turn it over to the schools or the leagues and let them figure it out, and if they can't let society judge it.
Actually...wait a minute. I know what to do. Put Elizabeth Warren on the case. She'll figure it all out and make it all better.
I received today's CSLF on the Ouitchita Mountains a little after 3 this afternoon.
If there's no email tomorrow, all may share badinage here tomorrow. I'll be home Saturday evening.
A day without CSLF is like a day without sunshine.
I thinks few are finding/thinking to look 👀 backwards
Also, I set up a post for this morning, but I must have done something wrong. Maybe it will turn up later.
Well, I'm glad I came here now. I've been searching in my spam, in my trash in case I accidentally deleted... so now I find y'all here! Yay! But now I have to get ready to go to the conference room at the shop so they can set me up to log on to the website so I can get my hours logged. I've sent them several emails about it. One I rec'd an automated 'we'll get back to you in 24 hours'. 24 hours passed by more than 24 hours, so in the same back & forth of emails, I said such. They finally got back to me saying when they'd be in the conference room. Then they said it was the first time they heard from me. I replied back, saying when I'd be there, & said I wondered how they saw the last one since it was connected to all the previous ones....???
Dues are also due, so perhaps that might be why they're responding to folks....????
I’m baaaakk! Took a long time but I’m glad ‘cause it shows I wasn’t a dummy. I didn’t work with the head of IT - I’m glad. I worked with another woman I hadn’t met before & at the end of our time I could honestly say that I was so glad to meet her & spend some 1 on 1 time with her. She was as puzzled by my situation as I was & had to have a lengthy conversation with the providers of our new platform. We’re guessing - well, I had already figured it out a few weeks ago - it’s cause I have moved down in ranks from an ‘official logger on of other people’s hours with a special email’ to now a pion, which I love, using my personal email.
I left happy, logged on my hours, paid my dues but others were coming in saying they had been logging in fine but now having probs… I put my hands over my ears - lalalalala can’t hear ya
Good morning, everyone. Happy Thor's Day from humid Camp Grimes and its insect population! One of the girls had a staghorn beetle in her hair last night.
Is there a badge for entomological hairdressing?
I used to ask my hairdresser the meaning of words too! Then I learned etymology doesn't have an n in it! 🤦♂️
There's Insect Study, but you don't want to be studying them in your hair at night.
Where’s CSLF this morning, this “Thor’s day” morning?
71 degrees here, with predicted high in the uppers 79s (read 80s). Chance of rain later.
The mothership is covering the first meeting of the Fed’s Board of Governors, the first such meeting chaired by Trump’s appointee Kevin Warsh.
I don't know where it is. I had a post, but I guess I made a mistake setting up the publication.
tech happens..... No worries! Enjoy camp!
I'm gonna blame AI.
I don't know how to get to the "Dashboard" using my phone, if it's even possible.
Safe travel to all the Scouts! I have heard Philmont is really something. 12 days of horseback riding sounds fantastic -- for the prepared.
Dear CynthiaW,
As a complement to scout camps and my earlier post on the difference between rural and urban, the closest to "rural" life that Trump will come to, might be this evening when he will be at Versailles (another of the cities of my youth).
It is not only the place where some of the treaties related to the independence of the USA was signed (in addition of the one signed in Paris on the same day), but it is also where Marie Antoinette had setup her own girl scout camp, with a fake farm at the Trianon, where she could play being a peasant girl: the hamlet of the Queen.
Le hameau de la reine | Château de Versailles https://www.chateauversailles.fr/decouvrir/domaine/domaine-trianon/hameau-reine#histoire-du-lieu
My oldest went to Philmont in 2008, he was 14. It was an incredible experience for him, but not easy whatsoever. The leaders let him go, but recommended he wait until he was 17-18 to go. And whenever I look at photo, he's the smallest kid in the photo.
They hiked, didn't go horseback, so that may be a very different experience. But it is a tough climate.
mine was 15 or16, no horse backing
Northern New Mexico is beautiful this time of year. I never went to Philmont, but I had a couple of grand uncles who ranched outside of Questa, north of Taos, and I've spent many happy days roaming the Sangre de Cristos.
Good morning. Is anyone else having a problem with Substack not loading comments? This has been happening on and off for a few days.
I've had occasional problems.
Good morning. So far, all is working ok for me
middle son enjoyed his Philmont time. That was before girl Boy Scouts.
His troop had to complete 50 mile hikes in order to qualify for Piedmont - I don't remember the mileage build-up, but it wasn't anything like 1 mile a day for 50 days, if ya know what I mean. Anyway, several of the guys in his troop were going to Philmont, so a scheduled hike on Fiery Gizzard Gorge in TN was planned to help some of them complete the needed 50 miles. Son had completed nearly all of his, but he wanted to go anyway. I went too, because he also had a school-sponsored trip to Moab immediately following that & immediately preceding Piedmont. So he & I hiked the roughest part of Fiery Gizzard where the troop had the permit for backcountry camping. Next morning son & I went back the way we came, while the rest of troop finished the entire trail; I was told it was much easier but the timing wouldn't have worked for us. I had to get him to the airport in time for the Moab trip. Then the Moab group got him to the airport for the Piedmont trip.
Fiery Gizzard was awful, altho the weather was beautiful. I rented a one-man tent. When I returned it, the woman at the shop, w/ a smile on her face, asked where I went. She immediately said "That's the worst trail ever!! All you see are rocks, cause as you're hiking you have to look down!" One other woman w/ us fell forward, cracked her front tooth. Another man fell backwards & truthfully was saved because his backpack got lodged be/n 2 boulders; otherwise he would have cracked his skull. The scouts had to climb down, undo his backpack & help him get back up on the trail & get his backpack unlodged.
It looks like a Philmont is very close to the Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway we were supposed to bike in 2023. We woke up to cold and rain so we trekked a few miles to a rental car company and drove it instead. It was beautiful. I was very glad we opted not to bike that day. Some of the roads were very curvy and narrow.
I googled “when were girls allowed at Philmont?” They were allowed to do some hiking beginning in 1971 but it wasn’t until 2019 “following the opening of Scouts BSA to girls, Philmont officially welcomed female troops to register for full high-adventure backpacking treks.” A physician at the clinic here used to take a group of Boy Scouts to Philmont every year. We would always see him training because he would walk around town with a heavy backpack. I hope teengirl has a splendid time.
Dear CynthiaW,
this camp sounds a lot of fun for "urban" people, although it sounds like everyday for those who like me at the moment, for the past few years, live in the "back of beyond" (I have lived in a few capitals around the world).
There was a few days ago an amusing article (even if inconsequential) in The Dispatch, about the meaning of "rural" https://thedispatch.com/article/rural-definitions-geography-culture/ (for some unknown reason, I received an email about it and had access to it). Where a lot is made on the difference between "urban" and "rural" and various official definitions, and other related vocabulary (city, town, township, village, etc.), which come either from Latin/French or Germanic/English.
These questions are not just specific to the USA, but reflect everywhere in the world different patterns of occupation at different periods.
There were times when the difference between a "village" and a "ville" could be consequential, as during the negotiations in 1659-1660 of the Treaty of the Pyreneans, and the definition of the frontier between France and Spain.
A county (Cerdagne) which belonged to Spain was roughly cut in half, with the Northern part attributed to France, with all the "villages" and "bourgs", and the Southern part remaining Spanish.
It so happened that there was in the Northern half of Cerdagne a place called Llívia, which claimed the status of "ville": to this day, this is a Spanish enclave in France, with a "neutral" road, roughly a mile long, on French territory allowing free passage to Spanish people (no longer relevant today).
https://maps.app.goo.gl/JCHtRJWWS52MfXZs7
Incidentally, the population density in the administrative unit (commune) where I live is 10 inhabitants per square miles: it is definitely rural, as there are more wild boars than people living there.
Although women in the US say there are more wild pigs in the sports bars than there are men! 😡
I didn't think I was THAT messy with the chicken wings. 😢
I grew up suburban. Our subdivision had 50 houses, all surrounded by cornfields. Most are now other subdivisions or golf courses. The house sits a mile from the Muncie city limits.
Katie grew up 8 miles from Rockville, IN (population 8,000). Terre Haute is a 45 minute drive, Indianapolis west side is an hour and 10 minutes. She lived on the farm in Coloma, which has a church and 6 houses, including hers. Bloomingdale (5 miles away) has perhaps 100 homes in it. No stop lights, just stop signs.
I would consider her to have lived rural.
today we live in Eaton (population low 8,000), which is semi-rural, semi-small town, semi suburb. We are 12 miles from the east side of Richmond (12 miles from Culvers, Chick-fil-a, and Uranus Fudge Factory), 25 miles west of downtown Dayton, and 50 minutes from the Cincinnati interstate loop.
Dear Jay Janney,
I do not really have experience of sports bars in the USA, but once, when I started to work around Philadelphia with an IT company specialized in the pharmaceutical company, the welcome diner organized for me by the company took place at Hooters... 🤔
Very American, I thought...
Years ago, I had a student who worked at Hooters. She came to class wearing overalls. One could easily see orange shorts and a midriff cut t-shirt underneath it. Never having been to a Hooters before, I innocently asked her at the end of class about it.
She winked at me, and undid her overalls, letting them slide to the floor in front of many guys, proudly announcing "I'm a Hooters girls; come in and get ya some wings"...She gave me and the guys in class coupons for free appetizers.
Years later I went...once. I was at a conference and wanted an evening meal. That was the only open restaurant. i thought it was okay....I prefer B-Dubs wings....
Dear Jay Janney,
In Philadelphia I would rather go for a hoagie. Although not a gourmet dish, I have had some good experiences there (but not always... over a 6 months period, there are necessarily some bad tries).
I'm curious what the options for internet access are in a rural area such as that. I have friends / family living in farming / ranching areas of Texas that rely on Starlink. Even where I live, in a well populated area, the cellular service remains so spotty I'm starting to wonder why Starlink might not take over everything. As an aside, some analysts say that's a more promising reason to project SpaceX enormous profits than dreamy space data centers.
We use starlink at the farms. It works fine. the nearest cell tower to the farm is about 15 miles away.
Dear R. Rice,
Regarding Starlink and other similar systems, they will suffer as soon as they are popular enough: they will experience the usual problems of bandwidth, as well as overpopulation of satellites in space: it is not a long term investment, except for very remote locations.
Where are all the satellite dishes which were ubiquitous some years ago, even in towns and cities?
They have been replaced with fibers.
Almost everywhere, where there is currently an electrical connection to a grid, there will be a possibility at some point to be connected to a fiber network.
Satellite internet access will be limited to very remote areas: the exception and not the norm.
Even for developping countries.
I have no expertise in these areas, but see the coming of larger re-usable rockets, able to send bigger payloads, with more frequency, with more sophisticated equipment, powered by solar or even nuclear, laser communication back to land based data centers, more redundancy, etc. Time will tell, but I'd not bet against that. On the other hand, I did not and would not bet on SpaceX either. Both because it is all a bit too fantastical to financially bet on, and because Musk is a crazy person with 80% voting shares.
Dear R. Rice,
Orbital space is already overcrowded and full of junk. Something will probably happen there within 10 to 15 years.
Is electronics recycling not available up there?
Or sooner. Near Earth Orbit traffic is maxed out.
In the Cibolo Creek Canyon of the Chinati Mountains, where I live, we have similar cell phone dead zones due to topography. Go two or three miles either way on the highway, and you can get reception. Curiously, I've had high-speed internet at home in Shafter for fifteen years (fiber optic for the last two years). Texas requires that all public schools have access to high-speed internet, and when the local internet provider, Big Bend Telephone, ran an internet line from Marfa to Presidio, they wired Shafter in. I pay $120 a month for unlimited fiber optic internet and a landline telephone with unlimited long-distance. It is my window on the world.
Dear Randall,
This sounds very expensive to me: I believe that basic unlimited fiber optic connection in France would be around 25 euros per months.
For a 5G capable mobile connection with 300GB of data during weekdays, and unlimited during the week -end (free calls in the EU), I pay 35 euros per months.
30 years ago, one could still go to the USA and find goods less expensive than in Europe, on average, but the increase in GDP that people like Kevin X Williamson are so proud of, seems to be, at the level of families, mostly due to a hike-up in prices far bigger in the USA than in Europe, and in artificial IT business profits, which do not "trickle" down to ordinary people: not representative of the actual quality and experience of living.
In all fairness, given that I live in one of the most remote and sparsely populated places in America, the cost seems more than reasonable to me. Here I sit at my kitchen table in a ghost town in one of the most remote spots in the country, chatting with an acquaintance in Europe. Later this afternoon I'll spend a few hours reading an ebook that was instantaneously delivered. I can research any subject I like with a few key taps. I read every day with my granddaughters who live in Arkansas. I'm in need of a few household supplies which I'll order online and can expect to have delivered to my doorstep in no more than five day's time. Tonight I'll watch TV for a while via streaming video. Given that I'm over three hours drive from the nearest settlement that might be called a city, $120 a month for all of that sounds like a bargain to me.
Dear Randall,
But in France, the cost of data transfer is like the cost of electricity: once you have the physical connection to the network, wherever you are, the cost is the same. Where you pay more, when you are in a remote location, is for the connection itself.
Dear R. Rice,
It is a hilly countryside.
4G coverage is very capricious, and it depends of being properly oriented on the proper side of the hills; almost inexistent when at the bottom of deep valleys; and also dependent of the operators and of the meteorological conditions.
At some point, I had 3 different SIM cards from different operators. It has improved since, I get by with one operator, knowing that as I walk the dog, I will often lose coverage (I download in advance if I want to listen to something during a 2 or 3 hours walk).
5G is almost inexistent, except at very rare moments: I have to go to the nearest bigger village, 15 kms away.
Fiber has been installed for many houses in the main village, but I have not yet taken the time to request connection, although the fiber post is adjoining to my property: something that I will decide in the next couple of years. I am in no hurry.
If you go in the plain, coverage is much better.
Fiber is the future for non remote areas. Some of the farmland areas, it is low priority. Starlink works well there, now. I'd get fiber for our farm if it ever gets run, but nothing is planned for awhile.
Dear Jay Janney,
In France, the government policy is that wherever there used to be a telephone land line, at some point there should be a fibre optic connection. This will still leave a few percents of more remote households without physical connections.
The farm never got a landline! It stopped a mile away... But yeah, if fiber ever gets run, we'd consider connecting.
No doubt Teengirl (lucky girl) will get far more and better exercise in Philmont than Sigrid and I got hiking miles every day around London and Paris, but still . . . I see this morning that I shed nine pounds over the last three weeks in Europe.
Monday was our last day. We logged miles in the Bois de Boulogne, the big Paris park that's more than twice as big as Central Park. I had wanted to see it for a long time because so many characters in books I've read spent time there.
And we visited a spectacular contemporary art museum, the Fondation Louis Vuitton, on the north end of the Bois. Pretty much the whole museum was given over to a big retrospective on the work of Alexander Calder, which was great, but the museum itself (designed by Frank Gehry) is an amazing work of art. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Fondation_Louis_Vuitton_-_Paris_%2850569906682%29.jpg/960px-Fondation_Louis_Vuitton_-_Paris_%2850569906682%29.jpg
ah, no need for you to put in your 'but still'
Y'all had a marvelous time, saw some wonderful sites, put in many miles to walking/hiking & shed some weight!! Yeah!!
Dear Paul Britton,
Well, since you departed, DJT came to replace you in France as representing the USA. 😊
There are two main wooded parks around Paris where Parisians used to go, the Bois de Boulogne to the West, surrounded by rich areas (16th arrondissement, Neuilly), and the Bois de Vincennes to the East, which is surrounded by areas which are more working class.
The Bois de Boulogne is where the "grand monde" (high society) and the "demi-monde" used to go to display themselves in their horse carts during the 19th and early 20th century (as I recall, the movie Gigi is quite representative). This is why it is so present in the literature of the time. For a Parisian, "aller au Bois", usually means Bois de Boulogne.
Both offer a mix of activities, ranging from culture to amusement (including during the night, prostitution).
I grew up not far from the Bois de Boulogne, but as a child we used to go to the much bigger and less civilized forests of Saint-Germain-En-Laye, and Marly-Le-Roy, although they were all at about the same distance.
PS: you could also have crossed the Seine, and go on top of the hill to the American Cemetery of the Mont Valérien https://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials/about-suresnes-american-cemetery/, or to the North of the Bois, in Neuilly, the American Hospital https://www.american-hospital.org/en/page/our-history , both symbols of another time of cooperation between the USA and France.
We did our best to represent America well while we were in France! I haven't read yet about how Trump may have embarrassed us at the summit -- I hope not too badly.
I wish Sigrid and I had had more time. So many more places we'd like to see, even though this was our fourth time in France. And the Bois itself is so large that we got only a taste of it.
We were startled to see a flamboyantly and scantily clad woman sitting calmly on a bench along one of the paths of the Bois, waiting for business. This was early evening. She was not at all like Zola's Nana.
We did spent a day in Saint-Germain-En-Laye! Although we didn't have time to hike any of the forest. We spent time at the Maurice Denis Museum -- back long ago when Sigrid and I first started seeing each other, the first art exhibition we went to together featured the Nabis painters, including Denis, Serusier, Emile Bernard, Gauguin, so we like to see more of them when we can. Also stopped in to see the Debussy museum (pretty small, didn't take long), as well as the big chateau that now houses the archaeology museum, and the church opposite it. We liked the town. Also, it was nice to be in a place where we weren't tripping over zillions of other tourists.
I will need to pull out my DVD copy of Gigi and see it again now that I have a sense of the Bois. What I remember best from previous viewings is Maurice Chevalier sitting in the park watching the parade of young women.
Dear Paul Britton,
"Thank heavens for little girls for they grow up in the most wonderful way." 😉
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, is where I went to school. I used to go to the museum around noon, almost everyday, instead of going to the canteen of the Lycée.
So many memories there... but it was a long time ago, in the 60s and 70s.
The working girls in the Bois de Boulogne, used to often be from Brazil, and not actual "girls". 😉
In the forest of Saint-Germain, around the parc of the castle, there used to be in addition of some working ladies, some satyres who displayed themselves.
People used to know which areas to avoid both in the Bois de Boulogne and in the forest of Saint-Germain, unless they were specifically looking for it. 😇
Hmm. The working girl we saw on the bench in the Bois definitely could have been Brazilian. Was she an "actual" girl? Now you've got me wondering.
🤔🤫🫣
Good morning. 59 degrees here, with a predicted high in the upper 70s (which means the 80s).
The mothership is reporting on the screwworm infestation in Texas. A separate mothership article asks, “Can Congress fix college sports?”
Who's gonna' fix Congress?
I know a good vet, who has experience "fixing" dogs....
That’s the question of the century.
"Can Congress fix college sports?"
No.
Actually, if Congress can do things like regulate transfers, NIL deals and direct payments to athletes, they can "do something".
Well yes, those are "something". But, I thought the question was about making, or returning, college sports to something resembling an ethical admirable situation. Imagining a central authority can regulate and enforce something that is local, regional, or otherwise fractured into incredible numbers of varying components is nonsense. Turn it over to the schools or the leagues and let them figure it out, and if they can't let society judge it.
Actually...wait a minute. I know what to do. Put Elizabeth Warren on the case. She'll figure it all out and make it all better.
There’s too much money in college sports to return it to “an ethical admirable situation”. Congress can’t fix that.
I think Congress giving limited anti-trust to let the leagues decide for themselves may be better.
There are proposals to do just that.
“Philmont, here’s to thee,
Out in God’s country tonight.”
Lucky them. Hope it’s everything they could wish for.
(Yes, I always read; I just don’t comment.)
Doug! Hi.
I hope it all goes flawlessly, too. Or as near as good enough! Niceta seeya, Doug!