Your space to talk about whatever it is you want to talk about!
Off-Topic Open Thread: June 2023
Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.com
Your space to talk about whatever it is you want to talk about!
It appears we’re still using the June OT thread?
Anyway, hello from Maui. It’s been a fun, and interesting trip so far.
The “interesting” part is that I somehow picked up a staph infection. I went into two hot tubs last week, both of which were presumably regularly tested. The infection is completely under the area my bathing suit covered, and nowhere else. We were supposed to snorkel yesterday, but moved it tomorrow and hopefully I’m cleared up enough by then.
Otherwise, it’s beautiful here, do I have to go home?
Yikes. Be careful. My son’s future father-in-law got what he thought was a staph infection and it turned out to be MRSA which led to some time in the hospital.
Have a good time!
MRSA is literally a Staph infection.
I’m not trying to make like of it – it’s a serious-as-shit condition. But as a biologist, I just had to point that out. I couldn’t help myself. Sort of like Dr. Strangelove trying to keep himself from blurting out…what he blurted out. 😉
Thanks for the clarification. I didn’t realize it was the same bacteria (or had forgotten it in my old age).
It is nasty. When I was a teacher I caught a staph infection and my doctor was really surprised – like a “where did you come up with THIS?” kind of comment. Working as a teacher is pretty much like working in a Petri dish. 🙂
It’s actually a really common bacteria that we’re all necessarily covered with, anyway. One of my micro professors referred human bodies as basically being school buses full of various bacteria and fungi.
Ewww.
gee, thanks guys.
There are about more than ten times more cells in a human body than there are human cells. A LOT are in your intestine, but there’s also every part of your surface, which is basically a wall of dead cells – sort of like the bark on a tree.
Human mouths and throats (and also the “potty zone” places) are hotbeds of bacteria,fungal, and animal passengers.
Happy thursday…
Enjoy your vacation! What’s been your favorite part?
Hope the staph infection clears up.
Huh. At least three different posts I made last week got lost here. Anyone else had that happen?
Weird, I remember posting something here… but our benevolent overlords are going to make us a fresh new page.
Okay, I guess I don’t need to go to Italy anymore. And I was really looking forward to carving my initials into something.
I remember hearing that in Italy that if a woman was raped, the court would likely aquit the rapist if the victim was wearing blue jeans. Supposedly, because blue jeans were hard to take off, removing them was implied consent, and therefore it couldn’t have been “rape.”
Was it Saudi Arabia where the royal guy was found innocent because he accidentally fell on (in) the accuser and presumably had some involuntary bodily action as part of the process, I didn’t read beyond the headline really.
Burger King in Thailand unveils a cheeseburger.
Literally a hamburger bun and 20 slices of cheese.
You may not like it, but this is what peak fast food looks like.
https://wapo.st/46IPl3n
I still think it’s a really big deal that China has high altitude tours going on and they’re mapping jet stream routes and practicing maneuvers through the jet stream.
If they make the vessels small enough they could put a bomb on them, loitering indefinitely, or launch an infiltration person or team from international waters, to drop from high altitude into sensitive areas within perimeters and we’d never detect any of it.
It’s like we need an equivalent of underwater sonar buoys, a lot of them, but at high altitude.
Japanese WW2 bomb balloons v2?
I assume conventional radar can detect these, but NORAD needed to adjust the filters. I remember NORAD basically said their sensors did detect the Chinese balloon but didn’t alert them because the speed was too slow and they were concerned more with enemy jets than a balloon.
I’d like to think a vessel that could loiter indefinitely, even with a small payload, would be large enough to not just detectable, but detected and identified.
But they’ve got a head start in unconventional warfare techniques in this space. We only know what we know, and they’ve also got stealth tech. The balloons were low cost, unmanned, low-risk mapping tools. Off the top of my head I’m envisioning a wide-flat stealth surface on the base of small solar-charged aerial outposts. A bit like a nuclear sub patrolling in the upper stratosphere.
A bird has a radar cross section of .01 meters squared.
A B2 bomber has a radar cross section of .0001 meters squared.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/stealth-aircraft-rcs.htm
It’s good our gov’t decided to shoot down the balloons. It established that unlike space, we consider that height over our land to be American territory. Raises the stakes of hanging out up there.
[Very busy time here.]
Saw last night Pence said we need Ukraine to win because otherwise the US is going to be stuck having to go to war with Russia to fix things.
That’s my kind of nonsense. From his lips to Putin’s ear.
Interesting way of differentiating yourself from the field on the campaign trail. Not that I’d vote for him.
Still amazing that Mike Pence is running for President of the Hang Mike Pence party.
Pence, the other white male
If you do not prefer Trump, women, non-whites, and you can’t get behind the Chris Cristi Kamikazi mission, then maybe he’s your choice, tho that word is frowned upon by Pence.
Alaska has ranked choice voting; there’s a movement underway to try to reverse the ballot initiative for ranked choice voting.
An anti-ranked choice group apparently formed a “church” called Ranked Choice Education Association to funnel money to the organization. I was hoping they’d sue because ranked choice voting was against their religion “one man, one vote!”, but alas, it seems like a standard campaign finance / tax evasion scheme.
https://www.adn.com/politics/2023/07/05/complaint-alleges-opponents-of-alaskas-ranked-choice-voting-formed-church-to-skirt-disclosure-laws/
I remember John Oliver dedicated an episode to showing how easy it is to set up a “church” and avoid paying taxes, etc.
Which reminds me, he also showed how easy it is to create your own crytocurrency…
I wonder if it would be useful to create a church based on your own crypto…
This is a pretty nutty way to write and pass legislation.
In Wisconsin, the governor is allowed to do partial vetoes of bills; to the point to deleting words or numbers and leaving the rest intact. So, the legislature passed a law where they increased spending for the school years of 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 and through some word surgery, he instead made it valid from 2023-2425…
It’s gotten to the point that the legislature went through and changed all instances of “may not” to “cannot” because they were worried he’d go and delete the “not”.
It was even worse previously where the governor could stitch a new word together by individually canceling letters (the Vanna White veto) or stitch sentences together from different paragraphs (the Frankenstein veto), but voters have limited those.
An NYT article described Gen X’ers as “defined by a vexed sense of aimlessness.”
Reading that I had to pause for a second, feeling like I’d just been booped on the nose.
Don’t worry, we millennials are the same.
I know this might get lost because I’m in the June thread…
Weird piece of mail just received by my husband. From the outside, it looked like it was going to be another one of those “have dinner on us” financial planners.
Nope. It was a graduation announcement from someone we’ve never heard of. My guess is somehow my husband got on someone’s business mailing list (we do not recognized the parents’ names) and they just spammed the list. Maybe looking for gifts, maybe just a mistake.
OTOH, they didn’t even say what the kid graduated from – high school, college?
huh, did you try google stalking them? Also, isn’t graduation stuff already over?
How bizarre!
But at least I found the OTOTO.
I accidentally sent a Christmas letter to someone I didn’t know once. I have no idea how his name and address made it onto my Christmas mailing list. He kept hounding me to explain it and I couldn’t.
Glad to see Koch brothers are spending lots of money on anti-Putin’s Puppet ads. I believe this may be a first for them doing something I approve of.
Yesterday, I read that that two big remaining Supreme Court cases had unwilling plaintiffs.
For the wedding website creator who doesn’t want to make sites for gay weddings, they grabbed a random guy (I forget how they got his personal information) who is not gay, married to a woman, and has kids.
For the student loan debt, the named company (MOHELA) said they did not want to participate in the suit, and in fact expects bigger profits (not sure how) if the forgiveness is allowed.
You would think that would make both cases moot, but you know that’s not happening.
Yeah, this Supreme Court doesn’t allow case facts to get in the way of their ideological rulings. The last school prayer ruling had multiple misrepresentations of the facts in the case, but they didn’t care.
DeSantis wants to eliminate Education, Commerce, Energy, and the IRS?
Clearly he doesn’t have a clue about what some of those agencies do.
Rick Perry should sit him down and have a talk – he said the same stupid shit. I *think* he wised up a little bit, didn’t he?
Rick Perry only rethought it when he was put in charge of Dept of Energy and discovered he was in charge of nuclear materials.
Good. Then we can count on you not bringing up Hillary Clinton or Obama during your campaign, correct?
White supremacists won a big one today with the death of affirmative action. Sigh.
I don’t know how I feel. I feel race itself is a stupid construct used to justify prejudice and there isn’t an objective way to define it without making some unjustifiable assumptions and will therefore necessarily be inherently racist…
But there’s the obvious reality of life in America and all of our checkered history of doing anything possible to marginalize non-whites.
I feel like, and hope, that universities will come up with smarter ways to make student populations more representative and inclusive, and maybe this will force them to get creative?
I also realize that I work in a field that is definitely not representative of the population and is highly skewed favoring some ethnicities over others…
My view is that it was an imperfect solution to a difficult problem and a problem that won’t resolve itself unless a proactive action is taken. Now, the schools will gradually go back to populating themselves with the privileged.
I suppose in the loooong run, it will turn around because white’s are becoming a minority after around 2044. So, by, say 2070, they will, just by random selection, start to lose their grip on higher education.
I think the legacy admission thing (with Harvard for example) is going to be tough – but I don’t think it’s solely an issue of the privileged versus non-privileged. The Harvard part of the suit was by Asian-Americans and their perception of anti-Asian bias because of Harvard to having to admit everyone, right?
Meanwhile, it appears they’re holding the student interest decision until tomorrow.
Which they’ll find a way to deny based on affirmative action.
So it appears they denied it because they chose to ignore the word “waive” in the original law passed by Congress in the HEROES act. Legislating from the bench at its finest. Amazing how the GOP won’t complain about it this time around.
And upon further reading about the decision it allows for military academies to apply affirmative action, just not schools. WTF.
In the WaPo article on the confirmation that the universe is continuously roiled by low-frequency gravity waves, there is some speculation about the putative source of the waves.
““So at this point in our measurements, we cannot definitively state what sources are producing the gravitational wave background signal,” NANOGrav team member Luke Kelley, an astrophysicist at the University of California at Berkeley, said at the Tuesday news briefing. However, he said, the data is a compelling match for theoretical predictions.
Theorists are “having fun” coming up with other possible sources for the low-frequency signal, he added. But “if it’s not coming from supermassive black hole binaries, we would need to come up with some explanation of where those supermassive black holes are hiding, and why we’re not seeing their gravitational waves.””
Theorists are “having fun” coming up with other possible sources of something so incredibly super-massive that it is distorting space-time, eh?
Sounds like the set-up for a “your mom” joke 😉
Every scientific discovery keeps showing how big and strange our universe is. It’s amazing they can detect these waves; the first direct observation of them was in 2015 and now I guess we’re just surfing around on these every day?
I wonder if Russia tried to assassinate Prigozhin? He’s furious Russian forces launched a strike against his camp/ forces.
He’s been arguing against message for months, refuses to sign a contract to subjugate his forces to central military command, now saying there was no need to invade, no nazi element to eliminate, invasion was motivated by greed, that Putin was misled by military leaders…
If they kill or now are trying to arrest him, they may be assuming they’ll gain full control of his forces, but he is also saying people in the military command who stand against him will pay.
He does offer Putin a way out of UA if he agrees he was misled. That could result in an interesting military power struggle. But it’s unlikely to happen yes.
Opinion:
When they bombed his forces, internally, Russian central command told him these are the types of “accident” that can happen when you go off on your own, outside of the central planning. If you go where we tell you and do what we say we’ll know where you are and these things can be avoided in the future.
Not so controversial to guess that he believes his forces and leadership are far superior and he aims to prove that after what appears to have been a last straw for him.
Medvedev saying never in human history has a band of mercenaries been in charge of the largest nuclear stockpile in the world and that it must be stopped from happening. That’s a pretty pathetic cry for help from thugs who don’t seem so smug today. I wonder what sorts of thoughts Putin has today as they close bridges, rip up roads, and set up roadblocks to Moscow. But there is tomorrow.
What a weird situation; Prigozhin takes over a city, marches on Moscow and then turns around and agrees to exile in Belarus? I guess he didn’t get the support he wanted or expected.
There are windows in Belarus…
The take I read that sounds correct is that Putin’s political stature has to be weakened, but there’s no successor strong enough to challenge him.
Also, hilariously, as Wagner marched on Moscow, they shot down an aerial command center. Ukraine has apparently tried to shoot one of those down without success, but Wagner managed to do it within 24 hours, oops.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/06/26/wagner-mercenaries-did-what-ukrainian-troops-couldnt-do-shot-down-a-priceless-russian-command-plane/?sh=5661422150e1
I’ve been in a tax conference yesterday and today at the Mayflower. This morning they announced that Biden and Harris would be coming to an event this afternoon. After lunch, we all had to go through the metal detector, after they had already done a sweep of the meeting room. The bathrooms are outside the perimeter that is secured, so you have to go through the detectors again to return to the meeting room.
The event is currently going on – meeting with members of reproductive freedom groups, per the daily schedule. I think it’d down the hall in a space that is screened off. I suspect they didn’t come in the front door; not sure where the “back” doors of the hotel are, but it’s a big place, so there have to be a lot of them.
As a follow up, they were still in the building when the conference ended. When I came out of the door of the hotel to cross the street to the parking garage, the street was closed off and a bunch of people were hanging around the door. Cops everywhere. I could see the entrance down the street they used was covered with a tent. Anyway, the cops had to escort me across the street, and fortunately the garage exit was down an alley to another street, or I would have been stuck until they left.
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/23/530733109/sheldon-harnick-died-fiddler-on-the-roof
To life, to life, L’Chaim.
I don’t think I’ve seen the entire show of Fiddler on the Roof, but my parents (Asian non-Jews) have a vinyl record and I listened to it a bunch, so I know a bunch of the songs.
I love that quote they have in the article.
I had actually played in the pit orchestra for a production of Fiddler on the Roof many years ago. And I’ve watched the movie, and a documentary about it.
While I didn’t see the official Broadway play or the musical, I went to see a HS production with my sister and some of her friends from the drama department – at a HS neither of us had ever attended.
Very cool. What instrument do you play?
Man, the African snail they’re trying to eradicate in Florida can eat “stucco, plastic recycling bins and even signs” according to the CNN article.
On plastic recycling bins:
Saw the article a few weeks ago on how recycling centers are responsible for some of the worst plastic pollution in the world. When they break down plastic for processing they release crazy amounts of micro plastic into the air, like zillions of tons or something, i don’t remember the estimate. Even the best ones that utilize the latest filtering techniques have the problem. The message was recycling is still good because it reduces production of more plastic, and they’re going to be working on improving the pollution from recycling.
The annoying thing about recycling plastic is that some can be recycled, some can’t, and it depends on your local municipality.
Like #1 plastic milk jug is pretty universally recyclable. The #5 plastic cup I get from McDonald’s? I think… but who knows.
Then it all gets dumped into a single container where someone has to sort them and a lot of it is thrown out anyway.
I try really hard to recycle aluminum, which takes a ton of energy to produce and recycles well, and then everything else is “hope for the best”.
Hunter Biden is pleading guilty to 3 counts: 2 for failure to pay taxes in 2017 and 2018 and lying on his handgun form.
I wonder what the difference between tax evasion and failure to pay taxes is and which tax crimes leads to jail time.
Evasion is illegal, avoidance is not.
In other words, tax avoidance means using everything legal to avoid paying taxes. Evasion is intentionally misrepresenting your income. Failure to pay means you made mistakes on your return that are inadvertent and result in penalties. I am not sure where failure to pay crosses from a civil matter as I describe it to criminal – maybe it’s the amount of the underpayment.
Can’t wait to see how upset MAGA world is that he’s not going to prison. They will conveniently ignore that the prosecutor was a Trump holdover.
I guess the intent standard is the one that’s tough to prove for tax evasion. Unless you’re an idiot like the former president, who on tape said all the elements of proving intent with the documents.
Wow. The excuses get lamer and lamer. Eventually, even those with a half of a brain will realize he was just being an idiot. Those with only a quarter will continue to accept his excuses, however.
He also claims that the damning audio recording where he showed off what were probably US war plans for Iran was instead him gesturing to newspaper and magazine articles.
This is a pretty easy lie to disprove; just get the other people in the room to testify.
And of course, he then goes on to say something ridiculous like “I’ve never read anything from Milley”. Just throwing a bunch of crap against the wall.
Looks like there is an unfortunate chance that a small group of rich people have joined the other rich people at the bottom of the ocean near the Titanic. Hopefully, they are successfully rescued and it brings an end to the Titanic tourism industry. Something I just don’t get…
I haven’t seen, is this the first trip of this submersible?
So many better uses for $250,000, but the filthy rich just don’t seem to care.
Apparently not. It apparently lost communications last year too.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/david-pogue-oceangate-titanic_n_649141c6e4b025003ee63198
Why a sub that apparently routinely loses communication with its mother ship does not employ some sort of emergency pinging device is beyond my comprehension.
CBS News correspondent was on the expedition last year and it seemed very hodge podge for $250K… I don’t doubt that running the expedition is extremely expensive, but I’m not getting into a sub that looks like it was built in someone’s garage.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/titanic-visiting-the-most-famous-shipwreck-in-the-world/
For $125K, you can take the Disney grand tour, which has a VIP tour in every Disney park onboard a private jet as well as some of the known landmarks in the world.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2023/06/07/disney-adventures-private-jet-tour/
I read that some people in past trips have been so caught up with Titanic that they took loans against their homes to scrape together funds to take the trip of a lifetime.
With all the coverage, people would probably watch a segment or possibly show about some specific middle-class person/couple who scraped together the money to go see Titanic on some past tour. I’d be curious if they had movie posters of Leo and Kate around
theirthe bank’s house.Go Bears!
Testing
Ha, I registered “Fred Milbury” using upside down text, it took it as entered, but as for display: Now I’m related to Jennifer Lopez!
I was looking for a new name, not sure this new one is me tho…
I’m back to being miseenjeu. (with no number)
Well this is really annoying…We ordered a new vanity for a bathroom from Home Depot and are having it delivered to the house. Along with that order and at the same time, we ordered two faucets that THEY recommended for the vanity. Now I see that they expect me to PICK UP the faucets from a Home Depot in MANHATTAN! This was NOT made clear when the order was placed. I have been trying to figure out how I cancel that part of the order. I think I will just wait until a week has gone by and see what they do when I don’t pick up the order.
If Home Despot is like most retailers I deal with, there’s a limited number of days to pick up your order. Then it’s returned to stock and your payment is cancelled.
I bought tickets to go see the Blackwater episode of GoT on IMAX back when it was a thing.
When we showed up we discovered I’d bought tickets for a showing in another state, and it was not even available in my state. Similarly to your experience, I could go into website design, suggested products/availability within the context of your “home” shopping location…
The theater gave us complimentary IMAX credit-passes, which went thru the washing machine shortly thereafter. So, some kind of water was ultimately involved I guess.
It seems it was pretty much water under the house at that point.
That episode in IMAX would have been great.
I give her credit for determination.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/15/us/louisiana-woman-posing-as-high-school-student-arrest/index.html
Welp. Vegas decided to stop playing games.
The Panthers dominating the ECF hurt them more than it helped them.
Came here to say that LV is not wanting to travel anymore.
No matter what, I am very grateful for what the Panthers did this spring. They gave me lots of joy.
Why does my comment have 100 recs?
I guess because it’s a really cool comment ????????♂️
A couple of comments in here have 100 recs. Can Becca/Staff massive rec comments?
Not sure. Are they even awake after 7:00 p.m.?
Somebody had to do the instant recap during the season. They probably go to bed at 6:30 now.
GMT of course!
What is that, 2:30am EST? I hope none of them are awake during that time.
+5
Oh, that’s just 10:30pm. That’s not terrible time to be awake
It is if it’s my ????.
That’s fair to their natural cycle. wake up at the crack of down and go to bed at sundown.
6-1 after 2. I’m also happy for Stephenson and Marchessault, and to some extent Eichel.
I’m also happy for Stone. Dude was suffering with Ottawa for his entire career.
Yes. So maybe this is not so alienating after all.
Would’ve been if Panthers won. I would’ve been happy for 0 people on that team. Maybe Bob but just to finalize his HHOF resume.
I’m fine with the players, it’s the undeserving fans and management.
I was tracing the draft picks he used to get all these people, they used one acquired in the expansion draft for that as well.
Also saw/was reminded we got Jensen for Bowey and like a 5th (rounder) or something, (not a 5th of booze as far as I know)
None of this is non-hockey OT tho yes
101 now. 🙂
In a similar vein, having an “official” account now is nice – unread comments show up reddish/brown for me. Then clear out when I read through each one. Less remembering which ones I haven’t read yet.
Pyrrhic victory? In any case, the Panthers were playing with a ridiculous number of injuries. Tkachuk (fractured sternum), Ekblad (broken foot, oblique injury, and popped his shoulder at least twice), Gudas (high ankle sprain), Sam Bennett (an upper-body injury limiting his range of motion).
I know the old cliche is that guys play hurt in the Stanley Cup Final but this is ridiculous. But probably the healthier team probably wins, too. (Last year, Vegas missed the playoffs entirely since their guys dealt with a crazy amount of injuries.)
Montour was playing with an injury too. Paul Maurice estimates that at least 4 guys will need off-season surgery and they may not all be ready for training camp.
Tried to do the official log in but wound up in a we don’t recognize your email loop of hell. But then I decided to ‘sign up’ instead of ‘log in’ and it worked. So now I’m going to rec every RockingRed843 post I can find.
He kindly woooshed me.
This isn’t really OT, but I can’t find a Cup final thread. Anyone watching Gm5 tonight?
Can’t believe it’s possible that Stephenson could have more Cups than Ovi. (I know Burra does)
I’m watching here and there. A blow out would not be nice to end the season.
Hmm… I found a giant “LOGIN” button and set up what I hope is an account?
Let’s find out!
And no profile picture, alas.
I wonder why? I set my picture for the Wilson Cup but it doesn’t show up.
Did you go into My Account and update/save the avatar there? Not enough to just do it here on this page.
It says my current image is the Willy Cup on the my account page, no idea why it isn’t there
I feel back to normal now!
Yep, I instantly conncted/updated/created a new password. Now I can log in and upvote! Hope 5 votes makes a post green here too. Avatar reflects my username.
Woah, 843 upvotes!
That’s a moniker match!
Talked to my UA military “team leader” friend for the first time since the war started.
I’d prev been worried my conversation would seem trite, or come at a very wrong time, maybe get him targeted by enemy forces, etc. I just knew this is a really really tough time, running straight at dug in forces, without air superiority. Has to be a very brutal meat grinder for a lot of good people, and a lot of imported equipment.
His demeanor was as friendly as ever. They are going to win because they have no choice other than to win. Was a general point.
unrelated – idk what their plan is, but I like that they’re taking little places. It’s their country, take all the little places, leave the big tough targets alone and they become isolated. Maybe. Like I’m a military expert.
It’s a tough ask for them to get everything back; and this counter-offensive wasn’t a surprise like the previous one was. Defense is the stronger form of war, especially without air support. The F-16s and Abrams are coming, but alas, too late for this counter-offensive.
I’m worried that it’ll end in a stalemate, like most conflicts, which means no resolution. There’s so many frozen conflicts throughout the world, very few resolve quickly.
Glad your friend is feeling optimistic.
I did see a NATO or UN official saying yesterday the attack needs to go well to improve UA’s bargaining position. So the wide expectation is indeed not that as a result of the counter-offensive Putin will call all his forces back, repair all the damage, send the incarcerated UA citizens back, apologize, and give billions in reparations.
We aren’t seeing any specific news – other than the Russian general getting killed.
I’m sure all we would see right now is blown up western equipment and brave liberators getting razed down during this tough period.
We had a US strategy guy saying it would be inappropriate for him to peanut gallery how things are going at this particular time.
Hey all. Got back from a vacation in Europe early yesterday morning. Went to Munich, Berlin, Prague, and Vienna. Great time with the family that will probably never happen again. Unfortunately, I also brought back some sort of head cold but I think I am starting to feel better today (we shall see as the day wears on).
Neve been to Prague, curious what you guys thought of Germany -would you specifically want to go back to Germany, or now that you’ve experienced it would you choose to see other locations in Europe if/when you return?
I spent some of my elementary years growing up there, but I’m always get overruled in attempts to swing thru Germany in family travel.
I enjoyed Germany, especially the Munich area. I will need to go back and see more.
Prague is a fascinating place. If you are into art, Prague is a must see. The place has more art museums per sq meter than just about any other place I have ever been to. But I also felt that the city was a little claustrophobic with all the ancient streets.
Vienna felt so wide open after Prague. I would feel more comfortable in Vienna than Prague if I had to live in one of the two for an extended period.
I do have an appreciation for art, it feels almost more like a fascination for it. We got dragged all over as kids but never made it there. Will have to throw it into the hat, probably in a couple of years when bro’s kids get old enough that they’ll want to stick em on a plane and make a few stops
I go to the Frankfurt area about once a year for work. I agree that when put up against places our family haven’t been (Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, France, UK), Germany tends not to rank as high. I’ve also heard that Frankfurt is one of the duller places in the country.
The Christmas markets were pretty cool though and I enjoyed my day trip out to Heidelberg.
That’s also part of the problem, I would prefer to go during Christmas market season – between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so it’s hard to get people to literally buy in with all the events and spending usually taking place in that timeframe
37 or 38 counts in the indictment.
It’s like a train wreck now, I can’t stop listening to the analysis.
This is what Twitter (and I guess Mastodon) is for. Just reading lawyers / interested amateurs clipping out the best bits from the indictment so I don’t have to read it.
Although, it’s unusual for a lawyer to take copious notes about how he’s being told to do illegal things to cover his ass.
Seriously, this is the very stupidest possible thing the former president could be indicted for. He just needed to return the documents!
The only way he wouldn’t be convicted is for someone on the jury to decide they’re going to do jury nullification. It’s always a risk, but Trump’s kind of cornered here.
The case was also randomly assigned to Judge Aileen Cannon… the one who was appointed by Trump and had some head-scratching decisions in the documents case in favor of him before her rulings were smacked down by the Appeals Court.
So, there is another risk that she may make some more baffling rulings which may undermine the case; presiding judges in cases get a lot of discretion is how they handle them and a lot of them aren’t appealable. This is the risk of trying the case in Florida, but the DoJ didn’t have much of a choice since he did most of THIS criming in Florida.
BLAME CANADA! (for the air quality outside)
On the plus side, code red air quality days seem to be rare now in the DC area. Back in the 90s, I remember many days with code red (the Ride-On buses would be free) with bad ozone.
ooo, really bad outside today. My daughter went outside, spun around, and grabbed a mask.
Also, it’s always to fun to learn that there’s an air quality worse than red… In fact two: Purple and Maroon.
I now understand what my poor friend had to endure. He spent a bunch of time in Shanghai where it got pretty polluted and then is living in SF where I remember talking to him when the sky was orange.
Orange Sky = Orange Guy indicted…
The writers of this reality are really lazy with their symbolism.
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/08/1181193212/trump-special-counsel-mar-a-lago
Truly the dumbest timeline that they got him on tape saying ““As president, I could have declassified them, now I can’t.”
Like… what the actual f*ck.
I went on a kayaking tour with REI on Saturday. We started at National Harbor by the Awakening statue, and paddled under the Wilson Bridge and 295. A pair of ospreys yelled at us when we paddled by their nest, and a bald eagle let us paddle near its nest without much commentary.
It was a great experience, considering that it has been fifty years since I’d been in a kayak.
Very cool. How long did the tour last? Did you get wet?
It was about three hours. The guides spent maybe ten minutes talking to us when we began the tour, and then off we went.
I got a little bit damp from where I splashed some water off the paddles, but I definitely was on the water and not in it.