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Jim
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Feb 02, 2022 01:01PM
Hopefully there is another in stock. I lost a 10 pack of refurbished 8' LED bulbs in a similar snafu (also UPS) & wound up having to buy new instead for 50% more.
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Nope. It is a popular new model but is in very short supply due to everything going on in the world. The manufacturer has temporarily paused making them.
If it weren't in such short supply, I would buy it from a local shop.
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That stinks. Good luck finding one.Just FYI, but if you right click on the Wordle or Lewdle page & left click on "Save As" & then click OK, you'll download the game to your computer & can play it whenever. It will still only give you 1 word per day & you'll lose all your stats, but it's a good way to save the original game before the NYT gets around to changing it or perhaps locking behind a paywall.
It was 1 degree on Sat morning, 63 yesterday afternoon, & raining all day today with dropping temperatures. By early tomorrow morning, we should be getting ice building up on everything with temps dropping into the low 20s by tomorrow night. Hopefully it will be less than a 1/2" & the wind won't get too bad, but with 2 fronts moving through, it will likely be ugly.
We got lucky & only got about 1/4" of ice. It was 33 degrees all day & the ice only built up on the north or shaded sides of things & the twigs of trees, so no loss of power. The rain stopped a little before dark & we got some light snow. Not sure we even got 1/2". It's been in the low 20s all day, but Sunday is supposed to go up to the mid 40s.
Lexington is just an hour SE of us & they got more ice. It caused some real problems for the buzzards. A few dozen had to be rescued because they got iced up.https://www.wkyt.com/2022/02/04/anima...
My mother is still showing the youngsters how to ride. She's 82 this year & out hunting (fox chasing). If you can zoom in, look at the expression on the face of the guy just behind her. He has his mouth open in a 'wow'.
Banking has sure changed a lot in the past 15 years. That was the last time we changed banks. Our bank got bought out & it's been a major pain switching to a new one. Instead of just dealing with a couple of accounts, there's all the online stuff. Just trying to make a list & checking it took me hours.
Wow, I am seriously impressed by your mother also, good for her! :)
Mod
If you need extra courage to wear a two-two, please note that it is also National Margarita Day!
I find myself on the fence with this one.Archivists Are Putting Terrorist Manifestos Online. Should They Stay There?
After a would-be mass shooter’s manifesto was removed from the Internet Archive, experts question when it's okay to post the writings of violent extremists.
By Claire Woodcock
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvn5g...
I hate to see content repressed, but I'm thinking a good solution might just be to lock such things away for a decade or so & then see if making it public seems advisable.
I was given the Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How by the publisher free for a review. Kaczynski didn't get any of the proceeds though, so I decided to read it & found some of it really interesting. We saw many of the same problems, but differed radically in our solutions. I wound up skimming & finally gave it a 1 star review.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
In many ways, it reminds me of the ethical arguments about using Nazi experimental data.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/...
I can understand the abhorrence of using it, but it is the most thorough research of cold water survival ever undertaken & some say it's saved lives. Tough calls.
Mod
Another interesting bit of trivia from that book: Kaczynski's brother recognized him in print from his unusual way of saying "You can't eat your cake and have it too" rather than the more common form of that phrase. He is correct that it makes more sense that way. I was just reading an essay from Ursula LeGuin's blog in which she makes the same point. She never understood the phrase until she also re-wrote it that way. (I also long had trouble understanding that phrase.)
According to Wikipedia it was James Fitzgerald that first noticed the unusual ordering by the Unabomber: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_c...Was anything of scientific value gained from MKUltra? I had the impression it was mostly the CIA being on a power trip.
Mod
Dunno, but I doubt it.
The book above does not repeat the (plausible, but I think unproven) claim that Henry Murray's work was part of MKUltra.
Kaczynski's brother, by the way, was also a recluse. According to the book, he lived for years in a grave-sized hole in the ground in Texas.
Jim wrote: "I find myself on the fence with this one.Archivists Are Putting Terrorist Manifestos Online. Should They Stay There?"
I guess with the modern spread of the internet, everyone who really wants to get any prohibited book will get it. Instead, the way Germans use with Mein Kampf - reprinting it with massive comments where and why it is wrong
Repression never works. The material always finds its way to the surface. The best way to increase sales of a book is to ban it. As for the various uses of research from the Nazis and the like, it is a damn near impossible answer. I have had this discussion more than once in college and the response is that is not ethical. My response was along the lines of would it not be better to not let those that died die in vain? I have bounced back and forth multiple times. I have pretty much landed it is better to let the research die in vain because it dehumanizes the victims to research animals and that dehumanizes us all.As for MEIN KAMPH and the like, better to have it out and about so the lesson of history may be taught and learned in the light of day than to fester in the dark.
Mod
Difficult choice. In the book I mentioned above, it is said that some of the only research we have available on how to revive someone from deep hypothermia comes from horribly unethical research done by Nazis in the camps.
Though, with the passage of time, those techniques have been tried and tested in emergency situations, so maybe that old research isn't really being used anymore.
As I understood it, the article wasn't so much talking about banning anything as just not preserving or publishing it. I think that's an important distinction. In time, it may work out to be the same thing since even the Internet forgets or at least the item becomes very difficult to find.I always try to remember that's what not acceptable to our way of thinking today might well be in the future. Sexual attitudes provide many examples of this. In the 1950s, being gay was actually a crime. Today any one over 18 can have their life completely ruined if they're even accused of having sex with anyone under 18, but 50 years ago, it wasn't such a big deal.
Even disgusting stuff can be instructive or at least satisfy prurient curiosity. I read that Felix Salten, the author of Bambi also wrote Josephine Mutzenbacher or The Story of a Viennese Whore, as Told by Herself, a child porn book. I didn't believe it, but wound up finding it & he most certainly did. It might make a reread of "Bambi" quite different. I've been meaning to get around to that. I know after reading RAH's later books, The Door Into Summer certainly changes.
With Nazi medical research - as I understand it, the majority of dr. Mendle experiments were non-scientific bullshit, like puncturing livers to 'balance humors', so their help to real medicine is small
Today a friend turned me on to Quordle (quordle.com) which is a grid of 4 Wordles that you get 9 tries to solve. you put in 1 word for each try & those letters are colored for each of the 4 words. When you solve one, the letters quit showing up there & you can concentrate on the rest. There are practice sessions, thankfully. I did a couple & then solved today's. It's taken me all 9 guesses to get all 4 words so far. I've managed to get all the Wordles & Lewdles for the past month, too. It's been awfully close a couple of times, though.
Jim wrote: "Today a friend turned me on to Quordle (quordle.com) which is a grid of 4 Wordles that you get 9 tries to solve. you put in 1 word for each try & those letters are colored for each of the 4 words. ..."Quordle and Wordle results have been swamping my family's WhatsApp chat for weeks now! I like the added complexity of guessing multiple words at the same time.
There's an arithmetic variant we play named Nerdle: https://nerdlegame.com/
And a geographic variant we play named Globle: https://globle-game.com/
I just did some googling and found two other recent variants. Absurdle (https://qntm.org/files/absurdle/absur...) where the computer is allowed to change the secret word until you pin it down to one possibility, and Survivle (https://lazyguyy.github.io/survivle/) where you have to try and attain the highest number of guesses while correctly using all prior information.
Wow! Cool! I had no idea there were such variations. I guess I should have expected it, though. Thanks to both of you.
Jim wrote: "Wow! Cool! I had no idea there were such variations. I guess I should have expected it, though. Thanks to both of you."If you think quordle is a bit much, wait til you've tried octordle... https://octordle.com/
I found octordle's layout confusing, but I'm enjoying Nerdle. I also like the geography games, although I do poorly at them even with a Google world map open to cheat off of. It's interesting to see how many new & changed nations there are since I took geography in school.
This new push to stay on DST permanently in the US is just ugly for us since we're early birds & on the western edge of the Eastern Time Zone. I was sure others felt as we did, but hadn't seen any articles about it until this one:https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet...
Mod
This novel is written as a series of letters and journal entries spanning May 3 to November 10. We will discuss each entry on the day it was written
More info and discussion thread is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Ed, doest it mean that the book discussion for Dracula will last for 6 months, from May to November!?
Mod
Yes. And we can only talk about the parts that have happened up to that date. We've done a similar thing reading "A night in lonesome october" one chapter per day, and it was fun.
This might be fun, or might fizzle out.
Ed wrote: "Tomorrow I will start a day-by-day reading of Dracula with a different group. (It isn't SF, so doesn't belong here.) You can join us...."great idea
Ed wrote: "Austin wrote: "Ed, doest it mean that the book discussion for Dracula will last for 6 months, from May to November!?"Yes. And we can only talk about the parts that have happened up to that date. ..."
That might actually work well.
I like the sound of this - a read in "real time" :)
I've read A Night in the Lonesome October day by day several times & discussed with a group. That's always been great even though many of the chapters are really short. Part of the reason is that it's a mystery on many levels, though. It's been a long time since I read Dracula, but I don't recall it being too mysterious.
I'm doing a daily read of Bleak House, with a day off at the end of each installment, and that is a multilayered mystery. It works really well, allowing for lots of discussion in the group. The chapters are all pretty long though, so it will be interesting to see how one over 6 months rather than about 3, works.
Happy Mother's Day to all. It's also our 40th wedding anniversary. Typical for us, we're celebrating by Marg going to a hunter pace, a kind of a horse show.
Jim wrote: "Happy Mother's Day to all. It's also our 40th wedding anniversary. Typical for us, we're celebrating by Marg going to a hunter pace, a kind of a horse show."40 years! Congratulations.
We're up to 44, or will be in late summer. My, how time flies....
We've recently added another Wordle variant to our evening run-through. It's called Heardle and the idea is to guess a song from the first few seconds:https://www.heardle.app
It can be quite challenging as the songs range from the 60's (maybe even earlier) to recent years. We find it's hit or miss: we either get it in the first couple of seconds or we struggle to get it at all. It's definitely easier with 2 people playing.
We had a productive weekend, but a tough one. My wife is getting back surgery on Thursday & we didn't have handicap access to the house. I'd been trying to talk her into letting me put one in for several years, but she was vehemently opposed. A few months ago, I decided to do it anyway, but I haven't been able to get a contractor to do it. Most wouldn't even return calls & I'm not up to building one any more. My boss volunteered to help build it. He & my son-in-law, Josh, worked on it all day under my direction. We got it all done except for the short path to the driveway which was going to be stone dust on gravel. The tractor suddenly wouldn't start Sunday afternoon after running fine in the morning to drill the post holes.
Neither Josh nor I know much about diesel engines, but it seemed like an electrical problem to me. Google to the rescue again. Josh immediately saw a post about how the heat sensor on the coolant goes bad & can cause a fuse to blow, so the tractor won't start. Sure enough, he disconnected it, replaced the fuse, & the tractor started right up, so he was able to finish the base of the ramp.
The lumber prices & availability were terrible. I'd sketched & priced one out several years ago when materials were about $400. Last Friday, I paid almost $1000. The local lumber yard was out of all 14 foot stock. The owner told me they couldn't keep stock in since everyone is building decks even with the prices so high. It's crazy, but at least we got it done.
Wow. I have another story of comparative price-checking. Here's the place where Kathleen and I honeymooned in 1980:https://www.flickr.com/photos/2905046...
Love that bougainvillea heart over the lobby door! Anyway, no idea how much we paid then -- but the cheapest cabins per-night rate, during the week, go for $3150!! Whoa. California! They do give you bkfst....
We celebrated my wifes b-day in their patio dining-room. Lovely room as always, but most of the food was just so-so, sigh. We had lunch there a couple months back & it was amazing!
Jim wrote: "That's crazy, Peter."Ayup. But it truly is a lovely place. The Kennedys slept there! Winston Churchill slept there. I mean, everybody splurges on their honeymoon, at least for the first night.....
Now owned by the Beanie Baby guy. Crazy that you could become a billionaire selling Beanie Babys.... but there you have it.
California!
A big thanks to Ed & Natalie for taking care of everything around here. My health sucks & life has gotten complicated. My wife's surgery was a lot more extensive than they planned on. 6 vertebrae fused instead of 2 & she lost the use of her right leg. She spent a week in the hospital & is now in rehab, probably until early July. Right now it's looking as if it will be a few months before she can walk unassisted, so she broke down & told me I was right about putting in the handicap ramp. Wow! I was right! She can still surprise me after 40 years occasionally.They hired my replacement at work, so I've been busy trying to get him up to speed. Seems like a good fit, but my job was complicated, so there's a lot to learn. There's plenty of chores around the house to deal with, too. Most is minor stuff, but has been done by my wife, so there's a lot to remember. We've also had a heat wave with temps in the mid 90s for most of the week.
That broke today. A mean storm blew in, 1-3/4" rain in about 20 min. Winds so bad that my bathroom vent was leaking & I had to block the dog door. Didn't lose power, thankfully.
It's good you didn't lose power, Jim. There have been some fierce storms in Ontario and Quebec lately too.
Possum hunting is one way to start the day. Pip cornered a young possum by the trash cans. Josh & I tried herding it out, but it evaded us. We had to let the dogs track it down. Lily bit it hard enough to make it play dead so Josh could scoop it up & toss it over the fence. Of course, it let loose its bowels so the backyard stinks. Hopefully the dogs don't think it's a perfume!
Mod
https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...
Margaret finally got home from rehab yesterday. Rio was so happy he burst through the closed dog door to greet her. Amazingly the 6 dogs greetings didn't injure her. They were actually quite good about not jumping on her. All is going well, but the hospital bed is a POS & should be replaced today. It has a big dip in it somehow. Our daughter, Erin, spent the night, but should be able to sleep at home tonight. She & Josh have been great. We couldn't have dealt with all this without them. James, our oldest drove all the way from RI to cover for them this past weekend. Thank goodness for the kids!
Best wishes to Margaret for a speedy recovery!
The Evolution of Science Fiction
Books mentioned in this topic
A History of the English Speaking Peoples, 4 Vols (other topics)Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (other topics)
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? (other topics)
Bleak House (other topics)
A Night in the Lonesome October (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Winston Churchill (other topics)Roger Zelazny (other topics)
Felix Salten (other topics)
Sam Kean (other topics)
Chuck Tingle (other topics)
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