Yeah. Like any of these exciting birdy anomalies there'll be a lonely end. I'll never be a twitcher making a list. Birds are so fragile even in their usual ideal environment, always living near the edge.

I associate croutons more with Caesar salad than soup. Oyster crackers or saltines are what I amend soup with more frequently. Dried bread cubes are most likely to become bread pudding or a strada in our home. Big Al

I tend to agree with Andy. I've seen a lot of art that I like. I will say that I have a long time fondness for impressionists. [image: 1770915955183-cd6232ed-475e-46bd-b44a-20b7d4c79c29-image.png] Renoir's Young Girl in Pink is in the Carnegie Museum of Art's collection and I tend to walk past it when I visit the galleries. I've liked it ever since I first saw it when I was a college student and used to wander through the museums when I had a break from classes. Big Al

Nothing. [image: 1770914638379-2111.jpg]

So much stupidity. If AI takes over it's because stupid people will let it take over. They will swallow the lie that it will make our lives so much better. It won't. Because we don't know how to handle it. We don't understand it's proper roll in society. It's the same with all technological advance. There is always a down side (sometimes a big one) that gets swept under the rug and ignored because it's so much fun to play with shiny new toys and all the money they can make. Look at computers. Damned useful; sometimes people do outright fabulous things with them. The internet, ditto. Cell phones, maybe, maybe not. But we've spent decades sweeping all the negative aspects of these technologies under the rug to make sure they work mostly for the benefit of making profits, not the betterment of society. They replaced artisans and skill in many fields, replacing them with heaps of rubbish and inferior goods. I have little faith that our politics will usher in this new technology in a way that benefits society equitably and prioritizes humanity.

Yes, this is a word that's used in Japan, maybe not like the example sentence you suggest, but more like "I'll add this book to my tsundoku pile"

@Bernard said in Musical Interlude — Dick Hyman: Wow. And he plays so much with his eyes closed. I wish had such good blind knowledge of the geography of the keyboard! I noticed that! No dramatic contortions either. Not to mention…isn’t he over 90 years old? Not too shabby.

Very timely. Pull up a chair, this will be long. [image: IMG-5201.jpg] Sharon made this and she got called away before she finished it. She told me to finish it without sending me the recipe. Big chunks of ham, bits of potato (must have taken hours to chop them like that) and the most remarkable broth! Thought it must be a Jacques Pepin recipe, thoroughly enjoyed cutting up the pieces of ham in the bowl. Sprinkled chopped green onions on top. Fantastic! Then she sent the recipe! It’s a standard midwestern crock pot recipe and I generally despise crock pot recipes. Frozen hash browns? Canned soup? Yikes! But - wow! Here’s the recipe [image: IMG-5202.png] A classic midwestern crock pot dump recipe. I would have passed it by but it works! Except… I didn’t add the cream cheese even though Sharon set aside Boursin cheese for the purpose. Cream cheese is fine but Boursin is next level and Sharon is fancy like that. She got mad when I told her I loved it without the cheese. So I had a second bowl. Added the Boursin. Yikes! It’s the richest, most decadent cream of potato soup I’ve ever eaten. Indulgent. Possibly sinful. Absolutely delicious! But for me, it’s better without the cheese. I might tart it up next time with some thyme because I put thyme in everything. But no cheese. Not even Boursin. It’s not Mediterranean. It’s not even healthy but yikes! It’s fantastic and takes no time (thyme) at all!

Hi, @Big-John ! Nice to hear from you. Funny, you crossed my mind just a few weeks ago; I was wondering how you were doing. I saw a picture of lake Michigan along Chicago and was reminded of the time you showed me some sites.

The difference, I suppose, is that the therapists know your insurer is going to pay them.

Thanks for the information! I'd suffer all of it-- if I were rich and young.

All the cool kids on Reddit are naming their starters so I named mine. Right now Bad Barmy is serving as a control to see if the 80° water bath makes any difference. [image: IMG-5198.jpg] That’s Yeastie Boys in the water bath.

@RealPlayer said in What are you reading?: @AndyD Your picture of The Pianist’s Mentor reminded me that there are a number of books on pianism by famous teachers (Neuhaus, Whiteside et al.) and I haven’t read any of them. The ones I’ve glanced at seem kind of dry, and it must be hard to describe fine muscle movements in lively prose. One study, The Great Pianists and Their Technique, does have comments by pupils of Liszt, Chopin and others which are interesting. In my teens I read one and picked out the essence. This is my youthful writing at the back of an address book (in which I listed all the songs I liked A-Z) [image: 1770623505317-20260209_074920-resized.jpg]

@ShiroKuro That's no thread drift. I should change the title to something more generic, like US Olympics. I don't have TV either, so I can only catch the meager offerings NBC posts on YouTube (and it's stingy to say the best). Here is something I'm not getting: They are using drones now for some events. Alpine skiing, for instance. Now, when I watch videos from vloggers I don't hear nary a peep from the drones they use. Why is it, a "professional" outfit like NBC has these drones that whine and wheez and buzz and distract like crazy? Surely, they can either mute the drone footage, or edit out the sound. It seems very sloppy to me. I'd also love it if more than one media outlet were allowed to cover the games.

@Mik said in Alcaraz breaks 88 Year Old Record: That's awesome. I wish we had kept our fantastic seats at the Cincinnati open. We've seen the changing of the guard so many times and so many thrilling matches. But as they said in one of the later Rocky movies, "Time...it's undefeated.". Great line.

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Link to video Omg. She's wonderful.