Hay, Mik! The house is, in theory, finished. We are still sweeping up after stupid contractor tricks, but that may be an ongoing situation. (Why didn't they insulate under the kitchen floor? Why does the insulation the kitchen wall stop a foot above the floor, causing the water line to the dishwasher to freeze up? We will never know, and we have washed our hands of them. We've got somebody who will fix these things properly.) Overall, though, it's lovely and it's comfortable to live in. We love it, and we really love being in a town where we can walk to groceries, the bank, the dry cleaner, restaurants, the playhouse, the jazz club, yadda yadda yadda. Quirt is ridiculously busy with work. It really is 24/7 for him, whereas I'm going to be able to smear my retirement over the rest of my life. He will probably have to work full-out until he turns it off like a switch. I stopped teaching a year ago this month, although I'm doing some freelance online classes now and then. I've got four book projects in various stages of completion--final editing, drafting, proposal, proposal--but I'm in control of my schedule, so I spend a lot of time traveling to friends and family or having them come here. It's all good! How are you?

I'm only using it for one thing, but I'm thrilled. I've been taking sumatriptan for migraines since 1990, about the time it became available in pill form. It was very expensive. Back then, my insurance mostly defrayed that. It stopped debilitating headaches. Great! "One day, it will be generic," I thought. For the next seventeen or so years, multiple doctors tried to switch me to newer drugs that weren't much different, just time-released or fast-dissolving. This would have extended the time to a generic version. Indefinitely, if I kept saying yes. "No, thank you. This one works." At some point, I received a letter from my insurance company that said, "No matter what your doctor says, we will only cover eight pills a month." I've never received a letter about that about any other drug. It must have been REALLY expensive for them to cover it. The generic date came. The price didn't go down, because the drug company sued. I had gone on COBRA after my divorce and it didn't cover prescriptions, so I was paying $200/month for those eight pills, but they prevented days of debilitating pain, so I forked it over. When they lost the suit, the price went down to generic levels, but I still only got eight pills a month and they'd gotten years of my money at the non-generic rate. I had became very skilled at deciding how bad I needed to feel before I took one of the precious jewels. (Also, I'd gotten prescription insurance again.) We got new insurance last year, and suddenly I could only get 50 mg tablets for the generic price. My usual 100 mg tablets went up to $80/month. I could still only get eight. Tony said, "Have you tried Mark Cuban's outfit?" Well, Mark Cuban sells me 30 pills/month, and they cost $12, including shipping. Just being free of worrying whether I'm going to run out is life-changing.

Sounds delicious and healthy. Going into the bookmarks.

One hallmark of normalization is that you can have a little fun with things. No harm, no foul.

The building is OK. I don't love it. I guess my issue is it more aggrandizes the man rather than his impact on the nation and the times he dealt with. Library for the short attention span public, MTV nation.

It feels like it was designed and decorated by ChatGPT.

Matt Yglesias putt it well - his only qualification is a demonstrated willingness to engage in abuses of power.

60 Minutes ceased being honest journalism decades ago.

Both of these incidents are terrifying to me. I feel like there’s less news attention to ICE’s activities, but the activities themselves continue.

[image: IKQ7HYOFINFIJMSPYHCPTZ4RH4.jpg?auth=5a5fdc2d282f1ada0a865ffc14dec1eb33e9eaea7d92a07926c41c0fccb96409&width=1280&smart=true&quality=90] Big Boy is in our area. https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/here-he-comes-million-pound-steam-locomotive-big-boy-rolls-into-chicago-area-this-week/3943201/ @steve-miller - Coming your way very soon! https://www.cleveland.com/news/2026/06/big-boy-no-4014s-northeast-ohio-route-is-set-see-the-towns-it-will-roll-through.html

I knew fog was creepy. Did not know it was infected.

Erin Brockovich gets involved: https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/erin-brockovich-says-people-angry-165957745.html For now she's not taking side (at least not overtly). She's just advocating for more transparency and crowd-sourcing information about plans for data centers.

Good use of ill-gotten gains. I've read that the wine industry in Georgia is booming. Never had one but I'm sure we will.

Well, "science" is a interesting topic but like any sub-branch of any epistemological system, science is not an exact science (pun intended). Questions like these aren't "solved" and then set in stone or displayed in a glass case. "Measurements suggested the giant planet's rotation rate was changing over time, as if Saturn were somehow speeding up or slowing down. That puzzling result left scientists searching for answers." I'd venture to say it appeared to be "changing" in fact because it was and is always changing. This isn't so much a mystery as it is the nature of the universe. I just posted about this topic in my Chronos and Kairos thread. https://wtf.coffee-room.com/topic/3681/kairos-the-ancient-greek-art-of-knowing-when-to-act#:~:text=Kairos%3A The-,ancient,-Greek art of We human beings have to be vigilant continuously about what Karl Marx (the writer whose work is canonical among intellectuals, not the "communist" we all love to hate) called reification. Reification involves setting up a continual feedback loop where we "play back" what we think we know in a way that the only outcome is our belief, whatever it was when we started believing it, can only end up being fallaciously reinforced. The planets, the galaxy, the universe-- are never static and if a human being truly wanted to map their machinations, he or she would die trying...

Highd up to 89, scattered showers. Lows around 80, but for some reason the lows are are going to drop to low to mid 70s for several days. That will be nice. Not worried about hurricane season. I'm actually more worried about tornadoes after experiencing one.

I'm a layperson and even I can tell you the applicable law is as plain as day.

He took the Commissioner of Social Security (or Acting... I should know this) and gave him a second job sinultaniously with a new (never existed before) title-- "CEO of the IRS." He was going to dispuse the monies through SSA payments.