@kluurs said: I still have no talent for music - can't sight read, memorize or count effectively, fumble over notes, and terrified of public performance - but I'm still hacking away at the poor piano and enjoying every moment more than ever. Oh! This sounds like me. I started playing around at the piano again a few weeks ago, trying to revive pieces that I played before. I haven’t played the piano in at least a decade. It’s slow going, but I like the way the notes sound. (I remember how some of the pieces should sound, which helps me fumble my way through.)

school

We bought our Whirlpool washer and dryer in 1995 when we moved into this house. They still run like champs. Had to replace a belt once, but that’s it. I’m not buying a new washer and dryer until these plotz. I don’t want electronic circuit boards and bells and whistles. I just want clean clothes.

They are irresistibly beautiful, but tricky. I am reliably informed by MrsA that this white one needs little water and lives pretty much off air! Others she's had have needed a moist bathroom environment. Back in Malaysia one of her uncles had a huge greenhouse devoted to growing them. As it happens there's an orchid show in Durham next Sunday which will be fun [image: 1788234004633-8138.jpg]

It's an astronomy observatory, built around 1750 by Thomas Wright, who was first to describe the Milky Way as many galaxies. Now surrounded by the small village of Westeron. Thomas Wright attended the same school as me (as did the young Stan Laurel for a year or two). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wright_(astronomer)

@Bernard nice! that’s a gorgeous house! Also this: for sale for the first time since being built in 1878 Wow!!

There are videos saying he staged all of this. Ok. This is what people mean when they say it's not true just because you read it on the Internet. I would look at what the retired top level players both male and female have said. Besides. You only need your eye to see if you know what you are looking at that he's in a radically different physical and mental condition than a short time ago. GOAT! He could retire tomorrow and whether he does or not I don't think we're going to see his level of play again in our lifetimes. He's "coming back" but we'll see.

Sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Touché!

On a related note... Since AI chatbots exploded in popularity and Google started offering AI-generated answers, people who research foreign influence campaigns have expressed concern that some governments may poison AI-generated answers with false narratives. But an experiment NPR conducted with NewsGuard, a company that monitors online falsehoods and issues ratings about the reliability of online news sources, found that popular AI chatbots mostly pushed back against false narratives spread by foreign states. AI summaries that are increasingly found at the top of search engine results didn't perform as well. But overall, they still pushed back against state-spread falsehoods a majority of the time. NPR also looked at how often AI-generated answers may have uncritically exposed users to false information compared to traditional search results. The experiment found that AI chatbots outperformed search engines, while AI summaries underperformed. The results suggest that compared with traditional web search links, using AI chatbots with web search access is a "good way for users to start to investigate these issues," said Mike Caulfield, a digital literacy expert at the University of Washington, Bothell, who has tested AI tools for search extensively. NPR's experiment revealed that AI summaries at the top of search engine results may warrant more caution, depending on the product. https://www.npr.org/2026/08/30/nx-s1-5876436/chatbots-search-propaganda

@realplayer Bike helmets FTW. Analogous to seatbelts. A seatbelt and passenger front airbag saved my life ten years ago. Be safe.

Omg.

Exactly.

The joys of property ownership Fix the leaks! Sounds like a new mattress ought to be high up on your list!

My Ting came from State Farm too. It also has a $1,000 remediation allowance if it finds an issue.

AMF.

@DougG said: Great, now Jon’s last post expects me to come up with a rhyme for “lits”. I’m pretty sure there isn’t one. Could this be the end of the word association thread?