I saw that! Grotriman was talking about having a party in July but that never materialized. Maybe I can nudge him or threaten to hold one myself… I’d love to see him again. It’s been ages.

Link to video

@AdagioM Aww, if I had any role in your return to piano, that makes me very happy! And just doing it for you is the perfect reason! But do let us know how it goes and what you're working on!

I see dead people.

I locked myself out of my machine/ toy. "Genius Bar" is my answer. I tried everything else they said. For hours. Did you notice you iPad can sometimes divide security countdowns to 1/2 seconds. I was told I had 8.5 min. I was told I had 8 hrs after some time. No. I don't have days to spend acting like Tom Cruise in an action movie trying to rob a bank in Geneva.

I never heard of a person being fined almost $2 million and doubt anyone else has either. I think I could try to say something else about this but what do you do with something so random and absurd? It's good to know it happened though because now we know it will probably happen again. WTF

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: 8138.jpg]

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

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.

Exactly.

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

AMF.

Well, they were a communist country for the better part of a century. I will make a note to unpack my smallest violin to play for the oligarchs whose assets are seized. I know the subtext is- "Putin bad!" 10 years of Trump the Ubiquitous and- "Putin bad!" have made a long 10 years. I know this is a legitimate news story but Russia didn't practice "capitalism," either before the break up of the USSR, or after.

Interesting. QEII had them. Assume she could have had any breed. That's a recommendation. Not a dog person. Wouldn't know where to begin.

Never heard of him though the character looks familiar. I only saw RHPS once.

So I made the mistake of thinking that closing my Spectrum account would be quicker if I did it over the phone. Oh boy. They put me through to their account retention dept. Bastards. It all started out fine and I thought I was just speaking with someone who would take my directive, tell me what I owed, and close my account. What a spiel she went through. It was insulting. She seemed to forget that I had already switched providers and was only interesting in ending my relation with them. After 3 or 4 times of telling her I was in no way interested in what she had to offer I said, in a well-raised voice (I was fed up) that I'd go to my local office and hung up. The clerk at the local office actually sympathized with me. Apparently Spectrum has been hemorrhaging customers. I looked it up when I got home... Spectrum lost 172,000 internet subscribers in the second quarter of 2026. This follows a loss of 120,000 internet subscribers in the first quarter of 2026. Can't say I'm all that surprised.

Some people are beyond stupid and ignorant. Big Al

As an adult I was in the office of a high school principal long ago. Cracking down on the kids was what he was talking about. Punishment was obviously was motivated him. Education was not on his mind. I think Burnside is an exceptional principal.