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Off Key - General Discussion

A place to talk about whatever you want

2.0k Topics 14.2k Posts
  • Working Dogs for Conservation

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    @Big_Al said in Working Dogs for Conservation: I wondered if piqué knows about them or the women at the heart of the organization? They appear to be carpetbaggers. I've spent decades immersed in conservation issues in the region, I've interviewed and/or am friends with all the major players in the state, and I've never heard of a single one of these people. They seem to have little to no connection to Montana or Missoula. And as someone who was on staff of a local non-profit myself in the aughts, I have to wonder if this is some kind of boondoggle (no pun intended). It works like this: Set up a cool-sounding 501c-3 and then write up a bunch of blather in grant proposals to get angel funders and you're off. The staff is ridiculously huge for a project with such a tiny niche. I find that suspicious.
  • The most Canadian town in the US

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    AxtremusA
    See, that's why diversification is so important.
  • Real estate transaction question

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    ShiroKuroS
    @wtg said in Real estate transaction question: But I think it's wise to remember that this is a business deal for all the parties involved. I know that was hard for me! It doesn't feel like just business! Each one of them (buyer, seller, buyer's agent, seller's agent) will be looking out for their own interests. Yep, and this is so hard, because I think people want to trust each other, and it's easy to develop what feels like a friendship with one's agent. But it's important to always keep a healthy skepticism. Your friend is lucky to have had your help! @wtg said in Real estate transaction question: Also the part about the buyer, whether they need the cash for the repair I don't quite understand this. edit: I mean it's ok to be aware of it, but he is not their financial manager. No, but what I meant was that, it's not necessarily only the agents who stand to benefit from the closing credit option, so he doesn't have to interpret his agent's suggestion of that as absolute evidence that he's going to be taken advantage of. The closing credit option could be just what the buyer needs/wants and could make it possible to close the deal. But yes, all the details matter and he should absolutely be paying attention to the small print! (And not just taking his agent's word for each detail)
  • The oldest recipe

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    @AdagioM I’ve found that the IP isn’t great as a slow cooker. It heats from the bottom, there’s no ceramic crock to spread the heat up the sides, and it runs hot. I like the results from a Dutch oven better anyway.
  • People switching parties

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    wtgW
    Karine Jean-Pierre. Dem -> Ind https://www.axios.com/2025/06/04/karine-jean-pierre-independent-new-book
  • His cellphone

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  • Tariffs

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    wtgW
    Starting today, the tax on imported metals is set to jump to 50%, twice what it was yesterday. The president announced the latest trade war offensive Friday, while visiting a US Steel plant outside Pittsburgh. Trump told a crowd of hard-hat wearing steelworkers that a super-sized tax would help keep cheap, imported steel out of the U.S. market. "[It] will even further secure the steel industry in the United States," Trump said. "Nobody is going to get around that." Many more people work in companies that use steel than make it The higher tariffs likely will provide a boost for domestic companies that produce steel and aluminum. But for every steelworker in America, there are about 80 people working for companies that use steel. And their costs are about to go up.. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/04/nx-s1-5422248/trump-steel-aluminum-50-tariffs-double-prices
  • Wyze light bulb cam

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  • Hey Streve

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  • Midcentury modern listing in CA

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    I really quite like it as it is. The lighting and decor make me grin. Could happily holiday in it and enjoy that pool for a month every year. Spotlights in living areas mean lowish ceilings and, while only 6' tall, I am attracted to Georgian-Edwardian bay windowed spacious rooms with picture rails and plastered rose-centered hanging lights. Never been able to afford one of course!
  • Ukraine smashed much of Russia's strategic bomber force

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    rustyfingersR
    Good for Ukraine. Although, US may be equally vulnerable. https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2025-06-03/ukraine-drone-attack-russia-17996048.html
  • Meanwhile, in Canada

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  • When a REAL ID isn't real enough

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    rustyfingersR
    Not regarding Real ID, but there's this lawsuit just filed by the mayor of Newark against the Acting US Attorney for false arrest and malicious prosecution: https://apnews.com/article/newark-mayor-ras-baraka-lawsuit-arrest-immigration-0d17f4adb136b9fefc02ea8b498124ed
  • The eagles have landed. Er, hatched.

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    JodiJ
    She’s back this morning on the tip top of the tree with her sister.
  • Josh Marshall on AI

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    Excellent!
  • Hallerbos Forest in Belgium

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    Spectacular!
  • PSA

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    @Mik Thanks. Yes, you'd think it would be simple enough. My theory is there's something primal to survivorship and in a family when one person passes on (and in the course of nature that person might easily happen to be an elder, with the most money, the most power, who by necessity had separate and different relationships with the survivors). I remember this kind of event when I was 17. My Jewish grandmother passed on and had made a verbal promise to her daughter, my favorite aunt, that the dowager matriarch's attached apartment, and its bespoke cherry wood furniture would become my aunt's. There is no doubt in my mind that this was promised. You'd have to have known my aunt but she would never have lied. She and my uncle got into a shouting match late at night. My uncle's blunt reply to my aunt was-- "You can look at the deed." I was crying and my other aunt put her arms around me and said- "Don't worry. This always happens." It was greeed. He wanted the apartment to be a rental. He continued to rent it out the entire time my aunt was living in the house 33 years later dying of cancer. At some point, she could no longer walk up the stairs. She was then moved to the screen porch. You can't make this up. The formal living room was connected to the porch with French doors. The living room could have been turned into a bedroom. It never entered my uncle's mind to make this accommodation for his sister. By this point, my uncle had five rental apartments and had amassed a small fortune. He could have used NYS law or if there wasn't one (there was one in HI), he could have paid the tenants in the attached apartment to move out before my father and other aunt went to LA to bring my aunt home. I received no condolences when my grandmother died from anyone even my own mother, because her three children couldn't accept the fact she had left me "an unconscionable" percentage of a single $15,000 POD account with six beneficiaries. She had given him me 50k six months before she died. "The family" (from which I was excluded) demanded I renounce whatever was mine from the 15k. My grandmother died after unsuccessful open heart surgery. There wasn't anything wrong with her mind at all. I couldn't and so refused to supplant her decision for theirs. What a terrible thing to demand of a loved one. Then my aunt left me $1,500. The paperwork was complicated and her brother was the executer. He was apoplectic his children didn't receive anything. I'm the only one of my generation who was close to my aunt. I'm the only one who called her and exchanged gifts with her, or sent her cards, or ever visited her in LA (3 times). Why should he have been surprised? Then my mother died. My father (I don't want to speak I'll of the dead, but, yes, this happened) and his brother paid their lawyer to insert a gratuitous "I leave nothing to my son for reasons best known to me." clause in her will. I wasn't a beneficiary in the first place. He needed a letter signed by his children saying we wouldn't contest the will so it could avoid probate (I was told at the time; I've since learned it did go through probate). I was always going to sign it because he was my father and because I had decided long ago we would never be estranged. But to "respond" to his inclusion of this insulting clause, I literally made him wait six months, until he called me fully convinced I wasn't going to do it, and then promptly told him of course I would sign, I didn't want to make trouble for him, yadda, yadda. This might not have been my finest hour but I extracted a price for how he behaved both after my grandmother and my mother had died. I had no feeling of mercy about it. We always maintained a relationship and got very close after my sister died as I've written. I miss him a lot. It's not that I'm in grief per se. He died last October. It's that I feel a kind of empty feeling. I don't know. Maybe I am still grieving. I've become close with my brother's ex-wife who along with the child she and my brother had before their divorce had always been close to my mother and sister. My brother has Stage IV bone cancer. His ex-wife (we've met) and I have become friends and allies. My mother and sister were very fond of her and now I see why. She's the one who told me the cancer is Stage 4. She's confirmed my brother has gone so far as to his child that he gets our father's entire estate. She made sure "they" found me. They didn't even know I was still in touch with my father but he had told her. My father never said one word about my brother's health. My brother did tell me he had to have chemotherapy for 6 days a week for 5 weeks in NYC. But none of this changed his mind that he would and did try to gaslight me into thinking he had inherited everything. This was in bad faith clearly and by now he's lied to me several times to try to keep up with his story. My cousin and I have a good working relationship now but at one point she sent me a long text that was so judgemental and so moralistic (she's 11 years younger than me, fwiw), that I had to put her in her place. Everything's been fine since then. But, yes, what an emotional minefield it can be when someone dies.
  • My 1st job

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    jon, it was "a big deal" grocery in the Hudson Valley and its big competitor was Grand Union. I remember housewives like my mom shopping when their husbands were at work; and I remember the cashiers being women whose husbands were the major earners for their households. We live in a different world today. I worked the night shift. I cleaned the entire butchers' area and then stocked shelves. My best friend since I was 3 (this being the summer) got me the job and we had the same shifts. My favorite part was actually driving the country roads between Poughquag and Arthursburg. I memorized the route almost immediately. My 58 year old brain would be like: what am I doing in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with no pay phone? Lol.
  • Prime 6 briquettes

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    MikM
    I’ve tried them. Not really worth the price. Lump is best.
  • Mobile Homes, the good, the bad, and the ugly

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    My living room will have a farmhouse table smack in the center of the rectangular floorspace. I've had years to plan it. It will be a dining table, drafting table, puzzle table, and desk. The surface will be wood, no press board, no tile, and smooth. Along the outside might be ancillary pieces of furniture for storage, and a comfortable chair and ottoman. This chair will have a small table with its own light fixture. I'd like to have a bookshelf. The kitchens are not large enough for functional dining room tables. The dining room/ dining room table in my parents' house was the center of the life of the house. I want the same thing.