@Bernard said: Fourteen, but a few will not be started up so probably around 12. Ok you win! that’s a lot! Another thing I forgot is our outdoor lights, which are on a timer. I think they’re supposed to adjust automatically, but if memory serves, last year, I had to adjust them manually.

@kluurs holy cow! That’s a crazy huge number! also sounds like fun. In the end, we only had the two groups. There are some families with kids in the neighborhood, but we are at the end of our street. And we didn’t have decorations up earlier, so those factors might be part of it. Oh, and our immediate neighbors next door have two daughters but they are away, and our across-the-street neighbors don’t have kids. So maybe I could have predicted this, but we had more last year so I wasn’t expecting our turn out to be this low. There are two places in town (not our neighborhood but along the commute to work) that do amazing Halloween displays, one with a huge selection of those massive balloon characters, very very cute, young kid-friendly. The other is the scary kind, with giant skeletons, a skeleton dinosaur, a scarecrow man that looks like its must be 10 feet tall. I wonder how many visitors those places get.

We don't have vote-by-mail nor early voting nor absentee voting (except for a handful of special reasons).

California update. More than 4 in 10 names flagged as possible noncitizen voters in California by the Trump administration cannot be found on the state’s voter rolls, according to a legal filing Saturday by an immigrant-rights group. It’s the first outside analysis of a list that the Department of Justice has used to threaten prosecution of election officials. The analysis also found that thousands of U.S. citizens appear to be flagged as ineligible to vote on the government’s list. The contention was made in a filing by two data analysts at the University of California, Los Angeles. They analyzed the 20,930 names that the department demanded that California election officials treat as possible illegal voters by separating their ballots during the vote count on Election Day. https://apnews.com/article/california-justice-department-noncitizen-voters-midterms-45b31d5aefb03723f0e59f6084e918d4

We’ve had two groups so far, and one of them was three boys not in costumes (they looked to be maybe 13 y/o and seemed sheepish!) There’s only 10 minutes left. Phooey!

Nevada and Connecticut won't for long. Link to video We get an extra hour of sleep tonight. Yeah.

@Steve-Miller said: Absolutely not. You must have the jawline. Or be a female pop star if some rumors are to be believed. What a circus.

Link to video

Van gay

I'll let someone else go there....

I remember the power going out in NYS during winters. That was awful.

Also, I disagree with his his Oprah️ line... if only because Nicki Minaj showed us who she was the first time, and that was long before her transformation for lack of a better word. And, he's self-righteous. And, nevermind his own politics. Suffice it to say that he's a hypocrite.

I'd love to hear Renauda's take on this.

A bunch more: https://www.boredpanda.com/winning-images-2026-siena-drone-photo-awards/

@jon-nyc said: Just saw this right now. [image: IMG_5070.jpeg] It is difficult to buy that they believe in meritocracy when they pull this crap. Ohio had yet another constitutional amendment on the ballot to require photo ID to vote. We already have to show photo id. I voted against it as I do not believe it belongs in the state constitution.

Espresso machine, Aeropress and pour overs in this house. I have a French Press but It's stainless steel. I will use it every year or so, but I prefer the other methods.