@jon-nyc said: They’re trying to save pixels so they avoided ‘ancient’. we prefer the terms “Persons of Advanced Temporal Status” or “Chronologically Gifted Individuals” to refer to the Experience-Dense Demographic.

What a high price for a small diamond the cut of which is not particularly noteworthy. I think that this might say more about the market than about the diamond however rare the color.

It it the second gutting. Who needs diplomacy when none of your former allies nor your enemies takes you seriously anymore? Who needs diplomacy when you have ineffective foreign policy that makes no sense anyway?

@Axtremus said: @Daniel Oh, good, tell me where (you think or believe) your intelligence and consciousness lie. In my humanity. Is this rocket science?

Ax- Still, articles like this makes me question of the American car industry is still alive only because of protectionism. What politician wants to be known for putting thousands out of work?

This is crazy. It’s not that complicated. I bake with my starter every week or two or three. I rarely if ever use fed starter, it’s usually totally flat, and I feed it after I’ve mixed up the dough and stick it back in the fridge. So it gets fed every week or two ( I almost never feed it if I’m not baking something). I never discard. I make mostly pizza dough and sandwich loaves in a loaf pan, and bagels and sweet rolls.. The bagels and sweet rolls go overnight, but the pizza and bread get baked the same day. I don’t weigh, and I loosely measure, sometimes I add a lot of starter to the mixture if I need to use some up. I add water, then flour until the dough feels right. I used a stand mixture and don’t do stretch and folds. It always works.

+1 re: the DNC

@bernard Did you see that Fetterman was the single vote to decide not to end the Iran debacle? He and his comfy clothes should be in an insane asylum, or he should be in prison for complicity in war crimes, or he should be in a military prison for treason, in my opinion.

I've heard many times the freeholders are often what we would call private equity firms and are practicing financial predation. I'm living where I was born. It's disheartening to see houses of the exact type my family lived in since I was born rise from well under 20k in 1963 to over 400k today. Wages and productivity were decoupled in the '70's with wages flat lining and productivity rising dramatically. People in this country today in general literally are not being paid wages that that equal what it costs to live. This country is and is about to be more so in a foreclosure crisis, also. Our neverending inflation crisis just got dramatically worse, also. This isn't the country where I was raised. It's not prosperous and in fact is holding on by a thread.

@wtg and @bernard I spent so much time on the music school's website, you'd think I was planning to move there! I would love to be in a class with your, Bernard!

Thanks everyone!

Turn on automatic software updates for networked devices. That’s about the best advice that can be given to most casual tech users.

@daniel So I have an Instagram account dedicated to board games. Occasionally small board game companies send me games to play with the understanding that I’ll play the games and post about them. Because modern board games are a fairly niche hobby, it only takes a few thousand followers to become enough of an “influencer” for companies to partner with you. Larger accounts (many still under 10k followers but some of the super popular board gamers influencers that I follow have over 100k followers on instagram ) will be paid to make content about games, sometimes for social media or for Kickstarter campaigns. They get invited to try games before they are released and get lots of free product. And these folks definitely influence purchasing decisions amongst fellow board gamers so they are a huge part of a game company’s marketing budget. Every hobby has their own group of influencers. In niche hobbies they may only have a few thousand followers. But in areas like makeup and fashion they may have millions of views on TikTok. It’s a really bizarre landscape. There is a woman, I believe in China, who shows each product for 1-3 seconds before moving on to the next one. She’s a big deal - though I don’t really get why. But companies pay her to show their product, just for a moment.