Thanks for explaining that, jon.

Friday Saturday and Sunday in London all hit 30 degrees. Some relief today as 23 forecast. Let me bore you all with my first world misfortune. Wife flying 11am Saturday on SIA. "Let's get the super-fast Queen Elizabeth line"... 6.20am we walked past our car to tube. Got to Paddington no problem then told both tubes to Heatrow were down. Shambles, absolute nightmare, tube stopped at Hayes station one stop away from Heathrow. Up the stairs, one young lad the only visible member of staff. We stood in the sun with hundreds of other people waiting (with suitcases, increasingly hot &panicked) for a replacement bus service. After an hour waiting & literally unable to get on a bus, we ordered an Uber, shared with a young American on his way to Chicago to visit girlfriend. Our driver was just great, sailed past stationary three lane traffic and into terminal 2 drop-off by a clever back way, taking only 10 minutes. God knows what foreigners think of our inability to cope with incidents (flooding at Heathrow, obviously can't get an emergency plumber out early on Saturday). Anyway Mrs A got through baggage in 2 minutes and away she went. Guess what? I joined a couple of hundred weary frustrated arrivals with suitcases queuing (another hour of joy) for the replacement bus service back to Hayes tube. In full sun. I use the word queuing loosely as the bus drivers are incapable of stopping at the sign, just anywhere within 20ft either side of the sign will do. Pot luck if you were by the doors when it stopped. Given the traffic I witnessed, driving may not have got us there in time. Six hours after leaving the house I was in a cafe in Covent Garden trying to chill (in every sense of the word) with daughter, not really hiding her amusement very well. She has the daily joy of London Transport's unpredictability.

Wowza Beautiful pink I'm currently in London so may see a few things. Meanwhile the weekend FT suggested some gardening books [image: 1780290633045-20260531_141601.jpg]

It wasn't that long ago that people would show disdain towards anyone who used Google, or god forbid, Wikipedia, to get answers to bolster their point of views. Now here we are (not me, but you already know that) fully embracing a system based on stolen goods that believes it's own lies. How times have changed.

Chronos beats his time drum and I'll let you in on an arcane fact few people know. Time can't be measured. There's no begining where it could "start" and so there's likewise no "stop" point, either. It's always changing based on the solar system, also, so even if you hypothetically found a stating point, it would be wrong in an instant. Kairos was apparently the Greeks' answer to this problem. He makes time definite by choosing his timing. It's not an easy thing to do and I imagine it's become even more difficult as kind of "analysis paralysis" can develop as society becomes an instrument of distraction in itself. I love classics. I never put much time in it but I do intend to learn Latin (not spoken) and to study classical literature and mythology. My digital Casio got "touched" when I was moving it and started to chime on the hour. I don't argue with it.

@Big_Al said: I sometimes think of people I knew and have met on the various forums over the years. Then, I wonder where many of them are now. I was just thinking the same thing a couple of days ago and thought about starting a thread about it. I thought maybe some folks keep in touch with people who no longer post here. I'd love to hear how they're doing.

Since they're a buch of con artists who don't believe in their own "conservative ideas" and a bunch of psychopaths (along with plenty of Democrats) who when you say "war crimes," they hear, "It's Sunday," I guess they have no choice (especially being authoritarian and/or Christian nationalist maniacs by nature) except to act as if Trump's cult of personality is the glue holding them together. I should probably edit this into several sentences but you get my meaning.

Skimming through, the main difference measured seems to be the acceleration of the hammer just before escapement - that moment when the key disengages from the hammer and it is free to continue on to the string without any connection to the finger. We are talking about the last little bit of motion - around 1/16", though often wider on many pianos. So not just speed, but how much that speed is changing right before it releases to the string. Interesting stuff! (I think this showed up on one of the tech forums when first published)

@wtg said: Anyway, I wonder if people who are immersed in music, have a brain wired for it, and who devote a lot of time and energy to it, see this as the equivalent of cheap wine in the world of piano lessons, and somehow not up to their standards. We need to remember that for some people, cheap wine is totally OK and even enjoyable! Maybe Payam will get folks into playing, enjoying, and spreading piano music and spreading piano music widely. I think that's a good thing. I think some (perhaps a lot) of established teachers are up in arms over Payam because it is promoting itself by propagating blatant falsehoods about traditional and other methods. To suddenly appear and tell everyone they've been doing it wrong with nothing more than flimsy marketing isn't going to settle with people who, as you said, have invested themselves heavily (money and time) in the study of music and teaching it. A good thing because it may get more people interested in piano? There is a limit. They are cheating their teachers by taking 75% of the lesson income. One has to question the quality of the teachers they will obtain. The way I see Payam right now, it's like those "Learn piano in 2 weeks" frauds that comes along every now and then. But if it works for someone, if only to get them interested, that could be seen as a benefit. And as it was pointed out in the video I posted, Payam's method is not all that dissimilar to a lot of standard methods, despite their claims. But I am worried that they will be taking advantage of ignorance. And it does sound like their main interest is financial, not musical.

Not that hard to find out. Just ask the children of professional chefs. The answers are ultimately of little consequence to the general public.

@jon-nyc said: She has the same haircut 67 years later and it looks great in both pictures. That is a life skill I would like to emulate!

@wtg From the brief filed by 35 former federal judges: “The parties have used this lawsuit—which was never an adversarial proceeding over which the Court even had jurisdiction—as a means to allow a “commission” controlled by the President to dole out $1.776 billion in taxpayer dollars without constitutional or congressional authority to do so, and to confer unlawful private benefits to the President and his family by purportedly prohibiting the United States from prosecuting any and all claims against them. And the parties have plainly tried to shield this conduct from necessary judicial scrutiny by short-circuiting this Court’s inquiry into whether the lawsuit is in fact an actual case or controversy by [seeking to dismiss the case] before they announced the “settlement”—clearly in hopes of preventing the Court from ever completing that inquiry, which, if it comes out against the parties, will undo their collusive “settlement.” …. Accordingly, because “[t]he parties’ ‘collusive’ activity perpetrated a fraud on the judicial machinery itself, by fostering an appearance that the litigation involved adverse parties, when, in fact, it did not,” the Court should void its prior dismissal and reopen the case to assess in due course whether a fraud occurred.”

Deeper dive into the points raised by the retired judges: https://www.npr.org/2026/05/30/nx-s1-5839989/judge-review-trump-anti-weaponization-fund And here's their amicus brief: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28176766-motion-from-35-former-federal-judges/

How to escape the trap by Elli Lieberman https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/escalation-trap-pape-and-lieberman-on-iran-war/

I only wish that human beings could bring themselves to admit to themselves and others that they have been and are watching a live streamed genocide in Gaza and other places in Palestine. We were taught to, "never forget." We were taught to believe in international law. We taught ourself that, "holocaust" is a word that no group of human beings owns. The new owner of CBS is a Zionist billionaire that has given more money to the IDF than anyone in history. CBS does not, as no media conglomerate does, operate under the FCC framework that we remember because the framework has been demolished. CBS is now the definition of propaganda. No true journalist can work for it as a reporter. The people who work at CBS now are stenographers. This young person is promising because he hasn't agreed to betray journalism by being a stenographer. I agree completely that everyone must make their way in the world. I understand on the other hand that this is entirely possible to do without supporting a holocaust.

I tried to use it once for otc stuff they sell (can’t even remember what it was) and their website simply wouldn’t let me proceed without a prescription.

@Mik said: Pandora's box was opened from 2015 on. What happened in 2015?

@wtg said: A book about a piano tuner. Thanks, I added it to my list. This reminds me of something I listened to as an audiobook. The title is unfortunately a bit generic, but I really enjoyed it. Love Is Blind, by William Boyd The description makes it just sound like a cheesy romance, but as I recall, there's a lot about piano tuning and music in there that elevated it beyond that. When he is hired as the personal piano tuner for a brilliant pianist, Brodie Moncur suddenly finds himself swept up into a life of luxury that he could never have imagined. But while accompanying his new employer on tours from Paris to St. Petersburg, Brodie falls madly in love with the Russian soprano Lika Blum: beautiful, worldly, seductive—and forbidden. Though seemingly doomed from the start, Brodie’s passion for Lika only grows as their lives become increasingly more intertwined, more secretive, and, finally, more dangerous. A tale of dizzying passion and brutal revenge; of artistic endeavor and the illusions it can create; of the possibilities that life offers and the cruel speed with which they can be snatched away, Love Is Blind is a dazzling work of historical fiction that unfolds across fin de siècle Europe.