WTF-Beta

@Steve-Miller - Looks like a great show. Thanks for the pics. I haven't been in years, but the Chicago Botanic Garden also has an orchid show. I loved looking at the various types of plants. I used to grow some of the more common varieties of orchids and had reasonably good luck getting them to bloom. I was even the proud owner of a plant that Mrs. @kluurs gave me when I visited their home for a piano party. I've been winnowing down my house plants little by little. The orchids were the most demanding care-wise, so I ended up selling them on craigslist probably 10 years ago. I still have offshoots of a ficus that I gave Mr wtg when we first started dating in the late 1970s. And the offspring of a clivia that I bought at Home Depot in the 90s. I grew new plants from the seeds. Speaking of which, I need to divide and repot those clivia and find them new homes...

People don't actually die of measles. They generally die from pneumonia, which is a complication that can arise. Less common is measles -induced encephalitis, which can cause serious cognitive impairment, deafness, and death.

I’m not sure it matters anymore. The market for electric cars is way different from the market for Swasticars and Wankpanzers. Let it burn.

The third eaglet has hatched. This video seems appropriate. Link to video From the comments: The method to make this availbable to film without harming the embryo is developed by my grandfather, whose name appears as "professional consultant" ("tudományos tanácsadó), "Dr. Braun Sándor főorvos", (Dept. head. doctor) at the closing titles. He developed the method during his pathology reserach into tumoruous illnesses in his lab, in the Budapest, Péterfy Sándor str. Hospital, Dept. of Pathology, which he led until his early death, and where this film was shot.

Americans are still in the dark about the scope and scale of what Elon Musk is doing with DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, which is working to drastically shrink the size of government by aiming to cut $1 trillion or more in government spending. But there’s some insight into what’s driving Musk — namely, an effort to combat what he referred to as “civilizational suicidal empathy.” During a three-hour interview with the podcaster Joe Rogan released February 28, Musk talked about his deeply held belief in the conspiracy theory that Democrats are working to import as many undocumented immigrants as possible so that they can take over the US government forever. “If they had another four years, they would legalize enough illegals in the swing states to make the swing states not swing states,” Musk told Rogan. “They would just, they would be blue states. Then they would … win the presidential; they’d win the House, the Senate and the presidency.” https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/05/politics/elon-musk-rogan-interview-empathy-doge/index.html

I watched Maddow's interview with him last night. She urged him to visit his doctor for a check up. He said he was experiencing discomfort having been dehydrated and standing on his feet for so long.

Agreed with all that has been said - that the staffing cuts are ill-advised and harmful to a population of people who often may not be technologically capable. Of course, it is also interesting how uninformed the genius behind DOGE appears to be - e.g. not understanding how 8 years could be receiving SS. One saving grace in all of this - if funds could be allocated to develop AI to handle at least some of the issues that people have. Generally, the service component of our government has been on the trailing edge of technology. This is one instance where it could prove beneficial to modify that approach.

I did a lot of work on DVD plants/machinery over the years - pretty much up to when most companies moved production overseas. I remember the techs predicting that those discs wouldn’t last as the process they used was crap

I think this is the same article that @AndyD referenced. Title is different, but the author and text seem to be the same. https://archive.is/pcMoS

@Nina I have An Invitation to Indian Cooking, and everything I've made from it has been delicious. The recipes tend to have a million ingredients, but most of them are spices. If you don't have a solid spice collection, that can be pricey, but if you already have a bunch of spices and dried beans, you can cook a lot of the dishes by buying the meat of chioce, some yogurt, and some cilantry.

I would make it at home, but our Costco carries a local restaurant's version that is excellent. https://pitainn.com/products/ Bonus points, too. If you buy a container of the hummus at Costco and bring your Costco receipt into one of their restaurants, you get six of their fabulous falafel at no charge. Pita Inn's hot sauce is delicious, too.

Stavridis talks Greenland. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/vance-s-comments-in-signal-chat-deteriorating-relationship-with-europe-stavridis/vi-AA1BWKOj?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=fbe4af05be3943d198fbf4e506bbc562&ei=42

Boston baked beans with Boston brown bread. Beans are scratch made; the bread came out of a can - as the good lord intended! [image: 1743268690099-b15e0cb3-e02d-4905-97c5-38f94310182c-image.jpeg]

@DougG said in Well this was sobering: according to this, I died two years ago. See, anomalies like this trips up DOGE when they look at Social Security data.

The emoticon set seems to be null. I don’t see any emoticons at all. Is anyone else having the same issue? Edit: I closed my browser and re-opened it and the old emoticon set has appeared.

@Nina said in Canada’s new PM: I like Carney. He's showing more spine than the US Congress. Check out his interview with Jon Stewart. I’m not sure whether I like him or not but he’s probably the right PM for the moment.

Tangentially related… I have been fascinated by the words for various animals in Ojibwe. Some are related to the sounds the animals make. Baakaakwenh is chicken. (aa is a broad a sound, the “enh” syllable is kind of a nasal short e sound.) When I have heard it spoken, the second syllable is stressed and held for an extra moment. In fact, in some dialects they spell it Baaka’aakwenh. Owl is Kookookoo (oo is somewhere between oo and long o) It is sometimes spelled Gookooko’oo, depending on dialect. Chickadee is Gijigijigaaneshiinh (ii spells the long e sound, e says long a). I am not an Ojibwe speaker but a friend taught me some words several years back and my students and I learn some through the year. But any errors in spelling or pronunciation descriptions are on me.

I like the Guardian. Yahoo News works too.

I'm sure they're going to say they will go through the photos and pull out the "errors". Of course that's a really good use of a federal employee's time, just when we're cutting back the workforce and trying to reduce costs...<insert facepalm here>

“High new and used car prices, along with higher auto loan rates, have left a record number of car owners with $1,000+ monthly payments,” Gulley said. That's pretty bad. I'm not boasting, but I bought a 10-year old car with less than 70k miles on it. 36 month loan, $222/mo. $1k/mo for a car sounds obscene to me.