WTF-Beta

ICE detained 2 in this county yesterday. Not surprised. The ski industry would collapse without immigrants. Restaurants patrons objected. Neighbors objected. "They are hard working people and cause no problems." Of the many immigrants in the county, I know one who walked from Guatemala. She became a maid at Keystone resort, and has worked up way up from that to a management position, married, had kids and is well respected. I don't know her official status as an immigrant.

Who skip childhood vaccination? https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/09/15/childhood-vaccines-parents-post-kff-poll/ The American parents who are choosing to skip or delay vaccines for their children are more likely to home-school their children, be White and very religious, identify as Republican or be under 35, ... [image: 1757972347356-img_7808.jpeg] The CDC says 92.5 percent of kindergartners received their MMR vaccines last school year. But those rates are lower in parts of the country, ... ... but you need 95%+ vaccination rate for herd immunity for MMR to be effective.

@Amanda Thanks, Amanda. My air bag (car didn't have side air bags) did not inflate and I think it's because I was pushed and travelled sideways. I got some closure when I went down to the tow company last week to retrieve my license plates and personal belongings from the car. I really liked that little car, and it was good to see the damage again. It made the verdict of 'totaled' more sensible. AAA has called it a total loss and the amount of the settlement covers the outstanding balance on the loan, plus a couple thousand more. I'm satisfied with that. The car was 11 years old. I had it only 2 years, but still, it had only 83K miles on it. I'm seriously thinking of leasing now. I am not driving anywhere near as much as I did when I first moved here and it seems to me leasing would alleviate the headache of repair costs and angst about breakdowns. I'm thinking another Hyundai. Like I said, I liked the one I had and they are affordable. My rental is a Nissan and it is not for me. (Apologies to anyone for whom Nissan is their car of choice. It's a fine car, but I don't like the exterior styling and there are some control layouts that annoy me. Personal stuff.) Your accident sounds ghastly, Amanda. Glad you are OK. I always hear good things about Camry's.

He is probably alive today because of the rapid research done to mitigate Covid.

Funny thing is, they were getting lunch from local Indian stalls. Of course they were probably legal UK citizens selling the onion bhajis, but there was a touch of irony. If we forcibly removed all nonwhites our society would undoubtedly collapse. However Illegal immigration is a problem and that rally did little to help solve it.

@jon-nyc Well yeah, the way they got paid before AI hasn't changed. But they get paid royalties when someone uses their work in any substantial way. AI's thieving "masterminds" aren't paying royalites for millions of copyrighted words. They're stealing them.

Swatch, limited time tariff edition: Link to video

Innovative, but not something I would want.

Happy belated birthday, @jon-nyc ! I hope you can relax and do something fun after all your traveling is finished! [image: 61Lvy-X0I6L.jpg]

I was a PC user. I then got heavily involved with Apple education with iPad so eventually got a Mac. It took some time to figure out how to do things on my Mac that I already knew how to do on PC. But once I learned those things, I found I far preferred Mac. Now I have to use Windows at work and I HATE IT. I find it is not as intuitive but also that there are so many things that Mac comes with that it just does better than Windows. For example, Mac’s “preview” program has elements of Adobe Acrobat built in. Stuff that you have to buy Acrobat to access on PC. I fell in love with using Mac by taking a class through Apple to become a trainer on MacBook. But similar courses are available at Apple Stores, and they also have online courses you can take. But until I had direct instruction in my Mac I didn’t realize how many cool things I was missing out on. I was just using it as an Internet machine (as well as using Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, which are included rather than being a separate purchase). Once I actually had someone teach me I became a huge fan.

Apple News drives me a little bonkers in their headlines for this news story. Any time this happens the headline is “French government collapses”. I live in a place where this exact same thing can and has happened and it is a FEATURE of our how government works. It’s actually a good thing that means folks have to cross the aisle to get things done. It’s not a “collapse” of government. Obviously the government in France is currently unstable - but the system is working as it was designed to work. /rant

Not so fast . . . https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-12207811 Astrologers say this shift in where the stars appear to be has no bearing on the "tropical zodiac" system. This is what is typically used for horoscopes in the West, and is based on segments of the sky calculated using the equinoxes on Earth.

@Axtremus aaaAAAAACCCCKKKK!

Yep. Exactly what I said about ten posts up ...