WTF-Beta

Cleaned out a corner cupboard last week and ran across the pasta machine that I haven't used in many years. So, I made pasta earlier today, cooked it up for dinner. One forgets how easy it is and now I'm retired it's no big deal to make pasta around noon and have it ready for dinner. It will remain secured to the work surface for now, where I intend to use it regularly.

I had to go out to close the shed door which I'd left open this afternoon and, more importantly, fetch the bottle of wine that I left in the car from shopping yesterday. Flipped on the lights for the deck and there were three raccoons cautiously edging their way towards the bird feeding area. Aw. I interrupted their supper. I made sure to shut the lights as soon as I got back in so they can have a nosh.

Wow! What a fantastic trip and what a superb photo journal. Thanks for sharing.

I absolutely love this charteuse-y color:

I've seen some Kolodko sculptures in the NYC subway system.

@Bootsy Hi Bootsy! I have no doubts your playing was top notch.

I had my second Shingrix last week. Easy peasy, and I had the usual chuckle over the buildup of apprehension over it (the idea always seems worse than the bite.).

I got the vaccine around 1 pm and I was fine the rest the day. In fact, I was feeling smug about not having any side effects and sort of boasted about it on another site.

Well. I woke up a few hours after I'd gone to bed with chills just about to the point of physically shaking, weakness, aches, nausea. I'd spoken too soon. It hit me hard and I was under the weather for 2.5 days, although only the first night was really bad.

But it is done and I'm glad for it.

@pique said in Fermented foods:

"Yogurt works, but plain yogurt tastes awful without a whole lot of sugar which seems to defeat the purpose.

I only buy plain yogurt, the amount of sugar in flavored yogurts is awful. Brown Cow brand is my favorite, comes with a layer of cream across the top. Lots of water leaches out of it though, once the cream layer has been broken. I mix in a few teaspoons of orange marmalade or strawberry jam or top it with maple syrup. I know that adds sugar but at least I can control it.

@wtg I was referring to the 2-legged ones!

@Steve-Miller Many the time I saw rats on the subway tracks waiting for the train in the NYC subway system!

D.C. is especially hard it with vermin at the moment.

Cheese, yoghurt, wine, kombucha, sauerkraut to name a few.

"AI" as it's known may not go away, and it may be helpful to some people, but it will continue to be little more than an expensive, fancy-pants data retrieval system that steals copyrighted material for profitable ends. Hopefully, our lawmakers will do their job and make sure it is appropriately and strongly regulated and that they put a stop to the wholesale theft.

The last copilot-generated search result I looked at (I always prefix my searches these days with "-ai -copilot" but I forgot this time) said something coherent followed by a parenthetical, "According to Wikipedia". Had me LOLing.

I recommend the following opinion as a counter to the constant hype...

https://unherd.com/2025/08/how-to-stopper-the-ai-genie/?lang=us

But as recent tests and studies of LLMs have shown, this technology is not the pathway to AGI that we were promised. The hopes that “scaling”, “emergent properties” and “reasoning” would lead to AGI have all failed. The path to AGI lies elsewhere, if anywhere. As Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at Meta, has said: “There’s absolutely no way that autoregressive LLMs… will reach human intelligence. It’s just not going to happen.”

The first part of this episode of Hands is about Belleek.

I like the store Vivienne from Chateau Love runs online. She sells antique jewelry. Nothing exorbitant in price, just really nice. There's a pair of mother of pearl cufflinks 4 or 5 pages down that I like. She has quite a turnover of merchandise so there's always a lot of "SOLD" items but she stocks it frequently.

https://www.chateau-love.com/antiquejewelry

Some interesting reading here, which I will read in its entirety later ...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273606710_The_rate_of_fading_of_natural_dyes

Let me qualify what I hastily wrote above...

If the weaving is wool--a protein fiber--it will not fade as fast as cotton or linen or other cellulose fiber.

I was referring to natural dyes; I don't know about synthetic dyes. Also, I'm basing this on the fact that protein fibers take natural dyes more readily than cellulose fibers. It could be that my conclusion about light fastness is too broad and that some natural dyes are more lightfast on protein than cellulose and vice versa.

No.

It's going to be traumatic if this whole thing turns out to be a bubble that pops.

Let's hope for some trauma. A plurality of Americans aren't interest in AI and don't want it. At least let's hope for some very strong regulation.

Any light can cause fading of both natural and man-made pigments, albeit much faster on natural pigment. (I have wallpaper, recently made, that comes with a warning about fading.) But keeping it out of direct sun light will help prolong the richness of color. Some dyes will retain some color a long time if kept in minimal light conditions. Here's a fascinating example:

1700-year-old sock

If the weaving is wool--a protein fiber--it will not fade as fast as cotton or linen or other cellulose fiber.

The Beebalm looks nice with the Goldenrod squatters (I will leave them where they've taken up residence, they do look good here).

Echinacea is one of my favorites.

After several mishaps and failed attempts, I finally have Hydrangea.

And then this happened! I put the Amaryllis outside for the summer to store energy and it blossomed!! I suspect this may mean no Christmas blossoms from this one.

@AndyD A stunning Dahlia!

He's so f'n sick.