WTF-Beta

Seems fair enough on the face of it. If a corporation can afford to pay it's CEO 2000 times what it's average workers make, they should be able to afford higher taxes. I wonder if it really would do anything to help the average worker, though. I'm sure big corporations would find another way to rig things. Capitalism is systemically flawed and I think it's going to take more than this bill to fix things. I suppose it's a start.

https://www.help.senate.gov/dem/newsroom/press/news-sanders-tlaib-introduce-bill-to-end-outrageous-ceo-pay-and-combat-corporate-greed

I pay for TPM, The Guardian, and three substacks: The Contrarians, Robert Reich, and Paul Krugman. WaPo is not trustworthy, and the NYTimes has really questionable judgement, so I bid them farewell last year.

Other sites I visit regularly, but not necessarily often: Politico and ProPublica. I also visit JMG every day but it's free.

Australia bans social media for children under 16.

Although I think it's a very good thing that children (and dare I say, adults) get off social media, I worry about the heavy handedness of bans. But maybe that's what it will take? Personally, I wish the world would just dump all their cell phones, to tell the truth. (I had to enter 10 zeros in a cell phone field when making a covid vaccine appointment a few weeks ago because the number was mandatory!) It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Who knows, maybe in a year from now young Australians will be grateful. Or not.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/09/australia-under-16-social-media-ban-begins-apps-listed

@Daniel It's so beautiful. Elegant design.

Congratulations!

I'll have one of those, please.

Congrats on taking lessons! It's great that you've found a teacher that you like, so important.

What an interesting piece you played. Who is the composer? I think you did a great job!

My piano is being tuned Tuesday and I'm thinking of recording the piece I worked on this semester as well.

Prince Albert, jewelry designer.

Fool.

He built art works. I love his buildings.

RIP

Stephanie and Philip (Chateau Diaries) went to see it at Christie's and included footage in today's video. For anyone so interested.

How this was made
Altered or synthetic content

That's beautiful. Thanks for posting it.

@wtg Oh dear, I figured it out... I wasn't logged in!

... exits sheepishly...

@wtg A question regarding Brave. I'm giving it a spin. It's fast. However, visited links are not greyed out as they should be. Example: coming to this site, all the topics are the same color--nothing I've already read is greyed out, so it's hard to know if there are new posts anywhere.

Is this the same for you? Did you have to do something to fix it?

@ShiroKuro said in Windows 11:

Also, in MS Word, I feel like MS's grammar checker comes up with incorrect suggestions more than it used to. I ignore them, but I notice the inaccuracy more. I type fast and sloppy, so in the past the grammar checker + spell check were pretty helpful but much less so now.

I noticed the incorrect grammar suggestions when I was using Chrome. It was very annoying.

Finally, not everyone is thrilled with Windows 11 being turned into an AI-agentic operating system. Despite all the AI hype, some people don't want AI second-guessing their every move or reporting on their work to Microsoft.

No kidding.

It's been over a month since I switched to Linux Mint with the Cinnamon UI. Since most of my time on the computer is now spent in a browser, there is little difference in look and feel. The only difference is I'm using Firefox instead of Chrome or Edge. Almost every software is going to have a few annoyances. Firefox is no different, but the adblock extension works well with it, and that (besides security) is my highest priority.

I am very happy I switched over to Linux. For decades all the programs I wrote at work were meant to run on Linux, so although I was not the systems person, I knew enough to get around. That helps. It's not entirely foreign to me. Plus, I was always comfortable with the command line because I started programming pre-Windows. (Command line knowledge is not entirely necessary to run a Linux UI, but it's helpful.)

Mint has been taking little longer to boot than my Windows OS did so I'm looking into that. I ran all the pending updates and switched to a local mirror, but it still takes a little longer. I may try one of the other distributions at some point, for comparison. But for now, I'm pleased with Mint/Cinnamon.

eta: Mint comes with a great photo editor for free: Gimp. But unlike Photoscape, that I used on Windows, it is sophisticated enough to sport something of a learning curve. I'm still learning.

Full on decorating mood here. I find it a great way to brighten up the shorter and shorter days. We should have more big festivals.

Both trees are up and now decorated (living room and dining room). I decided not to put up the silver tree in the kitchen this year. After 5 or 6 years in the kitchen for the season it has picked up a greased dusty look. So I put a 3' holiday topiary on the kitchen work table. The village is displayed in the book shelf again as I really enojoyed it last year. The santa collection sit atop one of the antique sewing machines. A swag over my desk. And a few bits and bobs here and there. Pics to come.