WTF-Beta

@ShiroKuro Op 28 No 4 is one of my favorite Preludes.

So I'm not taking cello lessons at the moment, I haven't for a few years and I'm starting to miss it. This fall I plan to enroll in a group piano class at the music school and see who is out there for cello teachers. But I can manage quite well right now without a cello teacher because I know what has to be done, but the climb is slow and steady. Also, my main focus is on piano right now.

I heard this piece "Les larmes de Jacqueline" by Offenbach last month and went looking for the music. The best I could find was a transcription for harmonica and harp written in G clef, but I downloaded it and am in the process of writing it out in F clef and C clef (where necessary) because that's what I'm most comfortable reading for cello. A good exercise in vibrato.

That was really nice, SK. I very much enjoyed listening.

Today I worked on a couple Chopin Waltzes.

@Steve-Miller That sounds great, Steve. I'm glad she won. Was it at TD Garden?

@ChatGPT Like I said, it's rubbish ... based on stolen property.

That was absolutely gorgeous! The orchestra and choir are very good indeed. Thanks for posting this, Rontuner, I'd never heard it before. Beautiful!

How much would you trust this "intelligence"?

History Hit has this series of historians evaluating AI pictures, it's a good series. AI is rubbish.

@Steve-Miller Wow, that's exciting!

That is cool, DougG.

Andy, I've bought ribbons on eBay before.

What with my fascination and love of old, human powered, mechanical things, I have three old typewriters. A Multiplex, a cool one from early in the last century. It has interchangeable font rings which surprised me when I first saw it because I thought Selectrix was the first typewriter to have such a thing. The other cool thing about it is that the striking hammer is spring powered and no matter how light or heavy you press a key, it always makes the same equal impression. I've gotten this one unfrozen but need a small piece of something that the hammer strikes against. I may be looking for a long while.

A bat wing:

And an Underwood No. 5:

Tom Hanks is a big collector of typewriters. He has something like 250 of them.

Ever since my first memories of seeing figure skating on tv in the '60s, which seemed artful and graceful, the sport seems to have slowly been overtaken by athleticism at the expense of art.

So it made me really happy to see this short program yesterday from Alysa Liu. In my mind, this is what skating is. The athletics are there to support grace and beauty. I love this performance so much.

From NYTimes:

The 16-year-old version of herself had the courage to walk away. To no longer be complicit in surrendering her life to the sport at the expense of her happiness. She said goodbye to figure skating after finishing third in the 2022 world championships, done with the grind of the sport.

“Moments like these made me realize 16-year-old me was so right,” Liu said with a proud smile. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t decide to retire for a little bit. So I’m glad that I listened to myself. … I was, like, kind of in my own world and people would always tell me not to make the decisions I made. But I’m really glad. I think I have good intuition. Maybe.”

Taking that time off to find herself made her an artist, iyam.

Because there's such a dearth of good news, I thought a "good news" thread would be in order.

Republican senators seek investigation into Signal leak scandal
Senior GOP figures warn of potential ‘significant political problem’ for Trump administration in rare sign of unrest (The Guardian)

Democrat wins Pennsylvania state senate race in major upset
James Malone triumphed in a district that voted for Trump over Harris by more than 15 points in last November

US supreme court upholds Biden regulation on untraceable ‘ghost guns’
In a 7-2 ruling, the conservative-majority court ruled to crack down on firearm products increasingly used in crimes

Elect a clown, expect a circus. I just hope their own incompetence will bring them down.

Looks like the artist was short on burnt orange.

Guru

Paul Weiss is scum. Trump is in the process of dismantling the justice system, he's already neutralized congress. This is a slow motion coup--he meant it when he told his voters they'd never have to vote again. So this law firm faced with the enormous unconstitutionality of Trump's orders, caves. They aren't worthy.

Another incident:

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Green card holders are officially Lawful Permanent Residents of the United States, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. But being a resident of the United States is very different from being a citizen.

Lewelyn Dixon immigrated from the Philippines to Hawaii 50 years ago. She graduated from Farrington High School and has been working as a lab technician at the University of Washington.

Dixon was returning home to Seattle from a family trip to the Philippines.

“She was there for like a couple of weeks. And then she returned on Feb. 28. And she was stuck in customs,” said her niece, Emily Cristobal.

“We got the news, I think it was March 2, that she go taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and then detained in the Northwestern detainment facility,” she said. “We haven’t officially been told why she’s being held. They just keep saying that they’re waiting for documents.”

https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2025/03/22/immigration-crackdown-now-hitting-green-card-holders/

far

Nice pics!

I love orchids. Used to have a half dozen or so different species, but trying to keep each satisfied according to their needs is quite a task without a greenhouse. I'm down to four now.

The New Hampshire Orchid Society show is next weekend and I haven't made up my mind about attending... the temptation to buy news ones will be great.

After what happened to the German national, who is a legal permanent resident, I would not chance leaving the country with the intention of returning. Not at this time.

And Vance is scary as hell. What they want is the total abolishment of the administrative state, as if the industrial revolution had never happened.

In a 2021 interview with Politico, Vance said Trump – if he were re-elected – should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, [and] every civil servant in the administrative state … and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-deportation-court-ruling

I heard Pam Bondi on NPR this afternoon. Scary as hell.