M
@ShiroKuro said in Breakfast Cereals:
@pique said in Breakfast Cereals:
I started making my own muesli because the premade stuff is so ridiculously expensive.
This is another frustrating thing. It seems like the less sugar something has in it , the more expensive it is.
Quality costs. Sugar and refined flour are cheap.
Just now eating the last perfect peach of 2025. Damn I hate to see sweet corn and peach season end.
That's my breakfast almost every day. - Alpen no sugar added Muesli and fruit. Right now it's 6 ounces of blackberries which are cheap and giant right now. Available at Kroger.
This is my Congressman, Greg Landsman. Ohio is one of the states piloting this. While I do not fully trust him yet I have seen a lot of good signs. If what he says is true about the incentives for the tech company, it's a bad thing.
Link to videoGemini is what I use most often. Itâs very good at simplifying complex technical issues. It even knows a lot more about Epic than Epic would like it to. 
@Piano-Dad said in The Greatest Movie Villain of all Time:
@Mik said in The Greatest Movie Villain of all Time:
Mightg be fun to go together if that's possible. The Sphere is pretty cool.
I will let you know what our plans are when I know them. My wife may be the only one who goes out for the birth because we don't want to impose on them while they are already very stressed. She plans to stay out there and help out for a few weeks afterward. I would not be staying in any event. Work calls back in Virginia.
If we're all out there at the same time we should indeed get together for something. Sphere, dinner, something.
We went to the Darren Aronovsky video that inaugurated the Sphere. Pretty impressive, even if I thought that narrative of the film was preachy preachy and shallow.
Yeah, that film descended into preachiness when it could have been the coolest sci-fi ever. But the Sphere is cool. My daughter's company did a lot of the exhibits in the lobby.
We have a domed theater like that here in the Museum Center, formerly Union Terminal, but about a tenth the size.
I think it is able to consider more factors and ask better questions without them being hard-coded than a simple rules-based software, and yes, the stuff I have seen produces a better explanation in plain language. Whether these improvements materialize in this case remains to be seen.
@Axtremus said in The Greatest Movie Villain of all Time:
@Mik said in The Greatest Movie Villain of all Time:
We're considering seeing Wizard of Oz at the Sphere at Christmas this year.
Would that be the Ariana Grande version?
The first or second movie?
(In any case, I like the first one, and plan to see the second one whenever it comes out.)
No, you're thinking of Wicked. This is the original movie.
I liked the first Wicked movie too, although I thought they really did very little of any significance with all the possibilities of cinema that was not done with the limitations of the stage version. It didn't tell the story any better or improve the musical numbers.
No, I just found it, but isn't it great? We're considering seeing Wizard of Oz at the Sphere at Christmas this year. This puts a whole new spin on it.
Whoâs the greatest movie villain of all time? Forget Darth Vader. Forget Hannibal Lecter. Forget Voldemort. The real answer? Glinda â yes, Glinda the so-called âGood Witchâ of the North. The one in the sparkly pink gown, smiling sweetly, pretending to be everyoneâs friend. Itâs always the ones with the tiaras youâve got to watch out for.
Think about it. She shows up all floaty and radiant in her bubble like some kind of celestial savior, and within minutes sheâs playing a game of cosmic chess where Dorothy is the disposable pawn. The poor girl has just been dropped into a land of technicolor nightmares, barely processing the fact that a house killed someone, and Glindaâs already scheming. First order of business? Magically slap those ruby slippers onto Dorothyâs feet. Without permission. No explanation, no warning, just â zap. And then, with a perfectly innocent smile, she casually drops the bombshell: âOh, and by the way, you canât take them off.â Convenient, right? Almost like she wanted the Wicked Witch of the West to lose her mind. Almost like she knew Dorothy was about to become a walking bullseye.
Then comes the kicker: Glinda sends this Kansas farm girl â armed with nothing but a dog, a picnic basket, and questionable footwear â on what is essentially a suicide mission. âFollow the yellow brick road,â she says, like itâs a Sunday stroll. No mention of flying monkeys. No mention of poison poppies. No mention of, oh, I donât know, the murderous sorceress who now has a personal vendetta against her. Dorothy doesnât need a travel itinerary; she needs a restraining order and maybe a Kevlar vest. But Glinda? She doesnât care. As long as someone else handles the West Witch problem, sheâs free to keep floating around in her glitter bubble, polishing her crown and humming lullabies to herself.
And hereâs the real punch in the gut: Dorothy didnât even need to go through any of it. Not the trek. Not the Wizard. Not the entire Technicolor death march. She could have clicked those heels and gone home from the start. But Glinda conveniently leaves that little detail out until Dorothy has risked life, limb, and sanity. Why? Maybe Glinda wanted her occupied. Maybe she needed a distraction. Or maybe â and this is where it gets delicious â she wanted the West Witch weakened, distracted, and ultimately destroyed, without lifting a perfectly manicured finger.
But you want real proof of Glindaâs dark side? Go back to their very first exchange. Dorothy, sweet, polite, Midwestern Dorothy, says: âIâve never heard of a beautiful witch before.â Innocent, right? Glinda doesnât miss a beat: âOnly bad witches are ugly.â Read that again slowly. What sheâs really saying is: good equals beautiful, bad equals ugly. And then, later, Glinda actually asks Dorothy, âAre you a good witch or a bad witch?â So, letâs unpack this. That means, in Glindaâs sparkly little worldview, if Dorothy were pretty, she wouldnât even need to ask. But since she does ask, well⌠she clearly doesnât find Dorothyâs looks reassuring. Yikes. Subtle, Glinda. Real subtle.
By the end, she sails back in like sheâs been orchestrating this entire saga from her crystal ball. Smiles sweetly, waves her wand, and says, âOh, silly me, youâve had the power to go home all along.â And she has the audacity to act like sheâs teaching Dorothy a valuable lesson about self-reliance, as though all those near-death experiences were some kind of personal growth seminar. No, Glinda. Dorothy didnât need a lesson; she needed a straight answer and maybe a cup of tea.
So yes, while movie history loves to paint her as the benevolent fairy godmother, Iâm not buying it. Behind that saccharine smile is the cold calculation of someone who knew exactly what she was doing. She wasnât helping Dorothy. She was using her. The Wicked Witch of the West may have worn black and cackled like a Saturday morning cartoon villain, but Glinda? Glinda played the long game. The quiet ones always do.
And somewhere, high above Oz, sheâs probably still floating in that ridiculous bubble, humming to herself, wondering how long itâll take before anyone else catches on.
Yeah, I've seen hawks get squirrels in my yard too, then go into the greenspace and tear them up. It's pretty funny to watch the young hawks learn to hunt, they're quite inept and often end up chasing squirrels around on the ground.
Because federal computer systems have done little but improve in the last 10 years or so, especially citizen-facing applications. It would, however, be interesting to see the discussions and the written goals leading up to this.
