WTF-Beta

Hi, rf! Long time no see. I'm just doing a drive-by here myself.

I've been to Paris a handful of times. It's said that Parisians hate Americans, but that's not true. Parisians hate everyone.

And as for the language ... if I went in to a cafe and tried to order in French, they'd respond in English. Go into the same cafe, the next day, try to order in English ... they'd act as if they don't speak English.

Outside of Paris, the people were friendly and lovely.

I forget who said it, but the saying goes that Paris is a beautiful city that Parisians don't deserve.

The key to scrambled eggs is ricotta cheese. A little milk, some ricotta, some shredded cheese, low and slow on the stove. The perfect scrambled eggs.

A piano-related thread, very throwback.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/arts/music/frick-piano-jeremy-denk.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/06/texas-county-that-swung-to-trump-grapples-with-immigration-crackdown-after-bakery-is-targeted-00274417

Push will come to shove and we will see if those associates will all take lower-paying positions. Some may, some will not.

Deleting apps may not help. They can demand access to a foreign citizen’s Facebook and Twitter accounts as a condition of entry, even if it’s not on your phone.

And it’d be even worse to lie and say you don’t have an account, and then get caught.

There was a very good analysis that I saw recently. The gist: if you don’t care about due process for non-citizens, you don’t care about it for citizens.

The reason: if there’s no due process for non-citizens, the government can arrest anyone, claim that they aren’t a citizen, and send them to a detention facility in El Salvador without a court hearing.

At a minimum, if someone says they are a citizen, they have to be entitled to a court hearing on whether that’s correct or not.

@pique said in Schumer finally speaks up:

Circumstantial evidence that he's also on the take. We need people in Congress who can't be bought.

I’m going to guess he got told by members of his caucus that they weren’t going to vote against it, and he didn’t want to be against it and lose the vote anyway.

https://us.cnn.com/2025/01/18/health/bird-flu-pet-food-cat-deaths/?dicbo=v2-NvHevcW&hpt=ob_25tp

Just saw this, I hope you're getting better, Chas.

The eye doctor told me I am starting to get cataracts, like almost everyone my age, but that I have a few years before I need the surgery.

I eat it from time to time. I prefer the large curds.

@wtg Interesting, and thanks for doing the research for me!

I am now eating a toasted bagel for dinner (it was refrigerated, not frozen, alas). Commercial, but fresh, so hopefully without the grocery store preservatives that might interfere with resistant starch.

@wtg Thanks, I'd missed this.

Maybe I read too quickly, but why wouldn't bread be the same thing? It's cooked and then cooled. Is it the reheating that does the trick? Wouldn't that mean that toast has resistant starch?

@Mik yup. TJ’s jasmine rice. There are a couple of boxes in the freezer right now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/26/health-care-insurance-prices-patients/

This part struck me:

"all of us, even the relatively healthy, now use a lot of health care. It’s no longer an unexpected need — an insurable risk. It has turned into one of our largest expected needs. Expected needs aren’t insurable."

Let's apply that to other contexts. Isn't hurricane repair in Florida an expected need, by that standard?

I watched it, it was really great and had a couple of terrific performances. Too violent for Mary Anna, though.

Time-shifting means that we choose to celebrate on a different day. Example: if we are in different places on one of our birthdays, we designate a different day as the birthday day in that year. We are not bound by the strictures of the calendar.

Is ChatGPT a a member with posting privileges?

I do not have a problem with him reclaiming names of accounts. It’s a free service, and Twitter is not the government. You get what you pay for.

I would have a major problem, though, if he decided to commit fraud and pretend that the account was still owned by the original owner and posted under it.