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25 years into the century -
Word association thread -
Word association thread -
Happy Public Domain Day 2026!January 1, 2026 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1930 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1925!
On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. The literary highlights range from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying to Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage and the first four Nancy Drew novels. From cartoons and comic strips, the characters Betty Boop, Pluto (originally named Rover), and Blondie and Dagwood made their first appearances. Films from the year featured Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, the Marx Brothers, and John Wayne in his first leading role. Among the public domain compositions are I Got Rhythm, Georgia on My Mind, and Dream a Little Dream of Me. We are also celebrating paintings from Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. Below you can find lists of some of the most notable books, characters, comics, and cartoons, films, songs, sound recordings, and art entering the public domain.
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Anybody doing wild New Year's Eve stuff? -
Word association thread -
Anybody doing wild New Year's Eve stuff? -
Anybody doing wild New Year's Eve stuff? -
Anybody doing wild New Year's Eve stuff?Wild around here could be actually staying awake till midnight.
We've got BBC News on and figure we'll ring in the new year with @andyd .
Just saw Paris and Berlin ringing in....
How about y'all? Partying? Crashing? Playing piano?
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Chopin's Op.72, No. 1@RealPlayer said in Chopin's Op.72, No. 1:
I think the recording is beautiful. By the way, have you seen that video where Seymour Bernstein argues that “hairpins” in Chopin and Brahms might mean rubato instead of crescendo and diminuendo? Head-exploding!
Bernstein is in this video; not sure if it's the specific one you were referring to.
Link to video -
Wacky weather@Steve-Miller said in Wacky weather:
Let us now bow our heads and pray for the continued health and wellbeing of my furnace.
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The Chicago kidnappings have begun64 days in Chicago: The story of Operation Midway Blitz
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The 2024 DNC autopsy reportIsn’t going to be released. Not good news.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/30/democratic-party-autopsy-report-2024-election
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Beth MacyBeth Macy stood at a lectern in front of a little more than 50 people in the basement of the Historic Masonic Theatre in this small town some three and a half hours from Capitol Hill. She put her hands in her pockets and clasped them behind her back. She crossed her arms and looked down at her stapled printed pages.
“So,” she said, “you might know me …”
One need not be a citizen of the Appalachia-based 6th Congressional District of Virginia for that to be the case. For a certain class of book-reading American — the type with a taste for deeply reported stories about left-behind parts of the country — the woman running for this seat in the United States House is something of a household name. An award-winning reporter for the Roanoke Times for 25 years, she’s the author of five nonfiction books, including three of particular note: Factory Man, her critically acclaimed 2014 debut about globalization’s ravaging of Virginia’s furniture industry; Dopesick, a 2018 tome on America’s opioid crisis that turned into a Hulu series; and the recently released Paper Girl, a memoir about her own hardscrabble childhood and the plight of her fading Ohio hometown.
If she wins — a big if in a district that hasn’t elected a Democrat since 1990 — Macy, 61, will be the second writer of at least one bestselling book about hard-hit Appalachia to get elected to federal office. The first, of course, is former Ohio senator and current vice president JD Vance. Macy and Vance both grew up in hollowed-out factory towns in families marked by trauma and drama and drinking or drug-doing. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy proved to be a political launching pad; Macy’s books could be, too.
That, though, is about where the Vance-Macy Venn diagram ends. Vance’s lament for Appalachia ultimately set him on a trajectory to the political right, a rise propelled by titans of the tech industry. Macy’s undergirds a New Deal-style liberalism, a career fueled by patrons of up-market bookstores. The headline on a piece Macy once wrote for the New York Times: “I Grew Up Much Like JD Vance. How Did We End Up So Different?” -
Stingless beesCultivated by Indigenous peoples since pre-Columbian times, stingless bees are thought to be key rainforest pollinators, sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem
Espinoza, a chemical biologist, first started researching the bees in 2020, after a colleague asked her to conduct an analysis of their honey, which was being used during the pandemic in Indigenous communities where treatments for Covid were in short supply. She was stunned by the findings.
“I was seeing hundreds of medicinal molecules, like molecules that are known to have some sort of biological medicinal property,” Espinoza recalled. “And the variety was also really wild – these molecules have been known to have antiinflammatory effects or antiviral, antibacterial, antioxidant, even anti-cancer.”
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Wacky weather@Steve-Miller said in Wacky weather:
Boy howdy!
Forecast was 61 and rain, currently like 20 degrees with 50 MPH wind. Wind chill -7! 🥶 Hard little snow pellets whipping around and piling up against the rocks . Forecast has been revised to 25 degrees by 5 PM.
Sharon left for CA this morning and her plane got off despite the wind. I’m on my own for a week and don’t plan to leave the house!
So how's it going? Cleveland was on the national news today. Canopy blew off of a gas station. We sent you our wind. You're welcome.
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The inaugural...Finally got around to making crumpets.
I thought about trying to do DIY rings from tuna cans but today's cans are don't lend themselves to being made into a ring. The old ones were a open cylinder with a sealing lid on the top and one on the bottom. You could remove both and get a serviceable ring. The body and the bottom of the new cans are a single piece and only the top lid can be easily removed.
Picked these up at a thrift shop:
Interesting little beggars. Like English muffins, they are cooked in a skillet but the batter is more like pancake batter than a dough, hence the need for a ring. The leavening agent is baking powder (or soda, depending on the recipe). I think my baking powder is old and has lost its oomph. I didn't get the numerous bubbles one expects in a crumpet. Still, they were pretty tasty and not bad for my first attempt:
eta: This King Arthur recipe looks better than the one I used.
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2020/03/23/sourdough-crumpets
Will try it out for round 2 of crumpets.
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Wacky weather@bernard Do you ever see hoarfrost in your garden? I've only seen it twice, both times when we were up in Door County for a winter visit. It is the most magical thing!
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The planet Mercury@Bernard said in The planet Mercury:
I hate the very first sentence, "Far smaller and closer to the Sun than it should be..."
Should be?
The topic of the article is interesting
Two peas in a pod we are. I had exactly the same thoughts.
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Images of the cosmosIt never ceases to amaze us, the images of the cosmos that amateur astrophotographers are able to capture from their back gardens.
The level of equipment and processing software available to night-sky photographers these days is remarkable, and as a result, there's been a huge increase in the number of people who have taken to capturing the Universe.
And with the advent of smart telescopes, it seems a hobby that was once the preserve of a few has been opened up to many more.
https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/astrophotography/best-images-2025
