W
There's a sweet autumn clematis way back in the yard. There was a trellis there but it fell over and broke over the winter. I never got around to putting another one in, so the clematis ended up becoming part groundcover/part climbing vine. It even headed over to a nearby arbor where I have a couple of other sweet autumns started.
I'll do something different next year, but for now I think it looks kind of neat! Smells wonderful, too.
Hot diggity dog.
On May 24, Donald Trump Jr. was celebrating in the Bahamas, as scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor caps performed for him and his guests. It was the last night of his wedding, a lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands. A five-tier funfetti cake had been airlifted in from Florida, and helicopters and seaplanes descended on the islands before guests settled into their oceanfront villas. That night on the beach, Trump Jr. lifted his bride into the air while fireworks launched from a barge over the sea.
“It was everything we dreamed of and more,” his wife later wrote on Instagram.
That dream was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin.
Kremlev footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the event. The oligarch paid to rent out one of the private islands, where a reception was held and where guests slept. He also covered other big-ticket items, like the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event. Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions.
The guest list numbered around 50. It included Trump Jr.’s brother-in-law Jared Kushner, Eric Trump — and Kremlev, an imposing man with a shaved head who speaks limited English. The oligarch was part of a large group whose presence puzzled other attendees. They sometimes stood off by themselves, speaking Russian.
“It was really small, like, just really close friends,” Trump Jr. later said on his podcast. “Tried to keep it really tight. And it was just awesome.”
Kremlev’s previously unreported relationship with Trump Jr. represents an extraordinary development: a member of Putin’s circle financially supporting the president’s son and gaining intimate access to the Trump family. For a decade, Putin’s government, regarded as a chief adversary of the U.S., has been accused of efforts to influence American elections. Attempts by Russia to make inroads with the Trumps before the 2016 election exploded into controversy that dogged much of the president’s first term.
Shortly after Canada and America became embroiled in the worst bilateral trade war in their modern history, the secure phones of Europe’s top leaders lit up with a trans-Atlantic call. Mark Carney was pushing to take Canada’s relationship with the EU to the next level—a bold gambit to rewire the economic cabling of the Western alliance.
For months, the Canadian prime minister had held private conversations with almost every major European leader—from France to Italy, Germany and Scandinavia and even some of the continent’s lesser-known royals—on how to more deeply plug Canada and its 41 million people into Europe’s 27-nation club.
Now, Carney was accelerating Canada’s pivot to Europe, matchmaking a shotgun marriage to offset the pain of its divorce with America. In effect, a threat to make Canada the 51st state is pushing America’s northern neighbor so close to Europe that leaders have begun to half-in-jest dub it the EU’s newest member.
Carney has instructed his special envoy to Europe to scope out the most ambitious possibilities short of full membership in the EU or its common market, according to people familiar with the matter. The details are still being sketched by technical working groups for what the prime minister has told his aides will be the reorienting of an economy and a society that for half a century has been dominated by the U.S.
The full scope of the talks, often mired in technical details like European rules-of-origin codes, has barely registered in the White House. But it adds up to one of the world’s most significant—and risky—reactions to the second Trump presidency. Canada ships two-thirds of its exports across the world’s longest land border. The two countries have been twin pillars of the economic, geostrategic alliance called the West, and the White House is wagering their interdependencies will drag Canada back to the negotiating table, concessions in hand.
Carney—who studied in Europe, met his wife in the U.K. and ran the Bank of England for seven years—is placing a counter-bet that he can shift the country once known as British North America back toward the Old Continent.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely if Canada was the 28th state of the European Union rather than the 51st state of the United States?” asked Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who speaks regularly with Carney.
@Bernard Great idea.
I have a collection of tea cosies in various sizes that I picked up when I was in England many years ago. They do a great job of keeping my tea warm from the first cup to the last.
I couldn't find any way to mount a Simplisafe door sensor on the inside of the garage service door. I could do it on the outside, but the sensor isn't waterproof.
I came across a guy who is using his design skills and his 3D printer to make stuff like a waterproof case for various sensor and devices.
His inaugural product was this little stand for a HomePod.
I bought from his Etsy shop, but here's his website.
My order for the door sensor arrived yesterday. Nice little gizmo!
edit: I thought of @mark when I found PrintSpired Designs. 
@CHAS - BMW is already there with that idea.
To add insult to injury (from reddit):
Bosch’s servers are currently down for maintenance… so there’s literally no way to set a delay tonight until their system comes back online
I wonder if you can change the setting and then disconnect from wifi. If you're like us you only use one setting. I'm guessing we could probably use it without the app at all; we don't do a lot of custom settings.
In any event, our friends at Abt have added a "no wifi" filter to their search. There are no Bosch models that don't have wifi.
Actually pretty interesting.
Artificial intelligence is giving researchers a new way to listen to what patients are saying about popular GLP-1 drugs. After analyzing more than 400,000 Reddit posts, a University of Pennsylvania team identified several symptoms reported by people using semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro and Zepbound) that may not be fully represented in clinical trials or official regulatory information.
The study, published recently in Nature Health, examined more than five years of posts from nearly 70,000 Reddit users. Two categories stood out as particularly deserving of further investigation: reproductive symptoms, including changes in menstrual cycles, and problems involving body temperature, such as chills and hot flashes.
The findings do not establish that the medications caused these symptoms. Instead, researchers say the massive collection of spontaneous patient reports may reveal signals worth examining more closely.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260912222856.htm
Things could get interesting if a company let loose bots on social media to complain about their competitors' products.
Isn't life grand?
Galahad
I'd forgotten half of this stuff...
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jennaguillaume/1970s-life-in-photos
Italian Taralli crackers. A bit bagelish (they're boiled before baking) snacky cracker.
https://breadtopia.com/italian-taralli-crackers/?utm_content
Where would the money come from? Apparently it depends on who in the administration you're talking to.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/lutnick-trump-5000-check-taxpayer-funds-rcna597092
Apples and honey here. I'd love some challah but won't have time to bake.
In any event - Shanah tovah to all!
We are sort of watching the ceremony from NY (the TV is on in the background, so not paying close attention). As they do every year, they are reading the names of those who perished. Several people who are doing the reading of names have made additional comments about how Saudi Arabia hasn't been held accountable for its role in 9/11.
I don't recall this happening in years past, but maybe I just missed it.
(I had the same thought about this being a very socialist thing to do. The Babylon Bee nails it again.)
@CHAS yea...a great marketing trick from the ultimate marketing trickster....
