W
Sad and shocking.
Mr wtg's high school doctor friend and his family were in Krakow this past summer. Sent us the most wonderful photos of what looks like an idyllic town; they said they loved it. I'm sure they were stunned by the news.
The shooter died this morning.
Reporting from Reuters:
Across the Mississippi Delta — poor, Black, rural — there were houses like the one where Smith was busy at work, where organizers spent months figuring out how to get a community of nonvoters excited about reengaging in democracy.
When Colom was trying to figure out the final message for his Senate campaign, he and his team chose to end with a commercial about Medgar Evers, the African American veteran whom white supremacists killed as he was conducting voter registration campaigns.
“We can’t just ask people to vote for me,” Colom said in an interview with The Washington Post on Thursday morning. “We just got to talk about sacrifice. We got to talk about the importance of voting.”
It was also about stressing the idea of what he called “Mississippi Values” — including Evers’s audacious and righteous response to abusive power. Those values were revealed in the work of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Party, and others who worked during the Civil Rights Era to break some of the most racist policies in the South. Still, Colom knew it would take a herculean effort in a place that hadn’t elected a Black politician to statewide office since the fall of Reconstruction.
Smith just focused on reaching would-be voters where she grew up in Holmes County. It is one of the smaller counties in the state — about 15,000 people, 80 percent Black, with 34 percent living below the poverty line. But it was a place where Colom could run up the score to offset Whiter, more conservative districts.
Happy Diwali! We used to love going to the lunch buffet at our favorite Indian restaurant on Diwali. The buffet was always expanded to include even more items, and the restaurant was always super busy. Fun times!
Of course the laptop is priced at $7K....
I tried local AI on HP’s Omnibook Ultra – it’s a private, powerful beast with zero token fees
I ran a free, open-weights AI model locally on HP’s $7,000 OmniBook Ultra and turned 20 years of my articles into a searchable archive in a day.
https://www.zdnet.com/tech/hp-omnibook-ultra-nvidia-rtx-spark-laptop-review/
Easter
That looks delicious!
(that's a @dougg or @piano-dad joke....)
Buzz Aldrin's favorite dish, Bourbon Pot Roast.
https://www.allrecipes.com/buzz-aldrin-pot-roast-recipe-12228599
President Donald Trump offered UFC president and CEO Dana White the job of press secretary on Saturday.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said: “I am pleased to announce that the Great Dana White, a violent Fighter and Warrior, has been offered the job of Press Secretary of the United States.”
“We need these people to defend us against the Lunatic Left,” Trump wrote. “Dana will be a Press Secretary like none other. Dana, please take the job!”
CNN, citing a source, reported White had declined the president’s offer.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/07/trump-ufc-dana-white-press-secretary-offer.html
Several Republican lawmakers are fuming over President Donald Trump’s elevation of Stephen Miller to be his chief of staff.
"Horrible decision," Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., told Fox News Digital Friday after Trump announced his decision.
A Republican lawmaker who was granted anonymity to speak candidly described being in "utter disbelief."
Tensions were rising against Miller in the wake of Republicans’ terrible performance in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Multiple House Republicans who spoke with Fox News Digital just moments before his promotion said Miller, who spearheads Trump’s immigration policy, should be fired.
When later asked about his promotion, one House Republican who said Miller should be fired replied simply with a facepalm emoji.
The second GOP lawmaker told Fox News Digital that Miller ignored multiple warnings from House Republicans in the past, arguing that Trump’s immigration crackdown is what voters asked for.
"I've been in several group meetings where a lot of us have told him, ‘Your immigration enforcement policies are backfiring back home. Our people are mad, our businesses are mad — even in deep red districts — and it is impacting not just the voters, but the donors, and everybody top to bottom," that GOP lawmaker said.
"But it looked to me like Stephen Miller was only after numbers. … He would not listen to us."
muffins
The right-wing activist Laura Loomer has been paid by private clients to make political posts on social media without publicly disclosing the payments, according to a former campaign aide to President Donald Trump and three others familiar with the arrangements, shedding light on what they say is a business practice of one of the Trump administration's most influential online firebrands.
The allegations were made by Alex Bruesewitz, an adviser to Trump's 2024 campaign, and three other people who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Two of the three people said they had paid Loomer directly to post political messages on her X account, where she has 1.9 million followers. The third said they had overseen clients who paid her to post on the account. The three spoke on the condition of anonymity.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/trump-ally-loomer-paid-thousands-164702283.html
Sony revives the original Walkman headphones, adds USB-C
Orange ear cushions included.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/11/sony-adds-usb-c-to-its-70s-era-mdr-3-walkman-headphones/
Peru airport officials discover 3,000 tarantulas smuggled inside dirty socks
Three suitcases’ worth of the spiders were on their way to Germany, where they could fetch an estimated €1.5m
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/nov/06/3000-tarantulas-smuggled-inside-dirty-socks-peru
wtg said:
the cold-sensitive impatiens are blooming like crazy
I think that ends tonight. We didn't get out of the upper 40s today; we're going to be at or below 32 tonight.
But it will be back in the 60s by Sunday!
