W
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear called on Monday for Sen. Mitch McConnell to either "verbally" show proof to Kentuckians that he can still serve in the Senate or to resign from Congress.
"Important events are happening in our country right now during your absence," Beshear, a Democrat, wrote in a letter to the Republican senator, according to a copy obtained by ABC News.
We remodeled our bathrooms back in 2008. The "hall bath" (vs the en suite in the primary bedroom) has Danze plumbing fixtures. We started to have a pipe thumping problem in the Danze tub/shower valve in that bathroom when another faucet in the house is turned off; I noticed it when I turned off the vanity faucet in the same bath.
When I pulled the handle and escutcheon off and diddled with the shutoffs that are built into the valve, the cold water side was leaking a little. And some black rubbery bits came out of the spout when I turned the water on. Looks like the stops are failing and need to be replaced. Figured that out thanks to a commenter on Amazon who was trying to find the right replacement parts for his pipe thumping problem.
I have all the documentation from the original install, including the parts diagram with replacement part numbers for the various components. A lot of the part numbers changed after Danze was acquired by Gerber some years ago. I couldn't find a direct match for the Check Valve Set in question when I did my own searches, and Claude and DuckDuckGo's AI bots tried to help but I wasn't confident they were giving me accurate part numbers so I could order something.
I called Gerber this morning and a very nice CS lady (not AI) listened to my story, asked a few questions, and processed an order to send me replacement stops under warranty. Gerber didn't even require a copy of the original purchase receipt (which I have). Took less than 10 minutes and I'm pretty sure I'll get the parts I need. She said 5 to 7 days for the order to get here.
Now off to look for out not-too-frequently-used metric socket set I'll need next week to get the old leaky stops replaced and the new ones in...
I think the video that's in the BBC story is only watchable in the UK. Or via VPN for us non-Brits.
On 30 July 1963, Kim Philby's defection from MI6 to the Soviet Union was made public. In 2016, the BBC broadcast previously unseen footage of his lecture to Stasi operatives in which he revealed the secrets behind his treachery.
"Almost all my life I have spent trying to avoid publicity of any kind," says Kim Philby in a 1981 video unearthed by the BBC from the archives of East Germany's spy service. It's something of an understatement. Philby was a British double agent whose defection to the Soviet Union was made public on 30 July 1963. In the video, he is seen giving a seminar to Stasi operatives on how to succeed at espionage.
As the BBC's former security correspondent Gordon Corera explained in his 2016 report on the previously unseen footage, "Philby offers a masterclass in betrayal, from his recruitment by Soviet spies after Cambridge to his joining Britain's secret service MI6, whose secrets he stole." It is the only known video in which the leading member of the so-called Cambridge Five KGB spy ring discusses his betrayal – a rare recording that is revealing on many levels.
WATCH: 'My advice to you is to tell all your agents that they are never to confess'
"I'm looking back on my career in the enemy camp, this 30-year career in the enemy camp," he says in the grainy video, standing behind a lectern in thick-rimmed glasses and a suit and tie. "Every evening, I left the office with a big briefcase full of reports which I had written myself, full of files taken out of the actual archives. I used to hand them to my contact in the evening. Next morning I'd get the file back, the contents having been photographed, and take them back early in the morning and put the files back in their place. That I did regularly, year in, year out."
A small Finnish town has turned to the world’s largest commercial sand battery to tackle a major hurdle in the energy transition: intermittency.
The giant sand battery can cover almost one month of the town’s heating demands in the summer and as much as one week in the winter.
“Hopefully a big portion of those storages could be sand battery-type of storages where we don’t need rare earth materials,” Tommi Eronen, CEO of Polar Night Energy, told CNBC.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/25/finland-sand-battery-renewable-energy-storage.html
Swing States Remain Underwater
The most politically significant story lies in the states that regularly decide national elections.
Trump is now underwater in every major battleground state:
Arizona: -11
Georgia: -21
Nevada: -16
North Carolina: -13
Pennsylvania: -12
Wisconsin: -14
Florida: -9
Ohio: -8
Several of those states have crossed important thresholds since Trump took office. Florida has moved from +9 to -9. Ohio has fallen from +8 to -8. Nevada has shifted from an even 0 to -16, while North Carolina has gone from 0 to -13.
The deficits are not insurmountable, but they underscore a consistent pattern heading into the midterms: Trump’s standing remains weakest in the states likely to play the biggest role in determining control of Congress.
Where Approval Has Fallen The Most
Every state in the tracker shows a lower net approval rating than it did on January 20, 2025.
The biggest declines have often occurred in states where Trump initially enjoyed some of his strongest support.
Among the largest drops:
Kentucky: +23 to -1 (down 24 points)
Wyoming: +47 to +26 (down 21 points)
Florida: +9 to -9 (down 18 points)
Idaho: +34 to +14 (down 20 points)
West Virginia: +35 to +18 (down 17 points)
Tennessee: +25 to +8 (down 17 points)
Texas: +6 to -10 (down 16 points)
Nevada: 0 to -16 (down 16 points)
Georgia: -4 to -21 (down 17 points)
Ohio: +8 to -8 (down 16 points)
The pattern is striking because the largest shifts are not concentrated only in Democratic states. Many have occurred in places where Trump started his second term with a substantial cushion.
What once looked like waste has become a powerful tool for restoring marine life along Florida’s Gulf Coast. Between 2007 and 2024, the state returned more than 500,000 tons of recycled oyster and clam shells to the Gulf of Mexico as part of a long-term effort to rebuild damaged oyster reefs and coastal habitats. Rather than coming straight from the ocean, the shells were collected from seafood restaurants and processing plants.
Instead of ending up in landfills, the shells were placed in areas where natural oyster reefs had steadily disappeared over the years. At first, the project drew criticism, with some questioning whether it amounted to dumping waste into the ocean. In its early stages, there was little visible evidence that it was working, and even researchers were uncertain whether the effort would succeed. But beneath the surface, critical ecological processes had already begun.
Klaus has done some housekeeping on the other forum because of that.
Yea, they've had hundreds and hundreds of bogus accounts for years.
When this was just the backup site the registration didn't require admin approval and we had a zillion spam accounts, too. I deleted them when we moved over here as the permanent WTF, and @axtremus changed registration to require approval.
The only hiccup that I'm aware of is that I rejected @marchant twice, not realizing that it was Ballyhoo with a new name. 
Been getting very regular requests for new member registrations. Used to be they were pretty rare but recently they are more regular, probably averaging five or six a week. About a month ago there were 50 or more that came in within a couple of hours. I was like WTF? 
Anyway, hopefully I haven't deep sixed any real new members, or old members returning under weird aliases!
Woke up around midnight to the sound of a sewer cover clanking out in front of our house. I thought it might be kids pulling a stupid prank so I looked out the window to see what was going on. No kids, just a village public works truck and a bunch of guys walking around. Oh, and a huge lake in the street a couple of houses over from us. Water main break.
We didn't get much sleep because of the noise. Generator running the water pump they use to empty the water so they can do the repair, plus trucks to take away what they dug up and trucks to bring fill and cold patch. Between the ongoing water main replacement project and this repair of the old main, our street looks a bit like a war zone.
Good news is the water was back on in time to make coffee this morning! 
Living in a community where repairs are done promptly is definitely a wonderful thing...
