WTF-Beta

Old friends.

It's tomorrow (Friday), and I had it on my calendar to start a birthday thread. I saw that she mentioned in another thread that it's a milestone birthday (one divisible evenly by 10)!

Let's start the celebration early!!!

The ​paint on Washington's newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Thursday was ‌peeling away from the bottom and into the algae-tinted water, less than two weeks after President Donald Trump announced the job's completion.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/paint-is-already-peeling-trumps-renovated-washington-reflecting-pool-2026-06-18/

“The advanced nanobubbler technology very effectively killed the algae that has plagued every Lincoln Reflecting Pool reopening—most infamously Obama's reopening—since 1922,” the Interior Department wrote on X. The Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool.”

“Just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf,” added the department led by former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

Mr wtg has been going to day rehab three times a week since he got home in early April. PT, OT, and SLP, though the speech therapy was dropped after 20 visits.

He's made good progress on the PT/walking front, though he still requires someone to be close by and help him a bit when the right leg doesn't quite follow through. He's gone on a muscle relaxant to help with post-stroke spasticity; it's helped quite a bit. And he's going to be fitted with a custom brace to help with the foot drop.

Occupational therapy was kind of a bummer yesterday. The various therapy disciplines do an evaluation every 10th visit to see how things are progressing; that was yesterday. They indicated that his right arm isn't really responding to all the therapies that they were throwing at it. Mr wtg has been diligent about doing the exercises, mirror box therapy, and imagery, but there hasn't been much progress in the arm. While Mr wtg had kind of sensed that, it was hard to hear it from the "expert". And she didn't do a good job of talking about their assessment of his status; he was totally bummed.

But then, maybe an hour after we got home...

The doorbell rang and when I answered it, a nice looking man about our age said "I'm a classmate of Mr wtg. My name is Larry Schott". I had heard stories about the legendary Larry, so of course we invited him in to visit. He and Mr wtg hadn't been in touch since college.

The guy is a force of nature. He's married to Carole Coleman, who was a reporter for an Irish broadcaster called RTE.

https://magill.ie/archive/alleluia-carole

She's written three books, and Larry brought us her most recent one, which is a look back at the first six months of COVID. They moved to her home town in Ireland after Sandy Hook; they had two adopted daughters from Russia and decided they wanted to be elsewhere, so they moved .

The story gets better...

I had forgotten that Larry is an MD and I asked him what his specialty was. Lo and behold, he was an interventional neurologist who used to place stents in people's carotid and cerebral arteries. Talk about serendipity! He was much more encouraging about the possibility of Mr wtg's arm regaining function, and he encouraged him to keep at it. "I've seen miracles. Don't give up." He also told him that he was doing really well considering where in the brain the stroke was. "The 1%".

Such a happy day. And he stopped by again today and visited for a while longer. He's in town for his aunt's funeral. Apparently he has been back in the area many times and kept thinking about stopping by, but thought he might not be welcomed with open arms because of the long hiatus in communication. His wife finally said to him, "Just do it. It will be fine."

She was right.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Is 40—Here’s the Story Behind the Real-Life Ferrari House

On the anniversary of the film, AD goes behind the movie magic that allowed a sports car to burst through the glass at an architecturally significant property

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/ferris-buellers-day-off-is-40-heres-the-story-behind-the-real-life-ferrari-house

@AdagioM said:

Food people: here’s a recipe for avocado blueberry quinoa salad

Dear Republic,

Maybe you liked Calvin and Hobbes as a kid but you probably have no idea of the scrupulous moral integrity that went into it, as Matthew Morgan demonstrates in this deeply-researched piece.

-ROL

https://therepublicofletters.substack.com/p/calvin-and-hobbes-and-the-price-of

Secret Service officials are reportedly angry with FBI Director Kash Patel for announcing Tuesday the FBI had intercepted an alleged plot targeting President Donald Trump’s UFC Freedom 250 event before many arrests had been made in the case.

Officials “woke up” Tuesday morning to find Patel had posted on X, boasting about the FBI’s work to thwart the planned attack and arrest several individuals accused of conspiring in the plot. Patel thanked the Department of Justice as well as “law enforcement partners.”

However, not all suspects had been arrested and the case was sealed in court at the time, angering Secret Service officials who led the investigation, sources told MSNOW.

Matt Quinn, deputy director for the Secret Service, appeared to comment on the furor Tuesday. “I’ll tell you a phrase I learned early in my career in the New York field office and that’s ‘Don’t choke on your own smoke,’” he said at a press conference.

Quinn said the Secret Service “led that investigation from the beginning,” and “chose not to leak it” because they wanted to maintain the integrity of the ongoing investigation.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/kash-patel-ufc-terror-plot-fbi-secret-service-b2996959.html

@ShiroKuro Awww....so sweet. But of course I know how destructive deer can be when it comes to landscaping!

As you say, better in someone else's yard.

@Bernard wins the fauna of the day award! My squirrels are nothing compared to your bear.

I keep the bird seed in some old metal tins in the garage. The biggest critters we might have would be raccoons, but they've never tried to get to the seed stored in there.

@AndyD said:

We've been asked to stop feeding birds via bird feeders due to disease

There was an avian flu making the rounds here a few years ago and people were discouraged from feeding and providing water for birds until the outbreak subsided.

Bloomberg seems to have gotten a copy of a draft of the MOU.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/read-the-14-point-draft-memorandum-between-the-us-and-iran-220917023.html

The linden trees are blooming here. My best friend's birthday is June 22 and the lindens are always in bloom for her birthday. The lovely scent (especially strong in the evening) always remind me of her. We had a birthday dinner for her with her family when she turned 40 at a restaurant that was near a grove of lindens. The scent takes me back to a wonderful celebration.

Near my house:

Makes me crave a cup of linden blossom tea!

Wow. That looks lovely, @andyd !

So, fellow birders....I gave up on bird feeders years ago..got tired of the mess and all the squirrels they attracted. It was a pain with the dogs around.

No dogs here anymore. I picked up a nice feeder with a solar powered camera for cheap at Costco. Online it's $110, but for some reason they were on closeout at the warehouse back in January for $25. I can't resist a bargain.

I got some seed and put up the feeder where the squirrels can't get in it. Of course the birds drop seed all over the ground, and the squirrels are ground feeding amongst my hostas. Four or five at a time, and when they scuffled with each other to protect their access to the seed, they did a number on the two really nice hostas that are at the base of the post with the feeder. Had to dig half of each plant out in order to save them. Anyway...

I find that I'm basically feeding the house sparrows right now, with them consuming probably 99% of the seed. Cardinals, blue jays, brown-headed cowbirds, and a downy woodpecker are seen every so often but clearly the sparrows outnumber them bigly.

The new feeder is empty right now and I'm thinking about not filling it until fall or winter. Do you guys feed birds during the summer? Or do you let them forage their own food during the summer and focus more on late fall/winter feeding? I bought a small finch feeder, too, and filled it with nyjer seed and we've been enjoying the goldfinches who show up pretty regularly.

Yea, the Albanians aren't happy about this. At all.

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/16/g-s1-128162/albania-resort-protests-kushner-trump

DUBAI, June 16 (Reuters) - A $300 billion private fund designed ​to trigger investment into Iran is outlined in the U.S.-Iran framework agreement and more than half that sum has already been committed, a source with ‌direct knowledge of the deal told Reuters.
The fund is designed to give both sides an economic incentive to conclude a final deal, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not yet been announced as Washington and Tehran prepare to sign on Friday.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/iran-deal-includes-300-billion-fund-more-than-half-which-already-committed-2026-06-16/

Oh, those crazy Norwegian fans:

Link to video

View from the top:

Link to video

@Mark Yes it is!

Started watching it. Fun!!

Thanks for posting it, @mark !