WTF-Beta

On an election-related note...I got on a GOP mailing list somehow and have been getting solicitations for Republican candidates and causes.

This somewhat unusual one showed up a couple of days ago. The subject line was "John Fetterman".

Friend – I’ve got good news and bad news for you.

The BAD NEWS is that the Socialist movement “DSA!” is hijacking the Democratic party and attacking our American way of life. They want to:

Abolish our borders
Abolish the electoral college
Abolish Israel and
Abolish the Senate and Supreme Court
It’s horrifying and a nonpartisan issue. We ALL must come together to defeat it.

The GOOD NEWS is that I’m leading the fight against them and that hardworking, common-sense Americans aren’t buying what they’re selling:

71% of Americans reject socialism
67% of Democrat voters reject socialism
82% of Republican voters reject socialism
The problem is sometimes the loudest voice in the room is the one that looks the most powerful.

We can’t allow this false impression to turn into policies that harm Americans and harm our country.

I will always:
Stand with America
Reject the extremes
Reject socialism and
Defend our American way of life
I will always stand up to the DSA!

Regardless of party affiliation I hope you will stand with me and the barrage of hit-pieces I have coming my way for reaching out to you.

The DSA and the media are furious with my refusal to play along with their ‘business as usual’ politics and scare tactics.

If you can, please consider giving – even just a few dollars – to help my efforts and reject the extremists once and for all.

Stand with me today
Thank you,

John Fetterman

P.S. If you’re surprised I reached out to you – don’t be! The issues of defeating extremists trying to destroy our American way of life should be nonpartisan. The DSA can be defeated but only with the help of hardworking Americans like yourself. Please, if you can, consider standing with me in my fight today!

Paid for by Senator John Fetterman

Also here. We watch local stations for news and weather and there are tons of ads. Hysterical and rabid from both sides.

The mute button comes in handy.

Amazon Knows You Have a Goldfish Named Ziggy, Even if You Don’t

Flat buttocks? Own a snail? Here's how to find out what Amazon's About You page knows — or thinks it knows — about you as a person.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/amazon-about-you-page-shopping-preferences/

platonic

Barbarians at the gate.

Einkorn Apple Crumble Cake

https://breadtopia.com/einkorn-apple-crumble-coffee-cake/?utm_content

@RealPlayer said:

Never went to a reunion. There were few people I would care to meet again.

What @realplayer said. Haven't been to any high school or college reunions. And I live within spittin' distance of both institutions.

pudding

Here’s an earlier thread about the Nokbox. Includes sample pages.

https://wtf.coffee-room.com/topic/2009/nokbox/7?_=1791548255155

Nope, though it is available here.

We got one of those goofy "we've installed X in your neighborhood" letters a few days ago. It was for a company called Base Power. Was curious to see what their business model entails.

Base Power launched today across the Chicagoland area, bringing homeowners in ComEd’s service area a new way to lower electricity supply costs while adding whole-home backup power.

Base installs a battery in every participating home and uses the battery to reduce the cost to serve customers during peak-demand times when the grid is most stressed and power supply is increasingly scarce. In its offering to ComEd customers, Base members will get their energy supply at rates at least 25% below ComEd’s default supply rate. The battery also provides backup power for essential household equipment, including sump pumps, during outages like those many experienced during recent severe storms which left +400k without power.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260624437919/en/Base-Power-Launches-in-Chicagoland-as-Electricity-Costs-Surge-Cutting-Customers-Supply-Bills-25-Below-ComEds-Fixed-Rate

Here's an article that goes into detail how it works:

https://epicelectrical.com/what-is-base-power/

We're not super interested (we have a manual transfer switch and portable generator) but I'm wondering what our resident Sparky experts think....@steve-miller @big_al ? Thoughts?

@Bernard Congrats! We updated our estate planning docs some months ago after years of putting it off. Now we're in the process of documenting our financial lives so that our successor trustees can take over if the need arises. Starting to fill up our Nokbox. I picked one up during a sale at a huge discount off their regular prices. It seems to be well thought out.

I officially give up.

@ShiroKuro said:

but it is most definitely an aesthetic take

No one I know goes to McDonald's for the food, coffee, or atmosphere.

We have a friend who goes to McDonald's every day for a gathering with a bunch of buddies. Every day at 10 and they're there till noon. During COVID they would sit outside on the benches.

In the olden days, it would have been a group of women and it would have been called a "coffee klatch".

It's all about the people.

I'm beginning to think that no one read the article....

C'mon guys, all together now: "GET OFF MY LAWN!!"

So it's 1980. People meet in person, right? At school, at work, at church? If you had told me back then that I would have a bunch of online friends whom I've never met and that I've been part of the group for nearly 20 years, I would have thought you were crazy. And that some of us would meet and marry, having first met online? Fantasy world!

For a bunch of a different reasons, you couldn't drag me to a shopping mall, a Taylor Swift concert, or a Star Trek convention, but clearly a lot of people find those venues inviting, and I think that's great. They've found their comfy places to land, to be with people who share their interests. Costco nerds are just another flavor of that.

This thread has gotten into what we like/don't like about Costco and the bigger point that's being missed is recognizing that we human beings continue to find new ways to connect with each other. Costco is just one example. Not a terribly important one, but just another way. And it may not be yours.

It's not that complicated.

On a typical Tuesday, NOAA biologists were deep into their standard routine—analyzing data on sharks and studying fish populations. Then, staff heard an unmistakable tapping sound at the building's glass entryway. Standing on the stoop was a brown pelican, repeatedly rapping its beak against the door.

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/knocking-help-pelicans-unlikely-rescue

Guess you guys aren't doing what the people who were profiled in the article are doing!

How ProPublica figured it out.

https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-wedding-umar-kremlev-reporting

Uptick in registration requests recently, at least five or six a day.