WTF-Beta

On another gardening note...I really like a variety of tomato called 'Little Sicily'. Tasty tomatoes, great yields. I have purchased them at Home Depot and at a local garden center but neither had them in stock this year. I don't have a lot of opportunities to get out to do plant shopping these days, so I took a flyer and ordered them from Home Depot online; I was surprised to see them listed. I thought I would probably get a couple of spindly, broken, yellow plants that I'd be schlepping to the store for a refund.

Imagine my surprise when this very sturdy box arrived with two tomato plants in it:

Each plant was in a small hinged "greenhouse":

Some of the healthiest specimens I've seen. I unpacked the plants when they came a few days ago, so they've already grown. I set up this photo so you could see how cozily they were packaged:

Hopefully the universe will forgive me for all that packaging. But I'll be eating the tastiest tomatoes in the 'hood later this summer!

Summer is here (basically zero chance of frost moving forward) so I'll be spending the next few days catching up in the garden. I have already purchased veggie plants and have bean seeds and seed potatoes. Time to get to work getting everything in the ground!

Looks like this year's crop of gooseberries and currants (both red and black) isn't going to be as good as last year.

@Big_Al said:

Having been involved with technical services to the steel industry earlier in my engineering career

One of my neighbors worked as an engineer in the steel industry. When we bought our house in 1980, he and the family were living in Turkey while he was working on a project there. We finally met them, close to a year after we moved into our house, when they returned to the US.

@Big_Al

Not your grandmother's aluminum:

https://news.mit.edu/2025/printable-aluminum-alloy-sets-strength-records-may-enable-lighter-aircraft-parts-1007

Ha! So I fat fingered the list I typed up a while back. Apparently my memory is better than my typing skills...

One of the other consequences of aging...the memory goes...I was convinced that I remembered Steve's May 16th birthday. Except his birthday was two days ago!!

See @steve-miller 's post below. It's today!!

In any event -- hope you've recovered from the festivities! But if you need more cake, here is a Baumkuchen, complete with recipe:

https://foodiegoodvibes.com/baumkuchen-german-tree-cake/

Thanks to all for the condolences.

@Big_Al I suspect you and Wasi would have hit it off immediately!

So does this mean @shirokuro will be house hunting near @bernard soon?

...is that you keep losing lifelong friends.

We got word a few days ago from the daughter of one of our good friends that he passed away. Wasi and I commuted on the same train every day starting back in the 1980s when Mr wtg and I moved here. We got to know each other because I used to kibitz the bridge game on the train. We would walk several blocks heading home; my car was parked not too far from Peg's and his house. The four of us went out for dinner a few times and we hit it off very well, becoming close friends.

Peg was a phenomenal cook and gardener, and Wasi's barbecued spare ribs were to die for. We explored the cuisines of many cultures together, at their home and ours and at restaurants, eating and drinking and laughing a lot. We lived through Peg's rheumatoid arthritis and knee replacements and Wasi's kidney dialysis, then transplant, and his later in life back problems.

They decided to sell their house in 2014 and move to Madison, WI to be close to their daughter. I actually found the house they ended up buying by looking at listings online! We kept in touch and managed to visit them a few times. When Peggy died some four or five years ago, Monya and Wasi put together a a "book" about her. It was a PDF that chronicled her life in text and photos.

Wasi sold their home and moved to a condo after Peggy died. We talked on the phone but between COVID and Mr wtg's health problems in recent years, we never got to see him again.

Their daughter Monya sent us a card a few days ago announcing his October 2025 passing and inviting us to a celebration of life later this summer. Monya put together a Google Earth slideshow, a link to which was on the card that she sent. It uses maps and Wasi's own photos and remembrances as the basis for walking you through Wasi's life. He was born in Assam to a Muslim family, was orphaned at a young age, moved to East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) as a child after the Partition, went to school in British Columbia, and Madison, WI...and on and on. I knew he was Bangladeshi but had never heard the details of his life story.

I don't know if anyone is interested, but I thought I'd share the link to the slideshow. @big_al , you might be interested in the wanderings of a fellow engineer. He had a PhD in mechanical engineering, was a PE, and worked on nuclear reactors when he was at Sargent and Lundy.

I had a bit of trouble navigating the slideshow on my iPad; it was much better on my laptop. After Google Earth loads, just click on Wasi's Story and start the slideshow.

https://earth.google.com/web/@7.45103866,-2.20258877,-10010.48268536a,17577568.38405848d,30.00000264y,0h,0t,0r/data=CgRCAggBMikKJwolCiExZENvdGI3WmJLWjBRM0dfd3VJQWl5MDFRSjJQREx2bkQgAUICCABKCAjw9vutARAB?authuser=0

Wasi loved his martinis:

Here they are sitting on the patio in their backyard.

Goodbye to our friends Wasi and Peg. You will live on in our memories.

@ShiroKuro Well done!

A team at the University of Hong Kong has developed a new “super steel” that can survive the harsh conditions needed to make green hydrogen from seawater. The material uses an unexpected double-protection mechanism that resists corrosion far better than conventional stainless steel. Even more impressive, it could replace costly titanium parts used in today’s hydrogen systems..

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/05/260510030950.htm

Google said Monday that it had disrupted a criminal group’s attempt to use artificial intelligence to exploit another company’s previously unknown digital vulnerability, adding to heightened worries across government and private industry about AI’s risks for cybersecurity.

Google shared limited information about the attackers and the target, but John Hultquist, chief analyst at the tech giant’s threat intelligence arm, said it represents a moment cybersecurity experts have warned about for years: malicious hackers arming themselves with AI to supercharge their ability to break into the world’s computers.

“It’s here,” Hultquist said. “The era of AI-driven vulnerability and exploitation is already here.”

https://apnews.com/article/google-ai-cybersecurity-exploitation-mythos-926aea7f7dc5e0e61adce3273c55c6d4

@ShiroKuro said:

I haven’t seen a reliable source saying that, but it’s certainly plausible.

The company acknowledged the ransom payment

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/administrative-tech/2026/05/11/instructure-pays-ransom-canvas-hackers

I looked into Optery, which is a similar service. I did the free plan, which provides a report that lists where your info is stored. It originally located 60+ sites, and I manually submitted requests to a bunch of them, requesting deletion of my info. Optery still sends me occasional emails and now it says I'm only on 30 sites. I may do some more manual deletion requests; I haven't pulled the trigger on a paid subscription.

PC Mag does a comparison:

https://www.pcmag.com/comparisons/incogni-vs-optery-which-data-removal-service-comes-out-on-top

If true, how fortunate for the workers to be able to share in his rich guy tax saving strategies!

@Bernard Definitely. Just look at some of the people in the current administration....

Block Communications had announced it would permanently shut down the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on May 3; the paper enjoyed a last-minute reprieve, sold last month to the nonprofit institute that created the online Baltimore Banner. But the local news guild says that the new owners have cut 40% of the newsroom, including the vast majority of those who served as union organizers during an extended labor dispute.

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/11/nx-s1-5818208/ajc-andrew-morse-leaving

(The article also talks about changes at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Of his friend Martin Short, Tom Hanks once said, "Marty operates at the speed of joy." Is that true? "You know, I don't analyze myself," said Short. "If that's his review for me, I'll accept it. But I think I do have the happy gene. And I think my orientation is to be happy."

For more than 50 years, he's been a bright spot on any stage or screen, with that crazy energy and that singular smile. And when you know what Martin Short has endured in private, his sunny attitude is all the more astonishing.

He's now the subject of a new documentary film out this week. "Marty: Life Is Short" was directed by Hollywood legend and family friend Lawrence Kasdan, who said Short needed to be prodded a bit to do it. "It was not a natural instinct of his to want it; he's not like that," Kasdan said. "I had to sell him on it. I had to lie to him, tell him how much I loved him and I would never hurt him." Kasdan also used hours of home movies with Short's pals, like Hanks, Kurt Russell and Steven Spielberg.

But with all of the good times, it seems Short had more than his share of bad. The youngest of five, Martin was 12 when his older brother was killed in a car accident, and he was still in his teens when both of his parents died.

Asked what that taught him about grief and loss, Short said, "What it developed in me was this muscle of survival and handling grief and a perspective on it."

He said it also gave him a bravery to put himself out on stage: "I think if you've gone through that, an audience not liking you is really not that important anymore."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/martin-short-facing-tragedy-with-joy/