WTF-Beta

Lots of witches this year. And Mike Ditkas. Best costume went to a woman who had an inflatable octopus costume. I don't take photos of people who come to the door, but this is the costume she had on:

California update.

More than 4 in 10 names flagged as possible noncitizen voters in California by the Trump administration cannot be found on the state’s voter rolls, according to a legal filing Saturday by an immigrant-rights group.

It’s the first outside analysis of a list that the Department of Justice has used to threaten prosecution of election officials. The analysis also found that thousands of U.S. citizens appear to be flagged as ineligible to vote on the government’s list.

The contention was made in a filing by two data analysts at the University of California, Los Angeles. They analyzed the 20,930 names that the department demanded that California election officials treat as possible illegal voters by separating their ballots during the vote count on Election Day.

https://apnews.com/article/california-justice-department-noncitizen-voters-midterms-45b31d5aefb03723f0e59f6084e918d4

I'll let someone else go there....

Yup.

https://wtf.coffee-room.com/topic/3747/rip-gene-shalit?_=1793488658567

I was going to say Roddenberry...

mustache

@Piano-Dad said:

Complicated answer.

No kidding!

wtg said:

Guess I'll be donating a lot of candy to the township come Monday.

Maybe not.

Suddenly, as if from nowhere, they're all coming out....

It's Saturday. It's Halloween. Weather is OK, cloudy and cool but not unpleasant. We're an hour into trick or treat hours (3 to 7), and we just had our first six kids. A coven of witches and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. No Toto.

Is there a Halloween Scrooge or Grinch? I'm almost thinking that next year I just won't bother at all.

Guess I'll be donating a lot of candy to the township come Monday. They collect it and send it to troops overseas in care packages.

I'd love to hear Renauda's take on this.

We have had a manual transfer switch, same setup you described, since 2000. Works great. It is a very cost effective way to get some kind of backup in case of an extended outage. But as @bernard points out, it is kind of a pain to haul a generator around to hook it up.

Standby generators are running close to $15K these days and our town has created pretty stringent setback requirements like the ones you describe that are making it near-impossible to get one installed.

These Base Power batteries are just another way to get a bit of backup so the essentials like refrigerators and sump pumps can keep on doing their thing. And a furnace in winter and well pumps if you're not on city water. Not so good for running the high-demand stuff like A/C or electric heat.

They have their own automated transfer switch, so the backup kicks in seamlessly. If you want to extend the coverage more, you can get a portable generator to use to charge things up if an outage goes on for long enough to deplete the battery.

And with the incentives (reduced electricity rates and referral bonuses), it's stupid cheap. If you can refer one person, you've covered $250 of the $295 installation cost.

Of course it's always possible that there is something in the setup at an individual house that could require additional work by an electrician so that Base can do their install. Like any home improvement project, the homeowner has to decide whether the costs outweigh the benefits.

I don't think everyone has a need for one of these, but if you do, it's worth looking into.

100 Unhinged Things Trump Did That You Probably Forgot

"Flood the zone with shit."

That's how Steve Bannon once described Donald Trump's attention-overload strategy. It's designed to overwhelm your senses, so the latest outrage erases your ability to remember the avalanche of outrages past. The "shit" part matters as well — because the goal is to make politics seem so dirty and indecent that no sane person would ever get involved in the political arena. This cedes the civic ground to hyper-partisan sociopaths.

That's exactly why combating the memory hole is essential as voters head to the polls. The 2026 midterm elections are the only structural opportunity to put guardrails on this runaway train of a president who seems hell bent on destroying our democratic norms, dividing the American people, and alienating our allies while emboldening our enemies. The result is a tsunami of sleaze: unprecedented corruption, rising costs, and governmental chaos.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/100-unhinged-things-trump-did-130000828.html

A bunch more:

https://www.boredpanda.com/winning-images-2026-siena-drone-photo-awards/

My fave of the ones in this NPR piece. Rugs in Turkey:

https://www.npr.org/2026/10/31/g-s1-150698/drone-photo-award-winners

This Halloween marks the 100th anniversary of the death of the legendary magician Harry Houdini.

He earned his reputation by freeing himself from traps that seemed impossible for a mere mortal to survive.But Houdini couldn't escape the ultimate fate waiting for him in Detroit on Oct. 31, 1926, and his spirit still haunts the Motor City.

https://www.npr.org/2026/10/31/nx-s1-6008110/100-years-harry-houdinis-death-haunts-detroit

Duh. Walkout basement. Didn’t occur to me.

@Bernard How do you get the generator out of the basement? Ours is in the garage so I just wheel it outside near where the plug is that goes into the manual transfer switch.

@ShiroKuro said:

I don’t like the fact that the company can drain the battery so you may not be at 100% when an outage happens.

Definitely not a deal breaker for me.

Their whole model is buying power cheaply and storing it in the battery and then selling it back to the market when the price is higher. And the rate they charge you as your electric supplier is lower than the local electric utility, so you save money on monthly bills.

They have weather monitoring in place, and if bad weather is coming and might cause outages, they modify how much they sell/drain your battery.

Although we have zero backup at present,

Yup. Some backup is better than nothing. And if you want an extra level of protection, you can get a portable generator and charge the battery yourself in the event of an extended outage.

From what I've learned so far, this is a pretty inexpensive (possibly money-saving ) way to get some level of protection.

This seems to be taking off here. My neighbor is having one installed at his mom's house, and his sister and nephew are also signed up. We have seen Base Power trucks at people’s houses. I did investigate it for our housebut we don't qualify for their program because a) we have an ancient electric panel and, more importantly, b) there is no way to put the battery near the electric meter at our house because of where the outside basement stairway is located. I initially didn't think we'd be interested but after my neighbor investigated it in detail and shared more about how it works, it seems like a very good option for getting some backup power.

Coffee appliance company Bodum USA is recalling 5.9 million French press makers, warning that the glass carafe can break and cause burn injuries.

Bodum USA is the American subsidiary of a Danish-Swiss company that specializes in coffee hardware. So far, the company has received 70 reports of glass carafes breaking, 48 of which resulted in burns, according to a notice posted by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The French press coffee makers were sold on Amazon.com, in retailers including Target and Walmart, and other stores between 1974 and October 2026.

The agency said the glass carafes can unexpectedly break if they are damaged or cracked, which can happen when customers use metal spoons to stir coffee.

"While the rate of reported incidents involving carafe breakage during use is extremely low, especially considering that Bodum has sold millions of these products in the U.S. for decades, this recall will further encourage the safe use of our French Press Coffee Makers," Bodum USA said in a statement.

A Bodum USA customer service representative told CBS News that the company was not offering refunds to customers.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/french-press-coffee-makers-recall-bodum-usa/