Still in Door County

 It’s very pretty.

Everyone thinks their parents are the worst...

... but this guy might take the cake. 

Dear Care and Feeding, 

I’m a 43-year-old guy. My father is in his 70s, and he had a health scare recently. He’s doing all right now, but he wanted to update his will and make some funerary plans. Dealing with the inheritance stuff was unpleasant but I suppose normal in a way. But when it came to what he wanted done with his body after he passes, I’m not sure what to do.

He doesn’t want to be buried. Or cremated. Or have his body donated for scientific or medical purposes. No, what he wants is to be decapitated, his skull cleaned out, and have the rest of his remains processed into two memorial diamonds. He wants those diamonds stuck into his empty eye sockets and to be put on the mantlepiece of MY home, so he can “watch his grandkids and any other descendants that might live there.” He’s done all the homework on this too, found companies for the various sorts of processing, and double-checked with an attorney to make sure that this is legal where we live. (It unfortunately is.)

I don’t know what to do. I do want to honor his wishes. But this is so morbid and weird. I don’t think it would be a good thing for my family to look up in the living room and go “Yep, there’s my old man, watching us from beyond the grave.” I’m honestly considering just telling him I’ll do it and then when he’s gone simply having him cremated. He’ll never know the difference, right? But that also feels wrong, and I think I do owe him enough to honestly say I can’t honor that wish. What can I do here?

—What the Actual Hell

Out the door and on to Door

We are heading out for about 10 days to Door County, Wisconsin. It is supposed to be one of the pretty parts of the entire Midwest, but I'll be the judge of that.

We are also going to see a Green Bay Packers game at Lambeau Field (Green Bay, Wisconsin, is at the foot of Door County). Should be fun.

You haven't lived until you watched this...

 this is hilarious...

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Arif Alfaraz & Ricky Carollo (@arif_and_ricky)

PS: I assume by now, everyone knows about Grindr. It is a hook-up app for the gay boys. On it, men are mainly looking for quick sex. Sure, some people meet the love of their life there, but that is not its primary use. It is used for sex, and the anonymousness of the site is a magnet for men both in and out of the closet. And more than a few men "on the down-low" - which is a term for gay or bisexual men who don't want their friends or partners to know. Men try to appear hot and masculine on the site.

PPS: At the Republican Convention, the logons to Grinder overwhelmed the site and crashed it.

PPS: Organizers at the Paris Olympics took it down because at previous Olympics, reporters logged on, found athletes on it that were from countries where gay sex is illegal, and outed them. Once again, the media ruins something for us all. This is why we can't have nice things.

PPPS: Ed and I are not on it (we are monogamous - but no judgment). We met the old fashioned way, drinking and making fun of other people in a bar.

Glen Powell

 

Glen Powell is a movie actor/star who is having a moment. He made a big splash in Top Gun: Maverick (I haven't seen it), Anyone But You, Hit Man, and Twisters (again, I didn't see that one either).

I actually quite enjoyed the movies I've seen him in. Anyone But You was a middling mindless rom-com, but he and Sydney Sweeny made it very fun. Hit Man was a fantastic rom-com heavy on comedy. "Fantastic," in this case, is based on the Netflix made-for-streaming movie quality curve.

Anyway, my point here is that he is the perfect example of "generically handsome." That is a wry smile, thick and pliable hair, nice jaw with just the right amount of stubble, medium height with a six-pack stomach, and subtle but pronounced muscles. But he doesn't really do it for me. I can tell he is objectively handsome, and it works sometimes with his smile, but he is just kind of G-rated cute. Many people find him PG-ish hot, but not me.

This is no knock on him. I tend to doubt that my finding him handsome versus hot will be at the top of his interest list, but... I share.

He is very of-the-moment. And, like I said, his acting is totally fun and self-deprecating.

He also has those very close-set eyes like Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling. I thought he was Canadian because of those eyes.

Anyway, he does take a hell of a picture both casually and posed.

Interestingly, he said he admires and was thrilled to meet Tom Cruise on Top Gun: Maverick. He said he learned from Tom that acting is only part of the job of being successful. You must also work at it, do interviews, be polite, and enjoy it all.

Tom Tomorrow

Complicated as it is to believe, I actually support Tom Tomorrow's cartoons. 

I donated a few bucks a while back. I loved him when his cartoons were in free rags like the Village Voice or LA Weekly. As print ads dried up, those weeklies have died away. This left my favorite cartoonist with very little income or outlet. He has moved to the internet where I visited his site for cartoons all the time.

At some point, I decided it was worth my while to support his work, so I did.

It comes with a weekly cartoon, and I don't usually publish it, but here it is.

This week in the Guardian's Animal Pictures

This week was a bit weak - lots of snakes I chose not to show.  These are my favorites - as always, select to enlarge if you want to read the captions. (All the Guardian's images on their site.)

Nincompoopery: Your funds for Peruvian Alien investigations

 In another episode of "Nincompoopery in Government Spending", I present...

Bunny vs Bunny

 While we were in England in June, I needed to buy batteries. I went to the store and was a bit taken aback by the packaging. 

In the States, the Bunny is the Energizer Rabbit. We are all familiar with the fake bunny that will not stop waltzing across the screen, beating that damn drum. For some, the stuffed bunny is cute as can be. For others, like me, he is a bit annoying. I assume he is scary to others, as clowns are to Ed.

But he is ubiquitous. 

Then, I enter the equivalent to Best Buy or Staples over there to get a Bluetooth keyboard. It needs batteries, so I grab a package, and I am horrified to see that England has perverted our Energizer Bunny to some bizzaro, very of a scary Energizer Bunny.

I only remembered this today because my Bluetooth keyboard is out of batteries and I have to get more batteries and I am confronted with the dead-eyed pink version of our beloved bunny.

That bunny has dead eyes
Stuff of nightmares

You may have noticed right away what I did not. The "Energizer Bunny" in England is the nightmare mascot for Duracell, not Energizer.

I developed a little deeper down the rabbit hole (see what I did there) to find out what was going on. It turns out that starting in 1992, and continuing for decades, a legal fight was going on between the two companies. Obviously, not between the actual bunnies; ours would kick their bunny ass from here to Canada by using his drumsticks.

But they seem to have resolved this years ago by letting The Energizer Bunny free to roam in the United States and the Duracell child's nightmare free to roam in England.

We got the better of that deal.

Speaking of the AI Uprising

I am reading a short story anthology about how AIs will take over the world or some parts of it. In one of them, an "intelligent" virus escapes the lab via the romba (who slips of the door to the lab), the refrigerator, and a microwave.

After my afternoon jacuzzi, where I sit and read, I then go upstairs to take a shower. Unbeknownst to me, Eddie has set the romba upstairs to clean the carpet. So, as I walk into our bedroom on the way to the shower, the romba happens to be rolling right toward me.

I laughed, but part of me freaked the fuck out!

Scooter

PS. Beware of googling "Killer Romba." I thought there would be maybe one or two images, but there were quite a few. The words, Shit Ton, come to mind.

Homicide Rates Europe / UK / US

 It is probably no surprise that the US homicide rates (this does not count suicides) are significantly higher in the United States. Here are the basic numbers. But if we had the UK's level of homicides, we would save 18,000 lives per year, and in Europe in general, we would save 13,500 lives per year.

The very high rates in Europe in the early 2000s is primarily due to conflicts in the Balkans.

That is one of the costs of unlimited gun ownership. 18,000 people a year. I'm not saying it isn't worth it, I don't think it is, but that is just me. I also am very sure there is no way to lower gun ownership, but we should understand it.

Suicide numbers in the USA were 49,976 in 2022 with more than half (26,000) by gun. In the UK, there are less than 100 suicides by guns per year! It is important to note that many gun suicides are driven in the moment, this occurs with the wide availability of firearms. Even if we multiplied the British numbers by 5 to round the population up to US numbers, there would still only be 500 deaths.

500 versus 26,000. That is a lot of difference per year. That means we lose about 47,000 people to gun deaths every year. 

That is about the same number as TOTAL residents of Lynn's current home of North Ft. Meyers. It is nearly twice the population of Steve's Point, Wisconsin where Ed grew up. It is a little more than the entire population of Palm Springs, CA where I live now. Just imagine, every year, that number of people just disappearing.

Yosemite Falls at the end of summer

Yosemite Falls - Spring and much of the Summer

When I think of it, I always feel a little bad for those tourists who visit Yosemite towards the end of the snowmelt season. Even though the high county is 9,000 to 13,000 feet high (about 3700 Meters to 3900 M), the Sierra Nevadas still get pretty damn hot in the summer. The snowmelt ends, and the waterfalls start to dry up. It is not what they expect.

Here is a still of a streaming camera and what the falls look like now.

Guardian's Wildlife

 Once a week The Guardian posts pictures of the week in animals, news images, and just their favorite pictures. Here are the animals I loved. The images with explanations on the side can be expanded.

What Tim Walz Haters tells us about the Bizarro version of the USofA

Tim Walz is being hit with the nickname - meant to be horrible - of Tampon Tim. Past the use of the scary word "tampon," I am not sure how this is supposed to be a bad thing.

Here is what it means. Apparently, it means Tim Walz is not an asshole towards women and is, therefore, a "weak" man. 

As governor, he required public schools to furnish tampons for women who needed them during menstruation. It is even worse, per MAGA assumptions, that schools must provide them for free. 

Women's groups, educators, and school nurses said these were critical since young women aren't always sure when they will have their period. And the absence of tampons causes students to either leave school unexpectedly or to be bullied for getting their period with no solution.

So their "own the libs" point here is that Tim Walz, ex-teacher, works to help students. 

I don't see what is wrong with that, but maybe MAGA women do?

Since JD Vance wants a national registry of women's menstruation cycles* if they are of childbearing years, I would think this would appeal to them.

* Technically, JD Vance and 17 Republican State Attorney Generals only want the menstrual information of women who leave the state to make sure they aren't getting an abortion. Really - here is the link. And here is another. 

New Banksys with animals show up

For those who don't know, Banksy is an anonymous artist who primarily does street art in England and sometimes the US—usually in New York. His items are both whimsical and edgy, addressing the discrepancy between rich and poor as well as war and its effect on people.

He rarely is seen and images just show up.

Well, over the last three days three different images have shown up in London, all of animals. It is fascinating to see where this goes.

Here are the new images:

My husband and Hastings

 Eddie and Hastings. Way back when.....

Makes me smile

The world of biography books in grade school

When I was just a yun'in I read a lot. It is a habit I picked up from my parents when I was very young. One of my really good memories of my parents (aside from Kelbo's) was actually sitting in the front room of our house (probably one in Torrance with stairs) and all three of us, both of my parents and me, reading books.

Maybe it is a false memory, but it stayed with me forever.

Anyway, the story below is about how few people read now—that includes adults, teenagers, and children. It does offer the reason why TikTok, Instagram Stories, and YouTube are replacing reading. It says that often, this small clip has a story arc or surprise that scratches our itch for engagement but is much simpler to digest—albeit less fulfilling for many readers.

Here is the snippet from The Guardian about this.

The impact of reading for pleasure on progress in vocabulary, spelling and even maths at age 16 is four times more powerful than the impact of parental education or socioeconomic status, according to an analysis by the charity BookTrust, while five-year-olds growing up in poverty are less likely to be poor themselves as adults if they are read to. Other studies show child readers are more secure, and have better self-esteem and mental health. Targeted interventions aimed at getting children to read and their parents to read to them are one of the single most powerful levers that a new government worried about social mobility, educational outcomes and child mental health could ever pull, as the National Literacy Trust’s current Early Words Matter campaign makes clear.

I had to search to find it, but I remember these books from my elementary school (Chapman Avenue in Gardena). They were biographies, and each was 200 pages long. I still remember some things from these books, like how Walter Reed found that mosquitoes were responsible for Yellow Fever. And how that decision allowed doctors in Panama to hold off malaria and yellow fever in American workers to finish the canal.

They named the hospital Walter Reed after him.

I read many of them, which sometimes pops up in my brain when questions arise, even though I don't consciously remember them all.

They are now seen as problematic by both Conservatives and Liberals (love in the time of book banning), and perhaps they are. But from 3rd to 6th grade, I loved every one of them. I must have read about 25 of them.

Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch: American has too many laws

 Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch has written a new book and is hitting FOX News to sell it (which is odd in and of itself). He talks about how the number of laws has exploded in the last hundred years. Which is correct. But let's look at just some of what happened since 1924 - when white men like Gorsuch ruled the roost.

Changes since 1924

Women

- Women were not allowed to open bank accounts in their own name without their husbands: fixed in 1974
- Women were not allowed to buy a home until 1974
- Not allowed on juries until 1961 (for Louisiana 1975)
- Discrimination allowed on hiring, firing, etc until 1964
- 1965 Birth control legal
- Housing based on the sex of women was outlawed in 1974
- Husbands were “husband and master” in some states, with unilateral control of household accounts until 1981
- 1994 Violence Against Women’s Act allows women to seek civil penalties for victims of rape and domestic violence.
- 2000 Supreme Court invalidates the ability for women to sue under the Violence Against Women’s Act in Federal Court, sending back to states that do not have this protection
- 2007 Supreme Court limits lawsuits over race and gender pay if claims against employers if those actions are based on actions over 180 days – even if the employee does not know
- 2016 Survivors’ Bill of Rights ensures rape victims can get a forensic test if requested, that rape kits cannot be deleted unilaterally by police

Blacks

- 1924, Blacks could not use the same facilities as whites: restaurants, buses, water fountains, housing, schools, military, and many more. Bank accounts and insurance policies were denied to Blacks

-       1954, segregation of public schools was declared unconstitutional 

- 1964, segregation at all levels was declared illegal: guaranteed equal access to public facilities (restaurants, stores, hotels, private schools, etc.).

- 1964, discrimination in employment proved illegal

- 1965, ended LEGAL sanctioned state barriers to Blacks voting and voting registration

-       2001 lawsuits against employers for discrimination can ONLY be brought if it was intentional by company, not if it "just happens"

LGBT

- Illegal in 1924

- 1953 LBGT banned from working for the federal government or any of it’s contractors

- 1977 “Save our Children Campaign” Repeals gay rights ordinances in Miami

- 1986 Supreme Court rules that Colorado’s 2nd amendment, which protects LBGT against discrimination, is illegal (Unconstitutional) because giving LBGT anti-discrimination rights are “special rights.”

- 2003 Sodomy Laws are unconstitutional and gay sex is no longer a crime in private

- 2009 LBGT attacks are covered under Federal Hate Crimes

- 2015 Same Sex marriage is legalized

Native Americans

- Not allowed to vote until 1925

Of course, there are more laws now, you dumb Supreme Court Justice. Are some of them dumb? Yes. But cherry-picking two examples to prove that the explosion of laws is wrong is a strew-man argument. But then, so are many of his Supreme Court decisions, so it makes sense

One Thing About Weird

 For my friends in England, you may have heard about the Democrats calling Trump 'weird.' Well, we all know he is. With his rampant election denying, his question if Kamala Harris is really black, his continued call for outsing the Georgia Republican Governor, his lying about crowd size, his attempt to overthrow the government on Jan 6th, and more.

Calling him out for any of these is met with a lying attack that his followers tend to believe, and everyone else ignores. But 'weird,' that one seems to drive him crazy. Not just because he is, but because it sums up many people's feelings. The word hits with independent voters, who aren't really involved yet. It hits with young voters. It seems to work.

AND it has the extra benefit of driving him nutso.

So his comeback recently is hilarious. Essentially, "No, I'm not. You are."

I love this.

****

And boy, does Trump hate it. He’s so defensive over the tag that he had a meltdown and attacked Democrats while appearing on a right-wing podcast Thursday.

“Well, they’re the weird ones,” he said. “That’s a weird deal going on there. They’re the weird ones. Nobody’s ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things, but weird I’m not. And I’m upfront. And he’s not either, I will tell you. JD is not at all. They are.”

In a desperate bid to slow the presumptive Democratic nominee’s momentum, Trump and the GOP have added the “I’m rubber and you’re glue” strategy to harping on Harris’ laugh and her “love of Venn diagrams and her call to ban plastic straws.” But it’s not working.

Change in Energy production in different states

 In today's issue, the NY Times has an article on how energy production and use have changed since 2000. It makes for exciting and actually hopeful reading. I have chosen some states to show how well things are moving or states we might be interested in.

There are a few reasons this is great news. First, nearly every state has created more energy with renewable resources. For example, Iowa now produces more electricity from wind power than any other source. Across the nation, there has been a movement from coal, which is VERY dirty, to natural gas, which is pretty clean. 

Here are the state images.

Like Montana, below, hydro power varies based on rainfall and drought - but solar is rising

More below

Well, what the hell do they want then?

 Maga (and JK Rowling) are super anti-trans. SUPER. 

An Algerian woman has done excellent in Olympic Boxing, and the conservative yackers are up in arms. Furious. Because she looks like a man. 

Now, MAGA's definition of a woman is someone born with a vagina. It used to be someone who could have babies, but some women can't, and some have had hysterectomies, so they have changed to "assigned female at birth."

Okay. Well - she (and a Taiwanese boxer) were born women with a vagina. And, they have always lived as women. And they were assigned female at birth.

But Maga and JK insist they are men. This is because one test, one time, administered by the International Boxing Authority - a group now banned for mismanagement and cheating, found they have an XY chromosome. It is natural and was there at birth, but IBA wanted them out.

For other reasons (bribes and mismanagement), the IBA was removed as the governing body of Boxing, and the International Olympic Committee made the rules. They were allowed to box.

But because she is strong, Maga and JK have been going crazy. She isn't a "real woman."

So, my question is, what the f*ck do they want? She meets the qualities of a woman that they have defined. They call her a man because ...?

So, is she intersex? No! Maga and JK don't believe that is a real thing. So is she a man? NO! because she has a vagina. So she is a woman with a vagina, right? No, she isn't a woman because, well, just because. 

But wait, the binary man / woman are the only sexes ever born. This is per their own comments and beliefs. So, what the hell do they want?

This is a real bird

 The Japanese Shima Enaga.

Vermont wasn't built for this

 Vermont is a cool little state. For those who don't know, it was our 14th state, carved out of New York.

It typically has snowy winters and warm summers. It was very rarely subject to extreme weather, but that has changed with climate change. Hurricanes from the Atlantic usually peter out well before Vermont and typically turn up Long Island towards Massachusetts, should they still have power.

But now hurricanes have a lot more power. They start much larger from warm waters, and the East Coast Ocean is also warmer. So they don't peter out as they go up the coast. The warm weather inland often sends the remnants of these as tropical storms all the way up to Vermont.

And Vermont was not built for tropical storms. It was built for snow melt, which is much more gradual.

So, yikes.

And a change to my header

 I was reading an advice letter in the NY Times - the article has moved since I read it and I cannot find it again. But generally here was the problem.

A couple from the West Coast was invited to a small wedding for a niece on the East Coast. They didn't want to fly back east for a wedding that would happen on a weekday and was designed to be intimate. They thought they would only speak to their niece they would only talk to for a few minutes (their words).  The couple asked if they sent a present and then offered to host them at dinner at a later date. Would that be okay?

To which the advice columnist first said "An invitation is not a summons." he went on about their plans, but I am stuck with that first comment.

Hence the new quote.

Random images: The painted Mosque from Tovovo, North Macedonia.

I took these a few years ago when I visited North Macedonia. The mosque was originally built in 1438 and later rebuilt in 1833 by Abdurrahman Pasha. It is crazy intricate on the inside and contemplative on the outside.

Parking, on the other hand, was a pain in the behind. Tovovo is built around the main street, which gets thinner and thinner as you approach the mosque, hemmed in by houses and no parking. So I parked about a 1/2 mile away. But the street was full of life and had a nice little restaurant I used after my visit.

Outside the Mosque

Inside the courtyard. That is my squint to see if the selfie is right.

Below are three different views of the ceiling.

Most Mosques will have an inner sanctuary to slow you down from the hubbub of day, a place to set your shoes and wash your feet before entering.

Unlike some Mosques with different areas for men and women, the Painted Mosque has different hours of prayer for the genders. But any others times, visitors are invited in - sans, shoes, short shorts, and bare shoulders