Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

We won’t go back.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Sunday Open Thread (and Ajabu update)

Sunday Open Thread (and Ajabu update)

by | 76 Comments

This post is in: 

After the debt ceiling drama yesterday, it feels like today will be the calm before the storm of a lot of action on the various indictment fronts this week.

This seems like a good time to give you guys an update on Ajabu. He now has $2,500 in his pocket that he didn’t have before, and he is infinitely grateful for everyone’s contributions!   Plus, 5 people asked for his address, so I imagine there are also checks on the way.

You will recall that Ajabu is a musician, and he keeps some of his CDs on hand  – and Ajabu would like to send a CD to all of you who donated $100 or more.  So if that resembles you, please send me an email message and your address so Ajabu can mail the CDs.  If anyone prefers to keep your address more private, he can mail me the CDs and I can send them on to you.

My dahlias are a bit late blooming this year, but here’s a picture of the one I brought in yesterday.  If you’re wondering about size, that’s a 12-inch bowl.  It’s an Emory Paul, in case anyone is interested.

I’m having a friend over this afternoon to make our final batch of stuffed spicy peppers before the rest of the peppers have to go in the fridge or the freezer.

I don’t know how other people do it because we always make up our own recipes.  We use spicy Krimzon Lee peppers as the base for the stuffing.  We chop and sauté jalapeño, anaheim, poblano, and hungarian hot wax peppers with onions and zucchini from the garden.  No salt because there’s plenty of salt in the cheeses.  We mix in white rice from the asian place at the corner, and top with a bit of white cheddar, parmesan and asiago.

We nibble on cheddar jalapeño cornbread and drink our sour cherry mojitos on the porch while the stuffed peppers bake.

What’s everyone else up to today?

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

76Comments

  1. 1.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Apparently Benicio del Torre is in STL for some reason or other. I got word he stopped by my old haunt the Venice Cafe.

    Somebody texted me the news even tho they new I was fast asleep at that point.

  2. 2.

    lowtechcyclist

    Looks like I’ll be helping out with concessions this afternoon for the play my son is in. (He’s managing the stage crew, plus one brief part onstage.) They’re doing “Puffs” which is a parody of the Potterverse.

  3. 3.

    geg6

    Heading to my sister’s to watch the Steeler game with some friends.  She’s making pork roast and sauerkraut and has refused my offer to make anything.  She has also said she’s made enough that I won’t need to worry about what  John will eat for dinner.  So I’ll be relaxing a bit today for once.

  5. 5.

    Alison Rose

    Is there a way to buy the CDs? I think my mom might be into his music. I did find MP3s on Amazon, but don’t see an option to purchase a physical CD.

  7. 7.

    RandomMonster

    I got the new covid/flu jabs yesterday. Other than some restless sleep and a sore shoulder, all is good. Think I’ll just draw and do laundry all day.

  15. 15.

    MattF

    COVID shot yesterday, so sore arm and rest today. Got the flu shot Thursday, soreness there is going away. Will get RSV shot when all back to normal.

  19. 19.

    mrmoshpotato

    Thanks for the Ajabu update.

    As for today, the Bears might actually win.  The Broncos are in town – and they’re also terrible.

  20. 20.

    mrmoshpotato

    That cheddar jalapeno cornbread sounds excellent.  Was the cheese grated on a Microplane® Adjustable Coarse Grater as called for?  Hehe.

    As for stuffed peppers, 😮🤯😋

  23. 23.

    WaterGirl

    @eclare: Dusty in here!

    @mrmoshpotato:  Did you ever stop by the postcard and music thread?  I put your music request in the post.

    I HATE when recipes do that bullshit where they push their products.

    But I have to say, I bought the two mini-skillets, and I cut the recipe in half, which is perfect for the two skillets. So good

    *I grated the cheddar the last time, and then I forgot to add it!  The cornbread was still excellent, but it’s a lot spicier without the cheese. :-)

  26. 26.

    Another Scott

    Speaking of music, beware the off-by-one bug:

    OH MY FUCKING GOD.

    Pictured: Apple’s M2 MacBook Air 13″ speaker response (measured with a mic), and the response you get when you zero out every 128th sample of a sine sweep.

    They have a stupid off-by-one bug in the middle of their bass enhancer AND NOBODY NOTICED NOR FIXED IT IN OVER A YEAR.

    […]

    It might be specific to the M2 MBA 13″, but still….

    Always, always check the “simple” stuff when debugging.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  27. 27.

    mrmoshpotato

    @WaterGirl:

    Did you ever stop by the postcard and music thread? I put your music request in the post. 

    Hahaha, thanks!  No, I didn’t stop by.  Was watching the Cubs.

    I grated the cheddar the last time, and then I forgot to add it! The cornbread was still excellent, but it’s a lot spicier without the cheese. :-)

    I bet!

  28. 28.

    Geminid

    @Another Scott: Turkiye’s National Assembly began their new session today. That may account for the timing of this attack.

    Middle East Eye journalist Ragip Soylu (@reagipsoylu) posted pictures and video of the attack. The video showed two men stopping their minivan right in front of a small guardpost. The passenger jumped out and ran towards the building, firing his weapon. The driver pulled out a launcher and fired a rocket. Both men were killed and two police officers were wounded, one seriously.

  30. 30.

    RaflW

    Good morning!

    I’m busy with home computer tasks. The last 24h have been stressful. I decided to (finally, very very late) update my Mac OS. I have a 10 y.o. macbook air so it was going to be a bit of a bother. I did make sure to do a couple fresh time machine updates (and after a thread maybe a month or two ago, also made pretty sure my external drive was OK).

    Short story long, 19 hours and multiple restarts later, I gave up and reinstalled the old disk image from yesterday morning. Everything seems fine, but what a p.i.t.a. for nothing.

    I did decide to just fork over $2.99/mo for iCloud, because all this last night woulda been less stressful if I was confident that my photos and files were safe offsite (not fully trusting the passport dive + restore process). So tons of bits n bites are on their way to the cloud now.

  31. 31.

    Another Scott

    @Alison Rose: :-)

    Computer audio is math.  To change the way the sound appears to our ears, and to tune it to the response of the computer speakers (which are never perfect), math is done before sending the electrical signal to the speakers.  Boosting the base response is a different change – different math – than boosting the treble.

    There’s a bad math error, and a simple error, on a particular Mac model.  It ruins the sound.  It shouldn’t have gotten through quality control.

    Hope this helps!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  33. 33.

    Alison Rose

    @Another Scott: I mean, sure, I understand that there is math and numbers involved, but “zero out every 128th sample of a sine sweep” still means nothing. But it’s okay. I’m not looking to start a new career as a music producer.

  34. 34.

    wjca

    @mrmoshpotato: No, I didn’t stop by.  Was watching the Cubs.

    Who seem determined to keep their fans on tender hooks until the very end.  Well, better then imploding in August, I suppose.

  35. 35.

    Another Scott

    @Alison Rose: My understanding:

    A sine wave is the simplest, most ideal, audio tone.  Sounds we hear are lots and lots of sine waves happening at the same time.  Computers are (mostly) digital – smooth sine waves are approximated by a bunch of discrete values. The more samples of a sine wave in a particular time interval, the more accurate the approximation of the smooth wave. Removing the 128th sample is just a simple choice as a math test to see how the system behaves – it shouldn’t change the final signal to the speaker all that much. The fact that it does means there’s an error in the math.

    My understanding, anyway. HTH!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  36. 36.

    WaterGirl

    @wjca: I always thought it was tenter hooks, but I thought maybe I was wrong, so I googled.  And if found a fun page that I’ll share:

    Nip it in the bud NOT nip it in the butt

    If you nip something in the bud, you’re cutting it off before it has a chance to develop, or grow. You might want to watch out for crabs nipping you in the butt if you’re hanging out at the beach… otherwise, it’s wrong.

    “Your dog’s developing bad habits. You might want to nip that in the bud.”

    On tenterhooks NOT on tender hooks

    This phrase, meaning worried anticipation, comes from the word ‘tenter’ which was a frame on which cloth was stretched to prevent shrinking. The tenterhook kept the cloth tense and tight – hence the expression. A tender hook isn’t a thing.

    “I’m on tenterhooks waiting for my exam results!”

    To all intents and purposes NOT to all intensive purposes

    ‘To all intents and purposes’ is defined as meaning ‘in all important respects’ or ‘virtually’. The phrase dates back to 16th century law, where it started life as, ‘to all intents, constructions, and purposes’. It’s easy to see how this is misheard as ‘intensive’, but it’s still wrong.

    “The house was, to all intents and purposes, abandoned.”

    I couldn’t care less NOT I could care less

    “I could care less” means you do, at least, care a little. “I couldn’t care less” means you don’t. Simple.

    “I couldn’t care less what my ex thinks!”

    180-degree turn NOT 360-degree turn

    I do words. I don’t do maths. But I do know that if you start at point A and do a 360-degree turn, you’re still at point A.

    When you want to express the fact that you started off thinking one thing but now think the complete opposite – in other words, you did a complete U-turn – that’s a 180-degree turn.

    “I didn’t like the new album at first but I’ve done a complete 180 and now love it.”

    Dog-eat-dog world NOT doggy dog world

    The phrase ‘dog-eat-dog’ means brutal, ruthless and competitive. Apart from a track by Snoop Dogg, doggy dog world is not a thing. I just wish it was.

    “It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, so you’d better up your game.”

    Chest of drawers NOT Chester drawers

    That unit in your bedroom where you keep your socks is a chest of drawers. Unless you bought the drawers from Chester, in which case, I won’t argue with you.

    “Please put your clothes away in your chest of drawers.”

    Moot point NOT mute point

    ‘Moot’ means arguable, or subject to debate. As well as thinking it’s ‘mute’, this one is also misused by people thinking it means that something isn’t up for debate.

    Someone once told me they thought it was ‘a mute point’ because it meant ‘stop talking nonsense’. Makes perfect sense – particularly if you don’t know what ‘moot’ means.

    Friends fans will remember the scene where Joey called it a ‘moo point’. “It’s like a cow’s opinion. It doesn’t matter. It’s moo.”

    “Whether or not it should be enforced by law is a moot point.”

    11 more commonly confused phrases

    Old wives’ tale NOT old wise tale
    Off your own bat NOT off your own back
    Go-getter NOT goal-getter
    Scapegoat NOT escape goat
    Alzheimer’s Disease NOT old timers’ disease
    Chickenpox NOT chicken spots
    Nerve-wracking NOT nerve-wrecking
    Card sharp NOT card shark
    Pass muster NOT pass mustard
    …and, of course, white as a sheet NOT white as a sheep

    I always thought it was “card shark”.  Bummer, I liked that better than “card sharp”.

    I am going to have to find a way to start using “doggy dog world” and “escape goat”.

  37. 37.

    Mel

    The stuffed peppers sound delicious!

    We’re making Three Sisters Stew (roasted corn, butternut squash, three kinds of beans, sweet onion, some shredded roasted pork and broth and spices) and cornbread this week, for a little early Fall comfort food.

  38. 38.

    Mel

    @WaterGirl: I love this!

    I graded a British Lit test once that had an essay  answer discussing Hamlet’s relationship  with his mother, Gertrude.

    The phrase “Edible Complex” made an appearance there.

    Wow. Problematic in soooo many ways!

  42. 42.

    Rachel Bakes

    Dropped 4 fruit pies off at the HS theater bake sale at our town’s Giant Pumpkin Weigh-off. Making beef fajitas tonight from some of the meat we had to cook Wednesday when our big freezer got left open and everything thawed. Moving firewood. Trying to get everyone over our various levels of cold. It’s not raining in CT today!!! Sunshine

  43. 43.

    Kayla Rudbek

    Waiting for two packages coming FedEx supposedly today by 2 pm. Mr. Rudbek’s dad has medical issues so he’s out there this afternoon. And I need a backhoe and an exorcist to help me get my office cleaned up and ready for tomorrow.

    I have also come to the conclusion that I need to get a new under-sink water treatment system for the kitchen. The previous owner had a reverse osmosis system that we haven’t used since we moved in a decade ago. So the Handy Women group on Facebook advised me that the current system is probably clogged up beyond repair and they would just go ahead and replace the entire system. Any suggestions as to what brand or model I should buy?  The Handy Women group will not recommend particular brands.

  44. 44.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Went to the Autumn Moon Festival last night at Huntington Gardens and it was lovely.  But they really needed more food trucks (and more tables for eating).  The line/wait for food was pretty bad.  I waited 30-45 mins for ours after waiting in line for a good 15-20 minutes.

  45. 45.

    There go two miscreants

    Thank you for the Ajabu update! I was wondering.

    Also wondering: what kind of peppers did you stuff? As I read it, all the ones you mentioned were part of the stuffing (maybe I’m misreading).

  46. 46.

    dnfree

    @WaterGirl:

    Those are all eggcorns (named for people who  mispronounce acorns).  The fun thing is that most of them make a KIND of sense, so you can see where they come from.  Look up eggcorns and you’ll find many more.

  47. 47.

    JoyceH

    @WaterGirl: I think sometimes the misstatement of the old expression becomes the new expression. It used to be that “the pit of your stomach”, was an anatomical location – it was the place where you felt something. “I felt a cold dread in the pit of my stomach.”  But now, and I’ve heard this over and over, the pit itself is the thing you feel “I felt a pit in my stomach.”

  48. 48.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @WaterGirl: Card shark is a thing.  I bought my spouse a “card shark” T-shirt from an aquarium the early part of this century.  He loved it.

  49. 49.

    RaflW

    @Kayla Rudbek: We decided on AquaSana for our townhouse. We have good water quality in Minneapolis, other than possibly some old service lines and, though our place was built in 1982, the possibility of minor leaching from lead solder.

    So we got a two-stage from them to remove chlorine and minor taste issues (I drink the tap water in the bathroom, BF doesn’t but he has a much more sensitive gut).

    About 100 bucks to buy, and their filters-by-mail service can come on auto-pay. We found that we did not need to change them as often as they suggest (we just change them when the spigot gets ‘too slow’ which is subjective) so I cancelled the autoship. That was a tiny bit annoying because I ordered it all online, but you have to phone to cancel.

    I braced for a hard sell but the phone person was cheerful, fast and just said “thanks for your call” and it was done.

    And, a warning: I bought an AO Smith (at Lowes) single-cartridge system for our ski condo. It failed after 13 months and caused $50,000+ worth of damage. Insurance covered all but $1,000, but it was a freakin’ nightmare since at least $47,000 of it was the units below us. My claims rep and I discussed suing AO Smith but it’s a bugaboo and they didn’t make me do it, thank FSM.

  50. 50.

    Geminid

    @dnfree: If you say “waiting with baited breath” it means something, but not exactly what “waiting with bated breath” means.

    I see this all the time on Twitter: ” so-and-so must be reigned in,” instead of “reined in;” “they need to make him tow the line” intead of “toe the line,” etc.

  51. 51.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … ArsTechnica.com:

    Every year between September and December, Lubna Dada makes clouds. Dada, an atmospheric scientist, convenes with dozens of her colleagues to run experiments in a 7,000-gallon stainless steel chamber at CERN in Switzerland. “It’s like science camp,” says Dada, who studies how natural emissions react with ozone to create aerosols that affect the climate.

    Clouds are the largest source of uncertainty in climate predictions. Depending on location, cloud cover can reflect sunlight away from land and ocean that would otherwise absorb its heat—a rare perk in the warming world. But clouds can also trap heat over Arctic and Antarctic ice. Scientists want to know more about what causes clouds to form, and if that effect is cooling or heating. And most of all, says Dada, “We want to know how we humans have changed clouds.”

    […]

    In a paper published this month in Science Advances, Dada’s team establishes a new heavy hitter in cloud creation: a kind of chemical released by trees. Trees emit natural volatiles like isoprene and monoterpenes, which can spark cloud-forming chemical reactions. Dada’s new work focuses on an overlooked class of less abundant volatiles called sesquiterpenes, which smell woody, earthy, citrusy, or spicy, depending on the molecule and type of plant or microbe that emits them.

    The team shows that sesquiterpenes are more effective than expected for seeding clouds. A mere 1-to-50 ratio of sesquiterpene to other volatiles doubled cloud formation.

    The role of trees in seeding clouds is important, because it suggests what the sky above some regions might be like if governments manage to tamp down sulfur emissions. In a world with less pollution, plants and trees will become more dominant drivers of cloud formation, an echo of the premodern world.

    This research could help refine estimates of what the atmosphere was like before industrialization. Maybe we’ve been undercounting the world’s aerosol population by overlooking a large portion of those that come from trees. If so, climate models will need retooling.

    […]

    By quantifying how trees make clouds, scientists could better predict the climate’s future—and past. Industrial emissions reduce some warming through radiative forcing, since sulfur aerosols can create reflective clouds. But if biogenic aerosols were more abundant than expected before industrialization, then the contributions from industry matter less.

    It’s hard to predict what this recalculation will tell us about global warming, because there are so many moving parts in a dynamic climate. For example, heat stress, extreme weather, and droughts cause plants to release more biogenic volatiles—which seed more clouds. Deforestation and heat stress are pushing treelines to migrate to higher altitudes and latitudes. That affects where clouds form.

    “It’s a feedback loop,” Dada says. “The climate is affecting the cloud formation, and the clouds are affecting the climate.”

    Better climate models will help scientists predict the best mitigations: “If we need more clouds, if we need less clouds,” Dada says. The catch, though, is that climate models are incredibly computationally demanding. It may not be easy to incorporate the physics of something as tiny as these tree aerosols.

    […]

    This stuff is really complicated. And that shouldn’t be surprising – the system has evolved over billions of years. The idea that we fully understand it all already is hubris.

    Beware calls for “simple” solutions like dumping a bunch of additional stuff in the atmosphere, or the oceans, or …, as an easy fix.

    We do know, though, that dumping tens of billions of tons of additional stuff (CO2, methane, particulates, etc.) into the atmosphere in a short period of time (a dozen decades) will cause big changes in the atmosphere – it’s physics. We need to stop doing that as quickly as possible.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  53. 53.

    Brachiator

    @WaterGirl:

    Chest of drawers NOT Chester drawers

    Wasn’t Chester Drawers the deputy in the old Western TV series “Gunsmoke?” ;)

    Moot point NOT mute point

    I think this spelling error developed because most people have only heard the word “moot,” but have not read it in essays or short stories. In middle school we had a moot court in history class. I always remembered the word after that.

  54. 54.

    wjca

    @WaterGirl:  On tenterhooks NOT on tender hooks

    Wow, learn something new every day!

    I take some solace from the fact that I already knew all the other examples.

  55. 55.

    trollhattan

    @Geminid: You have baited breath if just finishing a can of sardines.

    Also for consideration: she’s a real trouper, not trooper unless one’s discussing the CHP.

  56. 56.

    Brachiator

    @dnfree:

    Those are all eggcorns (named for people who  mispronounce acorns).  The fun thing is that most of them make a KIND of sense, so you can see where they come from.

    Yep! Here’s a great short video on eggcorns.

    Some are so cringe worthy, you want to climb into the feeble position.

  57. 57.

    Geminid

    There could be big Black Sea news: a Ukrainian official reported that three ships loaded with grain have sailed from two ports near Odesa. They are taking the coastal route the Ukrainian Navy has opened. The ships are considerably larger than the two that sailed last week. They had about a 24 sail to reach the Bosphorus Strait and could be halfway there if the Russians have not interfered.

  58. 58.

    Another Scott

    @Brachiator: +1 on the aural vs written aspect.

    A decade or two ago, “The point is is that” seemed to be a very, very common spoken expression to fill in space to think.  It seems to be on its way out now – thankfully.  It seems to have been replaced, at least partially, at least on the radio in the DC area, by “yeah!”, which was driving me nuts for a while – now I just [sigh] to myself.

    Language is weird.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  59. 59.

    like a metaphor

    @WaterGirl: “It’s a dog eat dog world, but sometimes there just aren’t enough dogs to go around.”

    from the movie Babe- Lost in the City

  61. 61.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: When Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov reported the ship departures he said that 5 more were ready to enter Ukrainian ports to be loaded.

  63. 63.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: Could be worse.  It can always be worse.  ;-)

    I took a year-long Far Eastern Civ sequence in college.  The subject of Chinese vs Japanese languages came up (they use similar symbols and the same symbol for “water” and similar terms, but the languages are very, very different (e.g. Ho vs Mitsubishi)).  IIRC, in Mandarin, each major sound can be pronounced 4 slightly different ways, [with different meanings,] depending on how the tongue is positioned in the mouth.  When I heard that, I knew immediately that there was no way that I was ever going to try to learn Mandarin…  (A physics class colleague said he was thinking about taking Mandarin and I suggested Japanese instead and that’s what he went with.)

    The Mandarin equivalent of “Merry Mary got Married” would probably lead to a 100 year family feud if I ever tried to say it.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  66. 66.

    grandmaBear

    I once had a student write that someone was ‘osterized’ out of Athens. I noted in the margins, must have been painful.

  67. 67.

    Another Scott

    @grandmaBear: :-)

    In my high school English class, the teacher joked that the sizes of eggs were graded as small, medium, large, jumbo, and ostracize.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  74. 74.

    WaterGirl

    Dead thread, apparently!  Oh well.

    Just checking BJ after my friend left.  sour cherry mojitos were fantastic, the stuffed peppers were great, and the cheddar jalapeño cornbread was outstanding.

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