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  1. Yesterday
  2. Chris
    I’ve never felt it was okay to find humor in things caused by health issues, which are outside anyones control and perhaps something they’re sensitive about already. If Jada shaved her head intentionally, that’s one thing. But if it was from alopecia, cancer, or whatever, it’s off the table in my book. Did Will over react? Yeah probably. He could have walked up and told Rock to STFU “or else”. He could have talked to him after the show. But in the heat of the moment, I get why he did what he did. I’d have likely done the same, albeit with a closed fist.
  3. Hal
    Me again Kevin . From a reference book that I keep on hand when i forget what i learned in school or what i learned from the man with big shoes (father ).
  4. Sal Sal joined the community
  5. Hal
    Just this thought Kevin . Horseradish being in the same family ( other than being a perennial) as Parsnips , Carrots , Turnip etc , these root vegetables get sweeter and more flavorful after a frost as the frost “ sets “ the sugars . My father used to dig it up after a frost .
  6. Kevin
    I need some information from someone that has grown horseradish before. I know they say to harvest in Oct-Nov, but should I wait till after a good frost kills the top of the plant? I have never grown it before, so any advice is appreciated. I did put it in a few buckets to keep it from taking over my yard.
  7. Last week
  8. Sal
    100% on Chris Rock's right to make the joke. Will has ruined fresh Prince forever.
  9. Ann
    I just recorded the original movie to watch this weekend. My favorite scene is the adult Halloween dance party. Hocus Pocus 2 will be next.
  10. Chris
    To me, the original is one of those things that signify a time of year. It's on, it's definitely Fall. I'll watch it, if only because nothing else is on. Has anyone seen the sequel yet? If so, what did you think?
  11. Zapp Brannigan
    Allegedly.
  12. Adam
    now thats a bunch of BS... particularly is you think about the amount of Legislators/families there of, operate "farms" for the subsidies and tax breaks....but hey my pants are at my ankles and im already bent over so why dont i just reach a bit deeper into my pockets
  13. TwinTiersLiving
    Read the rest here.
  14. TwinTiersLiving
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  15. TwinTiersLiving
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  16. TwinTiersLiving
    How America’s Democracy Is “Ripe to Be Exploited” by Eric Umansky Voters in Sweden this month gave a leading role to a far-right party with neo-Nazi roots. Italy is also on the cusp of putting a party in power that has fascist origins. And of course, in the United States, one party has increasingly embraced election denialism and attempted to undermine the legitimacy of the electoral process. To try to understand what, exactly, is happening, I talked with Barbara Walter, a political scientist at the University of California San Diego who studies democracies across the world. Her book “How Civil Wars Start” has become a bestseller. Rather than talk about the prospects for political violence, we discussed why many democracies are retrenching and how the U.S. stands alone — and not in a good way. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Can you walk through the vital signs of democracy that you and other political scientists have been tracking and that are trending the wrong way in the U.S. and elsewhere? So there are probably five big data sets that measure the quality of democracy and countries around the world. They all measure democracy slightly differently. But every single one of them has shown that democracies around the world are in decline. And not just the fledgling democracies, but sacrosanct liberal democracies in Sweden, the U.K. and the United States. These indices are like vital signs, but instead of for your body, it’s for our body politic. What are the most important ones? So, empirically, we can’t rank order them. But we know what the good things are, and if you start attacking them, you’re attacking the vital organs. One is constraints on executive power. You want lots of checks and balances on the executive branch. Here in the United States, you want to make sure that the legislative branch is strong and independent and willing to check presidential power. You want to know that the judicial branch is the same. Another one would be rule of law. Is the rule of law actually respected? Is it uncorrupted? You don’t want a system where certain individuals are above the law. If you want to become, say, Orban 2.0, you place loyalists in the Justice Department who are beholden to you and not to the rule of law. You also want a free and open press, so that your citizens get high-quality information and they can make good decisions. Another one is you really want a competitive political environment, so that there’s a level playing field for people who are competing for power. You could make a very uneven playing field by party. So you can restrict the vote, you can make voting more difficult. So these are all vital: Do you have constraints on the executive? Do you have the rule of law, so that there’s accountability? Do you have a level playing field, so that there can really be popular participation? Another warning sign you’ve talked about is when a party becomes less about policy and more about identity, a shift one can see in the Republican Party in recent years. Can you talk about it? The Republicans have always had a challenge that they were the party of wealthy Americans and business. The problem is wealthy Americans will always be a very small minority of Americans. So for wealthy Americans, they have to convince at least some nonwealthy Americans to support their platform. How do you do that? Well, you do it with issues of identity, their sense of threat, their sense of fear, their sense of the world is changing and “I’m being left behind.” It’s very effective. I want to get to why we see these dynamics playing out across so many countries. You cite three dynamics. One is that the dominant caste in many nations, white people, is trending toward minority status. Another is increasing wealth concentration, where rural areas are often losing out. And then there’s a new medium that has risen that is unregulated and unmediated: social media. On No. 3, the new medium, I would state it stronger than that. It’s not that it’s unregulated per se. It’s that it’s being driven by algorithms that selectively push out the more extreme incendiary messages. You also wrote about another concept that I hadn’t heard before: ethnic entrepreneurs. These are politicians like, say, Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian strongman, who recognize an opportunity in appealing to the fears of a particular group. Yep. He was not a nationalist. He was a straight up Communist. And again, that gets back to the difference between a political party based on ideology and one based on ethnicity. He became the leader of the Serb party. So he saw which way the wind was blowing and he put up a sail. And that’s what an ethnic entrepreneur does? Yes, but it can also be more strategic than that. Milosevic really had a problem in that communism was over. And if he wanted to stay in power, he was going to have to compete in elections. How is he going to get elected? And then he’s like, “Oh, like the largest ethnic group, and in this country are Serbs. I’m Serb!” If I can convince the Serbs during this time of change and insecurity and uncertainty when everyone’s a little bit on edge that unless they support a Serb, the Croats are gonna kill them, then then I can catapult myself to power. That’s classic ethnic entrepreneurship. I want to ask you a last question I’ve been thinking about a lot myself. Like a number of news organizations, we’ve created a team devoted to covering threats to democracy. But after I read your book, I stopped referring to it as that because it occurred to me that the term threats to democracy reinforces a story that we Americans tell ourselves: that we already have a true democracy, the best darn one in the world, and we just need to protect it. Our American democracy, even when we were happy with it and thought it was doing really well, it already had a whole series of undemocratic natures that no other healthy liberal democracy has. Our electoral college, nobody has that. That was a compromise to rural states. We have the fact that our elections are run by partisan agents. No other healthy liberal democracy has that. Canada, this enormous country, has an independent electoral commission that runs all of the elections. Every ballot is the same no matter if you vote in Prince Edward Island or the Yukon. Or that we allow so much money to be injected into our system. Nobody else has this. So we have not only these undemocratic features but a whole number of vulnerabilities that if you really did want to somehow cement in minority rule, you could do this legally. So in many ways we have a terrible system that’s ripe to be exploited. This article was republished with permission. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
  17. Chris
    11 minutes of hurricane coverage, one story out of Corning, and then weather tonight. Hey WETM, you guys do know the NBC Nightly News is on after you, and they’ll do the national news, right?
  18. Kevin
    I agree Ann. While I find the Deadpool movies to be okay, I don't find them as funny as most people.
  19. Ann
    Hubby watches these movies and roars with laughter. I watch with him and wonder what he’s laughing about. He looks at me not laughing and it drives him nuts lol.
  20. Chris
    Awesome! The back and forth between he and Hugh has been hysterical.
  21. Andy
    Will be a part of the MCU, releasing September 6th 2024
  22. Chris
    The Southport Carnival was always a good time. I'd say it rivaled or was better than the county fair, even back then.
  23. Chris
    This is one remake I will give a chance. I absolutely loved the book and have read it a couple times. I've seen the original movie, starring Richard Thomas ( "John-Boy" ) and enjoyed that as well. However I think with advances in CGI and this not so much a "made for TV" movie like the last one ( I think? ) it will be truer to the book in the gritty reality of war it tried to convey.
  24. TwinTiersLiving
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  25. TwinTiersLiving
  26. TwinTiersLiving
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  27. TwinTiersLiving
    Didymos (bottom right) and its smaller moonlet Dimorphos (center) were the targets of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL David Barnhart, University of Southern California In a world first, NASA has crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in an attempt to push the rocky traveler off its trajectory. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test – or DART – is meant to test one potential approach that could prevent an asteroid from colliding with Earth. David Barnhart is a professor of astronautics at the University of Southern California and director of the Space Engineering Research Center there. He watched NASA’s live stream of the successful mission and explains what is known so far. This video, sped up 10 times actual speed, shows a series of images taken one second apart by the DART spacecraft as it approached Didymos and the smaller Dimorphos before colliding with Dimorphos. The last few images are shown in real speed. 1. What do the images show? The first images, taken by a camera aboard DART, show the double asteroid system of Didymos – about 2,500 feet (780 meters) in diameter – being orbited by the smaller asteroid Dimorphos that is about 525 feet (160 meters) long. This image of the moonlet Dimorphos was taken 11 seconds before the DART spacecraft crashed into the asteroid. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL As the targeting algorithm on DART locked onto Dimorphos, the craft adjusted its flight and began heading towards the smaller of the two asteroids. The image taken at 11 seconds before impact and 42 miles (68 kilometers) from Dimorphos shows the asteroid centered in the camera’s field of view. This meant that the targeting algorithm was fairly accurate and the craft would collide right at the center of Dimorphos. This photo shows the textured and rock-strewn surface of Dimorphos and was taken two seconds before DART crashed into the surface. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL The second-to-last image, taken two seconds before impact shows the rocky surface of Dimorphos, including small shadows. These shadows are interesting because they suggest that the camera aboard the DART spacecraft was seeing Dimorphos directly on but the Sun was at an angle relative to the camera. They imply the DART spacecraft was centered on its trajectory to impact Dimorphos at the moment, but it’s also possible the asteroid was slowly rotating relative to the camera. The final image from DART, taken one second before impact, was not able to fully transmit back to Earth. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL The final photo, taken one second before impact, only shows the top slice of an image but this is incredibly exciting. The fact that NASA received only a part of the image implies that the shutter took the picture but DART, traveling at around 14,000 miles per hour (22,500 kilometers per hour) was unable to transmit the complete image before impact. 2. What was supposed to happen? The point of the DART mission was to test whether it is possible to deflect an asteroid with a kinetic impact – by crashing something into it. NASA used the analogy of a golf cart hitting the side of an Egyptian pyramid to convey the relative difference in size between tiny DART and Dimorphos, the smaller of the two asteroids. Prior to the test, Dimorphos orbited Didymos in roughly 16 hours. NASA expects the impact to shorten Dimorphos’ orbit by about 1%, or roughly 10 minutes. Though small, if done far enough away from Earth, a nudge like this could potentially deflect a future asteroid headed towards Earth just enough to prevent an impact. 3. What do we know already? The last bits of data that came from the DART spacecraft right before impact show that it was on course. The fact that the images stopped transmitting after the target point was reached can only mean that the impact was a success. While there is likely a lot of information to be learned from the images taken by DART, the world will have to wait to learn whether the deflection was also a success. Fifteen days before the impact, DART released a small satellite with a camera that was designed to document the entire impact. The small satellite’s sensors should have taken images and collected information, but given that it doesn’t have a large antenna onboard, the images will be transmitted slowly back to Earth, one by one, over the coming weeks. The force from DART’s impact should slightly shift the orbit of Dimorphos around Didymos. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL 4. What does the test mean for planetary defense? I believe this test was a great proof-of-concept for many technologies that the U.S. government has invested in over the years. And importantly, it proves that it is possible to send a craft to intercept with a minuscule target millions of miles away from Earth. From that standpoint DART has been a great success. Over the course of the next months and years, researchers will learn just how much deflection the impact caused – and most importantly, whether this type of kinetic impact can actually move a celestial object ever so slightly at a great enough distance to prevent a future asteroid from threatening Earth. David Barnhart, Professor of Astronautics, University of Southern California This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
  28. Carol Bossard
    The Equinox has come and we are now truly in autumn. Seasons are flashing past in double-time. Sooner than seems possible, we’ll be contemplating Thanksgiving dinner and then Christmas cards. But even now, there is this strange pull to prepare for winter ---- though most winter days here are navigable and fairly easy to manage. We are seldom snowed/iced in for more than two days. But, still, something inside ---- maybe all those years of helping put in hay bales or canning tomatoes, or perhaps ---- survival genes from eons ago ---- makes me want to be sure we are snug and ready for anything winter can bring. “….She was covered from head to foot with stove blacking. On the floor all around the stove were dribbles and splotches of blacking……That was the worst day. On Friday the house was almost in order and they worried lest Ma come home too soon….”* “Little Town On The Prairie”, quoted above, has Laura and Carrie trying to do the house-cleaning while their parents are gone. Everything that could go wrong, does. That also describes my comprehensive cleaning dilemma; I begin one thing and that leads to something else and suddenly I’m over my head in too much to do and where on earth will I put things? The traditional housewifely practice of the 19th and early 20th centuries demanded deep-cleaning, spring and fall. Of course, then, there were no vacuum cleaners, no carpet shampoos, Scrubbing Bubbles or Windex for regular maintenance. My seasonal efforts are, admittedly, minimal. I bring out the quilts and pillows, change the wreath on the door and add pumpkins and chrysanthemums to the porch. But I don’t take the carpets outside for beating, nor wash the walls. Some windows may be cleaned as we remove the ACs but my efforts are more cosmetic than seriously cleansing. My college major {then called “Home Economics;” now called “Human Ecology!”} was because a) I wanted to be a 4-H agent and b) I’ve believed that making a home where people feel comfortable and loved is both a fine art and necessary skill for happy living. Even an aero-space designer or nuclear physicist --- of either gender ---- needs this. That opinion wasn’t popular in the 1960s when women were trying to escape the rigidity of society’s assigned roles. I agreed about need for change in societal expectations, but if one is free to develop a career outside the home, then one should also be free to make home a career without feeling like a betrayer of womankind. Of course, there is far more to home-making than the house itself, but most of us do tend to focus on our houses, since they are the basic structures within which and around which, we create a living environment. Kerm and I lived in three apartments and one half-house before, we moved to a large, square Pennsylvania farm house; 4 rooms upstairs and 4 rooms downstairs with an attached summer kitchen. We and our then-toddlers moved in to face high ceilings, big windows and empty walls. I was staying home with the children, so one salary had to stretch for all things. My mother, always good at re-purposing, kindly offered me a pile of white sheets she no longer needed, and I made cottage curtains for six big windows, from those muslin sheets, and trimmed them with ball fringe. The living room walls were soon brightened with fabric hangings upon which I appliqued patterns and quotations. It took me about 3 days per hanging, to cut out letters and shapes, hand-sew them on and fringe the burlap, this being before the advent of digital sewing machines that do everything but fix dinner and wash the dishes. We also discovered a new hobby; household auctions. We found large, round overhead lights from the county building that, tipped over, turned into ultra-modern table lamps ---- industrial meets Star Trek. We found gold-framed paintings we both liked and occasional pieces of furniture. I bought an entire bolt of orange corduroy and covered floor pillows, slip-covered a chair and couch cushions. We purchased a good couch and bed, but the rest of our house was put together with very little effect on the budget. It e slowly evolved into an eclectic décor that was pleasing, at least to our eyes. I have always enjoyed seeing the unique ways in which people create their living spaces. Karen, whose casual house-keeping style is similar to mine, and who also enjoys vintage things, arranges pleasing vignettes on her table. I remember one that featured a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, some interesting stones and a charming little bowl. It was a conversation-starter. Jan fills her walls with original paintings --- not Van Gogh or Rembrandt--- but artists from her community. They may never be famous (or they might) but the art is attractive and unique, and it inspired me to go and do likewise. Pat has her own amazing paintings on the wall and makes beautiful quilts. Ellie keeps a neat and tidy abode without clutter, but adorned with African carvings, flowering plants and a comfy porch where one can watch hummingbirds. Her home breathes out restfulness and peace. Another Ellie’s home always has a touch of elegance whether she is living in an old house, a new house or an apartment. Her elegance comes from within and is expressed via good taste, not thousands of dollars. And Joette’s rooms could be in the pages of “Country Living,” a magazine that we both enjoyed some years ago. All of these houses have a unique ambiance that just fits those who live there. Our preferences have altered some over the years; I currently surround myself with what makes me happy. Books! Music! Photographs! Art from people we know! The top of a high bookcase has a painting of the Campfire Girl’s Creed (done by my mother) and various items suggesting camping and the outdoors. It is a dust-collector but every time I look at it, I think of the fun (and crises) we’ve had camping, and I remember the stories my mother told, about growing up in the early 20th century. I have framed photographs on tables and walls, surrounding myself with people I love. My living room curtains are still white with ball fringe, though not the originals. Our orange decor has changed to rose, blue and green. None of our rooms are “show rooms” in any sense, but they are comfortable. I believe that if we listened closely enough, we’d undoubtedly hear echoes of music and laughter --- of dinner parties and rehearsals, of D&D games and graduation parties---- of adding up the pinochle score ---- all caught in our walls. What happens in a house, over many years, must be absorbed, becoming part of the very air. A home that exudes warmth, welcome and happy times --- in one’s very personal style ---- is one of life’s blessings. And considering how many homes have been recently lost in floods, earthquakes and fires, not to mention bombings --- having four walls and a roof, is definitely something for which to be deeply grateful. We turn to the outside, tucking our gardens in with cover crops. We no longer have livestock (chickens or rabbits), but we do have outside cats who believe they own us, and wild birds with expectations involving suet and seeds. We make a shelter in an ell of our house for the cats, enclosing a table with sheet foam, lined baskets beneath. Some of the warmth from inside seeps out to them and they are protected from the wind. There’s also a double-walled dog house that, with the demise of Freckles, is open to cats. (Freckles would be appalled!) And cats grow thick coats of fur, soon resembling walking muffs. There are shelters for birds to use on cold nights, and we try to provide fresh water for whoever might need it. Concern for the creatures around us is part of being grateful for our life and theirs. This doesn’t mean romanticizing them to the point where they become more important than humans. Here I’m thinking of the cows in India that walk wherever they choose, of the deer in Ithaca that do the same and the people who are all warm and squishy about deer, whales and manatees, but forget about starving or abused children. We need to be compassionate toward whomever or whatever we met on our individual paths, but we should develop well-informed common sense so that our compassion doesn’t morph into gooey sentimentality. A home’s most important quality is probably that of acceptance. Carl Larsson**, an artist of all things homey, says: “A home is not dead but living, and like all living things, obeys the law of nature by constantly changing.” And “The nourished spirit is essentially what we pass on to others whether family, friends, coworkers or strangers.”*** Home should soothe us, inspire us and take us in, that we might be renewed to face a not-always-friendly world. Meanwhile, autumn has come --- today! Golden rod is blooming everywhere. The crickets sing their autumn songs while trying to sneak into the house. We all, with some dread and some relief, await the first hard frost. There is an aroma ---- perhaps a combination of composting leaves, flowers blooming for one last time, a tinge of woodsmoke on crisp mornings and a long, fragrant sigh from the earth as the season turns. Whatever the source, the bouquet for our noses triggers an impulse of urgency deep within us, to prepare for the colder days ahead. So. bring out the quilts, polish the windows and view, with gratitude, the changing life around us wherever we live. Carol may be reached at: carol42wilde@htva.net. *Little Town On The Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder----American writer. 1867-1957. If you haven’t read these books, or if it has been years since you did, now is a good time to re-read them. Excellent reads! **Carl Larsson---Swedish painter who exemplified the Arts & Crafts Movement. 1853-1919. ***Alexandra Stoddard--- American decorator and writer; philosopher of contemporary living.
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