Twin Tiers Living

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Bill Burr won’t back down.

The comedian snapped at a group of reporters who pressed him about current events at the 2025 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor ceremony, where his pal Conan O’Brien was honored.

In a viral video circulating on X, a journalist told Burr she had been “reading up” on his support of accused UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione and asked him to clarify his previous comments as he walked the red carpet at the March 23 event.

“I don’t think you read up on it because I said what I felt about it, and I said what a lot of people said,” he bluntly replied of his “Free Luigi” stance.

 

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Or you can just watch it here:

The Chemung County Sheriff’s Office announces the arrest of 49-year-old Warren F. Morrison of Ashland for Rape in the First Degree, a Class B Violent Felony.

According to Chemung County Sheriff William Schrom, on March 31st, 2025, a School Resource Officer from the Chemung County Sheriff’s Office Civil / Community Services Division was advised by a juvenile female that she and other females were being sexually assaulted by Morrison over a number of years.

The Chemung County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Division took over the investigation and began working in conjunction with the Chemung County Child Protective Services, as well as the Chemung County Child Advocacy Center.

As a result of the investigation, Morrison was arrested for Rape in the First Degree and arraigned in Ashland Town Court. He was remanded to the Chemung County Jail with no bail.

The sheriff's department says the  investigation is continuing, and more charges are expected.

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NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are falling Wednesday in the final hours before President Donald Trump unveils the tariffs he promised as part of his “ Liberation Day ” that could drastically remake the global economy and trade.

The S&P 500 was 0.7% lower in early trading, but it’s had a pattern this week of opening with sharp losses only to finish the day higher. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 240 points, or 0.6%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.9% lower.

 

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PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A decision on the future of the tush push has been pushed until next month.

NFL team owners had been set to vote Tuesday on Green Bay’s proposal to ban the play that’s helped the Philadelphia Eagles win one Super Bowl and reach another, but it was tabled until May.

Team owners approved modifying the kickoff rule, expanding replay assist, revising overtime rules, along with other changes.

Postponing the tush push vote means the debate will continue while teams gather more information. Proponents of the play and those who oppose it presented strong arguments while the league’s medical experts expressed safety concerns.

 

Read more here.

What do you think? Should the "tush push" be banned?

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Val Kilmer, the brooding, versatile actor who played fan favorite Iceman in “Top Gun,” donned a voluminous cape as Batman in “Batman Forever” and portrayed Jim Morrison in “The Doors,” has died. He was 65.

Kilmer died Tuesday night in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends, his daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, said in an email to The Associated Press. The New York Times was the first to report his death on Tuesday.

Val Kilmer died from pneumonia. He had recovered after a 2014 throat cancer diagnosis that required two tracheotomies. 

 

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Palm Beach, Fla. — The Buffalo Bills have handed out four contract extensions this offseason to players entering the final year of their contracts.

The one remaining candidate - Pro Bowl running back James Cook - apparently won’t join the club anytime soon.

Bills general manager Brandon Beane spoke to reporters on Sunday at the NFL’s Annual Meeting from the Breakers resort. He said the focus has shifted away from contract negotiations.

“At this point, we’re on to the draft once we got (Christian) Benford done," Beane said. “I don’t see us doing any deals anytime soon. We’re going to focus on the draft and getting our cap in order.”

 

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When "Peanut" the squirrel was euthanized last fall after being seized by the state Department of Environmental Conservation in Chemung County, the news sparked an immediate backlash of public outrage and made national headlines for days.

Now DEC's acting commissioner admits the situation could have been handled better and said the agency is reviewing its protocol for dealing with illegal wildlife.

The controversy erupted in late October when DEC representatives showed up at the home of Peanut's owner, Mark Longo, of Pine City, armed with a search warrant.

 

Read the rest here.

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Winter squash are fairly easy to grow but they require quite a bit of space. Fortunately, if you have a smaller garden there are some bush and semi-bush varieties that can be grown.

In addition to being delicious, most bush varieties mature faster than the larger vining types. A bush squash typically only takes up a 3×3-foot space. So you can fit three hills of squash (with 2-3 plants per hill) in a 6×6-foot area.

Semi-bush squash take up more room than the bush varieties but their vines remain shorter than the larger vining squash. They also have a tendency to produce a lot of fruit in the small amount of space they use.

If you are short on space think about growing a bush or semi-bush variety. Keep in mind though, because the foliage produces the sugars that feed the fruits, some bush and semi-bush varieties can be lacking on flavor. But there are some that are great. Here are a few of my favorites that we find have good flavor:

Bush Delicata

Cucurbita pepo, open pollinated. These oblong-shaped squash have creamy white skin with green stripes and flecks. The flesh is smooth and nutty flavored. The storage life of this squash is a little shorter than the harder-skinned varieties. I find they store well for about 3-4 months.

 

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Asked by NBC News’ Kristen Welker in a phone interview about whether he pressured automakers to avoid raising prices after his 25% tariffs on imported cars and parts go into effect, Trump denied that he told CEOs to control costs.

“No, I never said that,” Trump told Welker. “I couldn’t care less if they raise prices, because people are going to start buying American cars.”

 

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Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane has once again worked his magic to extend a cornerstone player at a team-friendly rate.

On Saturday, it was announced that the Bills and Christian Benford reached agreement on a four-year, $76 million extension. The deal comes out to $19 million on average, well below the asking price of top cornerbacks in the league.

 

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says Wednesday will be “Liberation Day” — a moment when he plans to roll out a set of tariffs that he promises will free the United States from foreign goods.

The details of Trump’s next round of import taxes are still sketchy. Most economic analyses say average U.S. families would have to absorb the cost of his tariffs in the form of higher prices and lower incomes. But an undeterred Trump is inviting CEOs to the White House to say they are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in new projects to avoid the import taxes.

It is also possible that the tariffs are short-lived if Trump feels he can cut a deal after imposing them.

“I’m certainly open to it, if we can do something,” Trump told reporters. “We’ll get something for it.”

At stake are family budgets, America’s prominence as the world’s leading financial power and the structure of the global economy.

Here’s what you should know about the impending trade penalties:

What exactly does Trump plan to do?

He wants to announce import taxes, including “reciprocal” tariffs that would match the rates charged by other countries and account for other subsidies. Trump has talked about taxing the European Union, South Korea, Brazil and India, among other countries.

As he announced 25% auto tariffs last week, he alleged that America has been ripped off because it imports more goods than it exports.

 

Read the rest here.

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LONDON (AP) — You can have your cake and eat it too — just do it slowly. 

Experts tend to focus on the kinds of foods you can eat to improve your health. But the speed at which you devour your dinner matters just as much. There are risks with eating too fast — think stuck food and the potential to overeat before your brain tells you to stop. (Inhaling your food also risks annoying your slower-paced dining companions or the person who took the time to cook your meal.)

Here are some tips from scientists on how to slow down and take a more mindful approach to consuming your diet.

 

Find out more here. 

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Richard Chamberlain, the handsome hero of the 1960s television series “Dr. Kildare” who found a second career as an award-winning “king of the miniseries,” has died. He was 90.

Chamberlain died Saturday night in Waimanalo, Hawaii of complications following a stroke, according to his publicist, Harlan Boll.

 

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As a measles outbreak in West Texas and New Mexico continues to grow, and other states report outbreaks of their own, some pediatricians across the U.S. say they are seeing a new trend among concerned parents: vaccine enthusiasm.

"Our call center was inundated with calls about the MMR [measles, mumps, rubella] vaccine," says Dr. Shannon Fox-Levine, a pediatrician in Broward County, Fla. She says parents are asking if their child is up to date on their vaccinations. Or "should they get another vaccine? Should they get an extra one? Can they get it early?"

Measles spreads quickly in communities where vaccination rates are low, and vaccine hesitancy has been on the rise across the U.S. in recent years. Kindergarten vaccination rates have not bounced back to their pre-pandemic levels.

Fox-Levine says the recent interest in the MMR vaccine — which protects against measles, mumps and rubella — is a refreshing change in a state where vaccine hesitancy has been growing.

 

Read the rest here.

Definitely worth a listen. 

What do you think?

Ray Maratea has asked for a section where he can post items of interest pertaining to the economy and about investing. This is an excellent idea, and I appreciate Ray's suggestion. 

To cover both Ray amd our rears, please keep the following disclaimer in mind:

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The information given in Small Potatoes does not mean that investing is risk-free. The user must be careful about the quality of the stocks they select. Small Potatoes is neither a registered investment advisor nor a stockbroker/dealer, and all investment/financial information expressed herein is the opinion of the author, based on personal research and experience. Although effort is to ensure that all information is accurate and up to date, occasionally unintended errors and misprints may occur.

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In encouraging news, the eastern monarch butterfly population nearly doubled in 2025, according to a new report announced in Mexico. The population wintering in central Mexico's forests occupied 4.42 acres, up from 2.22 acres during the previous winter. While monarchs occupied nearly twice as much forest habitat as last year, populations remain far below the long-term average. 

The survey, Forest Area Occupied by Monarch Butterflies Colonies in Mexico During the 2024-2025 Hibernation Season is conducted annually by WWF-Mexico and Mexico's National Commission of Protected Natural Areas in collaboration with local communities, and it serves as an important indicator of the butterfly's overall population health. 

“We recognize the key role of local communities, as well as the support of the government of Mexico in conserving the forest and providing this iconic species with the opportunity to thrive,” said Jorge Rickards, director general of WWF Mexico. "It’s now time to turn this year’s increase into a lasting trend with an all-hands approach where governments, landowners, conservationists, and citizens continue to safeguard critical habitats along the monarch’s North American migratory route.”

 

Read more here.

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The only thing we ask is that you keep it intelligent. There's lots of places on Facebook for calling someone out or showing some random street drama. If you're not sure the topic is suitable, all you have to do is ask. 

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Keith Wagner, a dairy farmer in the rolling hills and open fields northeast of Albany, shelled out $1.4 million to build a device that promises to cut his electric bill and to reduce air pollution: a generator powered by manure and food waste. He was confident he would be reimbursed for a big chunk of that money, thanks to a $422,806 grant from the US Department of Agriculture.

Now, the Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars in payments to rural farmers and small businesses for climate-friendly projects approved during the Biden administration. Wagner doesn’t know when, if ever, he’ll see the money.

“It’s unfair,” said Wagner, whose 1,000-acre family farm with 400 milk cows, Wagner Farms, is just 13 miles from the state capital. “We signed a contract with the federal government to complete a project. We did that. Now, they’re not holding up their end of the deal. It’s kind of like, if I wasn’t going to pay my taxes, and I said, ‘Well, I’m just not going to pay them.’”

Wagner is one of 151 farmers, rural businesses, and municipalities in New York State who were promised $186 million under Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), according to an analysis by Atlas Public Policy prepared for New York Focus. The grants are for projects designed to plant trees, protect farmland from the effects of climate change and to bring solar power and other forms of clean energy — like Wagner’s manure-powered generator — to rural areas.

Almost all of that money is now frozen. On Trump’s first day in office, he ordered the USDA to stop payments to all IRA grants; Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says the department is reviewing projects to ensure money goes only goes to “farmers and ranchers” and not to “far-left climate programs.”

That leaves grantees in rural parts of the state — where support for Trump is strong — in the dark, with no information about when a review might be forthcoming or what it might entail. “I asked my contact at USDA if they heard anything,” Wagner said. “They said, ‘Nothing yet. Radio silence.’”

His generator, called an anaerobic digester, is a success. It extracts methane gas from the cows’ manure and food waste and generates enough electricity for his entire farm, saving some $7,000 a month in utility bills. He even has enough electricity to sell some to the grid. The machine helps the environment, too, by keeping planet-heating methane from escaping into the atmosphere. But Wagner still doesn’t know how he is going to pay back the bank loan he took out to pay for it.

Even some who support Trump’s agenda are frustrated. Todd Drake, a Republican member of the Albany County legislature, was awarded an $87,000 grant under the Rural Energy for America Program to install solar panels at the Adirondack Diamond Point Lodge, his family-owned vacation property in Lake George. Now he doesn’t know when he’ll be reimbursed.

“I absolutely support what the Trump administration is doing, reviewing projects to get at the fraud and waste,” Drake said. “But if you’ve already committed to a project, there should be some clarity. We’d be really happy if we knew how long the review will take. There is a fear about what’s going to happen now.”

The funding freeze may become an issue in this summer’s special election in the 21st congressional district to fill the seat vacated by US Representative Elise Stefanik, Trump’s nominee as ambassador to the United Nations. Stefanik, whose district runs from the Adirondacks to the Canadian border, won reelection in 2024 by a whopping 24 percentage points. Democrats have nominated a dairy farmer, Blake Gendebien, in the hopes that his appeal to rural voters will overcome daunting odds; Republicans have yet to name a candidate.

Trump’s policies will have a far-reaching effect on agriculture in New York, said Allison Morrill Chatrychiyn, a researcher in the Climate Stewards Program at Cornell University in Ithaca. Layoffs at USDA and cuts to Cornell’s long-standing agricultural research programs will make it difficult for farmers to get the information they need to adapt to climate change, she said.

Farming has always been a risky and unpredictable business, but changing weather patterns have made it worse. Hotter summers make cows vulnerable to “heat stress,” which means they produce less milk and, in extreme cases, die. Heavy rain alternating with periods of drought damages the soil and makes it less fertile.

Warmer winters may seem like a boon to farmers, but unpredictable temperatures sometimes damage fruit, such as the grapes grown in the Finger Lakes’ vineyards. “If you have a warmer winter, and then you get a cold snap and a freeze after grapes have already started to bud, that’s deadly to the crop,” Chatrychiyn said. Research geared at mitigating these problems is in jeopardy. USDA laid off seven researchers at a Cornell lab in Geneva who studied how to make grapes more resistant to changing weather, for example. (An independent federal board later ordered the USDA to temporarily rehire laid-off workers.)

“We signed a contract with the federal government to complete a project. Now, they’re not holding up their end of the deal.” —Keith Wagner

“USDA layoffs will definitely have an impact on farmers in New York State and on research at Cornell,” Chatrychiyn said. “It will have a long-term effect.”

During the Biden administration, the USDA awarded $60 million to New York State to help farmers mitigate the effects of climate change under a program called Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities. These funds, too, have been frozen.

As a result, eight small farmers in the Hudson Valley won’t get the first payments of grants they had been promised for projects to prevent erosion and improve the quality of their soil, says Megan Larmer, senior director of programs at the Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming in Cold Spring. For example, a vegetable farmer was planning to use his grant to buy wheat and rye seeds to be used as cover crops. Cover crops grow in the off-season and are allowed to die and decompose naturally, putting nutrients in the soil. Other farmers planned to plant trees.

“Promising farmers money, as the U.S. government did, and then freezing it creates financial havoc,” said Larmer, whose organization was managing the $4 million grant to be divided among the farms. “This is especially disruptive at a time of year when there is little cash, because the farm has nothing to sell, and there are lots of expenses like labor, seeds and equipment repairs.”

Also frozen is a $560,000 grant to the Adirondack North Country Association (ANCA), a nonprofit in Saranac Lake that fosters economic development, to help eight small dairy, beef, and vegetable farms become more resistant to heat, drought and heavy rains.

“If you have really intense rainstorms, like the ones we’ve been having, it can carry off soil nutrients and result in erosion,” said Jon Ignatowski, the ANCA staffer who manages the grant. “And that has implications down the road. Will these fields still be fertile in 10, 20, 30 years? How can we prevent runoff and erosion, or at least slow it down a little bit?

Trees, with their deep roots, can hold the soil in place. They also provide shade, making animals less prone to heat stress. But the money ANCA was expecting to buy trees has been halted.

“Our invoices were being paid regularly up until the new administration took over, and then our invoices stopped being paid,” Ignatowski said. “Suddenly, eight farms that thought they had this amazing opportunity to grow are being stuck in their tracks, and the implications of that will be felt over many years. We’re losing funds to do good rural economic development work in the region that really, really needs it.”

This story originally appeared at New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York.

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In the wooded highlands of northern Arkansas, where small towns have few dentists, water officials who serve more than 20,000 people have for more than a decade openly defied state law by refusing to add fluoride to the drinking water.

For its refusal, the Ozark Mountain Regional Public Water Authority has received hundreds of state fines amounting to about $130,000, which are stuffed in a cardboard box and left unpaid, said Andy Anderson, who is opposed to fluoridation and has led the water system for nearly two decades.

This Ozark region is among hundreds of rural American communities that face a one-two punch to oral health: a dire shortage of dentists and a lack of fluoridated drinking water, which is widely viewed among dentists as one of the most effective tools to prevent tooth decay.

But as the anti-fluoride movement builds unprecedented momentum, it may turn out that the Ozarks were not behind the times after all.

"We will eventually win," Anderson said. "We will be vindicated."

Fluoride, a naturally occurring mineral, keeps teeth strong when added to drinking water, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Dental Association. But the anti-fluoride movement has been energized since government scientists published a report last summer finding a possible link between lower IQ in children and consuming amounts of fluoride that are higher than what is recommended in American drinking water.

 

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There will be no reunion with the Houston Texans, but Stefon Diggs is returning to the AFC East.

Diggs and the New England Patriots have reached a three-year, $69 million max deal, NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reported Tuesday.

Diggs is roughly five months removed from suffering an ACL tear that ended his first and only season with the Texans. He recently visited with the Patriots and later posted workout videos on Instagram. Though the addition addresses a massive need for New England at wide receiver, it's also sure to draw some scrutiny given the high price tag and concern for a veteran coming off the most serious injury of his career. Apparently the Patriots aren't too distressed about his recovery.

 

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CNN — America’s economic mood continues to deteriorate as President Donald Trump carries on with his sweeping economic agenda.

Consumer confidence slid 7.2 points this month to a reading of 92.9, the Conference Board said Tuesday in its latest survey, reaching its lowest level since January 2021 and extending a decline that began in December, after the US presidential election. March’s decline was similar to February’s, underscoring the growing pessimism among US consumers.

Not only are Americans expecting higher inflation this year, but more of them are also predicting that the economy will slip into a recession, the Conference Board survey showed. That toxic combination of weakening growth and accelerating inflation resembles “stagflation,” and Federal Reserve officials also see the US economy trending in that direction.

 

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The film suggests that Morrison met a Syracuse man named Frank, possibly at Rochester’s Eastman Theater, and in some way acquired his ID. 

Finn is a self-described “superfan” of Morrison and The Doors who produced the series through his own company, Z-Machine.He says he’s spent 39 years researching Morrison.

As further evidence for his theory, Finn claims that two of Morrison’s ex-girlfriends were shown a picture of the man in Syracuse and burst into tears because of the resemblance. The man in Syracuse also has a scar on his nose in the same place where the real Morrison once had a mole.

 

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