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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 2, 2022 12:10:28 GMT -5
I'm amenable, assuming the Covid trajectory permits. I get shot #4 on Friday (officially immunosuppressed as well as Old) and keep watching the infection/hospitalization figures, which are in decline locally and state-wide. To crick-don't-rise I now mentally add, "and if the virus don't mutate again."
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Post by Russell Letson on Mar 1, 2022 14:47:21 GMT -5
Not so much an "unprovoked act of war" as an extremely unwise one. The provocation is right there, but the international-legal machinery that would justify it is not (Ukraine not a NATO member)--and even if there were some kind of treaty that justified going to war, the non-zero possibility of Russia (which is to say Putin) pulling a nuclear trigger is a serious disincentive.
As for Putin being "nuts"--well, there are certainly mental conditions that lead to disastrous decisions, and there are personality types that are vulnerable to megalomania, borderline-paranoia, and related non-optimal states. The guy started out as a KGB agent, reorganized Russia along oligarchic* lines, concentrated power in his own hands, and now makes speeches that have echoes of a line of toxic nationalism that stretch from the czars through Stalin. There seems to be a political/geopolitical mental state that amounts to thinking with one's dick, and I suspect that Putin has a case of it.
* Yes, a one-party state is a kind of oligarchy, but there's a line that gets crossed when a top oligarch emerges. The model that comes to mind is the organized-crime syndicate.
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 28, 2022 16:42:08 GMT -5
Whatever Garrison's problems with women were, he always seems to have treated musicians well--that's what came across in all the interviews I did for the AG PHC story years ago. Of course, I wouldn't expect anybody connected with the show to air dirty laundry to a guitar-magazine writer, but it was pretty clear that he was a very good showrunner, and unless you're a comely young woman that's the important thing.
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 27, 2022 15:02:38 GMT -5
The wellness-check appointment has developed an interesting coding/billing wrinkle. A couple years ago in the course of what I took to be my annual physical (paid for by our excellent state health insurance), I mentioned my blood pressure, which has been a topic for something like 15 years, along with a couple other routine matters. A few weeks later I got a bill for what I thought was a covered visit--which turned out to have embedded in it a separate consultation, because the talk (which occupied maybe five minutes out of my alloted 20) strayed beyond the boundaries of a Medicare wellness checkup, which has a tightly delimited set of issues. I complained to CentraCare billing but they were stubborn, even though I pointed out that my wife had the same kind of conversation with her doctor but was not billed. I'm guessing somebody along the way added the triggering code.
A bit of research revealed that this kind of coding has become commonplace. So the next year I specified that I was not asking for a Medicare wellness appointment (since I am not a Medicare client unless I'm checked into the hospital) but my fully-insured annual physical. No extra charges have showed up on our EOB forms. And as a bonus, I didn't have to go through the dementia test.
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 27, 2022 12:57:34 GMT -5
I've walked out of two concerts in my life, and one of them was David Wilcox. With Little Feat it was just physical discomfort--their setup was so loud I couldn't stay in the hall (which was acoustically good enough to host a string quartet.) Wilcox I found to be a very accomplished musician, a decent composer, and an unbearable bore about his personal emotional life. In his stage patter, he went on and on about (I think) his marriage, and most of the lyrics were along the same lines. Now, I'm a uxorious guy myself, but I don't make it the subject of every conversation. So at the intermission, I left.
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 27, 2022 12:46:33 GMT -5
The cards were created in 2019 by Ginny Jones, 46, a Los Angeles-based eating disorder coach who works with the parents of children with eating disorders. <snip> She said the cards — which are for sale on her website — clearly say that if a weight is needed, to just tell the patient, and that patients recognize there are situations when the scale is necessary. Emphasis added.
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 26, 2022 19:48:27 GMT -5
It's an interesting mix--the European ownership seems to account for products that we don't see at other stores (the factory-made cookies and such, usually German, are especially nice), so it's a bit "exotic." But it also attracts budget shoppers. The milk and half & half prices, for example, are consistently the lowest around. C. likes their cheese selection, and they stock some interesting frozen items (Canadian-made shepherd's pie, for example).
It's not much like Trader Joe's, though their parent companies are owned by brothers, and some of their products look like they come from the same suppliers. Fresh Thyme is closer to Trader Joe's. Ours has its own bakery, very good produce, and a deli/prepared-food department. They used to have very nice pizza-by-the-slice as well, but the pandemic put that on hold.
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 26, 2022 12:44:32 GMT -5
Who did you spend sixty years listening to? I'm about as far left as anybody on this forum, and I've never thought that the USSR wasn't dangerous. On the other hand, I was (and remain) skeptical of suggestions that I check under the bed for Reds every night, or that every anti-colonialist regime must be a bunch of Commies.
Any autocratic regime in possession of nukes is dangerous. As is any regime anywhere with a global military reach and hegemonic ambitions.
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 26, 2022 11:40:11 GMT -5
My father had a Navy saying for that kind of situation: "Junior man provides."
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 26, 2022 11:37:09 GMT -5
Several Late Unpleasantnesses back, the USSR went to war with Finland--you can Wiki it: The Soviets made several demands, including that Finland cede substantial border territories in exchange for land elsewhere, claiming security reasons—primarily the protection of Leningrad, 32 km (20 mi) from the Finnish border. When Finland refused, the USSR invaded. Most sources conclude that the Soviet Union had intended to conquer all of Finland, and use the establishment of the puppet Finnish Communist government. . . . en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_WarThe Finns held the Russians off but eventually had to give up territory. Later in that Wiki entry is the account of more than a century of Russian attempts to absorb and eventually "russify" Finland--which is culturally and linguistically distinct from the usual Slavic-speaking Russian targets for absorption. Russia has a long history of imperial-style expansionism, whether or not their targets are part of some notional greater Slavic realm--for example, the Baltic states' only appeal is that they make handy buffers. (Cezarija's parents left Lithuania when the NKVD started sending in guys to make lists and notice who had nice farms to seize.) Dreams of global hegemony beckoned Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin and now beckon Xi and Putin. As they beckoned American administrations after 1945, driven by Stalin's ambitions.
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 25, 2022 13:53:58 GMT -5
So: an amateur lawyer. Or maybe one that couldn't manage to pass the bar exam. What could possibly go wrong?
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 25, 2022 12:28:34 GMT -5
Justice Kagan's non-law background: Harvard Law (later dean of that school), clerked for Thurgood Marshall, served as US Solicitor General.
Rehnquist: Stanford Law, clerked for a Supreme Court justice, was an assistant AG under Nixon.
Nothing in the rulebook says a SC justice must be a lawyer, but it strikes me as folly to expect a non-lawyer to cope with the technical demands of the job.
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 22, 2022 21:17:50 GMT -5
Michale Dunn's instrument-building projects are getting Out There. Here's a demonstration of his new Stroh cello.
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 22, 2022 20:49:58 GMT -5
A niggle: Those of us on our side of the Mississippi refer to our location as "west,"* even though the river hereabouts runs on the NW/SE slant.
* It's that traditionally more expensive half of the US, as in prices are "slightly higher west of the Mississippi."
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 22, 2022 16:59:07 GMT -5
Puellesque? Just spitballing here--though spitballs are puerile.
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 22, 2022 0:38:54 GMT -5
It would have been nice if they'd credited the music played behind the narration. This is the piece that closes the segment. Sounds like a period guitar like the Martin in this video:
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 21, 2022 18:39:01 GMT -5
If "challenge the source" means "fact-check the claims of a Tweet," then, yeah. There are several parts to such a "challenge," the first one being the accuracy of Mark Strahl's tweeted claim that a particular woman who only donated $50 to the cause has had her accounts frozen. Attempts to identify the woman did not turn her up, and Strahl now claims that he is witholding her identity to protect her. Makes it hard to verify his story. And the details of that story are quite specific. Next: Even if "Briane" doesn't exist, might something like what Strahl depicts have happened to some similarly-situated person? If it is the case, then some journalist or researcher or blogger is going to report it. And could it happen, given the wording of the order and the particulars of its implementation? Here's the text of the government's order: www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2022/2022-02-15-x1/html/sor-dors22-eng.htmlAnd here's a CBC explainer: www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-banks-ottawa-protests-1.6353968I've taken two passes through the Order and I'm still not sure exactly how far down the money chain it is meant to apply--nor exactly when application is meant to begin. The head of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association doesn't like the look of it--"There is nothing that I’ve seen so far on my understanding of the orders that limits it. They are very broad in scope." (https://canoe.com/news/national/banks-get-protesters-names-as-canada-financial-squeeze-unfolds)
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 21, 2022 12:44:03 GMT -5
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 20, 2022 20:48:08 GMT -5
We have a table exactly like that, disassembled, down in the basement. Our chairs were different, though, and long discarded. The whole set came with the (ex-rental, furnished) house we bought when we first got married. When we moved to Minnesota, we found an almost-as-rickety kitchen set, but of golden oak. I've had to reglue the chairs a half-dozen times over the years.
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 20, 2022 20:42:10 GMT -5
In the US, Chianti was just about always sold in those romantic straw bottles (fiaschi), but when I was in Italy in the mid-sixties, I was told that only the cheap stuff was bottled that way--that the good Chianti came in standard Bordeaux-shoulder bottles. American tourists, apparently, liked the look, and every train station seemed to have shelves of the cheap stuff for sale on the platform. Later I recall that if you wanted a good Chianti in the US, you looked for bottles labled "Sangiovese," which is the grape Chianti is made from.
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