2025.04.22
Apr. 22nd, 2025 09:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lsandersonEmily Baude KSTP
https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/northfield-residents-warned-of-elevated-levels-of-manganese-in-drinking-water-advised-to-use-bottled-water-or-filter/
Rice crisis: Japan imports grain from South Korea for first time in more than 25 years
Japanese consumers who used to treat foreign-grown rice with scepticism have been forced to develop a taste for it amid domestic shortage
Justin McCurry in Tokyo
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/22/japan-south-korea-rice-import-crisis
Experts talk realism of Conclave movie: ‘Gets a lot of the details right’
After the death of Pope Francis, experts weigh in on how much the real-life papal election will mirror the hit Oscar-winning movie
Adrian Horton
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/apr/22/conclave-movie-pope-francis
How an American businessman lost his job and found himself in an old French vineyard
One day, life as a finance consultant stopped making sense for Peter Hahn, so he took to organic winegrowing in the Loire instead
Genevieve Fox
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2025/apr/22/how-an-american-businessman-lost-his-job-and-found-himself-in-an-old-french-vineyard
US to impose tariffs of up to 3,521% on south-east Asia solar panels
Ahead of a global summit in London comes a warning that lessons on energy security have not been learned
Julia Kollewe
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/22/us-huge-tariffs-south-east-asian-solar-panels-energy-summit
Gold hits $3,500 for first time as US dollar sinks to three-year low
With many stock markets in the red and Dow Jones headed for worst April since 1932, gold could even reach $4,000
Julia Kollewe and Graeme Wearden
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/22/gold-hits-3500-us-dollar-sinks-three-year-low-stock-markets
Ex-US senator's wife convicted in gold bars bribery scheme
Brandon Drenon
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70zlj8dpn8o
Show us your mussels! A mouthwatering trip to Vigo, Spain’s seafood capital
The Galician city on the Atlantic coast has the EU’s largest fishing port, which provides its many bars and restaurants with a spectacular trawl of oysters, clams and mussels
Fiona Dunlop
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/apr/22/food-trip-to-vigo-galicia-spain-seafood-capital
The extraordinary rise of bakery tourism: ‘People travel from all over the world. It’s mind-blowing!’
Beer crawls are out and bakery crawls are in, with people arranging whole days, weekends or even holidays around the search for the perfect loaf or croissant
Chris Marshall
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2025/apr/22/the-extraordinary-rise-of-bakery-tourism
2025 Sony World Photography Awards: Winners revealed
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9qww2rv0y0o
I won the lottery
Apr. 22nd, 2025 01:32 amcalimacAt Easter, our niece passed out scratch-off lottery cards as a kind of party favor. I got two of them. One of them I couldn't figure out the instructions for, so after scratching off most of its surface in a futile attempt to understand it, I threw it out. The other made sense, though. It had two 4x4 squares showing various occultish tokens - The Rooster, The Mermaid, The Hand, The Cello, etc - and another section which you'd scratch off to reveal a list of 14 more tokens. Match those up with the ones in the squares, which you could scratch off to keep track, and if you got four in a row on a square you win the amount printed at the end of the row.
According to the lottery's website, 1 in 44 tickets in this game win $50, so it isn't that rare. The instructions say take a small-win ticket to any lottery agent to redeem. So Monday morning I went to a local 7-11 that sells lottery tickets.
What would they do? Would they painstakingly verify that the tokens I'd scratched off on the square matched the ones in the list? Would they demand to know where I'd bought the ticket? (I don't know where she bought them.) Would they make me fill out the name/address/phone/email form on the back of the card?
No, none of those. The guy scratched off an unmarked section of the card, which I guess confirmed it was a winner, and also revealed a barcode which he scanned, probably to let the state know he was on the hook for the money, and then he handed me $50 in cash from the register. That's it. No ceremony, no Bob Barker or anything like that. I gave some of my largess to the homeless guy on the stoop outside.
I've never bought a lottery ticket, but I'm willing to try one if it's given me. This is about the fourth time that's ever happened, and the first one that's come up a winner however petty. These tickets cost $10 each, and I'm sure our niece spent a lot more than $50 to acquire her stash. So that explains where all that lottery money comes from, and that's why I'm not buying any tickets.
Do This Today: Call Senators
Apr. 21st, 2025 09:14 amsolarbirdIndivisible reports that these Democratic senators in particular need to hear from their constituents right now to oppose HR22, a bill which would disinfranchise millions of people, mostly women, from voting.
Again, urge these Senators in particular to reject the GOP’s voter suppression bill and protect our freedom to vote:
KELLY (AZ)
WARNOCK (GA)
PETERS (MI)
SHAHEEN (NH)
HASSAN (NH)
CORTEZ MASTO (NV)
ROSEN (NV)
If they aren’t your Senators, give your own a call anyway. You can call directly, or you can use Indivisible’s tool to help you call if you prefer.
HR22 is intentionally a voter suppression bill, and it’s intentionally suppressing votes of married women in particular. You need a birth certificate in person or a passport in person to register, and if you’ve changed your name (by, say, getting married) and haven’t changed your birth certificate to match, and you don’t have a passport (as most people don’t), then last I heard you’re just kinda fucked. You have to get one or the other done, and then get registered to vote, a process which will take months.
This is not an accident. Also, it eliminates registering to vote by mail or online, which is something else they want in order to, again, make it harder to vote.
This lines up with what the far-right openly say that they want, which is either eliminating votes for women entirely or assigning one vote per household, which would be executed by a man (presumably where such exists).
Also, they know that men vote Republican far more than women do, and it’s about making sure they can’t ever lose another election. This is what they’ve done in state after state where they have power, and it’s what they want to do across the country.
This can’t pass. It absolutely cannot pass. Make sure your senators know. Today.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Lost and Found
Apr. 21st, 2025 08:18 amkevin_standlee
2025.04.21
Apr. 21st, 2025 08:06 amlsandersonMars King at the Pioneer Press reports: “Whether you have an official autism diagnosis or an inkling that you could be on the spectrum, you are invited to a happy hour on Wednesday. Happy Hour for Adults with Autism kicks off at 4 p.m. April 23 and will give attendees the chance to socialize without the stigma, according to event sponsors Fraser, a provider of autism and early childhood mental health services, and Sheletta Brundidge, a local business owner and mother of three children who are on the spectrum.” Via MinnPost
https://www.twincities.com/2025/04/19/happy-hour-adults-with-autism-minneapolis-rfk-jr/
The Star Tribune’s Jon Bream reports: “Monday marks the ninth anniversary of Prince’s passing. As Paisley Park has done previously on April 21, it will be open for free for people to pay their respects.” Via MinnPost
https://www.startribune.com/prince-anniversary-death-paisley-park-chanhassen-concert-film-greensboro-candle-lighting/601335340
Amy Klobuchar calls on supreme court to hold Trump officials in contempt
Senator warns of US getting ‘closer to a constitutional crisis’ as Samuel Alito’s dissent signals deference to Trump
Edward Helmore
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/20/amy-klobuchar-samuel-alito-trump-immigration
How the Fuck Do Some Democrats Not Get That Due Process Is the Fight?
https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/
The ancient history of Iceland's warring Viking families
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0l4kk08/the-ancient-history-of-iceland-s-warring-viking-families
traveling broccoli chef
Apr. 21st, 2025 04:20 amcalimacPesach and a family Easter are both food-oriented celebrations, and my contribution to both is usually to bring along my trademark and favorite veggie, broccoli. The question is how to cook it. At home for a dinner side dish I usually just steam it, and I've done that for holidays. But usually I look for something fancier. Most of my specialty broccoli dishes are roasted, and have rather complicated recipes. So when I do those I usually make them in advance and bring them along to be heated by microwave just before serving. The problem is that reheated roasted broccoli is a rather sad thing compared to the fresh stuff.
This year, however, browsing through my recipe collection I found one which uses steamed broccoli and also cashews, which both B. and I like a lot. And the recipe was not complicated to prepare. So I made it twice, putting all the sauce ingredients together at home and packing everything up, altering the procedure for circumstances.
At the Seder, the hosting couple split duties this way: the wife organizes the invites and the table seating, while the husband and one of the sons do all the cooking. They're really well organized and prepare lots of dishes, so (with prearrangement) I figured they could add this in. When I arrived, I gave them the instructions:
This is a four-step recipe.
One, steam the broccoli. [Holds up large storage bag full of cut-up broccoli pieces.]
Two, melt 1/3 cup of margarine or butter or whatever you have in a small saucepan.
Three, stir this in - it's mostly soy sauce and garlic - and bring the mixture to a boil. [Holds up small sealed container of the sauce ingredients I'd mixed at home.]
Four, remove from the heat, stir in the cashews, and pour it over the broccoli. [Holds up small bag of cashew pieces.]
And I left them to it. They did a splendid job, and the dish got raves around the table despite being served following three other excellent veggie dishes that others had brought.
For Easter, where prep is more relaxed and there's much more room in the kitchen, it seemed best to steam the broccoli beforehand and bring it in a serving dish - steamed broccoli reheats in a microwave better than roasted broccoli does - and asked our niece who hosts for a small saucepan, cooking spoon, a free burner on the range, and the butter, and did the cooking myself. Also a successful dish.
Plans to repeat this next year are definitely on.
Gone Solar
Apr. 20th, 2025 09:58 pmmurphys_lawyerSeeing as it’s been four months since I last posted here, I thought it was time to bring you up to date on the solar panel and battery installation, and the results.
It didn’t get off to the best of starts – the scaffolders turned up on 26 February, took one look at the house, sucked their teeth and went “It’s taller than three meters, innit?”. This being the case, they put up what they’d bought to halfway up the first floor and left muttering dire threats against surveyors who only use Google Bloody Maps. I didn’t point out this was slander against the surveyors, who turned up in person with a drone and a laser thingy that does those trigonometry problems you got in school to find the height of things like, you know, houses. Anyway, the scaffolders came back a couple of days later to finish their part of the job (and did it well, to their credit) in time for the actual installation on 1 March.
The installers told us to expect them between 9 and 10 AM, but must have had a headwind up the M1 because they turned up at 8.45. After showing them where the mains switch and fuses were, and making some suggestions where to fit the inverter and battery outside (current regs require indoor fittings to be in a room with two exits, and the old coal hole in the cellar didn’t count), we left them to it. They finished by 1PM, handed over some paperwork, and left to go back to London.
Here’s some photos. Click to enlarge if you feel so inclined.
Panels on the South roof. That’s a lot of scaffolding.
Panels on the East roof. If you click to enlarge, you can see the anti-bird mesh between the panels and the roof. This stops anything nesting or sheltering under the panels, which does them no harm but can leave a lot of guano on the tiles.
The battery (10kW) and inverter (3kW).
Where the power goes into the house, near the mains switch.
All the electrical gubbins. There’s a smart meter at the bottom and a comms box on the right. I’ll post again on how they’re working when they’ve been running for while longer.
After running the setup for about a month, our electricity bill has come down by just under a half of what it had been the previous month. This isn’t just due to the days getting longer: we had an exceptionally good spell of fine weather and clear skies which gave us a 10-day period where the panels and the battery supplied all the electricity we needed. Among other things, this let us do a serious amount of washing and dry it on the lines in the garden rather than the rack in the kitchen, and still leave the battery topped up at 100% at sunset.
A system graph from 10 April. The pale blue line on the top graph is the solar power collected, the red line power consumed. You can guess when we ran the washing machine. The bottom graph is the state of the battery, which starts and ends the day at 60% or thereabouts.
So other than the scaffolding, everything went exceptionally well, and I’m glad we eventually decided to do it. As I’m typing this up at about 10PM, the battery’s still reading over 80% full which will take us well into tomorrow morning. There’s some heavy clouds and rain expected here for a couple of days next week, but this was never going to be a fully off-grid setup. If nothing else, we may soon be selling our surplus power back into the grid – not a lot daily, but it will all add up.
Oh yes – the scaffolders took nearly two weeks to take it all down again. I have a sneaking suspicion we were being used for temporary storage…
Transit puzzle
Apr. 20th, 2025 10:46 ampetrea_mitchellAmtrak even has a bus connection to Santa Rosa, but it means getting off the train in Martinez a little before 8am and then waiting two and a half hours for the bus. Surely there are local transit options that can do better!
That was sarcasm. I grew up in the Bay Area and know that transit there is a fragmented nightmare. There are somewhere around 30 different transit agencies (the number varies depending on where exactly you draw the line around "Bay Area") and minimal cooperation between them. I am moderately shocked that most of them have managed to agree on a common fare card.
After poking around various agency sites, this looks like a possible option:
1. Amtrak to Emeryville
2. AC Transit up to the transit center at the El Cerrito del Norte BART station (a couple of options for exact route, depending on how far I feel like walking)
3. Golden Gate Transit route 580 over to San Rafael
4. SMART train to Santa Rosa Downtown station, which is within walking distance of the hotel
It feels odd that I can't work BART into this, but the only Amtrak station with a direct transfer to BART is Richmond, which the Coast Starlight doesn't stop at.
Good turnout in Bothell for Saturday’s protest
Apr. 20th, 2025 10:14 amsolarbirdPretty good turnout in Bothell, counter had over 600 which is a good number given the rain in the morning and the unavoidable timing against Easter. It’s not what we had two weeks ago, but again, conflicts and worse conditions. Still a bit larger than the 2018-era protests, so I’d call that another win.
There were still people on the far downtown bridge, too. There were just gaps in the crowd between us and them.
I’d post pics but I totally forgot my phone, oops. And I actually did, not “lol no phone oops” did.
There was one (1) counter-protestor/heckler on the ground; he didn’t like my “NO KINGS” signs at all and started ranting about how Biden was the real “king” they got rid of. He didn’t have a sign himself and stayed pretty far back; I came across him accidentally while walking around testing our FRS radio range.
(As an aside: FRS handheld radios are f’real, team. Consider getting some and getting practice with them. No license needed, they’re channelised so can’t be used against you as “police scanners,” the range is shockingly good, and even with prices going up they’re super affordable. Ignore the only review on that Best Buy link; those are the exact model we bought. If you want to spend a little more you can get the T30 version, which has a headset and I think is rechargeable, but is otherwise pretty much the same radio and only comes in black. We specifically wanted replaceable batteries for extended-blackout reasons. Just remember: they are NOT private. Just relatively obscure.)
As with every other protest here, we had overwhelming support from the vehicle crowd. Hundreds to one in favour, easily, just like in person. I even got support from a presumably embarrassed Tesla driver.
I don’t know if there were more Bothell PD out this time, or if it just felt like there were. Might’ve been a difference in crowd to cop ratio, might’ve just been the escalating situation, might’ve just been where they were standing. But I wasn’t the only one who noticed.
Keep on your toes. Even here, the cops are Trump’s friends.
Anyway, that’s it for this week’s report, I hope your protests went well. Remember to save the date for May 1st, and to turn out at your local Tesla Takedown or similar before then, too. Momentum is everything, and we need to keep it.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Booked
Apr. 20th, 2025 10:04 amkevin_standleeI could have sworn that I took the book out of my tote bag when I went into Men's Wearhouse, but today I cannot find the book. It's not in the van. It's not in the bag. It's gone. I'm hoping that it turns up, because I was only halfway through the book and I don't want to have to buy another copy.
2025.04.20
Apr. 20th, 2025 08:53 amlsandersonExtraterrestrial rocks, recently delivered by a space probe, could answer the big questions about alien lifeforms and human existence
Robin McKie Science Editor
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/apr/20/it-blew-us-away-how-an-asteroid-may-have-delivered-the-vital-ingredients-for-life-on-earth
The big picture: Wolfgang Tillmans’s tender image of two boys off the coast of Denmark
The German photographer captures a moment of tranquility one Scandinavian summer
Emily LaBarge
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/apr/20/the-big-picture-wolfgang-tillmans-ocean
The Fighting Temeraire: Why JMW Turner's greatest painting is so misunderstood
Matt Wilson
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250415-jmw-turner-at-250-why-his-greatest-painting-the-fighting-temeraire-is-so-misunderstood
‘Why be toxic?’: Russell T Davies hits back at claims Doctor Who too woke
Screenwriter says he has no time for ‘online warriors’ criticising show, which now has two minority ethnic leads
Hannah Al-Othman North of England correspondent
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/apr/17/russell-t-davies-hits-back-at-claims-doctor-who-too-woke
concert review: Ariel Quartet
Apr. 20th, 2025 04:15 amcalimacI wasn't sure if my editors would let pass my rather cheeky comparison of this concert's repertoire with that of the previous Ariel concert I reviewed, but it got through. However, though I provided one, the published article has no link to that earlier review.
The big difference between those two concerts was something off-topic enough for this one that I didn't mention it this time. The previous concert had been held to show off the Violins of Hope, instruments rescued and restored from the Nazi Holocaust. As I mentioned in that review, being played by such excellent performers pushed against the limitations of the Violins of Hope's limited qualities as musical instruments.
After this week's concert, I got a chance to talk about this a little with the group's cellist. She said it was so much easier to play this time on their own instruments, whose natures and capacities they know well. And the extreme aptitude of the performance confirmed that.
Another thing there was no room to mention was the pre-concert masterclass, something I don't always have time to attend. At Kohl, the guest artists usually hold a masterclass with local high-school students. This time the ensemble was a string quintet rather than quartet, playing the scherzo from Schubert's work for that ensemble. The most interesting part of the teaching was the request that the students sing passages from the music, to help them appreciate matters of balance and flow.
Spring anime premieres
Apr. 19th, 2025 07:02 pmpetrea_mitchellAs for the others, plus one where the reactions on my favorite anime Discord server convinced me to give it a chance:
Apocalypse Hotel: After episode 1, I was amused, because the punchline was easy to guess but the exact form it took was not. After episode 2, I was clearing a spot for it on my Hugo ballot next year. It's whimsical, melancholy, philosophical, absurd, and blessed with some excellent character animation in episode 2. If you thought the premise sounded even remotely interesting, you should absolutely try it.
Lazarus: Sure looks great, but the writing ranges from just plain dumb to complete nonsense. Also it turns out I still hate dubs.
Sword of the Demon Hunter: Sets its protagonist up with an origin story which is dark and edgy on paper, but avoids the gratuitous excesses that would normally go with it. Only the one person that needs to be horribly killed for plot reasons gets horribly killed, and it goes out its way to show its human characters having humanity, allowing the demons to look properly demonic in comparison. Although this was advertised as a time travel story, there's no going back and forth, it's just that a couple of characters are going to have very long lifespans.
ZatsuTabi: Yup, it's just low-key travelogues about journeys to obscure bits of Japan. It turns out that this is my kind of thing right now, but I understand if it isn't yours.
Kowloon Generic Romance: Sets up a fascinating mystery, but it's going to be a competition between my interest in that and my annoyance at how much time the camera spends ogling our heroine (although episode 3 was much better) and how the shortcut to showing us that the apparent villain is evil is to make him an effeminate gay man (episode 3 got much worse on this).
I also managed to stop watching The Apothecary Diaries in the middle of its first episode of the season, so you don't have to keep reading my complaints about it.
Suits Me
Apr. 19th, 2025 03:32 pmkevin_standleeWith the vehicle maintenance done, it was time to head to Men's Wearhouse, where I've never shopped before, as I've owned only a handful (as in less than six) of suits in my life including the one I bought today. I didn't make an advance appointment (I didn't even know that was a thing) so when I checked in, I found that I was number 10 in the queue, with two service people helping them.
Obviously, things were busy, and coming in on a Saturday did not help. Also, I had not considered that a bunch of guys were shopping for suits for the spring proms. Oh, well, it gave me time to browse around.
The last time I bought a suit, I weighed around 330 pounds. I now weigh around 220 pounds. That's why I need to buy a new suit. The only one I have (many of you have seen me wearing it to host Match Game SF) now hangs on me more like a tent than a suit. I didn't even know what size I needed to get.
Wandering around the store, I found myself in the clearance section, and decided to toss on a few suit jackets of a color that I thought suited me (ahem) to check sizes. To my surprise, the very first one I picked up seemed to fit well enough. Finding a pair of slacks of similar size/pattern that fit would prove to be more of a challenge.
Eventually, after perhaps an hour, they called my name and I spoke with a sales specialist. She measured me, and while my nominal jacket size is considerably smaller than the jacket I got from the clearance rack, I think it fits me well enough to go with it. That is in part because I may still end up hosting MGSF and I generally need to be able to lift my arms over my head, which this new jacket still allows.
The specialist measured my waist. I'm in between sizes, and there were not a lot of slacks that were a close match for the jacket. She found slacks in waist sizes 36, 38, and 40 inches. I tried them all. The 36 does not fit at all, and the 38 was tighter than I liked, although it's possible that I will eventually shrink into it as I continue to lose weight. However, I decided that the 40 will work, although I'll have to wear a belt again.
I paid for the new suit and set off for home. I think I got somewhat lucky. The suit was originally priced at $440, but was on clearance for $200 off that. The slacks were not on sale, but $60 was not out of line.
Having forgotten to take pictures of when I was trying on the suit, I put everything back on when I got home. I realized that I've forgotten how to tie a tie, it having been at least two years since I last had to do so. Eventually I managed it.
( Cleaning Up as Nicely as Possible )
The suit seems to work, and it did not cost a fortune, so I think it was a pretty good day's work.
Maps Release: Greater Northshore Bike Connector, MEGAMAP 1.6
Apr. 19th, 2025 09:19 amsolarbirdGreater Northshore Bike Connector Map 1.6 – 18 April 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 1.6.
Additions and changes since 1.5.1:
- Large expansion north to Lynnwood City Centre and rail station across all of SW Snohomish County
- Extension of Interurban Trail in Edmonds to 78th Place West reflecting new construction
- Improved street labelling, mostly in SW Snohomish County
- Route indicators at map edges describing past-map continuations to destinations such as UW and City of Snohomish
All permalinks continue to work.
If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because it doesn’t. If you have an iPhone, please use the website interface and not the app, because Apple takes 30% if you use the app. I’ll keep doing this regardless, but you know. Thank you! ^_^
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
to see the giant woman
Apr. 19th, 2025 08:35 amcalimac
Apparently it's supposed to "transcend outdated perceptions of the female body and celebrate it as a symbol of strength, beauty and empowerment" or something like that, but perhaps it could convey that message a bit more clearly if it had a few appropriate clothes on. And was not quite so gigantic.
This is not (fortunately) a permanent thing. It's going to be there for six months. Apparently it's been going around on a world tour for about ten years now. Here's a bunch more photos in various locales.
The giant naked woman is made of a steel inner structure with a wire mesh framing to give her a female shape. That makes her fairly translucent. She has short hair. She has very long fingers. She has toenails, which I mention because you can get close enough to see that. She has no sign of any genitals whatever, which is relieving but a little dishonest.
There are a number of rude comments online - "dumb" "disgusting" "inappropriate" etc - but she's there and I didn't regret the little extra time it took to see her.