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Cake day: June 10th, 2025

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  • The split isn’t left/right (what the rest of the world would see as middle/extreme right), but money/workers, and I no longer see a fix. When Citizen’s United decreed that “money is speech” (it isn’t: money is power, and codifying ‘free speech’ was meant as a protection against power), the fix was to overturn that and go further to get money out of politics – but that didn’t happen.

    We are in the process of losing everything that made the U.S. worthwhile. Other countries used to try to emulate the U.S. models for things like: public education, research and development, public works (roads, dams, etc.), economic model (and laws restricting it after it crashed), and lack of corruption, including laws to prevent and/or punish the latter. Now we are removing and de-funding all the stuff that made the U.S. attractive and successful. We’re working on becoming the next North Korea rather than the next, say, Sweden.

    We seem to have lost all culture except for a love of money and spectacle. There’s no respect for education, Truth, Justice or the like. If an official does something questionable, they get to keep their job and the most their underlings can do about it is resign – and that doesn’t make things better. There ought to be an option where the official has to resign and the underlings who are doing honest work need not fear retribution. Instead, we reward those who can ‘spin’ the narrative or outright lie. The populace ought to be offended by those lies, but instead there is a large number of people who would rather be a good team member than demand honesty.

    That’s where money comes in. You pay agents to start or reinforce several ideas, do data tracking to figure out which ones get high “engagement” scores, then campaign on that garbage rather than on anything of substance. Once you win the election, you don’t have to follow through on anything. Just give tax breaks to your backers.








  • It is hard to be overly picky about bagels unless you live in Manhattan. Crossing over to Jersey City immediately drops the quality. Venturing futher is just asking for trouble. I will happily eat the things that pass for bagels in the rest of the U.S., but one trip to the big city set the mark so high that I don’t try to for perfection elsewhere. The lowest mark I’ve sampled was set in Montreal where I thought a onion bagel bought straight from the bakery would be be lovely… but instead was a crumbly, bready disaster. Obviously the Québécois have different expectations of bagels than do New Yorkers.







  • The science folks document attacks that succeed and those where the prey escapes (possibly wounded, but still not a meal). Here’s a PDF on some hawk rates – it is just a few pages from a larger work. Excerpt:

    Relatively high successrates of 89 and 82% have been documented for the fish-eating Osprey (Pundion haliuetus)in Europe (Brown and Amadon

    1. and North America (Ueoka and Koplin 1973). Success rates of 33- 65% have been reported for the insectivorous and rodent-eating American Kestrel (F. spurverius),depending upon season, prey type, and geography (Jenkins 1970, Sparrowe 1972, Rudolph 1982, Collopy and Koplin 1983). Various success rates have been reported for raptors that feed mostly upon mammals, but supplement their diets with birds and reptiles. Mader (1975) documented a rate of 16% for Harris’ Hawks (Purubuteo unicinc- tus). Wakeley (1978) reported that Ferruginous Hawks (Buteo regulis) were successful 17% of the time in Idaho. Orde and Harrell(l977) reported a successrate of 79% for Red-tailed Hawks (Buteojumuicensis) in South Dakota. Nesting Golden Eagles (Aquilu chrysuetos)in Idaho were suc- cessful on 20% of their capture attempts (Collopy 1983). Clark (1975) calculated a success rate of about 20% for the rodent-specializing Short- eared Owl (Asioflammeus).






  • Given that you could be anywhere on the planet and my guess was only one country off – one with a shared border and where both are (mostly) above the 60th parallel – I am content with my guess. The growth issue explains why she doesn’t look quite like a registered Siberian, and the fact that she’s she’s shedding is just expected. Of course you know that the never ending cycle of a new winter coat is already on the way. :-)