Thank you for going to all that trouble. I am definitely going to be tea shopping now!

Yeah. And I will be appointed the Queen of the May – in perpetuity.

It’s the Sun, you guys. They’ve become famous for losing lawsuits over the lies they print.

Thank you! It’s got exactly the kind of thing I have been searching for! May your (kitchen) drawers never give you grief and may you always be able to find that little silver nubbly thing that rolls under the couch!

Japanese and Chinese myths and legends have excellent representation in games and movies: the Egyptians have representation and followers everywhere! The Celts and Germanic peoples contributed pretty much everything found in European fairy tales. The Middle East gave us their myths and their gods, and people from European/North American cultures know at least a few Hindu Gods and their tales, again, often thanks to video games. That leaves sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania, and the Slavic and Siberian myths ‘underrepresented’. Can’t say about middle and South American ones: I suspect they are better known in the Americas than in Europe, but I dislike them, so haven’t the background to be sure.

Um, I hope you are talking kitchen, since the other drawers are more the business of Petulia, that one the Seamstresses think is an actual goddess. Bah! No one ever chanted “How can it close on the damned thing but not open with it? Who bought this? Do we ever use it?” in her name!

Better they pour that money into figuring out how to instantly terraform a planet completely different from the one on which our type of life evolved, which would take about 4.5 billion years, and only work if an enormous number of unique events that happened on and to this planet were arranged to happen to that one, too. Despite all the sci-fi and tech bro brouhaha, it is next to impossible for a life form that evolved here to adapt, even with huge amounts of genetic engineering, to a different planet with a different history around a different star (or stars, it is very likely that about half of all the stars in any galaxy you can see are in binary or bigger systems of their own.

There are books and articles written by real scientists who have actually studied the topic all their lives that make it very clear that the moon is a possibility, Mars is on the edge of the odds, and anything beyond that is a Isaac Asimov dream for quite a long time to come – probably longer than there will be humans to dream it.

I wonder if these guys have thought this through. I mean, network states run by business owners is going to require vast and reliable infrastructure and resources: who’s going to fund, build and maintain those? The business owners? Who won’t want to spend a penny more than is absolutely necessary? Especially if the wires/roads/machinery et alia crosses into some other guy’s territory/system and benefits a competitor? And where are they going to find the expertise to do all the analysis, design, engineering, building, wiring, programming, tracking, maintenance and repair? Do they think LLM AI and robots will be capable?

Let’s remember that this idea is being pushed by the same type of people who are sure they can just wave their hands and rewrite the laws of physics, chemistry and biology sufficient for humans to be able to colonise other planets, and in their lifetime!

Ah, but Pimento, mon frère (ou peut-être ma sœur), that would be so boring, and inspire no science fiction whatsoever! It would mean that humanity made things far more complicated than they needed to be because we just can’t wait for more evidence to start hollering that we’ve got it all figured out and my idea is the END OF THE DISCUSSION!

I’d like to believe this is because Mr. Carney is amazingly qualified, am more likely to accept that it is because Pierre Poilievre is such an unattractive alternative, and secretly suspect it’s the same kind of fangirl idol worship that Justin “Isn’t he cute!/At least he’s not Harper!” Trudeau and his papa provoked. Mr. Carney may not be cute, and he might ideologically be more suited to lead the old Progressive Conservative party, if it should ever resurrect, but he has international big money glamour, and Canada feels the need of someone with clout to stand against our proximate enemy.

My mother’s wedding ring. My father was a monster, so it’s not because of the marriage it represents. It was the cheapest he could get, it’s thin and worn down and battered, and, of all the kids, she gave it to me. When I die, however I am disposed of, that ring goes with me, because… she gave it to me!

We use Wikipedia a lot, mostly to understand references from another country or culture, the rest to answer the question: “Who the hell is s/he…” The latter enquiries are often interesting, but rarely resolve the real issue, which is “… and why is s/he famous?” At any rate, we send a goodly annual donation, because without Wikipedia, we’d be even more out of touch than we already are!

Oh, NO!

Anyway…

Here’s to the death of a company that has always looked down its nose at working people, brown people not wearing at least pearls and diamonds, anyone under the age of, say 21, and insisted on spraying you in the face with the latest Vogue magasine full page ad perfume as soon as you entered. It’s been a long time since HBC was anything more than a shortcut to some other place.

There is a very low risk of getting H5N1 by eating the meat of infected cows or chickens, provided that meat has been properly cooked. The heat of cooking destroys the virus before it gets near us. However, you may have noticed that the prevalence of salmonella, e.coli and listeria infections has already been rising in the USA due to contamination of fresh produce that has, theoretically, been through the proper protocols for consumption. Now imagine just how much more salmonella, e.coli and listeria there will be on produce without the inspections and regulations that existed this time last year. Remember Typhoid Mary? She killed between 5 and 50 people (records were not well kept in the early 20th century) simply by being an asymptomatic carrier of disease in an era when kitchen staff not only did not wear protective clothing, but did not wash their hands between tasks. This is the kind of unregulated, untested food growing, harvest, processing and shipping the USA will face again, and several countries are setting up regulations will prevent American food from entering as a result.

I wonder, is this a result of the trade war, or because the US Administration cut all the quality assurance, health and safety regulations and personnel? I mean, would you import food that could be spoiled, contaminated with bacteria from handling, cross contaminated with allergens, or padded out with inedibles like nanoplastics, sand or styrofoam? I mean, there are a lot more reasons than just tariffs to avooid buying US farm products right now.

We’re at the same stage, and devised a loose hierarchy of values to apply (ymmv):
1.) Canadian/not American, because the danger of economic/conventional warfare is acute and deadly for every living thing in Canada; 2) No Loblaw’s/Weston company/products: we haven’t forgotten. 3) Minimum possible plastic: a little extra cost, if we can afford it, to not infect the planet further, is worth it; 4) Downsizing: we’ve been giving a lot away, often from a table out front – about 70% gets taken by local students or an ODSP recipient who resells it. Friends call to see if we have a spare, or want to get rid of, our <insert item>, and a locally-run thrift store not only sells certain goods, it sorts and directs other items AND tells us what will get dumped, so we can look for alternative disposal.

It can be a lot of work, but on the plus side, doing the research online has forced me to brush up my language skills, which is apparently the best way to prevent cognitive decline at my advanced age. And, when we finally shuffle off the mortal coil, we won’t leave a lot of stuff behind to bedevil any heirs we might have!

Damn! They’re talking about torpor! Just for a minute there, I thought I had the answer to outliving my enemies!

Canadian English, a jumble of Parisien and South Ontario French avec un levain de québécois, Bangladeshi Bangali, and old fashioned Cadre-speak.

I agree about the waste, not to mention the plastic. But I can’t be too critical, as I use interdental brushes for gum care and plaque control, and ain’t no bamboo interdental brushes with replaceable heads!

Ooooo. You know, that would have been painful, had it not been so entirely off base. Thanks for the laugh…

“The provisions make it difficult to run a business efficiently and provide adequate customer service,” said the sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Sherri Gallick, R-Belton. “The unpredictability threatens the stability of businesses, large and small.”

If that is the case, how is it that businesses, small and large, manage it in every other country in the world except the US, Sri Lanka, South Korea and Somalia for G-d’s sake! I mean, these people are just one step up from Somalia, where there is no sick leave at all!