A favorite saying of a late friend of mine who had a PhD and was a professor was "I will call no man 'doctor' who cannot deliver a baby and I will will call no man 'professor' who does not play the piano in a New Orleans brothel."
I coached park district soccer when my kids were little. I’d offer a dollar to any player who’d provide an assist to any other player who hadn’t yet scored that year. I wanted every player to get that experience. Was pretty good at evening out playing time too. But that was first line entry level soccer. Once my children moved up to club teams, not only could I not offer any suitable coaching, their play time depended on their ability.
Regarding old phrases, I cringe when someone says area code before offering their number. Bonus: no one needs to say formerly Twitter. We know!
"Again" in MAGA seems to me like a promised land*. It is not real. There is no time in the past where I would rather live than right now. Yes there are problems, and we, collectively, always fall far short of how well we could do. What is always different about how we feel about the current moment from how we feel about the past is uncertainty of the future. Looking back, the 80's and 90's were a time of relative peace and growing prosperity, but there were fears about everything falling apart, or nuclear war. Concerns about AI are an example of anxiety about the future. Maybe it will cause a change for the worse for the majority of humanity, but it has not happened yet.
I would add "safety" to the list of attributes for a good time to be. That is safety as it relates to crime, food, transportation, and workplace. We have been on a favorable trend on those items for at least 100 years. We did have an uptick in crime recently, but even at its recent peak, crime was still lower than it was in the 90's.
*The promised land that Moses lead the Hebrews to was far from the land of Milk and Honey. Like some other leaders, Moses was probably a grifter.
I remember former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's quote: “Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!”
I interpret "Make America Great Again" as "Make me feel as invincible and problem-free as I used to during my OWN best years." For me, that was late childhood when I got lots of praise in school and my parents handled pesky realities like work, money, health care, etc. Back then, I paid almost no attention to the problems of the wider world. When MY life was humming along comfortably, surely the country must have been fine too, eh?
Heck, if Trump could restore that reality, he might even tempt me.
Yes, we need leaders with Lincoln's empathy. We also need ones with his political skill. He put slavery on a path to extinction by creating a coalition against its expansion. Lincoln united people progressive enough to hate slavery with people racist enough to want western lands kept all-white.
No, the Democrats problem is the inability to craft a coherent message about what they stand for & learn to come up with simple slogans, which will grab people's attention, which the right wing Re Thug Licons are truly excellent at.
I know, I know. In the current political climate, it's probably not a realistic political strategy. But when have the Democrats been different? It seems to me that the Democrats welcome many different kinds of people and views. With that, there will be conflict. Or should they simply change to the current GOP philosophy which is sit down, shut up, and don't dare disagree with what Trump wants? Yes, before someone lectures me, I know it's a lack of coherence that MAGAs are taking advantage of. And I remind people that I have been all about defeating Trump from the start. But I find it rather depressing that Democrats must surrender freedom and divergence of thought to defeat the evil orange stain.
On the distinction between the words pedophile, hebephile, and ephebophile, I gave up arguing that years ago. I still see the very real need to distinguish between truly disturbing fetishes (such as sexual attraction to infants) and quite normal behavior (finding older teens attractive). The reason I think most people don’t bother separating those terms is it’s easier to pick a single label than to split hairs, and at the end of the day people acting on such attractions can cause serious emotional and/or physical harm to the children they’ve targeted.
Actually, I hadn't quite realized until now that even major news sources are incorrectly using the term "pedophile" and was starting to think there were literal children, as opposed to underage teens, being raped and abused by Epstein et al. All rape and sexual abuse is heinous, but yes, there is a difference. This clears it up. I totally understand why average people may not make the distinction in everyday speech, but for instance CNN has no business using "pedophile" repeatedly, and their hosts often do.
Yes, from what I can tell he wasn't targeting prepubescent children. Whether that was because he wasn't interested in them or because it would have been harder to coordinate I don't think we'll ever really know now.
It's also unclear how many of his victims were forced or coerced into being there and how many were willing participants. Not that it really matters -- there's a reason it's called "statutory rape," because sex with underage kids is illegal whether it was forced or not.
And lastly, where were the parents of these kids, especially for the middle-school aged girls? Did they just not care that their daughters were gone for days or weeks on end?
I have been following this combined lecture and debate for a month now. I think we are complicating something that is simple. Many men love sex. It is mostly pleasurable and men don't get pregnant. Many rich and powerful men like to think they should be able to get it whenever they feel the urge, regardless of marital status. Epstein took advantage of this by providing the means for a price. Young girls? Many men, especially older ones find them more attractive and pliable. If a rich powerful man is going to do it, he wants what he wants and what he is willing to pay for. I'm not defending this. But we are batting back and forth with various terminology what really amounts to male human desire combined with the wealth and power to make it happen. What do they say in the movies, that there are a million stories in the big city? JFK and Marilyn Monroe? Robert Kraft and his massage parlors? Wilt Chamberlain's claim before his death that he had probably done over 20,000 women? Adam and Eve took the bait and man has taking advantage ever since. Okay, now it is time for some male here to defend men by claiming that the women are just as responsible. I'll play the Vegas odds and say the blame lays more on the men than the women. It will stay that way while women have to shoulder more of the burden, called getting pregnant.
There’s something about that “ped” suffix that enhances the sleaziness of the word, and in a way that “hebophile” (which sounds like it could describe a person who’s an enthusiast for all things Jewish) and “ephebophile” don’t quite match. In essence, the media incorrectly use it because it sounds more disgusting than the accurate terms, and it’s just journalistic dishonesty and laziness to continue to do so.
They're also exceptional when it comes to willful ignorance, such as hand-waving away all the evidence that Trump is the exact type of creepy perv they're hoping to find in the Epstein files.
Stephanie Coleman is a typical nannybot idiot in the City Council.
The small number of people who drown in the lake are those that can't swim.
Now I haven't been swimming in over 50 years, but I'm sure I could figure it out. But that is the actual problem, they can't swim. Most of the drownings have been poor people who go into the lake at some beach & get into far deeper water than they are capable of getting out of. Or that middle aged man who last year jumped off a boat & drowned on the South Side.
If were on a small boat, 20 feet or less, I would definitely wear some sort of life vest, but to have people on the dinner cruises wearing them is insanity. Does she also want them worn on the rare lake cruise ships that also dock here to take on passengers that travel to the other lakes?
And does the City Council even have the power to require this, since the city doesn't actually control the lake? Would it also apply to the crews of the few freighters that dock in Lake Calumet?
My guess is this proposed law will be quietly buried & forgotten.
How about the countless thousands who cross the bridges over the Chicago river every day, with little more than metal gratings under their feet? I imagine there are far more of them directly over the open water than passengers on all the boats in and around Chicago -- should they have to don life vests before being allowed to cross the bridge?
Don't forget, all the openable bridges also have a snow chute in the sidewalk near the end of each leaf. If that were to break, there you go into the drink!
Mariano's is part of Kroger's new procedure where they provide paper flyers throughout the store with their "digital deals" and bar codes to use them, allowing those who don't have or care for the app to get the same prices as those who use the app. Nice for people like my husband who uses our home phone number to get sale prices but doesn't have the app to add digital deals. Or for when the wifi in the store is wonky and one can't get on the app easily to add a digital deal.
I've stopped trying to play these games with stores. I use Walgreens a lot, they have some kind of a points/rewards thing but the hassle is just so not worth it, I simply don't want to spend any time on it.
I grew up in Holland, Michigan and while not myself Dutch I learned Dutch frugality by osmosis - NEVER pay full price if you don't have to. And sink is pronounced Zink, lol
I've visited Holland, MI! The tulips and windmills and clogs, it was memorable, fun road trip. I doubt you're as frugal as soviet immigrants though, it might by an act of rebellion on my part as much as laziness to turn up my nose at literally dollars in savings I might otherwise reap.
As someone who has EARNED a Juris Doctor degree, I would never dream of insisting people call me doctor. I can't imagine the hubris of asking people to call the recipient of an honorary degree "doctor." Ugh.
I don't have a degree (honorary or otherwise) and it does seem a bit silly to me that anyone insists on being called doctor or professor. It's as pompous as someone insisting he be called Mister Bigimportantman.
But I do get a chuckle when some people argue you shouldn't be called doctor unless you're a medical doctor, given that non-medical doctorates existed when medicine was still mostly quackery.
I should’ve mentioned Libby. I am a user. But I find that titles that are even remotely popular are very hard to get. You really need to plan your reading way in advance.
EZ - You are correct. You need to plan and to be patient. I lived in a 'burb for 30 years where the demographics are much narrower, and the population of our library district was approximately 40,000 or so. The audiobook offerings that appealed to the general demographics of the area was huge. If they didn't have a particular title you were looking for, you'd ask for it, and like as not they'd acquire it within a couple of months. (All you had to do was ask a few friends to request the same unavailable title.) After moving to the City, with its huge - but incredibly diverse - reading/listening base, I find that lots of the stuff that I want to read or listen (and where in my former 'burb I had free access to), I can't get through CPL. This is because the CPL has so many diverse tastes to accommodate - especially across the many languages spoken by Chicago residents.
I am a member of a couple of reading groups on FB so hold times are discussed a lot. It depends a great deal on your library. Some libraries really limit how many titles members can borrow a month. Some people sign up for multiple cards (using family names, or friends') and some libraries (Fairfax County in Virginia) allow outside borrowers to get a card for less than $30 a year. Obviously, this increases wait times for those who pay the freight (taxpayers!). I'm a big user of audiobooks and I find that hold times pass pretty quickly (at least in my corner of the world). Also -- see if your library also has Hoopla. And there's an iCloud library option out there that my library doesn't have.
I wouldn’t say we won’t see his like again. But he is special enough to be in the conversation with Banks, Williams, and Santo from 1969. That’s the Cubs’ Mount Rushmore.
"Make America Great Again" is a dog whistle and a war cry for white supremacists. The time they want to go back to is when straight "christian" white men had an inherent advantage simply by being born that way and held most positions of power.
2024 was a sight better than 2025, but we had already lost many freedoms by then and the stain of Trumpism had already been smeared on the country. I think the most progress we'd made toward the promise of the American Experiment was in the early 2010's, when we had a Black president, a woman Speaker of the House, expanded access to medical treatment, and legalized gay marriage. Pretty much everything since then was a reactionary backlash from the right to reverse that trend. That is the point in time that MAGAs want to go back prior to.
That slogan really should read "Make America White Again." It has its roots, along with "America First," with the KKK going back to the 1920s. Archie Bunker (played ironically enough by dyed-in-the-wool liberal Carroll O'Connor) was the epitome of ignorant white men pining for those "good old days" of Herbert Hoover(!).
For me personally, I am better off due to medical knowledge that exists now that was not there is 2010. My life expectancy is much higher than it would have been back then. Also, technological advancements have been great. Knowledge workers would not have been able to work from home with 2010 networking, and good electric cars were not available to the masses. Technology has also made cars safer overall.
What freedoms did you have in 2010 that you do not have now?
Advancements in technology and medicine over 15 years were inevitable. What we have lost is reproductive rights, the chevron doctrine, trust in independent institutions, the rule of law applying to all, advancements in equal rights and opportunities, valuable alliances around the world and global standing. In fact, with the cuts to various research programs, we have lost the prospect of the next 15 years seeing similar advancements as the past 15 years.
I will second your colleague's green light for Andy Weir's "Project Hail Mary" - excellent, entertaining, original, "hard" sci fi. I'm really looking forward to the movie, the trailer looks excellent already.
Also, 85% of the poll responders didn't see The Penguin, so I'll extend my recommendation. Colin Farrel is amazing in the main role, completely unrecognizable. Cristin Milioti is also terrific. It's set in the Batman universe, but really just nominally, it's really about organized crime, political corruption and family relationships. The Penguin's story arc and background is really tragic. Highly recommend.
Agree on both counts. I really enjoy Andy Weir's books, even when they get stuck in his engineering headspace. It's definitely better than other nominally sci-fi offerings that can't get basic physics right.
Also with Penguin, there isn't even a mention of Batman until the very last scene of the final episode, and then it's just the bat signal in the sky. Very well done, and Colin Farrell was great, reprising his turn as Penguin from the Robert Pattinson Batman movie.
Yeah, about the worst error he made was with the potato farming on Mars -- the soil would be toxic to plants without more treatment than simply adding manure. But I'm not even sure if that was known when he wrote the book.
The very beginning is also a bit suspect - the atmosphere on Mars is super thin, like 1% of Earth's, so the storm couldn't have been so powerful that it would risk knocking down their rocket. But I'm willing to overlook things like that for story's sake, especially when everything else is mostly accurate.
To be fair, that was the movie adaptation. (I had to reread the first chapter of the book to make sure.) The risk to the rocket he wrote about was the sandblasting nature of the storm, not the wind knocking it over.
“The MAV is a spaceship. It has a lot of delicate parts. It can put up with storms to a certain extent, but it can’t just get sandblasted forever. After an hour and a half of sustained wind, NASA gave the order to abort.”
Nice edition Eric! So loved this season of the Bear! I can see the plot line of the next and maybe last season's plot lines all work out well for the characters I've come to care for a lot. A great group of actors! Great quips. For me after Covid and Trump 2021-4 were pretty great; give me sleepy Joe-at least I can sleep at night. We have a 1993 Toyota pick up with crank windows. Mary's classic indeed. And a great round of quips. Have a great vacay!
Regarding “ I haven’t read much about President Donald Trump’s recent declaration “Whatever the lowest price paid for a drug in other developed countries, that's what Americans will pay,” but I must say I do like the sound of it.”
Can’t tell if this was sarcastic (never been good at recognizing sarcasm), but given Trump’s success with healthcare, brokering peace between Russia and Ukraine, and initiating a well-planned, coherent tariff strategy , I’m not overly optimistic.
He's just trying to use the topic as a distraction from the Epstein scandal. He was talking about reducing drug prices by "1,000%, 500%, 600%, 1,500%": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK2S0iFek-Y
I honestly hadn’t seen this covered much. And, sure, it may just be bluster like his declarations about the Panama, Canal or Greenland, but if he does pull it off, it’ll be enormously popular.
What will happen if that occurs, is that the prices in foreign countries will rise a bit, because the US prescription drug user has been paying for the lion's share of drug research for decades now, even if that research happens in those same foreign countries.
A favorite saying of a late friend of mine who had a PhD and was a professor was "I will call no man 'doctor' who cannot deliver a baby and I will will call no man 'professor' who does not play the piano in a New Orleans brothel."
this is a great read. news, events and even some humor.
I coached park district soccer when my kids were little. I’d offer a dollar to any player who’d provide an assist to any other player who hadn’t yet scored that year. I wanted every player to get that experience. Was pretty good at evening out playing time too. But that was first line entry level soccer. Once my children moved up to club teams, not only could I not offer any suitable coaching, their play time depended on their ability.
Regarding old phrases, I cringe when someone says area code before offering their number. Bonus: no one needs to say formerly Twitter. We know!
I think we can also just say "Twitter." I look at it less as an anachronism than refusing to let Elon Musk win on that one.
Oh I still call it that too. It’s more when they say x with the qualifier. Either or. Not both.
I still call it Twitter. Like Sears Tower or Hancock Building
Also - you kids get off my lawn!!
Or Comiskey Park.
"Again" in MAGA seems to me like a promised land*. It is not real. There is no time in the past where I would rather live than right now. Yes there are problems, and we, collectively, always fall far short of how well we could do. What is always different about how we feel about the current moment from how we feel about the past is uncertainty of the future. Looking back, the 80's and 90's were a time of relative peace and growing prosperity, but there were fears about everything falling apart, or nuclear war. Concerns about AI are an example of anxiety about the future. Maybe it will cause a change for the worse for the majority of humanity, but it has not happened yet.
I would add "safety" to the list of attributes for a good time to be. That is safety as it relates to crime, food, transportation, and workplace. We have been on a favorable trend on those items for at least 100 years. We did have an uptick in crime recently, but even at its recent peak, crime was still lower than it was in the 90's.
*The promised land that Moses lead the Hebrews to was far from the land of Milk and Honey. Like some other leaders, Moses was probably a grifter.
I remember former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's quote: “Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!”
I interpret "Make America Great Again" as "Make me feel as invincible and problem-free as I used to during my OWN best years." For me, that was late childhood when I got lots of praise in school and my parents handled pesky realities like work, money, health care, etc. Back then, I paid almost no attention to the problems of the wider world. When MY life was humming along comfortably, surely the country must have been fine too, eh?
Heck, if Trump could restore that reality, he might even tempt me.
Yes, we need leaders with Lincoln's empathy. We also need ones with his political skill. He put slavery on a path to extinction by creating a coalition against its expansion. Lincoln united people progressive enough to hate slavery with people racist enough to want western lands kept all-white.
The problem the Democrats have is the lack of a strong leader who stands out and garners attention.
No, the Democrats problem is the inability to craft a coherent message about what they stand for & learn to come up with simple slogans, which will grab people's attention, which the right wing Re Thug Licons are truly excellent at.
It's both.
I found this interview to be interesting. It discusses the Democrats problems.
https://socialcontractwithjoewalsh.substack.com/p/live-with-joe-walsh-d90?r=qjgnp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=audio-player
I know, I know. In the current political climate, it's probably not a realistic political strategy. But when have the Democrats been different? It seems to me that the Democrats welcome many different kinds of people and views. With that, there will be conflict. Or should they simply change to the current GOP philosophy which is sit down, shut up, and don't dare disagree with what Trump wants? Yes, before someone lectures me, I know it's a lack of coherence that MAGAs are taking advantage of. And I remind people that I have been all about defeating Trump from the start. But I find it rather depressing that Democrats must surrender freedom and divergence of thought to defeat the evil orange stain.
On the distinction between the words pedophile, hebephile, and ephebophile, I gave up arguing that years ago. I still see the very real need to distinguish between truly disturbing fetishes (such as sexual attraction to infants) and quite normal behavior (finding older teens attractive). The reason I think most people don’t bother separating those terms is it’s easier to pick a single label than to split hairs, and at the end of the day people acting on such attractions can cause serious emotional and/or physical harm to the children they’ve targeted.
Agree. At this point no one interprets "pedophile" as its dictionary/clinical definition, it's a silly argument trying to defend the word.
Actually, I hadn't quite realized until now that even major news sources are incorrectly using the term "pedophile" and was starting to think there were literal children, as opposed to underage teens, being raped and abused by Epstein et al. All rape and sexual abuse is heinous, but yes, there is a difference. This clears it up. I totally understand why average people may not make the distinction in everyday speech, but for instance CNN has no business using "pedophile" repeatedly, and their hosts often do.
Yes, from what I can tell he wasn't targeting prepubescent children. Whether that was because he wasn't interested in them or because it would have been harder to coordinate I don't think we'll ever really know now.
It's also unclear how many of his victims were forced or coerced into being there and how many were willing participants. Not that it really matters -- there's a reason it's called "statutory rape," because sex with underage kids is illegal whether it was forced or not.
And lastly, where were the parents of these kids, especially for the middle-school aged girls? Did they just not care that their daughters were gone for days or weeks on end?
I have been following this combined lecture and debate for a month now. I think we are complicating something that is simple. Many men love sex. It is mostly pleasurable and men don't get pregnant. Many rich and powerful men like to think they should be able to get it whenever they feel the urge, regardless of marital status. Epstein took advantage of this by providing the means for a price. Young girls? Many men, especially older ones find them more attractive and pliable. If a rich powerful man is going to do it, he wants what he wants and what he is willing to pay for. I'm not defending this. But we are batting back and forth with various terminology what really amounts to male human desire combined with the wealth and power to make it happen. What do they say in the movies, that there are a million stories in the big city? JFK and Marilyn Monroe? Robert Kraft and his massage parlors? Wilt Chamberlain's claim before his death that he had probably done over 20,000 women? Adam and Eve took the bait and man has taking advantage ever since. Okay, now it is time for some male here to defend men by claiming that the women are just as responsible. I'll play the Vegas odds and say the blame lays more on the men than the women. It will stay that way while women have to shoulder more of the burden, called getting pregnant.
There’s something about that “ped” suffix that enhances the sleaziness of the word, and in a way that “hebophile” (which sounds like it could describe a person who’s an enthusiast for all things Jewish) and “ephebophile” don’t quite match. In essence, the media incorrectly use it because it sounds more disgusting than the accurate terms, and it’s just journalistic dishonesty and laziness to continue to do so.
Well yes. Hate to be judgey about it but yes.
Simple statements for simple minds. MAGAs (and many right-wingers) simply don't do nuance. That's why they win elections.
They're also exceptional when it comes to willful ignorance, such as hand-waving away all the evidence that Trump is the exact type of creepy perv they're hoping to find in the Epstein files.
Stephanie Coleman is a typical nannybot idiot in the City Council.
The small number of people who drown in the lake are those that can't swim.
Now I haven't been swimming in over 50 years, but I'm sure I could figure it out. But that is the actual problem, they can't swim. Most of the drownings have been poor people who go into the lake at some beach & get into far deeper water than they are capable of getting out of. Or that middle aged man who last year jumped off a boat & drowned on the South Side.
If were on a small boat, 20 feet or less, I would definitely wear some sort of life vest, but to have people on the dinner cruises wearing them is insanity. Does she also want them worn on the rare lake cruise ships that also dock here to take on passengers that travel to the other lakes?
And does the City Council even have the power to require this, since the city doesn't actually control the lake? Would it also apply to the crews of the few freighters that dock in Lake Calumet?
My guess is this proposed law will be quietly buried & forgotten.
What’s next — requiring people walking along the riverfront to wear life preservers, lest they fall into the river? Sunbathers on the beach?
How about the countless thousands who cross the bridges over the Chicago river every day, with little more than metal gratings under their feet? I imagine there are far more of them directly over the open water than passengers on all the boats in and around Chicago -- should they have to don life vests before being allowed to cross the bridge?
Don't forget, all the openable bridges also have a snow chute in the sidewalk near the end of each leaf. If that were to break, there you go into the drink!
Mariano's is part of Kroger's new procedure where they provide paper flyers throughout the store with their "digital deals" and bar codes to use them, allowing those who don't have or care for the app to get the same prices as those who use the app. Nice for people like my husband who uses our home phone number to get sale prices but doesn't have the app to add digital deals. Or for when the wifi in the store is wonky and one can't get on the app easily to add a digital deal.
I've stopped trying to play these games with stores. I use Walgreens a lot, they have some kind of a points/rewards thing but the hassle is just so not worth it, I simply don't want to spend any time on it.
I grew up in Holland, Michigan and while not myself Dutch I learned Dutch frugality by osmosis - NEVER pay full price if you don't have to. And sink is pronounced Zink, lol
I've visited Holland, MI! The tulips and windmills and clogs, it was memorable, fun road trip. I doubt you're as frugal as soviet immigrants though, it might by an act of rebellion on my part as much as laziness to turn up my nose at literally dollars in savings I might otherwise reap.
As someone who has EARNED a Juris Doctor degree, I would never dream of insisting people call me doctor. I can't imagine the hubris of asking people to call the recipient of an honorary degree "doctor." Ugh.
Will Ferrell had fun with that when he received an honorary Doctorate from USC and spoke to the graduating class.
I don't have a degree (honorary or otherwise) and it does seem a bit silly to me that anyone insists on being called doctor or professor. It's as pompous as someone insisting he be called Mister Bigimportantman.
But I do get a chuckle when some people argue you shouldn't be called doctor unless you're a medical doctor, given that non-medical doctorates existed when medicine was still mostly quackery.
Far worse are the lawyers who put "Esq" at the end of their name. The pomposity of that is beyond appalling!
It sounds especially stupid when female attorneys use Esq., in my opinion.
At the risk of it being not available when I go on my next road trip, “Miracle and Wonder” is available to download from the library on Libby.
Thanks because I'm at risk of not subscribing to Spotify.
I should’ve mentioned Libby. I am a user. But I find that titles that are even remotely popular are very hard to get. You really need to plan your reading way in advance.
EZ - You are correct. You need to plan and to be patient. I lived in a 'burb for 30 years where the demographics are much narrower, and the population of our library district was approximately 40,000 or so. The audiobook offerings that appealed to the general demographics of the area was huge. If they didn't have a particular title you were looking for, you'd ask for it, and like as not they'd acquire it within a couple of months. (All you had to do was ask a few friends to request the same unavailable title.) After moving to the City, with its huge - but incredibly diverse - reading/listening base, I find that lots of the stuff that I want to read or listen (and where in my former 'burb I had free access to), I can't get through CPL. This is because the CPL has so many diverse tastes to accommodate - especially across the many languages spoken by Chicago residents.
Especially since they lowered the number you can have on hold! But this one was actually available.
I am a member of a couple of reading groups on FB so hold times are discussed a lot. It depends a great deal on your library. Some libraries really limit how many titles members can borrow a month. Some people sign up for multiple cards (using family names, or friends') and some libraries (Fairfax County in Virginia) allow outside borrowers to get a card for less than $30 a year. Obviously, this increases wait times for those who pay the freight (taxpayers!). I'm a big user of audiobooks and I find that hold times pass pretty quickly (at least in my corner of the world). Also -- see if your library also has Hoopla. And there's an iCloud library option out there that my library doesn't have.
Ryne Sandberg was a class act, a true superstar. We will never see his like again.
I wouldn’t say we won’t see his like again. But he is special enough to be in the conversation with Banks, Williams, and Santo from 1969. That’s the Cubs’ Mount Rushmore.
not incl'g Ferguson Jenkins? hard to compare pitchers to hitters - but i'd rate fergie well ahead of both santo & wms in baseball 'greatness'
Good point. Hard to compare, as you said. I’ll put Jenkins ahead of Greg Maddox whose time was too short in Chicago.
"Make America Great Again" is a dog whistle and a war cry for white supremacists. The time they want to go back to is when straight "christian" white men had an inherent advantage simply by being born that way and held most positions of power.
2024 was a sight better than 2025, but we had already lost many freedoms by then and the stain of Trumpism had already been smeared on the country. I think the most progress we'd made toward the promise of the American Experiment was in the early 2010's, when we had a Black president, a woman Speaker of the House, expanded access to medical treatment, and legalized gay marriage. Pretty much everything since then was a reactionary backlash from the right to reverse that trend. That is the point in time that MAGAs want to go back prior to.
That slogan really should read "Make America White Again." It has its roots, along with "America First," with the KKK going back to the 1920s. Archie Bunker (played ironically enough by dyed-in-the-wool liberal Carroll O'Connor) was the epitome of ignorant white men pining for those "good old days" of Herbert Hoover(!).
https://www.voanews.com/a/is-make-america-great-racist/4009714.html
For me personally, I am better off due to medical knowledge that exists now that was not there is 2010. My life expectancy is much higher than it would have been back then. Also, technological advancements have been great. Knowledge workers would not have been able to work from home with 2010 networking, and good electric cars were not available to the masses. Technology has also made cars safer overall.
What freedoms did you have in 2010 that you do not have now?
Advancements in technology and medicine over 15 years were inevitable. What we have lost is reproductive rights, the chevron doctrine, trust in independent institutions, the rule of law applying to all, advancements in equal rights and opportunities, valuable alliances around the world and global standing. In fact, with the cuts to various research programs, we have lost the prospect of the next 15 years seeing similar advancements as the past 15 years.
I will second your colleague's green light for Andy Weir's "Project Hail Mary" - excellent, entertaining, original, "hard" sci fi. I'm really looking forward to the movie, the trailer looks excellent already.
Also, 85% of the poll responders didn't see The Penguin, so I'll extend my recommendation. Colin Farrel is amazing in the main role, completely unrecognizable. Cristin Milioti is also terrific. It's set in the Batman universe, but really just nominally, it's really about organized crime, political corruption and family relationships. The Penguin's story arc and background is really tragic. Highly recommend.
Agree on both counts. I really enjoy Andy Weir's books, even when they get stuck in his engineering headspace. It's definitely better than other nominally sci-fi offerings that can't get basic physics right.
Also with Penguin, there isn't even a mention of Batman until the very last scene of the final episode, and then it's just the bat signal in the sky. Very well done, and Colin Farrell was great, reprising his turn as Penguin from the Robert Pattinson Batman movie.
Getting the science mostly right is why my husband loves Andy Weir's books as well.
Yeah, about the worst error he made was with the potato farming on Mars -- the soil would be toxic to plants without more treatment than simply adding manure. But I'm not even sure if that was known when he wrote the book.
The very beginning is also a bit suspect - the atmosphere on Mars is super thin, like 1% of Earth's, so the storm couldn't have been so powerful that it would risk knocking down their rocket. But I'm willing to overlook things like that for story's sake, especially when everything else is mostly accurate.
To be fair, that was the movie adaptation. (I had to reread the first chapter of the book to make sure.) The risk to the rocket he wrote about was the sandblasting nature of the storm, not the wind knocking it over.
“The MAV is a spaceship. It has a lot of delicate parts. It can put up with storms to a certain extent, but it can’t just get sandblasted forever. After an hour and a half of sustained wind, NASA gave the order to abort.”
Nice edition Eric! So loved this season of the Bear! I can see the plot line of the next and maybe last season's plot lines all work out well for the characters I've come to care for a lot. A great group of actors! Great quips. For me after Covid and Trump 2021-4 were pretty great; give me sleepy Joe-at least I can sleep at night. We have a 1993 Toyota pick up with crank windows. Mary's classic indeed. And a great round of quips. Have a great vacay!
Regarding “ I haven’t read much about President Donald Trump’s recent declaration “Whatever the lowest price paid for a drug in other developed countries, that's what Americans will pay,” but I must say I do like the sound of it.”
Can’t tell if this was sarcastic (never been good at recognizing sarcasm), but given Trump’s success with healthcare, brokering peace between Russia and Ukraine, and initiating a well-planned, coherent tariff strategy , I’m not overly optimistic.
He's just trying to use the topic as a distraction from the Epstein scandal. He was talking about reducing drug prices by "1,000%, 500%, 600%, 1,500%": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK2S0iFek-Y
I don't think EZ was being sarcastic, but I assume you were in declaring "Trump's success"...
I honestly hadn’t seen this covered much. And, sure, it may just be bluster like his declarations about the Panama, Canal or Greenland, but if he does pull it off, it’ll be enormously popular.
What will happen if that occurs, is that the prices in foreign countries will rise a bit, because the US prescription drug user has been paying for the lion's share of drug research for decades now, even if that research happens in those same foreign countries.