Three links and a rant...
Animals
This link has been sitting at the back of a long line through two browser-crashes, and only just turned up. From July? Is it still relevant? At the Cat Sanctuary the answer is YES. All three cats and all three kittens expect to share a bottle of Pure Life water at some time in every afternoon when it's not actually raining.
I've not tested these cats, but cats who used to live here either absolutely rejected chlorinated water from town, or would drink it only in ninety-degree heat. But my cats like Pure Life water. There was another brand that the cats and I liked even better, but then the company had a problem with contaminated water and the cheerful chap who delivers our Pure Life said "Don't ever drink that water!" Of course, the store for which he works no longer sells it, though it once did. Anyway we like Pure Life.
The cats have ample access to the spring branch of fresh spring water, any time they want it. Occasionally they don't; that's an indication that the Professional Bad Neighbor has sprayed poison, illegally, around the spring and it's time for the government fellow to come out again. Mostly they like spring water. And they like rain water that lingers in a fallen leaf or a hole in a tree. They have no real need for bottled water. It's all about the sharing. They enjoy sharing a bottle of water more than they enjoy simply drinking water.
Do animals who live with you like to share the water you drink, before your mouth has actually touched the bottle or glass or whatever?
Election 2024
At this stage the election's in a whole separate category from Politics (the theory, the ideas apart from the screaming and mudslinging).
There was considerable interest in the questions that weren't asked during the rest of the Trump-Harris debate, and I've not even found the time to listen to the Vance-Walz debate, but I'm still catching up here.
Meanwhile, someone shared a recording of a Trump rally...I'm not happy about where my vote has been thrown. I blame the Democrats, of course. Stupid idjits should've nominated Kennedy and given thanks for God's gift. Trump's "gonna frack, frack, frack' sounds almost as horrific as Harris's promises to destroy the economy. I say "almost" because one little earthquake toward Washington will have the whole federal government on the right side of the fracking issue. I do not care how greedy Pennsylvanians think they want to be. Pennsylvanians may need to be saved from themselves.
There's a better way than fracking, and Pennsylvanians need to have it waved in front of their foolish faces. We have to stop sneering at solar energy as if it necessarily meant corporate "solar farms" (or "wind farms") displacing real farms. We have to clean it up and then privatize it. Instead of lettng the utility companies set up solar panels so that they can cut off people's access to their own sunshine, we have to insist on the solar panels being set up so that they charge batteries to store individuals' solar energy first and give people a choice about how much energy to sell back to the companies. It's new technology, so there will be problems, but it will work if people start making smart choices about how much electricity to use.
I could get behind the Trump, Cao, Griffith ticket if the gentlemen and Mr. Trump were talking about real energy independence, rather than destroying the bedrock under our feet in hopes of keeping the Waste Age roaring on for another, what, fuur yars is probably all Trump cares about. I think we need more young people weighing in on the issue. Trump needs to remember that some of us are going to have to live with the results of "an 'all-of-the-above' approach to energy" fifty or a hundred years from now. Melania might easily be around fifty years from now. Barron might. I'm all in favor of separating our economy from the Arabs', thereby also reducing their ability to kill one another, but we need to focus on ways of doing that that won't leave our country looking like Saudi Arabia.
But Trump's choice of leitmotif is really a stupid one. Let's all remain calm enough to acknowledge that we do know what he's screaming about when he's appealing to the fears of the ignorant. There are people who weren't born here, who are here for criminal purposes. Those people are not what the word "immigrant" means. They don't intend to live here and become naturalized citizens. Call them criminals, call them gangsters, call them border-jumpers, but stop calling them immigrants for pity's sake. Most of the Republicans I know are not stupid. Not all Republicans have had the opportunity to know any immigrants well, but they can see that people who are trying to be good neighbors and good citizens are very different from criminal gangs. It's always stupid to attach emotions to stereotypes of large groups of people, but Trump ought to be aware that people who do get acquainted with them usually like immigrants.
How many legitimate immigrants we have room for, when so many of us are already showing the harmful effects of crowded living conditions and some people still think they want to have more than one child,, is another question. But "immigrants" means the kind of people it's easy to like, even if Trump remembers his grandfather as an exception.
Politics
"Would you please define your terms?" is always a good question to ask people who talk about political theories. Norb Leahy explains two terms that should be understood as very different, though some people want to confuse them.
Technology
After finally getting the Internet connection back, post-hurricane, I've spent the past week trying to catch up with everything I've missed, while Microsoft has been obsessed with running and updating and shoving in my face a program I've never liked or wanted to use. If I ever get another computer, I think I'm going to try Linux. It's supposed to be for programmers...well, I am a programmer manquee. I'd rather design my own nice, stable tool that does what I tell it than put up with a program that tries to steer me away form what I want it to do into what it wants me to do, even if we're talking about a disagreement about how wide margins need to be.
So this song goes out to Microsoft. Snarky parodies of amateur singers and all. I missed connecting with you readers, post-hurricane, but I could be quite happy if the same people just exchanged letters and tapes, the way we did before Microsoft existed and the way we need to be preparing to do when Microsoft self-destructs.
Attention tech companies! When search engines pull up whole pages of customers' inquiries about "How can I get this program off my computer?", that may be an indication that you don't need to interfere with what people are doing with an automated push to call more attention to that program. You might need to, y'know, take the program off their computers!
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