"Heavy snow" is expected this weekend. That means it may warm up a little--it's been too cold for more than powderings all week--and also means more damage to power lines and/or Internet cables. It means that posts after today, except for the Butterfly of the Week, may not show up on time.
It does not mean, y'know, heavy snow. Virginia has never seen heavy snow.
This is a photo that's circulating...Google says it's been circulating since at least 2019, but it's a good visual definition of heavy snow. Some of you may have seen what's reported to be a new video from Kamchatka showing forty-foot snowdrifts there. If I see it again I'll try to snag a link this time.
Computers
If "artificial intelligence" (PLAGIARIZED information) is meant to bring us this kind of thing, should government shut it down, or should corporations have the sense to kill it first?
History
Did you, too, learn in school that an ancient Roman's villa was expected to have a room called a vomitorium for people who had overindulged at those legendary Roman feasts to go and...? Would you, too, be glad to learn that vomitorium meant something different to the ancient Romans?
I'd like to see the historical evidence for both explanations, but Gene Weingarten is a fairly authoritative source:
Politics
I think that for some Trump fans it may be about the man, and I'm sure that Trump would like it to be about the man, but...
Relationships
When American parents consented to their children "dating" rather than meeting at well chaperoned social events, only, until the girl's father had vetted the boy and consented to an official "courtship," the rule was that what happened on dates would be socializing and kissing. This evolved into a guy culture where guys at least bragged about having touched different "bases" and got closer to "home" (making babies before marriage) on each date, and girls were annoyed. Did we look like baseball fields? Then, mercifully just before my time, were the years when some people thought sexually transmitted diseases were easy to cure with new antibiotics so all women should be "on the Pill" and doing what makes babies should be the new way to shake hands with a new acquaintance. During the years when older people fretted about my showing no interest in dating and men my age thought a date with me meant a chance to enlist me to advocate for them with someone who looked less like a child, we were all learning about AIDS, and during the years when I was dating grown-up men who were not Seventh-Day Adventists the rule was that anybody could touch anything as long as there was no exchange of bodily fluids. Women, at least, liked that rule, although the baby supplies industry sponsored a lot of dire warnings that we might have "biological clocks" that would make us want to quit our jobs just when we'd reached middle management level and rush home and have babies, and wails from women who said they'd be happy to have babies if the men they were dating would only "commit," meaning get married or at least get a job that would pay child support. (I did not personally know any of those couples. The only woman I knew who wanted a baby belonged to a German Jewish family that had lost a lot of people in the Holocaust.)
But this apparently deprived men of the chance to invest enough effort in pursuing women that they could feel sure that they were "in love," so they started whining that they felt that flimsy little objects made it "safe" to do what makes babies without actually having babies and, if they paid for those objects, they shouldn't even have to pay for dinner to get the privilege of doing what makes babies. If we really liked them. Which was what songs like this one were about, although back when the song was written the situation was more likely to have been that the girl wanted to play the dating game by 1950s rules and the boy wanted 1960s rules. Springsteen was more of a shouter-through-noise than a musician, but the words he was yelling, if guys looked at the record cover to see what they were meant to be, did express the emotional feelings of stupid, "entitled," hormonal guys. That is the only logical explanation of how he ever sold a record.
Here's the rule, nieces: Although his hormones are indeed screaming that he wants "it all" right then and there, that's not what he really wants, nor is it what he should have. For his sake as well as your own, when young men start making this kind of noises, they need to be told, "Nothing at all, then. Go home!" They need to hear the door slam. They need to wonder whether we're crying (which is a normal hormone reaction and should last half an hour or less) and reconsidering "breaking up," or talking to the next young man on our list. They need to have to make the move toward reconciliation, if such a move is made. And the apology. The apology should not find fault with your behavior in any way. It should sound like "I'm sorry, and I beg you please to forgive me for acting like a stupid, selfish piece of trash. Please give me another chance to show you that I am trying, with the help of a Higher Power, to become a decent human being."
Here's the rule, nephews: If haggling or "negotiation" sets in, there are women who will still have sex with the man (if they really think they're "showing" someone else something, or the man has a lot of money), but it will not be "good" sex. Not only will she dump him at the first opportunity, she'll tell everyone she dumped him because he was a lousy lay. Don't even kiss a woman when your relationship is antagonistic rather than synergistic. And, if you want respect, don't even consider making babies before marriage. Don't even consider exchanging bodily fluids, e.g. kissing on the mouth, before the engagement is announced.
(Google credits the egg to Kylie Jenner and the quote to Arnold Glasow.)
Weather
How nice people behave in a snowstorm:
As a guess, Mr. Good Neighbor will have a job with the city government before next winter...
Northerner explains what really cold weather feels like. This web site offers no apologies for describing single-digits-Fahrenheit as cold, but yes, it is possible to be colder.
