Another day of drought even in Virginia. The artesian well still wells up, but the stream is low in its bed. Again the land seems dry enough that I have qualms about burning the trash. In California they think they finally got one fire under control. Most of California, even livable parts like Sacramento, can't count on another rain before late September. They will have more fires. The last summer I was in California was the rare summer people told me to tell my grandchildren about--the year it rained in high summer in Sacramento! Can't remember now whether it was July or August, but I hope it happens again this year.
Camping Weekend
Weekend camp in beautiful rural New York for twenty-somethings. Trigger warning: Bruderhof. Be prepared to interact with people who live in small close-knit radically Christian groups, who respect Judaism and Buddhism and look forward to contact with the outside world, but don't approve of drugs or extramarital sex or greedy careerism. The Nephews, if any of you choose to go, should have a good time; generally the same rules you respect when you visit your Auntie Pris. You do you in your house and don't raise the blood pressure of your hosts in their house. I wish that could be said for a majority of twenty-somethings. It definitely could not be said for a majority of people my age when we were twenty-something.
I looked for some indication of how much this will cost you. It costs the Bruderhof to host the weekend, but their web page doesn't mention a fee. If they don't specify one, at today's prices I'd think $500-1000 would be a nice guest gift. (It's one thing to read their magazine in the e-mail without paying, since adding names to e-mail lists takes so little time or money...but this weekend is a serious investment for them.)
Film
It's an educational documentary film, but it does have Selleck in it.
Frugal Food
Jill and Robert Malone discuss basic frugal/prepper meal planning. They start with an overhaul that's ahead of where simple $10-makes-dinner-for-two recipes start, but worth making if you can do it--a Prepper Pantry will start to pay off in a week or so.
Music
Woo-hoo! This web site has been invited to join the Music Moves Me Monday link-ups. Apparently some readers like our music links. I am honored by and grateful for the invitation.
The ironic part is that, although I've tried to remember to look up links for the tunes that start playing in my head as I read or write things, I've not found enough of them to solidify the habit; I get most of these links from the Mirror, the Meow, some of the poets at the poem sites I frequent, and the Music Moves Me Monday link-ups.
The idea was just to share what I was stretching/dancing to on days when I stayed at the computer all day and didn't go out for exercise in the real world. It started with the COVID panic and people saying they lived in cities that banned walking, jogging, or going to the gym. I suggested that we make a habit of moving to every musical beat we encountered while surfing the'Net. Fast and slow, loud and soft, familiar and weird--stretch our bodies, stretch our minds--on the Internet nobody cares whether you're warming up for practice with the Ballet Russe or retraining your toe muscles in physical therapy; just pick a muscle and bend, stretch, or shake to the beat.
This web site has a commitment not to embed videos, because they foul up printers and even some browsers. On the surface that violates the 4M link-up rules. If the hosts of the 4M link-up are willing to allow links instead of embedded videos, however, we can have theme music posts on Mondays.
Yes, Gentle Readers, you should feel free to post music links in the comments or e-mail. They will probably reappear in the Music section of a link log in a day or two.
Perhaps unfortunately this happens to have been one of the days when the laptop's speakers were mostly taken up with talk videos...I don't recommend that anyone ever make a talk video unless physically incapable of writing down the words, but I give people the benefit of the doubt if recommended by e-friends.
So today's music link is The Clash. (Warning: link will play the whole album if you let it. Real workout music.)
Poems
Cutest moth metaphor I've seen in a while:
School, End of Term at
Robert Reich's farewell address to students at Berkeley.
"
I used to tell my students, the best way of learning anything is to talk with people who disagree with you.
"
I've disagreed with Bill Clinton's old school friend on a lot of things, over the years, beginning with why anyone would ever have claimed Bill Clinton as a friend. Some may be shocked that I've agreed with him on anything...oh, come onnn, like chicken soup tastes good? Like grandchildren are adorable? Like Substack is fun, if your computer time is not already chock-full and you keep forgetting to squeeze your Substack in somewhere, which Reich hasn't done? News flash--people who disagree with our political opinions are still people. Anyway, I completely agree with that sentence. If you think their opinions and practices are truly loathsome, you can still gain intelligence by listening.
(And if he can write out his words, at his age...)
X (Twitter)
Latest scam: When you post on X, you're followed by total strangers whose profiles are either empty, or all reposts of other people's posts, including yours. Those people then send other people phishy DM requests. When you recognize someone who tried to phish your account before, and report the account to X, the system demands an offensive post and takes the one at the top of their profile page. Might be yours. Then your account shuts down while X investigates the false flag.
I see a clear pattern. I don't see yet whether these people are primarily about attacking the people whose posts they repost, or primarily about phishing accounts of people who aren't onto their game yet.
"
Guerrilla shadowbanning: create bogus accounts to generate obnoxious DMs, while accounts' profiles consist of reposts. You get blocked because they reposted your posts.
"
Unfortunately X doesn't have a live, responsive help team, as Twitter had, so it may take a while to fix this. I can say that "Official Mel Gibson," as distinct from the verified account with a screen name like "private Mel G," is an egregious example. (Some time ago I reposted something Mel G posted on some hot topic of the day. Apart from The River I'm not a fan of his movies, but I respect the man for saying he's a Christian in mostly anti-Christian Hollywood. Anyway this impersonator had, at the time, what looked like a credible fan or publicist account for Mel Gibson. His account was shut down after I posted about its phishiness. He's back on X, following me. It's a grudge fight.)
Let's say this. I could believe that Mel Gibson has developed some Glyphosate Awareness, which would be great news, but if that were the case he could have told the world about it on X and he would probably have been more interested in chatting with a demographic "peer" like Neil Young. I don't believe there is a married movie star who spends time online chatting up a woman who doesn't even post a human face image but does publicize the fact that she doesn't even date divorced men. Men still annoy me in real life, regularly enough that I can imagine a "celebrity" flirting with me if we'd met in real life, but not from some foreign country where if he is visiting he's surrounded by platoons of would-be starlets. I'd love to discuss a legitimate remote writing job with someone working for Mel Gibson or Elon Musk or any number of other rich and famous non-writers, but I'm ticked off by people phishing from foreign countries and pretending to be famous non-writers. (EM is the male "celebrity" that they recognize on my following list, so a good half-dozen Phake Phollowers pretend to be Elon Musk.) Worst of all when what prompted my original complaint was not even overt phishing, which was where I thought the DMs were going but they didn't get there, but the impersonator trying to flirt with me in the name of somebody who is not, in any conceivable version of this world, going to flirt with me. How desperate and pathetic a fool is person openly saying he thinks I am?!?!?!
Are there people on X who fall for this?!?!?!?!?!
Clustered toward the bottom of this page, with white buttons that show I'm "following" them, are the long-term Tweeps whose posts, from legitimate free accounts, I miss and look for. Clustered toward the top, with black buttons that show I have nothing to do with them, are these nuisance accounts. I think X should check them for a history of requesting DMs and block the ones that have.
For all I know some new followers post content as good as or better than my old familiar Tweeps, may actually be my old familiar Tweeps with new screen names, and I'm sorry, but so many new followers' profiles have been such a total waste of time that I don't even check out new followers' profiles any more.
And I think X should verify claims that anyone's "content appears to be automated" before annoying anyone with that messages--someone may have an acoount with a similar name, and apparently someone does, but my content is 100% hand-typed except for the titles and links to articles, books, etc. Nobody likes everything so some people undoubtedly hate my posts, but there's nothing automated about them.
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