Wednesday, March 02, 2022

Tufted Titmouse

 



 

25 comments:

  1. It was a very relaxed day at the polls. The vast majority of voters mailed their ballots in. It took us half the usual time to open the paper ballots, check them off on the checklist, and feed them into the machine.

    End of the night, we election workers got an email from our Town Clerk with the results! I'm happy to report that everyone and everything I voted for was victorious!

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    1. Gee--everyone else voted right? That must be quite an experience!

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    2. We have only about 6000 residents (counting children) and probably 3000-4000 of them vote. It's not a hard project, really. But it's rare I vote a perfect ballot. Sweet.

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  2. It seems that rumors of steroid use by Putin have been circulating for some time; that can increase aggressive behaviors. Google
    putin on steroids
    for more information and more rumors about his health.

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    1. We try to comprehend why any one could be capable of doing such things, so we might have clues about how to keep such things from happening. The difficulty is that insanity is not rational.

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    2. Given Putin's age, he is most unlikely to have been afflicted with syphilis, which Hitler very evidently was.

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  3. Atherstone ball game returns for 822nd year after pandemic break [Click] Wow! This must be the only such football game remaining. In the Middle Ages such games were well known, not infrequently between neighboring towns.

    I stand corrected; such ballgames [Click] have persisted in a number of places, mostly in Britain, but also in Georgia (the country):

    Medieval Football:

    Calcio Fiorentino – a modern revival of Renaissance football from 16th century Florence.
    la Soule – a modern revival of French medieval football
    lelo burti – a Georgian traditional football game

    Britain

    The Haxey Hood, played on Epiphany in Haxey, Lincolnshire
    Shrove Tuesday games
    Scoring the Hales in Alnwick, Northumberland
    Royal Shrovetide Football in Ashbourne, Derbyshire
    The Shrovetide Ball Game in Atherstone, Warwickshire
    The Shrove Tuesday Football Ceremony of the Purbeck Marblers in Corfe Castle, Dorset
    Hurling the Silver Ball at St Columb Major in Cornwall
    The Ball Game in Sedgefield, County Durham
    In Scotland the Ba game ("Ball Game") is still popular around Christmas and Hogmanay at:
    Duns, Berwickshire
    Scone, Perthshire
    Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands

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  4. ‘We are a huge amount of ants’: the united front of Ukrainian volunteers [Click] Alex Riabchyn, a former deputy in Ukraine’s parliament and an adviser to the CEO of the state gas firm Naftogaz, said volunteers were playing a crucial part in the struggle for the nation’s survival. “We have a series of strong horizontal links. We are good at self-organisation,” he explained. He continued: “Russia has vertical links and strong institutions. Putin says something; Russians obey. In Ukraine, institutions are weak. We are not used to obeying. The state killed people in the Holocaust and the gulags. People here rely on their family and friends.”

    In today’s news from Japan there was a report that so far fifty Japanese had volunteered for the Ukranian foreign legion.

    Some other headlines from The Guardian:

    ‘Just a sea of tears’: the group helping anxious mothers of Russian soldiers

    Germany unites behind chancellor’s historic U-turn on arming Ukraine

    Ukraine refugees given right to live in EU for three years

    Rebecca Solnit: It’s time to confront the Trump-Putin network

    UN General Assembly votes to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and calls for withdrawal

    Thousands of people in cities across Russia have been defying police threats and staging protests against the invasion of Ukraine.

    More than 7,000 Russian troops have been killed since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s presidential adviser. Oleksiy Arestovich, a military adviser to president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in a television briefing that hundreds of Russian servicemen have been taken prisoner, including senior officers. A Russian army commander was taken to Belarus after being severely wounded, Arestovich said.

    In the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, the Russian army claims it has captured the city but its mayor says it is still held by Ukrainian forces.

    Success for progressives in Texas while Trump ally suffers major blow

    BBC headlines:

    Airbus joins rival Boeing in cutting Russia ties

    'More than 100' Scots volunteer for Ukraine fight

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    1. Scots!
      https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-60589580

      "If I was a bricklayer I'd go and build hospitals. If I was a doctor I'd go out and give people first aid. It just happens my trade is soldier, so I'm going out to fight."

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    2. "Rebecca Solnit: It’s time to confront the Trump-Putin network"

      Yes, please.

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  5. How the Finns Deter Russian Invasion [Click] “If you want ordinary people to make your society occupation-proof, you have to teach them to kill well before they need to do so.”

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  6. Replies
    1. That's a fair number of angle grinders; presumably Home Depot sales are good.

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    2. We try not to shop at Home Depot anymore. After learning that the leadership are DT supporters, we prefer Lowe's.

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  7. I am deeply impressed with the world citizens volunteering for the Foreign Legion to fight for Ukraine.

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    1. I feel a strange compulsion to rip up sheets and roll bandages.

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    2. I use the term foreign legion because that seems most appropriate; the official term is different. BTW, did you know that most of the French Foreign Legionnaires at Dien Bien Phu were German WWII veterans?

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    3. Having typed that note about Dien Bien Phu, I looked up the Wikipedia article and discovered that a few months before the eponymous battle, the French carried out a military operation there to interrupt the rice trade through the area and thereby draw out the Viet Minh. Well, they brought out the Viet Minh, all right. Didn't work out very well for them. And the Japanese Navy attacked Midway hoping to bring out the US battle fleet and aircraft carriers; that didn't work out very well either. And now Putin has brought out the Americans and Europeans. . . as well as Japanese, South Africans, etc. while inspiring hatred that will motivate Ukrainians for generations. And trying to do it on the cheap; no way did he use enough troops to control such a large country, even if he were able to subdue it for a while. Hmmmmm... I wonder if the fuel tank filler pipes on Russian trucks are big enough to slide a hand grenade down; helpful South Vietnamese refueling US trucks during the Vietnam war would sometimes slip a rubber band over the handle on a hand grenade, pull the pin, and slip the grenade into the fuel tank. After the Americans figured that one out, their military trucks started to come with smaller diameter filler pipes.

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  8. Select Panel Lays Out Potential Charges Against Trump [Click]

    AND Capitol Rioter Pleads Guilty to Seditious Conspiracy. [Click]

    Sounds like it’s time for Donnie to get onto his superyacht and head out beyond the three-mile limit. Which raises the question of whether he has a superyacht, like real gazillionaires. Turns out he DID, [Click] but gave it up for unspecified reasons, possibly financial.

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  9. Vermont students protest the lifting of school mask mandate
    https://www.wcax.com/2022/03/02/montpelier-students-protest-lifting-mask-mandate/

    I know that VT*Grand (now 14) also doesn't want the mask mandate lifted.

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