"I'm older, and I have better insurance."

She looks like she could be an MLB umpire.

@Mik Thank you!

Yeah we have an unwritten rule. Whoever clears the sidewalk first also does the sidewalk for the houses on either side of them too.

@Mik Frogs are really good at it, too. So much compared to their body size! It's amazing how big their poos are. If humans were so productive, there's no way it would fit in the cologuard bucket! My pet froggos always had a pothos plant growing in their house. I can tell you with complete confidence that frog poo and pee are the perfect fertilizer combo for many plants. We have five HUGE pothos plants in our house, all from prunings of the froggo's pothos. The inside of the frog house was always like a jungle.

@jon-nyc Holy smokes indeed! I figured you would be watching the numbers. Your situation is much more serious than mine, but your assessment of the numbers and the locational factors are spot on for my experience as well. I just started using the AQI alert system, because I can't smell the smoke until it's way too far over my tolerance level. Hubby smells the smoke long before I do, so he's my second alert system when he's home.

And here i thought the dollar was taking a nose dive!

It's Lizzo on a bike. [image: 1755283696789-9359f452-46c9-4ad4-aa69-3cd97dfc4276-image.png] (OK, she is just freakin' NASTY.)

I had that sense of it but kind of at the end of my career so I didn’t try to jump on board. It is handy to have it summarize what a search tells you.

My favorites are probably 15, 19, and 7.

Jesus. Y’know, I like some of the policies but the fatigue is just awful.

Bill Gates completely missed the importance of both the internet and smart phones until some time after others had picked up on them, and I suspect he's wrong this time as well.

Ha, sorry... trade secrets my son. Link to video

haha that made me chuckle

I've heard he's a great dude, a terrific musician, and yeah.... what a talent, makes me want to go back and watch Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (first "grown up" film I remember watching) and so many of his other comedy classics. Great Oscars host, too.

@LuFins-Dad said in Why HHS Pivots Away from mRNA Vaccines: DeSantis really should have wiped the floor with Trump, but he was too weak. He didn’t go in hard enough to beat him, nor soft enough to stay close enough for a cabinet position. But who knows, maybe it’ll serve him well in 28. Especially if some of trumps’s policies and up hurting people (I’m looking at you, tariffs) and those close to Trump get tainted by it.

I don't think so. He doesn't generally veil what he means in sarcasm.

@Mik During our Minnesota winters when the snow is deep, I can look out the windows and see deer enjoying the use of the cleared sidewalks. They get tired of walking through the deep snow. They're so darn spoiled. They'll walk down the plowed sidewalks to a plowed driveway, then cross the street from there to the next plowed sidewalk. They finally go into a yard when they spot a favorite plant to eat. I love my new fences.

Interesting bits that didn't know before: Basically, when plants are growing, photosynthesis is happening in their cells. And that photosynthesis gives off a very specific wavelength of light. The OCO instruments in space measure that light all over the planet. "NASA and others have turned this happy accident into an incredibly valuable set of maps of plant photosynthesis around the world," explains Scott Denning, a longtime climate scientist at Colorado State University who worked on the OCO missions and is now retired. "Lo and behold, we also get these lovely, high resolution maps of plant growth," he says. "And that's useful to farmers, useful to rangeland and grazing and drought monitoring and forest mapping and all kinds of things, in addition to the CO2 measurements."