The New Coffee Room

Saw this on FB Marketplace - trying to give this piano away.

@jon-nyc said in Good news for Mark and me:

CDs don’t count!

Think I don't have a couple thousand LPs??

Arnold shows us the way....

Of course, the long standing goodwill of our relations with Europe, Canada, South America, etc. would reduce the impact of any such plan...

TikTok had a guy saying that part of China's plan is to have the best AI platforms and keep them free - and ensure they require less infrastructure to maintain. In doing so, they would undermine the mega-investments by US AI companies - which are over inflated anyway. Between the collapse of AI and a similar implosion of bitcoin, the US economy would be in shambles for some time to come.

Up at 3:15... Of course, that's not the whole story as prep has been going on for a while. Mrs. Kluurs took off yesterday to do prep as well. House organizing, prepping has gone on for a while.

We have written a quite detailed SOP for Thanksgiving. This has helped limited arguments discussions of how much soda, food, wine, etc. are needed the SOP documents what was used last year, amount left over, suggestions for improvement for the following year, etc. It is now at 3 pages of detail.

The reason for the 3:15 rise was to make sure the bird was fully prepped and ready for the roaster. In days of yore, we'd used our convection oven - but the last couple of years we've used an electric roaster as that frees up the oven for all kinds of things.

We'd had the roaster on the back porch in past years - but given outdoor the predicted outdoor temp and the hurricane level of wind predicted for today, we opted to place the roaster in the basement. Spouse doesn't like cooking bird smells in the house - but hopefully the hurricane winds oozing through the house - along with the basement location will limit the aroma from being noticeable.

We have a 19 lb bird in the roaster - slightly smaller than past years but the main bird is supplemented by 3 lb turkey breast which will go in the air fryer - to ensure turkey supremacy. In some years my spouse, in her zest for friendliness has given away ALL of the turkey to her relatives for leftovers. As a result, I've ended up cooking a turkey the day AFTER Thanksgiving.

Our dining room can comfortably sit 10 - so it was ordained that we have 13 people attending. Thus, there is the infamous "kids" table - and propitiously, there are kids.

I've conveniently positioned chairs in front of the stereo monitor speakers - hoping to protect them from destruction. Horror stories on internet abound with children and adults tearing the tweeter off the speaker, assuming it is meant to be abused - a $1,500-$2,000 mistake we hope to avoid. A substantial amount of art and art-like objects have been removed from key rooms so as to minimize insurance liabilities.

Festivities reach their apex at about 2:00 this afternoon - and hopefully, we chase the last of the attendees out the door about 6:00. We then have the rest of the night to restore some of the order to the house - and sleep the sleep of the damned.

The shooter does so much damage to so many - especially his own people - and at the same time harms whatever cause he thinks he was supporting.

I once had a temp working for me that named her child Fidel Castro.

@Mik said in Need some motivation to eat right and exercise?:

I just changed my primary care of 25 years as he's on extended medical leave and I suspect not going to make it. Makes me sad as he's been fantastic and very influential. he's helped me cut through a lot of bureaucratic nonsense.

I could have written that post - except it's been 40 years with the same guy. I remember thinking how smart it was that I had a young doc, and I'd have him "forever". Clearly, i didn't stop to consider that he, like me, would age. While the practice hasn't given details, there's hints that it is a health issue that has caused him to retire. He and I shared a love of music - and even read the same record collecting periodicals. I just sent him a card with a thank you and wished him the best - along with a recently released CD of music I thought he might like.

I reviewed the docs suggested by his practice - and it looks like a female doc is my best bet. Hopefully, that works out until I'm toasted.

I read a couple of books on native cultures in the US and more recently, Humankind by Rutger Bregman. While I haven't seen the PBS show yet, there were myriad cultures in the US - and some fascinating cultures prior to the arrival of and even slightly after the continent was contaminated by Europeans. Humankind explored pre-civilized cultures and suggested that it in hunter/gatherer populations - living off the bounty of a land, that it isn't surprising to find very different value systems than one that have developed agriculture and "civilized" themselves. Another interesting detail comes from the number of Europeans, once kidnapped by native Americans and assimilated into that culture, did NOT want to return to civilized society, very frequently escaping back to the tribes from which they were rescued.

@Mik said in AI and partisan politics:

The distillation of the information is wonderful.

No question. Instead of going to 25 sites for comparisons on insurance, one can specify the type of information required, places to include in the search, criteria for review, etc - and instead of one having to search myriad sites, it's there in seconds - in graph form if so requested.

My stereo and audio storage installation - connecting devices from multiple vendors with different interfaces - a nightmare that would have taken forever to sort through - was relatively easy with the help of AI.

It's perhaps even more transformative than the introduction of the PC, the internet, and social media.

So much for read along with Tom Sawyer.

Yup - I visited a woman who worked for the VA as an occupational therapist. She was a kind soul and would take patients home to her rural farm where they could be outdoors, ride a horse, feed chickens and play with her dog. It wasn't part of her job - just something she did because she wanted to bring some sunshine into the lives of soldiers who had lost a part of themselves. Then one day her horse got spooked and threw her. She hit her head. When I met her, she was a quadriplegic, blind and deaf. Her world was reduced to darkness and silence. She could speak. You would write letter on her hand to spell out words, and she would respond verbally. It wasn't possible to walk out of that room be grateful for - everything.

Could be Monopoly money that can be used to help when you land on Boardwalks with a hotel. You just need to broaden your thinking.