At the end of a customer service call, I hate being asked to rate the representative. What I value is whether they solved the problem. Not whether they seemed to understand the problem. Not whether they buttered me up. And at the end of the call, I usually don't know yet if they have.

Not Google Translate's most shining moment. "rentes" means "rntes" in English? However, to be fair, it did OK with more context, which is often the case.

Forget the show itself, I'm dying to know how on earth a spectacle of that kind was prepared AND REHEARSED. Were they able to rehearse in Levi's Stadium? How much time did it take, now many rehearsals, how many hundred people were needed just to be sugar cane bushes and how long did it take just to

Just waiting for the first MAGA to say that more people watched the TPUSA halftime show than the Super Bowl halftime show.

The Atlantic: "Gregory Bovino...will return to his former job in El Centro, California, WHERE HE IS EXPECTED TO RETIRE SOON." I hadn't seen that least detail. Good. He's apparently only 55 years old, according to Wikipedia. www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

I guess it wasn't "effective February 20th" after all.

Today is the day our credit card interest rates get reduced to 10%. Trump said.

Countdown time. Don't let this be forgotten. Trump's 10% credit card rate cap becomes effective in two days, January 20th, 2026. When I wake up on Wednesday the 21st, my Capital One credit card will either be showing an APR of 18.40% or a reduction to 10%. Yes or no. True or false. No ambiguity.

María Corina Machado has either given or offered to give her Nobel MEDAL to Trump. However, does Trump know that the prize also comes with money equivalent to $1.17 million? Is she going to give him the money? And finally, of course, if Katie Ladecky gave me her Olympic medal, does anyone think

When I was a kid, I thought "Russian dressing" was called "Russian dressing" because it was so quick and easy to make. I wasn't thinking puns, I simply heard the word "Rushin'."

María Corina Machado can't give Trump her Nobel Peace Prize, even if she wants to. The Peace Prize website says: "A Nobel Prize can neither be revoked, shared, nor transferred to others. Once the announcement has been made, the decision stands for all time." www.nobelpeaceprize.org/articles/is-...

John Bolton, 1/7/2026. "There's no Plan B because there's no Plan A." And today on 1/9/2026 I read: "Trump seeks $100bn for Venezuela oil, but Exxon boss says country 'uninvestable.'" www.bbc.com/news/article...

"An engineer remotely piloted [Boston Dynamics' Atlas "robot"] from nearby for the purpose of the demonstration." As of 2026, humanoid robots are all fake. Tesla's Optimus is fake. 1X's Neo is fake. And now we learn Atlas is fake. Fake as the Mechanical Turk, the 1770s robot chessplayer

Be funny if 1) they can't secure a conviction of Nicolás Maduro, or 2) He just keeps running the government from prison, the way Boston's Mayor James Curley kept running Boston, or 3) He escapes from custody thanks to a bold Venezuelan rescue mission.

Three ways the abduction of Nicolás Maduro could go wrong. 1) The Administration could fail to get a conviction. 2) Venezuela could mount an equally daring military rescue mission and bring him back to Venezuela. 3) Maduro could continue to be the President of Venezuela while in US custody.

ABC news said the US had "ousted" Maduro. But DID we? We physically removed him, but if Delcy Rodriguez says Maduro is still President, was he ousted? James Curley continued to be the legal Mayor of Boston, continuing to draw his salary, while he was in Federal prison.

Monroe Doctrine: the US will protect the independence of South American countries from European attempts at re-colonization. Trump Doctrine: The US will re-colonize South America.

The US "run" Venezuela? If you think Venezuela won't fight for its independence, Simón Bolívar would like a word with you.

As best I can remember, I did not realize that Sherlock Holmes was a fictional person until about age twelve, when a relative gave me a paperback copy of "The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes" as a gift. How about you? When did you realize he was not real?

“I looked at [a Navy ship]. ‘That’s a terrible-looking ship, let’s make it beautiful,' The U.S. Navy will lead the design of these ships along with me, because I’m a very aesthetic person,” Trump said. Keep the nuclear subs submerged, don't let him set eyes on them!

AI is NEVER available for things I WANT done, like automatically skipping YouTube ads.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act says "All redactions must be accompanied by a written justification published in the Federal Register and submitted to Congress." Where are these written justifications? For example, this morning the New York Times reported that "More than a dozen photos

Thank you, archive.org! I was looking for a specific quotation somewhere in "No Hands: The Rise and Fall of the Schwinn Bicycle Company." Google Books only has a "sample" and no way to search the whole book. Archive.org had it, and I was able to borrow it--like a real library, only one person can

"If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars." Note to self: yep, I was wrong, Trump's big address was not about war with Venezuela.

Image created by chemical leakage within a damaged thermopane window, Milton Hospital, Milton, Massachusetts. Believed by many to be an image of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus, it eventually attracted a total of 25,000 viewers. This image was taken on 7/6/2007.

Flocking sparrows, 2021

Landscape Arch, Arches National Park, 2011

Poet's Walk Trail, 2018. The Scenic Hudson parks have some very cool park benches.

People are coming up with such convoluted explanations on what the Trump-Mamdani meeting means. It's simple: Trump is nuts.

"Dog Accidentally Shoots and Injures a Pennsylvania Man..." That does it. We ARE in a computer simulation. No way is this a real world. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/u...

Badlands National Park, 2016. Long camping road trip, Boston to Yellowstone and back, but really Badlands was the highlight of the trip.

Gooseberry Badlands, near Worland, WY.

The only "emergency" is Trump's collection of tariffs which might need to be refunded. But the tariffs were collected from American businesses and, if refunded will be refunded to American business. The money would stay within the US and refunding it would not be an economic catastrophe.

ISN'T THAT A LOW-FLUSH TOILET? Did Trump install a low-flush toilet in the renovated bathroom of the Lincoln Bedroom? Isn't we worried that his honored guests will "need to flush ten times?"

Save me from badly integrated IT systems. My 2025 Toyota Camry has a dashboard clock. Although the car is connected to the Internet, to satellites, and to my smartphone, it is unable to automatically adjust the clock for the time change. The time cannot be set by any of twenty-odd settings groups

Donald Trump wants the US to resume bomb tests. But he's my age, he remembers ATMOSPHERIC testing. Bomb tests were tourist attractions. Announcers said "Welcome to the valley where we grow the giant mushrooms!" He loves spectacle. I bet he will demand ATMOSPHERIC testing when he figures that out.

The last poem in Carl Sandburg's "The People, Yes," slightly abridged for Bluesky's three-minute limit. "The people will live on. The learning and blundering people will live on. They will be tricked and again sold, and go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds.

It was a big deal in 1962 when all three networks aired "A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy." Donald Trump would have been 15. I think the ballroom is about Camelot envy. If it is completed, I fully expect Donald Trump to conduct a TV "Tour of the White House with Donald Trump."

My language companion in Peru hadn't heard about the destruction of a third of The White House, found it difficult to believe, and said "This couldn't happen in Lima because there are laws against changing historic buildings."

The web page describing the White House tour begins by explaining that "The site of the new ballroom will be where the small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits." But it then goes on to say "Tours of The White House include the public rooms in the East Wing!"

Little kids are going to see the diarrhea-bombing video. Some of them are going to be disturbed by it. Nightmare-disturbed. Too-scared-to-ask-parents-about-it disturbed. They will NOT understand that the President only bombs bad people. Or will think that if they are bad, it could happen to them.

Why is it called a "ballroom" when the only purpose ever mentioned for it is dining?

"In February 2024, [Paul] Ingrassia wrote: 'The founding fathers were wrong that all men are created equal … We need to reject that part of our heritage.'" That's not "joking" language. www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

I ache for at least one Trump supporter to say something like "I still support Trump, but I could have done without the diarrhea-bombing video."

The price OF EGGS does seem to be down. They weren't up because of Biden, they aren't down because of Trump--but they are down. Oddly, Republicans aren't trumpeting this--probably because ALL OTHER grocery prices are up, so they'd like to avoid discussing groceries.

Someone needs to tell Donald Trump that the Nobel Economics medal weighs ten grams more than the Peace medal. THAT should get him going.

A originalist legal scholar whom the Supreme Court often cites wrote a "bombshell" article denying the "unitary executive" concept. The knell of democracy is that the NYT says "the new article is unlikely to have a practical effect." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/u...

"Trump Administration Will Rehire Scores of Experts Fired in Error" Friday’s layoffs swept up scientists involved in responding to the measles outbreak and running an influential journal. An official acknowledged the mistakes on Saturday." This is 100% on Russell Vought.

What I want to know is why alien foreign Briticisms are creeping into our All-American English. For example... why is an injection now a "jab" when it always used to be a "shot?"

I was puzzled as to how "rocking" a piece of clothing can mean "wearing" it, until I realized that it makes exactly as much sense as "sporting" it.