salix sericea (@Ripple13216)

Six countries, nine lives. Not good at doing a bio. Comments on the reality show of life. May contain traces of nuts.

Experts welcome.

Public Key

npub1rasrrez0gcz3zx8kyls4f8zre09tma2e36xwtkua5nerehzl8t7qdjjdsg

NIP-05 Address

salixsericea_at_mastodon.social@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsp7cp3u385vpg3rrmz0c25n3puhj4a74vcar89mww6fu3um30n4lqp2emhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgtmwwp6kyvfswe6n26n3dpmng6m4wfmh5e3nxauxwu3kw9axk6350gmhxum8dekxgdr3df3nv7rkxdkhy6rrxd48z7nhw9hx6dr3wv6qru4agv

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npub1rasrrez0gcz3zx8kyls4f8zre09tma2e36xwtkua5nerehzl8t7qdjjdsg

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Last Notes

2025-04-06 01:32:56

Estate is such a weird word.
Finally closed out our volunteer gig of dissolving a veteran's estate by handing over the last bits of paperwork to the next of kin.
The old man had just under $ 10 K debt when he died. No money beyond sixty dollars in the bank. While in hospital is residence was plundered. Nobody knows what was taken.
The fate of a poor American after a lifetime of work.
#poverty #death

2024-12-22 23:06:35

There's a pancake thread going, and one recipe called for 1 stick of butter and 1 cup of flour.
Triggered, I've been craving my fave butter load, the Kouign-amann, for several hours now. And while the Brittany tourist site below says "made of butter and sugar" instead of "with", ignoring the flour is true to the spirit of this cake, 😉.
Also, forget *every single non-Breton* recipe! They are garbage.
https://www.brittanytourism.com/matching-what-i-want/food-drink/brittanys-specialities/kouign-amann/
#food #cake #Brittanny

2024-12-21 03:28:57

Wait, we can not have a bird flu emergency declaration without first blaming another country for the virus.
Doesn't precedent count for anything anymore?
You expect me to tell grandma on Christmas that she needs to make the ultimate sacrifice for the GDP? I mean, before or after the presents are opened?
/s
#h5n1 #birdflu

2024-12-20 21:33:56

After studying Foster Kitten's latest progress for a few days, it's official: She now opens the heavy external door to the back porch at will to let herself in.
And ignores any request to shut the door behind her.
Are we seeing accelerated evolution?
Did we indeed have radioactive spiders in the house as I might have suggested?
Will we come home from work one night to find a suitcase with our clothes on the porch and the door locked from the inside?
#cats

2024-12-20 20:16:17

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@nprofile…nphd 💙
Thank you for being here on Mastodon, and happy holidays!

2024-12-20 19:34:44

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@nprofile…nphd Nothing happened, and I praised the idea of providing enrichment for the kitten while I moved the tablet, 😃.

2024-12-20 19:20:55

PSA: Do you or someone in your household reflexively stomp on bugs or things that look like bugs?
If so, please, do not put a tablet with an app that has scurrying mice or hopping bugs on the floor for your kitten to play with.
[No judgement, just trying to help. Also, no I have an iPad, I'm fine, pls. 😃.]
#cats

2024-12-18 13:16:16

I've never been confronted with a "brain teaser" in an interview*, and always felt sorry for people who have. Which led to a quest: how can I help these poor souls?
Like so? Answer any brain teaser they throw at you, then politely say: "I have one for you. Why does an air mattress always give out in the middle of the night?"
Do make sure you have all your belongings ready and have memorized the exit route, 😉.
[* Maybe I come across as too dense to recognize one.]
#tech #culture

2024-12-15 21:52:16

Having grown up in a climate with temperatures best described as "like the inside of an average fridge" for much of the year, our California garden will always be fascinating to me.
It's the middle of December, and we will have peas in the garden within a week or so. The cherry tomato plants are full after their summer timeout. Cosmos and salvia bloom, as does the milkweed.
Such a nice corner of the world.
#gardening #food #flowers

2024-12-08 00:51:55

The Anthropocene is dead.
Wellcome to the Age of Morons!
The 5-4 Pod crew discuss the Supreme Court case "United States v. 95 Barrels of Vinegar".
Here or wherever you get your podcasts: https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-7fuu2-2291b0dc
#podcasts #SCOTUS #food

2024-12-07 20:42:13

Foster Kitten has discovered she is now big enough to get onto the roof of the porch.
She finds it very entertaining to see a human bring out a ladder.
On the bright side, the porch roof needed cleaning anyway.
#caturday

2024-12-03 10:52:21

Ah, #Mastodon is sending out "Thank you for being part of Mastodon" notes.
Kind of cute, with a touch of nerdy.
Could that be the "Unknown Notification Type" my mobile client wants me to be aware of, or is that just a bug?
Pleasantly surprised to have made it into the Top 100% of users!
#SocialMedia

2024-12-02 21:53:51

We tried uncured sweet potatoes for the first time, and they were just fine. Harvested last week, stored like true potatoes.
Some internet comments warned they'd be mealy.
Ours were fine, so it may be a question of the variety or a storage quirk.
Also got cheap fresh post-Thanksgiving cranberries and made sauce. Oranges + fresh cranberries pureed in the food processor, that's it. No cooking. No sugar, or add sugar to taste.
#Food #SweetPotatoes #Cranberries

2024-11-29 21:17:36

Ah, a Firefox update on Black Friday.
What could that be? Will we ever know?
Just kidding, they tell us. It's a product Review analyzer for online shopping. It uses AI to figure out if reviews you read on Amazon, Walmart, etc. are "real" and assigns a letter grade.
No, thanks.
#Firefox #AI #tech

2024-11-24 18:02:58

The old man once said:
"What's worse then eating a bug? Eating half a bug."
Please, do not ask.
Everything is fine.
Happy Sunday, 🙂!
#bugs #food

2024-11-20 00:07:04

Freeze alert last night, big rain storm coming.
Moved the coffee plants to the better protected back porch. Picked all pomegranates, the first key limes, and a large colander of chili and jalapeno peppers.
Rewarding self by watching "Resident Alien" on Netflix in a few.
#gardening #food

2024-11-15 19:45:29

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@nprofile…eqw3 Happy birthday! :blue_balloon_heart:

2024-11-13 03:11:31

Sunset on the Pacific Flyway in Northern California in early November.
#birds #nature
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/473/402/931/412/115/original/4294509e821dd3e7.png

2024-11-07 20:44:12

One of my favorite things on Mastodon is to give new accounts a follow.
It's sort of a "welcome hug", a "yes, someone sees you and it will be okay".
Almost always, it works out just fine.
Sure, there's the rare somewhat progressive account that goes full on libertarian or fash a few months before an election.
But that's easy to deal with.

2024-10-29 05:46:09

So, we are doing another round of "this is not who we are".
And then we get a well meaning version of "<minority> have fought in wars and many currently serve in the US military".
Which in itself is transactional af.
Do they ever check who the greatest Amish general was?
These empty political Lego speech blocks are, let's say, not endearing.
Give Puerto Rico statehood or independence. Period.
#PuertoRico

2024-09-03 23:18:23

Several years ago, we planted potatoes very close to a row of bushes. This one came up against a root and wanted to grow around it.
Tempted to make small square cages to try to get some artsy square potatoes, like Japanese square watermelons, 😉.
#gardening
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/076/146/065/046/442/original/6e9972cb840d7439.png

2024-08-11 19:48:12

One thing the #Project2025 videos confirm again is that "the swamp" absolutely ran Trump's first presidency.
The deep involvement of the Heritage Foundation in all aspects, from basic ideology to the people running the transition, to staffing of political employees, Heritage was the big talent pool.
Many Baby bush political appointees were recycled. Plus Daddy Bush's fixer Barr and others from back then.

2024-08-02 22:02:17

As of May 2024, the Biden administration had forgiven about $ 7.7 billion in student loans. Many of which people had been making payments on for many years.
Also as of May 2024, almost all of the $ 793 billion of the PPP (paycheck protection program) from the pandemic had been forgiven. Most with no partial repayments ever made.
The first was accompanied by numerous legal challenges and fascist outrage.
The second, 100 times bigger, caused....crickets.

2024-07-31 01:59:04

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@npub132h…f594 https://www.yahoo.com/news/fake-trump-medical-report-spreads-165154158.html

2024-07-29 19:21:33

Now listening to one the most satisfying simple sounds ever.
The "plop" telling us that one more jar of jelly is sealed, 😃.
Grapes and figs from a vacant lot nearby. With permission from the owner.
There are also persimmon trees for later in the fall.
Last year, we made Hoshigaki , dried persimmons Japanese style.
Fun for bystanders when they hear "honey, have you massaged the persimmons yet?"
#food

2024-07-26 01:10:32

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@npub1lrv…tth9 Wow. Thank you so much.
Even in an already gratuitous part, he couldn't resist to hammer it in: Instead of "a lunch in May", "a lunch we had", "a lunch with him", that "I" just had to go in there.

2024-07-23 04:16:53

Foster kitten update.
Last feeding took a surprising turn.
#cats
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/833/837/640/241/588/original/5bf4b8f766420bba.jpg

2024-07-09 18:25:14

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@npub1y3m…r6lg So true. Every now and then, I explain that I tried to lower my expectations, but there is no bottom.
Have a great rest of the day. Enjoy a definitely not (yet, 😉 ) region encoded beer!

2024-07-08 20:41:29

A couple of weeks ago, I made the mistake of buying a peach at the grocery store. Just one. Because I couldn't wait for ours.
The sweet taste of cardboard...
Time to pick the ripe ones now and be nice to self and the neighbors.
#food

2024-05-04 00:04:22

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@npub1y3m…r6lg You are in fact protecting your family from so many calories. Not wrong at all, one might say.
Happy Friday.

2024-04-14 22:01:22

There are no giants.
Well, explain this, 😉.
#SilentSunday #SFBayArea
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/271/802/539/814/472/original/5e2aab6d2d193f32.png

2024-04-05 19:13:06

Successful user interface for zoos and parks in India.
Another one from the Pune zoo:
"Please be safe. Do not stand, sit, climb or lean on zoo fences. If you fall, animals could eat you and that might make them sick. Thank you."
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/220/147/397/524/615/original/a271273dc28b1df8.jpg

2024-03-16 20:11:19

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@npub1xzm…eykm Enjoy the ride! It's often better not to know what one gets oneself into, 😉.
Thank you for doing this.

2024-03-12 20:32:24

Oh, boy, the #FBI executed a search warrant on the federal women's #prison in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The news report that the new warden is gone. Which comes after the previous one was convicted of sexually abusing prisoners.
Just another reminder how f***ed up our "justice" system is.
No, sending in the FBI does not change it. Abuse has been going on there for decades.
#SFBayArea

2024-02-24 03:30:20

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@npub1y3m…r6lg Maybe the blank sheet of paper is an invitation for you to add your own events, to make a future without being boxed in by others?
Have a great weekend (assuming you will be around that long 😉)

2024-02-04 19:09:30

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Or how we all heard and saw the #GOP rail about "activist" "liberal" judges when it was really the Republicans who had appointed most of them.
Or how a #law student was told, no, you won't get a #clerkship, you worked for the Obama campaign.
While we were busy worrying about our small lives, the Federalist Society and its allies pulled off a Supreme heist.
https://shows.acast.com/fivefourpod/episodes/the-federalist-society-part-1-immodest-origins

2024-02-04 19:00:49

The other day, I came across the weird take that no-fault divorce violates the #14thAmendment of the #US #Constitution. On a "respectable conservative" website. WTF?
Lo and behold, the source is the vast right-wing legal network of the #FederalistSociety.
The #Fivefour #podcast is doing a deep dive on it.
Learn things, you will (sorry, Yoda.)
For example, that foundations with the money from the gilded age helped fuel the lurch to the right.
...🧵

2024-01-31 20:16:07

News of the demise of email have been greatly exaggerated
--- Mark Twain
Not using #email quite as much as before but saw another instance of "thread breaking" a while ago and chuckled.
You have likely experienced email threads that stopped suddenly, only to find a new thread on the same topic started by one of the original participants.
Did you notice and think "nice way to deflect", "uh, covering your ass?"
Of course, I remember only these fun episodes ...🧵

2024-01-24 22:58:24

In case you missed it, from our friends at the #Pitchfork #Economics #podcast:
"How Economists Invented #Austerity and Paved the Way to #Fascism (with Clara Mattei)"
As a side note, I do find it quite remarkable that #US politicians and media have avoided the term austerity and stuck with better sounding "tax cuts", "balanced budget", etc.
https://pitchforkeconomics.com/episode/how-economists-invented-austerity-and-paved-the-way-to-fascism-with-clara-mattei/

2023-12-25 06:14:17

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@npub17u8…uhnv Sloppy gift wrapping is better according to this scientific research.
Happy Holidays!
https://flipboard.com/@conversationus/conversation-us-pc8ciek1z/-/a-DAJeO4MxQYyI8rrK-MLR9A%3Aa%3A2015697237-%2F0

2023-12-14 20:05:54

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@npub17ha…t8va Your non-cat posts are an important part of my news diet. Thank your for that.
As for cats, 😉:
So many studies of cat behavior seem to show primarily two things:
1) Scientists watch lots of youtube videos.
2) The MaxiMegalon Institute of Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious (MISPWOSO) continues to be an influential scientific institution.

2023-12-10 20:48:23

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@npub19mj…ugjc @npub1hyk…3p33 At least five years before the security update issue, HP "regionalized" their ink cartridges in the same way as movie DVDs.
This meant that the exact same HP printer model in, for example, Europe and the US would only work with HP Europe or HP US encoded cartridges respectively.

2023-11-22 19:27:52

Every single #utility company in this country: "“Customers do not fund #lobbying expenditures,....”
And no follow-up by journalist with "who does then?"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/21/new-orleans-climate-carbon-emissions
#electricity #gas #environment

2023-08-12 19:06:32

How did I miss Joseph #Rotblat?
While #Oppenheimer et al built the bomb, Rotblat became,"... the only nuclear scientist to leave the #Manhattan Project,..."
"The Strangest Dream" is a freely available film about the story of this remarkable human:
https://www.nfb.ca/film/strangest_dream/
Includes the reminder that the nuclear bomb was dropped on #Japan but aimed at the #USSR.
One of the very few Nobel Peace Price winners who deserve it.

2023-05-29 21:28:34

It is so much fun to see tiny native bees bounce from one wildflower to the next.
One of these hard working critters was half covered in pollen and still managed to fly.
#bees #wildflowers #gardening #California

2023-04-01 21:32:31

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#[0] Thank you for the context. Would have loved to be in that meeting.
"US only?"
"Yes, it's only 'metrics'."
"You sure?"
"Yes, and besides, like, the French keep renaming their parties every few months, the Italians have so many that the lookup would break our electricity bill."
"Really? What about, say, Canada?"
"Look, the official line is it's purely metrics."
Happy Saturday.