The US Government has deployed the National Dad-Joke Clearinghouse, available for consultation at fatherhood.gov/for-dads/… .

This is Lars. Lars is a city dog, visiting us out here at the farm today. Lars went out into the corn stubble for an adventure, but came running back like goosed lightning. Lars ain’t saying what he saw out there.

The Washington Post, my hometown newspaper, gave me an end-of-year report on how much I read: just shy of two articles per day. Back when the Post was on paper, delivered to my house, I read the whole thing every day. That’s quite a decline.

Elapsed time from when the red-tailed hawk departed the fence-post by the bird feeder until the squirrels returned was under two minutes. 🦅⏱🐿

“Moderation is the health of the soul.” - La Rochefoucauld

“There are things in life one does well to carry to extremes.” -Cyrano

First time I’ve seen a Trigger Warning in a book in French: “Existential horror; abyss; spider; mushrooms.” OK, you have my attention.

Reading a paper by Tom Shippey is always a trip: “Kemble has been treated very kindly by English scholars, as the founding father of their discipline, but I have to say that in my opinion he became, in the end, clinically insane.”

Upgraded to MacOS Sonoma last weekend. 🍎overwrote my HTTPD configuration file, for some reason that no doubt makes sense to them. Here’s what I had to fix: 1. uncomment the lines with “userdir” in httpd.conf 2. uncomment the “Include” line in extra/httpd-userdir.conf 3. uncomment the lines with “cgid” in httpd.conf

Why, yes, I am using my iMac to do things that Apple would like me to pay them for on iCloud. But that couldn’t have anything to do with it, could it?

Somebody dropped a bag of dry cat food in the grocery-store parking lot, where it burst open. I have never seen so many pigeons in my life.

I hope you never need to know this, but #ClevelandClinic appointments in 9300 Euclid Avenue and 9500 Euclid Avenue are in the same building and you go to the same place. Navigation apps say very confusing things about that.

🌱 When the weather cooled down in September, a couple of volunteer pea vines sprouted along the permanent trellis. I harvested a free bowl of snow peas this week, just before the frost. I wonder who pollinated them? #gardening

Madness takes its toll. EZ Pass or exact change only, please.

At the breakfast buffet. The tray had five strips of #bacon all stuck together. I know a message from the gods when I see one.

Phrase of the morning comes from Andy Zaltsman: “septic think tank”

New feature at the #library: the check-out process ends with the computer telling me I’ve saved $15.99 this year by using the public library. That’s a bit of an underestimate. They should include the $250 of volumes they got me through Inter-Library Loan last month.

He thinks schoolchildren ought to learn cursive handwriting and touch typing. He thinks the Constitution (he doesn’t say which one) forbids campaign contributions. He agrees that sheriffs have statutory authority to protect the Constitution. He thinks banning “screens” in schools will prevent vandalism. He’s on a first-name basis with George Mason. I suppose it goes without saying that he has a degree in electrical engineering.

This makes me sad. I used to like this sort of wacko. Sometimes when I didn’t like the guy who was going to get 80% of the vote in a gerrymandered district, I’d even vote for them. But all the fun has gone out of it now.

In French, a well-dressed person is “chic”. In German, she’s “schick”. In English, she looks “sharp”. Who borrowed the word from whom? #etymology

The most remarkable thing about the #English language is the word “palooka”. My ancestors coined a word whose only purpose is to insult someone who could kill them with his bare fists.

Corporate metaphor of the day: “When the coals are hot, you’ve got to jump on them.”

Join the Zorganite Encumber. By reading this, you already have. zencookbook.blogspot.com/2023/09/w…

This is the time of year when the mailman brings me stacks of reminders of how many times I’ve typed Bilbo Baggins’s birthday into web forms.

The ancient Romans had another god, similar to Janus, who could listen in two directions. He was usually portrayed as a male figure with an ear on each side of his head, but his cult has been forgotten because the statues looked like just some guy.

They said I could be anything I wanted, so I became a UFO. #selfie #shadow

Can anyone recommend a tutorial on multinomial modeling that’s not for machine-learning application? I’m more interested in #CausalInference than prediction. #rstats

The Virginia DMV will provide car owners, for a consideration, with a “don’t tread on me” license plate. It’s a useful warning label, usually. But today I saw one where the license number was “IAM SNK”. Maybe this person is OK.