Home » Open thread 8/20/2025

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Open thread 8/20/2025 — 24 Comments

  1. On my way to more eye surgery and saw four orca along the hood canal bridge in the canal. Pretty cool. Drove by them about 30-50 feet away.

  2. Hi Neo. No one asked me but maybe keep a link up on the top of your sidebar for Gerard’s book – keeps your blog flow moving but doesn’t get rid of it.

  3. sharksauce; Liz:

    Thanks. Actually, I already had planned to do that or something like it. Haven’t gotten around to it yet.

  4. Re: Photo

    neo:

    If that’s yours, that’s the most gorgeous yet. It has a classic painterly quality,

  5. huxley:

    Thanks! Yes, I took the photo. It was a daylily plant in the courtyard of the rehab hospital where my ex-husband was unhappily quartered.

  6. My eye procedure was YAG laser capsulotomy on both eyes to correct posterior capsular opacification which is a common side effect of cataract surgery.

    Was not supposed to feel anything but I could feel each laser pulse.

    I have never seen orca that close up outside of Seaworld. I saw their spouts first at a distance then the four of them surfaced right next to the bridge as we passed by. I guess they had just passed under the bridge and they were headed south into the canal. The salmon are running. I counted 34 people fishing along the river at low tide on Monday and of course the night fishing has started.

  7. Kate, yes it’s interesting.
    There are things in motion but God knows when they will coalesce.

  8. There is also a group of architects working out how modern crowd planning and people-movers can be squared with the requirements of ritual purity on the Temple Mount.

    Very interesting, but among the things I leave to G-d as I work on my own character and communal service.

    As one of my Rabbis said “If you want the Messiah to come, act like you would then – now.”

  9. Re: The Legend of Larry Legend

    There is a growing world of YouTubes about Larry Bird, which are going more deeply into his life, his play and what others say about him.

    All his old opponents now love to talk about their encounters with him, though Bird usually got the better of them. But in a way that too was an honor.

    So many younger people just know him vaguely as that white guy who shot threes for the Celtics. They have no idea how deep his game was and how much fun it was to watch the Bird Celtics.

    Then they discover that Bird was also the ultimate trash talker in NBA history. People love those stories.

    After Bird retired as a player, he became a coach, then manager. He got awards for those roles too. Anyway I ran into a clip explaining his rules for his players which are perfect Larry Bird:
    ______________

    (1) Be on time.
    (2) Be unselfish.
    (3) Play hard.

    ______________

    Words to live by.

  10. I have also only recently begun seeing all the Larry Bird YouTubes. Great stuff although certain themes do get repetitive. A couple common ones:

    – the number of times in a last-minute game-deciding situation he *told* the guy guarding him what he was going to do (“I’m going to the corner and drain a three over you”) and then proceeded to do it

    – Bird complaining about being “disrespected” because the opposing team put a white guy on to guard him

  11. Chases Eagles, I had that after each of my cataract surgeries. The laser procedure is not surgery and is the most minimal “procedure” possible, taking about one second. I do recall feeling something but not sure if it was the laser or just the “capsule” collapsing (I think that’s what it does).

  12. Loudoun County [VA] boys who complained about girl in locker room hit with 10-day suspensions

    The district initially launched sex-discrimination investigations into three boys, but dropped the charges against one of them in June while adding sex-discrimination charges to the probes into the remaining two boys.

    The [Founding Freedoms Law Center], which represented all three students, said the boy whose case was dismissed was Muslim, while the other two boys are Christian, spurring concerns about religious discrimination.

    “Now, to be clear, we are thrilled for our Muslim client. LCPS did the right thing in dropping his charge. He did nothing wrong,” the center said in a June 12 statement. “But LCPS shows their blatant religious discrimination by completely letting him off while adding more charges to the Christian boys who are alleged to have done exactly the same thing.”

    Disgusting.
    https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/aug/19/loudoun-county-boys-complained-girl-locker-room-hit-10-day/

  13. RE: The police force in the UK

    I wonder what impact having to arrest teenage girls for ordering hamburgers after 5 P.M., oldsters who made inconvenient protest posts on social media, parents posting protests about conditions at their children’s school, and, reportedly, an old farmer in a wheel chair in Yorkshire for protesting the new inheritance tax, is having on the force–many disgusted cops leaving the force, many, only too happy to make these types of arrests, joining?

    The Gestapoization of the force?

  14. P.S. Then, of course, there is the job of impeding, stifling native English protest efforts while, at the same time, looking the other way, and not arresting criminals who are Muslims.

    It must be a sad and infuriating time to be a cop in the UK.

  15. @ Snow – German cops didn’t resign en masse at orders to attack Jews in the 1930s, but Hitler was willing to add opponents to his “enemies” list, with all that entails, up to death; at least the UK would stop at just making their lives miserable.
    We hope.

    However, my prognosis is that there won’t be a big uproar about this “picayune” infringement of citizens’s behavior.
    Not after the lessons of the Rotherham Rape scandal.

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