Snowflake's Forum

  Japan loves its pandas. With the leases from China running out, now down to two.  Yesterday was the last day for two down south.  Major news coverage.  Helicopter above the zoo.  Zookeepers giving farewell speeches.  Tearful good-byes from visitors.   Bunny in a rare good mood, so just put it down as silly news, which can be preferable to the horror show serious news is now. Anything silly in the news in your area? J. P. Bunny

This is from the YouTube channel WasabiSushiMatcha.  The young lady here manages a kitten rescue effort from her home, fostering two kittens at a time.  She works with the nearest SPCA in her neighborhood in Montreal.  She and the little fur babies are a lot of fun to watch!   Here it is:

Which word would you use if you could only use one for the rest of your life? IOW, what word are you most fond of?  And why does it have appeal to you? Some common suggestions. (by PrimalSoup)

Yes, I am still alive and kicking. To be honest, and it's been a long time coming, I have been pondering how much longer I want to keep this site going. All kinds of thoughts have been rolling around in my head, and oddly, or maybe not so oddly, I have given this site very little thought over the last couple of months. Everything has a shelf life, and apparently so does this. Am I really ready to give it up though? There is the million dollar question. You see, I have been participating in discussions on other sites that don't use Disqus, and quite frankly, there is the rub, this era of Trump as ruined about any discussion board out there. You could post a thread about Mom's apple pie and somehow Trump will be mentioned. When I first started this forum it was mostly to get into the politics of the day. Quickly I learned politics can not be discussed in rational tones and I had to start banning people, even some Leftists.  Gradually, we became more "drop in and let'...

  Is it my imagination or do people in general, especially women, especially younger women, talk faster and faster these days?  Or, do I, a senior, just listen slower? Their speed practically qualifies for a new language, at least a new dialect. Whadaya think? (by PrimalSoup)

  Pretty simple one.  Bunny had a huge collection of Matchbox Cars when young.  Loved playing with them. Which toys did you enjoy or still enjoy? J.P. Bunny

  Not. Today Trump used what they’re calling the “F-bomb.”  Oh, the horror! [Where’s the fainting couch?] You’d think we were still stuck back in the 1950’s, with the Clever Family, Ward, June, Wally and The Beaver.  Now, I know that society has come a long way baby, language-wise.  "Shoot" has become a full-blown and brazen "shit." "Darn" has become a full-blown and unabashed "damn."  "Freakin’", "frackin’" and/or "mother-forgettin’" have become… well, you get the picture. Qs : How egregious is using the F-bomb these days?  Does the F-bomb really still pack all that much punch, here in 2025?  Who looks down on it?  Religious folk?  Politicians?  Everyday people walking down the street?   True, we don’t like the idea of kids being exposed to it, but we act like they, or anyone really, have never heard it before, let alone used it.   We are all very aware of it’s existence.  Is it just plain rude and crude to use it?...

 Where are Snowflake and milo?  By Germaine: In the missing persons bureau

The Rubin space telescope uses a gigantic 3.2 billion pixel camera. The telescope is in Chile. The images coming back contain far more content than the human eye can see or that any screen can show. Pink clouds in the Trifid and Lagoon nebulas Narrated video from the observatory After a decade of construction, the completed telescope recorded its first photons or bits of light on April 15. The first image was not perfect. Instead of dots of light, stars showed as doughnuts. But seeing doughnuts rather than smeared blurs meant the mirrors were not far out of alignment. After a few adjustments, the doughnuts turned into dots. Rubin is not the largest telescope in the world, but it is a technological masterpiece. The main structure of the telescope consists of a 28-foot-wide primary mirror, an 11-foot-wide secondary mirror and the world’s largest digital camera. All of that 300 tons floats on a thin layer of oil. Magnetic motors twirl the whole structure around. At full speed, completes o...

Happy Solstice, fellow earthlings! Whether Northern or Southern Hem, may you continue to enjoy our life bringer and sustainer, the beautiful sun (Son?)  Any thoughts as we transition? (by Primal "goodbye summer" 😭 Soup)

[Click to enlarge] Okay, I remember, from a long-ago philosophy class, that the etymology of the word “atom” translated into “indivisible/non-cutable particle".   Wiktionary defines "atom" thusly: " The word  "atom"  originates from the  Ancient Greek word "atomos,"  meaning "indivisible." This term is composed of the prefix  "a-"  (meaning "not") and  "tomos"  (meaning "cut"). The word passed through  Latin  as "atomus" and  Middle French  as "athome" before entering  Middle English  as "attome". Thus, the etymology reflects the philosophical concept of atoms as the smallest, indivisible particles of matter. " Jillatte.com  (I think it’s some sort of religious site) asks the same question: "Is it coincidental that these two words and identifications associated with these; nouns, person, and creations; are so commonly linked to each other? The Adam a...

When I don't feel like reading anything that requires much attention, I flip through cookbooks (above), illustrated architectural tomes, and books about furniture and interior design.  It's just fun to look at the pictures and read about how those results were or are achieved and why. What does anyone else like to read or flip through when they just don't want to plow through the Bible or The Lord of the Rings ? Posted by Jennifer A. Nolan  

Gizmodo writes about Trump's new cell phone and mobile network: Trump’s New Cash Grab Is a Gold iPhone  Lookalike That’s Worse Than Any Budget Android When conflict of interest calls, Trump answers! If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the years, it’s that President Donald J. Trump loves two things: gold furniture and using his status as U.S. president to make money . And now, to everyone’s detriment, Trump is apparently combining those two passions into a mobile device that you can buy with real American tender. It gives me no pleasure to introduce to you all: the Trump phone . You can use Trump Mobile with your existing device, apparently, but why would you do that if you could show everyone your appreciation for fascism with a whole-ass gold phone? Trump is also claiming the T1 will be “made in the USA,” though I have doubts there’s much truth to that. .... The good news is that this phone is so bad I don’t really think most people, outside of Trump’s diehard supporter...

  The small bits of dialogue from movies or TV that made it for you.  Not having them wouldn’t affect the movie / program, but they aren’t the bits you wait for. Any such for you? J.P. Bunny

Last fall, an aunt of mine gave me a couple of books; one of these was Prairie Fires: the American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser, 2017.  In it she exposes events that didn't make the final editorial cut, including the death of a baby brother, the family's time above a wild saloon in Burr Oak, Iowa, and the paralysis that overtook Almanzo Wilder while he was still quite young.  She also mentions many of the actual people the family met on their travels.  These people do not include Nellie Oleson, Mr. and Mrs. Scott, Isaiah Edwards, or Soldat du Chene. I find the  Mr. Edwards  story especially interesting.  Apparently, this "wildcat from Tennesse" was based on a settler from England named Edmund Mason, whose grave is in Independence, Kansas.  But an Englishman could hardly pass himself off as an Appalachian wildcat.   Wikipedia  also proposes that the character was based on a Fred Brown, a 35-year-old bachelor from Ala...

No big themes this time: I can't find any that would light any fires on this site.  I'm just wondering if anyone is going out marching against the Big Cheeto or just hanging out and having barbecues and nature walks.  Please stay out of the wildfire smoke! Posted by Jennifer A. Nolan  

  Rather a nerdy niche topic, but that is the way Bunny rolls.What small things could you do to make a big change in history?  Slip some antibiotics into the milk of Henry VIII`s first son.  He lives, no tossing out Catherine, England stays Catholic.  Leave a case of high class booze on the doorstep of the Hitler house on the day of his conception.  Ring the bell, and run away.   Anything you can think of? J.P. Bunny

In  Snarky Faith , Stuart Delony, a disillusioned ex-pastor and current Jesus-believer, writes with jubilance about the Episcopal Church of the United States rejecting government funds in order to escape having to help white Afrikaner "refugees."  Meanwhile, Evangelical church people are either going along with the program or squirming under the glare of public attention.  Sometimes, church people do  get something right, but I think the Episcopalians remember their ties with Desmond Tutu a little too well.  

Jonathan and Kim Cornford   make their home in Victoria Province, Australia, and have deliberately structured their living habits so as to live comfortably on an income somewhere around the 20th percentile of Australian household incomes.  As long as Jonathan's piece is, I think we should give it a read.  Lifestyle changes will only cut greenhouse emissions by a maximum of 17%, but they should offer some real relief to people facing financial losses. Posted by Jennifer A. Nolan  

A rather long time ago, I read and copied these remarks on the  Atlantic Monthly  about why so little teaching is done about slavery in American public schools.  The man who made them is, or was, a trained lawyer from a white Southern farm background who made his home in Utah.  He had this to say: 10 XP to 😎:  "I actually didn't state that one was the consequence of the other. I said we don't discuss slavery as an institution, because if we did discuss questions like how slavery worked under the law, who benefited from slavery, how integrated at every level slavery was into the antebellum economic system, and how people of the time rationalized slavery to themselves, they'd see uncanny similarities to today. And that makes adults, who benefit from the system and therefore don't want to destroy it, uncomfortable. "So we just agree not to discuss it at all. And if it does come up, we agree to talk about something else instead. We don't really have a good ...

As we all remember from May 22 , I posted about two eaglets being about almost ready to fledge, i.e., fly the nest. Sonny and Gizmo are bald eagles in a nest as far south as is known for the US continent. Anyway, Sonny fledged at ~10:46 am PST this morning at Big Bear Lake, about 18 miles east of San Bernardino. The fledging is at ~10:46:10 am PST. You can scroll back 12 hours, so you can still see this for the next ~10 hours. Scroll back to ~10:45:30 am. In the nest, Gizmo is seen alone for the 1st time. The left-right keys on your keypad scroll forward or backward in 5 sec. increments. That is how you can zero in on 10:46:10 am. It is an amazing moment.  At 10:40:15, Gizmo moved next to Sunny, maybe because Sunny senses that Gizmo was about to leave the nest. I don't recall ever seeing them together like that on a tree branch next to the nest, but maybe they have done that before.  Here they are together, maybe for the last time, or maybe Gizmo comes back at night at least f...

  Many of us here have entered the realm of old fartdom.   When Bunny was younger, really cared about what was going on with the rest of the world.  Followed the news as much as possible.  Now, unless it has an effect on Bunny, really don’t care.  The world will go on when Bunny hops off for the final time.  As long as everything hold together until then…not going to worry about it. Yes, a bit selfish, but at this point in life….  What about you?  Do you follow the news and hope things work out, say screw it all, or something in between? J.P. Bunny