... in response to Meryl Streep's gorgeous speech last night:

“We are going to have an unbelievable, perhaps record-setting turnout for the inauguration, and there will be plenty of movie and entertainment stars,” Mr. Trump said. “All the dress shops are sold out in Washington. It’s hard to find a great dress for this inauguration.”

I can't wait until January 20th rolls around and nobody comes to his party (except maybe The Nuge). Maybe that's what it'll take to show this clown that no really dude, nobody likes you, and nobody wants to come to your party, no matter how many moon bounces and ice cream flavors you're gonna have.

With everyone's luck, there will be a horrible nor'easter hitting the whole DC area from the 19-21st, making that the reason in Donald's orange little head why people couldn't come.

Anyway, that's what I'm thinkin' about here in my folks' spare bedroom in north Jersey at 7:40am. Back to sleep.

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what are you doing in your folks' spare bedroom in North Jersey at 7:40 am? Everything ok, or just a fun trip?
Aw, thanks for asking. My dad's best friend since kindergarten, a man I called Uncle Chris, died a few weeks ago, and yesterday was a memorial service for him in north Jersey. We figured we drove all that way, so we might as well spend the night.

It was a good visit, but the conversation Matt and I had on the drive back to DE was better than any therapy session. I've got mommy issues, apparently. (Ya think?)
This wasn't... 'Spike(?)' was it? The guy who was a 'weekend biker'?
Nopers. Uncle Chris wasn't much of a biker guy... more of a car guy. He owned body shops and gas stations for most of his life/jobs.

I'm trying to remember if you ever met him. He didn't really come over for holidays, but he popped over every so often. My dad called him "Greek," ( his last name was Xenetelis), but he was always Uncle Chris to me.

If you did meet him, you guys would have loved each other. But that happens when people meet you. :)
"The Greek" sounds familiar. I think that I may have met him one time, but I'm not sure - it's been a little while. :)
The 48% who voted for him must include some... known persons. It'll be a countrified show, but I'm betting there will be a show.
They're gonna get Tupac's hologram or something... LOL
Scott Baio playing the xylophone.
Marie Osmond is *in*!
Not the 21st ... I'll be there protesting.
Go get 'em! My sister-in-law and niece(s) will be there, too!
Rock on lady Knapps!
"Lady Knapps" sounds like a euphemism for something... like, "She kicked me right in the lady knapps." I don't know. :)
 

So a topic keeps coming up with a boy I like (probably boyfriend? Mostly?) -- he keeps telling me things are lifestyle choices... like how I live (currently a little chaotic) and how I parent (possibly, same --but sorry, parenting a 15 year old girl is never not chaotic, to a degree, or you're a lying sack of poop; add in copatenting with a megaDick ex, and... yeah, chaos)...  

I don't intentionally choose chaos; I yearn for the zen kind of minimalist lifestyle that the whole KonMari lifestyle is all about.  But maybe I'm more of a hygge person. Definitely more that than minimalist. Thing is, life happens.  

Life is messy.  Finances are messy. Anxiety and depression are messy.  I think I'm kinda doing okay, all things considered. 

And yet! Right now what I want, really really want, is a more streamlined and simple existence.  I want a house organized how I like things. I want a healthy eating and moving lifestyle that has me two degrees more active than a sloth. I could totally be all over making some of that happen, sorting through twenty years of household shit and making some kind of sense of it all, purging shit like a good flu does...



so why why am I resisting?

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1/8 '17 3 Comments
Hi, welcome aboard!

I am reminded of the Absolutely Fabulous episode where they are worried about visiting their minimalist artiste friends with the all-white living space except now they have children and everything's just higgledy-piggledy. Nobody with a life has time for perfection.
I hate that we have to do a thing or not do a thing, do we actually? I guess I have a "minimalist lifestyle" if that's what it means when you leave your home with a bowl of pasta salad in one hand and a kid in the other and try to start over. I work out, etc. I made a budget and a whole game plan thing and then... life. Kids. Cats that randomly pee on things. New house with no storage. Bills that get put off for one month end up put off for three. Budget is basically poorly written fantasy novel at this point. General lack of desire to fold laundry...

I'm trying to get over the idea that any of the things that I do "right" are totally negated by the things that I'm doing "wrong" or not doing at all. The things themselves don't care, and I think they'd find the whole thing kinda funny if we asked them.
Bottom line, the best we can do is our best. We kind of did the same thing (starting over) in totally opposite ways. At times I wish I did bowl of spaghetti and kid thing, and yet... *sigh* -in the end it's all just a ride, or so we (friend bit andI) mutually agreed.

On another note: I did manage to clear out half of my spare bedroom. (Shoved one half into the other, non-KonMari, Hygge, Minimalist style.) tomorrow is another day...
 
 

Some things are new on One Post Wonder today:

  1. Follow Fridays! This is very simple: on Friday, the "suggested topic" is always "who else should your friends follow on One Post Wonder?" and there's a little "Follow Friday" indicator. When posting, consider using the little-person icon, which is a handy way to mention someone in your post. It is my hope that this will help people who show up with just one or two connections and never really get "plugged in" beyond that. 
  2. By popular request, the header bar now stays with you as you scroll, even on phones. But I am interested in feedback from folks who may have been happier the other way. Let's see how this goes.
  3. Numbered lists (as you may be noticing).
  4. Strikethrough (as you may be noticing).
  5. The plaintext versions of important emails like account confirmation emails have working URLs in them. This is important to my fellow nerds people who for various valid reasons loathe HTML email, and possibly other corner cases.
  6. When you paste a URL into your text and OPW makes a nice little presentation block out of it, the URL field gets populated right away.
  7. The "bug report" icon is only available to logged-in users now. Which means no more spam for me to sort through. Which means I will pay better attention to your bug reports. w00t.

What would you like to see? What do you think would help the platform reach more people for the right reasons?

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I would like it if when I made posts "public" to OPW, I could also keep them "private" from showing up in search engines. That was one LJ feature I truly miss. It was a way for Journal users to find and add me, without random google searches splashing me and all my thoughts on the wall. Does that make any sense? Or should I just be resigned to such things?
Well, a flag to make it a "noindex" post is possible, but I'm concerned about the people who will expect this to be more than it is, in terms of blocking tools that don't care about such niceties, or people who are already stalking their journal for public posts.
I guess I'm saying I'm open to suggestions on the wording.
Wouldn't the simple solution be to give it a link to more information and just explain briefly what it does and doesn't do? Or is that going overboard?
These sound great! Looking forward to testing everything out. :)
I like numbered lists, strikethrough, the top bar staying on mobile, and I don't know if it's iOS or OPW, but the photos are easier to enlarge on mobile too!
Interesting! I don't *think* I changed anything re: photos.
Does your iOS stay logged in for you as you go on with your life and then click in another day? Had some trouble with that on Carrie's phone last night.
Yes iOS stays logged in - I use Safari, not the app because I had
Memory issues on a previous phone and never bothered to switch when I got the new phone.
App? I ain't got no app
I thought there was one but I didn't have it. Ok, I am not as backward as I thought.
Nah - Tom's clever enough to realize that apps seem pointless at times, so he makes his web apps work for mobile. Reason number 8540778052 I'm a fan.
If I'd had the time and money when OPW launched I would have done an app. Today though...

On desktop and on Android, websites can now have their own notifications if the user opts in, even if you're not on that website or in that browser right now. And the feature is coming to iOS, folks suspect this year.

With notifications added there is precious little reason to write an app unless you need the zero-friction cash flow of in-app purchases. (Yes, yes, they take a huge bite, but does the user want to give your rando app their credit card number? By finger typing it? No they do not.)
I am reminded I need to send in a bug report re: some Notifications wonkiness. I will try to do that today.
 
  • 2 cups white flour
  • ½ cup whole wheat flour
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ⅔ can coconut milk
  • Italian seasoning to taste
  • ¼ cup coarsely chopped walnuts (I just crush a handful of pre-shelled walnuts in my fist as I’m dropping them in)
  • Enough almond milk

Mix the dry ingredients. Add the coconut milk, then enough almond milk to get to a slightly sticky but rollable consistency. Roll out with a rolling pin, not too thin, keep it maybe half an inch even. If there's leftover dough, you can roll it out again who am I kidding you ate it.

Use a small glass as a biscuit cutter, who has biscuit cutters?

Bake for 12 minutes at 350. Awesome as-is or with your spreadable fat of choice.

This recipe happens to be vegan. I would have put in an egg if I'd had one. Glad I didn't, I think they are perfect as-is.

They are on the salty side, but these are biscuits. Biscuits are not health food. They are snowy-day warm belly food.

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1/7 '17 2 Comments
Sounds delicious!
Sounds yummy to me too!
 
 

In Minneapolis for 36 hours.  Just got off the light rail and was walking 3 blocks to my hotel and a homeless guy stopped me.

"Pleeeeeeeeease can I have money for something to eat? I haven't eaten since yesterday, I'm sooooooo hungry, they kicked me out of the shelter, I'm so hungry... hungry hungry starving starving..."

And I said, "Dude, I have no cash. All I have is plastic... I'm here on work. If I had something, I would give it to you."

He wouldn't let it go. He figured if he pleaded with me more, money would magically appear in my wallet for me to give him.  "Pleeeeeeeease! Anything! I'm so hungry hungry! SOOOO hungry! Aaaaaggggh!!"

Then I remembered, "Oh wait! I have a fresh sandwich in my bag. It's turkey and swiss. Here." And he changed 180 degrees and said in a totally different voice, "nah, forget it."  

Hahahaha. Idiot.



PS: No need to tell me the millions of things I should see and do while I'm here. I literally just got here (it's almost 9pm) and I teach a full day tomorrow and then I go straight back to the airport. 

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12/21 '16 11 Comments
Your response to his final statement is much better than mine, but then, I'm pretty certain you're a better human.

Me? I would have wanted to kick his nuts into his tonsils.
This one stuck with me... I think we are judging a homeless person by the standards of people who have things like adequate sleep and mental health care. The Stranger out in Seattle followed some of the local homeless guys on Capitol Hill to see if their patter was "honest." It wasn't, but their actual stories were as bad or worse.
When I was a little kid, I was with my parents and we were stopped by a homeless man begging for food. My dad didn't have cash either, but he did have some leftovers from the restaurant where we had just eaten, so he gave them to the guy. A few minutes later as we were pulling out of our parking space, we could clearly see the man throwing the unopened left overs into a nearby dumpster. Since then, I simply ignore people begging. And it feels horrible to keep right on walking without an acknowledgment, because I feel like by ignoring their pleas, I am denying their humanity. But I know myself well enough to know that I won't have the strength to say "I'm sorry, I have no money to give you" and I already know they don't want the granola bar that's in my purse. So, right or wrong, I just keep on walking.
I once heard an explanation that made a lot of sense to me: "Would YOU want someone else's half eaten food?" That made me rethink the whole leftovers thing.

Don't get me wrong - if I was truly starving, I would eat whatever the hell someone wanted to give me, but it adjusted my view.

Additionally, when I was recently in Mobile Alabama, I was confronted by a homeless dude. When he asked, I explained that I don't carry cash, but I was already headed to that pizza place right there, and I would be happy to get him some dinner.

In the few hundred feet to reach the restaurant, he came up with some half muttered excuse to part ways.
If I was me, in possession of a good night's sleep and good mental health, and starving, I'd be rational and polite and eat what was offered too. But that's not how homelessness works.
Completely valid point.
Oh, you should come visit scenic Media. We have snarky comments and hot cocoa.
You do? Oh good. I'm starving. [Rimshot]
I had that happen in Starbucks. Only had my phone with me with my Starbucks app. Lady asked me for money, I told her I had none but offered to buy her a cup of coffee.

"No, I want money," she said to me, speaking as if I were mentally handicapped.

This comment needs a punch line but all I have is "wow, I am tired".
I've had that happen several times. Once the person pointed out that they couldn't eat the apple I offered them because they didn't have strong enough teeth. Fair point, but I still didn't have any money.
 

My current no-knead recipe, boiled down to even less effort than the official New York Times version, which includes some unnecessary steps on baking day IMHO:

3 1/2 cups white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt (*)
1/2 teaspoon active dry bread yeast (I use Red Star from the supermarket)
2 cups water, and a splash more

Mix the dry ingredients. Add the water. With a fork just combine it well; don't knead; this takes less than a minute. It should be a little too wet to knead.

Cover the bowl and allow to sit for 18-24 hours.

Shove an empty pyrex casserole pan (or similar) in the oven, with the lid on, and preheat to 450 degrees.

Remove pan carefully. Toss a little corn meal in the bottom. Take the dough out of the pan; it'll be sticky but manageable. Fold it over on itself (*). Drop it in the pan.

Shove your sticky hands back in your oven mitts and stick the pan in the oven for 30 minutes with the lid on.

Remove the lid and bake another 15 minutes. (**)

Remove and allow to cool a few minutes before devouring.

I was a latecomer to the no-knead party but I think I've got this down.

(*) Salt is a leavening agent and does add a little air to the bread which is nice when there's whole wheat in there. This was a key improvement for me.

(**) This step is optional. The results are a little prettier, but it does take a whole second, and I did say this was zero-effort bread.

(***) If you bake it in an uncovered loaf pan, you'll get a very hard crust. You can cover a loaf pan with aluminum foil if you haven't got a nice pyrex with a lid. The latter is worth finding because you get a very pretty peasant loaf.

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12/19 '16 17 Comments
By "Pyrex casserole pan," do you mean one of the round ones? What size?
Mine is round, yes, but not hemispherical. I'm sure that yields cute results too.
LOL--yes. Cylindrical, but squat.
I mean a thing with a lid that can go in the oven. 4 quarts is a good size.
Photo? I'm having a hard time envisioning the shape of the final cooked loaf. A picture is worth a thousand words, dontcha know.*

Also, I love bread and you have inspired me to make some damn bread. BREAD!


*SEE WHAT I DID THERE HOLY CRAP

It is months later and I would just like to say that I rarely RARELY find myself funny, but that "SEE WHAT I DID THERE" made me laugh my ass off. BECAUSE BREAD! Get it? Bread? The "picture is worth 1000 words" guys? HOLY SHIT I'm HIIIIIILARIOUS.

I'll see myself out.
Picture added.
Thanks! Imma make this bread tomorrow (which is to say: today. Yay!)
Attempting. With no wheat flour. And "old fashioned" oats. And going to have to improvise a baking dish. I'll let ya know.
I have no idea how that will turn out without wheat but am curious to hear!
Ahhh, I thought you were literally using NO WHEAT flour, as in something gluten-free. White flour should be fine.
Aluminium foil over a regular loaf pan will do in a pinch.
YUUUUMMMM. Maybe we should have a bread baking party.
I am tempted to try to make that bread.
Soooo easy
 

Lots of hubbub about Russia "hacking" or "rigging" our elections lately.

But those words aren't quite accurate, are they. Even if the allegations are correct, the Russians didn't alter the results, or install malware on our machines. (If they did, the only sane thing to do is a do-over, a heavily audited one on paper ballots.) It's more accurate to say the Russians "influenced" our voters, by publishing hacked DNC emails and creating false narratives about one of the contenders, among other tactics.

And while it's no trick to temporarily stir up infochaos, it really shouldn't stick. Not against an informed populace, anyway. Fortunately for Russia, they didn't choose an informed populace. They chose us.

If one thing has become clear to me, it's that Americans - on all sides - don't want information. Information is hard. It has no feelings. It holds our hearts up the the mirror and forces us to look, to reassess how we feel. We don't like that.

We want ammunition. We don't care if news is "fake" if it supports our narrative. We don't learn facts to challenge our bias and increase our knowledge base - we learn "factoids" we can trot out to make ourselves appear, and feel, "right." Even when we're wrong.

And we certainly don't mind being shown hard evidence that we were duped. If cognative dissonance doesn't kick in, allowing us to deny the reality we see before us, we'll simply blame our gullibility on the victim, claiming we were only duped because the person being smeared is so bad that the false bit could have been true. Rational people, of course, would wonder what other false narratives have skewed their perceptions. That ain't us - we give ourselves a hug and - to work a terribly overworked word even harder - double-down.

That's the American way. Whether or not it's a by-product of the Age of Internet is beside the point; it's our way of life now. And it has consequences.

Look, it makes sense for people to be angry when a guy cons them. But when they willingly hand him their wallets - and another $20 on top of that - you have to conclude that they want to be conned. They enjoy it.

And it isn't going to stop. 

A wise man once said "be it heaven or hell, the Christmas we get we deserve." Trust this guy - he was so wise he chose to die before his time rather than live one more second in this brave new world. (What a lucky man he was.)

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12/13 '16 7 Comments
I've wanted to respond to this for a while but haven't been able to articulate quite what I'm thinking. But let me take a swing at it now.

I don't think Americans are averse to information. I think it would be more accurate to say that we're overwhelmed with it. Saturated so thoroughly that manipulation becomes a much easier game. Not only that, but the science of pyschometrics—at one time more of an Asimov's-Foundation-Series sci-fi notion but now a very real science, one augmented by powerful modern data computing systems—ensures that vast swaths of people exposed to propaganda will respond as desired. Which is a breathy way of saying, be careful not to blame the victim too much here.

While social structures and technology have gone through vast upheaval and change in the cosmological blink of an eye, humans have not had a similar rapid evolution. We're wired pretty much the same way we were 1,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago. HARD-wired anyway. And there's another problem--that current SOFT-wiring. Our grandparents cognitive exposure and our own and our children's exposure to technology has had profound effects, layered on top of a hardware system never designed or evolved to cope with such things.

It hardly surprises me that some of us monkeys have figured out ways to use the current set-up to their exclusive advantage. Nor is it surprising that such ancient instincts overlaid on modern times has/is/will cause no end of suffering and confusion.

But the technology (soft and hard) that is causing this mess is also the very same stuff that can rapidly advance solutions. While some of the monkeys are selfish, some act out ancient altruistic patterns, and all of this happens at a faster and faster rate.

Which is another breathy way of saying, "Don't give up on us quite yet." And maybe even, "Pay attention, and lend a hand when and how you can."
I'm so sorry it took me so long to read this! (Happy new year.)

You make an excellent point that media evolution has outpaced human evolution by a crazy-ass factor. I hadn't thought of it that way, but it's undeniably true. It's also pretty damned impressive, if I can pat the collective we on the back for a moment. But thank you so much for bringing all that up - you've given me a different perspective on the issue.

I mean, it was a cranky post. And I use "us" as a way of including myself in this mess. But you're right - I am indulging in some victim-blaming here. I know that's pretty obnoxious, but I decided several months ago (before the unfortunate phrase "fake news" became a thing) that the collective "we" are going to have to be the ones who take responsibility for our own info-filter. We can't count on our media sources, especially social media. Our worldview used to be shaped by our values + facts - but we now live in a world where we can find "facts" that support our worldview. We don't have to tolerate challenges. The internet should be a source of truth, but I think we are culpable for letting it be a source of comfort instead. I've been shouted down (to put it kindly) for putting actual data where it was clearly unwelcome. Just today, in fact, I let a conservative friend of mine (an 80-year-old gent, I love the lug) know that, in fact, Obama did not open the floodgates for, sigh, "illegals" to enter - that he's responsible for deporting more illegal immigrants than any president to date - so many that immigrant advocates call him "Deporter-in-Chief." I provided data - I even gave 'em a DT tweet in which he agreed to the very same thing. His, and his friends', response: "I'm going to choose to disbelieve these facts and go with my feelings."

So that's what I mean. If we aren't demanding to get to the bottom of this, we are to blame. I'm to blame, too - I gave up. But I'm going to stick with it. Maybe, when the gold-and-orange dust settles, we're all going to get a crash course in incredulity. If we accept it, maybe we'll be much better at this in a few years. But if we let ourselves be ruled by what we want to be true, rather than what is true, don't we deserve what we get?
Happy new year to you, too! Such as it is.

It's such an intractable problem, isn't it? How we pick and choose what to believe, what to discard.

And I'm as guilty as the next person for lounging back and stating problems but having little constructive input into *solutions.* Lately I've been passing around this article, which I think both speaks to what you and I are mulling over but also offers a way to chip away at what to do about it. It's a bit of a long read, but I'd love to know what you think.

https://georgelakoff.com/2016/11/22/a-minority-president-why-the-polls-failed-and-what-the-majority-can-do/
"We want ammunition. We don't care if news is "fake" if it supports our narrative. We don't learn facts to challenge our bias and increase our knowledge base - we learn "factoids" we can trot out to make ourselves appear, and feel, "right." Even when we're wrong."

I'm sad to say that I think you hit the nail on the head. The quoted paragraph is (in my personal experience) 95% of the issue. Even when I grit my teeth and tried to better understand 'the other side', all I received as a response was factoids, and I'm not a big enough man to keep from shutting down at that point.

Yes, I could have done more research (rather than personal interactions) but that sounds dangerously like making an effort.
Not just an American thing. Look at what's happening in Europe. Humans prefer stories to hard numbers.
Maybe, Tom, bit at least England has that "Vindaloo" song.
My lunatic tinfoil hat theory is that the White House needs to bring back Federal Project One, so nuts like me can get paid to spread stories.
 

OK.  We're recording tonight, and while Matt is recording some guitars and keys, I sat back and played with my phone and let the Internet happen.

I'm not sure how it happened, but I wound up on YouTube, and a video popped up in my "Hey, this video might appeal to you" List... which is always interesting because I told Google and YouTube that I didn't want it keeping track of my YouTube video watching history or my search history... so I'm not sure what it bases its suggestions on.  But either way, it suggested this quickie compilation of the dance numbers from a movie I'd never heard of (The Rich Man's Frug?) that Bob Fosse choreographed.  So I watched it.

AND GOOD GOD, this very well may be one of the top 20 most amazing things my eyeballs have EVER seen, and I've seen some cool shit.  This here is a miracle and the pinnacle of what humans can accomplish.

Behold:

RIGHT!??!?!

WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL WAS THAT?!? OK, yeah, it was from Sweet Charity. But other than that, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT??

(And am I the only one who was looking for Jenn Rice in that video?)


So I then read the comments, and miraculously, many were positive, and not the usual mouth-breathing lose-all-faith-in-humanity comments. Many people kept talking about "Emma" Something-or-Other and "Maybe" and even mentioning Beyonce, I didn't know what any of that meant, but enough people were talking about these things as if some person named Emma had a song called Maybe and that the video was inspired by the Fosse thing.

I'm a curious chick, so I entered those words into YouTube's search bar and I was expecting to be taken to some Arianna Grande bullshit (not that I could pick an Arianna Grande out of a lineup)... but the next thing I know I was watching a video that looked like it was directly ripped off/inspired by the Fosse thing indeed, and the lead singer looked like a 10-years-older Baby Spice maybe... and hey what do you know, that's exactly who/what this is. And HOLY SHIT, what is this song?! It has... genuinely interesting and challenging chord progressions! A really interesting melody! Damn fine production! It isn't auto-tuned to hell! It was created with genuine fucks given! 

Apparently this song "Maybe" by Emma "Please Don't Call Me Baby Spice Anymore" Bunton was a hit 10+ years ago, but I guess I stopped listening to Top 40 radio long before that so it never made it into my ears even once.

Hot damn, I love this little song!

And the video is cute, too.  It ain't no Fosse, but the nod is appreciated. If you're gonna steal an idea, steal from a great one, I guess.

Anyway, that's all I have to report.

Enjoy.

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11/27 '16 1 Comment
Loved the Bob Fosse video!