I’m sure he would say think you by cheeping sweetly, then hissing like an asthmatic snake.

I should make him pay rent!

Yes, I work from home, but he’s been to workplaces before, and nothing so boring as a simple office. My wife got him as a chick in college, and he still needed a little bit of syringe feeding, so for a week or two she took him to the restaurant where she was a server and got her manager to put him in the business office away from any food prep areas. I’ve known him since he was around 5, and I’m not entirely sure whether my being able to get him to fly to me made her jealous or made her love me more. Maybe both. :-)

He’s finally, in the last year or so, visually showing his age just a bit, though he’s still got the energy to molt and grow new feathers, and he’s also still loud and an active climber, although he doesn’t like to come out of his cage anymore, even when the door is open. “Flying” is also more “falling with style” these days, but he gets quite the attitude when he needs help to get back to the cage. I feel pretty good that we’ve still got a year or more with him, though you never really know with birds. I’m just glad his vain little self has decided to grace us with his presence for so long.

The best moment in our current house was the day a local hawk caught sight/ear of him through the cracked-open window, then perched on that black fence you can just see in the background, and finally lazily swooped in for an easy meal, only to thump into the “force field” of glass. Hawky boi was fine after a few minutes resting back on the fence, but I wouldn’t have thought you could identify “WTF” as a bird emotion before that day. He’s returned once, though he didn’t try the swoop again.

And yet very possibly not the worst person nominated for that specific vacancy.

Samuel Alito, a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, was nominated four days after her withdrawal and subsequently confirmed.

So a little bit of investment in stadiums here, a new TV deal there, some exciting QB play, and a sprinkling of Canadian exceptionalism… Sorry, wrong CFL.

Some people think that failing ballasts will trigger their thermal protection, so it could be as simple as cooler weather or components that are failing but haven’t yet, and a little variability in temperature or the intial jolt of electricity may make it work for a while. I generally found CFLs to be finicky and annoying after a while, though i don’t recall ever having one that seemed to die completely and then come back.

https://www.edn.com/teardown-what-caused-these-cfl-bulbs-to-fail/

Literally. They are all forming some kind of axis… of evil…

Note to that Katalin Novák, part of Orban’s party, had to resign due to the fallout from pardoning an asshole who was in jail for pressuring child victims to withdraw their testimony against a literal pedophile.

It’s also worth pointing out that rhyming is not the only way to get those pattern-recognition neurons firing. Meter in poetry/lyrics is all about this, and the Ancient Greeks knew all about it. They also knew all about mnemonic tropes (wine-dark sea) and other devices. Old English in particular built most of its poetry and songs around alliteration rather than rhyming.

But when I went back to my alma mater, the University of Iowa in Iowa City, I went to the library where they have all my papers, and I was stunned to see an exchange of memoranda between me and Gene Roddenberry that I had totally blocked out. Once I read them, I understand why I blocked them. It was very toxic, very venomous. He hated the script. I guess I didn’t know any better, so I was intemperate. I responded intemperately.

Anybody at UI who can get access to those memos, LOL? That sounds catty and fun. I know Roddenberry never truly came around on TWoK, but IIRC he acknowledged it was well-made for what it was.

The boat, named Amidala, alerted the maritime rescue centre…

Sith Orca confirmed.

Janeway: Let me tell you, it’s unwise to enter heated scientific debate with a Wookiee…

I would have preferred a debate with Professor Kashyyyk.

Going to need you to clarify.

Meanwhile, AliExpress…

Yes, and the style as well! HJB really dials up the visceral but anxious disgust like only he can.

I also like this 2012 version’s uber-clinical interrogation, and the way this live action one both dials up the banal grossness of our meatness, as well as makes the aliens less relateable without losing the overall tone (I see hints of Marc Evan Jackson in it).

Is that not pretty much exactly what his Sith cave was? 🤣

Vicky is probably also hunting for a Sabine Wren suit…

Like I said, I didn’t do the actual paperwork, but it seemed intentionally thorough, maybe even verging on onerous, but not like they were trying to trick you. We did have to find every single birth or death or marriage certificate along the way, eventually landing on an actual Luxembourgish record matching the name and timeframe pretty closely, and because it was through a female line, she had to physically go to Luxembourg (she has trips to Amsterdam from time to time, so it wasn’t too bad). The whole process took a few months IIRC, and involved lots of emails, letters, and checks to various counties in Minnesota and North Dakota.

I mean yes, in a certain sense mbin is exactly how open source is supposed to work when things go sideways: fork the code, change the name, leverage the original work, leave Ernest in peace, whatever he’s dealing with.

As an adopted person, I did 23andme and a couple others over a decade ago. With a lot of online resources and good advice and friendly DNA cousins (some of whom I’m still in contact with), I was able to triangulate my birth family. Assuming that rumors of a surprise cousin in Texas didn’t actually cause all the relatives who’ve tested since to do so, it would be way easier to track it down today than it was then, when 3rd-cousin-ish was as good as I had available.

I might be eligible for a couple of passports from the paternal side (interesting family story), but it would require actually getting my obviously alcoholic and possibly mentally ill bio-father to acknowledge me and that he was never located to sign over any rights in the 70s. I’ve already got one dysfunctional dad, and while I’m very firmly convinced that 99.9% of adoptees should be allowed to who their birth family is, beyond that we have to deal with the same shit everybody else does, including people who want no-contact, so my motivation to follow this up has been limited.

I was able to find enough straightforward records to help my wife and kiddo get Luxembourg citizenship. I did the research, and an immigration firm retained by her employer did the actual paperwork. I should be able to tag along with them if the shit hits the fan here in the States, which is nice. :-)

Probably a nest up in the corner of the bus stop. The only time I’ve ever been dive-bombed was by some swallows when they had a nest up in the corner of the house’s porch.