The Book Thread exists for the love of books, and what better place to revel in the rich possibilities of the written word than a library? A proper library, that is, not a soulless industrial concrete outrage with not a single comfy chair or reading nook! A perfect library has these, and a rich collection, and a librarian.

A librarian is like a trail guide for all the wonders, especially for the young, easily overwhelmed by all the possibilities a library contains. Sometimes you just need a few books on mummies, for ... reasons.

I always made a point of befriending librarians -- an easy thing for a bookworm to do, and it can have unexpected benefits even beyond being allowed to check out books in the grown-up section! I was once granted the signal honor of being permitted to take and read a new book that *hadn't even gotten its little stamp card sleeve glued in yet!* (It was a book on the Black Death and I was going through a phase of yersina pestis fascination, and the school librarian knew and indulged me.)

Of course, with great power comes great responsibility. The Books Must Return!

The shame, the agony of Overdue Fees! In the dark ages, they would not let you check out more books if you didn't pay! You may have noticed the general societal collapse when that stern but loving rule was removed... (Strangely enough, the Bloom County Barbarian Librarian bears a strong resemblance to Mrs. Friedman, that school librarian. Maybe that's why she encouraged me to get my Black Death fix ... A sweet lady, all of 5' nothing and I would never, ever cross her. Not in the library, anyway.)

And then later in life, even when I was all grown up and doing software testing for a living, I was quite pleased when I had a job working on library software--a complex system. (I can tell you more than you want to know about how Chinese and Japanese libraries sort things.) I was helping librarians! It felt good.

Tech News

• Speaking of Intel, the company's new Nova Lake desktop chips will start arriving early next year, though the high-end 52-core parts might be nearly a year away. And then in 2028, it will be followed by Razor Lake. (WCCFTech)
  
  For which we have no details at all except that it will fit on the same motherboards.
  
  
  
• 8GB is the new 16GB says Microsoft. (Windows Latest)
  
  I plugged in my old laptop with its 8GB of RAM and powered it up, and it... Worked just fine actually, but was using 75% of its RAM by the time it reached the Windows desktop. We'll see if the improvements make it useful or if it's time to put Linux on it.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which Electron must die and probably will. (Windows Latest)
  
  Tests of Discord's new desktop app - which moves from Electron to native Windows code written in Rust - reduces the app's memory footprint by 70%.
  
  That is the sort of thing that can make an 8GB laptop useable.
  
  
  
• Claude Code will put passwords you give it into files inside your code repository and commit the files to GitHub... Sometimes. (Apiiro)
  
  Only 1% of the repositories checked are affected, but there are a lot of such repositories.
  
  
  
• Are the impressive coding test scores on some AI models are result of "teaching to test" - developers training the model to answer known test questions rather than the much harder task of improving the model generally? It will surprise few to learn that the answer is often yes. (MaxxBench)
  
  Tests that changed the questions did not much faze Claude and ChatGPT, but Chinese models like DeepSeek and Qwen fell off a cliff.
  
  
  
• Figured out what those 8" iron staples were used for, and also why I didn't work it out earlier. The ones I found last year in the first stage of the garden project were twisted and mangled as if they had been pulled out of something and discarded.
  
  The one I discovered yesterday buried straight down in hard clay was still fulfilling its duty - pinning down a tree root that was close to the surface.
  
  So I'll need to work around them (and the roots) rather than dig them out.

Saturday Night Jokes and Other Funnies

Two ladies were walking home from the bar, they had to pee and cut through the cemetery to save time, but couldn’t hold it. One used her panties to wipe, the other grabbed a ribbon of a nearby wreath.

The next morning their husbands were talking in the yard.

One says “I think my wife is having an affair. She came home last night and her panties were missing.”

The other man says “That’s nothing. My wife had a ribbon taped to her ass that read from the men at fire house 9, we’ll never forget you!”

-----

A woman was convinced her husband was having an affair with the maid, so she decided to set a trap.

One evening, she suddenly sent the maid home for the weekend without telling her husband.

That night, after they went to bed, her husband gave his usual excuse.

“Excuse me, dear. My stomach is bothering me,” he said before heading to the bathroom.

The wife immediately got out of bed and slipped into the maid’s bed. She turned off the lights and waited.

When her husband returned, he quietly climbed into bed and wasted no time. He had his way with her without saying a word.

When he finished and was still catching his breath, the wife said, “You didn’t expect to find me in this bed, did you?”

She then switched on the light.

“No, ma’am,” replied the gardener.

Drink of the Night

Tonight we drew the 8 of Hearts from our deck of playing card cocktails

Club ONT Department of Coming Attractions

Club ONT Department of Geography

Fun facts:

1) Cleveland, Ohio is only two miles further west than Jacksonville, Florida.

2) Most of South America (especially Brazil and the eastern half of the continent) is east of the entire US East Coast. The extreme western edge of South America (Peru) aligns with Jacksonville, Florida.

3) All of Florida is south of California. Florida's northernmost point is roughly 100 miles south of California's southern border.

4) The long western stretch of the Canada-U.S. border follows the 49th parallel. The Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport actually lies almost exactly on the 49th parallel. In other words, every part of Europe north of Paris is further north than any part of the US mainland.

5) Calgary is only 32 miles south of London. All of Ireland is north of Calgary.

6) Both Los Angeles and San Diego, California are further east than Reno, Nevada.

7) Rome, Italy is the same latitude as Chicago, Illinois.

Club ONT Department of Customer Service

Club ONT is considering installing advertising screens at each sink to enhance the Club's financial position. It is possible that you may not otherwise receive advertising while you wash your hands, so new advertising screens will fill that space. Heaven forbid that you have a moment to yourself without commercial stimulus. The good news is that you can purchase advertising time to ensure your message gets to the (clean handed) Moron Horde. Please contact the Club ONT management for a rate card. Special introductory rates may be available.

Club ONT Jukebox

Top 10ish Comments of the Week

Club ONT is brought to you by Each state's unofficial state animal

So THAT'S why the Moose out Front drives a vehicle with Maine license plates. We've been wondering about that!

I do think this an exceptional documentary that earns its 175 minute runtime and is a fascinating look at some complex characters. In some ways, it's a documentary about Nathan Fielder. What I think is especially commendable is that, for all its staged elements—which are overtly staged, with an Amanda Seyfried filling in for Elizabeth Holmes—I think it is actually a documentary, as opposed to a narrative that Fielder and co-director Lance Oppenheim want us to believe.

It's not that there's not a point-of-view, it's that the point-of-view is very clear and guileless. Or "guileless appearing" as it's kind of hard to come out of this movie without wondering if everything is manipulation and performative.

I mean, not just in the movie, but everywhere.

I have my own take, of course, but let's start with the basics: Fielder is selected by Holmes and her husband Billy Evans to do the documentary because Fielder thinks "outside the box". Holmes is not really aware of Fielder's work, nor of Abbot and Costello and their "Who's on First?" routine, a sketch she doesn't understand when they watch it. She laughs, but because of the confusion, not because she understands the grammatical roots of the humor.

Holmes, you see, is weird. 

As it turns out, "weird" is a pretty big club.

We don't know all the ways that she is weird, but one way is an affect where she smiles and makes a lot of direct eye contact with whomever she's talking to. She's a distaff hide-the-pain-Harold, essentially, and this affect makes her very easy to make snap judgements about. 

And what I had heard about this documentary was that it was akin to In Cold Blood, where we learned (decades later) that Truman Capote had a thing for one of his cold-blooded killers and so altered the facts to protect his love interest. The suggestion has been made that Fielder fell under Holmes' spell like so many others and therefore is hiding something damaging about her. In fact, Seyfried herself makes this suggestion toward the end of the movie.

But this is remarkably shallow, and shallowness is a kind of through-line of the documentary.

Holmes invites Fielder to actually live with them for the last few weeks before she starts her eleven year sentence, and after a while he takes her up on that, and we do, in fact, see a whole lot. Too much, at times. Probably the number one thing you hear about the movie, besides the clip of Holmes where she says "Why would I deceive you?" with her affect in full flower, is that there is nudity in the film, and it's Evans and his whangdoodle.

This was his idea, apparently. But it's not particularly revealing. (Is that irony?) He's an odd character, for sure, but he's also in the oddest of situations. The couple and their two kids (Holmes has had a baby a month prior) are trying to max family time before she goes away, which creates some friction for Fielder & Co., especially with Evans, who comes across as overbearing at times, and brittle.

But then he's staring down a decade of being a single dad, essentially, to two young children. The peril of the same sort of shallow snap judgement applies here.

Most "documentaries" are fine with this. They give you villains, heroes, etc., etc., etc., to tell the story they want to tell. Here we see bits and pieces of things that allow multiple narratives to be built, and it feels more honest for that. We don't see "the mask drop," which is what you'd expect if Holmes were a sociopath. Evans and Holmes are devoted to each other, but they lack unctuous presentation of, e.g., the stereotypical Christian evangelist who presents himself as devoted and turns out to be a bully who's banging hookers on the side. 

Holmes is devoted to her children, and the smiling affect she has goes away when she's experiencing grief or worry or regret—and less so when she's afraid. The affect—the thing she's most called out for, that people call a red flag—works against her, I think. Her natural charm, such as it is, overcomes that affect rather than being a feature of it, or helped in any way by it.

In fact, to me, it looks like PTSD. (And looking it up now, apparently that was part of her unsuccessful legal defense.)  To me, also, she looked increasingly like a woman who abdicated responsibility to the man in her life, and in ways that are only unusual in their extremity. 

I was unable to find a picture of Seyfried in this film, so enjoy this picture of her in her low-budget Oscar-bid musical flop, "The Testament of Ann Lee".

They watch "The Dropout," a Hulu series where Amanda Seyfried plays "a character based on Holmes", which is the actress' dodge for the slander that results in abuse for Holmes once she's in prison. Fielder brings Seyfried in to re-enact scenes that happened before the cameras, and the jail scenes, and begins by showing her how devastated Holmes is by the series.

Throughout the doc, Seyfried goes through a series of interesting reactions. At first, she comes off like she's an inch deep, blowing off the idea that anything she did might have a real effect on Holmes, and besides she deserves it. Then she acts out a series of deeper examinations—only to come back around to it's just television and besides, Holmes deserves it.

There's a scene early on where Evans takes eggs away that Holmes is scrambling to scramble them properly. (Seriously, I was watching this and thinking "That's no way to scramble eggs!") Holmes doesn't seem to mind, but Seyfried latches on to this to decide that Evans is controlling and destructive. Then the actress meets with Evans and the two are particularly antagonistic.

Seyfried opens with attacks on his sexual prowess. The situation itself seems more than a little contrived. The two walk into Evans place, and Evans says he hasn't had sex for 899 days. (He's counting!) Fielder asks him if he's good at it, and Evans response with something like "I'm great at it." This is a weird conversation, just for starters.

But then Seyfried seeks to humiliate him by claiming she lied to every man she ever slept with. This dovetails nicely with the whole premise of whether one knows when someone is lying to you, but is meant to highlight Evans supposed narcissism. 

On the other hand, it reminded me of the idea that you can tell someone is stupid when you say something like "Men are generally taller than women" and they respond with "My sister is taller than my brother," as if that were a rebuttal. This is almost the inverse: "I'm good at sex" gets rebutted with "I've never had good sex."

Also, holy cow. How dysfunctional is that? A Wall Street Journal article's headline claims that Seyfried is the only trustworthy character in the film, which is a bold claim since she's apparently lied to every man she's ever been intimate with. (I won't dignify the article by reading it, which leaves me free to speculate that this either goes unaddressed or is brushed aside with "Everyone lies about sex." Remember that chestnut?)

For his part, Evans antagonizes Seyfried over her unkind comments in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination.

At this point, Evans has been raising his kids for two years on his own. He's also been using his Power of Attorney to do things like post to Holmes' Twitter account. Seyfried finds it appalling that he should have the Power of Attorney, but given that Holmes is in jail, it seems reasonable to me. Both Fielder and Seyfried are alarmed at how Evans claims that he and Holmes are essentially of one mind, and he doesn't even have to talk to her to know what she would want.

Sounds sinister, right? Then at the end of the movie, Holmes says the same thing: That she knows Evans' mind and doesn't even need to talk to him to know what he thinks about things. She has whole conversations with him alone in her cell.

Seyfried says she would break the two up if she could. This is the inch-deep thing re-surfacing. She says this even as we're all aware that Evans has relocated his house to Texas to be near her, so he can take the kids every weekend, and does daily calls to whatever the limit is.

Seyfried also acted very impressed by this seaside rental, which I didn't quite understand.

Speaking of inch-deep: Holmes understanding of the device she is credited with being in charge of is less than mine, and I'm only going on what she said during the movie. That is, she describes the device not like a software engineer, not like a chemical engineer, but like a pamphlet trying to sell the device to someone who is not very smart. I got the principle—how such a thing could theoretically work, and what it would take to make it work, and what kind of device it would have to be—and I wouldn't need to say a word about "the cloud". 

Some people say this is all part of the ruse to which I say, it's a very convincing ruse. And of course, "the ruse" often becomes "the thing" after a while. Politics is composed almost entirely of people playing dumb, to the extent that they eventually are no longer playing.

In a way, everyone in the movie is doing what Holmes did: Using the abilities they have to get attention, acclaim, money, allies—while brushing aside responsibilities they don't want to deal with. In Holmes case, this may well be the financial stuff that got her into trouble, and the engineering stuff that got her into trouble, and the marketing stuff that got her into trouble. 

For Seyfried, it's "It's just fucking television" and witch hunting.

I think Fielder came in wanting to expose Holmes, but he didn't find much to expose. I think he toyed with the "controlled by men" thing, but he doesn't dig into Holmes' older lover who guided her through the Theranos project (and is serving even more time). And while it's clear he finds aspects of Holmes relationship with Evans weird, he also says he sees genuine love and a real family unit. 

The result, I think, is something more honest than the usual documentary. It doesn't tell you what to think because I don't think Fielder himself is sold on any of the easy narratives. 

Meanwhile, quite a few things charged my tinfoil hat. The media machine is in full swing in every aspect of this case, like it's a gremlin on the wing of the airplane and I'm William Shatner. The media creates this character, the media hypes the company, and it's not even a question of whether or not they'll turn on a dime and destroy the character. It's all grist for the media mill. If Theranos was on to something, and the pharmaceutical companies decided it needed to die so they could steal all the patents, would the media then fall into line and destroy what they created? 

That's a rhetorical question, of course, independent of whether Theranos was on to anything.

I'm reminded, for some reason of Wilhelm Reich, a mid-century quack who developed a theory of life-force called "orgones" which I presume is complete nonsense, and which the FDA—inspired by libel printed in The New Republic—responded by cracking down on him with utter savagery, including destroying much of his written work—well out of scope of their already unconstitutional charter.

I also thought of Martha Stewart, thrown into jail not because of insider trading, which is the smear that attaches to her, but because somebody wanted her in jail.

There is an object lesson in this film, I think, but I'm not sure anyone involved in making it knew what it was.

She had children! This is totally a manipulation tactic and not a woman in love looking at what's probably her last chance!

Your host is a dinosaur with a small brain and short arms. That means it is difficult to get low to the ground and reach to shoot marbles. But I understand that others are into marbles. Some still shoot marbles or play other games. It seems like many others are enamored of collecting marbles because of the visual interest and variations inherent in the glass making process.

Marbles are also useful for other crafting and hobbying pursuits.

Other than losing them, what hobbying experience do you have with marbles?

Give the content a chance before you judge and bail out. There's gotta be something that resonates with you. More importantly, what are you hobbying? Jump in with your hobbying, interests, stories and questions.

Anything (legal) you are hobbying is welcome. If not, offer something else relating to hobbying or just check in and say hello.

As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. Leave politics and religion to threads elsewhere (unless your hobby is building or restoring churches). Pants? Nope. As always, puns are welcome and encouraged.

Play nice and do not be rude. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls.

Are you wise in the ways of marble history?

The earliest marbles were made of flint and stone and baked clay. Examples have been found in archaeological sites around the world and some of these, from Rome and ancient Egypt, can be found at the British Museum.

There are frequent references to marbles in Roman literature and it is probably fair to assume that the Romans took this popular form of entertainment with them to all parts of their empire.

For centuries thereafter the marbles were made of common stone or in some cases, real marble. China and crockery marbles were introduced around the year 1800 and before that glass marbles had been made in Venice. However, it was only when a German glassblower invented a tool called the marble scissors in 1846 that production became quick enough to make the sale of glass marbles to the public an economic proposition.

These marbles became increasingly popular throughout Europe and America. An enormous variety of colours were used and intricate patterns were created within the glass.

Clay marbles began to be produced in bulk from about 1870 onwards on both sides of the Atlantic. In the 1890's the first machines for the manufacture of glass marbles were introduced. However, machine production remained low until the 1914-18 war in Europe cut off supplies of marbles to North America. This stimulated the machine production of glass marbles in the U.S.A. This production technique and the machines themselves are now found in many countries, east and west.

Does anyone still shoot marbles? Do kids still learn?

How it's made: marbles

Some people are serious marble collectors based on the colors and patterns:

The world's largest Marble King (one specific marble maker) collection:

Marble music:

Anyone make cracked glass for crafting? Want to learn how?

How to Make Cracked Glass Marbles for Crafting

Cracked glass marbles can go by several different names. I've seen them called fractured glass, fried marbles, or shattered marbles.

So these marbles are pretty and all, but what can you do with them?

The answer is pretty much anything you can do with regular marbles! Which means there are plenty of options.

You can turn them into jewelry, embellish an art project, add them to an outdoor decor project, or use them as a vase filler. The list goes on and on.

Marbles come in different sizes:

PeeWees - approx. 12mm or 1/2" and smaller
Decor Marbles - approx. 14mm or 9/16"
Target Marbles - approx. 16mm or 5/8" (most standard size)
Shooters - approx. 18 - 19mm or just under 3/4"
Cobbles - approx. 22mm or 7/8"
Boulders - approx. 25mm or 1"
Jumbos - approx. 35mm or 1 3/8"
Super Jumbos - approx. 41mm or 1 5/8"
Toebreakers - approx. 48mm or 2"

How much do marbles cost? Like anything else, fancier gets more expensive. They are sold in bulk quantities. I fancy found target marbles for sale on line sold by the pound. There are approximately 80 to 90 in a 1 pound bag ($13) and approx. 250 in a 3 pound bag ($32.50).

A 50 pack of bumblebee jumbos costs $52.

Anyone play marble games called Ringer, Plums, and Dropsies in scouts?

Marble jargon is fun. Here are some marble words that came up during the research for this content - can anyone vouch for these? Any others come to mind?

Types of Marbles:
Aggie - Marble made of agate (or glass imitating agate)
Alley - Originally from alabaster or real marble. Sometimes alley taw for a high-quality shooter.
Bennington - Glazed clay or stoneware marble (named after pottery style, though not made in Bennington, VT).
Cat's eye - Clear glass marble with a colored, eye or vane-shaped insert inside.
Clearie / Peerie / Purie / Crystal - Transparent clear glass marble.
Commonie - Cheap, plain clay or common marble.
Onionskin - Glass marble with layered, swirling color bands that run the length of it.
Steelie - Steel ball-bearing marble (heavy and effective as a shooter).
Sulphide - Clear or semi-opaque glass marble with a small clay or porcelain figure (animal, person, etc.) inside.
Bumblebee - Yellow-and-black striped marble.
Joseph's Coat Specific pattern with many straight color bands.

Size-Related Names:
Peewee / Pewee / Mini - Small marble
Mib / Target / Tolley / Duck / Kimmie - Standard target/player marble
Shooter / Taw / Dobber - Larger marble used to knock others out
Boulder / Giant / Bumboozer / Bowler / Tom Bowler - Very large marble
Other size nicknames include bonker, masher, popper, thumper, and godfather.

Making a marble track:

Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did a crystals and gem cutting theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.

Notable comments from last week:

Words of wisdom:

"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).

Reminder: if you put links in the comments, use a URL shortener and describe what you're linking to. Failing to do either or both makes you barrel-eligible. Don't make people click to find out what you're linking.

Boo! Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Or just email to say hello. Do mighty things.

Courtesy Hrothgar:

A little timeline cleanse. I know it won’t last long.

You call them dogs. I call them fur missiles.

When you’ve seen one of these four legged rockets in action up close, there are no words to describe it.

Pure speed, power, loyalty, and absolutely no brakes. https://t.co/jTtczGVmmW

— ARMY1325AIR (@army1325air) October 24, 2026

Amazing. Some people need to be careful around those pups, I think.

Extreme, but steps taking here may be applicable when other animals get their heads stuck.

A pet from the yard?

Zach from Hilton Head has been on the page before. He's enjoying his new home on the golf course.

Rich

Zach looks wonderful on the golf course.

I should have sent these orange and black cats last week ...

My two boy cats -- Rufus is my golden boy, a dog in a cat body, very sweet and protective, bossy and vocal. Julius is the black blob with lantern eyes, a terrific hunter, yet very cuddly, and my baby. They are five and four years old, respectively.

The tortie is Susannah, who is 14 and usually grouchy, but occasionally sweetens up. I sing "My Girl" to her and "Oh Susannah," and she knows they are about her.

I am skywch, and I usually lurk. Thanks!

Thanks for sending in the great photos of your wonderful, distinctive cats! Susannah can give a Halloween look, can't she?

Commentary by Saijo:

I told Saijo I was going out to dinner tonight and his sister was babysitting the cats and him. I don’t think this is a happy face! https://t.co/w83lPrd1GD

— Piper (@piper_moves) November 6, 2026

The view from my kitchen window.

King of the Castle and The Prince, 10 minutes ago

Howard in Alberta

Thrilling view, Howard! And great photos. Thanks for sending them in.

Thank you for sharing your pets and animal photos and stories with us today.

If you would like to send pet and/or animal stories, links, etc. for the Ace of Spades Pet Thread, the address is:

petmorons at protonmail dot com

Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known when you comment at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.

Until next Saturday, have a great week!

If you start feeling nostalgic, here a link to last week's Pet Thread, the Ace of Spades Pet Thread, October 31

I closed the comments on that post so you wouldn't get banned for commenting on a week-old post, but don't try it anyway.

And see the link above for photos and growing information on 'Darlow's Enigma' Rose, Symphyotrichum [Aster] oblongifolium, Salvia azurea, Thunbergia and a white form, plus Helianthus maximiliani (which had kept going since the last time we saw a photo of this magnificent sunflower.

Edible Gardening/Putting Things By

Ever heard of this? Apparently, it contains Vitamin K. Wonder how many of us could grow it indoors in winter?

🏆 Discover the health benefits of #Katuk: a #Superfood for your mind and body

🌿 Katuk, or #TropicalAsparagus (#Sauropusandrogynus), is a delicious #leafyvegetable popular in South and Southeast Asia. Its young shoots, often referred to as tropical asparagus, are highly prized for their taste and high yields.
🌿 In Vietnam, Katuk is commonly cooked in soups with crab meat, minced pork, or dried shrimp, while in Malaysia, it’s stir-fried with egg and dried anchovies.
🌿 The #plant is unique for being one of the few plants that contains vitamin K. It’s also rich in folate, vitamin K, and lutein - nutrients linked to improved memory and reduced cognitive aging.
🌿 Katuk thrives in full sun or semi-shade, making it a versatile and healthy addition to your #garden or kitchen.

🛒 Add Katuk Superfood to your edible garden today:
https://t.co/1o1n7JuAqH

#Food_Forest #Remedies #Discover

— TopTropicals.com (@toptropicals) July 9, 2025

Don in Kansas knows how to prepare for holiday visitors through research:

Puttering, Self-Improvement and Connection

This is one of the non-political Saturday threads, but if you missed it, someone posted in the comments on a recent thread an AoSHQ thread by Warden from another hard time, in 2012. It is entitled Where do we go from here? We talk about home and preparedness issues here, and we should probably talk sometimes about how we connect with neighbors.

Topics touched on in Warden's post include:

Focus on self-improvement

Prepare

Preparation is a topic that fits into this thread. There are some ideas in Warden's post that we may sometimes neglect.

Small things add up

Some interesting ideas on doing the things you can and maintaining an attitude of gratitude.

Some AoSHQ threads have staying power.

Adventure

Remember the Halloween quilt lady? She and her husband teamed up with a hiking friend for a post-Halloween adventure:

We finally got to hike in the Superstitions. The saguaros are abundant and thriving, the jagged skyline crystal clear blue with puffy clouds, the trail rocky and beckoning us on. We reached the end where there was running water from the rain storms. Also some very cool petroglyphs. There were a lot of people out enjoying this trail today!

After our hike, we drove to Tortilla Flat. I didn't know such a place existed. It's a teeny ghost town. The saloon/restaurant walls are covered in dollar bills. People write their names and the date on the bill and staple it to the wall. Some are layered 4 deep. My favorite had colored over Washington's face with a Batman mask and put a conversation bubble saying "I am Batman." There were even dollar bills under plastic on the tabletop. I'm sure there was at least a million dollars stapled to the walls. For being out in the middle of nowhere, there were a heck if a lot of people having lunch there. The food was great! Part of the road was still flooded, but it wasn't on the part where we drove in.

Wyatt Earp?

Gardens of The Horde

What's happening in your garden?

Hope everyone has a nice weekend.

If you would like to send photos, stories, links, etc. for the Saturday Gardening Thread, the address is:

Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.

Week in Review

What has changed since last week's thread? Gardening, Home and Nature Thread, Halloween!

I closed the comments on that post so you wouldn't get banned for commenting on a week-old post, but don't try it anyway.

One of the oldest tree species on Earth,

The magnificent Ginkgo tree at Kirkstall Abbey in Leeds, England, transforms into a golden spectacle each autumn, https://t.co/RCIOyiVYlD

— Science girl (@sciencegirl) November 3, 2026

The Democrats thought that "Our Democracy" was over before last Tuesday. And of course, Trump is still President. So some of them may still think it is over.

Hard to keep up. How should we react?

So are we living under a fascist dictatorship or is democracy alive and well?? I’m just trying to keep up with the messaging😂😂 https://t.co/o2jE8Zj7as

— patriotic peach 🍑 (@patrioticpeachh) November 5, 2026

On Substack, Michael Smith has had some interesting thoughts. This is from one of his posts from earlier in the week:

James Madison’s Shocked Face

When combined with government, the only human characteristic stronger than the desire to be benevolent toward others is to do it with someone else’s money.

I mentioned yesterday how dismayed I was that in the aftermath of our shellacking on Tuesday, there are the expected people on the left and a surprising number on the right who want the U.S. government to “do something” about the price of tea in China (archaic reference alert).

It reminded me of reading about how, on January 10, 1794, James Madison rose in the House of Representatives to challenge a proposal to provide financial assistance to French refugees who had fled the violence in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti).

Setting aside the fact that Americans are still paying for benevolence program in Haiti some 232 years later, Madison did not question the suffering of the refugees or the humanitarian impulse behind the appropriation, rather whether Congress possessed the constitutional authority to spend taxpayers’ money on charity.

According to the Annals of Congress, Madison declared:

"Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."

He continued:

"It would puzzle any gentleman to lay his finger on any part of the Constitution which would authorize the government to interpose in the relief of the St. Domingo sufferers."

Drawbacks to such humanitarian relief and the ingenious way Congress bypassed Monroe's objection are summarized in a colorful manner at the link above.

Madison’s objection was evidently the last time anyone in government could be shamed about such spending since today, depending on how broadly we define benevolence, roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of federal spending now goes toward social insurance, income support, healthcare, and other programs intended to provide financial or material benefits to individuals. That seems a remarkable proportion when considered against Madison’s objection to spending $15,000 for humanitarian relief.

Which brings me to the “affordability” crisis, and how the newly anointed Democrat controlled government deigns to “solve” it.

Some of the bright ideas for extracting money from groups under current disapproval are described, along with other typical plans to increase dependency on government. Mr. Smith also mentions things that the Congress DOES NOT intend to do to improve "affordability". This is refreshing.

Did I mention we are still sending aid to Haiti 232 years later?

Madison's corpse is so pissed right now.

And others remember:

SHOULD WE TAKE A LOOK AT HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY?

Book Review reminding us of the limits of second-hand benevolence

Empathy without that troublesome suicidal empathy
(You can listen to this article in a high-quality reading at the link.)

Summary:

Decline is a choice, and self-governing citizens can choose renewal instead.

Theodore Dalrymple is among the English-speaking world’s most insightful social critics. For decades, he has written about the pathologies that have ruined our cities and resigned entire neighborhoods to the antagonist world of the state of nature. . .

Among his most important works is the 2001 book, Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass now out in a new twenty-fifth anniversary edition. Drawing on his experience as a physician and psychiatrist in some of the most blighted slums of our society, Dalrymple argues that the West is facing a crisis of personal responsibility rooted in the determinist ideology that has infected the elite. As he writes in the book’s original introduction, “In the modern world, bad ideas and their consequences cannot be confined to a ghetto.”

One striking thing about Dalrymple’s work is its profound empathy. “In the course of my work over fifteen years, I spoke to thousands of people about their lives and the lives of the people around them,” he writes in the new preface. “As a result, I could not conceive of them as simply vectors of abstract social forces acting upon them.” A doctor treats persons, not statistics, human beings with real agency and life stories. Yet Dalrymple does not let his empathy calcify into excuses for their poor decisions. As much as he acknowledges how the “system” has failed his patients, he maintains that criminals bear ultimate responsibility for their crimes.

Armed with this experience, Dalrymple argues that modern liberalism’s great error is its social determinism. “The very form of the explanation offered by liberals for modern crime—from social conditions direct to behavior, without passing through the human mind—offers those who commit crime an excuse in advance,” he writes. The social scientists who attribute crime to poverty or inequality are in fact guilty of dehumanizing the very people they claim to want to help. By attributing social dysfunction to grand, sweeping trends outside of the control of any individual, they deny the impoverished a path out of squalor and delinquency.

One of Dalrymple’s most fascinating examples of how ideology disempowers people is the shockingly common use of passive voice in his sessions with British prisoners and addicts. His patients often spoke of themselves as “marionettes of happenstance,” in a dialect he calls “the psychobabble of the slums.” The fashionable relativism of academia and other areas of professional life filtered down to these unfortunates through mass culture, giving them a vocabulary to shift blame as far away as possible. Though many had “absorbed nothing at school, [they] had nevertheless absorbed the shibboleths of political correctness” and therapeutic culture. The immiserated then wield the notion of a true “inner self” to ward off responsibility, speaking as if they have no control over their actions. One man who had been guilty of stabbing someone uttered “the knife went in,” rather than acknowledge he chose to thrust the blade.

Leftist ideology adopted by Criminal:

"The truck went up onto the sidewalk and hit five pedestrians."

Sources of social pathologies which affect the underclasses and criminal classes are described. Few of them are remedied significantly by passing bills or adopting "programs.

While these cases are depressing, the book is even more troubling when Dalrymple delves into the ideological roots of this mass enervation. He has a particular ire for insipid Rousseauian theories of the self, which cloak selfishness in romanticism. “This is the lie that is at the heart of our society, the lie that encourages every form of destructive self-indulgence to flourish,” he writes, “for while we ascribe our conduct to pressures from without, we obey the whims that well up from within, thereby awarding ourselves carte blanche to behave as we choose. Thus we feel good about behaving badly.” As a doctor, he is concerned above all with the practical effects of these theories—and his case-studies demonstrate how dangerous the lie of subjective morality truly can be.

Beyond his medical experience, Dalrymple’s upbringing under the roof of his outright communist father predisposed him to see the fatal flaws in collectivistic social theories. One essay recounts a barbaric episode in which his old man viciously destroyed a collection of old Victorian paintings on little more than a whim as a metaphor for the total cultural leveling of British society. Out of devotion to egalitarian and anti-colonial ideology, the bureaucrats of the centralizing state have graffitied or torn down the physical remains of the past. In both Britain and America, people are governed as if we were livestock, and our places are treated little better than pigsties. Is it any wonder that the prevailing mood of our age is despair?

Now I understand Dalrymple better! His early exposure to communism helps explain why he so effectively notices the destructiveness so prevalent in the Left today. There's more on specific actions of politicians, bureaucrats and ideologues at the link above.

Another interesting way to look at the actions of Trump, from Michael Smith:

The King in the North

Sometimes leading means poking the bear to see what he will do.

As an executive, I’ve always hated working on the required 1-, 3-, and 5-year plans. I worked with my teams to create them because they were required and because the analysts wanted numbers even if they were bullshit. At best, they were believable bullshit and only directionally correct.

My approach to understanding policy and politics is to define electoral politics and the subsequent governing stages with a mashup paraphrase of Mike Tyson and General George S. Patton:

“Everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face, your enemy gets a vote in what you do, and a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”

I had a couple of mentors during my early career who taught me the difference between a manager and a leader was that a leader makes decision and then course corrects when necessary and a manager just follows the plan because nobody ever blames someone for following “the plan”.

My first mentor told me, “Son, you already know a bear is a bear and generally know what bears do but sometimes you have to have the courage to poke the bear to find out exactly what he will do. The trick is to know when, where, and how hard to poke him and not only that, know what you are willing to do after he is poked.”

So, I guess that is my basis for supporting President Trump. He seems to poke the bear to see what the bear will do and then adjust accordingly based on that feedback.

That’s really the extent of his plan.

We need to acknowledge the difficulty of defining the problems we now face.

We need to do some bear poking.

The first step is to understand the enemy. Ours can be understood in their words, but also in their actions – so let’s look at both for a moment.

I really recommend clicking on the link for the following section of this essay, which provides examples of the behavior of our domestic opposition. Rather unsettling. Frightening, actually.

So, we already know the bear is a bear and have some insight into what that bear is going to do. They are showing us in real time.

The question we must answer is whether we have the courage to do what needs to be done.

So far, the GOP has not shown that courage and because we haven’t, the Democrats are about to give us yet another lesson in how far they are willing to go.

I’ll admit to liking HBO’s Game of Thrones – a lot - one scene that keeps penetrating my mind is the Battle of the Bastards in season 6, when Jon Snow stands alone facing Ramsay Bolton’s army. That seems to be our destiny because it is repeated again and again – when we do find a leader worthy of the fight, our army deserts him.

Right or wrong, Trump demonstrated the resolve to go shield to shield with the worst of the Democrats – but in the end, like Jon Snow, he was left alone on the battlefield.

If we want that to change, we need to field the right army.

Founders

Some of the Founders had it tough:

Statues: The People They Salute

NAME the Signer of the Declaration of Independence who was dragged from his bed and marched in only a nightshirt and breeches in freezing weather to prison by the British.

RICHARD STOCKTON signed the Declaration of Independence knowing his life, fortune and sacred honor was at risk. Four months later he was imprisoned.

Stockton had been moving his family to safety because the British were following George Washington and his army into New Jersey after the Battle of Long Island, when a treacherous neighbor of the friend whose home he had moved his family to, led a band of loyalists to Richard Stockton.

They dragged Stockton from his bed and marched him improperly clothed (only a nightshirt and breeches) in freezing weather to a common jail in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Later he was moved to Provost prison in New York City, which was notorious for its harsh conditions. It is estimated that about three times as many prisoners died in the prisons and prison ships of New York City, as soldiers in combat during the Revolutionary War years.

After five weeks of being locked in irons and nearly starved, Stockton was released. The condition of his release was that he was not to engage in American affairs during the fight for freedom. His health was compromised to such an extent, that it is doubtful he could have contributed much on the battlefield. His home had been plundered of his furniture and livestock. His extensive library had been destroyed. His monetary wealth was also gone as he had donated most of it to the cause.

Richard Stockton died before the Revolutionary War ended in 1781 at the age of 51. He is the subject of one of the two statues representing New Jersey in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol.

More at Diana Erbio's Substack

Weekend

The Week in Pictures: Electoral Degringolade Edition

Well THAT was no fun. No fun at all. But what is the Democrat plan for improving America? You can summarize it in one word—no, not “affordability,” but subpoenas. Think this is an overstatement? Let’s start here, and cheer up, this will be the Democrats’ undoing. (At least Newt Gingrich had a Contract with America with a policy agenda his House largely passed. The Democrats have no policy proposals for “affordability,” and appear instead to have a Contract on America.)

Music

Soldier's Joy

Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

Last week's thread, Halloween Miscellany

Comments are closed on the thread above so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.

Follow-up

The people who asked questions about COVID early on may sometimes get a little weird, but sometimes they make some good points and point us in some useful directions, even now. Independent of the piece below, I saw a comment by Bret Weinstein stating that COVID would have been the biggest scientific investigation (or words to that effect) IF DATA HAD BEEN COLLECTED AND WERE BEING ANALYZED.

There are still some independent-minded people who maintain an interest in what happened. TWISTED Thursday, November 5, 2026 C&C NEWS

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Apologies for the late delivery— your author is navigating the nation’s airports again (ugh). Our election hangover continues, creating a challenge to report real news, since the Great Shellacking is still busy throwing its weight around. But, only 48 hours in, twists and turns are appearing and some of the numbers are paying hide-and-go-seek. Today’s roundup describes what’s causing folks to scratch their heads a little. Plus, more good news from Florida.

By the way, I’m en route to the lovely city of Chattanooga, where I’m attending the Brownstone Institute’s sixth annual conference, “The Challenge Ahead.” For two days, a crowd of doctors, scientists, journalists, and assorted heretics of various sizes and descriptions will compare notes on how to unwind the capture of our institutions, preferably before the next “two weeks to flatten the curve” arrives.

Tech News

• Speaking of Apple Applebees left its database password in its Android app, installed by over a million people. (Tech Crunch)
  
  I am sometimes amazed that our species has survived this long.
  
  
  
• Nagare Labs is making progress on the impossible: DRAM that runs more like SRAM. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The commodity dynamic memory (DRAM) found in every computer - except for example the Raspberry Pi Pico - is a tradeoff: It's much cheaper than static memory and much smaller, but it's slow and it leaks - it needs to be constantly refreshed where the contents are read and written back. That's invisible these days but if you look at older systems it was very obvious; the Zilog Z80 CPU had an integrated refresh counter and the Commodore Amiga had refresh slots baked in to the DMA allocation.
  
  It looks like this still needs to be refreshed, but it solves a different leak: With conventional DRAM every read erases the data and the memory chip also has to write it back afterwards.
  
  Long story short, the new memory uses two transistors per bit instead of one for DRAM or two for SRAM, is five times denser than SRAM, and fourteen times faster than DRAM. Only problem remaining is that it doesn't exist outside of lab samples yet.
  
  
  
• Six more Nvidia GPUs with a total value of $11 million have been stolen in transit from a third-world country, this time California. (WCCFTech)
  
  The cards left Oakland bound for Texas but only made it as far as San Bernardino County before the entire truck was abducted by aliens.
  
  
  
• Some less bleak political news closer to home: The ruling Labor (Maoist) government at the heart of the rot down under, my birth state of Victoria, is now polling third ahead of state elections on the 28th.
  
  The Greens (Khmer Vert) are polling fourth.
  
  First are the Liberals (Conservative Squish), with second place going to One Nation (Conservative Non-Squish).
  
  To give you an idea of how unpopular Labor has made themselves, they are polling at 22% in their own stronghold. And thanks to preferential voting (used by Victorian state and Australian federal elections) a situation where Labor loses numerically but wins a majority of seats as happened in the UK is all but impossible.
  
  I hope this trend spreads.
  
  
  
• Repotted all 29 seedlings in coconut fiber propagation pots so I can just pop them in the ground.
  
  Now in the process of digging out the ground to plant them in. It's hard clay riddled with rocks and roots and builder's debris, so this is a lot of work. I planted one boronia this morning to replace the one that didn't make it through the winter, leaving 42 plants in various sizes of pot sitting by the walkway to my front door.
  
  This is what the half-ton of gardeny stuff is for - soil improvement so I can grow something other than tussock grass and weeds, and mulch so that the tussock grass and weeds don't grow back.

Fido Friday: Pup cup

Why don't we have cool ballot issues like this?

College football playoffs

May vs Ramsey

This is true

Reply with your best noir sentence

Rome

Grocery nation

Rowling is funny AF

I love science

Who do you hate?

Knit Doom!

Car puns

These are some great logos

Don't forget the important stuff

This may be the funnest commercial I've ever seen

Trick or treat

She's got a point

That's quiet

Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by enemies:

Chocolate lab is the hardest worker in the house.

Frequently Asked Question: Was "Dobby the House Elf" in Harry Potter played by Jason Statham?

Well yes, of course he was. Duh.

You didn't know that? You're so silly.

Unrelated; Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles resigns, and will work for Trump's political (not governmental) staff.

Steven Miller will replace her.

Overton @overton_news

Well, that was unexpected.

Kid Rock won over Bill Maher's audience with an epic monologue about the degradation of the modern-day Democrat Party and how progressive politics are teaching kids to hate America.

The moment the audience heard his final line, they erupted into applause.

ROCK: "A Democrat's never scared me being in office until just recently when all this crazy stuff has popped up."

"I think Bill Clinton loves the country. I believed Obama loved our country."

"Now these whack jobs are coming in here and I'm like, wait a minute... even if they don't hate the country as a whole they hate a big portion of it, and they're spewing this."

"And I believe our teachers have been a big problem, you know indoctrinating these kids for a long time now."

"We're starting to see the fruition, they're starting to raise up, I'm a victim and everything's bad and America is just a big racist piece of sh*t country."

"Bad, bad America and we're not celebrating what makes us great, which all of us being different and being together."

"Being the greatest country in the world!"

It's pretty seldom that a Republican gets cheers and applause from a liberal crowd with such an unapologetically patriotic message.

This was a great moment.

Bonus: Democrats are headed for a "civil war."

America has elected a slew of local, state and federal officials more left-wing than ever before.

Jeffries's own caucus now contains at least eight members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) -- an increase from two during the previous term. Among them is a woman who advocated for 'a world without prisons or police' and demanded the US 'literally, abolish the border.'

His colleague in the Senate -- fellow Brooklynite Chuck Schumer, the next Senate Majority Leader -- will have to contend with Abdul El-Sayed in his ranks, arguably among the most far-left Senators ever elected. And he almost had a fully-fledged member of the DSA by his side: Angie Nixon narrowly lost her Florida Senate race.

It is all music to Ashik Siddique's ears.

Siddique, the co-chair of the DSA's national political committee, told the Daily Mail that Tuesday's vote was just the beginning for his party. He pointed to the triumph of his rainbow-headed comrade Ashley Herrmann, 38, who even flipped a Republican-held state senate seat near Tampa, Florida.

'These results are not a flash in the pan,' he said, noting that DSA membership has surged from 6,000 in 2016 to 130,000 today. 'Democratic Socialists of America are building an enduring organization that can lead an enduring movement.

'We're now seeing DSA candidates win re-election to second or third terms across the country. We ran more candidates in this cycle than ever before. I think there were at least 200 candidates at many levels of government, from local up to Congress. So we're really leading the conversation and helping to shift public opinion on a wide range of issues.'

Siddique said that the DSA was pushing policies leftwards -- noting that on the eve of the election, even Donald Trump was discussing ending military aid to Israel.

'Nobody thought 10 years ago that abolishing ICE was a popular sentiment when we were saying it, but now it has popular support,' he said. 'When we said 'Free Palestine,' that was not a popular sentiment among Americans 10 years ago, but now it is, and majorities of Americans across parties support a full arms embargo against the state of Israel.'

DSA candidates largely ran on affordable housing, Medicare for All, childcare for all, moratoriums on AI data centers and abolishing ICE, Siddique said.

'These are very popular things, and when you look at the range of issues our candidates ran on, it's clear that we've been driving the conversation and the direction of the political left more broadly,' he added.

But what will happen when his candidates walk into the chamber in January and come face to face with the establishment? Is there a civil war brewing?

Siddique chuckled.

I don't know if there'll be a civil war. The Democrat Party is made up of two factions. No, not socialists and moderates. It's made up of Go-Slow Communists and Go-Fast Communists.

But they're all communists. They all know where they want to go. They just have different opinions on how hard they can charge to get there.

With the DSA temporarily holding the whip-hand, and proving that, at least for this moment, the public won't punish the Go-Fast Communists, the Go-Slow Communists will all fall in line and support the Go-Fast Communists. With reservations, but support them they will.