Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: December 11th

Welcome to The Moose Pond! The Welcomings posts give the Moose, old and new, a place to visit and share words about the weather, life, the world at large and the small parts of Moosylvania that we each inhabit.

Welcomings will be posted at the start of each week (usually Saturday night with a Sunday date). To find the posts, just bookmark this link and Voila! (which is Moose for “I found everyone!!”).

The format is simple: each day, the first moose to arrive on-line will post a comment welcoming the new day and complaining (or bragging!) about their weather. Or mentioning an interesting or thought provoking news item. Or simply checking in.

So … what’s going on in your part of Moosylvania?

NOTE: The comments page will split off after 20 or so left margin comments with the most recent comments on the current page. To see the older comments, scroll to the bottom of the page (right before “Leave A Reply”) and use the Pages Tool to view previous pages, shown here with 3 pages of comments available and Page 2 circled.

42 Comments

  1. Good morning. Somewhat chilly — 50 degrees, which feels cold after the 70 degree mornings we’ve had. It’ll be actually cold in the morning, upper 30s. One of the Discovery channels had replays of The Universe all day yesterday, that was nice. Today it’s just the usual 2 reruns of How The Universe Works on Science, but I’ll take it. Both of the candidates I supported lost in yesterday’s runoff. Very close races, I don’t know if that’s actually worse. But Austin will have it’s 40somethingth middle-aged white guy mayor. How progressive of us.

  2. Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …

    It is 34 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 45. Sunny skies are in the forecast. It looks like we escaped the deep freeze this morning (it was supposed to be 29) but we have one more chance overnight tonight. I was chuckling at the drama on the local news surrounding The Cold Spell and wondered if I would ever think that 29 degrees is cold. It is 15 degrees colder than normal but in my view it is not really cold until the the temperature drops below zero and the high temperature for the day is in the single digits.

    TFG must be beside himself – he is now trailing DeSantis in the Republican primary polls, his Kevin is losing his grip on the speakership, his January 6th coup group is on the verge of getting indicted (fingers crossed that it takes out a few Republican House members), his personal business is in a shambles (with more shambling imminent) and his lackey Musk is disintegrating. By the way, I feel sorry for any Twitter employee who thought that a severance package promise from Musk was worth anything – I hope they had stock that they could cash in before Twitter decided to stop paying their bills including rent. I still hope that someone decides to buy Twitter and restore it to pre-Musk ordinariness. Maybe George Soros should buy it – that would drive the nazis off the platform! :)

    I had a very productive early morning and I have a few more things to do before I can start my non-work day.

    See all y’all later!

  3. Guten Wodnes Tag, Moosekind! It’s a chilly 23 F. here in Ashburn, and overcast. Tonight we’ll have ice, or so they say, turning to 1.5 inches of rain. We’ll see. We’re now 5 inches under normal for the year.

    Have to scurry in about 25 minutes to go with the Raging Grannies to Fairfax, VA, where we’ll stand vigil in front of NRA HQ. Today is the sad 10th anniversary of the slaughter of innocents—The Sandy Hook Massacre. It’s hard enough to wrap one’s head around the idea of people slaughtering grownups, but babies—6-year-olds—it makes your heart hurt.

    I’ve an orange cap to wear, knitted for me by a fellow resident (she wouldn’t take any money for it), an orange scarf, and I’m wearing my bright orange Halloween sweater although it won’t show under my puffer jacket. Never mind, it’s the thought that counts. It has been explained to me many times why we wear orange, but alas, it goes in one ear and out the other.

    The party last night was very nice, with music, singing and lots of food. (Note to self: NEVER again bring any dish that is best served warm. We weren’t allowed to eat until everything was ice-cold.) Dearly came with me, most unusually for him, and I filled his plate for him. We both ate too much. I wore two masks unless eating and drinking.

    Eejit that I am, I forgot where the doctor’s office was yesterday and by the time I remembered, I was 10 minutes late. Apparently I have to use this medication for the rest of my life. Crud. And I have to go back to see her in 3 months! She did kindly allow that if I keep using the med. twice a week, things will improve.

    t’s a minute past nine and I have a couple more preparations to make, so I’d better skedaddle! Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!

  4. It’s 40 heading for 48 and cloudy. We’re supposed to get sunshine later today. Fingers crossed and all that. We generated 1.2 KWHs yesterday. M-t-d’s 48.24 – sigh.

    Lousy night and running behind this morning. I’m going to be a lot more behinder on twitter as I’m about to head out to the Co-op to stock up on supplements then to Harps for my almost-monthly grocery shopping plus wine and a few oddments for Friday evening’s family party. But I know better than to go grocery shopping on an empty stomach so I’m eating oatmeal while checking in. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  5. Good morning, 33 and mostly sunny outside my window today. Yesterday I was busy doing what needed to be done, but my plan for today is to do something I want to do first. So another cup of coffee and then I’m going to be outdoors. The piles of holly, twigs, and greens are calling to me :) Best wishes to all.

  6. Thursday Meese. 23 degrees here in Kingston – waiting to see if we get rain today into tomorrow or 11 inches of snow. National Weather service in Albany NY can’t really tell atm.

    Puerto Rico

    Stuff happening today:
    (I don’t like the bill – it needs amendments)

    Most recent story from mainland media in English on the bill.

  7. Good morning. I decided that 36 is just too cold for my walk. Considering that yesterday it got into the 70s, this was kinda sudden. But others are having terrible weather so I’m not complaining. There was (is?) a leak in the Russian part of the Space Station, they canceled a space walk last night. But it doesn’t seem too bad, the last update is 6 hours ago. I was watching the NASA channel last night, it looked like it was snowing. Working in the office today. But at least we have a long lunch for our holiday luncheon. I bought tofurky slices so the 1 other vegetarian and I can have something.

  8. Good morning, meeses! Thursday …

    It is 34 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 50. Sunny skies are in the forecast. We have one more day of below normal temperatures (but no more freezes) and then we will return to our regular December temperatures (highs in the upper 50s/low to mid 60s).

    Busy morning here got busier with some new projects inserted into my schedule so I am going to pass on more than a glance at the news. It sounds like the Omnibus will get a vote and it also sounds like the fixes to the Electoral Count Act might get included. I think that the spectre of Marjorie Taylor Green and Steve Bannon bringing guns to block the 2024 Presidential Election certification might loosen up a few votes to pass that. Goddess help us if they leave it on the Unfinished Bills scrap heap.

    See all y’all later!

  9. Good Thursday morning, Meese. As usual the weather forecast was wildly off: yes, we are getting rain, thank Yemaya, and I hope it will make a dent in the more than 5-inch shortfall we have. Right now it’s 32 F. in Ashburn. The weather widget is saying heavy snow soon—ha, ha! Whatever ice we may have had has confined itself to the more primitive parts of Loudoun County.

    Well, guess who was interviewed yesterday at the 10th anniversary vigil! There were speakers from all over the country. A young reporter asked whether I’d mind talking to him, I said no, of course not, so he summoned his camera man, miked me up and proceeded to ask me questions. The segment ran for 2 and 1/2 minutes on CBS Local News last at 5 p.m. I appeared for all of 60 seconds. Elder son taped it and he, DIL, and little Ethan all watched. Ethan said, That’s my Grandma! LOL. Here’s a link to the story, if not the video:

    link: https://www.wusa9.com/…/65-195786a4-3eea-4073-9974…

    I have a meeting about the Winter Solstice ritual we’re doing on the 21st at 10:30, then a bunch of errands, all of which are on campus so I can walk through the buildings. This afternoon I’ll work on sending out the Yule newsletter to all the desolate family members and friends who haven’t received it yet.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!

  10. It was 28 when I got up, 30 now, heading for 43/windchill 32. Welcome back Winter. But it’s sunny, so that part’s good. Very good. Yesterday we generated right at 5 KHWs and the m-t-d is 53.35 – we might get up to 6 KWHs today. Maybe.

    I was almost two hours shopping yesterday and spent close to $300. Would have if they hadn’t been out of stock on some of what I wanted. I can understand, at this time of year, being out of bulk department cinnamon, cloves, sage, molasses, and walnuts. And at least I still have everything except the molasses – this was a stock-up trip. But the “household” department was out of scent-free, dye-free concentrated household cleaner and toilet bowl cleaner. Oh well. I’ll either find them elsewhere or I’ll have to go back to the Co-op before next March.

    I actually got a mostly decent night’s sleep. After a rather rocky start, so shifted forward from when to when. LOL. I’m off to twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  11. Friday Meese. 33 here in Kingston going up to 38 and raining. Thankful we missed this being snow – though parts of our region are getting it as snowfall.

    Puerto Rico

  12. Cold but not as bad as yesterday. I walked ¾ mi. Was going to run back outside to see the Space Station, but it’s really cloudy. Watching the Twitter meltdown. Depressing because a lot of my friends are there, and not everyone is going to the same place.

    • I think it will have to be mastodon for the short term. From what I have seen, Post is really a posting platform – a web site like Facebook where people can write posts and other people can read them and comment – it is not set up to interact. Mastodon is more like Twitter in that you can boost a story or a comment – a quick one and done.

      I did notice some people saying they are done – being on Twitter is no longer fun. From ABL:

      "I think the era of me participating in The Discourse on social media is drawing to a close. I don’t want to go to Post and read people’s blog posts. I don’t want to join a repro server or a journalist server on Mastodon. I’m tired of the social media rat race I think.

      i just want to bake and post about my dogs"

      Now that is sad.

      • The Spoutible guy says he is trying to get his platform up & running sooner than planned. I just don’t like either Mastadon or Counter Social. Too complicated.

        • I’m a Chris fan – have been using his Bot Sentinel for a long time – and applauded his work going after Kamala and Meghan hate bots.

        • Sadly, I think that no one site is going to replace Twitter. And maybe Twitter got too big which is part of the problem. Post is not going to be able to host all the people needed to make the site valuable – at best it will become a web site like substack, a place where people can post articles and have people read them and comment on them. Spoutable, if it makes it off the ground, will maybe be for people to spout at each other but unless Chris has a deep pockets investor, he won’t be able to build a server network to handle the traffic. That is why I think the Mastodon model has the best chance of success. IF, and that is a big if, the media sites embrace Mastodon, the distributed processing platform it is built on will spread out the workload and not require any one group to invest a ton of money in hardware and infrastructure.

          The Mastodon Fediverse is made up of thousands of “instances” also called servers and which I like to refer to as communities. The communities are linked together by common computer code and each community can see people on the other communities and read their posts and the other communities can see the people in your community and see your posts. If your community’s server has a problem, it does not take down the entire Fediverse, it only impacts you – but hopefully not for long! If your community’s server has lots of outages or they have rules you don’t like, you can choose a different community and take all your followers and follows with you. Think of it as how Internet email works. There is an Internet address that is associated with the host that manages your email. That address is kept on thousands of Name Servers all over the Internet so that if one is down, the entire mail system is not down. When someone emails you at hotmail.com, the Name Servers look up the address of the server that manages that domain and sends it there. That “distributes” the work load and adds redundancy. If your mail server is down, that impacts you but does not take down email throughout the Internet. Right now if you want to be on twitter, there is one address and one network location. If it goes down, Twitter is down. 404. They probably have some redundancy built in so that there are multiple data centers handling the work load but essentially one domain, one address, one entry point.

          With Mastodon, you have hundreds of (maybe thousands of?) servers with different names linked together like the Internet mail system is. The way I understand it (and I will do more research on the technical aspects), requests to look at your community’s toots arrive and are handled by your server. Requests to look at toots on journa.host, for example, are sent there and handled by their server. So it is not any more complicated than the way Internet mail is handled – it just appears complicated because it is an unusual way to handle web site posting. In my opinion, it could be made simpler with the right kind of app and one thing I am 100% sure of is that there are people writing smarter apps and working to add features to the basic Mastodon instance software.

          I will write something up on how it works and how you can connect – I am hoping to carve out some time on Sunday after I finish client work.

  13. Good morning, meeses! Friday …

    It is 37 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 55. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast. We will see the 60s again by Solstice.

    So Mr. Free Speech has decided to suspend Twitter accounts of journalists. This should not surprise anyone who has been paying attention to the rise of the right-wing. Anyone with two brain cells should have know that when an authoritarian gains power they use it to punish their adversaries and block the dissemination of unflattering information. I noticed that a lot of the banned accounts showed up on Mastodon last night – which prompted Twitter to flag all Mastodon links as dangerous. Yikes! I saw someone suggest that anyone with a mastodon link in their profile would be banned – I guess we will find out! The automated reposts, API code that was written to post on Twitter and Mastodon simultaneously, appear to have been disabled at the Twitter end. So here is what the media and government should have done: set up and host mastodon communities (servers) for their niche and leave twitter, quit, be done with it. Don’t be held hostage to bored billionaires and those who would fluff up his ego. You have websites, take it one step further and link up with a way to connect them to people who might want to read your stories. This is a huge failure of contingency planning and not surprising for an industry that ignored (and in some instances encouraged, like CNN!) the rise of fascism.

    I watched some MSNBC yesterday and was encouraged to see that the January 6th Committee will be releasing its criminal referrals and its final report next week. The best news was that the Special Counsel is throwing his net far and will be looking into the fake electors scheme – which is a crime – and that it is unlikely that those people will remain unpunished. After Watergate, a lot of people from the Nixon Administration did prison time – the violent obstruction of the peaceful transfer of power is 1,000 times worse than breaking into DNC Headquarters and covering up that crime. If no one goes to prison, it will be a complete travesty of justice.

    Okay, nose back to the grindstone. I want to try to get some accounting work done before the sun comes up so that my weekend is set for wrapping up end of year work. I want next week clear so that I can enjoy the Solstice. If you have noticed, the sunset is already a little later than it had been – this time of year the total sunlight holds steady but minutes of sunlight are added to the end of the day (and taken from the morning). That works for me!

    See all y’all later!

  14. Good Friday morning, Moosekind, and happy Dingaan’s Day—I suppose. It’s rather a sad anniversary, really, concerning the defeat of the Zulus by the Boers. Right now after a delightful day and night of rain, we have 39 F. and clear in Ashburn.

    Well, I couldn’t post yesterday, although I wrote one. I couldn’t tell you how a TV reporter and his camera man interviewed me, chuckled at the thought of “raging grannies,” and how I appeared for 60 seconds on the CBS Evening News at 5 p.m. All the grannies in my hallway heartily approve of my statement that grandmothers prefer live grandchildren. Little Ethan, who watched the news segment with Elder Son and DIL, said That’s Monty Grandma!

    Had a meeting with the head of Dining Services and a Resident Services Coordinator, and I think they’re even more excited than we are about the Winter Solstice ritual next week! They’ve managed to get the firepit in the courtyard going after 3 years, so that’s a plus. Betsy and I found someone who has a crockpot, so we can heat the cider.

    Yesterday afternoon I suffered horrors when my Lenovo laptop was hacked! OMG! Someone that I assumed was Microsoft Security guided me through a scan. Luckily, I don’t have much on the Lenovo yet, but it was very scary. I have my financial information only on my Mac, and I think I’ll just keep it there. To make matters worse, someone from Pakistan named Abdul suddenly came on, told me that he loved me, that I was a stunning granny, etc., etc., and showed me myself and the room I was in! FREAK OUT! I’ve checked and checked, conversed with someone from Security from the bank, and changed passwords on the bank and credit union account. I deleted UltraViewer this morning.

    Well, I want to go to the auditorium at 11 to hear my state senator and my state delegate speak about next year’s legislation, so I’d better get ready. Have a great day at the Pond, all.

    • {{{Diana}}} Congratulations on the interview but YIKES! on the hack. Healing Energy & moar {{{HUGS}}}

    • Holeee Sheet! It sounds like whatever security software you have on your computer is completely inadequate. The Microsoft Support scam has been around for a very long time and any security software that let it through is garbage. You need to get your computer to Geek Squad for a deep clean, someone has compromised YOUR computer and YOU. After they get it cleaned, and reset all your computer passwords, you need to get reliable anti-virus internet security software. I recommend buying Trend Micro Maximum Security – here is the link Home Products. You can get a 30-day free trial. Good luck!

      • Thanks, Jan, the nerd who set up my Lenovo told me if I had Windows Defender I didn’t need anything else! Was that a lie? McAfee bugs me every 5 minutes to buy it. I’d better make an appointment today, not that I have any time next week.

        • Windows Defender is the most basic anti-virus and does not do anything about the other types of Internet security issues like exploits, malicious websites or spyware. That was pretty bad advice – I would never recommend Windows Defender to anyone unless they were behind a firewall and protected by a smart router.

          Do not buy McAfee. For one thing, John McAfee is not just a trumper but a trumper who had to leave the country because of his misdeeds. His software is suspect and can never be completely removed. Purchase the TrendMicro that I linked to – I have been using that brand for 40 years and it is solid.

  15. It’s 30, windchill 20, heading for 41. No the windchill is not getting above freezing today. It was supposed to be sunny. It hasn’t gotten there yet. But it’s trying. I don’t need the lights on anyway. Yesterday we generated 6.6 KWHs and the m-t-d is 59.98 – after a full 15 days of generation. sigh.

    Tonight’s the family gathering. (They spend actual Xmas day with the other grandmothers.) I need to shove the cat stuff in the spare rooms and tidy up a bit before they get here. I’ve now got a MERV-12 HVAC filter and we’ll run the furnace fan the whole time they’re here. Even as cold as it’ll be after dark, I think with the fire going I can open the east window 1/2″ at top and bottom as well. We’re all vaxxed to the max. I hope that’s good enough. Because you can’t wear a mask and eat. The food part will be “traditional” – turkey and dressing, gravy, various veggies and breads, lots of desserts. And in honor of/to celebrate the fact the youngest of Lang’s boys turns 18 next week, we’re having mulled wine instead of apple cider.

    Meanwhile, I’ve got twitter stuff to do. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  16. Good morning, 29 sunny and frosty outside my window today. I have one more gift to finish sewing and then I close my workshop for this season. I’ve finally gotten into a familiar sewing groove and it’s nice to feel like I know what I’m doing again. So after Christmas I hope I can keep my sewing focus and finish a few more projects in my TBS stack.

    As always, my best wishes to all.

  17. Good morning, meeses! Saturday …

    It is 34 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 57. Sunny skies are in the forecast. I can see the moon again, a waning crescent at about 40% supine in the eastern sky. I can tell before I even go out on the patio that she is there – the light shines on the brightly on the green space.

    The destruction of Twitter by a thin skinned narcissistic billionaire would be hilarious if it did not have real world implications – the loss of a communications tool used worldwide by journalists and activists and people reporting on dangerous situations. That Elmo is asking for new investors as he burns through Tesla stock that is plunging in value is shocking in its cluelessness. Maybe he hopes to find people as stupid as he is or ones who believe that the successes of his various ventures reflect a Midas touch instead of a lot of luck buying and selling other people’s ideas and getting government grants. He reached the end of the road and his house of cards is crashing down – similar to what happened to his soul mate tRump. I need to do my Mastodon writeup – journalists are leaving now and populating Mastodon with lots of content and people are asking for help in navigating the Fediverse.

    First up, I am going to get on livechat right now with our hosting to get the 406 error fixed.

    See all y’all later!

    • Sorry, peeps, for the outage. I was on livechat with the technician from our hosting firm and we got the 406 problem resolved. We did have a posting issue for about 10 minutes.

    • If you have any problems logging in, you may have to close the moose and reopen it. We had to make a change to login security. DM me on Twitter if the problem persists.

  18. Good Saturday morning Meese. 33 going up to 41 here in Kingston.

    Puerto Rico


    Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley posted an important thread to Twitter with a critique of the PR Status Act.
    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1603600063980531714.html
    H.R. 8383, the so-called “Puerto Rico Status Act,” which passed the U.S. House on Wednesday, has serious problems.

    Without even touching the elitist and partisan power politics that led to this “compromise” bill, let me note just a few problems (of many more) with the bill. 🧵
    First, while its proponents characterize the bill’s passage as a move to “decolonize” Puerto Rico, the bill doesn’t in the slightest acknowledge the crime of U.S. colonization. Instead, the bill euphemizes it as “the inherent limitations of Puerto Rico’s territorial status.”
    Second, and related, the bill is silent on reparations. While it stipulates that Puerto Rico must pay its odious debt no matter what status is selected, the U.S. is under no obligation to address 124 years of violence, exploitation, extraction, experimentation, and displacement.
    Third, the bill does not acknowledge Puerto Rico’s “natural right to self-determination”—to quote one of the bill’s predecessors. This omission contradicts international law.
    Fourth, the bill entirely removes the Puerto Rican diaspora from the process. As such, recently settled cryptocapitalists can participate, but colonially-displaced Puerto Ricans cannot.
    Sixth, the bill’s woefully underspecified “voter education” item does not discuss—among other things—how it will address decades upon decades of political repression and stigma against independence and its proponents. There can be no fair vote in such a context.
    Lastly, for now, it is quite telling that the U.S. press is calling on it a “statehood bill”—not statehood as in independence but statehood as in annexation into the U.S. empire-state. This is precisely what the pro-annexation party wanted and won with its so-called “compromise.”
    The bill can be found here:
    congress.gov/117/bills/hr83…
    Another problem, noted by others, is the lack of discussion on the “language” issue

    • I wish they would not put up bills just for Show Votes. If they want to do something real, they should pass some bills to give Puerto Rico the money and resources to manage their own electric grid.

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