I just got an email from the weight loss program I did in 2015/16 that they're temporarily out of the chocolate-flavored meal replacements, and thought "Is this the same flooding affecting cacao production?"
Research suggests there is indeed a cacao shortage, in which climate is also a factor, but more in Ghana and Ivory Coast.
When I was a kid we were told that Mother's Day was derived from "Mothering Sunday",which was a day which was a day when bound apprentices got leave of absence to visit their mothers. No idea if there's any truth in that, but it makes a good story. And it would support the Mothers' Day punctuation.
The Wikipedia entry on the day suggests that it was more about mothering in general - Virgin Mary, bounty of mother Earth, etc. - whence visiting mother church, whence giving servants a day off to do so.
Reacting to Anna Jarvis's efforts to establish Mother's Day in 1913, Constance Penswick Smith created the Mothering Sunday Movement.
That is, the day did exist going back centuries, but its modern revival by Smith was in reaction to the American version.
I call Father's Day "Mother Fuckers Day. "
Reminds me of a story of how my BIL was once being bad as a teenager and his mom called him a son of a bitch and everyone was like "uhhh"
It's just the symmetry is right there.
Apparently the Northern Lights reached all the way down to Texas? Like people in right outside town saw them? I'm very disappointed - always wanted to see them and just didn't know to look. :(
I assumed you get 30 seconds, just like the eclipse. Make the most of it.
No, they're going on all night, supposedly hasn't hit the peak yet. Im pretty surprised that they'd get anywhere near you though. We got a faint image with a 3 second exposure.
Visible with the naked eye hear. Streaks running straight overhead.
I posted a pic on FB which os striking because it includes the moon. Setting in the west, as it is wont to do.
🙏🙏
The Bible prophesied 7-year Tribulation is at humanity's doorstep & the time to escape is very short. To read more, pls visit https://bibleprophecyinaction.blogspot.com/
Seven years is less than I'm thinking.
11: I think they're supposed to continue through tonight, so you have another shot. NYC is cloudy and light-pollutioned, so we're hopeless.
People were putting up beautiful pictures they took and I thought I was missing something. Turns out the pictures that looked nice and were from Pittsburgh were time lapse. That's like taking "eclipse photos" but putting a big ball in front of your camera lens.
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NMM to Roger Corman. American cinema since the 60s is unimaginable without him. Just the number of top list talent he discovered, mentored, nurtured is astonishing: Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Jack Nicholson, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd, Dennis Hopper, the list goes on and on. A real mensch by every account and never failed to make a buck on a picture. There will never be another like him.
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20 It's night. If you don't do a 2 or 3 second exposure it's just black.
I thought they were cheating because I couldn't see anything that was clearly a northern light.
Light pollution easily masks the aurora borealis. It's not cheating to take a long exposure shot, but the colors are paler in real life, at least this far south.
Where I was (and I'm guessing where Moby was) you literally couldn't see them with the naked eye, only with photos. Which does seem different than just needing long exposure to capture what you were seeing.
Maybe they could be seen with the naked eye here if you got somewhere that was both dark and had a good view of the northern horizon, but I failed at finding a good place.
My favorite picture of the week is the NYPD assistant chief who maced himself.
21: "This joint looks like a meeting of the Roger Corman Alumni Association." --Robert Towne on the 1975 Academy Awards, where he, DeNiro, Ellen Burstyn, Francis Ford Coppola, and Carmine Coppola all took home Oscars. (Corman himself was in attendance, as the American distributor of the Best Foreign Language Film-winning Amarcord.) (Burstyn had a fairly length set of TV credits before she appeared in Pit Stop, but on the other hand Art Carney shouldn't have beaten Nicholson.)
Apparently, I'd conflated Roger Corman and Russ Meyer.
Interesting the Netherlands hosts the flower auctions.
Cut flowers in the US mostly come from Colombia, I think. I haven't heard about any shortages but I haven't been paying close attention.
Except for peonies, which are a lucrative niche industry in Alaska due to a fortuitous intersection of economic and ecological conditions.
I understand that there's a carve-out in the wildlife protection laws that allows Alaskan Natives to hunt a certain number of peonies per year using traditional methods (harpoons, kayaks), so they've managed to keep the skills alive.
34: This link explains it briefly. Basically, because of the cooler climate peonies bloom later in the summer in Alaska than in the Lower 48, so they're available for weddings at the times people typically prefer to get married.
They're also bigger because of all the sunlight, but the timing is the main thing.
I thought 37 was about the Portuguese.
woo hoo! kiddo got his first acceptance by a peer reviewed journal! 🎉🎉🎉
Interesting. Implication being, Chile and NZ supply Chinese New Year?
Chinese New Year is on my son's school calendar. There is also "Nirvana Day". To be clear, it wasn't a day off even thought it was on the calendar. I tried to get him to dress in flannel, but he wouldn't go for it.
While I am certainly no Buddhist, it seems unlikely to me that Nirvana is subject to scheduling.
Oh right. It's probably just a Buddhist holiday.
February 8 or 15, usually. There's no reason _not_ to wear flannel.
Congratulations to you and the kiddo, dq!
thank you mobes charley & barry! now all that is lacking for a v fond mother is evidence of a nice young man on the horizon 🤣.
they're available for weddings at the times people typically prefer to get married.
That's interesting because my impression (unscientific, personal experience) is that spring is the popular time for weddings - in the US people prefer summer?
Yes, because if the bride is a high school student, it's easier for her to get away.
I don't know how accurate it is, but the first list I found said the most popular months in the US for weddings are (in order): October, September, June, May, August.
The weather is better in October in much of the U.S.
Prom is usually in May, so you notice the pregnancy by July and plan as quickly as you can to minimize the chances the baby shows. You probably can't make August happen, so you've got September and October.
53: yeah, there's presumably a huge difference from state to state for that reason. October wedding probably lovely in South Carolina. Not in Maine.
October is probably your best bet for good weather for wearing formal clothing as far north as New York.
At least the first couple of weeks of October.
And apparently I was wrong and August is the commonest month for weddings in the UK. Unless there is a global pandemic. https://www.statista.com/statistics/933431/most-popular-wedding-months-in-uk/
I went to one once that was on 31 December. Reception rolled straight into a Hogmanay party. That was a fun evening...
My cousin's kid got married outside in Kansas in August. Fortunately, only the actual wedding was outside and that side doesn't do proper religious weddings.
We never developed much of a habit of celebrating our wedding anniversary. The day we picked was a beautiful Saturday in September, but then a couple of years later, someone else picked the same day for other things.
We got married in November, but yes, summer and early fall are more popular.
My cousin's other kid just invited us to a November wedding in Texas.
Which I think means they'll be legally married in the normal states too.
I'm not a lawyer, that's not legal advice.
If it is legal advice, it isn't good legal advice.