SoINeedAName

Pineapple Peeling by Pros & Pendulums Dancing

Posted by SoINeedAName at 6:38 am Politics

Jun 022026

Pineapples are a common street food in SE Asia, so finding a way to increase production increases profit.
This Malaysian street vendor has it down to a fine art:

Why are we still peeling pineapples like cavemen? 🛠️🍍This gadget does it perfectly in seconds. Lazy? Maybe. Smart? Absolutely.#pineapplehack #funnyvideo #asmrcooking #foodhacks #cooksky #beestrot

— Beestrot 👨‍🍳 (@beestrot.com) 2026-05-15T10:43:15.969Z

Typically hand-peeling to get this artistic result takes 2-3 minutes, but this gadget gets the job done in under 30 seconds.

From Harvard Natural Sciences Lectures

I found this fascinating and mesmerizing.

The period of one complete cycle of the dance is 60 seconds. The length of the longest pendulum has been adjusted so that it executes 51 oscillations in this 60 second period. The length of each successive shorter pendulum is carefully adjusted so that it executes one additional oscillation in this period. Thus, the 15th pendulum (shortest) undergoes 65 oscillations. When all 15 pendulums are started together, they quickly fall out of sync—their relative phases continuously change because of their different periods of oscillation. However, after 60 seconds they will all have executed an integral number of oscillations and be back in sync again at that instant, ready to repeat the dance.

Harvard’s classic pendulum waves demonstration

“Sisyphus” the Cat Gets a Helping Hand

Posted by SoINeedAName at 1:27 pm Politics

May 262026

Cats in Turkey are deeply revered and treated as communally owned pets rather than strays to the point they’re viewed as the Soul of the nation.

This happened at Sabiha Gokcen Airport in Istanbul, Turkey.

Sometimes In Our Lives We All Have Pain

We All Have Sorrow

But If We Are Wise

We Realize There’ll Be Tomorrow

(PS: I know my lyrics are a bit different than written – but I like mine better. And it’s the first time I’ve combined a GIF w/ an audio track from Audio.com)

The Michelangelo of Chainsaw Sculpture

Posted by SoINeedAName at 9:02 am Politics

May 192026

First from yesterday’s post:

“Yesterday, I wore for the first time my third experiment in knitting pants.”

This reminded me of what I think might be my all-time favorite graffiti. It was so well-known and liked that it actually got a write-up in “The New York Times” back in February 1967 – although it’s archived:

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1967/02/12/82582599.html?pageNumber=259

The graffiti was originally written in a gay bar in Greenwich Village way back in the day when the Village was pretty much a gay ghetto.

GRAFFITI POSTER:

“My mother made me homosexual.”

Some Wag with a wonderful droll sense of humor wrote right below it:

“Cool! If I buy her the yarn, do you think she’d make me one too?”

.Now to the amazing skill using a chainsaw to create a sculpture:

Gatekeeper(𝔒𝔠𝔢𝔞𝔫sℜ𝔲𝔰𝔱|ℑ𝔪𝔤𝔲𝔯)

— Chris Dorman (@chrisdorman.bsky.social) 2025-09-20T01:35:13.032Z

Kinetic Sculpture Over Colorado’s Gazebo Lake

Posted by SoINeedAName at 1:34 pm Politics

May 122026

An amazing kinetic sculpture in Colorado is detailed in this link:
Off the Beaten Path | Green Mountain Falls Art Installation – Poetic Kinetics

Off the Beaten Path | Green Mountain Falls Art Installation

And the intros in these YouTube videos also provide solid information. – so just enjoy its unique beauty …

Off the Beaten Path Aerial Sculpture | Green Mountain Falls, Colorado – YouTube

“Off the Beaten Path” in Green Mountain Falls, COLORADO 🌲 | Green Box Art | Patrick Shearn – YouTube

Experience ‘Off the Beaten Path’: Kinetic Art Installation in Green Mountain Falls, CO – YouTube

Tuesday Fun Filler

Posted by SoINeedAName at 2:59 pm Politics

May 052026

Since JD now enjoys a respite on Tuesdays, I thought I might share some (mostly) NON-political tidbits I’ve come across.

The first one is a mesmerizing and amazingly choreographed video titled “Storm” about a school bully performed by an all-boys UK boarding school.
There’s actually the longer version that provides the prelude to the dancing – but it’s the dancing that I found amazing.

The way the outfits here create flashes of blue and white is very mesmerizing.

— derek guy (@dieworkwear.bsky.social) 2026-04-29T05:48:46.387Z

Your Earthbound Crew Wishes You a “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TomCat!”

Posted by SoINeedAName at 1:14 pm Politics

Mar 132026

The Sequel to Hegseth’s Classless Comic Book Mocking His War Crimes

Posted by SoINeedAName at 2:12 pm Politics

Dec 012025

MeidasTouch Facebook page announced this morning that “Pentagon Pete” Hegseth just posted an AI comic book mocking war crimes.

“Pete Hegseth just posted this amid accusations he has committed serious war crimes”

Believing that patriotic Americans would not let this travesty go unanswered, I ventured to Hegseth’s social media post (which might not show up because it’s X).

https://x.com/PeteHegseth/status/1995291042346852861

And I wasn’t disappointed by those answering the challenge, so I culled the best ones and put them together as a GIF cautionary tale about war crimes.

TRIGGER WARNING: The panel close to the end depicts a fate similar to Jeffrey Epstein’s while in prison.

A Riddle Worth Its Weight in Gold

Posted by SoINeedAName at 7:48 am Politics

Sep 062025

In a time long, long ago there lived a wise and generous king. As with all kings, he was extremely wealthy.

But what set him apart from most rulers past and present was he loved sharing his good fortune with his subjects.

And just as much as he enjoyed spreading his good fortune around, he enjoyed a good riddle.

The king posted this riddle and if his subjects could solve it the king would disperse the gold among his people.

He showed his subjects five royal purple velvet bags and then displayed the five gold coins that each bag contained.

He explained that each coin weighed exactly one pound … EXCEPT for one bag that was filled with five fake gold coins. And each fake gold coin weighed exactly one pound and one ounce.

He pointed to the royal scale beside him and noted that it was extremely accurate. He told his people that they could have one –but ONLY ONE – chance to use the scale to try to determine which bag held the fake coins.

And whatever they decided to weigh had to go on the scale ALL at the SAME TIME.

They couldn’t put one bag on and then closely watch as they added another to see how the scale changed.

Whatever they wanted weighed had to go on the scale at the same time – and they only had ONE CHANCE to use the scale.

If his subjects could figure out which bag had the fake coins, the kind king would disperse all the gold among his subjects.

Would you be able to figure out how to use the scale JUST ONCE and successfully find the fake bag in order to enjoy some gold?

I trust everyone will be on the honor system and avoid Google, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc. – and figured it on their own.

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PHP is a programming language used to build websites. We have it at all through our hosting partner, BlueHost. In order to update it, we have to go through Bluehost. During his life, TomCat was the only one who had access to our account there. I (JD) am now the only one. I have been to BlueHost and investigated updating our PHP to 8.3 or even to 8.1. I found instructions to do so - in fact, I found two conflicting sets of instructions. I went through one set of the steps and got the message that Our site could not handle 8.3, but that it had successfully updated to 8.1. I then went back here to see what it looked like. But I couldn't get in - either as an administrator or as a reader. It was just gone. I had to reach BlueHost by phone. It was determined that Politics Plus is in fact not compatible with any version of PHP newer than the one we have. BlueHost therefore uninstalled it for me, and the site came back to normal. Of course, like everyone else, I care about security. But I also am aware that TomCat elected to use different providers for several of the services that BlueHost provides, for instance backups. We are backed up daily - but not by BlueHost. However, out PHP is through Bluehost. I feel that if they are not worried about the older version, I am not going to worry about it. I believe that our security here is all or mostly through WordFence, whom I trust.