Holidays – Politics Plus

Open Thread April 5 2026

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:00 am Holiday, Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 052026

Yesterday, the radio opera was La Gioconda. You have heard part of it, since this is the opera from which the Dance of the Hours comes, and if “Fantasia” didn’t do it for you, Allan Sherman or Spike Jones did. The performance is from 1968, but airing it yesterday was to celebrate its 1ts 150th anniversary. It’s (accurately) described as a melodrama, so I won’t go into detail. Today’s featured image is a pysanky (or pysanka) or Ukrainian Easter egg. Happy Easter to all who celebrate, and Happy Passover to all who celebrate. Off to see Virgil now – will check in.[

From The Root regarding Artemis 2. There is also a woman in the crew. I don’t know how they got it past the emperor.

From ABC News referred by The Smile. This is sweet. Joe Biden got to ring the bell when his cancer was gone, but he didn’t do this. And I certainly couldn’t – not ever – not at any age.

From CBS News, also referred by The Smile. This is so much better than the “Alpha Male Camp” earlier this week.

Open Thread December 14 2025

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 3:19 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 142025

Yesterday, the radio opera was “Andrea Chénier” by Umberto Giordano. It is loosely based on the last days of French poet André Chénier who was a victim of the French Revolution. Not surprisingly, an opera about a poet has multiple arias for the character (a tenor) – four, in fact, of which the best known is “Come un bel di di Maggio” (“Like a lovely day in May.”)The plot is a bit reminiscent of “A Tale of Two Cities,” except that here it’s the woman who takes a prisoner’s place, and not to save her, but in order to die with her lover. Hey, it’s opera. What did you expect, a happy ending? OK, I’m off to see Virgil – will check in upon return.

I’m not the one to comment intelligently on this story referred by The Smile – instead, it is right up Nameless’s alley. (And this story barely scratches the surface.)

Even in darkest Louisiana there are still good humans. This is one. I wish him well. There is a video at the link.

I’m not trying to tell anyone where to shop. However, I know I sometimes find it difficult to find vendors whom I know are not MAGA, so I’m passing on this link from Daily Dose of Democracy in case it will help anyone.

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.