Ice Cream – Politics Plus

Open Thread February 22 2026

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

Feb 222026

Yesterday, the radio opera was “Manon Lescaut” by Puccini – his first big hit, actually. I always struggle not to laugh when she ends up dying in “the deserts of Louisiana”, but – since it’s set in the 18th century, when French-owned Louisiana stretched much farther west even than the Louisiana Purchase – it’s not nearly as silly as it sounds today. This performance was chosen by soprano Asmik Grigorian, a big fan of Mirella Freni (who was born in the same tiny little town where Luciano Pavarotti was born – there must have been something in the water.) Off to see Virgil now – will check in upon return..

This is kind of sweet. (You will likely need to unmute it)

It always warms my heart to see Joe Biden get any credit at all. He deserves so much better.

I do realize some people have difficulty with bats – and that most people are not aware how much bats do for the environment. But how can anyone not find flying foxes adorable?

Rocky Mountain Mike

Open Thread April 30, 2024

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:06 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 302024

Yesterday, I ran across a video on ice cream from which I learned that Joe is far from the first President to have a thing for ice cream. Washington did, and so did Jefferson, and Dplley Madison hostessed America’s first ice cream social ever, in the White House. I won’t embed it here because it’s over 20 minutes longbut I will provide a link in case anyone wants to check it out. The earliest ice creams, incidentaally, were made with eggs, and should therefore really be called frozen custard rather than ice cream. Among the many books I had as a little girl, there was one which mentioned frozen custard, and I wondered what it was – I was well into adulthood before I learned the distinction. Now I know, and now you know.

This from LAWdork (at Substack) was referred by the Talking Points Memo newsletter. The facts of the case itself are all too common. But the sight of conservative lawlessness being too much for even a proven, dyed-in-the-wool conservative is not quite so common. I wish AG Drommond and Mr. Glossup both complete success here.

There are multiple reason why this story from Antiques Roadshow is astonishing, touching, and mindboggling. And pertinent to America and Americans today. Christian Nationalism has in common with slavery the concept that some people are more equal than others.

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.