Paying Forward – Politics Plus

Open Thread October 18 2026

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 5:46 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 182026

Yesterday, The radio opera was Puccini’s “Tosca,” set in Italy around 1814-1815, when Bonaparte had been exiled to Elba, but was fighting his way back, and the populists still thought he was a constitutional populist who would save them (boy, were they wrong. But the viewer kind of needs to side with them because the other side is worse.) Mario, the romantic lead, gets tortured (off stage) and executed (on stage.) These summer operas are not broadcast live; they are recorded during performance, and this performance is even older than last summer – it’s from 2022 (from China). And WFMT will have had no idea how timely this choice would be. Off to see Virgil now – will check in upon return.

Open Thread October 19 2025

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:05 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 192025

Yesterday, the radio opera was “Louise” by by Gustave Charpentier. He didn’t call it an opera, but rather a “musical novel,” the “verismo” school was getting started at that time, and composers and librettists wanted to flag their work as different. I had heard of it for many years, but never actually heard it before. Placido Domingo recorded it in 1976 and Beverly Sills in 1977 and I missed both. Not a lot actually happens in it – just parents who want to prevent their daughter marrying the man who loves her (and she him) so they can keep her at home. But the music is pretty. Off to see Virgil now and will check in when I get home.

I’m always particularly happy to see a good news story which involves a veteran – there are so many of us who are living through various kinds of bad news. This guy is even a Texan.

This is sweet – such a small thing – wearing costumes to work – can provide so much joy to so many children. (This was actually a week ago Thursday.)

Matthew was in very critical condition and was not 100% expected to get out of the hospital alive – let alone this fast.

Call me sentimental. I’m guilty as charged.

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.