{"id":56708,"date":"2025-05-04T06:00:28","date_gmt":"2025-05-04T13:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=56708"},"modified":"2025-05-04T11:34:05","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T18:34:05","slug":"open-thread-may-4-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2025\/05\/04\/open-thread-may-4-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread May 4 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, the radio opera was Verdi&#8217;s &#8220;Il Trovatore.&#8221; Yes, the &#8220;Anvil Chorus,&#8221; as you may have heard on TV cartoons as a kid. The opera takes less than two and a half hours excluding intermissions, but the story &#8211; that&#8217;s a revenge tragedy which was decades in the making. And so hard to believe that many people still want it explained to them. I think someone finally told this guy, but there sued to be a caf\u00ea in Italy whose owner offered a free bottle of wine to whoever could explain it to him. Frankly, it didn&#8217;t totally click for me until the last decade. Sometimes I&#8217;m slow. But at least in this case I have good company. Now I need to go back to Friday, when I got an email from Virgil&#8217;s prison that my paperwork was expiring and they needed new paperwork by 2:30 pm that day or I would not be able to see Virgil today. Well, I didn&#8217;t even see it until after 2:30. I was able to put it all together and email it, but not until about 10:00 pm (still Friday though.). So you don&#8217;t have to worry about me being on the road today, and I won&#8217;t post a comment.\u00a0 Almost forgot &#8211; May the Fourth be with you.<\/p>\n<p>This from <a href=\"https:\/\/reasonstobecheerful.world\/solar-device-repair-africa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Reasons To Be Cheerful<\/a> pretty much speaks for itself. I could wish we could have this here, of course. But it&#8217;s probably happening where it most needs to.<\/p>\n<p>From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.democraticunderground.com\/100220289837\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Democratic Underground<\/a> &#8211; You have probably read or heard this. I&#8217;ve seen references to it but not the actual story yet.<\/p>\n<p>This is from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodnewsnetwork.org\/pollen-replacement-food-for-honey-bees-brings-new-hope-for-struggling-colonies-and-the-crops-they-support\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Good News Network<\/a>, and it&#8217;s regarding something I&#8217;ve been worried about for quite some time now. Maybe you have too. I&#8217;m not suggesting we can be complacent &#8211; but it is a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TPg0BWvhMkA?si=E4nvW-E7qsh-oPT7\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RbCrwYqaU_c?si=G49ju8luQCuAPG2K\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-56710\" src=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Buoy-named-Sue.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"526\" height=\"598\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Buoy-named-Sue.jpg 526w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Buoy-named-Sue-264x300.jpg 264w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Buoy-named-Sue-132x150.jpg 132w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 526px) 100vw, 526px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, the radio opera was Verdi&#8217;s &#8220;Il Trovatore.&#8221; Yes, the &#8220;Anvil Chorus,&#8221; as you may have heard on TV cartoons as a kid. The opera takes less than two and a half hours excluding intermissions, but the story &#8211; that&#8217;s a revenge tragedy which was decades in the making. And so hard to believe that <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2025\/05\/04\/open-thread-may-4-2025\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":56112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[4355,3814,3723,4531,3718,3811,6377,4926,5145],"class_list":["post-56708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","tag-animals","tag-australia","tag-climate-change","tag-dogs","tag-music","tag-personal","tag-pictograph","tag-randy-rainbow","tag-solar-energy","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}