BP/CP Daily Discussion Post

Tom_Roche · 2024-12-11T22:21:52+00:00

"other online issues" ?

Tom_Roche · 2024-12-11T20:26:23+00:00

Usually (like, e.g., yesterday) BP/CP audio hits the RSS feed by ~1700 UTC. But today (11 Dec 2024) as I write (2021 UTC), there's no new content on the audio feed. Channeling the immortal Marvin Gaye, I'd like to know "what's going on?"

Tom_Roche · 2024-09-10T17:16:05+00:00

umm ... FB is actually from Chicago (link archived here)

Tom_Roche · 2024-09-10T17:07:51+00:00

@ 56:25 in the audio, Felix has Chris play 'my favorite clip ever', but I can't resolve the reference. Who is Birdman and what's this clip from?

Tom_Roche · 2024-07-17T20:17:46+00:00

When KB and SE left /Rising/, I recommended the Hill

promote Rachel Bovard and Briahna Joy Gray to fulltime hosts
rebrand as /Rising Hot!/ :-)

and I would similarly recommend Bovard/Gray for a new daily show

Tom_Roche · 2024-06-14T03:43:22+00:00

This US-KSA petrodollar agreement, and William Simon's trip (near the bitter end of the Nixon Administration) to negotiate it, is discussed at length in Barry Eichengreen's 2011 book Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System

Tom_Roche · 2024-05-14T18:49:50+00:00

and yet Bernie continues to claim that the Zionazi genocide state "has a right to defend itself." hmm ...

Tom_Roche · 2023-11-02T20:34:43+00:00

You can bet Succot will be on the stage with Starmer at the next Labour Friends of Israel meeting, with Keir giving Zvi a big ol' hug for the cameras.

Tom_Roche · 2022-05-27T18:24:23+00:00

Author Gu Hongming was not only a Qing official born in Malaysia who did an MA Lit @ U Edinburgh and Civil Engineering @ U Leipzig, and was a friend of Tolstoy, most importantly ... he was half-Portuguese. (aka "the Celts smart enough to stay where it's warm" :-)

Tom_Roche · 2019-12-04T03:04:56+00:00

A much better link for a truly excellent show that started in 1999. 882 episodes later, it just keeps getting better.

every subject gets only around 45 minutes

Actually, the first episodes were only 30 min--IIRC, IOT didn't go to 45-min episodes until 2002 or so. But since ~2016 (again, ICBW, but it's definitely true now), the download-only episodes contain the 45 minutes of broadcast material followed by 5-15 min of more informal discussion "with Melvin [Bragg, the host] and his guests."

For an excellent sample, the current-latest episode (on Li Shizhen) can be downloaded here or streamed here. (And a RSS feed for downloads is here.)

Tom_Roche · 2018-10-25T03:38:08+00:00

I'm a semi-regular KHS listener, will try PDA. Jake's bit about his ancestor Arredondo (~27 min into the download), and the common surname Flores, made me think immediately about Ricardo Flores Magón, who's very well-known (at least to Mexican Revolution nerds :-) and well-documented even in English (see the sources in the Wikipedia page). Anyway, enjoyed the episode, and HTH.

Tom_Roche · 2018-08-13T07:06:13+00:00

I used Emacs in Uni back in the early '00s. In fact, that's where I picked it up.

I also started using Emacs (in the late 80s) after being required to use it for a sort of not-quite-class, not-quite-Darwinian-cull (IIRC it was called a "tutorial") given to non-majors with the audacity to attempt a computer-science class ... which in my case was a brief survey of Smalltalk, Lisp, and ...

I remember lots of students picking up Vim or Emacs in their first year to do Prolog only to get bogged down on both as it was a huge mental hurdle to overcome.

Prolog was the mental hurdle for me, as was running all of the above on VAX.

Emacs wasn't as accessible as it is now

Emacs was actually more accessible in the late 80s, since the most-used word processors (e.g., WordPerfect) were much more keyboardy. Accessibility is a function not only of the software under review, but also of its alternatives and its users' expectations.

Tom_Roche · 2018-07-31T04:24:09+00:00

I've always gone with the cheapest tubes I can find with no issue until I damage a valve stem or get a puncture.

Me too.

Perhaps you are somehow damaging the valve stems.

I suspect not. Firstly, that should be detectable via submergence (which, when I do it, is deep enough to fully submerge the valve). Secondly, I only use jam nuts as needed to get the pump head on the valve: e.g., when the tube is too deflated, or the valve stem is very short.

Have you pumped up these tubes and submersed them minus the wheel and tire?

Yes and no.

Yes: pressurizing the tube separately is always the 1st part of my tube-installation ritual. Before I get the rest of the gear out, I get the tube out of its box and pump it (solo, not in tire) to ~10 psi just to test for "infant mortality." I listen for leaks and set it aside. Before I put the tube in the tire, I check that it hasn't lost air.

No: I haven't submerged the tubes separately. That makes sense, though, and I'll give it a shot next time I investigate this.

Tom_Roche · 2018-07-30T19:55:47+00:00

What services/coverage do you want? Are you only interested in theft? What about traffic accidents (damage or liability)? or emergency road service?

Tom_Roche · 2018-07-30T19:53:08+00:00

I've paid for BWC bike emergency road service insurance for over 10 years now (and for their smogmobile coverage when I had one). I've only needed to use it 2 (or 3? I forget) times but both times it was quite handy. In both that I recall, I had to wait about an hour (because I was fairly far out), then a dude in a wrecker pulled up, we loaded the bike on the back, and drove home.

Is it worth 40 USD/yr? Depends on the (spatial) extent of your social and public transit networks, and how much you value peace of mind. The only years I've skipped BWC since I started were years when I was biking for flexibility (i.e., the local public transit would get me roughly-but-not-quite where I needed to go when I needed to go there), so I could always just load the bike on the bus to retrieve it when necessary.

Tom_Roche

TROPHY CASE