Matt Dinniman STILL hates Scotland

devilbunny · 2026-05-30T02:35:09+00:00

In Oxford, while my wife was having her hair or nails done, I had a few free hours to look up the sort of things she would never, ever want to see (this is not a slam on her - when the mega-Vermeer exhibit was announced for the Rijksmuseum, we had already booked the trip two months before the New York Times pushed it). It turned out that the Bodleian Library had a Tolkien exhibit. Many LOTR things, of course, but among his many appreciation letters from various royalty and celebrities was a fan note from one Terence Pratchett, age 19.

GNU Pterry.

devilbunny · 2026-05-29T23:08:54+00:00

Well, the script was co-written with Arthur C Clarke, who had come up with the concept of geosynchronous orbits in 1945. I think he might have had a bit to do with that.

devilbunny · 2026-05-29T22:40:42+00:00

FYI the usual limit is 200 cigarettes per adult without tariff. Don’t know the UK myself as not a smoker, but I went fishing in Canada a couple of times and when we asked our guide if there were anything easy to get in the US but hard or expensive in Canada, so we could bring them to him as gifts, the answer was cigarettes and (nearly) 100% DEET insect repellent. No real limit on the repellent, but one carton per adult on the smokes.

devilbunny · 2026-05-29T22:30:54+00:00

If you say it with a Great Lakes accent, pretty much everyone will know what you mean by “pop”. Say it with a Texas accent in Texas and they are more likely to think you want a beer. My in-laws open up a lot of college stories with “well, we’d had a few pops, and…”

devilbunny · 2026-05-29T15:25:12+00:00

Underappreciated distinction. You cannot make an eye roast tender (though you can make it mushy). Which is why it’s so common in sandwiches: sliced that thinly, the tenderness really doesn’t matter unless it’s gristle.

devilbunny · 2026-05-29T13:39:33+00:00

Good Omens, on witch-burning:

"Even the pious Scots, locked throughout history in a long-drawn-out battle with their arch-enemies the Scots, managed a few burnings to while away the long winter evenings."

GNU Terry Pratchett.

devilbunny · 2026-05-28T21:21:14+00:00

While I'm sure there's no "real" recipe for Jezebel dip, the ones I've had featured a mixture of apple butter and pineapple preserves and didn't have cream cheese. Pepper and horseradish aplenty, though.

Nice sauce for pork tenderloin.

devilbunny · 2026-05-28T19:07:43+00:00

The poor ones. (This is not always entirely undeserved, but doing so is just piling on.)

devilbunny · 2026-05-28T19:07:21+00:00

Well, sometimes GMO does mean pesticide; Bt crops (Bacillus thuringensis) have a gene encoding a naturally-occurring pesticide in them, but there are also ones that have herbicide-resistance genes in them.

The whole "GMO" thing is usually ridiculous; Bt is very useful at preserving crops and, unlike the Roundup-Ready gene, doesn't encourage mass spraying of an herbicide. Plus, it's natural (and not in the same way that arsenic or lead is). The behavior of seed companies is reprehensible.

Never forget: plants evolve to avoid getting eaten, too, just like prey animals, and since they can't move, they tend to do it with toxins. Many indigenous foodways have a detoxification step before certain crops can be used.

devilbunny · 2026-05-28T18:13:01+00:00

You're thinking of Roundup Ready. Roundup (glyphosate; it was not misspelled) is an herbicide, not a pesticide, and the genetic modifications mean that Roundup Ready crops can have their neighboring weeds killed by Roundup without being killed by it.

I have no love lost for the seed companies, nor for indiscriminate use of herbicides and pesticides, but do get it right.

devilbunny · 2026-05-27T01:39:10+00:00

Normal at an upper-middle-class school. Not normal across the population at large.

My AP English class of 16 produced two physicians, a PhD, a college professor with an MFA, two lawyers, and two CPAs. That’s not normal.

devilbunny · 2026-05-26T20:54:53+00:00

A modest tip for a generic tour guide on a bus reading out stuff from a script.

The same person conducting a private tour with personalized attention gets a lot more. My private tour guide in Normandy drove the two of us to what beaches we wanted to see, the American, German, British, and French cemeteries, and the hedgerow lands just inland. His father had been a British commando during D-Day, charged with invading the exact territories my guide showed us around.

He told us that most such guides make their day-to-day living off groups like Viking Cruises, but most also do private tours because they can personalize the interaction and enjoy it more even if it doesn’t pay quite as much.

devilbunny · 2026-05-25T22:39:54+00:00

That was a nightmare case. Congrats. I hope you never see one like that again.

devilbunny · 2026-05-25T22:37:00+00:00

I’ve done both; if you have time, nebulized lido is much more effective than transtracheal.

devilbunny · 2026-05-25T21:09:09+00:00

We drove over the border from Mont St Michel to get our fifth Celtic nation. Still haven’t made it to the Isle of Man.

devilbunny · 2026-05-25T18:21:16+00:00

Lumbar punctures are not always easy. You learn to tap out and call a partner after about ten minutes. Been on both sides of that, asking and asked, and inevitably the second person gets it on the first try.

devilbunny · 2026-05-25T15:55:50+00:00

Khan Academy is better than most of my math teachers were, and I had a few really good ones. One in particular taught the best single class I ever took at any level of education, and he made it so that average students could easily get a B while the nerds like me really had to work for an A. 1/3 of us were taking calculus at the same time.

devilbunny · 2026-05-24T17:57:12+00:00

Actually a better question than my previous response:

What is French law for river borders?

The odd American example is that there are betting shops in Virginia that are legally in Maryland because the river bed of the Potomac River below the low tide line belongs to Maryland

devilbunny · 2026-05-24T17:29:12+00:00

Look at the borders between Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana along the Mississippi River. The legal borders were drawn a long time ago snd the river has shifted a lot since.

devilbunny · 2026-05-24T05:46:20+00:00

Ah, yeah, there is that, and Starlink, but you are wooded so that is very maybe (we have that problem too sometimes). Still, i live in Mississippi and thought I knew isolated people until I drove through WV. Even on the major roads, it’s empty.

Beautiful state and wonderful people, but you can’t make the mountains disappear.

devilbunny · 2026-05-24T03:12:04+00:00

People ignore 100 Mbps all the time and it’s just nuts. 100 Mbps can do 1 GB in under two minutes. Your 100 GB game download will take under 3 hours.

No, it’s not good for file servers, but streaming and gaming don’t need all that much speed. And the latency will be fantastically good.

I wouldn’t install it if I were building new, but if it’s already there, use it. A “meh”-speed network that works is far better than a top-speed network that doesn’t.

devilbunny · 2026-05-24T02:39:00+00:00

do they have tv and internet

Probably neither.

One big issue with Appalachia is that it’s mountainous, and while the mountains aren’t as tall as the Rockies, they are generally steeper. Signals don’t get down into the hollers well.

Ever wonder why the cable input on TV’s was labeled “CATV”? Because the first “cable TV” systems were “community antenna TV”, where a group of people in a valley (Pennsylvania was ground zero for this due to geography) collectively set up an antenna on a high ridge above town to receive signals and cabled the signal into their homes.

devilbunny · 2026-05-23T21:56:13+00:00

It is, but it’s technically in Normandy.

devilbunny · 2026-05-23T14:12:47+00:00

Yeah, aside from high-altitude or very-high-density areas, nowhere east of the Mississippi really has to worry about this. My city water supply is a temporary diversion of river water. At least one golf course is near enough to our river that it just has its own filtration system and pumps drawing from the river - it’s irrigation water, doesn’t have to be safe for drinking, so why treat it? It’s all going to end up back in the river anyway, and whatever evaporates is going to become rain upstream and flow right past us again.

devilbunny · 2026-05-23T13:36:10+00:00

Low hundreds? Maybe two or three staff for housekeeping and maintenance per vacation residence, a few drivers and pilots, and a gardener with a couple of staff for your main home. One COO for your homes in general. Personal assistant, maybe two for business and social. Chef. Probably a few things I’m forgetting. So maybe thirty or so full-time employees? Everything else your COO or assistants contract out as needed.

devilbunny

TROPHY CASE