We've never enabled the on-line features of our Bosch refrigerator, and it's doing quite well by itself.

OCU

Just when Trump wants to allow AI to be used without any guardrails...

OCU

Note that in Russia, you can vote online. I wonder what Trump would think about that in terms of being susceptible to voter fraud, but when you consider that, at least in Russia, there's really only one party that you can vote for, who cares how much 'voter fraud' might be taking place?

OCU

They started to broadcast 'Star Trek' my freshman year in engineering school. Our dorm only had one TV room and it would be packed for every episode. After the show, everyone would leave to go study, but a few of us night-owls would come back at midnight as they were playing reruns of the 'Untouchables', in glorious B&W.

OCW

I just read this article and while it was interesting, I didn't understand all that much as the math was over my head (my degree was in Mechanical Engineering). However, I have a granddaughter who's graduating from my alma mater this coming May, majoring in Chemistry and minoring in Math and Physics. Here current GPA is 3.95 and she's applying for graduate school at Johns Hopkins and ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology). I'll see if she's ever heard of this sort of math before.

OCU

Related to all this, my wife and I have given up on this stupid and cynical piece of Red Texas. We aren't leaving the state, this is our home. But we are going somewhere we can still breathe free.

#3 | Posted by Zed at 2026-09-06 09:46 AM

We've always liked the Hill Country, near Johnson City and Fredericksburg, whenever we've driven though that part of Texas.

OCU

Well since this guy has only been charged with a SINGLE felony, as opposed to the original company's CEO, who was charged with TWO felonies, so I guess that's a step in the right direction.

OCU

Note that while I've never been anywhere outside the US for more than a few weeks at a time, I have visited 33 countries, and at least when it came to eating the local cuisine. I always was of the attitude that if the locals were eating or drinking it, that I would do so as well. And in the nearly 50 years and over five million miles that I've traveled internationally, I've never had any problems like food poisoning or even a mildly upset stomach, except perhaps when something was so good that I simply ate or drank too much of it ;-)

OCU

This is not a joke, there actually is a 'Trump Lake' and it's located in the Canadian province of Ontario.

OCU

What kind of virtue signaling BS is this, it was known as Gulf of New Spain, before Mexico existed.

#67 | Posted by oneironaut at 2026-08-31 12:25 AM,/I.

From a Google search:

The Gulf of Mexico first appeared with that name on a European map around 1550.

Early Names and Origins

Before the name became standard, early explorers and mapmakers used different titles for this body of water:

Mar del Norte (Sea of the North) by Spanish explorers

Golpho de la Nueva Espaa (Gulf of New Spain) in 1544

Seno de Mejicano (Mexican Sound) starting around 1541

Europeans named the gulf after Mexico because ships had to cross it to reach that land. The name comes from the indigenous Mexica people.

By the middle of the 1600s, the Encyclop ... dia Britannica notes that the "Gulf of Mexico" became the common and accepted name.

OCU

And note that my wife and I have been to several 'No Kings' rallies and I always wear a T-shirt which says 'It's still the Gulf of Mexico' with a map drawn by the early Spanish explorers which shows that the name was there long before the US was, which is the same situation with Lake Ontario.

OCU

This is just inane...

If someone in Canada goes online and opens Google Maps or Google Earth, it will show 'Lake Ontario'. However, if that request was made from the US, it will show 'Lake America'. But if the request comes from anywhere other than the US or Canada, the lake will be labeled 'Lake Ontario (Lake America)'. Now how foolish is that?

OCU

Not exactly a good time...

OCU

This is the 'fine print' that I'm sure Trump is hoping that the people will never read:

But experts have repeatedly warned that Venezuela's dilapidated oil infrastructure will take years and billions of dollars to repair. A substantial boost in production is not expected to happen quickly.

OCU

"Let's do the Time Warp again"

#3 | Posted by Corky at 2026-08-26 01:26 PM

Speaking of Tim Curry, in May of 1993 my wife and I stayed at a hotel on the River Thames near Windsor, England, the Oakley Court Hotel, which before it was converted to a hotel, was a Gothic-style chateau built by a 19th century industrialist. It had been left in some disrepair for years, but it had been used by several film companies to film dark and scary movies, including the 'Rocky Horror Picture Show'. There was a display of photos and a commentary in the lobby covering the filming of the movie.

"In its 10-page, unsigned opinion, the majority said that it was too soon for courts to consider the states' challenge because the order has not yet been carried out"

#12 | Posted by Danforth at 2026-08-24 10:27 PM

The irony is that the US Postal Service had already issued the order, contingent on the courts decision. So now, the states can proceed with their lawsuits, which could very well win in the various courts, thus assuring that nothing is changed for the midterm elections. Besides, the Court left in place an injunction against the USPS making any changes. So if nothing happens between now and next week, when early voting starts in some states, the Court's opinion will be meaningless since they can not claw back ballots already mailed or votes already cast.

OCU

Here at home in SoCal on my COX network server, my download speed was 266 Mbps and my upload was 11.5 Mbps. I could probably get slightly higher speeds as COX claims that my modem is out-of-date, but they no longer allow you to use any modems other than their own, which they charge for. Since I was grandfathered in using my own modem, I've stuck with it because those speeds are more then adequate, since we don't have fiber in our neighborhood, the difference wouldn't be that much anyway. So until it dies, I'll stick my current, albeit, out-of-date modem.

And yes, I can remember the days of dail-up internet service back when we got our first AOL account.

OCU

OCU not COU

Sorry, I thought I was responding to a different thread...

COU

What's with this anyway...

OCU

But where's the $20 million that Congress allocated for body-cams and dash-cams?

OCU

Trump keeps claiming that the US will eventually have complete control of Greenland and I suspect that this is just one move in that effort to gain control of the island.

OCU

My understanding is that Amazon is going to rebate the amount that was charged customers which was the result of the tariffs which they paid, which may be limited as a result of how Amazon does business. What rebates that will be paid, will be in the form of credits on their customer's accounts.

Busily working on/awaiting a deflection to distract the conversation.

#27 | Posted by TrueBlue at 2026-08-03 01:13 PM

And Trump has found that compelling new issue which he needs to make a 'big decision' on shortly, whether to replace the red brick pavers in Lafayette Park with granite or not.

Our #4 granddaughter, who will be starting her senior year this fall at my alma mater in Northern Michigan studying chemistry (after her first three years, she's currently running a 3.95 GPA and is already taking graduate level classes) is working on her application to attend graduate school at the ETH (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in Zurich, Switzerland (this is where Einstein went to school). I was talking to her the other day and I told her that she needed to apply for her passport ASAP, and to make sure that she does NOT get the one with Trump's image in it, which she agreed 100%.

With that in mind, she's teaching herself German. As she told me, back in high school, she could have taken German but took three years of Spanish instead since she was living in Texas and figured that would be better. She now regrets her choice, but back in her freshman year of high school she never dreamed that one day she might be going to school in Switzerland. BTW, this isn't the first time that she's taught herself a foreign language as for the last three years she's been teaching herself Japanese (her maternal grandmother was half Japanese and thought that it would be cool to learn more about her ancestry. She even joined the Asian student organization at the school, although she had to show them pictures of her grandmother and mother before they accepted the fact that she was indeed an Asian-American, albeit only 25%).

OCU