I just got the MMR vaccination. I’m too old to have gotten it as part of standard childhood vaccinations and I certainly don’t want to get measles as an adult so I figure it’s cheap insurance.

Democratic Front Runners Update By John C. Dvorak, July 12, 2019

I don’t generally agree with Dvorak, but he makes some good points here especially about the 2016 election but also about Hillary.

Putting pigs in the shade: the radical farming system banking on trees | John Vidal | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/13/pigs-radical-farming-system-trees-climate-crisis?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium=&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1563007238

New England Is Crisscrossed With Thousands of Miles of Stone Walls By the middle of the 19th Century, New England was 70 percent cleared, primarily for farming. Slowly fields were abandoned and the forest grew back leaving thouseands of miles of abnadoned stone walls running through them.

Does anyone have any pointers to good, useful online resources (forums, blogs, groups newsletters) about How to self-publish? I’m trying to seperate wheat from chaff here.

Old news but worth repeating Former Mozilla exec: Google has sabotaged Firefox for years ZDnet.com

Dear Democratic Presidential Candidates: Social networks are not the real world.

What the Declaration of Independence Said and Meant by Randy Barnett (Reason.com)

The assumption of natural rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence can be summed up by the following proposition: “First comes rights, then comes government.”

Source: Khurt Williams: Island in the Net with thanks.

I know it is no longer fashionable to have statues of great people in our public spaces in America. But I would like to see more statues of Frederick Douglass in our parks and squares. A lot more.

• Diet Orange Crush does not have the bite I remember from regular Orange Crush. That was decades ago so my memory might be off or my taste buds have changed.

• Diet Sprite is no longer called “Diet”. Tastes funny. It’s called Zero Sugar or some such. Tastes funny.

• I always preferred old time 7-Up before they ruined it, decades ago, by making it taste more like Sprite.

• I miss Canfield’s pop. Particularly 50/50 and their Root Beer. People outside of Chicagoland won’t understand.

• Canada Dry Ginger Ale (both regular and diet) is still being made. Yay!

• Most of the good root beer brands have disappeared from the shelves. What’s with that?

Sorry, I just don’t see the British going for MLB. They already have cricket, which does not take up huge amounts of space, is hard to play and has a nap time built in for the fans, why bother with MLB?

Buying recycled paper products locally has become a challenge. Local supermarkets that 10 years ago had a wide range of recycled paper now seem to have gone dry. Seems like corporate America has taken over this niche with products that imply eco-friendlyness on their packaging with marketing words like “responsible” and “Sustainable” but are short on details like actual percentage of pre and post consumer waste, the use of chlorine in their process and even where it’s made.

It all seems a little dodgy to me.

Fortunately there is Amazon where you can better sort through the details, even though the price seems to be constantly rising on all recycled paper there.

I’m trying a different route from recycling by trying renewable bamboo based facial tissue. We’ll see how this goes although I admit to being skeptical.

Of course, every time I find a product that I really like it gets discontinued or so expensive and hard to find that it might as well be discontinued. This happens so much that I’m afraid to give anything my Brad Seal of Approval lest it disappear.

I’m becoming addicted to the Apple News app.

Hotels/motels a lot of things like soap bars don’t need to be wrapped in plastic, paper will do.

I’m not quite sure what you can do about the plastic film covering the plastic drinking glasses. It denotes that the glass is clean and unused but there has to be something more environmentally friendly than plastic film to wrap them in.

Same thing for the fast food industry, utensils can be wrapped in paper not plastic film.

Traveling with an iPad Air 2 and an iPhone is a pretty effective, light weight, combination. The iPad has a cellular data card just in case hotel WiFi is bad. When WiFi is good, I can stream shows on the tablet in the evenings. Good kit.

I can now state, IMHO, that Nescafé Classic dark roast instant coffee tastes better than Tasters Choice.

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

– Henry David Thoreau

From the Archives: Using Webrings for Defining Sub-Communities on Micro.blog Um, I forgot I wrote this. I just did a search in the MB discovery section for “webrings”, which returned one of @smokey ’s weekly summaries which had the timeline thread about this article.

cc. @JohnPhilpin

This sounds good: Vivaldi to give abusive sites the middle finger with built-in ad blocking

I stumbled across one of the best reviews/essays for a TV series collection on DVD that I have ever read. It’s a DVDtalk.com review of the complete Danger Man a/k/a Secret Agent series. If you like spy films, if you like vintage British Cult TV, if you like noirish films I urge you to watch Danger Man, which is one of my favorite TV shows.

Don’t take my word for it, read the review (above), which is long but well worth it.

Starting Your Own Webring on Webringo.com

You need a ring host. I have used Webringo.com recently and everything there is in working order, with no spam from Webringo and no ads being inserted into rings. Honest and clean.

1. Register an account at Webringo.
   
2. Read through Webringo’s Help and FAQ section. This helped me a lot.
3. You are registered and logged in. Now you want to find the link to “Create a Ring” from the left menu.
4. Fill in all the spaces on the Create a Ring page. After you hit create you should get to a section where you can customize the colors, style, type, logo design of the default ring code that will be given to anyone that registers to join your ring. Save your edits.
5. My memory is a little rusty here so bare with me. At this point you may need to add the ring code to your own webpage. You may have to sign your own site up as the first member to do that. You will get your choice of the default ring codes and you add that code to the page you have designated.

This is about where my memory ends. It was pretty straight forward. It’s free so you can play around with it and learn. Feel free to create a demo ring first to learn on, you can always delete it.

Tips:

• Be specific about who can join the ring.
• If you already have a community of people interested in your topic that qualify for ring membership, contact them individually before to step #3 above and see if they are interested in joining the webring. It’s hard to get people to join a webring that only has one or two sites.
• Joining an existing ring is easier than creating one.
• Make the ring code easy to find. Preferably it should be on the same page people entered on.
• As Ring Master, you must preserve the integrity of the ring. This means 1. sites should be qualified to be a member, 2. Ring codes must be working, 3. ring codes must be easily findable. Suspend members that don’t display the ring code. Visitors will not use a ring that is broken or too hard to navigate.
• The ring code is there not only for navigation but is also there to recruit new ring members and/or new readers.
• Webringo has it’s own Private Messenger system called “Ring Mail”. As Ring Master you should check this regularly to see notifications of new applicants or messages from members.

The, “It’s Interesting to Me File”: I’m surrouded by train tracks here but the line closest to were I live seems to have less traffic on it these days. I’m not sure if that is true for other lines.

Does train traffic seem lighter to anyone else?

I have not synced my iPhone with my car yet. I know it works but I generally don’t answer phone calls while driving so I thought I’d skip it. But I did try plugging in the iPhone unsynced and Apple Music came up. I couldn’t get it to play. Maybe I should download some songs to see if that would work?

PinePhone $149 Linux smartphone could support Ubuntu, Sailfish, Maemo, LuneOS and more - Liliputing liliputing.com/2019/06/p…

On the evening of D-Day, 6 June 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addresed the American nation with this prayer:

“My fellow Americans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

“And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

“Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavour, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilisation, and to set free a suffering humanity.

“Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

“They will need thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

“They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men’s souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

“For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

“Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into thy kingdom.”