Coffee

[flowerbug]

Good Morning.

Looking out the kitchen window before slicing a banana for my late breakfast. Made a mistake on my forecast, first some wind and a chance of snow. Then, the overnight temps drop into the teens. Anyway, with the check for snowfall, I see the neighbor across the road come out of his house. THREE motion detection lights come on. The furthest away from him is about 50 yards!

These aren't even the lights of the neighbor with the "don't tread on me" sticker in the back window of his truck. He isn't home and was last seen departing with his ex in their 3 year + broken relationship of separate households. His light was on almost continuously when the slightest breeze would trigger it as his US flag hung beside the door, 24/7 from fall 2020 until it blew to shreds this winter ...

I'm very thankful that my neighbor on the bedroom side of my house doesn't have one of those lights! The light on the neighbor's garage on the other side will be a distraction as the tree leaves by their driveway break their buds. That thing is bright! And, unfortunately, the tree's shadow doesn't fall across our kitchen window. Dang near blinding when we are standing at the counter and a breeze thru tree leaves triggers it!

Steve

there should be a national law that says if you have an outdoor light on timers and motion detected but also that it should be shielded enough that it doesn't shine past the limits of the property. light pollution is a real thing and it does do damage to the environment. many creatures life cycle is geared by moon and even starlight, having lights on all the time at night is just wrong (and also the waste of energy).

when i was dating someone up north she had a bedroom window that faced a neighboring Jehovah's Witness church parking lot that had a bright light. it was a new light so she mentioned it to the church people that it was annoying and they didn't change it. she mentioned it again, nothing happened.

so we got a 4x8 sheet of plywood, painted pictures (in very loud and obnoxious colors) and put it up facing them. solved the problem, but it was something they should have done.

 

[baymule]

Neighbors on one side, close by, have lights that shine in 2 bedroom windows. I put up blackout curtains and it's like a dungeon in there now. DARK.

It rained all day yesterday. Cold and damp outside, would rather be lazy and warm, but outside calls!

 

[Artichoke Lover]

there should be a national law that says if you have an outdoor light on timers and motion detected but also that it should be shielded enough that it doesn't shine past the limits of the property. light pollution is a real thing and it does do damage to the environment. many creatures life cycle is geared by moon and even starlight, having lights on all the time at night is just wrong (and also the waste of energy).

when i was dating someone up north she had a bedroom window that faced a neighboring Jehovah's Witness church parking lot that had a bright light. it was a new light so she mentioned it to the church people that it was annoying and they didn't change it. she mentioned it again, nothing happened.

so we got a 4x8 sheet of plywood, painted pictures (in very loud and obnoxious colors) and put it up facing them. solved the problem, but it was something they should have done.

Don’t mind me taking notes over here...

 

[Artichoke Lover]

i tried to read Great Expectations (i've come to call it Grape Expectorations since then) several times and never made it, yet other books of his i did not have that same trouble. i now take most authors of that era with some grains of salt as they were paid by the word a bit too forwards in their thinking. i was able to get through some of Jules Verne but i think you'd need some extreme efforts to get me attempt any others. Shakespeare made a bit more sense to me - it didn't pay well to put a theatre full of people to sleep (perched aunts (ants) to dream)...

I’m sure you already know that a lot of authors back in those days had there works published in serials in magazines or newspapers. So for original readers it would have been somewhat like following a tv show or radio program is for us know. Some of these end up being pretty dense once they were put into books.

I have both those books. I think both kids read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, but I am not sure I got either one to read A Tale of Two Cities. I read that in school. I used to read a lot and so did my mother and brother. After my mother went blind she listened to talking books for the blind. My brother said he was starting to read again. I stopped reading when I got married. DH did not read and seemed to need somebody to watch a TV show WITH him. He would just kind of stare at me while I was reading, almost like he was wondering if his TV show was not as good as my book. lol

I’m guilty of bringing a book into the living room while watching tv. I was only accused of being antisocial once. My response was to ask if it was really less anti social than the other family that was scrolling on their phone with earbuds in.

I read all those books in school because mostly I was made to. I liked Sherlock Holmes and read all of those stories, so when I started homeschooling I was following for a few years a program that had a list of all the classics and age levels to read and my kids hated them. They made it through some of them, but DD totally rebelled against Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and for some reason DS thought I was insane for making him read Frankenstein. I bought a homeschool program later that they had to send in work and had tests graded, so they had their own reading list and book reports still had to be done, but they had series they had to read like some of Dickens and also Shakespeare. They did not seem to mind reading done in chapters and listening to the teacher discuss with students about the books, but to give them a book and say read this and do a book report by such and such day, total rebellion and they still do not like to read. I think it is because of computers and the way people communicate now. When I was younger we did not have a television and I read every one of Nancy Drew and I read all of the Black Stallion books and other horse books, and later Jane Eyre, and they were my choices and when I had to read something for a book report like one of Charles Dickens then I was unhappy too. DD actually opened Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and had me read a page and I closed the book and said okay, you do not have to read it. LOL

I was homeschooled! Mom once told me that she never had to give me a reading list because she knew I was reading most of the commonly assigned books anyway. She said that generally all she had to do if there was one she wanted me to read was to point it out while we were at the library and say she liked it as a kid and I would take it home and read it

 

[digitS']

I thought of putting this post on the current Pea thread since those posts evolved into a discussion on hallucinating squirrels. So, maybe, this would fit right in . Instead, a conversation on "reading" makes more sense, with regards to this article .

Restoring and attributing ancient texts using deep neural networks - Nature

Ithaca—a deep neural network for textual restoration, geographical attribution and dating of ancient Greek inscriptions—collaboratively aids historians’ study of damaged texts.

www.nature.com

Using Artificial Intelligence to help with understanding and the historical and locational placing of ancient Greek inscriptions. This points to the problem of the plundering of archeologically important sites that has been going on forever. But anyway, if inscriptions are in fragments or have been moved - where were they originally? When were they written? What all might be done to determine the information inscribed and, perhaps, missing?

As far as reading this scholarly work --- I read the Abstract .

Steve

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I’m sure you already know that a lot of authors back in those days had there works published in serials in magazines or newspapers. So for original readers it would have been somewhat like following a tv show or radio program is for us know. Some of these end up being pretty dense once they were put into books.

I’m guilty of bringing a book into the living room while watching tv. I was only accused of being antisocial once. My response was to ask if it was really less anti social than the other family that was scrolling on their phone with earbuds in.

I was homeschooled! Mom once told me that she never had to give me a reading list because she knew I was reading most of the commonly assigned books anyway. She said that generally all she had to do if there was one she wanted me to read was to point it out while we were at the library and say she liked it as a kid and I would take it home and read it

The hardest thing about homeschooling was having kids who did not enjoy reading. Drove me nuts. lol

 

[Artichoke Lover]

The hardest thing about homeschooling was having kids who did not enjoy reading. Drove me nuts. lol

I can imagine. I only did one round of English tutoring back in high school but it was a joy(sarcasm if you can’t tell) I have memories of my cousin who was also homeschooled and my aunt both sitting at the table crying over literary essays more than once during our Highschool years.

In my case. I took two classes at a local homeschooling group in Highschool and I had that I loved but the second was bad enough that it resulted in tears, throwing books and some creative language on more than one occasion. I never minded essays but if I ever have to fill out another study guide for a literature class it will be too soon. That last class was what convinced me I didn’t want to be an English teacher.

 

[flowerbug]

oh, my, good laugh of the morning, Mom was putting a dvd in the player to rewind it. the dvd player remembers the discs you've recently played and will remember where you left off so she thought that the disc itself was remembering where she stopped it. since she doesn't like this series and we stopped it part way through a disc last night she thought she had to rewind it or play it to get it so that others didn't get stuck at the same point.

i'd mentioned to her before that this was a local thing to our dvd player and not the dvd itself. *giggles more*

 

[digitS']

Did you catch ..

. this scene ..

. on tape

?

 

[flowerbug]

Did you catch ..

. this scene ..

. on tape

?

no, but it has made me smile this day a few times thinking of it.