So, of an estimated 348 million Americans, roughly 3 million, less than 1%, please note, work for the US federal government directly (the Armed Forces are a separate matter and a separate budget). Of those, DOGE has managed to lay off slightly over 2%, while spending 14.4 million dollars on its own operations in just the period of time between January 30 and February 8: after that, no figures have been released.

Why do I keep hearing my Mom’s voice muttering Penny wise, pound foolish?

I’ve been working out at home since the late '70s/early '80s, as I found gyms in that era seriously woman-unfriendly. I splurged for a simple bench, a barbell/dumbbell set, a cheap area rug and a book by Arnold Schwarzenegger on workouts for women. At my peak, I was pressing 130% of my body weight, and able to bring my head down to my knees without fracturing a vertebra. Nowadays, my aim is to be able to carry my own groceries 9 blocks home, chase the cat up the stairs and down the hall when it’s time for his meds, and defend my wallet as needed.

I prefer this. It allows me to focus, protects me from dorks who think I need their advice or should surrender the machine I’m on because they need it, saves $75-100 a year in membership fees, the cost of ‘proper’ gym clothes, the time and money travelling and I can work out when it fits into my day. I recommend it, but you will need a level of self-discipline and a daily routine that works for you. Don’t just buy the weights and start flinging them around: find a good book or two/a couple of websites and learn about basic nutrition needs, the best times for exercising, and why you need to cycle your exercises and take a day off regularly.

Don’t be discouraged if it takes a while to get into it, and see results. If you miss some time, just go back to it when you can. I can’t explain how good it feels every day, being fit, but it is worth it!

If cherries are expensive, blame capitalism, not cherries. Cherries are densely nutritious: one cup of American cherries has less than 100 calories, but 12% of the vitamin C you need in a day, vitamins A, B6 and K, potassium, copper, manganese, is very high in polyphenols – which protect against diabetes, brain disease, heart disease, certain cancers, aid in muscle recovery after strain, and ease inflammation, especially in the joints. As a bonus, cherries also contain serotonin, tryptophan and melatonin, which elevate your mood when you are awake and then help you get a good night’s sleep.

You can buy all those things separately, as supplements, for significantly more than the cost of a cup of cherries, or you can buy an entire pound of your favourite type of cherries for between $US2.20 and $US5.26 depending on type (prices as of yesterday). In Canada, the price when converted, is about the same. I would not recommend trying to get all your nutrients just from cherries, though: many years ago, a friend and I raided a neighbour’s tree and ate our fill, then spent some time in our respective bathrooms learning that cherries also have a lot of fibre!

Japanese and Chinese myths and legends have excellent representation in games and movies: the Egyptians have representation and followers everywhere! The Celts and Germanic peoples contributed pretty much everything found in European fairy tales. The Middle East gave us their myths and their gods, and people from European/North American cultures know at least a few Hindu Gods and their tales, again, often thanks to video games. That leaves sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania, and the Slavic and Siberian myths ‘underrepresented’. Can’t say about middle and South American ones: I suspect they are better known in the Americas than in Europe, but I dislike them, so haven’t the background to be sure.

Ah, but Pimento, mon frère (ou peut-être ma sœur), that would be so boring, and inspire no science fiction whatsoever! It would mean that humanity made things far more complicated than they needed to be because we just can’t wait for more evidence to start hollering that we’ve got it all figured out and my idea is the END OF THE DISCUSSION!

My mother’s wedding ring. My father was a monster, so it’s not because of the marriage it represents. It was the cheapest he could get, it’s thin and worn down and battered, and, of all the kids, she gave it to me. When I die, however I am disposed of, that ring goes with me, because… she gave it to me!

We use Wikipedia a lot, mostly to understand references from another country or culture, the rest to answer the question: “Who the hell is s/he…” The latter enquiries are often interesting, but rarely resolve the real issue, which is “… and why is s/he famous?” At any rate, we send a goodly annual donation, because without Wikipedia, we’d be even more out of touch than we already are!

Canadian English, a jumble of Parisien and South Ontario French avec un levain de québécois, Bangladeshi Bangali, and old fashioned Cadre-speak.

Ooooo. You know, that would have been painful, had it not been so entirely off base. Thanks for the laugh…

Um… if you look at the post again, you will find that the doctor in question is a PhD, admittedly in neuroscience, which does produce results used by medical doctors. But there is no indication the woman in question has ever, or will ever, practise medicine in a clinical setting. For that matter, there is only the inference from the mention of a US podcast that she is even American, mmm?

But, then, I infer from your userrname that you are male, and from your post that you are American. So I am not, at this point in history, terribly surprised if you have jumped to a wrong conclusion about the actual content of a woman’s doctorate.

Signed, another woman with a doctorate that has nothing whatsoever to do with practising medicine in the USA, although you’d never know it from the number of Americans who immediately tell me their symptoms upon introduction. (Ah, yes! I think Napoleon died of something similar on Ste. Helena. Or possibly he was poisoned. But then French history is not my field, either.)

The Guardian, The Tyee, BBC, CBC, Reuters and AP, with a dash of utterly unreliable press from abroad.

It seems to take more keywords to home in on the kind of speciality items I look for, and does not always appear to detect connections between those keywords, for example in trying to find certain kind of veterinary support devices made to national specifications. One of the other commentors says Kagi is okay for shopping, so maybe I’ll give it a whirl because I’d love to be free of Google once and for all.

I’m interested, but a bit reluctant. I find DuckDuckGo quite adequate for most things, except shopping online, something that I have to rely on for certain categories of items. How is Kagi on shopping?

Gee! Up here in Canada, we’d be delighted if he’d just… walk away. Preferably, say, due east from the Atlantic seaboard, wearing cement overshoes.

You were born into a highly social species. The basis of human society (and that of many other social species) is co-operation and mutual aid to increase the individual’s chance of survival and reproduction, make life for group members easier and, at least since Neanderthals and Denisovians, longer, rather than, as Thomas Hobbes opined “nasty, brutish and short”. While it is quite true that there are those who game the system to reap more than their share of the benefits while giving less or nothing back, overall, those who give more are more likely to ‘earn’ the respect of their fellows and gain the help they need to live as well as possible within whatever circumstances they find themselves.

Don’t be too sure that the evil face no consequences. Until their book is finished and closed, you cannot know they will not wish once more to ride down the slope on Rosebud. I knew a woman who was the head nurse on a terminal ward for years – to this day, I don’t know how she did it. She told me one evening that, in all those years, no one had ever died wishing they’d made more money or achieved greater power, but many of the elite that passed through her ward died alone.

As an old Canadian socialist with the lumps to prove it, I agree. There is so much performance, and so little action. I spend time on reddit, trying to get keyboard warriors to understand that posting an opinion will not magically cause the fascist Administration to collapse and get a lot of “The media refuses to cover us!” bullpuckey. There are thousands of newsrooms in the USA that are not owned by billionaire tech bros or MAGA devotees (see, for example https://www.trustworthymedia.org/ › list-of-independent-media ) and most social media is still wide open to pictures and facts about your actions. If you are acting, let the independent media – most but not all of whom are progressive, check first – know and post your pictures (faces blurred if need be) and stories everywhere you can reach people.

Meantime, buy Canadian, buy local, or don’t buy at all, at least it’s something!

Alone: separate, apart, isolated from others; solo, without company; exclusively, uniquely; without aid or help. I don’t see anywhere in the definitions in the OED, Merriam-Webster, or at Dictionary.com where it says your allies and/or companions have to be capable of winning the war alone. Most of the countries in the Empire declared war within 24 hours to one week after Britain did. The fact we lost tons of materiel and human lives to German submarines suggests rather strongly that, far from being alone, Britain was receiving materiel and soldiers well; before D-Day, The reality is that the partisans and resistance fighters, the colonial soldiers, the other nations also fighting on their fronts were all part of the same anti-Nazi alliance: Britain was emphatically not alone. It simply had the best orator and propagandist at the head of its government.

And, yes, you are right about the majority of Indian deaths being civilian. I admit I have always considered them with the soldiers because so many of them died of starvation when Britain confiscated their food for its own people.

I do wish people would stop with the “Britian stood alone.” stuff. Even before Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, there were Allies fighting all over the world, resistance movements in every single continental European country, famously France, but also the Nederlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Norway, Denmark, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The entire British Empire was at war, either based in Britain, as saboteurs on the continent, on fronts from east Asia to the Sahara – Canada, Newfoundland, Nepal, Australia, New Zealand – India alone lost 2 million fighters (look it up!), Burma, Malta, South Africa, Egypt, and southern Rhodesia. China did not just surrender blindly: before 1941, both Mao and Sun Yat-sen had armies fighting the Japanese which kept them from attacking the Soviet Union after Hitler turned. Mongolia and Korea never stopped fighting, either. Britain endured the Blitz, it is true, and Churchill certainly made some great speeches about ‘standing alone’ while he was sacrificing literally millions of ‘colonials’ to preserve his European troops. But it was, and is, propaganda.

True or not, one can avoid the whole issue by using your phone as a phone, maybe to send texts, with location, mike, and camera switched off permanently, and all the other apps deleted or disabled. Sure, Google will still know you called your SO daily and your Mom once a week (NOT ENOUGH!), and that you were supposed to pick up the dry cleaning last night (did you?). Meh. If that’s what floats the Surveillance Society’s boat, I am not too worried.

Thanks for clarifying that.