House mustards should be harder to mess up, and yet...🤷🏼.

🤦

That is probably the United Church of Christ, which is very different (positive).

I sometimes think the USA should move Thanksgiving earlier, but then I remember that it delays the Christmas commercial season just a bit. Although we do already have *some* Christmas ads, they usually don't get really heavy until the week of Thanksgiving.

It does bring up whether spelling influences pronunciation. Where i am, -ize (as in standardize) is pronounced with a voiced sibilant and -ise (as in surprise) is pronounced with an unvoiced sibilant, although my understanding is they were pronounced identically ~400 years ago.

Globally, no, but spelling in American English is standardized, even if their British English counterparts are different.

If we want to keep standardized spelling, one option is to form a language institute that updates the standardized spelling of words when the typical modern pronunciation has changed significantly.

Pronunciation continues to change; we may have reached a threshold where the standardized spelling is just too different from the pronunciation to work.

Thank you! I'm not in your district, but I have friends who are, and I am grateful they have a representative that cares about them!

Today I was helping one of those friends look at insurance options for next year, and the premiums are much higher than what I'm paying in Albuquerque!

We have an aging population, and most of them want to stay at home or with family.

Meals, bathing, and chores don't require help to be always present. Getting to the toilet can, and is often the deciding factor when considering a nursing home.

At one point in time, we could pay civil servants slightly less because federal government jobs were secure and reliable. Even with shut-down nonsense, they (and their banks/landlords/etc) knew they would eventually be paid.

I suspect it will be several decades before they are agaib seen as secure.

Tried again with a different order that had fewer sale items in 2024. This time there was a 5.7% increase.

11/20/2024: $137.41
11/11/2025: $145.18

Yeah. I order groceries online, and it seems like half the items are marked as having a price reduction, but my grocery bill still manages to be higher than a year ago.

I get a little more irritated than most when movies or books play fast and loose with their own canon, but I'm still usually satisfied with "yeah, I'm not explaining that."

I'm currently doing two socks on two circular needles, but I think I'll go back to flexiflips for next pair; mostly because straightebing out the yarn every time I switch socks slows me down.