Don’t know about anyone else, but I was thinking they are an excellent, versatile and easily prepared protein source, dense with nutrients, which does not involve the taking of a life.

Edit: I’d been thinking of dumping social media entirely, due to the discouraging number of trolls, self-righteous moralists, snarks and ideologues, but thought it would be reddit that went – it really has become depressing to consider the future if redditors are indicative. Guess it’s not just reddit, mmm?

For the amusement of folk jumping to firm conclusions, I have raised chickens, lived on the Indian subcontinent (and you left out the fate of the Eid cows among Muslims – the streets run with blood), eat a lot of beans, and will remember in future that it is wisest to stick to my own company rather than set off people who don’t think I know how to use a search engine.

Tata.

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?

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!

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!

There were and are many more people involved in the arts who are not gay than who are, and gay people have family and friends outside their professional world. But, yeah, just go ahead and jump to the nearest convenient stereotype, mmm?

That said, average gay participation was definitely higher at that time, which, I (totally straight, btw) always thought made it more likely we as a group would have a better idea, given all the personal connections to the homophobic, the seriously closetted et alia of the underlying reality. I stand by that assessment.

Being old, I recall in the 1990s the number of Americans identifying as homosexual or bisexual was published as either 7% or 8% of the population. I was involved in the arts, where our group estimate was, with a lot of people were still closetted, the real percentage would be closer to 12% to 15%. Reading this and considering the way the US has gone since then, I think we were probably right, and I’d even go so far as to say perhaps a little low.

? Self immolation? I’m a Canadian, so we’ve been a bit distracted by other issues, but what two self immolations? Could you educate, please?