Okay, I'll Explain

 My Wife didn't understand my Facebook post--which was just the picture below:

The FBI seized a "fully constructed" Lego set of the U.S. Capitol from the home of an alleged insurrectionist. 

What does the FBI think they can prove here?  Are they not sure they have enough evidence that the guy was trespassing in the Capitol and the Lego set will put them over the top?

Maybe the FBI has watched one too many 'heist' movies and they think his sinister plot depended on the detailed model, provided by Lego.

Contrast

 

With flat light, you can still kind of see the break line, it runs almost vertically.

When I tilt it a bit, it's really easy to see the etching.

BTW.  These pills are our elderly female dog's incontinence drug--estrogen.  They work like magic. She gets half a pill per day, wrapped in American Cheese, so she will eat it.

Another Accepted Post!

 David writes:

"This may be off-topic, but your post reminded me of something from a few days ago:

"I had been looking into this Knight Professorship program because of the controversy around tenure for Nikole Hannah-Jones at UNC, and found out that Michael Pollan is a Knight Professor at UC Berkeley.

"It seems, on one hand as if it is laudable for a foundation to facilitate getting people, who could be exceptional professors, but who lack the normal academic credentials, in front of students.

"In the case of NHJ, it looks like a colossal mistake—her work doesn’t come close to academic standards, she hasn’t really broken new ground in journalism and hasn’t done any teaching.

"In the case of Michael Pollan, this seems like a perfect example of why the program is great. He is a very compelling speaker and has written a bunch of books which are journalistic and very influential. One thing that comes to mind with Pollan: Was the Knight money really the only thing stopping Berkeley from offering the professorship?"

Althouse posted it Here but my response was to this post.  In fairness, she had two Michael Pollan posts in one day and I was admittedly on a tangent--to both of them.

Not, No Signal, But Certainly, Not Much Signal

 If you look at past and current infection rates in the UK, it looks pretty scary:

But let's look at the death rate:

Last time the case rate went this high, the death rate went from high single digits to the high 400s per day.  Now it's jumped from the high single digits to, 21.  I conclude that the vaccine is working, though I would like to see more data about who is getting infected.  An alternate hypothesis is that D is more infectious for those who are not immunized, but less deadly.  And of course it could be and probably is a mixture of this and vaccinated people becoming infected, but having great survival rates from the vaccine. 

The previous death rate was approximately 500 deaths / 25,000 infections, so one in 50.  Now, (with rounding) about 25 deaths / 25,000 infections, so one in 1,000.  A 20-fold difference in this outcome.

I'm Half Italian and Only Now am Realizing

 

That the Italian flag has vertical stripes.  It's not shocking, it's just that it never really occurred to me that there is a flag, almost just like it, but horizontal.

The reason for this was that I had been watching a bunch of Wimbledon over a very rainy 3-day weekend and marveled at how no American men were left and yet Canada and Italy each had two men left.

Well, I was right about Canada, but not Italy.  I thought that a name like Márton Fucsovics didn't sound very Italian, but reasoned that professional tennis players are kind-of world citizens:  They choose a place that is nice to live in and which has the kind of weather which allows you to train year-round.  Italy has pretty nice weather compared to most of the Slavic areas.  Anyway, I noticed his flag was different from the very typically named Italian, Matteo Berrettini's flag.

So I learned something about the Italian flag and something about the Hungarian flag too. 

A Rainy 4th Of July Weekend

But we still got to do everything we wanted to do: 

On the 4th, I got in a run during a break in the rain--I would have happily run in the rain, but it was nice to see the sun.

Later, I fired up the grill when it was mostly sunny.  When it started to rain, I wheeled the grill to a place under the new shelter we just installed and I was able to grill, without the rain drowning the coals or wetting the meat.

After dinner, it got nice again and everyone went outside and lounged under the shelter.  I had wheeled the grill back to its normal place in the sun, or rain.

Much later, some fireworks were set-off and I was kind of glad it was raining again, since one of the small rockets landed in an oak tree branch and a small fire was burning up there.  I'm pretty sure the tree was never in danger and all that was burning was the firework itself.  But better safe than sorry: The garden hose just reached the spot (after I stood up on the deck railing) and after a few tense moments, all was well.  We set off one more large rocket and decided to not test our luck with the arrays of tiny ones.

Another break in the rain came on the 5th and so my wife and I explored a new (to us) trail nearby.  It was very buggy and the trail didn't go far.  But the town forrest had been harvested in 2019--according to a sign I saw on the way to the parking spot--so there was much open area and we found ripe blueberries growing in there.  We braved the deer flies and mosquitoes long enough to enjoy a couple handfuls of the tiny but very sweet and tasty berries, before making our escape.

It Should Have Been An Emergency

 It was Saturday the 3rd of July and we had plans.  I was watching Wimbledon tennis and my wife had plans to either do a cardio class, or treadmill if the class was cancelled.

Either of these plans require electricity, which just went-off around 8:00 AM.  I've done it so often, it was almost too easy:  Open the garage door manually, wheel out the generator and plug it into the outside 220V socket, fire the unit up, go to the basement and shut-off the main breaker and all the other breakers, energize the socket breaker then all the others one-by-one.  Go back out and release the choke on the generator.

I got Wimbledon back on the TV once the cable box reset itself and the wife's class remained cancelled so we decided to find out if the generator could handle the treadmill.  It could!

We were back on track!