Britney Griner was benefited in more ways than one by the extraordinary prisoner exchange with Russia. Russia and the US do not have a prisoner transfer treaty. The US does have such a treaty with 11 countries and is a signatory to two multilateral …

If you need blank horizontal space in Ulysses, try using a UTF-8 space character.

Ulysses does not strip blank space where that blank space is a UTF-8 character, like U+2004 (three em space). While this symbol cannot be generated in …

I had a conversation about these critters last week. They are found, fortunately enough, in Queensland, Australia but not in Thailand. Their venom is neurotoxic and extremely dangerous. They commonly grow to a meter and a half in length.

If you come …

I came across a reference, in a new biography of Colette, to the “Duke of Sodom,” a French dandy, contemporary of Oscar Wilde, named Robert de Montesquiou. I thought I’d look him up, for after all, anyone who has earned the sobriquet “Duke of Sodom” …

While the arresting officers’ body cams have not been released, at least one journalist has seen the footage. The recording shows that Paul Pelosi indeed opened the door to the officers, did not say that he was in danger, and then retreated back …

A young mother with her malnutritioned two year old son has staked out a begging post at the entrance to the BTS Metro station at Ekkamai. She is unwashed, unshod; she looks about fourteen and her son, similarly covered with the dirt from the busy …

Two ideas: throw stuff out. 10% won’t survive the move anyway. Put stuff in storage. If you haven’t gone to the storage in two years to redeem it, throw the whole lot out.

Second: Packages under 70 pounds can be shipped via US mail. You …

The American president is eighty years old.

Eighty. Years. Old.

We are ruled by a gerontocracy. Chuck Grassley, a senator from Iowa, is 89 years old and was just re-elected to another six-year term.

Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker, is 82 years old. She …

Darrell Brooks, the Waukesha hit and run murderer, was sentenced this week to six consecutive life terms on the six convicted counts of first-degree murder, plus an additional 762 years for seriously injuring dozens of other victims.

Such a sentence …

If Twitter:

–starts charging $8 for verification to meet KYC (Know Your Customer) anti-money laundering requirements

–layers on #Ripple/#XRP

–restricts access to verified accounts

–now you have a profitable payment ecosystem …

Perhaps the US would be wise to stop insulting the Saudi petroleum minister and attacking the Saudis generally and instead solicit their help with respect to Brittney Griner.

The predilection for writing letters did not begin in Bahrain. In another lifetime, I worked for the Panama Canal. One of the benefits, at least as seen by one who suffers the affliction of writing letters, was a provision of the Panama Canal Treaty …

An infant lay in a baby carriage in front of the photo studio. I was there to get visa pictures as was the infant’s father, who was from Malaysia.

A Thai-Chinese woman in her 80’s made a fuss about the infant, who I wrongly assumed was the child’s …

One undiscussed aspect of the pardon is whether those who are incarcerated on other offenses, but whose presumptive guidelines were calculated based in part on the now-pardoned conduct, are entitled to sentence reductions.

Under the Sentencing …

Property owners who delegate rental management to local companies an who may never even have visited their leased property.

Since real estate agents claim that one of their core skills is showing a property and none of these properties are ever …

In the US, it’s

.”

In the UK, it’s

”.

When writing Markdown, it’s

*. or

.*

Because it doesn’t matter if a full stop is italicized or not.

But after a while, the error ceases to leap out at you. Query: will this lead to the long-awaited unification of …

Typing envelopes is a practical use for a typewriter.

By the time you:

• open a WP program
• find “Envelopes and Labels”
• choose label
• copy addressd
• paste address
• connect printer
• change printer paper feed
• confirm paper change
• reject …

In 1975, the US Senate unanimously agreed to posthumously restore citizenship to Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis.

Statues of the former have been removed; not sure if there were ever any statues of the latter outside of Mississippi.

It is now silly to pretend that there is any intellectual integrity to Supreme Court decisions. For the past 60 years, we studied and learned from Roe. Now we’re told it was all ginned-up nonsense and that should have been obvious from the …

This is the kind of nonsense I’d expect from grifters, con artists and others of that ilk. In order to avoid the photo op showing Biden shaking hands with MbS, the invented cover story–which probably made sense sitting around a briefing …

While the killer murders children, cosplaying coward cops make sure their hands are sanitized. The coward cops of Uvalde and Parkland show that the militarization of American police is mostly cosplay.

60 years after arguing about Quemoy and Matsu

we’re still arguing about

Quemoy and Matsu.

Good news Bahrain: The number of Active Covid-19 cases is dropping. 12,747 as of 4 July. There is still a long way to go to get the numbers to the August, 2020 level, but the July trend is encouraging.

Q. “We are playing the conference champions next week and our team has had a dismal record. What can we do, that is, in a spiritual sense, to insure victory?”

A. Put photographs of a soul-eating Naga everywhere in the champions' dressing …