Another Half a Year Gone...

Time's fun when you're having flies...or something like that. No doubt time seemingly passes faster and faster as the years click by. I bet Julian's time is about to speed up...spending time with his family instead of sitting in a maximum security prison...for committing journalism and truth telling. The conflicts around the world continue with US provocation. The USD continues to be at risk, and many banks are on the verge of bankruptcy. Let's dive into these stories and more below the fold.

Afternoon folks!

Here we go with three blues albums this week, King Curtis and Champion Jack Dupree start us off with a live album followed by albums from B.B. King and Bo Diddley. After that, there's an album of folkey/bluesy acoustic music from Paul Geremia and some electric blues rock from Blues Magoos and ZZ Top. We finish off in the diversity department with an album from British rock band, The Rumour.

Enjoy the tunes and have a great weekend!

Good morning!

As I compose this, I am looking at hills. I am in the Texas Hill Country, taking in the gorgeous views, making a valiant effort to relax.

Like a dumb ass, I checked my emails, wound up talking to a lawyer for an hour before I got unpacked.

Happy Friday everyone. I hope everybody is doing well. Post any and all photos, memes, or music that trips your trigger.

Needing to shed some excess pounds and being burned out on riding the bike, I recently started hiking up Cowles Mountain, a 1593 ft speed bump on the Earth's surface located in Mission Trails Regional Park, a short drive from where I live. I was pleasantly surprised to see many of the spring wildflowers were still in bloom. On Monday I decided to forgo exercise for photography and tried to capture some of the more interesting looking flowers growing along the trail. I have no clue what type of flowers most of these are other than very small.

Mariposa Lily

I watched the debate so you wouldn't have to. I was going to do a summary write up about it, but after watching it I don't want to sound biased, so I'm not going to make a judgement call on this one.

Except for this:

Watching this debate was like watching two schoolyard bullies pounding their chests about how great they are and daring the other to knock the proverbial chip off of their shoulders.

If you didn't watch it and I don't blame you if you didn't, surely, in the next few days, you all will see clip after clip of this melee, I'll leave it up to you to make your own judgement.

Whew, boy!

It's Thursday and here's an open, Open Thread!
I'm very tired. Puppies can do that! So here's a short open thread with a bit about Assange and a bit about the Dickin Medal. The what? Read below

Assange:
Julian Assange's release really made me happy. Very happy. His release was written about in stories that appeared on news websites (a couple local examples: Assange returns to Australia a free man, Mike Pence is upset at the plea deal, and some examples from around the country: New York Times on Australia's view of Assange and an article from NBC). But happy or not, I'm suspicious that his release is going to be used to try to gin up support for some political entity (or entities) or another. And the fact that he was held in prison for so long, for nothing really, is insane. Nothing was right about this prosecution. The only right thing now is that he's been released.

From https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/julian-assange-reach...

“Bayonets aren’t much good against tanks.”
-- Kurt Vonnegut from Slaughterhouse-Five