Comments

  4. birgerjohansson says

    Halloween month in Sweden means lighting a candle on the graves of loved ones. In september I lost the last uncle so now I , my siblings and my cousins are the oldest generation left alive. It makes the whole graveyard business even more emotionally charged.

    Also, I need to stock up on birdseed to keep pigeons and other birds alive until spring. The goddamn critters are like cats, hanging about until I cough up food for them (not being a canid, I do not literally cough it up but you know what I mean).

  6. Walter Solomon says

    I’ve already started my nightly horror film tradition a few days ago. So far I’ve seen Smile, Evil Dead Rise, Evil Dead (2013), and No One Will Save You. I haven’t decided what I’m watching tonight yet.

  7. says

    For those interested: True Oktoberfest is always celebrated in September and ends the beginning of october. I’m not going to go into all the historical, logistical reasons why.

  8. mordred says

    I went hiking today. Should have used sun blocker. Still haven’t adapted to climate change, October 1st should not be that warm and sunny in Germany!

    @5 Not sure I’m allowed to celebrate Oktoberfest, as someone living in the former Kingdom of Prussia. Also quite sure I don’t want to – not my kind of entertainment. ;-)

  9. birgerjohansson says

    If uou want samples of horror films, I can recommend Brandon’s Cult Movie Reviews at Youtube.
    Also, Decker Shado – he is big on weird Japanese films.
    Against all reason, the German horror comedy “The Killer Condom” is pretty well made !

    I have heard good things about the “Tales From The Loop” series.

  10. Akira MacKenzie says

    It’s my favorite time of the year! In a few weeks I’m going to GameHole Con in Madison. I’m trying to put together a Call of Cthulhu game for my weekly TRPG group. I’ve got a list of horror movies I want to see…

    So much fun to be had before the world goes all cold and dead.

  13. birgerjohansson says

    Akira Mac Kenzie @10
    If you go to Sweden some day, try to meet up with Martin Rundqvist of the Aardvarchaeology blog – he is also an RPG enthusiast.

  14. StevoR says

    @8. mordred : “@5 Not sure I’m allowed to celebrate Oktoberfest, as someone living in the former Kingdom of Prussia.”

    Huh? Whyever not?

    “Also quite sure I don’t want to – not my kind of entertainment. ;-)

    Fair enough.

  15. Rob Grigjanis says

    StevoR @14: Oktoberfest is a Bavarian (SE Germany) thing. Prussia is in the NE. Saying Oktoberfest is German is like saying Hogmanay is British.

  16. wereatheist says

    Just another Kraut chiming in: born ‘Prussian’, grown up in Munich, now living (again) in Berlin.
    Oktoberfest always begins in sorta mid-september and ends this year on october,3, wich happens to be our (quite new ) national holiday.
    Oktoberfest is both a tourist magnet and a tourist trap, heavily overpriced (but good for Munichian economy, and for the German Finanzamt, that’s the local IRS).

  17. birgerjohansson says

    So Oktoberfest is to Germany what fermented herring is to Sweden – strictly regional.

  18. birgerjohansson says

    OT1
    Monday is the beginning of Nobel Prize week.

    OT2
    Happy 99th birthday Jimmy Carter- the last US president not to fight wars *
    ❤🌷🎆🏆
    *Biden has special forces fighting in a bajillion third world countries, so he does not count.

  19. StevoR says

    @15. Rob Grigjanis : “Oktoberfest is a Bavarian (SE Germany) thing. Prussia is in the NE. Saying Oktoberfest is German is like saying Hogmanay is British.”

    Ah. Ok. Thanks.

  20. robro says

    Oktoberfest is a Bavarian (SE Germany) thing. Prussia is in the NE.

    What would Bismarck say?

  24. Silentbob says

    なぜフランス語を話すのですか？ 騙されない人には敬意を表して頭を下げましょう！

  28. birgerjohansson says

    Yes! The system is back up again!

    🍻🎉🎈🍾😀
    Also, the Nobel prizes are trickling in.
    A well-deserved prize for the mRNA vaccine people who saved millions of lives (mine might be one of them).

    A well-deserved physics prize, too.

    And the late night TV show hosts are back again, so we can get our doses of Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert.

  29. raven says

    Freethoughtblogs was down for 1 1/2 days. Again.
    I’m sure we will find out what happened.

    Just in time too.
    OT but important:
    There is some major excitement in the USA right now.

    Kevin McCarthy ousted as Speaker of the House
    By Aditi Sangal, Adrienne Vogt, Elise Hammond and Maureen Chowdhury, CNN

    Updated 5:39 p.m. ET, October 3, 2023

    This is the first time the Speaker of the House has been voted out of his position ever.

    There is no obvious path forward to elect another House Speaker.
    Which means congress is mostly shut down for now.

  34. raven says

    OT more.
    Strangely enough, the US House has a procedure to keep going if the House Speaker is voted out.
    This was set up in case of a terrorist attack that took out a lot of House members or maybe a nuclear strike on Washington DC.

    So now there is a temporary Speaker who can run things until whenever.
    Whenever a new Speaker is elected or until the Speaker Pro Tempore is himself voted out.

    MSNBC today edited for length

    Now that McCarthy is no longer speaker, though, there isn’t a total power vacuum in the House. Instead, with the speakership vacant, they have a speaker pro tempore, or “for a time.”
    For now, House Financial Services Committee chair Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., will take up that role until the House votes on a new speaker.

    How does someone land that gig, you ask? Well, in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the House changed its rules to require that the speaker “shall deliver to the Clerk a list of Members in the order in which each shall act as Speaker pro tempore” during a vacancy. This secret list of speakers-in-waiting was meant to allow for continuity of government in case of an emergency that caused mass casualties in Congress. And as a trusted ally of McCarthy’s, it’s clear that McHenry was his top choice to be his successor if he was ever sidelined.

  35. says

    Apparently, this downtime was cause by a random crash of the PHP on the server. Don’t know why. Our host company seems to have been kind of clueless about it all.

  39. TGAP Dad says

    @PZ – 2nd crash in 3 months with >24 hour offline? Maybe time to consider a hosting upgrade.