After twenty years in winterific places where it snows for real, I came back to Seattle a few months ago, and the city's first snowfall of 2022 was on Wednesday. About half an inch fell where I live, atop a hill on the city's west-ish side.

Snow is infrequent here, but it happens, and even for Seattle, half an inch is very nearly no snow at all. For this feather dusting, though, they closed the airport, sent kids home from school early, and put chains on all the city buses' rear tires.

Maybe more snow accumulated in other parts of town, or maybe Seattle is run by wimps.

Last week, my flatmate Dean offered to cook an impromptu Thanksgiving dinner for me and the other flatmate, Robert. I said OK, and the meal was OK.

He's a professional chef, as he often reminds us, but Dean and I share a refrigerator, and his food handling habits frighten me. Raw meat and leftovers sit uncovered in the fridge, sometimes until after they've molded.

And he offered to cook for us again last night.

Ah, no thanks. I chanced it with his beef for Thanksgiving, but last night he was prepping shrimp, and seafood is a little more susceptible to listeria or salmonella and everything else you don 't want as a side order.

Dean and Robert shared the shrimp without me, and as it cooked, and even now the next morning, it smells… wrong to me, too pungently shrimpy. And during the night, there was a lot of traffic to the toilet.

Mostly, though, it was 'no thanks' to the shrimp because I didn't move into this house to be anybody's buddy, and I don't want to eat two two dinners with Dean in a week.

Yesterday's Google doodle was animated, and that's stupid, Google.

It didn't make me smile, and I didn't even look at it. I annoyed me is all, same as ads that move when I'm trying to read an article, so I used my ad-blockers to make the Google logo go away forever. I'll never see another of their too many doodles, unless one's good enough that I want to see it.

'Cranky old fart' is what I call this page, and not for nothing.

Here's the news you need,
whether you know it or not

• Congress votes to avert rail strike amid dire warnings

Most of what's on your shelves, and probably your clothes and your car and your bed, rode on rails to get where you bought them. A railroad strike, looming to begin on December 9th, would be a Very Big Deal, so Biden and Congress are making this strike illegal before it happens.

Republicans would like to outlaw all strikes, and probably will when they're next in power. Meanwhile, Dems and Republicans have worked together to make this particular strike illegal.

Here's hoping the unions have the balls to strike anyway. Labor has a long history of breaking the law — civil disobedience, it used to be called — and when the law is wrong, breaking it is right.

American railroads are fabulously profitable, and all the workers are asking for is paid sick leave. Fuck, yeah. Strike, I say.

• Secret 9/11 memo reveals Bush rewriting the history of the 9/11 attacks and the warnings he'd tuned out

Anybody here seen my old friend George? Can you tell me where he's gone? Thought I saw him stealing the Presidency, and not giving a damn about terrorists until 9/11/2001, and then morphing that attack into a war that had nothing to do with it...

• Starbucks illegally refused to negotiate with union, NLRB rules

• Amazon CEO says company won't take down antisemitic film

• US approves anti-drone system sale to Qatar worth $1bn

• Beliefs about humanity, not higher power, predict extraordinary altruism

• U.S. to pay millions to move tribes threatened by climate change

And it never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, because climate change isn't 'coming', it's underway. It'll kill billions, and we're not doing squat about it.

• City of LaFollette investigator shredded documents tied to investigation which led to two officers fired

And it never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, because all cops are bastards, or they know who the bastard cops are and do nothing about it, which is the same thing.

McCarthy says Republicans will investigate Jan. 6 committee’s work

And it never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, because Republicans are the enemy of common sense, common decency, simple truth, and democracy.
Links I liked

• Why you should stop reading news

• Biden just knifed labor unions in the back. They shouldn't forget it.

• The Caganer: a weird tradition in the Catalan Christmas culture

• 8 essential gadgets from the 1980s that are now obsolete

• Pong is now 50 years old. Here's the story of its invention.

• How on earth did that crow do that?

• Garden hermits

• Berserk llama syndrome

• Blue Peacock

Mystery links
Like life itself, there's no
knowing where you're going

• click

• click

• click

♫♬ Mix tape of my mind ♫

• "Crystal Blue Persuasion" — Tommy James and the Shondells

• "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" — Ennio Morricone

• "Lovely Day" — Bill Withers

• "Ride Captain Ride" — Blues Image

• "You're So Cool" — Hans Zimmer

The End

• Aline Kominsky-Crumb

• Christine McVie

• Donald Perkins

• Gaylord Perry

12/2/2022
Tip 'o the hat to Linden Arden, ye olde AVA, BoingBoing, Breakfast at Ralf's, Captain Hampockets, CaptCreate's Log, John the Basket, LiarTownUSA, Meme City, National Zero, Ran Prieur, Voenix Rising, and anyone else whose work I've stolen without saying thanks.
Extra special thanks to Becky Jo, Name Withheld, Dave S, Wynn Bruce, and always Stephanie...