Last month, this painting appeared on the cover of Der Spiegel (here’s the international edition, in English), the most-read news magazine not just in Germany, but Europe as well. Its title is Der Feuerteufel (the firestarter), and its subtitle is Ein Präsident setzt sein Land in Brand (“a president sets fire to his country”).
To find out more about this magazine cover, see Ad Age’s article, Germany’s Leading Newsweekly Decries Trump’s Incendiary Approach.
For the next five weeks, I’m teaching an online Python class from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays. That means that on those days, I eat dinner a little earlier, which in turn means that I’ve got to have it prepped earlier.
Luckily, I have all sorts of tricks for this sort of schedule, one of which is the mid-afternoon veggie roast: Cut up some vegetables, drizzle with oil and seasonings, roast in the oven or turbo broiler for 45 minutes. It doesn’t take long to put together, and it doesn’t need to be attended to while in the over, allowing me to continue working.
Last night’s vegetable was a whole head of cauliflower in curry powder (I used Badia’s “Jamaican style” curry), truffle salt, and ghee.
While tasty, it doesn’t look pretty close up. It’s layogenic (pronounced “LIE-o-jennic”), a Filipino/English hybrid term that was BBC’s “Word of the Day” back in January. It means “attractive from a distance, but not close up,” — the “layo” part comes from the Filipino word for “far” or “distance”.
May 20, 2020: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, toeing the Trump Administration’s line of pretending everything is fine, castigates the media for overhyping the coronavirus threat.
An excerpt from his rant:
You got a lot of people in your profession who waxed for weeks and weeks about how Florida was gonna be just like New York.
“Wait two weeks! Florida’s gonna be next! Just like Italy. Wait two weeks.” Well, hell, we’re eight weeks away from that, and it hasn’t happened.
So we’ve succeeded, and I think that people just don’t want to recognize it because it challenges their narrative, it challenges their assumption, so they gotta try to find a bogeyman. Maybe it’s that there are black helicopters circling the Department of Health. If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.
Two months after the rant:
- CNN: Florida shatters US record for new single-day Covid-19 cases
- Orlando Sentinel: Florida breaks state, U.S. record with 15,300 coronavirus cases reported in single day
- Tampa Bay Times: Florida breaks nationwide record with 15,300 coronavirus cases
- Reuters: Florida sets one-day record with over 15,000 new COVID cases, more than most countries
- And even “Republican Pravda” is reporting it: Florida shatters largest single-day record of coronavirus infections in US while world sees cases spike
Nice going, Governor DeVirus.
Why play a human, elf, or dwarf in Dungeons and Dragons, when you can play a race that really knows how to have a good time: a Floridian?
This D&D parody page does a great job of describing the strange race that inhabits the swamps of America’s drainpipe. It’s actually pretty good — I would want to play as a floridian bard in my next D&D campaign!
Here’s its text:
Floridian
Much like tieflings carry the essence of Asmodeus, the floridians are descendants of a human bloodline cursed by the trickery domain. A floridian parent will pass along this curse to any and all offspring they create. Anyone born to at least one floridian parent is destined to become an agent of chaos themselves.
Floridian traits
As a floridian, your traits combine those of a human with uncanny traits provided by your chaotic nature:
- Ability score increase. Your Constitution score increases by 2, and two other ability scores of your choice increase by 1.
- Age. Floridians age similar to humans and live less than a century. However, they are likely to perish due to an accidental mishap before they reach old age.
- Alignment. Floridians are entirely chaotic with no discernible logic to their actions. Their intentions are difficult to discern but can lead to results of any alignment.
- Size. Floridians are approximately the same height as humans, though their weight is usually above average. Your size is Medium.
- Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
- Hold my Beer. You have the uncanny ability to succeed in the least likely of circumstances. When you fail an attack roll or ability check that you rolled with a disadvantage, you can choose to take the higher of the rolls instead, potentially turning the failure into a success. You must finish a long rest before you can do so again.
- Muddled Thoughts. You have an advantage on saving throws against being charmed and your mind cannot be read by magic.
- Reptile Wrangler. Whenever you make a Wisdom (Animal Handling) check to handle a reptilian beats, you are considered proficient in the Animal Handling skill and add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus.
- Language. You can just barely speak, read, and write Common and one other language of your choice. You can understand the ramblings of intoxicated creatures as long as they’re in a language you know.
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Tonight’s dinner: Mapo tofu!
One of my favorite Chinese dishes is mapo tofu, a Sichuan dish whose name translates as “pockmarked grandma’s tofu”. It’s a nice, high-protein dish as it’s made from ground pork and cut-up firm tofu, and it’s also a high-octane dish thanks to its use of Sichuan peppercorns. It also calls for lots of garlic, ginger, and green onion.
I was out of that really red Chinese chili oil that always ends up on whatever white that I’m wearing. I replaced it with a mix of Chinese chili sauce (not sriracha — this is different stuff), Sichuan pepper flakes, and sesame oil, and it still came out pretty tasty.
…for I studied physics, and I have duct tape.
Here’s the story: I was assembling a set of shelves for our front hallway, and I was having trouble driving in its screws with the allen key provided. So I duct-taped the allen key to a screwdriver, which provided the necessary torque to finish the job.