Liz R

@lizr2301

Celebrating rural/urban life: 35 years in NYC bracketed by decades in the boondocks. Following news, politics, tech. I am a quilter, reader, fan of gardens, wildlife, science, music. In long term recovery from alcohol and cigarettes. Potato chips next!

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Bluesky

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Liz R@lizr2301· Jul 8

The insanity... 😱

A schematic showing planned renovation of two NYC buildings with the extra floors to be added above existing structures shown in yellow.

Liz R@lizr2301· Jul 6

I took care of a bro's house, dogs and horses when he and his wife vacationed. My instructions for their shepherd were to tell him "In your place now" whenever I was going to be cooking a meal in their kitchen. LOL just the paws broke the law... so sweet.

German shepherd lying down with just his paws over the line between living room and "forbidden" kitchen. Testing me!

Liz R@lizr2301· May 24

Hmm. Memorial Day Weekend in the Catskills is looking like a cold and rainy nonstarter for seasonal residents looking to launch their brief gardening season. Of course rest of week will be warm and sunny...

sceenshot of holiday weekend weather with rain all three days and air temps below 60°F
followed by nice weather during work week.

Liz R@lizr2301· Mar 15

Yeah well back on 7/27/2009 when Fox had put up some totally fubar map of the Middle East and North Africa that had variously left out, relocated or mislabeled a few countries, they later skated on that hot mess by asserting that there is no legal requirement to broadcast actual facts...

An incredibly incorrect map of the Middle East and North Africa that was broadcast by Fox News' Live Desk on July 27, 2009

Liz R@lizr2301· Mar 12

#7syllablesentence Will this winter never end?

"Peony Cat" from the 'Neko' collection of Quilt Gate's fabric series Hyakka Ryoran.

A black cat solemnly sits amid painterly images of peonies in pink, blue and pale green on a cream background.

Liz R@lizr2301· Mar 12

A #bargello wall hanging that I call "Fire on the Savannah" -- pinned and ready for tacking. Not too happy with that grey batik in the borders, lacked what to pick up the rose hues in that floral, but time to move on from lessons learned. Otherwise a very fun project. #quilting

Bargello wall hanging in earth tones from nearly black through brown, green, grey, cream.

Liz R@lizr2301· Jan 26

How much time you figure a cormorant spends getting dressed and putting on the makeup? What a work of art. (photo credit: Paul Hayes) #birds #design #art

photo of a cormorant by Paul Hayes. The bird is really a work of art showing off so many styles - the clamshell overlays of the body feathers, the pointillism of the eye ring and jaw hinge areas etc.

Liz R@lizr2301· Jan 11

Made four "Brock House" blocks on spec once but couldn't figure out what to do with them. The answer to such issues is often to make a kitty quilt. This one landed with my sister's cats. Think the black print in the larger border pieces is "Fishbone" (maybe a Michael Miller?) #quilting #cats

Overhead view of a brown tabby and a black cat inspecting a kitty quit made of four "Brock House" blocks in blues and yellow, framed out using print scraps in pink, blues, black, yellow.

Liz R@lizr2301· Jan 5

Yeah? Well here's Planet Venus a few billion years after Mother Nature resurfaced it with a fresh coat of lava one afternoon. Probably got tired of petty tyrants throwing their weight around and decided to show how it's done. #Trump is tempting forces and fates over which he has zero control.

image of the cratered surface of Planet Venus

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 25

Here are some of your "radical left" on Christmas Eve, Mr.Trump. St. John the Divine cathedral was packed with people who know the message of Jesus Christ is love for the neighbor and stranger, not hate. Yeah maybe that's radical in the America of 2025... #ChristmasEve #NYC

Interior of St. John the Divine cathedral in NYC on Christnas Eve, crowded with worshippers for the 10:30pm service.

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 24

Christmas ham... the little rascal 🤣 #cats

My brother's grey and white tabby cat posing in a festive red white and green shopping bag, in which his earlier roughhousing had conveniently made a hole in the corner for his tail to hang out

Liz R@lizr2301· Aug 10

Same here. Hit my limit on non-quilting sewing pretty fast. Someone gave me wonderful scraps of dupioni silk to play around with, but even using stabilizers I was almost ready to kill myself after making a little wrap for an iPod Mini... the thing came out cute but NEVER AGAIN.

Silk-lined protective wrap for an iPod Mini.

Liz R@lizr2301· May 10

Consider the source: an admin of lackeys speaking to and then for an entirely malleable audience of one. An infinity of mirrors shows us less with each reflection, so we are all offered jumbled fragments of the eternal now of Donald Trump's mirror. What we learn? Seductive beauty of lies.

Satirical poster held by a child claiming to have the same weight and height (239 pounds, 6'3" tall) as was alleged about and in flattery of Donald Trump in 2018 by the US president's physician at that time.

Liz R@lizr2301· May 10

Summing it up (and Americans could well wonder for whose team Trump plays, inadvertently or otherwise).

Meme on China's view of US-China trade talks -- Xi depicted as laughing over Trump's book "Art of the Deal"

Liz R@lizr2301· Apr 28

Sometimes less is more when it comes to #quilting. For a kitty quilt fashioned from squares of neutral and earth toned prints, I machine quilted it with alternating circles and rough-drawn squares. The driving thought on this one was admittedly "just get it done!" Photo of the boss included.

Photo of the front side of a kitty quilt made from five inch squares of neutral and earth-toned prints, with a slate-blue binding.

Photo of kitty quilt showing the various earth-toned and neutral prints used for the top, and a floral print on the back that has muted blues, rust and green on a cream background. Binding is a slate blue.

Black and white kitty for whom the quilt was made.

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 9

Since researchers acknowledge that some recent releases of AI chatbots are capable of scheming to avoid detection when told a) "do this at all costs" and b) are then presented with obstacles to achieving the mission... and will then lie about what they are doing, I'd say this about us and AI:

A partial image of John William Waterhouse's 1896 portrayal of his vision of Pandora opening the legendary box...

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 5

Wondering something like that while considering these two sobering (or, apocalyptic) gems reviewed on March 22, 2024 in the WSJ. They cost more than $12 a pop, although are doubtless worth it. Perfect gift for a US Congress Critter. 😐

Image clips of the covers of two books about nuclear weapons. One is by Sarah Scoles, "Countdown: the Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons" and the other is Annie Jacobsen's "Nuclear War: A Scenario." Both were reviewed in the March 22, 2024 Wall Street Journal.

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 5

Even dumber and way quicker than Tulip Mania of the 1630s.

The text is an AI summary of a search on "Tulip Mania" and an image of a tulip in bloom, with a reference to a related piece in Wikipedia.

The tulip craze in the 1630s lasted about three years and crashed hard, although did not widely affect the Dutch economy. Still it was a very early example of the downside of speculative bubbles. At its height, very valuable things like "four fat oxen" were recorded as having been traded for a single tulip bulb of a particular variety.

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 4

Heck I more or less got this covered every morning when trying to remember how to assemble a French press. #coffee #genius

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 4

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Day 20 - Désert - J.M.G.Le Clézio, translated from the French by C.Dickson #BookSky #Books #BookChallenge 💙📚

Cover art for J.M.G.Le Clézio's novel "Desert" Photograph of the author.

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 3

Cheerful kitty quilt with faux diamonds since it's all just half-square triangles. Simple outline #quilting, I like how it looks more intricate on the solid Kona backing, a pale yellow.

Images of a kitty quilt in the making. At left the back, a pale yellow Kona cotton. At right a simple star block, made from half square triangles and squares in contrasting light and dark small floral prints. Framed with a mediium-dark orange blender. It hasn't been trimmed yet after machine quilting so the batt of the sandwich shows at top and bottom of the piece on the right along with excess backing.

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 3

Most of the front page of the NYT above the fold for 12/3 is a travesty. I cancelled then took retention offer of $1/wk for a year. Nearly hate myself for accepting. Still can't make myself read it. Editorial judgment is just shot, or else taking direction from publisher. So disappointing. #news

A screenshot of most of the landing page of NYT above the fold on 12/3/24. Focus is entirely on Biden having pardoned his son.

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 3

Dance is how the soul takes flight. #7syllablesentence

Photo of Alvin Ailey dancer Yannick Lebrun in Robert Battle's "Takademe". He's wearing bright red ribbed bell bottom pants. Don't ask me how anyone can arrive at this position in mid-air except by way of superb physical strength, a lot of practice and a belief in ability to get there and come back safely. Photo credit Andrew Eccles of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 3

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Day 19 - What You Have Heard is True - a Memoir of Witness and Resistance - Carolyn Forché #BookSky #Books #BookChallenge 💙📚

Cover art for Carolyn Forché's "What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance". A photograph in sepia tones of the author, with white text ovverlaid showing title, subtitle and author's name.

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 3

Random hit from image clips stashed as "Color Is the Thing"... that I crave in winter. Subtitle here: "It Might Get Loud" but it's the Tedeschi Trucks band setup, and not a clip from a 2008 docu of that name (the one about Jack White, Edge and JImmy Page) which btw was worth watching. #color

Photo of the setup for a Tedeschi Trucks band performance, with drum kits, amplifiers, a red and a yellow eledtric guitar. I was drawn by the bright colors and clipped the photo for my stash of "Color Is the Thing" images that I use for screensavers sometimes in winter.

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 2

So... hard pass on just having #salad for #supper ? 🙄 Gotta love the idea of #snow stopping in 19 minutes though. But even weather gods telegraph lies in the post-factual era. I've lived in the Catskills for a long time and this snow ain't quittin' in 19 minutes. It's just gettin' started.

A bracing clip from an Apple weather forecast showing a high temperature for today of 28ºF, low of º18 plus a possibly wild guess that it will stop snowing in exactly 19 minutes.

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 2

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Day 18 - Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World - Margaret MacMillan #BookSky #Books #BookChallenge 💙📚

The cover art for Margaret MacMillan's "Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World" is a black and white photograph of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George (left), French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau (center), and American President Woodrow Wilson (right) in Paris on their way to signing the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). Book title is overlaid in white text. Author's name at top of the photo also in white text, subtitle at bottom is in black text.

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 1

Speaking of #connections, when will #NYT add a #Bluesky option in the paper's "share" options? Y'all hang out here and we can easily link to your featured pieces, but out in the NYT to link back here from some other article, there's no Bluesky-share shortcut yet. Time to fix that, please!

Image is clipped from the online New York Times' list of options for article-sharing to social media. And Bluesky so far is missing (12/1/24)!!

Liz R@lizr2301· Dec 1

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers. Day 17 - The Fifth Risk - Michael Lewis #BookSky #Books #BookChallenge 💙📚

Cover art for Michael Lewis' nonfiction book "The Fifth Risk". Cover image is of rectangular wooden blocks precariously arranged in 11 levels, two or three blocks to a level, with the bottom level having only a single block to support the rest of the structure. The ends of the blocks are variously painted either plain red or else blue with a single light colored star. The long sides of the blocks are left as bare light-colored wood. Looks like a disrupted American flag. The text for book title and author is black. Background is white.

Liz R@lizr2301· Nov 30

Finally happy with an outer framing for my "Buddha in the Marketplace" wall hanging. Studio is now an unimaginable mess of rejects from the selection process. Monday's soon enough to restore order in there. Cue Etta James "At Last"! #quilting #music #blues www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qJU...