Post Thanksgiving Leftovers
I keep meaning to write, I keep meaning to write, I keep meaning to write...
So here comes a flood of unrelated things.
Thanksgiving came and went. I made ~seven meals worth of food for the occasion. Bought gravy, green bean casserole, a stuffed turkey breast roast (to cook at home), small pies (pumpkin, apple, and pecan from Mariposa), and ice cream (cinnamon and maple walnut from Gracie's). My parents sent some cranberry chutney (my Thanksgiving fave). I made mashed potatoes (with buttermilk and celeriac puree), sweet potato casserole (with chopped dates and pecans and cultured butter and egg, topped with brown sugar and more pecans and marshmallows), buttermilk biscuits, honey-butter, cranberry sauce, and maple whipped cream. I did most of the food prep in advance so that the day of was just cooking the turkey and making sure things were ready at approximately the same time. Start cooking after breakfast, have a relaxing midday dinner, put off dessert until the late afternoon to the point where you're basically having a full dinner's worth of pie, that's the way to go! Then 3-5 days of leftovers, adding items as necessary to round things out (no soup this year, but I did make leftovers sandwiches and a sort of turkey stroganoff).
I spent some time this week watching various bits of testimony and the prosecution's closing statements from the Ahmaud Arbery murder trial, and the thing that struck me was what a relatively straightforward application of the law to the facts the verdict seemed to be. The felony assault statute in question didn't require intent or injury, just action that would reasonably cause someone to fear serious injury. The self-defense law and jurisprudence in question didn't allow someone to claim self-defensive in the midst of committing a felony. And the citizen's arrest statute that was in place at the time required "immediate knowledge" of someone committing a crime (not just vague suspicion that they'd maybe done something at some point) to justify detaining them by force (and even then only reasonable force).
Striking to compare that to what a convoluted process it was to actually get the law to be applied. (The first of three prosecutors to look at the case has now been criminally indicted for obstructing it, which is really unusual!)
And then in the news this week there's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the case that's going to overturn Roe, catapulting the country into a new political era that's going to be weirder than people expect (even given the expectation that it's going to be weirder etc.). I guess I can't rule out the whole range of outcomes, but I don't think "approximately uphold the central etc. of Roe/Casey etc." has the votes. "Zygotes have the same suite of constitutional rights as human adults" probably doesn't either (maybe three). But I think there's a really broad set of plausible outcomes in between. History in the making. :-/
Kid got her second COVID vaccine. Was much more crowded at the vaccine center than for the first one, we had to wait in line for about 90 minutes. The new variant will surely be here soon. We're looking forward to traveling for the holidays for the first time in a long time. We'll see we'll see we'll see.
On my mind today: This video essay about MrBeast's latest large-scale YouTube production. The guy is an entertainer of note for sure, a bit of a marketing genius.
Eristic improvements: Recognizing more words by sight, improved arithmetic skills, sounding out words some (in both directions). This entry was originally posted on Dreamwith.
comments are there.
So here comes a flood of unrelated things.
Thanksgiving came and went. I made ~seven meals worth of food for the occasion. Bought gravy, green bean casserole, a stuffed turkey breast roast (to cook at home), small pies (pumpkin, apple, and pecan from Mariposa), and ice cream (cinnamon and maple walnut from Gracie's). My parents sent some cranberry chutney (my Thanksgiving fave). I made mashed potatoes (with buttermilk and celeriac puree), sweet potato casserole (with chopped dates and pecans and cultured butter and egg, topped with brown sugar and more pecans and marshmallows), buttermilk biscuits, honey-butter, cranberry sauce, and maple whipped cream. I did most of the food prep in advance so that the day of was just cooking the turkey and making sure things were ready at approximately the same time. Start cooking after breakfast, have a relaxing midday dinner, put off dessert until the late afternoon to the point where you're basically having a full dinner's worth of pie, that's the way to go! Then 3-5 days of leftovers, adding items as necessary to round things out (no soup this year, but I did make leftovers sandwiches and a sort of turkey stroganoff).
I spent some time this week watching various bits of testimony and the prosecution's closing statements from the Ahmaud Arbery murder trial, and the thing that struck me was what a relatively straightforward application of the law to the facts the verdict seemed to be. The felony assault statute in question didn't require intent or injury, just action that would reasonably cause someone to fear serious injury. The self-defense law and jurisprudence in question didn't allow someone to claim self-defensive in the midst of committing a felony. And the citizen's arrest statute that was in place at the time required "immediate knowledge" of someone committing a crime (not just vague suspicion that they'd maybe done something at some point) to justify detaining them by force (and even then only reasonable force).
Striking to compare that to what a convoluted process it was to actually get the law to be applied. (The first of three prosecutors to look at the case has now been criminally indicted for obstructing it, which is really unusual!)
And then in the news this week there's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the case that's going to overturn Roe, catapulting the country into a new political era that's going to be weirder than people expect (even given the expectation that it's going to be weirder etc.). I guess I can't rule out the whole range of outcomes, but I don't think "approximately uphold the central etc. of Roe/Casey etc." has the votes. "Zygotes have the same suite of constitutional rights as human adults" probably doesn't either (maybe three). But I think there's a really broad set of plausible outcomes in between. History in the making. :-/
Kid got her second COVID vaccine. Was much more crowded at the vaccine center than for the first one, we had to wait in line for about 90 minutes. The new variant will surely be here soon. We're looking forward to traveling for the holidays for the first time in a long time. We'll see we'll see we'll see.
On my mind today: This video essay about MrBeast's latest large-scale YouTube production. The guy is an entertainer of note for sure, a bit of a marketing genius.
Eristic improvements: Recognizing more words by sight, improved arithmetic skills, sounding out words some (in both directions). This entry was originally posted on Dreamwith.
comments are there.