I do tangine with leftover lamb all the time. Just start it with all the spices and lemon and tomatoes and mabye some chick peas, and add the already-cooked lamb and some red pepper chunks 30 minutes before serving, when you start the rice or couscous or whatever. How on EARTH did you end up with TWO POUNDS of leftover lamb? What does a fullgrown lamb even weigh?

Gracious. I'm sorry. I lose TONS of plants every year myself. Perhaps because I'm still a rando idiot even after all these years, that is entirely possible. Another way to frame "rando idiot" is "person who keeps trying arguably-longshot things with arguably-sladpash consistency because hey, sometimes you get lucky." Framing is all I suppose, lol.

I used to be zone 6; my area is warming up faster than many so we've recently been re-designated 7. I have several types of lacecap with which I tinker to get bluer or pinker; tree PeeGee and bush PeeGee, and a couple of oakleaf. All but the PeeGee trees are in partial or pretty full shade. I haven't ever successfully achieved panicled. (I have a serious deer issue so I have to work around that to get anything established. I've found, generally, that once a hydrange is 5+ years old, the deer don't go for it anymore; the taste of the summer leaves must change and the toughness of the winter stems/bark visibly changes.) The confusing thing is, hydrangea are REALLY easy to root and REALLY soak up nutrients so the cuttings throw off spectacular blooms; so very often you see lusciously blooming little ones, often very affordable, that look temptingly vibrant and healthy. (I learned all this during the 2020 season, when I had nothing to do during COVID lockdown but experiment with propagation.) Here, these seemingly healthy small shrubs are regularly sold in 4-6" pots in grocery stores alongside cut flowers, for like $8-15, as table decorations. But these little recently-rooted guys just don't have sufficient root balls to be ready to go out in the beds. The hydra- part of hydrangea warns us that they need a LOT of water, and without a sufficient root ball they just can't draw it from freely draining soil, even with frequent watering. I've had reasonable success keeping them going -- whether I purchase them or root them myself from existing shrubs in the yard -- by keeping them in patio pots, with saucers, with very frequent full-on soaking, for 2-3 years before putting them out in the beds.

If it was a proper real hydrangea with a full root ball (not the hothouse over-fertilized cuttings you buy in the grocery store, which often don't take if you try plonking them in the garden bed and otherwise ignoring them, ask me how I know), and you're in a reasonable zone, it should be fine. Hydrangea are actually pretty tough, and even the bloom-on-old-wood benefit from pretty substantial pruning; they branch out fuller even if they take longer to get to the height you may aspire to.

I'm so sorry. Holding you in the light.

re effects of engagement and dissemination Not merely driving a particular post higher and higher, but also leaving the digital breadcrumbs that create a almost-literal map by which the SM company (sooper-dooper easily) and other digitally competent folks (somewhat, but not all that, less easily -- whether motivated by commercial, political, or quite nefarious purposes) can trace the route to similarly-minded fear / outrage / hateful folks. It's how high-end yoga pants get marketed, and also how fascism spreads.

re SM and development of reductive / hasty response patterns This. And also, we are often less well mannered when we're not face-to-face. Even less so when there's a screen of anonymity. But it's not merely that social media rewards snark and invites one-liner snipe-and-run responses, though it does. It's also, fundamentally, a natural effect of the business model. Social media addicts by rewarding dopamine rushes. And social media business models are constructed, literally, on monetizing those dopamine rushes. There's a great deal of research in various social sciences that human beings experience, recall and recount negative emotions more intensely than positive ones. That suggests that the profitability of SM business models depends on their success in stirring up MORE outrage / fury / fear / and their amplification. I think A LOT about the implications of France Haugen's testimony that in the run-up to the 2016 elections, Facebook algorithms started out weighing a thumbs-down at 5x a "like," but by November it had ramped the ratio up to 20x.

There's way too much going on in this thread, and I'm coming in way too late, for me to participate meaningfully on the Big Picture. On this one small but important issue: ... I would add that the white evangelical view of the State of Israel has virtually nothing to do with concern for the well-being of actual Jews even in Israel (and exactly nothing to do with the well-being of Jews living in America). That worldview is motivated by a vision of end-times and the necessary precursors for it (including the in-gathering of the diaspora Over There). It is ENTIRELY possible to hold that worldview, "support Israel" as a means of hastening the coming of the next world... and simultaneously to be quite indifferent to the well-being of Jews in this world. (Or NBD/ move on when men bearing sharpened flagpoles flying swastikas and Iron Cross swarm the Capitol to keep their guy in power. Or actively disseminate Great Replacement Theory and and Soros tropes. And etc.) When "support for Israel" amounts to "hasten the Rapture at which point the Jews will be Left Behind" -- and for a segment of evangelicals, that is precisely what "support for Israel" does mean -- it is entirely consistent, ideologically, with antisemitism. (Opposition to specific policies of a particular leader of a particular state is not antisemitism. Any more than even very-strongly-held opposition to a particular POTUS/ particular US policies makes any of us Americans "traitors." This should go without saying and yet, saying it. )

re narrative arcs of resilience, redemption and getting better over time Absolutely. In literature and in life I am an absolute sucker for stories of by-slow-degrees redemption. And the older I get the more deeply I believe that adherence to the adage "when we know better, we can do better" is a freaking superpower. It enables self-forgiveness, it de-escalates small errors and allows us to see them properly sized; it makes apologies easier in many circumstances, and creates a bit of space to enable the extension of grace to others.

it's instructive that the Bible itself shows tons and tons and tons of more-complicated.

re graphic novel with narrative arc from receiving hagiography to receiving more-complicated That is a wonderful idea for a storyline, and the graphic novel format would be a wonderful vehicle to convey it. I hope you go for it. There's a sense is which this tension, and the tendency for some of us to incline towards focusing on the good parts while others seek to understand and convey the more-complicated has been played out writ large, with projects like 1619 vs the 1776 backlash to it. Both orientations are understandable and human. And when the subject is relatives, particularly still-living relatives, I think it's fine to err towards focusing on the more-laudable narrative highlights and personal characteristics. (The balance plays out differently when the subject is school curriculum, where it's not merely incomplete history but affirmatively dangerous to whitewash the complicated so as to present hagiography.)

Huh. Well, any government that *had been* limited by pesky privacy/ due process/ inconvenient warrant requirements before the breach has had plenty of time to just BUY the information up by now. If so inclined.

re Virginia Hall Wowza. I knew from Heddy; and an itty bitty bit about Virginia, but I was today years old when I learned about Fat Electrician. This is awesome.

Do go on, please.

Like other pp, I enjoy them roasted, alone or with other friends like sweet potatoes and carrots, with some olive oil and smoked paprika. Or thrown in among chicken pot pie etc. Never tried them mashed.

I've had bad luck with suction feeders -- they loose their oomph pretty quickly and also seem to have trouble with large/rapid temperature swings, for which my region is notorious. I think in your situation I'd consider attaching a bracket of some sort over the kitchen window and suspend a suet (which will attract some -- not all-- winter birds) such that it's visible from the window; and then swap that out for a hummingbird feeder in the spring. Neither will leave droppings and you'll get a nice switch between winter birds and hummingbirds. I puffy heart LOVE my hummingbird feeder. They are AMAZING to watch. And no mess.

Zillions. But a lot of them we got/gave as gifts, tried 3-5 times, and they just sit there. When the kids were here, we actually *played* the same ~10 or so over and over; and my husband and I only play ~3-5 or so when it's just us. We do Spelling Bee (online wordgame game designed for 1 person) collaboratively just about every day, a habit we started during lockdown. Before we discovered that one, we never played anything online together. (He plays a Very Great Deal of online backgammon and regularly played online poker with an extended family group during the worst of COVID.)

All of these *can* be played with more players, but our go-to family games are Quiddler (word game), Scrabble (word game), Rummikub (numeric patterns) and Set (visual patterns and processing speed), all of which work very well as 2 person games -- Quiddler, I think, is *best* as a 2-person game.

re Trader Joe's Smoked Chipotle Black Bean sauce / "elixir of life" Oh yes, pretty much everything. Soups, sauces, any tomato-based dish, all sorts. It a) imparts a nice smoky depth; b) thickens; c) slightly darkens the color. It's awesome. (not hot chipotle/spicy, more smoky paprika with just a smidge of tang.)

I use ground turkey for just about anything my mother used ground beef for (burgers, meatballs, spaghetti, meatloaf etc); I just use Very Generous Dollops of Trader Joes' Smoked Chipotle Black Bean paste and a well carmelized onion to give it flavor. We call that TJ stuff "the elixir of life" around here.

Or I. RIP to a very wise woman who served her country, profession and family with patience, grace and and temperance.

Sigh. I remember how elated I was when Reagan appointed her. Quite the legacy no matter where you stand and squint from. (She could not get a firm to hire her upon graduation magna cum laude from Stanford Law; she ended up working without a salary at the San Mateo Attorney's office. ) I'm off now to investigate iCivics, which I had not been aware she had founded after she stepped down from SCOTUS to care for her ailing husband.

~20 minutes. If I'm in a city where it's more interesting to people-watch, I'll regularly choose to walk much longer distances than that, but I mentally categorize it as "taking a walk" rather than "my destination is within walking distance," IYKWIM. I cracked up the first time I was in Amsterdam, and I didn't know where anything was relative to wherever I was, and every time I asked anyone, literally anyone, if my next destination was "within walking distance" they invariably answered yes if it was anything less than 5 miles. Hearty folk those Dutch, and the terrain is flat, I guess.

@maize , I agree that hyperbolic language is unhelpful and it behooves us all to be mindful of our use of it. I see a real distinction between the use of the term "censorship" vs the term "book ban," however. "Censorship" is, to my mind, a word that conveys an act of government that curtails expression. When a prison warden blacks out portions of outgoing letters: censorship. When military command limits outgoing or incoming information: censorship. When the DOJ enjoins a newspaper from printing classified material or grand jury materials that the outlet has lawfully acquired: censorship. When a municipal governments issues a regulation that BLM placards cannot be placed on a town square where other placards can be: censorship. (There may be limited circumstances where such actions are warranted.) Content decisions by private companies may *look* superficially similar, as when a private mall allows its pavillion to be used by some organizations but not others, or a newspaper to publish some op ed or letters to the editor opinion but not others, or a social media platform to remove some types of posts but not others. But there are any number of distinctions between the actions of government, with the force of law behind them, vs the actions of private companies making private decisions based on their assessment of where their customer / advertiser base is at, or the image they wish to convey, or their corporate values or etc. Those types of actions to my mind are not "censorship," and I would count the use of that language there as hyperbolic/ incendiary/ unhelpful. Publicly funded public libraries are something of a grey area when it comes to "censorship." The "publicly funded" side of their operations suggests there properly should be some sort of mechanism for societal input to the values that guide the curation. That's difficult to effect in practice -- it's not feasible for all 18,000 of the people, or all 12,000 of the adults, in my town to weigh in on each and every book and video and puzzle our library acquires; there are good reasons to give a fair amount of discretion to the professionals who work hard to be well informed about new titles in their respective areas; there are bad reasons to fear a tiny handful of loudmouth cranks from wielding disproportionate influence. And the "public access" side of libraries' mandate and purpose for existing includes, I think, a mission to enable folks from different walks of life to find material that help them -- a library in a heavy-majority Christian area with a stated or (more likely) de facto policy to not carry any books about other religions, for example, would not be serving its "public access" mission very well, even if its governance board were content with such a policy/ practice; even if some loud townspeople were demanding it. It's a balance; the balance is often tricky, trickier when kids are involved. But in the "no books about Islam" library hypothetical, I don't think the language of "book ban" would be over the top. I still wouldn't quite use "censorship" in that case -- a library procurement decision is something short of an overt act of a government entity, or of book-burning. But I think we do need *some* sort of language for library restrictions on books based on content that a handful of folks complain about. I mean, in that hypothetical, they are banning a whole category of books. In FL, legislators actually passed a list of books that school libraries were prohibited from acquiring. It's a thing; it's becoming more of a thing; we need language for the thing. What language makes sense to you? (And all this is a definite rabbit trail off the OP, which is something very much narrower, a private company flogging outrage to displace a competitor!)

The issue seems to be that a particular private sector company is wielding very targeted panic-flogging in an extremely intentional and cynical way so as to displace a competitor. Wielding astroturfed Porn Panic as opposed to the prior rounds of White Guilt panic or Trafficking panic or LGBT Grooming panic or whatever. Once again melding CRT!!! culture war brouhaha to extremely specific profit ends. Am I missing something?