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š Home Entertaining: Chili Bar
A chili bar is a fantastic, stress-free way to host a cozy gathering. Prep everything ahead so you can enjoy your š guests.
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The "Prima Ballerina" fountain is located in Kosciuszko Square in the town center of PoddÄbice, Poland. Unveiled on August 3, 2024, this public installation features three ballerinas standing 2m tall, crafted by Polish sculptor MaÅgorzata Chodakowska who currently lives in Dresden. Her work lies at the intersection of sculpture and water installations and her portfolio includes projects in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Chodakowska's work is undeniably wonderful!
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JUST IN: Cheerios announces the first-ever resealable cereal bag, partnering with Ziploc to keep cereal fresh longer.
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This was deeply disturbing to watch. Most of the audience invited to chant āFuck Israelā, āFree Palestineā and āFuck Zionistsā have little understanding of the history behind the conflict, Israel or Palestine.
What should be a worldwide campaign for a peaceful solution increasingly looks like a cult movement consumed by inciting hatred against a whole country and Jewish people.
The scenes were chilling, with an unsettling echo of the Hitler Youth rallies of the Second World War.
jrnl.ie/7205779
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June 6, 1944. An American paratrooper jumps into Normandy in the dark and lands on the roof of a church.
By the end of the war he had been declared dead, held a funeral he didn't attend, escaped the Nazis, and fought his way toward Berlin in a Soviet tank unit.
His name was Joseph Beyrle. He's believed to be the only American soldier to serve in both the US Army and the Red Army during World War Two.
Beyrle was from Muskegon, Michigan. He joined the 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles. His buddies called him Jumpin' Joe.
On D-Day night his plane was hit by flak and he jumped early. He came down on a church roof, slid off, and lost his unit in the chaos. For a few days he fought on his own, blowing up a power station and cutting German communications.
Then he was captured.
Here's where it gets strange. A German soldier ended up wearing Beyrle's uniform and dog tags. That German was killed. When the body was found, the Americans identified it as Joseph Beyrle.
The army told his parents their son was dead. His hometown held a funeral mass for him. His obituary ran in the local paper.
Meanwhile, he was very much alive, being moved from one German prison camp to another.
He escaped more than once. One time he and two other prisoners jumped off a train heading east. They thought they were heading for Russia and freedom. They got lost and ended up in Berlin, where they were caught by the Gestapo, beaten, and tortured.
In January 1945, from a camp in eastern Germany, he finally made a clean escape. He went east, toward the gunfire. Toward the Soviets.
When he found a Soviet tank unit, he walked out with his hands up, holding a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes, and shouted the only Russian he knew. American comrade.
It worked.
He asked to join them. And they said yes.
For about a month, an American paratrooper rode with Soviet tank crews as they pushed toward Germany. He used his demolition training. He fought. He was reportedly welcomed by a Soviet officer who was one of the rare women commanding a tank battalion.
Then a German dive bomber attacked. Beyrle was badly wounded.
He was evacuated to a Soviet hospital. Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov reportedly visited, heard his story, and gave him papers to get to the American embassy in Moscow.
When he showed up, the embassy didn't believe him. As far as the US was concerned, Joseph Beyrle was dead. They held him under guard until his fingerprints proved who he was.
He made it home to Michigan in April 1945.
In 1946 he got married. In the same church where they'd held his funeral.
Decades later, in 1994, he was honored at the White House by President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin for serving both countries.
And the last twist. His son, Joseph Beyrle II, grew up to become the United States Ambassador to Russia.
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Sometimes I think Labradors are so ridiculously friendly that evolution simply forgot to explain to them that not every small creature they meet is their responsibility.
Back in May 2018, at Mountfitchet Castle in Essex, England, a 10-year-old Labrador named Fred somehow ended up becoming a single father to nine ducklings after their mother disappeared and while the staff were understandably worried about what would happen to the little birds, Fred apparently decided that this was now his problem.
And the best part is that the ducklings seemed perfectly happy with this arrangement, following him around, climbing onto his back, cuddling up to him and even accompanying him into the castle moat for a swim, because apparently nobody involved in this situation was particularly concerned about the fact that their new father was a dog.
You'd think that raising nine children who aren't even the same species as you would be enough parenting experience for one lifetime, especially when your children insist on using you as public transport, but Fred apparently disagreed.
Because in 2022, when he was around 15 years old, another mother duck disappeared, leaving behind 15 ducklings, and Fred once again took on the job of looking after them. At an age when most dogs would probably prefer a comfortable bed, a quiet afternoon and absolutely no responsibilities, this Labrador somehow found himself running a daycare center for an entire flock of tiny yellow creatures. And honestly, I find it fascinating that an animal can be so gentle and tolerant towards creatures that aren't even remotely related to it.
Fred didn't care that they were ducks. They were small, they needed someone, and apparently that was enough. Although I do wonder whether, at some point, he looked at all 15 of them sitting on his back and thought: "I really need to stop making eye contact with unattended children."
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So sad! Susan Saint James has died as age 80. Just posted her 80th birthday celebration in August. The "MacMillan & Wife" and "Kate & Allie" star was a popular fixture of the 1970s and '80s.
R.I.P., pretty lady.
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Today, I am recommending four essential works by Donald Wandrei, who co-founded Arkham House with August Derleth to preserve H.P. Lovecraftās work and wrote SF on a vast, cosmic scale.
The Red Brain (1927): As cosmic dust smothers the universe, the last surviving minds, sheltering on the giant star Antares, struggle to find a way to stave off extinction. Ā Wandreiās chilling vision of the end of everything culminates in a uniquely disturbing twist.
Colossus (1934): When an astronomer discovers that the universe is smaller than anyone believed, the pilot of Earthās first interstellar ship sets out of find its edge. Ā Itās mind-bending, scale-shifting SF that puts the very nature of existence into perspective.
A Race Through Time (1933): Two rial scientists, one aboard and atomic-powered craft and the other relying on drugs that suspect aging, race toward the Earth of a million from now, with the woman they love at stake. Ā Pulpy, audacious, and Wandrei at his most epic.
The Web is Easter Island (1948): A strange green statuette linked to a trail of deaths draws an archeologist into a nightmare that leads from Stonehenge to Easter Island and far beyond our own age. Ā Itās a strange, ambitious novel that blends weird horror with speculative science.
Check out the quoted thread for the recommended works of Theodore Sturgeon, Alfred Bester, Bob Shaw, Clifford D. Simak, Algis Budrys, A.E. van Vogt, C.L. Moore, Cordwainer Smith, C.M. Kornbluth, D.G. Compton, Thomas M. Disch, Alice Bradley Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.), John Brunner, Judith Merril, Hal Clement, James Blish, Jack Williamson, Katherine MacLean, Fred Saberhagen, Jack Vance, Leigh Brackett, Edgar Pangborn, R.A. Lafferty, William Tenn, Kate Wilhelm, Avram Davidson, James H. Schmitz, Eric Frank Russell, Brian W. Aldiss, Carol Emshwiller, Wilson Tucker, Chad Oliver, Zenna Henderson, Pauline Ashwell, Frederik Pohl, Henry Kuttner, Barrington J. Bayley, James P. Hogan, C.J. Cherryh, Margaret St. Clair, Keith Laumer, Charles L. Harness, Howard Waldrop, Rosel George Brown, Gordon R. Dickson, Robert Sheckley, Fredric Brown, Kit Reed, Joanna Russ, H. Beam Piper, Daniel F. Galouye, Sydney J. Van Scyoc, Tom Godwin, Andre Norton, Harry Harrison, Vonda McIntyre, John Christopher, John Wyndham, Michael Bishop, Doris Piserchia, Bob Buckley, George Alec Effinger, Olaf Stapledon, John Varley, Miriam Allen deFord, Raymond F. Jones, Suzette Haden Elgin, Richard Cowper, Bruce Sterling, Josephine Saxton, Mack Reynolds, Phyllis Gotlieb, E.E. āDocā Smith, Sterling E. Lanier, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, George Turner, Octavia E. Butler, Philip JosĆ© Farmer, Somtow Sucharitkul, Charles Sheffield, Sonya Dorman, Clark Ashton Smith, Norman Spinrad, Naomi Mitchison, Suzy Mckee Charnas, Barry N. Malzberg, Paul Preuss, Lloyd Biggle Jr., George S. Schuyler, Damon Knight, Nancy Kress, E.C. Tubb, John Sladek, Joan D. Vinge, Ward Moore, Marta Randall, Robert L. Forward, Ian Watson, Brian Stableford, Keith Roberts, David R. Bunch, Michael G. Coney, Frank M. Robinson, Christopher Priest, Vernor Vinge, Lee Hoffman, Wilmar H. Shiras, Lucius Shepard, David I. Masson, Mildred Clingerman, Leigh Kennedy, Ernest Hogan, Jack Womack, Kenneth Bulmer, Mark Clifton, Kage Baker, Murray Leinster, Evelyn E. Smith, Kris Neville, Edmond Hamilton, James White, Wyman Guin, Emil Petaja, John Boyd, Christopher Anvil, Alan E. Nourse, T.J. Bass, Colin Kapp, Edmund Cooper, Rog Phillips, Mark S. Geston, James E. Gunn, Walter Tevis, Maureen F. McHugh, John Crowley, George O. Smith, Cherry Wilder, F.L. Wallace, G.C. Edmondson, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Pamela Sargent, Robert F. Young, Fred Hoyle, Eleanor Arnason, Ā Bertram A. Chandler, Charles Eric Maine, Tanith Lee, Kathleen Ann Goonan, J.T. McIntosh, Philip Wylie, Tom Purdom, and Richard McKenna.
Today, I am recommending four essential works by Richard McKenna, a 22-year Navy veteran best known for The Sand Pebbles, who also wrote a handful of quietly brilliant SF stories about the mindās power to reshape reality.
Casey Agonistes (1958): In a tuberculosis ward, dying men conjure an invisible mischievous ape as their defiance against despair. Ā Itās a funny and heartbreaking short story.
Hunter, Come Home (1963): An alien worldās ecosystem resists colonization, and a young man must choose between his cultureās code of conquest and the planetās strange, interconnected life Ā This novelette is early ecological SF.
"The Secret Placeā (1966): A wartime geologist hunting uranium in the Oregon desert finds the key in a lonely young womanās childhood fantasy of a hidden world. Ā This short story won the Nebula Award posthumously.
Fiddlerās Green (1967): Castaways adrift and starving in an open boat imagine a better place so intensely that reality begins to bend in this haunting novella.
Check out the quoted thread for the recommended works of Theodore Sturgeon, Alfred Bester, Bob Shaw, Clifford D. Simak, Algis Budrys, A.E. van Vogt, C.L. Moore, Cordwainer Smith, C.M. Kornbluth, D.G. Compton, Thomas M. Disch, Alice Bradley Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.), John Brunner, Judith Merril, Hal Clement, James Blish, Jack Williamson, Katherine MacLean, Fred Saberhagen, Jack Vance, Leigh Brackett, Edgar Pangborn, R.A. Lafferty, William Tenn, Kate Wilhelm, Avram Davidson, James H. Schmitz, Eric Frank Russell, Brian W. Aldiss, Carol Emshwiller, Wilson Tucker, Chad Oliver, Zenna Henderson, Pauline Ashwell, Frederik Pohl, Henry Kuttner, Barrington J. Bayley, James P. Hogan, C.J. Cherryh, Margaret St. Clair, Keith Laumer, Charles L. Harness, Howard Waldrop, Rosel George Brown, Gordon R. Dickson, Robert Sheckley, Fredric Brown, Kit Reed, Joanna Russ, H. Beam Piper, Daniel F. Galouye, Sydney J. Van Scyoc, Tom Godwin, Andre Norton, Harry Harrison, Vonda McIntyre, John Christopher, John Wyndham, Michael Bishop, Doris Piserchia, Bob Buckley, George Alec Effinger, Olaf Stapledon, John Varley, Miriam Allen deFord, Raymond F. Jones, Suzette Haden Elgin, Richard Cowper, Bruce Sterling, Josephine Saxton, Mack Reynolds, Phyllis Gotlieb, E.E. āDocā Smith, Sterling E. Lanier, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, George Turner, Octavia E. Butler, Philip JosĆ© Farmer, Somtow Sucharitkul, Charles Sheffield, Sonya Dorman, Clark Ashton Smith, Norman Spinrad, Naomi Mitchison, Suzy Mckee Charnas, Barry N. Malzberg, Paul Preuss, Lloyd Biggle Jr., George S. Schuyler, Damon Knight, Nancy Kress, E.C. Tubb, John Sladek, Joan D. Vinge, Ward Moore, Marta Randall, Robert L. Forward, Ian Watson, Brian Stableford, Keith Roberts, David R. Bunch, Michael G. Coney, Frank M. Robinson, Christopher Priest, Vernor Vinge, Lee Hoffman, Wilmar H. Shiras, Lucius Shepard, David I. Masson, Mildred Clingerman, Leigh Kennedy, Ernest Hogan, Jack Womack, Kenneth Bulmer, Mark Clifton, Kage Baker, Murray Leinster, Evelyn E. Smith, Kris Neville, Edmond Hamilton, James White, Wyman Guin, Emil Petaja, John Boyd, Christopher Anvil, Alan E. Nourse, T.J. Bass, Colin Kapp, Edmund Cooper, Rog Phillips, Mark S. Geston, James E. Gunn, Walter Tevis, Maureen F. McHugh, John Crowley, George O. Smith, Cherry Wilder, F.L. Wallace, G.C. Edmondson, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Pamela Sargent, Robert F. Young, Fred Hoyle, Eleanor Arnason, Ā Bertram A. Chandler, Charles Eric Maine, Tanith Lee, Kathleen Ann Goonan, J.T. McIntosh, Philip Wylie, and Tom Purdom.
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After a recent taping of Subway Takes, a random woman sits down and proceeds to riff with Conan OāBrien matching him joke for joke
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Oh man. So saddened to here of the passing of Star Trek star...Walter Koenig.šš
To boldly go....thank you for everything.
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Comme on est en plein dans la pĆ©riode d'Halloween, j'en profite pour vous montrer le plus mignon des dĆ©guisements d'Halloween que j'ai vu au Japon š£ #Halloween2026 #Halloween
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Today, I am recommending four essential works by Richard McKenna, a 22-year Navy veteran best known for The Sand Pebbles, who also wrote a handful of quietly brilliant SF stories about the mindās power to reshape reality.
Casey Agonistes (1958): In a tuberculosis ward, dying men conjure an invisible mischievous ape as their defiance against despair. Ā Itās a funny and heartbreaking short story.
Hunter, Come Home (1963): An alien worldās ecosystem resists colonization, and a young man must choose between his cultureās code of conquest and the planetās strange, interconnected life Ā This novelette is early ecological SF.
"The Secret Placeā (1966): A wartime geologist hunting uranium in the Oregon desert finds the key in a lonely young womanās childhood fantasy of a hidden world. Ā This short story won the Nebula Award posthumously.
Fiddlerās Green (1967): Castaways adrift and starving in an open boat imagine a better place so intensely that reality begins to bend in this haunting novella.
Check out the quoted thread for the recommended works of Theodore Sturgeon, Alfred Bester, Bob Shaw, Clifford D. Simak, Algis Budrys, A.E. van Vogt, C.L. Moore, Cordwainer Smith, C.M. Kornbluth, D.G. Compton, Thomas M. Disch, Alice Bradley Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.), John Brunner, Judith Merril, Hal Clement, James Blish, Jack Williamson, Katherine MacLean, Fred Saberhagen, Jack Vance, Leigh Brackett, Edgar Pangborn, R.A. Lafferty, William Tenn, Kate Wilhelm, Avram Davidson, James H. Schmitz, Eric Frank Russell, Brian W. Aldiss, Carol Emshwiller, Wilson Tucker, Chad Oliver, Zenna Henderson, Pauline Ashwell, Frederik Pohl, Henry Kuttner, Barrington J. Bayley, James P. Hogan, C.J. Cherryh, Margaret St. Clair, Keith Laumer, Charles L. Harness, Howard Waldrop, Rosel George Brown, Gordon R. Dickson, Robert Sheckley, Fredric Brown, Kit Reed, Joanna Russ, H. Beam Piper, Daniel F. Galouye, Sydney J. Van Scyoc, Tom Godwin, Andre Norton, Harry Harrison, Vonda McIntyre, John Christopher, John Wyndham, Michael Bishop, Doris Piserchia, Bob Buckley, George Alec Effinger, Olaf Stapledon, John Varley, Miriam Allen deFord, Raymond F. Jones, Suzette Haden Elgin, Richard Cowper, Bruce Sterling, Josephine Saxton, Mack Reynolds, Phyllis Gotlieb, E.E. āDocā Smith, Sterling E. Lanier, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, George Turner, Octavia E. Butler, Philip JosĆ© Farmer, Somtow Sucharitkul, Charles Sheffield, Sonya Dorman, Clark Ashton Smith, Norman Spinrad, Naomi Mitchison, Suzy Mckee Charnas, Barry N. Malzberg, Paul Preuss, Lloyd Biggle Jr., George S. Schuyler, Damon Knight, Nancy Kress, E.C. Tubb, John Sladek, Joan D. Vinge, Ward Moore, Marta Randall, Robert L. Forward, Ian Watson, Brian Stableford, Keith Roberts, David R. Bunch, Michael G. Coney, Frank M. Robinson, Christopher Priest, Vernor Vinge, Lee Hoffman, Wilmar H. Shiras, Lucius Shepard, David I. Masson, Mildred Clingerman, Leigh Kennedy, Ernest Hogan, Jack Womack, Kenneth Bulmer, Mark Clifton, Kage Baker, Murray Leinster, Evelyn E. Smith, Kris Neville, Edmond Hamilton, James White, Wyman Guin, Emil Petaja, John Boyd, Christopher Anvil, Alan E. Nourse, T.J. Bass, Colin Kapp, Edmund Cooper, Rog Phillips, Mark S. Geston, James E. Gunn, Walter Tevis, Maureen F. McHugh, John Crowley, George O. Smith, Cherry Wilder, F.L. Wallace, G.C. Edmondson, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Pamela Sargent, Robert F. Young, Fred Hoyle, Eleanor Arnason, Ā Bertram A. Chandler, Charles Eric Maine, Tanith Lee, Kathleen Ann Goonan, J.T. McIntosh, Philip Wylie, and Tom Purdom.
Today, I am recommending four essential works by Tom Purdom, a Philadelphia-based science fiction writer and music critic who enjoyed a remarkable late-career run of more than thirty stories in Asimovās.
Fossil Games (1999): Left obsolete by each new generation of genetic enhancements, our hero joins thousands of other under-enhanced humans fleeing the Solar System aboard a hollowed-out asteroid. Ā Their voyage turns into a struggle over whether to settle a new world or push on.
Bank Run (2005): On a frontier colony world, a banker finds himself hunted by genetically altered mercenaries in the pay of a debt-ridden landowner who wants to seize his bank. Ā He fights for his freedom with his wits and some white-knuckle financial maneuvering.
The Mists of Time (2007): Two unseen time travelers with clashing views watch a tiny Royal Navy schooner pursue a slave ship off the coast of Africa in the 1840s. Ā A moving tribute to the Navy's campaign against the slave trade.
Romance on Four Worlds: A Casanova Quartet (2015): Four stories follow Joseph Louis Baske, a 21st-century Casanova whose love affairs draw him into intrigue on the Moon, Mercury, Phobos, and in the Kuiper Belt.
Check out the quoted thread for the recommended works of Theodore Sturgeon, Alfred Bester, Bob Shaw, Clifford D. Simak, Algis Budrys, A.E. van Vogt, C.L. Moore, Cordwainer Smith, C.M. Kornbluth, D.G. Compton, Thomas M. Disch, Alice Bradley Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.), John Brunner, Judith Merril, Hal Clement, James Blish, Jack Williamson, Katherine MacLean, Fred Saberhagen, Jack Vance, Leigh Brackett, Edgar Pangborn, R.A. Lafferty, William Tenn, Kate Wilhelm, Avram Davidson, James H. Schmitz, Eric Frank Russell, Brian W. Aldiss, Carol Emshwiller, Wilson Tucker, Chad Oliver, Zenna Henderson, Pauline Ashwell, Frederik Pohl, Henry Kuttner, Barrington J. Bayley, James P. Hogan, C.J. Cherryh, Margaret St. Clair, Keith Laumer, Charles L. Harness, Howard Waldrop, Rosel George Brown, Gordon R. Dickson, Robert Sheckley, Fredric Brown, Kit Reed, Joanna Russ, H. Beam Piper, Daniel F. Galouye, Sydney J. Van Scyoc, Tom Godwin, Andre Norton, Harry Harrison, Vonda McIntyre, John Christopher, John Wyndham, Michael Bishop, Doris Piserchia, Bob Buckley, George Alec Effinger, Olaf Stapledon, John Varley, Miriam Allen deFord, Raymond F. Jones, Suzette Haden Elgin, Richard Cowper, Bruce Sterling, Josephine Saxton, Mack Reynolds, Phyllis Gotlieb, E.E. āDocā Smith, Sterling E. Lanier, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, George Turner, Octavia E. Butler, Philip JosĆ© Farmer, Somtow Sucharitkul, Charles Sheffield, Sonya Dorman, Clark Ashton Smith, Norman Spinrad, Naomi Mitchison, Suzy Mckee Charnas, Barry N. Malzberg, Paul Preuss, Lloyd Biggle Jr., George S. Schuyler, Damon Knight, Nancy Kress, E.C. Tubb, John Sladek, Joan D. Vinge, Ward Moore, Marta Randall, Robert L. Forward, Ian Watson, Brian Stableford, Keith Roberts, David R. Bunch, Michael G. Coney, Frank M. Robinson, Christopher Priest, Vernor Vinge, Lee Hoffman, Wilmar H. Shiras, Lucius Shepard, David I. Masson, Mildred Clingerman, Leigh Kennedy, Ernest Hogan, Jack Womack, Kenneth Bulmer, Mark Clifton, Kage Baker, Murray Leinster, Evelyn E. Smith, Kris Neville, Edmond Hamilton, James White, Wyman Guin, Emil Petaja, John Boyd, Christopher Anvil, Alan E. Nourse, T.J. Bass, Colin Kapp, Edmund Cooper, Rog Phillips, Mark S. Geston, James E. Gunn, Walter Tevis, Maureen F. McHugh, John Crowley, George O. Smith, Cherry Wilder, F.L. Wallace, G.C. Edmondson, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Pamela Sargent, Robert F. Young, Fred Hoyle, Eleanor Arnason, Ā Bertram A. Chandler, Charles Eric Maine, Tanith Lee, Kathleen Ann Goonan, J.T. McIntosh, and Philip Wylie.
