One washing machine’s load of water destroyed our kitchen
We saw the water running out and immediately started mopping up the water with all our house’s towels:
Yet another case of poor design that everyone uses
Washing machines drain their water through a rigid plastic hose with a sort of spout at the end. We Americans seem to like to use something called a washer outlet box to hold the water faucets and the drain pipe. Here’s one sold at Lowes:
The problem with this system is that the drain hoses can be very stiff and resist resting snugly in their holes.
When a service person replaced the water hoses to our washing machine, he simply pushed the drain hose into the drain hole. The hose resisted but was in the hole.
It took a weekend for the company which had made the error to send someone to fix the problem. As you can see, the fix is really kind of jury-rigged. In my opinion, this is a sign of very poor design, one of those decisions made long ago that no one bothers to change.
Unfortunately, the washing machine evacuated its water with such force, that it came shooting back up out of the hole, pouring several gallons of water on our kitchen floor, as seen above.
Now the fun begins
I’m going to let the following photos tell you what has happened since we called our insurance company. They are making very sure that we have no possibility of fungus damage in the future. In the process, they discovered asbestos. Our kitchen is gradually disintegrating. On a happier note, we expect it to come back to life better than new. But it will take a long time.
If you’re woke like me, you’ve probably read a lot about the Telegram messaging app. I downloaded it some time ago and then forgot about it until today when the New York Times announced that they have created a Telegram channel where people can get news about the Ukraine war.
I’ve updated my Telegram apps on my Mac and my Android phone:
Here it is on my phone:
It’s so “secure” that it prevents me from taking a screenshot on my Mac, but it can’t stop me from taking a photo with my phone:
Since taking the screenshots above, I’ve joined a couple of chats/channels that supposedly come from Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Of course, I’m not really sure yet. Gotta watch out for fakes.
When Amazon first introduced its Smile feature, I would start each shopping session by changing the URL from www.amazon.com to smile.amazon.com and watch money go to my designated recipient.
Lately I’ve been noticing that nothing goes to the organization that I’ve designated as my Smile recipient. Even if I change www to smile in the Amazon URL, it often changes back to www by the time I review the cart.
I can change the www to smile again, before I push the Buy now button, but I often forget to do so.
Could this be a trick?
Today I decided to see where my change is undone. I went to Amazon, changed www to smile, and started shopping.
I rather randomly navigated to a Storage & Organization page and started looking. Here’s what I found:
As expected, some of the items on the page retain the smile in the URL when I link to them:
But as soon as I went to the Lightning Deals, my smile went away:
If I purchased a Lightening Deal this way, I might very well have not noticed this change, thus shortchanging my designated charity.
If future historians are well designed and supplied with sufficient training data, including facial recognition data, they might catch the error in this human-generated UNC Press Centennial Recollection, The 1990 Brooks Hall Fire and 1993 Rededication. They may know enough, for example, to recognize and call upon the young man, second from the left, for help, if it can remember his name.
This is the caption under the photo:
UNC Press staff, such as former Managing Editor Ron Maner (right), celebrating the rededication of Brooks Hall, 1993.
Hint: That is not Ron Maner on the right. Corporate memory can be so fleeting.
J’ai pensé à ce passage du livre « La septième fonction du langage » de Laurent Binet
Pour aucune raison particulière, je me suis souvenu hier d’un scene qui ma fait rigoler:
À l’université de Vincennes, pour accéder aux salles de cours, [l’inspecteur Bayard] doit traverser une sorte de souk peuplé d’Africains, enjamber des drogués comateux affalés par terre, passer devant un bassin sans eau rempli de détritus, longer des murs lépreux recouverts d’affiches et de graffitis sur lesquels il peut lire: « Professeurs, étudiants, recteurs, personnel ATOS: crevez, salopes ! » ; « Non à la fermeture du souk alimentaire » ; « Non au déménagement de Vincennes à Nogent »; « Non au déménagement de Vincennes à Marne-la-Vallée » ; « Non au déménagement de Vincennes à Savigny sur Orge » ; « Non au déménagement de Vincennes à Saint-Denis » ; « Vive la révolution prolétarienne » ; « Vive la révolution iranienne » ; « maos fachos »; « trostkystes - staliniens » ; « Lacan = flic »; « Badiou nazi »; « Althusser = assassin »; « Deleuze baise ta mère » ; « Cixous = baise-moi » ; « Foucault = pute de Khomeiny » ; « Barthes = social-traître prochinois » ; « Callicles SS »; « Il est interdit d’interdire d’interdire »; « Union de la gauche = dans ton cul » ; « Viens chez moi, on va lire Le Capital! signé: Balibar »…
Des étudiants puant la marijuana l’accostent avec agressivité en lui fourguant des tonnes de tracts: « Camarade, tu sais ce qui se passe au Chili? Au Salvador? Tu te sens concerné par l’Argentine ? Et le Mozambique ? Tu t’en fous, du Mozambique? Tu sais où c’est? Tu veux que je te parle du Timor? Sinon, on fait une collecte pour l’alphabétisation au Nicaragua. Tu me paies un café ? » Là, il se sent moins dépaysé. Quand il avait sa carte à Jeune Nation, il en a pété, de ces petites gueules de gauchistes crasseux. Il jette les tracts dans le bassin sans eau qui sert de poubelle.
Thanks for sending these two articles, George. It’s nice to hear that people in the Tunis medina are organizing to save its traditional crafts, arts, and businesses. Furthermore, the story about Sufism in Tunisia was a real surprise to me. I had no idea Sufism was so widespread in Tunisia. The only time i encountered Sufism was in the tiny town of Nefta. Up until I read this article, I thought that Nefta was pretty much the only place where Sufism was practiced. I taught in Tunis both years, and, of course, knew of Sidi Bou Said and the big Sida Mahrez mosque in Tunis, but at no point did I know there was any connection to Sufism with either. Nor do I think that I am the only volunteer who didn’t know about these long established roots of Sufism in Tunisia…. Thanks again,…Phil Jones
Mondher’s 1st reply
Definitely, there are saints (or Sidi or waly in Arabic) in every town and city in Tunisia, and many villages are centered around the saint’s mausoleum and would bear the saint’s name, like the all famous village of Sidi Bou Said north of Tunis or the city of Sidi Bouzid where the 2010 revolution started.
Many towns/cities have a number of these, usually one would be the most famous one, such as Sidi Mehrez in Tunis, with many other saints sprinkled around various neighborhoods.
My paternal grandma was the resident curator of a saint, Sidi Bouaziz, in the heart of the medina of Sousse. She actually resided in the mausoleum after my grand father passed. In addition to people visiting and praying for benediction, there were all kinds of events, such as engagements, circumcisions, etc., that where my brother and I had ours done. Most importantly, there were musical and chanting events periodic or specific to certain days in Ramadan and other religious commemorations. Each one had a different type band, sufi, , hadhra, yissaouya, suleymya, stombali, or other bands. One type of band was called El-Banga, which has Saharian/Berber origins, where women would dance until they get to a trance and end up fainting. Men stood in the center courtyard and boys watched from the adjacent room, where the saint’s tomb was located, through a see-through wooden wall. That was fun.
Here is a YouTube link clip about a performance hosted in the Tunis Municipal Theater celebrating Sufi tradition… It’s called El Ziara, which means “the visit”, referring to a visit one makes to a saint for benediction.
Below is a Guardian report with video of one of those Banga ceremonies, but not like the one I described above.
In Gafsa, I loved going to the 3asawiya (sp?), where people went into trances and stuck nails through their cheeks or ate cactus. It was amazing. Do you know about this? Is it Sufi?
ge
Mondher’s 2nd reply
Hi George,
The trance, yes. When I was a kid, my dad took us to this village near Sousse, called Sidi Amer (another Sidi😊), where 3yssawyya shows took place; I don’t remember whether it happened frequently or it was an annual event linked to some holyday. All what you said happened in these exhibitions, sticking long big nails through their cheeks, eating cactus, walking on burning charcoal or laying on broken glass with a person standing on their body, swallowing shaving blades, etc. All of this being done as the music gets to a climax and people dance to it until they get into a trance to varying degrees.
As if these “practices” are Sufi, I think those who believe in Sufism take it very seriously. I also think that these are few. So the majority that carry-on these practices do so as traditions and culture. But I may be wrong. I saw a few documentaries on Sufism and Sufis; so that’s a good place to learn more. The youtube video is a good source to watch and check out comments…
[ge: this is a fabulous video that explains a lot about Sufism.]
Some Youtube Sufi videos
I can’t find a video of people in trances sticking nails through their cheeks, etc. These videos show scenes somewhat like what I saw in Gafsa. The music seems similar.
This video briefly shows a man in a trance at the beginning.
This video from Tozeur, a town just South of Gafsa, shows a woman apparently in a trance.
Here are some other videos of similar scenes. Nothing exactly like my experience crowded into the courtyard of a house in Gafsa at night.
This scene from Paris looks like fun but is definitely not Southern Tunisia.
