DW

Beto O'Rourke recently dropped out of the presidential race and there was hardly a peep. Harris drops out and the YA cons are yelling every hate-based or abusive insult and conspiracy they can think of.

Why the difference?

Many years ago pot smoke was fragrant. Not quite fruity, but something like that and a little piney. In the last 15-ish years the smell has changed to a skunky one.

What happened and why?

(I smoked it a small number of times many years ago. I've smelled it many times in passing, and the smell has changed.)

(Although it's possible people were smoking it mixed with fruit or something, this doesn't explain it. It would mean every smoker I passed was using the same add-in, then every smoker stopped using it.)

I reading Yahoo Answers in the U.S. Increasingly I'm seeing questions in Chinese, at this point *most* of the questions are in Chinese.

And if Google Translate is reasonably accurate, this is spam and gibberish in Chinese, not actual questions.

Is anyone else seeing this? Is YA falling apart?

There's a history in racist circles of using skin color to associate African people with sh*t. That doesn't show up in public much, not in recent decades, but it's still there and you can be sure the sheet-wearing crowd still uses it. Trump has definitely heard it, if he doesn't use it himself. So that's what came to his mind when he decided to insult black-majority countries.

Think about it, he thinks Mexico and Panama and Philipines are terrible places. But he didn't think of calling them sh*tholes because they aren't majority black.

In traditional vampire legend vampires don't reflect in mirrors and don't show up on film. (With, obviously, a lot of stories that vary from the traditional legend.)

Has this legend been updated? Do vampires show up in digital photos? Can a vampire use an automatic paper towel dispenser?

My friends host a weekly volleyball game and would like to set their baby next to the court while they play, but they're worried about him getting hit by the ball. So they're looking for a protective shelter they can put near the court.

It has 2 requirements:

1) It must protect the baby from the ball, even if it's hit hard right at him.

2) The baby must be visible to the parents while they're on the court.

This is an indoor game, so the shelter doesn't need UV protection or sand anchors, but if you find something designed for the beach that's OK too. They can adapt or modify it if needed.

Any suggestions?

My friends host a weekly volleyball game and would like to set their baby next to the court while they play, but they're worried about him getting hit by the ball. So they're looking for a protective shelter they can put near the court.

It has 2 requirements:

1) It must protect the baby from the ball, even if it's hit hard right at him.

2) The baby must be visible to the parents while they're on the court.

This is an indoor game, so the shelter doesn't need UV protection or sand anchors, but if you find something designed for the beach that's OK too. They can adapt or modify it if needed.

Any suggestions?

My club posts, and sometimes prints, one-page PDFs that describe our events.

Should I call that a "flyer" or a "flier"? Which feels right to you?

Note: I'm not looking for the dictionary entry - both spellings are correct - I'm looking for common use. Which feels right?

I need to replace a pair of pants, but I'm having trouble finding it because I don't know what to call them. (Hard to search without a search word.)

They're the pants equivalent of a windbreaker jacket - nylon shell that's wind and water-resistant, thin lining of cotton and/or polyester.

What would you call those pants? Extra credit for a link, especially to something available in a tall size.

NBC didn't feel like broadcasting the game except a few highlights (carefully chosen to show sections where the USA team was playing well). They still haven't posted it on nbcolympics.com. Clearly they want to protect me from ever seeing that game.

The video on bbc.co.uk doesn't play outside the U.K. and wouldn't play through any proxy servers I tried.

Anyone know a way I can watch that game?

I looked through my photos and tried a few as possible cover photos until I found the one I liked.

Problem is that all the ones I tried are now in my "Cover Photos" album and I can't find a way to remove them from that album. And that means they're public (that album is publicly shared, which is not changeable).

I'm not trying to delete the photos from their original albums, just take them out of the cover photos album. The option to remove the cover un-selects the cover photo, but doesn't remove it from the album.

50 people went on a trip and we'd like an easy way to share photos.

My ideal sharing site would look like this:

* Each user can create an album within a common site

* Each user can edit photos in their own album, view and comment on everyone's albums, download full resolution photos

* Simple interface, some of the travelers are seniors who won't be able to keep up with flickr's jumpy interface

* I'm willing to pay a setup fee, but not ongoing membership or maintenance fees

Bonus points if:

* We can also upload and download small videos

* The interface doesn't try to push the user into slideshows

Is there a sharing site that meets this description? Or most of it?

Thanks

I haven't seen any emails recently from a particular mailing list and I wonder if they're landing in the spam folder. I can't find a way to search the spam folder, and there's too much spam there to look for it. Did I miss something?

Note: If you copy/paste something from Yahoo help, make sure it actually works.

I need to set up a new email address. For each incoming message there's something I need to do, I want to keep track of the date I did it and a confirmation number and occasionally other information.

So my thought is to add a comment or note to each message. The closest I can think of is gmail, create a reply for each message and save it as a draft. But that's clumsy.

Is there an email service that has a comments feature?

I have 2 connections, one ethernet one wifi. The wired goes through a corporate LAN, the wifi to a router with a DSL connection. I'm trying to get to a site that the LAN blocks (it's not inappropriate, but they consider it wasted bandwidth), but the browser always uses the wired connection.

Is there a way I can tell the browser which connection to use for that site? Or can I tell Firefox to always use the wifi connection and let Internet Explorer use the wired?

Note 1: In case that wasn't clear these are 2 different connections to the internet, not 2 paths to the same router.

Note 2: The LAN doesn't exactly block the site, it redirects it to an explanation page. The browser might be smart enough to try the other connection after no response, but a redirect isn't no response.

OK, stay with me here.

The story they're telling is that the episode included some self-censorship, which makes sense in an episode making a point about censorship, and that Comedy Central added additional censorship before broadcasting. No one (that I've heard) has specifically said which censorship was added.

The "Censored" rectangle in front of Muhammad had to be part of the original episode, the story doesn't work without it. Tom Cruise gets a rectangle when he's immune from criticism and loses it when he isn't, that's the work of a writer, not a censor. The fully-beeped "here's what I've learned" summations at the end that make everything perfect again must have been originally censored, that fits the show's style much better than actually ending with perfect resolution.

That just leaves the beeps that replace Muhammad's name. That part might have been added by the network, and I think that's the story they'll tell. But something still feels wrong:

1. They allowed his name in the previous episode and one a few years ago

2. When you're trying to suppress a word you blank it. You beep it if you want to call attention to the word you blocked.

So I believe the show's creators and the network agreed in advance that the focus of the episode would be the missing parts, and the network obligingly took the heat for "censoring" the show. They got wide publicity and extensive discussion on Yahoo Answers and probably got high ratings for the show. A radical Islamic group assisted by issuing a call for violence that it claimed was a warning.

So - controversy planned in advance to get ratings. What do you think?

Is there a way to get a list of all the permissions that have been granted to a group in active directory?

If, for example, the group FinanceDept has Read&Execute to \\server1\files\goodfiles and Modify to \\server2\stuff\otherstuff\herebewabbits could I get a list that showed this?

Obviously I can get properties of each share or folder and see who has permissions to it, but with all the servers and shares and subfolders, checking them one at a time isn't an option. Until last year we had a Novell network, so I'm used to this information being easy to get.

Possibly more complex than the usual YA question, but I think you can handle it.

In a lot of the religion questions there are people who describe themselves as atheist AND agnostic. It seems to me those descriptions exclude each other. Can anyone explain?

Is there a way to get a list of all the permissions that have been granted to a group in active directory?

If, for example, the group FinanceDept has Read&Execute to \\server1\files\goodfiles and Modify to \\server2\stuff\otherstuff\herebewabbits, could I get a list that showed this?

Obviously I can get properties of a share or folder and see who has permissions to it; but with all the servers and shares and subfolders, checking them one at a time isn't an option.

Possibly more complex than the usual YA question, but I think you can handle it.

We're selling my mother's second house and it's hard for us to get there. The real estate agent has helped a lot, referred contractors, let them in to work, alerted us when the heat wasn't working and the roof was damaged in a storm (when there was no reason for her to be there other than to see if the heat was on and the roof was OK).

Is this part of her job? Are these the things a realtor has to do to sell an unoccupied property and earn a commission? Or is she helping us out above and beyond her duties?

I'd especially like answers from realtors. If you are one, please note that in your answer.

Thanks