@leslietownes oops! A neighbor of mine, before they moved, had a black cat they named Moses. They let him out for a half hour each evening (before dark, mind you I had to retrieve him dozens of times from his wandering, always within half a block). Well Moses brought home (this his human mom and dad) an assorted array of critters: chipmunks were his favorite, field mice, a dead bird once. But he did not kill what was not dead. He had them by the tails, when called to come inside, and

growing up, we had an indoor-outdoor cat who was a prolific hunter. he had lived two years feral before we adopted him.

would proudly drop the critter at this human mom's feet. She'd shriek, the critter would scurry, and hide, inside! They weren't terribly happy with Moses's "gifts"!

you'd open the door to leave the house in the morning and see the entrails of some mouse, or bird, or just a bird head, or bird claws. every day getting up was like the first 5 minutes of law and order.

sometimes it was gross, he would kill fairly large animals, e.g. grey squirrels and opossums, and not eat them. and we'd have to dispose of them.

my sister once cat-sat for somebody whose cats left her 'gifts' on her pillow, like that scene in the godfather.

@leslietownes I never liked National Geographic as a kid. "Why can't we all get along?" Can predators be satisfied with a vegetarian diet? (Half-joking

she'd wake up and see a dead kestrel staring back at her.

@leslietownes That would haunt me!

^^^Just me, being squeamish. It doesn't help, @leslietownes, that I have a thing about rooting for underdogs. Not always, but it surfaces a lot.

this is why olivia is an indoor cat. it wouldn't be a fair fight.

@leslietownes Indeed. Ditto for my shai.

my daughter interrupted me once when i hypothetically suggested letting olivia out to 'play' with the lizard. "NO," she said, "LIVVY is an INDOOR CAT"

@leslie The LA Rams beat the Arizona Cardinals in the Wild Card weekend. I'm thrilled the 49'ers pulled off an upset on the Dallas Cowgirls (oops, Cowboys!!). I will never like any team Jerry Jones owns. Next weekend, Packers play the 49ers: that should prove interesting...

oh, i haven't followed the NFL in some time. i love it when the niners beat the cowboys.

@leslietownes Oh, that's adorable! She's learned well!

@leslietownes It's kind of state law in Wisconsin; one cannot claim residency without rooting for the Packers!! I lose interest, though, in any playoffs if the Pack is eliminated. It's more of a social bonding thing. @AlexanderGruber has spoken well of this, in his various residents.

niners cowboys was a rivalry from my youth. i think everyone hates the cowboys.

or maybe the patriots took over the title of the team that everybody hates. i don't know anymore. :)

The Washington Football Team (formerly the Washington Redskins) is recently competing for that spot, though likely unintentionally.

I'm really getting tired of Tom Brady. He's a great player, but don't forget the baggage: deflate-gate, e.g.. By sister used to refer to him (when a Patriot), as "Boo-Hoo-Brady" because of his whining years ago. Oh well; I'll enjoy the ride, as far as it goes.

@leslietownes I think you're right; there's hating a team, and there's shaking one's head at a team. They are different phenomena. I'm not a fan of much anything "Texan", these days!

the cowboys had very aggressive branding of a certain kind of 'texas' that yeah, is annoying.

@leslietownes Indeed, and did I mention I can't stomach Jerry Jones? ;D

most of the texans i personally know are great, but that swaggering stereotype can go. i'm over it.

@leslietownes Indeed!

Just dropped in to say hello @amWhy

@ParamanandSingh o/ Hello! Hope all is well!

@quid Looks like we'll need to wait at least until February before "guess the date on which math.se reaches 1.5 million question! We're roughly 32,000 away.

Woo Hoo! @leslie, I got today's Wordle on my third try! First day I actually played! (I saw wordle come up in the cafe.) But I used a letter in my second try, that was clearly not in the word (given the first result). Getting used to the color coding!

i've never gotten one in three tries. i have a knack of narrowing it down to maybe a few words, and then always choosing the wrong word first.

i did get it in four.

sometimes i think it's helpful to re-use a letter that you know isn't there, if it's a way of testing other letters. i do it all the time, and have not lost yet. it doesn't seem like a waste unless you are reusing a bunch of letters that you know aren't there in one go.

@leslietownes I doubt I'll repeat the feat. After choice number one and two, it seemed (blank)oin(blank) made the most senses, so I typed point, (s was ruled out). voila! Part luck, methinks.

that's what keeps us playing. if it were purely a matter of skill it would become boring quickly. :)

i had it down to p_int and of course tried r before o.

spoiler alert, i guess, if some people haven't played today :)

@leslietownes Indeed! ;D I'd say a fourth attempt is just as good. I ended up grabbing a pencil and paper. I was fortunate because my first word indicated a o was a letter in the word. But given your data, I would have done what you did, r before o. spoiler alert

@leslietownes Could have been paint, too!

yes, i only failed to burn an attempt on that because i knew that a wasn't in the list from a previous guess. fortune smiled on me a little bit.

i haven't seen my best friend in two years because of the pandemic. she has a weakened immune system and is extremely high risk due to various ongoing medical treatments. we text each other our wordle results in the morning. it's a nice way of staying 'together.'

she's absurdly lucky with her word choices. she got one in 2 once.

Perfect example of a game that could not have been printed in the Sunday edition of newspapers (like the New York Times crossword puzzle) back in the day: instantaneous feedback is crucial in Wordle.

i was thinking about that. it really needs a device to play. it would be a pain in the ass to do offline unless someone was appointed the gamekeeper and did the boring bit of providing the feedback, which would be no fun at all.

@leslietownes Wow!! That's sweet. Such connections mean a lot to people.

@leslietownes Indeed, and a human "gamekeeper" would likely be more prone to error. And the time to say, "the letter a is in the write place, and only the letter n also exists in the word, but not in your placement" and the player to digest... no fun at all!

QUIET would be a fun word to figure out on wordle, but Q as first letter could only be reasonably guessed from (blank)UIE(blank), and perhaps the (blank)UIET. But U is likely the least frequently occurring vowel, maybe?

it's a bit like hangman, where sometimes it does seem the game is trying to choose words that are hard to guess.

today's word was something of a surprise in that respect.

@leslietownes well you discovered p was in the word. I was not sure on the first and last letter, but knew they surrounded "oin", and I could not figure out much save for point or coins, but had ruled out both c and s earlier.

@leslietownes I always wonder how is assigned that role of selecting words in such a game. Also, I think it would be fun to be a programmer anticipating Google searches like "Does god exist". Even on Wolfram Alpha, the programmer made some hilarious responses to such questions!

Ooh, QUILT would be a good one too, or GUILT.

Check your email, @leslie :D

:D

Indeed! thanks!

I'm excited for my shai, @leslie. His heated pet bed will arrive tomorrow! Thanks for the idea!

I'll try to take a pic and post it, of my shai snuggling in the comfy bed!

that'll be great. it's a good product.

livvy uses it whenever there isn't a sunny window.

it doesn't use a lot of electricity or make an alarming amount of heat, either.

@leslietownes Certainly a better option than a heating pad under a towel! One thing he does in winter is lay in front of or on top of one or another heat vent. I have a flat bed in front of one of them. But this will give him an awesome option!

here she is in hers. instagram.com/p/CWmcISKpA4q

Precious!!

we used to have it on our dinner table, if you can believe that. we had a small square table where my wife and i sat opposite one another, our daughter sat on one side, and Thermo Kitty Bed occupied what would otherwise be a place setting.

she loves joining us for dinner.

Hello!

@leslietownes That's so sweet. My cat joins me on the table, whether invited, or not! A cat is gonna be where the cat wanna be!

@soupless Hello, soupless!

If you check my chat profile, I'll be back in math.se chats in 28/29 days, @soupless. How are you doing?

@amWhy Sorry, I don't see anything. Is there something that I should see?

I just woke up, by the way. The second semester started last Monday.

How are you doing, @amWhy?

I don't know what's shown on user's chat profile. Just consider yourself informed :-). Semester two. Are things better in your homeland?

@soupless I am doing well. I actually went to get tested for Omicron, because my allergies are worse than normal, so I thought, "maybe it's something else"? But I tested negative. I'm long overdue for some heavy duty dusting and vacuuming duty, and have a friend who has a friend who does air duct cleaning (the way heat flows within a home in the northern latitudes in winter, is through such ducts.) leslie wouldn't know anything about that ;p

(I sneeze, get itchy, and get hives when exposed to allergens. Every season presents new challenges. But I'm doing well.

@amWhy I sneeze and get some colds everyday. This led my grandmother thinking that maybe I got the virus, but I always told her that I always had it.

@soupless I totally understand. For almost two years, I dread it if I have to sneeze in public, even if I have a mask on, due to the weird looks others give me, like the one from an old woman bathed in perfume that caused me to sneeze! :-)

(I'm allergic to cats, but don't tell my cat shai that ... ) ;-)

Not that I want your allergy, but that I totally want that sneeze. When my allergy starts, I just get itchy, but I don't sneeze. Then it's really bad.

Oh, I hate it when that happens, when I can't actually sneeze...

oh, perfume sets me right off.

my wife and i have a joke about this. my mom and sister never used perfume, so i was generally unfamiliar with it. my wife had an ant problem at her apartment when we were first dating, which necessitated bug spray. once or twice i noted the aroma of bug spray in her place.

but it might have been bug spray only once. we later realized that one of the things i thought was 'bug spray' was her perfume.

not the best branding of a perfume.

'smell like insecticide!' :D

in my defense it did smell like bug spray.

@leslietownes Hah! That hilarious! I'm especially averse to "floral" perfumes.

Interestingly, I'm never terribly bothered by men's cologne. Unless the man is swimming in it.

i didn't know anything about perfume or makeup. none of the girls i grew up with used it. and literally didn't use it. obviously if you use it properly you can't notice too much.

yeah, colognes are usually less floral. although people who use it tend to use too much of it.

@leslietownes Exactly.

In fact, with floral perfumes, it might actually attract ants! ;D

one time i was talking with my best friend and asked what she was wearing. she said, i'm not wearing perfume, and i only use unscented soap and detergents because i break out if i don't. so we had an awkward moment where we realized that maybe i just like the way she smells.

there's probably something to that. pheromones or something.

Horrible memories of when I was seven, and spending the day with my Grandma, and threw up on my winter coat. We rushed to her place, and she promptly put it in the washer, adding half a bottle of her potent perfume into the load. After that, my coat reeked of a vomit + perfume, that equaled Reeking more than either one of the two!!