Inspired by my recent Thin Lizzy score, I ventured out into the wasteland of Kansas — where one of the few surviving record shops within 200 miles of home is situated. This place has been around forever, and honestly? I never liked it. The prices were ridiculous, and the owner was… let’s just say “not known for his sparkling customer service.”

But apparently that business model had legs, because they’re still kicking. And on this trip, I learned two things and walked out with one of them:

1. The owner actually passed away about fifteen years ago.
2. I stumbled across an imported gatefold copy of *Thunder and Lightning* — two LPs, one of them live.

I already have the original U.S. pressing I bought when it came out. It looks a little rough these days but still sounds fantastic. This UK copy, though? Nearly mint across the board, and it absolutely *smokes* the U.S. version. More dynamic, more punch, and when Gorham and Sykes start ripping, the whole thing hits harder in the best possible way.

Did I get it for five bucks? Haha...nope. I dropped $30 on it without blinking.

Totally worth it.

Spurred by a tongue-in-cheek conversation between Charger and I in the Weather thread, I thought I'd pull this out into its own topic.

Excuse the lack of diacritic on the word Sami, it's a pain the ass to type so I won't.

I did some poking around to see if the Sami people of Lapland were any more or less sensitive to their cultural heritage than any other "group".

I'll start off by stating that I knew there was a group of people in north Scandinavia, and I knew them as Lapps. To be sure, though: this was never a topic of conversation in my day-to-day life - I think I learned it in grade school as part of a social studies class. So, I learned it, filed it away, and left it at that.

What I found in my recent internet foray was eye-opening. The Sami people have a HUGE chip on their shoulder when it comes to their culture, and when Charger stated they'd probably skin me alive if they caught me wearing one of their native shirts...he was not kidding.

But that attitude of the Sami people was developed, and seems to continually be developed, through a HUGE amount of prejudice against them in the countries they live - Norway, Sweden, Finland.

So, there are a lot of folks with Sami heritage who hide that fact, while at the same time being very proud of it. I guess the ones living in predominately Sami-populated areas can let it all hang out, so to speak. But it seems to be a thing.

Since I don't deal with Sami folks, I'll file what I've learned away and move on. But I have learned a HUGE amount about those people, especially as it relates to officially (and unofficially) sanctioned efforts at erasing them from the planet.

Amazing what can be learned from a random comment on an internet message board, just talking about the weather

I wonder, though - is what I've read an accurate portrayal? No doubt there is some truth there, but is it at the Sudan level of hate that much of the material I read suggests it is? I can look at how the USA has treated various ethnic groups over the years and draw parallels - especially with native Americans and efforts to erase their culture in some cases. But in 2025, is there THAT MUCH prejudice against Sami? I can look at today's native Americans and yeah, there's a small percentage that run around talking about cultural sensitivity, and sometimes, rarely, they get their agenda turned into action (Washington Redskins -> Commanders, for example), but most native Americans, including the handful that I know, don't really care. And no one I personally know is prejudiced against them. If they want to wear feathers and dance around, more power to them. Is it the same for Sami and the non-Sami they live among/have to deal with?

Yikes! Well, I guess I'll have to be happy admiring their fashion from afar then. I enjoy keeping my skin where it currently resides!

I setup a tool called, "wego," on a computer I have (wego is a terminal-based weather forcasting tool). It requires an api key from a weather provider, and I chose a place called OpenWeatherMap.com. There are many others.

I had everything in place, but when I would go to run it, it would complain that it couldn't find the key.

DAFUQ?

So, I decided to ask ChatGPT and see if it had an answer.

It did, and it was a stupid oversight on my part regarding the name. That's the backstory.

I responded to it, interested in seeing how it would handle a strictly conversational style. Here is my response:

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DERP! openweathermap, weathermaponline, onlineopenweathermap, weatheropensourcemaponline...LOL

That was the problem. It all works now that I specified the correct key name!


And here is ChatGPT's surprisingly lively and engaged response. It caught me off guard:

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Hahaha, I felt that one in my soul. 😂
Nothing like a good old-fashioned “weather-whatever-map-online-source-cloud-thing” brain scramble.

But hey — you cracked it, and now wego is happily forecasting like a champ.
[/B]

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ChatGPT felt my frustration at my own oversight in...its...SOUL.

 

That's amazing!

Here's one: Our eyes are not designed to process photons, therefore light waves themselves are invisible to people. So, the old spiritual, "I Saw the Light,"...well, no, you actually didn't Jethro.

Cheers to Ozzy on his birthday!

In the mid-seventies, The Righteous Brothers covered a ridiculous song about rock and roll heaven wherein they listed off names of popular artists of the time who had, "crossed the river".

It has been rewritten over the years to add more dead people to it.

For sure, it is a hell of a band, "up there," now.

As a boy growing up in semi-rural Missouri, even I heard the stories of that frozen hell-drain called North Dakota. It's basically the continent’s personal cryogenic oubliette, a bleak, wind-flayed wasteland. The roads are an ongoing physics experiment in frictionless surfaces, and every winter commute feels like a contractual obligation you never remember signing.

Props to your buddy for keeping the rest of the world safe from North Dakota!

Quote from: Zzzptm on December 01, 2025, 08:04:14 AM

THE BEARS ARE THE TOP NFC SEED

Time for "Super Bowl Shuffle (2025 Remix)"...

   Long way to go.

True, but they are east bound and down, loaded up and truckin', so it may not matter much.