I was surprised I liked something at Slate; http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/08/31/anne_marie_slaughter_and_the_podesta_group_choose_money_over_democratic.html
I have no idea of the provenance of this particular interpretation, but here's an entertaining tale of James VI's dick getting him into trouble.
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Oh Juicero, we hardly knew ye.
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Zendaya in the new Spider-Man movie was more like me as a teen (though better, obvs, and hotter) than any teen I've seen on screen before. I can't even manage politics today.
Did they reboot that again? I can't even keep track since the one where Toby went all evil-emo.
5 That's your business, I try not to judge.
Juicero is reminding me that we really need to con SV venture capitalists out of a few 100 million or so. What's some needlessly stupid gadget or pointless service we can market to people with more money than sense?
5 is making me think of all sorts of awful "juice" jokes.
Tell them we've figured out how to vat-grow hair and we will sell it in a home machine, receiving proprietary packs of "precursor materials" (hair).
Once you go four tons of pressure, you'll never know other pleasure.
Moby makes juice out of ...er, nevermind.
But on the plus side, he can get the same result using a hand.
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Soon to board for a week in Beirut. Excited and also amused by how much my Fox news and Homeland * watching parents are worried.
*where they make scenes in Beirut look like Kabul.
Damnit Ogged, this is old news. But yeah, Honnold is a maniac.
16: have a good trip! I have still not been despite the entreaties of Smaller God-Daughter, who lives there.
18. Thanks. I need to get back to Narnia one of these days. I also need to change my seating preferences: window seat, vegetarian meal, no screaming baby.
And here I thought SGD stood for Social Giustizia Doukhobor.
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Barry, if you're still around:
The text insisted that there were three 'pillars' (arkan) of Islam: 1) testifying that '[t]here is no god but Allah and Muhammad is His Messenger' (shahada); 2) the performance of obligatory daily prayers (salat); and 3) waging war against the Dutch unbelievers. Traditionally, most Muslims have enumerated five 'pillars' of Islam, which, in addition to shahada and salat, include alms-giving (zakat), fasting in the month of Ramadhan, and the pilgrimage to Makkah (hajj). Waging war against infidels, however, is not included as one of the five 'pillars' in their standard elaboration.This from Aceh in the 19C. I hadn't heard of war being made a pillar except by the hardest-core Salafists.
Look, if you don't want the screaming baby just leave it on the side and eat the salad.
My first kiss (13-14) was with a young man (17-18?) who later died climbing in Yosemite.
9: hey, SHOOBER is standing right there, poised and ready to disrupt.
I can't even read about stuff like that without getting vertigo.
Have fun in Beiirut, Barry
21. My guess would be that what you have there is a group of Malay/Sumatran independence fighters who were Muslim, possibly Islamist, but not exactly scholarly, who thought that would make a good recruiting tool.
Oh, and Eid Mubarak, everyone, albeit a day late here.
27.2: I just mention it as a point of interest, and hoping Barry (or anyone) has something to add. They were Acehnese* in north Sumatra, resistance rather than independence fighters,** were Muslim (I'm not sure "Islamist" can be meaningful in the 19C) and in fact were scholars: the ulama led the resistance after the sultan and his court were captured early in the war. Their theory apparently was that alms-giving, fasting, and the haj were impossible under infidel invasion, so war took priority. The text in question is a verse chronicle of the war, apparently very popular at the time and since.
*Speaking a Malayan language; best I can figure on a quick wiki, using "Malay" to indicate ethnicity rather than language is going to be fraught.
**The Dutch only began conquering Aceh in 1873 after failed attempts centuries earlier.
Who could have guessed that a hotel well-known as a hangout for foreign correspondents and spies in days long gone by (Kim Philby stayed here!) would be seriously run down? Apparently not me. I make some bad travel choices.
At least they were playing the James Bond theme music when I walked into the lobby.
hangout for foreign correspondents...seriously run down
Answered your own question there, mate.
28. That is actually quite logical, but I'm not sure that "enabling believers to act on the Pillars of Islam under specific circumstances" makes itself a Pillar, particularly at the expense of the others. An Imam would have to advise me on that.
re. "Malay", I was basing my usage on a half forgotten anecdote in which an Acehnese self identified as Malay. But I don't know how widespread that would be. Alas, the only person I knew who was a deep expert on things Indonesian died a year ago this week.
29. Do they have a blue plaque on the wall of Philby's room?
31: Condolences. This thing I read brings to a grand total of two the books I've skimmed on Indonesia. Whole 'nother world over there.
Who could have guessed that a hotel well-known as a hangout for foreign correspondents and spies in days long gone by (Kim Philby stayed here!) would be seriously run down?
If you were Kim Philby, you'd be too drunk to notice.
35 It is known for its bar, alas I should have stayed somewhere else and visited the bar.
More to say Im the Indonesian thing but maybe later.
I used to share an office with a guy who had a column in the Indonesian version of Time Magazine.
Tome Magazine sounds like a good read.
It's more of about long reads than a long read itself. Advertisers want to reach people who like to think of themselves as being the kind of read long books, but who don't actually have the time or energy.
Until an accident put paid to my nerves, climbing was My Thing. I've done longish multipitch routes (although admittedly nothing too difficult) and hardish technical climbs, both sport and trad. I've even soloed a couple of routes that I knew were well within my abilities at that point.
I can still happily watch people climb in person or on film - but watching this guy soloing an offwidth crack a thousand miles off the ground actually made my palms sweat. As the article all but notes, he must have ice-water for blood.
43
There's also the fact that basically everyone else who's considered doing the same climb is now dead.
The wikipedia article on free soloing also has a long list of famous climbers who have died. Looks like eventually, this sport will kill you.
If grim documentaries about climbing disasters are your thing, The Summit is on netflix. It's about the time that 11 people died in one day trying to climb K2.
Not free soloing, but still enough to kill you.
My best friend at school joined the climbing club at university. The first summer they organised a trip of a lifetime to the Himalayas. Where he fell of something quite high. RIP.
You aren't making me feel relaxed about my son wanting to join the school ski club. Fortunately, we have only shitty mountains.
He comes from a long line of clumsy people. My dad had a ski trophy reading "Least Coordinated Skier, 1960."
There won't be any snow by the time he's old enough to go anywhere without your consent.
Or mountaintops in the Appalachians.
There wasn't any good snow last year.
Skiing, you generally only break a leg, unless there's an avalanche, in which case, sayonara baby. But they're pretty rare.
They are very rare in Pennsylvania.
51: That's really on West Virginia that still allows mountain top removal.
In Mossheimat you can ski on the heaps of mine tailings. But those tailings are ground super-fine for geological reasons, so you probably can't do that in Pennsylvania.
55: Yes, that's why Pennsylvania wants to Make America Great Again. They want to remove some of those pesky mountains. Didn't you hear?
You can buy a house for about three quarters of a million that is built on top of slag from steel mills. Easy walk from my house.
If he tries skiing on slag he won't be ok. You should warn him against that.
There's nothing built on Mossheimat tailings, because of the super-fineness. Also they have cyanide in them.
They sealed the slag under a layer of clay and then put new dirt on top.
You would be so much more badass if you had enormous hills of cyanide-laced industrial waste slowly blowing away in the wind instead.
We have plenty of those. Just not with expensive houses on them.
Did you put the teeming dormitory towns of your coerced laborers downstream of the cyanide? I ask because America seems to have problems understanding drainage systems.
I don't know. But we definitely have the problem were new suburbs are resulting in old towns being flooded by creeks that didn't flood back when the suburbs were trees and ferns.
Good news- I got a call asking if I'm interested in a hugely career advancing position- essentially founding CEO of a well funded high visibility (like, part of the role is schmoozing well known politicians) organization. Not like I'm guaranteed the job but would be the leading candidate.
Negative- wait until you see where they put it. Total nonstarter.
Ohio isn't actually as bad as I sometimes make it out to be.
We have pitched a tent in the backyard because the house will be uninhabitable until long after a reasonable bedtime. Sympathy and worries to our southern compatriots though.(LA and Houston both I suppose.)
I'm surprised it's been as hot or hotter up in SF/Oakland as it is here. I spent all day in a library, still trying to figure out what to do tomorrow. SF is suppose to be in the 80s tomorrow, but San Jose still near 100.
And yes, people who live in hotter places, I know it's hotter in other places. That doesn't make it cooler here.
Unbearable yesterday / last night. The barista apparently considered going into work on her day off for the AC.
Highlight of yesterday: showed up at Richmond Swim Center ~20 minutes after it opened, waited in line for at least an hour, someone threw up in the pool, everyone went home, still hot. ("I know why they threw up," my daughter said sagely: "they drank too much pool water.")
It's 60 degrees here. Did we steal your weather?
We were just on Ocean Beach and down at the water line it is *heaven*. Highly recommended.
The amount of trash will confirm the wretchedness of humanity, I've never seen so much, BUT the weather there is exquisite, and the cloud-haze was clearing when we left. Go if you can!
We are all made of worm shits.
I don't understand what Deathwish Guy climbing a great big thing has to do with Zen, but I always kind of get off on pictures of shirtless climbers as long as I can avoid thinking about what their fingers and toes look like, which I guess in a way is like meditating, a la, don't think about not thinking about things, so hey, full circle, Zen it is. Look, I made a koan.
very much not in the spirit of the OP but they're LEAVING JACKSON ON THE 20 NO HARRIET TUBMAN FOR US FUCK THIS.
however, in the spirit of the OP, my horrifying misprecribed psych meds disaster appears to be calming down. awake at 1:45 and 4:45 but eh they're packing for the move today what do I expect, no banging my head on things (ok very gently yesterday) no hitting walls, less gnawing on fingers, akathisia going down, tedious OCD thoughts of suicide marginally down; in short I feel terrible but was honestly thinking longingly about the psych ward three days ago which I am not at all now and feel as if I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and it's not obviously a train.
I went to the Asian Art Museum. Still hot outside in SF away from the ocean, but nothing like yesterday. I think last night's low where I live was between 80-85. And it's apparently 10 degrees hotter there right now so I'm killing time while SF cools.
Like fiddling while Rome burns, but for millennials.
So lame, Al! Also Mozilla spellcheck doesn't recognize millennials which is grimly hilarious if you squint at it.
I'm closer to generation X. So I haven't eaten avocado toast today.
I ate a large carrot for breakfast. This is not innuendo.
So just wondering: what's the worst-case scenario for what looks like a massive rashy ring around an insect/spider (?) bite on my ankle? Noticed Friday morning (idly), probably result of putting a blanket on the bed without checking it for passengers. But I really don't know what caused it. Significant chance of leg falling off, necrotizing fasciitis, or tick-borne nightmare disease? Should I see a doctor or continue being nonchalantly freaked out?
idk, but from what I've heard that's the main indicator for Lyme disease.
Yes. See a doctor. Early treatment is best.
sounds like Lyme disease but it has been hyped and I know people who have gotten it quite a few times and it was nbd so there's that.
FUN. Urgent care is open tomorrow.
Out of all the diseases named after cities in Connecticut, Lyme disease is the worst. Still, very easily treated if caught early.
Chlamydia, Michigan and Lyme, Connecticut, have a legitimate complaints with medical nomenclature.
Just be aware that al's standards for nbd are possibly different from yours.
Well, not too hard to guess when the infection could have occurred... I was so fucking happy in the woods that day; I guess this is how I pay for happiness. I THOUGHT I HAD PREPAID
93: honestly they might not be that different. The hell she's describing now is certainly familiar -- so glad it's getting better, al.
Think of the poor deer tick, so hungry for blood and in despair of ever finding a deer, she bites into a programmer.
It is with a truly pathetic amount of shame that I admit I'm not a programmer. "Tech drone" covers it a bit better.
Speaking of desperate insects, is it possible for one to crawl into a room through a running wall AC unit? Like through the condensation drainage pipe or whatever? I ask because the other day I heard an object fall and looked up to see a large cockroach directly below the AC. After I killed it I noticed little bits of black fluffy stuff all over, resembling the stuff on the cooling fin thingies inside the AC. I'm thinking maybe this explains the lizard too.
This is only the second time I've had a cockroach in the apartment, so it's not a weirdly exotic explanation like epicycles or whatever.
it's going to turn out cockroaches and lizards are orbiting your apartment. hopefully a Kuiper belt thing.
It's good to have you commenting al! Have they fixed your cluster headaches or whatever it was?
Thermostat in my apartment says 88. Since it was at 85 when I left this morning, I guess I can consider myself lucky.
Also, I think I'd rather say "I had lyme disease and they treated it and it was nbd" than not know I had it, I think.
Today I was vacuuming the house and started to sweat. I turned the AC down to 73 until I finished.
it's going to tun out cockroaches orbit your apartment, hopefully in a kuiper belt type situation.
102: my creepy neurologist fixed my headaches mostly but then my otherwise competent psychiatrist fucked me all up with the wrong doses of meds because it turned out I was a bad metabolizer of one drug and another was therefore causing it to be 5.2 times as powerful, which induced some fucked up shit. which is improving! but I still feel awful. depressed but like I took way too much benzedrine.
cleaning the cabinets of my new house with bon ami is soothing.
and hey, at least the withdrawal puking and lack of desire to eat have caused me to lose weight! for chicks that's a win rather than a sign of...hmm this sounds bad when I say it out loud.
The only reason they found out I had shingles early on was that then-baby Selah was admiring my first lesion and scratched around it in a way that made it look like she might have been tracing a ring rather than starting one with her scratch. Turns out it was the latter and they got me on medication and eventually all was well, but I fear I'd have done my normal thing of giving it a week or two to improve on its own. Anyway, get checked and tested!!
I'm pretty sure the woman doing check-in at Children's urgent care tonight wasn't hitting on me when she said she should know all my information already as often as she sees me (It was only the second time this week; the other stop was ER only, lady!) and just literally meant we're there way too much, but if things stay on this path we'll be back again tomorrow. Yikes.
We're lab rats! http://963theblaze.com/missoula-county-smoke-problem-apparently-unprecedented-in-u-s-and-canada/
My parents, in their 70s, were headed to Montana last I heard from them, a week after the eclipse (which they saw in Oregon). They haven't had much internet, so I emailed them a warning about the smoke, strongly suggesting they re-route. I hope they did, but I know they really wanted to go to Yellowstone again.
That's probably just about the best place to be right now.
The orbital period of Alameida's astronomy jokes is three comments.
They get ablated by the heat of the server, so they're slightly different each time.
105 to 103.1, I assume! Hey, what better place to spend the holiday weekend than urgent care, I ask you? Totes better than Yellowstone. (Apparently not Missoula. It sounds horrific.)
I don't remember if I mentioned this, but I read Young Men and Fire during the 2015 wildfirepalooza and it was burned seared made a very deep impression on me, even though I found Maclean's prose artfully clunky. Not sure the impression can really be put into language, clunky or otherwise. Antiquated notions of honor and duty, crossing disciplines and generations. I lived in the dorm named after him; I guess the dorm made a related set of impressions, in fact.
113: Well, then I hope they're hiding out there. We went to Yellowstone on a family vacation in 1988, but lots of it was closed and on fire.
Check your privilege. Where I come from national parks have pissy little grass fires you can just walk through.
There's a Maclean festival next weekend.
I've been hit on at the ER twice; I wouldn't be so sure. but sorry you're going so often!
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Off to ER for a CT, because I fainted at the weekend. Which has never happened to me before.
Dr seems to think I need swelling checked out. Swelling from clunking my head post-faint, not a precursor to faint.
>
Do that. I had a swelling from clunking my head which turned out to be a brain bleed. If they fob you off, look for symptoms of tiredness, loss of vision focus and numbness in your hands/feet. If you get any of those, get back to a Dr and demand another scan statim. A very slow bleed doesn't necessarily show up on the first one.
The ill-health of the 'tariat is becoming alarming. Best of luck to all.
The ill-health of the 'tariat is becoming alarming. Best of luck to all.
The ill-health of the 'tariat is becoming alarming. Best of luck to all.
I fucking hit that button once.
it turned out I was a bad metabolizer of one drug and another was therefore causing it to be 5.2 times as powerful, which induced some fucked up shit.
I'll be teaching about this very topic in a few weeks. Maybe I can give the lecture a "ripped from the headlines" feel by telling the students that this effect is known to cause adverse drug reactions in imaginary people on the internet.
BTW, 23&Me now offers screening for most of the more common genetic variation in drug metabolizing enzymes, although this is pretty recent and I'm not sure to what extent medical professionals are willing to use the information.
129: For bipolar specifically I know a lot of people who've gotten an official doctor-requested version because it makes medication choices so much easier. I can think of at least one person who got the info through 23andme but I'm not sure what her prescriber thought. I'm not sure why they wouldn't take it into consideration when so much of deciding which drug is guessing anyway.
130: After some back and forth, 23&Me did get approval from the FDA to advertise that they screened for variations in drug responses, so their information must presumably be as legit as the tests that were already being ordered by doctors and covered by insurance.
But medicine can be pretty conservative, so I could imagine people being reluctant to use information from a test that wasn't ordered through "proper" channels.
Worst air of the episode today. Here's what the county AQ person (who's developed quite a following) had to say last night:
Tonight and Monday we have a high pressure ridge to the west and a cold front to our east. This is not good. East winds should clear the smoke out of eastern Montana into western Montana but the high pressure ridge to the west will not let the winds or smoke go much further than western Montana. With more locally produced smoke, expect unhealthy air quality or worse throughout Missoula County on Monday. There may be some pockets of Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups air quality in places tonight or early tomorrow. This is where I hope I am wrong and somehow the complicated air flows do disperse some of the smoke out of the county and western Montana.
On the upside, Thorn, anyone who knows how many and troubled your kids are and hits on you anyway is clearly a keeper. Or some kind of twisted ghoul. Worth investigating either way.
Yesterday morning:
Tonight is when things get really interesting. East winds are expected tonight through Monday and then a more typical south west wind pattern is expected to kick in around Tuesday or so. You would think the east winds would clear the smoke out of western Montana, but these winds will probably be more like sheep dogs where western Montana is the sheep pen and smoke is the sheep. The dogs will herd the smoke from Idaho, Oregon and Washington fires into Montana, then they will swing around to the east and herd the smoke out of eastern Montana back into western Montana. So yes, there is a potential for several herds of sheep to stop for a while all around Missoula County and western Montana. Hopefully the sheep dogs will take an break and let some of the smoke leave, but not too optimistic on this.
134: Please don't take it personally when I say that that's fucking hilarious.
I know, right? The county health department. Who would have guessed.
The building code is all in haiku.
133: I don't ACTUALLY think she was hitting on me, but do think there was a queer I-recognize-and-acknowledge-you vibe, which is unsurprising in that personal experience and my small amount of online dating have convinced me that hospital is suuuuuper full of queer women. I suppose it would be unethical of them to use the abuse screening question about "if you are in a relationship, do you feel safe?" as a pickup tool, but my answers are strikingly consistent!
hospital is suuuuuper full of queer women
Wisdom from the mouths of porn directors. Who knew.
Take that, Alex Honnold.
(don't think about his fingers, don't think about his fingers...)
For anyone following this fascinating saga, the "rash" got considerably worse overnight and was diagnosed as cellulitis, for which I am taking the same antibiotics I would be taking for Lyme disease. It's pretty grisly, but hopefully not this grisly (links to PDF horror story, but it's a great piece of writing).
Alex S., please update if you get a chance -- thinking of you. Thorn, I notice you are being cagey about whether or not the hospital employee was cute.
Lurid, hope you get better quickly. I had cellulitis as a teen and do NOT want to repeat that experience. Glad you got it checked out as it can get so much worse quickly!
And yes, Alex S. Hope you're ok!
Thorn, hope the kiddos stay out of the hospital for a bit....
And al, good luck on getting the meds/moods stabilised.
Ugh, cellulitis is awful. I've had two "let's take heavy antibiotics to avoid cellulitis" episodes this summer and oh boy am I glad it worked.
Um, check-in lady was plenty cute for my needs though not one of the ones who's made me previously think that damn there are some good-looking med techs etc. but I'm pretty committted to my plan of not dating anyone for a really long time. So just admiring that they're good at their jobs is enough. No hospital today, yet at least, though we did get a child's cracked phone screen fixed. Tomorrow's hospital trip is already scheduled, though I guess technically fifth in a week or seventh if we're counting being handed back and forth between ER and urgent care. I guess it kind of makes sense that I'm extremely tired and grumpy.
So just admiring that they're good at their jobs is my story and I'm sticking with it.
147: I keep meaning to get better at objectifying but get hung up on whether it might bother or offend the person, which I realize is not the point. But sadly "wow, nice haircut" or whatever is about as far as it goes.
Is this the Share Your Downer thread?
5 weeks ago: saw a friend of 37 years, who was a bit off his feed because he'd been told he had an ulcer, otherwise fine;
1 week ago: friend rang, no ulcer, probably problem with bile duct, endoscopy scheduled for Friday;
Friday: friend rang, bile duct fine, problem with pancreas, exploratory surgery imminent;
Saturday: called into hospital
2 hours ago friend's sister rang. Friend died yesterday of heart failure associated with pancreatic cancer metastasised every fucking where. Age 63.
Look after yourselves.
Ugh. Sorry, Chris. It's a scary world on so many fronts.
O God, Chris. I am so sorry.
I am fine. Had a CT. No signs of any brain injury. Although I'll take Chris's advice above on board.
There's no 100% certain identified cause yet, but the consensus seems to be that it's likely to have been a vasovagal thing. Waking at night with (extremely painful) cramp, jumping up out of bed to deal with cramp, followed by (a minute or so later), fainting.
I have fairly regular blood tests, and had an echocardiogram and ECG last year.*
Following on from Thorn, I had a strange sense that one of the nurses was flirting with me. I think presumably just one of those people who has that flirty vibe/affect about them. I have a bruised face, and am under no illusions about my charms at the best of time. I probably had more of a 'street person' vibe about me, than, "charming professional 40 something".
Doctors don't seem to think there's anything to worry about. But I have another checkup in a few weeks to review.
* I get them every 2 years, as monitoring for a minor (but rare) non-health-threatening condition.
That reminds me that back when Nia was the one having middle-of-the-night GI emergencies, we got a male nurse who overcompensated for that relative rareness by using a lot of "sweetie" and "honey" as he got her ready for him to put her IV in. She was having none of it. "Um, isn't that a wedding ring? Does your wife* really want you cheating on her by calling other people Sweetie? That seems SO disrespectful!" Both he and the child life specialist there to make sure she was relaxed and calm got laughing so hard he had to put the needle down and get another sanitized one because he was afraid he'd knocked it into himself or the bed while cracking up. He was NOT flirting with her, I'm quite sure.
* I'm pretty sure actually husband.
When my mother died, three days before Christmas, we had to delay her funeral Mass until after the holy holidays. She died on the 22nd of December, but we couldn't bury her until the 28th.
By this point, I was all snarky and exhausted, and whatever the f*ck. And then two of her nurses showed up at the church, for my mother's funeral Mass, and they were not being paid, they were taking time out of their regular, daily lives to pay their respects to my mother, my dear little mum. And that's when I totally lost it.
This was their own free time, you know? and they came to pay their respects to my mother, and for this time they were not being paid, they just came because they cared. Will never, ever, forget these two nurses.
And me and my dad, me and me da, me and my old man, we just sat there at the back of the church pretending to hold things all together, but basically we cried.
Oh Jesus chris that's awful.
Take good care everyone.
Was Nia also the one who, when asked about her religious preferences in hospital, said that she believed firmly in unicorns? The staff must be fighting to get on her ward when she comes in...
I'd forgotten the unicorns but yes. At least we're memorable in GOOD ways! ("That one holds so still for blood draws," called someone who must have done it before as a nurse walked Mara to her room last week.)
well, I'm back to terrible with the mixed state/akathisia and have been hurting myself a little badly--whacking my forearms on door and window frames mainly but no hitting my head so, yay me. my daughters black kitten got lost from the (first) apartment in the move, running out the door the movers had open and I assume into the elevator they had waiting at the floor. we'll never find her. she's never been outside our apartment before and she must be so lonely and scared. husband x is working so hard all week and I can't do all this stuff anymore. if I really think I'll hurt myself I have to go into the psych ward but I don't know what the point is; they take your nail scissors away but not your hands. I can tough it out but my doctor better fix it soon I can't do this for even one more week. Ok wait I'm more badass than that, but not two weeks. sorry for all this shittiness going around and I'm glad your head is ok alex, sorry about the cellulitis lurid keyaki, condolences that's awful chris and that's a very sweet though sad story JPJ. wait, wasn't this the cheering thread? quick ogged, post about that breakout instagram star baby hippo.
160: my daughter is a fucking rockstar of blood draws.
Keep not hitting yourself in the head al! It makes everything worse.
Sorry about the painful stuff, al. Sit and tickle the kitten for a while, it might help. Kittens often do.
161 is justified as good news retroactively by 163. Sorry things are not going tremendously well for you.
Yay on finding the cat! I hope things look up.
From 21: The text insisted that there were three 'pillars' (arkan) of Islam: 1) testifying that '[t]here is no god but Allah and Muhammad is His Messenger' (shahada); 2) the performance of obligatory daily prayers (salat); and 3) waging war against the Dutch unbelievers.
I like how, out of context, this sounds like a description of a stock bumpkin comedic figure. Presumably said in whatever regional accent you find most amusing: "I have but three principles: I believe in God, I pray when I must, and I hate the Dutch!"
168 made me happy. I am now at the ER which is less awesome, but clearly I need better antibiotics ASAP, where ASAP means "within twelve hours or so". Can't even get insurance sorted out while waiting. Is Haiti in trouble again from hurricanes?
165: this is the trump administration; can you be sure?
168
Change Dutch to Swiss and I'm not ruling it out.
(Actually, I had a Swiss passport control official at the Zurich airport wave off when I accidentally told him I'd been in Europe 9 months and couldn't remember the date I entered, and then tell me to chillax and not worry about missing my flight when I told him that I was flustered because I was worried about making a connection, so either it's exxtreme white privilege or they let only the assholes out of the country.)
For everyone else, sorry to hear about all the health problems! Hope everyone gets the treatment they need.
(I had to get a blood draw recently at a teaching hospital, and after missing the vein once the student nurse panicked and refused to try again, so this older nurse jammed it into the back of my hand, missed a vein, and then just dug around until she hit something. It was unbelievably painful, and it left a giant bruise that now over two weeks later hasn't totally faded yet.)
171.last Keep an eye on it for infection. That was my second let's-make-sure-it-doesn't-become-cellulitis adventure, but I think they were extra diligent because it would have counted as a hospital-acquired infection they had to report, which the phlebitis did not. God, it's been a great summer!
They should have called a SLC police officer.
172
Yikes! Hope yours cleared up. I didn't even realize that could happen.
173
I guess America has to up its quota of white people unfairly shot by police so they don't appear so racist. Apparently the Swiss don't worry about that as much.
(Seriously! I was flushed and sweating from running across an entire terminal, fidgeting in line and looking at my cell phone every 2 seconds (to check gate closing time on my boarding pass), and then getting flustered and lying to the border patrol guy.)
I liked this: https://theoutline.com/post/2203/the-empire-doesn-t-care-who-is-president
roger, will you please try your hardest to post links that are actually relevant to the discussion under way, and to say something more about them than "I liked this".
If you feel you absolutely must post something that is unconnected to the subject of a thread, you should:
a) use the "pause/play" symbols || and |> to indicate that you are posting something off topic;
b) say a little more about the subject of the link than just "I liked this"; for example, what is the link about? why did you like it? do you agree with its argument? does it relate to a topic that the blog is known to be interested in?
c) at least acknowledge that you are derailing (or at least trying to derail) the conversation. A quick "sorry, this is off-topic" is acceptable. So is a humorous explanation of why the link is actually not off-topic as well.
As it is, your contributions are more similar in style to those of "delhi escort agency" than to those of any of our human commenters.
176: I'm pretty sure not the one pronounced Dell-high, in case this is another entry in your list of Ohio abominations.
"I liked this. Kill Flanders. Kill Flanders. Kill Flanders."
Delhi has robot escorts?
The US Navy has robot escorts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Hunter
Way way down on the list of physical ailments, but let this be a public service announcement: I had to run into Whole Foods with a kid to pick up a missing ingredient for dinner, and buckling kid back into the car with my hands full (no free shopping bags here any more) I put the receipt in my mouth to hold it. When I went to remove it a small amount of saliva had made it bond to my skin and grabbing the receipt ripped off the entire top layer of my lower lip which still hurts two days later. Couldn't even drink wine that night, it was too painful. So don't put thermal receipts in your mouth, kids.
As long as I can still eat the kind with the blue, ditto-master-like print.
For over a week I've had persistent cramping in one calf, started after a slightly sprained ankle. Wakes me up at night, I go down stairs at half speed, one step at atime. Last night I alternated between wanting to get a fucking saw and exercising compassion for my afflicted friend the leg. Currently trying a course of triple water intake.
For bonus points, my dad is simultaneously visiting for a while. We get along pretty well, but as a houseguest he is roughly a friendly rhino.
Went far into the Bekaa valley today. Baalbek is astonishing. Had to resist the urge to buy a Hezbollah t-shirt. Also went close enough to the Syrian border a traveling companion's cell phone picked up a welcome to Syria sms message from her network provider.
I am fairly sure my sister considers me a friendly rhino of a houseguest.
Travel folks down in this thread gulch: any recommendations besides the obvious in Naples, Campania region, or south Lazio region (not Rome)?
That facial expression as he looks up from the inexplicably broken thing in his hand, or the explanation behind why a perfectly logical expedition went bad because of an unhelpful surprise.
Actually OK so far, I am just cranky because I am not used to having middle-aged minor body failures.
Ravenna if you haven't been, maybe. Retreat town for many emperors during bad weather, plague, or other tempoirary problem with Rome.
Thanks but that's up north. I'm looking southish.
When in Naples, be sure to dress like the locals.
185 last should be a joke/plot point in a post-apocalyptic novel.
Maybe it's a comment on an immediately pre-apocalypic blog post.
187
Don't listen to Moby. Something like this outfit will help you fit right in.
If you're in Campania, avoid eating the local produce unless your body is above average in resisting cancer cells.
184
Sorry to hear about the calf pain. Have you had it checked by the doctor?
195.1: With the hair in 191, perfect.
Pompei and Herculaneum are crass but still worth seeing -- not least for the distance between Pompei and Vesuvius, which gives you an intuitive grasp of how big a big eruption really is. Otherwise, if you have time, head for Palermo, which is wonderful
