I put too many Parmesan cheese in quarantine meatballs and I owe a ton of taxes because Trump's plan for stimulating the economy by lowering withholding doesn't mesh very well with my plan of never paying estimated taxes.

Someone gave me one of those instant pot slow/pressure cookers as a birthday present back in January. So far I've tried 2 things from this collection of instant pot Indian food recipes and they've both been easy and delicious. Any other sites I should check out?

2: yes, this one https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/topics/method/pressure-cooker

Ogged is a better Apocalypse Blogger than I am.

I'm really liking my new job, which is nice. It is so, so much easier bullying persuading clients of their best causes of action when I'm not also maneuvering around my own supervisor. The kind of call that would have been miserably tense last year just went very very smoothly.

Also, in my first few weeks as a supervisor, I have found it repeatedly necessary to remind my subordinates to think inside the box.

You could make a head-sized box for them to wear over their brain.

With eyeholes.

8: You don't want them looking outside the box.

Then put the monitor in the box.

2: Which of them?

Merging 1 and 2, I made this">https://www.thekitchn.com/instant-pot-spaghetti-264230">this Instant Pot pasta last week and I'd go with 12 oz. of pasta rather than 8 next time but have no complaints. It was absolutely delicious and took no work. Except now it will take the work of finding a grocery that isn't sold out of ground beef, so it may be a recipe for week two.

Argh, sorry. I hate mistyping html on my phone. And that my phone apparently now autocorrects "html" to "gremlins."

How is the Afghanistan withdrawal (not in any sense actually a peace deal) being covered in the US? At all?

Effectively, not at all. There are stories about it, but no one really pays attention to them.

No win for Trump is I guess the best one could hope for.

Have you read White, Railroaded?

Yes.

I haven't but I've heard good things.

Does it say enlightening stuff about the interaction between railroad construction and the subjugation of the Plains Indians*? Beyond the obvious. I'm thinking economic push-pull and migration routes and stuff.
*Tribes? Nomenclature I know not.

And I guess not just railroads but ranchers (or whatever you call the people who owned the cattle the cowboys herded).

20: I would expect it to, yeah. Much of White's previous work has been on exactly that sort of thing in various contexts. Another book that you might like along the same lines, though covering a slightly earlier period, is Elliott West's The Contested Plains, which I did read recently. It's about the 1850s gold rush in Colorado from a really interesting perspective that kind of encompasses both economic and environmental history as a single field, from both the Indian and white viewpoints.

I should note that I think the only White I've read is the Navajo section of The Roots of Dependency, and that was many years ago, but it was really fascinating and thought-provoking. I keep meaning to read more of his stuff, but it somehow keeps not rising to the top of my immense reading list.

Because you're woke.

And thanks. When did they build a railroad to Colorado?

Elliot West? Seriously.

24: Not woke enough to avoid books by old white guys. I'm currently reading Europe and the People without History (which is also really good btw), as well as Josephus.

When did they build a railroad to Colorado?

The first was apparently the Denver Pacific, which connected to the transcontinental at Cheyenne in 1870.

So I guess the immediate comparison is the Potosi-Plate mule trains.

Talking indirectly of which : the wonderful "half made world"

Reminds me.
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/life-and-public/2020/03/arctic-railway-dream-fades-away-sami-herders-announce-veto

As Walter Echo-Hawk has suggested, "The widespread lack of reliable information about Native issues is the most pressing problem confronting Native Americans . . . today."

30. Speaking of which, has Gilman stopped writing? Haven't seen anything since The Revolutions.

30:

"the love child of McCarthy's The Road and Le Guin's The Dispossessed.".

Gilman's active on Twitter, but I haven't seen him mention anything about a new book (either that he's writing anything or that anything's coming out) since I've been following him, which is a couple of years. Don't know more than that.

He's very funny on twitter. Recommended.

36 seconded

I'm not sure if I've ever suggested that folks follow my wife at the other place, but the (near) daily bird picture has been known to cause small improvements in viewers' well-being. That's based on self-reporting, so not necessarily scientifically valid.

Here's a minor escapist fantasy I've had: it's spring 2022 (say) and we're all emerging from the other side, and we've got that unstoppable post-war euphoria feeling of community and camaraderie. (Plus the sadness and feeling of loss and grief. But the feeling that things are finally on the up and up again is what I sometimes think about.)

If your minor escapist fantasy involved Israel not run by Bibi, things are looking up.

My quarantine beard shows I'm really going grey.

Right, I should have said that that's why I'm following him, he's wildly entertaining.

Thanks. You too.

NMM to Genesis B. P-ORRIDGE

44: Would they mind, really?

I bought a cheap gaming headset with a mic for Zoom conferencing. It lights up with rainbow LEDs on the side. I can disable the lights, but I shouldn't, right?

46 of course not.

The 80s are well and truly gone.

Hey. I was born in the 80s. Asshole.

41. You're allowed to shave as long as you don't do it in anybody else's bathroom.

What's the average percentage of patients who need to be put on ventilators? Trying to get a read on the situation here where we have a population of around 2,800,000 and 11.8 ICU units per 100,000 (not that I saw any info that they also had ventilators but I'm assuming the best here.)

What's the average percentage of patients who need to be put on ventilators?

I've seen figures ranging from 10%-25% of those hospitalized. Presumably as hospitals fill up, only the most serious cases are admitted, which bumps up the percentage needing ventilation.

How are you feeling, Barry?

||

lynching] has been presented as saving gau-mata (cows) but the court is of the opinion that no mother would ever permit her sons to murder anyone in her name.

Cows are just delicious.

And seldom guilty of mob violence.

Except for stampedes.

That's just fulfilling the duty to retreat.

OK so if my math is correct we have about 330 ICU units and maybe there are 60ish of the 401 who need one. So all good for now. And in a couple of weeks we're fucked.

If the ICU units can recur once I don't see why they can't do it again.

53 a bit better but still have a cough and fluid in my lungs, I've been taking my medicine regularly but maybe it's not clearing up as fast as it should. Also have a bit of a sore throat. It's not helping that I had to go into work this morning to retrieve and setup my laptop for remote working, than hightail it to a mall to get photos taken for my insurance card, as well as get new glasses because mine finally broke. I'll have to go to one of the healthcare centers tomorrow morning to get my card (first thing to avoid the crowd). Then maybe a bit of a shop. I'd like to stay in for a solid month after that but i have car insurance/inspection stuff to take care of before the end of the month. THis whole thing is really making me resent whenever I have to leave the house for some bullshit.

I'm worried about the situation here but the situation in the US and UK looks like it's going to be a horrorshow and very soon.

Oh, and they shut down all bars and restaurants (save for takeout) and have shut down all flights for two weeks. I think it's going to be months though.

In other news, the volcano I work on and can see from my roof has been determined to be not extinct but merely dormant. I think I'll go walk on it tomorrow.

Sorry I made this into a COVID thread...

Recommend an Ibn Battuta translation and I'll call it even.

(The gf started reading him and is into ME travel, so.)

Seconding 65. I've started keeping tabs on Barry's recommended Arabic translations and would appreciate having more classics to consider.

(Was going to make an Eaters of the Dead joke, but apparently that was inspired by Ibn Fadlan, not Ibn Battuta.)

Maybe we should do a quarantine book club?

Eaters of the Dead is so well done!

That was a good book.

Much better than expected.

67.last: My father is not quite self-quarantining yet but has finally got round to starting the Decameron.

65 I've seen your email and been meaning to get to it but this last week has been...well pandemic, man.

This seems well regarded, though I've not read it and I seem to recall a much more recent one, maybe 2014 or more recent. But maybe I'm wrong.

Have I told my favorite Ibn Battuta mistranslation story? So Ibn Battuta was born and raised in Tangier, Morocco. His account of his journey is filled with gastronomical observations which makes it really quite unique and gives it a certain, if you will, flavor. In Morocco the Ramadan fast is broken with a wonderfully nourishing soup called harira, ingredients vary slightly by region but it is made with flour, little chunks of meat (beef or lamb), chickpeas, onions, tomatoes, sometimes turmeric, etc, it's really quite delicious and really hits the spot after you've spent the day fasting. Anyway, recounting his time in Delhi he marvels at the various exotic dishes and desserts specially made for Ramadan but laments that even though that's all wonderful and delicious what he really misses is harira. This gets translated (Gibb, I think but not sure) as "but what I really miss is gruel" which is technically true but if you've ever had it and read Oliver Twist is so wide of the mark as to be comical.

"Please, Moor, may I have some sir."

Thanks Barry!

Mossy, I don't know much about that. We have two transcontinental routes -- Northern Pacific and Great Northern -- but both were built several years after the original transcontinental, and both more or less after the effective military defeat of the plains peoples. At the time of Little Bighorn (in south central Montana) the NP was floundering in bankruptcy in Bismarck ND, some 400 miles east. The St Paul & Pacific, a precursor of the GN, was a failed shortline in Minnesota. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Paul_and_Pacific_Railroad The GN crosses several reservations, so there would have been politics involved, but I don't have the sense that the tribes were major players at that time.

Here's a 1909 ad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.)#/media/File:Greatnorthernad.jpg

Does it say enlightening stuff about the interaction between railroad construction and the subjugation of the Plains Indians*?

I don't remember how much Railroaded gets into that, as it's been years since I read it. I think there's a section early on about American colonial expansion but it's mostly chronologically after the initial construction across the Plains. It's not a "building the first transcontinental railroad" type of book, more of a business, social, and political history of the railroads in operation. Also there's an old companion web site with some data visualizations that may interest you.

I just saw a Ford Taurus station wagon with "Classic" plates. Legally, the car just needs to be old enough and not used for daily driving to qualify, but what the fuck?

Ford Tauruses will be the potsherds of our era.
Thanks CC and fa & anyone I missed.

looks like the facebook AI has escaped its constraints and has now erased the entire site. pity.

Railroaded is great. Also Republic for Which It Stands, broader scope, recapitulates some of Railroaded. I think mostly railroads came after miners or ranchers and also after the most serious warfare-- I'm sure there were places where the railroad was a factor locally.