It's quite confusing. I guess they're thinking of it primarily as a messaging thing?
I think I'm going to wait until my son is vaccinated before I go back to the bar. That won't be long. I welcome our impending quasi-normality, but I don't want to be an asshole to somebody who had a rougher plague that I did.
Hawaii got her first shot today. No appointment and no wait, which is good but not a great commentary on the town.
Some college bars don't card anyone.
I just worry that unvaccinated people will take their masks off in stores and things, because we have no way to verify their vaccine status. I would be more comfortable if they waited until a certain percentage (maybe 65%) we're fully vaccinated.
BG: at this point, one supposes that most of the unvaccinated are unreachable. Certainly those who will take off their masks without mandates, are unreachable, yes? We tried. We've stayed masked for weeks after our shots, and nothing seems to work. Time to just declare failure and get on with our lives. People will die. But really, what can we do?
Epitaph for a nation, that last sentence.
5: Why worry? The vaxed are safe from the unvaxed. The unvaxed who wear masks in indoor public places are also reasonably safe. The unvaxed and unmasked are almost entirely only putting others in the same group at risk. That's their collective choice. The CDC is pretty sure that there aren't enough of them to overwhelm the hospitals, or cause serious risk to those who continue to wear masks.
I don't think I'm ready to go without a mask indoors. But I don't want people to think I'm weird and neurotic. So I'm going to start robbing banks.
6: our vaccination rates are pretty steady. I would not describe everyone as unreachable. People are scheduling. Some had childcare and transportation barriers. Adolescents only just became eligible for Pfizer etc.
My boss is vaccinated, but she's a kidney transplant patient on immunosuppressants. She's basically supposed to behave as though she is unvaccinated. Rituximab (chemo for non Hodgkin lymphoma also makes you vulnerable.
"Culture of mask-wearing" seems good to me but so does "make being vaccinated have benefits". Personally I can't call it between those two so I say err on the side of telling the truth.
If anybody in my command is a headache, I have them beaten. How's that?
10: I just doubt the vaccine hold-outs are going to wait to enjoy the benefit of going maskless.
We should extend mask requirements just to piss them off.
During MI's recent surge in cases, my workplace required two layered surgical masks in situations where you couldn't maintain 6 feet. My skin is pretty wrecked (I have splits at the tops of my nostrils that won't heal), and the weekend usually requires a few mask-wearing errands. MI's governor has said she won't drop the mask mandate for indoors until we hit 70% first dose coverage as a state, but I hope work will relax their restrictions back to a single mask, maybe even allowing nonsurgical ones.
The data aren't in yet, but they really seem to be pointing at "vaccinated people don't transmit virus" and also "vaccines give good enough protection including variants you don't need to worry about unvaccinated people." Now, I just hope Pfizer was overestimating Sept. approval for kids and that all 3 get approval in the next 2-3 months.
The vaxed are safe from the unvaxed.
I have to admit I don't fully understand why people think that vaccination is some kind of magic safety screen. We know that the vaccines are very effective at preventing severe illness, and quite effective at preventing infection or transmission, but the efficacy in terms of transmission is lower than the efficacy in terms of severity of illness, no? It feels like the removal of all mask requirements should be a combination of vaccine rates _and_ incidence in the wider community?
I guess maybe ydnew's 14.last is pointing to that concern not being something to worry about that much.
In the UK, under 40s are still not being vaccinated, although we are proceeding with a lot of relaxation of rules as of Monday. I'm not personally super-worried at the moment.* Incidence in London is very low, and I'm happy to go to the pub and drink with friends, but continue to wear a mask in any busy indoor situations.
* first dose of vaccine, but not second, but I'm about 75% sure I've had it in the past, anyway.
I don't think we do know that efficacy in terms of preventing transmission is meaningfully lower than efficacy in terms of preventing illness. When the vaccines were approved, we knew it was possible that the vaccines were very good for preventing illness but not good at preventing transmission, but that was a possibility because data hadn't been collected on the latter question yet. As data is coming I'm, my understanding is that the vaccines are very good at preventing transmission as well -- even the few breakthrough cases are characterized by a lower viral load and therefore lower transmissibility than unvaccinated cases.
And cases do continue to plummet in the US as vaccination advances, even in states basically dispensing with masking.
I'm very curious to know how this plays out as some regions achieve herd immunity and others lag, maskless and conservative, at 30% vaccinated or whatever. Are the 65+ set vaccinated in these places? If not, what kinds of unforced losses end up being endured? I guess I can extrapolate my own answers to this, but the idea that it's a self-induced slow train wreck makes it so much weirder than a country whose government is massively dropping the ball on vaccine delivery.
Our school district just pulled the mask mandate for the last week of school.
My son's school requires two masks. It is indeed not good for his skin.
My understanding is that data on transmission is still firming up, but looks very good so far.
I do think the new CDC recs were oddly communicated, since they didn't spell out how "vaccinated people don't need to mask" should be operationalized in policy. We don't have vaccine passports, so should we keep mask mandates in public places? Drop them and have an honor system? Drop mandates when we reach certain thresholds of vaccination and/or community transmission? Drop mandates only in contexts such as controlled workplaces where it's possible to track who is vaccinated?
I know they are probably very conscious of the fact that red states are unlikely to do what they recommend anyway, but some guidance for jurisdictions that do want to follow CDC advice would have been useful.
In the UK, under 40s are still not being vaccinated
It feels like a Zeno's paradox situation for me. I want my fucking vaccine. I'm jealous of all yinz. I'm 35 with a birthday in mid July, so there's a good chance I'm going to be at the start of a vaccination cohort and have to wait a few more weeks.
Sure sounds like they're overselling safety, but, enh. It's tricky, obviously, given the need to show benefit of vaccines. I'd still wear a mask inside, and definitely on public transit. "Good against variants" isn't necessarily something we can rely on forever, especially when The Unwilling serve as petri dishes. It's already expected that we'll need boosters (the UK has put in massive orders for the fall), so length of efficacy is a concern. Local incidence rate should matter in determining mask mandates.
We'll have our teen fully vaccinated by June.
I'm now legally able to lick my fingers before taking a plastic bag from the roll at the Whole Foods.
I have to admit I don't fully understand why people think that vaccination is some kind of magic safety screen.
Other than the word "magic," I don't understand why people don't think that. A small possibility that one might have a mild infection is consistent with being safe.
The State of New Jersey, number one in covid deaths per capita since April 2020 and unlikely ever to relinquish its title, is not reducing mask mandates yet. 100% mask compliance at the gym this morning, including by me, as has been the case since I returned post-vaccination two months ago.
CDC diresctor Rachel Wolinsky on Rachel Maddow's show last night said that if you are fully vaccinated but you share an office with another person who is not vaccinated and doesn't wear a mask, you don't have to wear a mask. You are safe although your office mate is not. Good enough for me! When reputable scientists disagree, I accept the view of the scientist who most closely matches my intuitions.
re: 26
I guess I am going off reports from some weeks back now, that seemed to suggest that there was a difference between the level of protection from serious illness and the level of protection from infection, with (and this is per the UK medical advice as of not that long ago) vaccinated people still capable of transmitting the disease, albeit at a significantly lower level. Also, given the widespread use of the AZ vaccine here, which is not as effective (so I believe) as the mRNA vaccines.
But if that's now wrong, great.
J&J is the most me. Self-expression is important.
Is it weird that I feel attached to my vaccine brand when I signed up without knowing which it was?
Covering the cheeks was never the mission.
At Trader Joe's this morning, there was a sign outside announcing that in accordance with new CDC guidelines, fully vaccinated shoppers were no longer required to wear masks. Everyone inside was still fully masked anyway.
Maybe they were protecting themselves from the vaccinated.
Our teens got their first Pfizer shots yesterday. Their doctor's office called us as soon as the approval went through to set up appointments. It was pretty impressive.
I'm finally starting to see the endgame of the Liberal Agenda. They want to replace our traditional racial, ethnic, and sexual hierarchies with a new caste system based on vaccine type, with the unvaccinated as the untouchables.
I'm waiting for the first fuck-the-unvaccinated kink.
Just dropped daughter and granddaughter at the airport. Still masks required, but the county mandate was lifted this week, so now it's business by business.
We're at 1090 doses per thousand in the county, which is pretty good compared to 681 in Flathead County. People might want to think about their visits to Glacier National Park, especially now that you need a reservation to drive the Sun Road during the day. But they won't. Butte is at 1082, but some of that is people driving over from Bozeman where scheduling was more screwed up.
It's pretty quiet, not having a 4 year old in the house. Too quiet.
Glacier County -- the eastern part of the park and out on to the plains -- is at 1074, but that's because the Blackfeet Nation is showing us all how it's done. (I bet vax-rates in the non-reservation far east of the county are much lower than in the Nation.)
How can you have more than 1000 doses per thousand? People vaxed twice? Counting first and second doses separately? Lie-to-children (see prev. thread)?
First and second doses separately. If everyone got a two dose vaccine then fully vaxxed population would be reported as 2000 doses per 1000 people.
29: Haven't kept up with the stats on AZ because it's not approved for use in the US. My understanding with the mRNA vaccines is that vaccinated folks who get infected (which is a very small percentage of the vaccinated) have very low viral loads. The CDC advice is given based on that---I don't know how/if they're accounting for people with the J&J vaccine though.
Right. 108,000 doses administered, 99,813 eligible people. 59,614 first dose, 52,247 fully immunized. We've had 9,000 cases and 93 deaths. 57 active cases now.
35 gives me more hope that the pandemic will actually end than anything else I've ever heard of
DE still has a mask mandate, and in the whole time it's been in effect, the one person I've seen unmasked in an indoor public place was a cop. I've been incredibly impressed by how well everyone I've witnessed here has acted.
We just had a friend over for an unmasked dinner indoors for the first time! Amazing.
The CDC says if you're vaccinated or a Florida Republican, you can snort cocaine indoors without a mask.
But never share your dollar bills.
While I understand the CDC (and Biden Admin)'s relenting on masking, I know I won't be unmasked indoors in foreign buildings, until community spread stops. That should have been the end-criterion anyway, all along. And for sure, even after that, come the fall, I'll be masking in crowded public places and in mass transit.
Flu? Colds? Ha! Get past my mask, you dirty viruses!
It's like we grew up in the same house.
What exactly is a medium-sized dog?
The NYT did an informal survey of a bunch of epidemiologists, who were mostly surprised by the CDC's change and thought we should still require masks in mixed vaccinated/unvaccinated settings for longer.
53: Jewish and Irish-Catholic pro-guilt solidarity.
I think I could beat up a lab, but I'd need a good reason.
Also, following up to 6, vaccination here opened up to the general public April 19. Assuming you got an appointment for Pfizer or Moderna for the next day - and not everybody could - you are not yet fully vaccinated (2 weeks post 2nd shot). By my calculation that's May 25 and June 1, depending on which one you got.
In 4-6 weeks, I'd feel differently.
Also, the vaccines are great, but the data aren't measuring the chances of 5 vaccinated people walking into a room full of 80 people in the 1st or 2nd day of a covid infection when they are transmitting a lot of virus particles. The level of virus circulating in the community matters as well as individual vulnerability.
I would beat up a goose for no reason at all, but honestly I'm not sure I would win. The first few seconds would be the whole thing. Either I get a grip on it or I'm done.
It occurs to me that Trump's thing about saying he doesn't need sleep is in the same as Mao's "swimming" in the Yangtze.
He did actually swim, but with flotillas of safety people just out of frame. But I don't think he claimed to swim every day.
Swimming is harder than snorting Allderall.
And Mao did it all on downers! Addicted to sleeping pills. Above was me, obvs.
Most of my recent encounters with geese have been when I'm holding a golf club so I have no concerns in that situation. Have also seen a coyote there which I'm less sure about handling if it got mad.
Most of my recent encounters with geese have been when I'm holding a can of goose liver.
Do you throw it or just let them read the label?
Threw. If you let them read they just get mad.
My recent encounters with geese involved waiting for goose parents and goslings to cross the road. Why does everyone want to fight so much?
It's for their own good. Someone told me they do occasionally get hit by golf balls if you don't chase them out of the way and it's not a pretty sight.
If geese could be trained to shit only on golf courses, I'd never want to fight one again.
I was thinking it might not be so difficult to recruit a murder of crows to do my bidding. I could pay them off with table scraps and they could shit on my enemies' cars.
I mean, crows are pretty smart. If one could somehow communicat the nature of the deal to them, they would probably go for it.
I was attacked yesterday! By a bird! Not a goose, like a little black starling. I was taking a walk in the park and suddenly felt like I had been whomped by a small tree branch. Anyway, I stood my ground, so I think can say pretty confidently that I could take a small bird in a fight. I don't know about a goose though, I don't think they give up as easily.
Huh. I'm interested to learn that nearly a quarter of American men believe they could beat a king cobra in a fight. Exactly how would they go about it, I wonder.
I don't think I could beat any of the listed animals in a fight, unarmed. A rat wouldn't get the best of me, necessarily, but I can't imagine by what means I could meaningfully subdue a rat.
I think I could maybe take on a medium sized dog, but that's probably a misapprehension based on the fact that most of the medium-sized dogs of my acquaintance are extremely docile. I probably wouldn't be able to beat a dog up, but I could make it feel bad about itself.
I think I've subdued a rat. I broke open the cement over its home and then swung at it with a shovel until it ran away.
Once we uncovered a bunch of pinkies under the board we needed to build a house. My boss told me to step on them, but I couldn't. They probably died of exposure or being lunch. In retrospect, my boss was right, but should have done it himself.
I hadn't been to graduate school yet, so I didn't have the ability to be cruel.
The weirdest result on that chart is the rat. How the hell are you going to catch up to the thing? I'd give myself better odds against the cobra.
Gmail just autosuggested doubleplusgood. Tripleplusunnerving.
Maybe it thinks you're in Hong Kong.
nearly a quarter of American men believe they could beat a king cobra in a fight. Exactly how would they go about it, I wonder.
Trick I saw in a movie: what you do is you play the flute at the cobra and then it gets lulled to sleep in a basket.
With the power of this flute, my gun and I can win.
So in fairness the SinoVac vaccine is turning out to be pretty good. But also in fairness they were opaque as shit and there were excellent reasons to distrust them.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-11/china-s-sinovac-shot-found-highly-effective-in-real-world-study
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-16/chile-says-sinovac-shot-67-effective-vs-symptomatic-covid-cases-knkcmpwk
81: if I kill a cobra but die of its venom minutes later, does that count as a win? If it does, that's pretty much the only animal on the list I could take. And the rat, but s/venom/sepsis/. House cat is 50/50.
90: This, on both points.
So is the "India" B.1.617.2 variant not really a thing in the US yet?
ISTR cat sepsis is as bad as rat. I'd only back myself against the birds. Fragile bones.
We're past variants and vaccinating teens.
Everyone is still masked at the airport.
90: They're seeing only about 50% efficacy in Seychelles. I still think it's better than nothing (assuming no manufacturing issues - I am still terrified they're going to fuck up a batch or two and get a bunch of people really sick but I guess if they haven't yet, maybe we're in the clear), but it seems to be of variable efficacy (depending on dominant local strain). I'd expect numbers 40-60% in general for the type of vaccine it is, similar to a flu vaccine.
95: Yes. But there are a lot more people in Indonesia, so take what you can get, right?
I had a girlfriend whose mom once killed a cobra that got into their house.
I think the strategy against most animals is to try to get a good solid kick in and hope they run away. Kicking is longer than the range of most animals. It's not going to do serious damage, but it will send them flying back a bit and make them think about leaving. The trouble is if you miss.
My mother once beat an adder to death with a rake, to protect her grandson. Mary Warnock once decapitated a seagull. But I thought you were meant to use bare hands.
Isn't the approved method of bare-handed snake-killing to grab them by the tail and crack them like a whip?
People walking through the airport like there is no one else around them playing Pokemon Go
I'm picturing kicking a soccer ball, and the soccer ball has to be pretty close to absorb the momentum from your leg. I think if you're taking advantage of the longer range of your leg, you're closer to just nudging it along with your toe.
i was once mugged by a seagull for a pasty, the seagulls of padstow are a hardened, canny lot. & padstow is tedious except for if you are there with my mil on your arm bc she keeps up this wild murmuring narration of padstow in the 60s & everyone's business by her lights. better half's mum good at gossip even when it's aged by 50-60 yrs. people in general vastly overestimate their abilities against motivated non-human being, not i! am militantly pro avoidance.
Oh! If causing the animal to run away counts as beating it in a fight, then I've greatly underestimated my odds. I thought we had to physically beat the animal to incapacity. It would be nearly impossible to persuade a rat to stay in one place long enough for me to claim my title, but if I win when it runs, then this is actually pretty easy. Animals run away from me all the time.
Right, I might be able to beat a grizzly bear by that measure. Hell, I've probably already beating a grizzly bear who ran away when it heard me coming, with bells on.
Speaking of animals, I hadn't realized that the baby in "Bringing Up Baby" was a leopard until just now.
I thought Grant was going to marry the other woman, but I guess he went for Hepburn.
Masking still widespread at BWI today. Alaska, here I come! Hard to believe it will be my 5th visit to the state.
perhaps urban wildlife are made of hardier stuff, but i don't fancy my chances against the coyotes i see regularly in and near gg park - https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Coyote-Golden-Gate-Park-child-bite-San-Francisco-15688959.php
and a couple of months ago i was starting down the steps of the dock onto the beach to go swimming in a suit and nothing but (okay okay + thermal cap and goggles), before sunrise, when faced with a racoon heading towards me. i assumed it would either run away or go under the dock but no, headed up the steps. there are only a couple of steps. i retreated, racoon advanced, i skirted racoon and headed back towards boathouse, monitor club member mr. n asked if that was my dog right on my heels, no say i that is a racoon help please do something, mr. n grabbed a plastic bin and fended off racoon as i headed back towards water asking whether racoons can swim, not very well i was told and believe you me i made a swift entry into the lively chop.
i don't think they are particularly poor swimmers either bc others say they've seen them hanging out in gangs on the breakwater at the end of the hyde st pier and heard them plopping into the water. insouciant buggers, with nasty claws.
When I lived in the East Bay, we had a pool and a pool sweep: I saw a raccoon swim out to the pool sweep, and start riding. When they lack in swimming technique, they make up for in opportunism.
That animal-fighting thing is bonkers. I have to believe people weren't answering seriously. Beating a cobra is reasonable if you have experience with snakes. Even a crocodile isn't completely out of the realm of possibility (I mean, unlikely, but not impossible) as long as you're on land. But a gorilla? Jesus fucking christ. An adult chimp would straight up maul you before you had the first idea what was happening. A gorilla could rip your head clean off your body without breaking a sweat, and they have fangs. A gorilla probably gets even odds against a grizzly in Vegas. But the one that really kills me are the ones who think they could bare-knuckle beat up an elephant. Granted, I don't know all that much about elephants, but I'm super confident that they can take a punch to the leg.
I think I could take a deer without antlers, a raccoon, or a golden retriever, but I'm not that confident and I certainly wouldn't imagine I could take anything worse than that.
I definitely don't think I could take a badger, but I'm unclear on say a weasel. I should be fine, I think, but what if deep down it's a really small Honey Badger?
I see a deer with a raccoon or a golden retriever I'm inviting it for drinks.
I believe the badger capabilities question was analyzed in depth in The Sword in the Stone.
I am not at all confident that I could beat a deer, antlers or not. Those hooves are sharp and at the end of very long legs.
You need to make it chase you until it's tired. They
Then you strike.
I am not at all confident that I could beat a deer, antlers or not. Those hooves are sharp and at the end of very long legs.
I heard a second-hand story about somebody who was drunk, in the woods, and decided to tackle a deer (I think egged on by friends) and got seriously hurt.
Since hearing that, I look at deer differently when I pass them on a trail -- deer are _strong_.
I once saw two raccoons straight up murder a third by pushing it off the roof of an apartment building. Clearly not an accident; after the first push, the victim was hanging on to the edge of the roof by its front claws, screaming, and the murderous pair attacked it again until it fell to its death.
Lesson: don't fuck with raccoons. They'll kill you.
My son filmed two crows fighting a raccoon, but honestly he didn't have the lens to do it justice.
Fair warning - I can't post until early afternoon tomorrow. Sorry.
Would you be even later if a harbor seal were in front of your computer?
One time I watched two orioles fight an iguana.
I was admiring a praying mantis one lovely spring afternoon when a squirrel ran over, grabbed it, and bit its head off.
A whole bunch of putatively herbivorous animals are opportunistic carnivores, apparently.
Did the squirrel at least buy it a drink first?
re: 111
A lot depends on circumstances, I guess.
As mentioned by dsquared on twitter, a human with a pointy stick beats a lot of things. Humans with sticks regularly kill almost all of the fierce animals mentioned, although with the really big/scary ones, it'd be several humans with sticks, rather than one human with a stick.
Completely unarmed person vs chimp or gorilla gets slammed, of course.
As an aside, I remember my Dad telling me that when he did various escape and evasion type things in the army, when they asked one of their instructors what to do if they were being chased by a dog, the instructor's comment was that they should, "Turn around and kill the dog." I presume with the assumption that they were at least somewhat armed (knife, firearm, stick or whatever).
The girlfriend's mom that I mentioned being victorious over the cobra did in fact use a stick (I don't know if it was pointy).
Raisins although I guess by the time the dog died of kidney failure you'd already be dead too. It's like a video game, you have to find the one item that is each animal's weakness.
re: 128
A friend of mine once had to kill/disable a large venomous* snake in Glasgow. It crawled into his apartment and terrified the crap out of him. Turned out it had escaped from a neighbour that kept snakes as pets. It wasn't a cobra, but some kind of large coral snake or similar. He attacked it with a bread knife, a bucket and a stick.
* it wasn't actually venomous, apparently it had had the procedure done to remove or disrupt venom. Although he didn't know that at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venomoid
|| Four opinions from the US Supreme Court today: (1) more or less got rid of the notion that newly announced constitutional rules in criminal cases might be applied retroactively to overturn finalized convictions/sentences; (2) clarified (and broadened) the exceptions from the bar on appealing orders remanding a removed case; (3) narrowed the tax provision of the anti-injunction act; and (4) reiterated that concerns about an occupant's personal safety doesn't justify a warrantless search of their home when they are not there. In addition, Justice Sotomayor gave a statement on the denial of cert in a death penalty case where the state was allowed to have a retired guard testify about how a different inmate injured him, an incident with no connection at all to the defendant -- it was basically, 'hey, all inmates are potentially dangerous, so why not kill this guy.'
Justice Gorsuch's concurrence in (1) more or less suggests that the Supreme Court had no business deciding Miranda or Gideon. His vision for federal collateral review is basically 'jurisdiction only.' |>
Ours is dropping 5/29 except on public transit, medical settings, group homes, 'k-12 schools.
The rush is crazy. MA opened vaccine to general access on 4/19. So even if you got in that week you're still not fully vaccinated (Moderna) or just barely (Pfizer) by 5/29. What's the problem with waiting one extra month?
134: Memorial Day and the damn CDC. I trusted Rochelle Walensky but am disappointed in her. Having two-tiered guidance really puts store clerks in a bind, so he did avoid the worst of that.
A month would have been about right, but I guess the boomers got the vax, and they can't wait for anybody else.
I'm worried that people won't mask on the T.
(1) more or less got rid of the notion that newly announced constitutional rules in criminal cases might be applied retroactively to overturn finalized convictions/sentences;
Wait. Does this mean that states can't expunge the records of people with felonies from now-legal drugs or sex workers or things like that? Or is that an entirely different thing?
133.last is what continues to get me. I would feel like an asshole telling my kid to wear a mask when I'm around her and not wearing one myself.
I wouldn't say the CDC made any mistake other than expecting people to be responsible adults. Jokes aside, they clarify that it only applies to fully vaccinated people, that "fully vaccinated" only applies if it's 2 weeks after your 2nd shot, that fully vaccinated people should still get tested and socially distance if they have symptoms, that people should still follow their local laws and rules, etc. Most people who won't obey a clear, polite request to mask up indoors or on a bus because of this guidance were probably objecting to masks all along. The CDC makes things a tiny bit harder for frontline workers, but not in a safety way, just in a "dealing with assholes" way. Which sucks, I realize, but is more the NLRB's problem than the CDC's.
Maybe they have "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" on in the background? Makes it impossible to focus.
a human with a pointy stick beats a lot of things
True, but the survey specifies that you are unarmed.
Different -- awful, but different. This says that if your conviction is final, all appeals completed, and a new constitutional ruling comes down that would have entitled you to have your conviction overturned if your appeal was still active, you can't bring a new appeal to get the benefit of the new ruling.
Since hearing that, I look at deer differently when I pass them on a trail -- deer are _strong_.
One time a few years ago, I was out for a walk in the cemetery after dark. Headphones were in and I was playing with my phone so I had no peripheral awareness. I hear some noises and ignore them for a while. I realize that there's a deer within five feet, grunting at me, just one of a herd of ten or twenty. I think it had been grunting for a while. Don't recall if it was a buck or a doe, I was just concerned with getting out of there as fast as possible. That could have gone very badly. I'm so glad the deer was smarter than I am.
I don't like to walk after dark with headphones but I have too much imagination to even try in a cemetery.
Why is medication for tardive dyskynesia advertised on the TV? You'd think the doctors providing the psychotropics would bring it up.
I walk or cycle through herds of deer multiple times a week. Both the big west London royal parks which are full of deer are on my regular exercise routes and for family walks.
I cycled the Tamsin Trail on Wednesday evening as it was getting dark and the deer were grazing right beside me.
Like most people who love round here, I am very blasé about it except in rutting season.
143: Most pharmaceutical ads only pretend to be aimed at patients. The usual goal is to stick the proprietary name in a prescribing doctor's head earworm style.
Live round here.
Although I expect dogging is also going on.
145: That makes me feel better, kind of. How many doctors are watching Hallmark at 3:00 in the afternoon?
136, 140 -- LB is right. The facts of the actual case illustrate this perfectly. A few years ago, the Supreme Court decided that the Constitution >requires that a state criminal conviction can only result from a unanimous verdict. So a guy sitting in jail (life sentence, I think?) says 'hey wait, the jury vote in my case was 10-2.' Kavanaugh and 5 others say 'too bad, no lookbacks.' Thomas, joined by Gorsuch, concurred with 'and by the way Congress already cut this shit off' and Gorsuch joined by Thomas concurred with 'yeah, and the common law cut this shit off as well, until that damn Warren court got in there and started fucking things up.'
Kagan has a very well done dissent.
The governor can commute or pardon. But the power of federal district courts to overturn unconstitutional state court convictions has been eviscerated. This is a huge deal.
148: And we were all so happy when Scalia's seat was vacant.
So, a walking path in Lincoln has a sign with the title "What to do if you see a coyote." I didn't read it further in case it would be cheating if I fight a coyote later.
150: A couple of summers ago, I was followed (or 'escorted,' I believe is the term) by either a wolf or an Eastern coyote (a hybrid of the western coyote and the eastern wolf), while walking alone at dusk on a dirt road in Ontario cottage country.
The animal crossed the road about 50 metres ahead of me, and it was like something out of a fairy tale, to see that wolf (or perhaps coyote?) silhouette at dusk ... 'OMG, that's a wolf!' I thought (though it may have been a coyote). At that point, I was not quite frightened, but I was definitely wary: time to turn around and head back, back to the safety of the cottage, with its dogs and its humans and its indoor plumbing, and etc ...
So I turned around, and started to head back; and then the animal crossed the road again, also at about 40-50 metres ahead of me, but now in the other (my reverse) direction. I was being followed! (or 'escorted,' I believe is the term: I was too close to the pups' den, perhaps, and I was being herded out of the area...). At this point, I was truly frightened (I mean, c'mon, I'm all alone, and I'm being trailed by either a wolf or a coyote...). I wanted to run; but I knew that running was just a very bad idea. I decided upon a brisk walk; and kept looking back over my shoulder until I came into sight of the row of cottages where I was staying, and heard a dog bark at my approach (and I was so NOT afraid of that dog, was so grateful to that canine for the noise he or she was making...).
I'd appreciate a pamphlet, or perhaps a TikTok video, on "What to do if you see a coyote [or perhaps a wolf]." Some people try to feed them, try to pet them and make friends with them ... (some people are dangerously clueless...)
149: At least the son of a bitch is still dead.
It's amazing the narrow path the Republicans took to end up completely dominating the court. Apparently God loves them, and hates us.