I saw Shang Chi and the Ten Rings, and have many thoughts about it, which I will express, unsolicited, here (mild spoilers ahead throughout, major spoilers marked):
1. I went in without a lot of expectations, but M wanted to support the film, and I wasn't going to say no to watching Tony Leung on the big screen.
It was really fun. I dislike superhero films generally, but this turned out to be mostly a martial arts/HK gangster movie. The Marvel bits were bad but mostly didn't get in the way - I actually kind of forgot that I was watching a Marvel movie at all until Sean and Katy went to the Macanese fight club. When that big Hulk-looking monster showed up in the ring, I felt a pang of disappointment. But for the most part, the clunky Marvel/Disney elements (the LED bracelets, the Disneyfied fantasy creatures in Ta Lo, some annoyingly quippy dialogue) were easy to disregard, until the end, when -
SPOILER
- the story is essentially over, Wenwu having been defeated, and for some reason we are made to watch ten minutes of dragons fighting each other? It was so visually incoherent that I literally couldn't understand what I was seeing. Every Marvel movie I've seen has been like this - unpleasantly chaotic and messy to the point of incomprehensibility. Why are these films so popular?
END SPOILER
2. The Wenwu flashbacks felt like a love letter to 90s-early 2000s Chinese-language cinema: the John Woo action movie, the Hong Kong romantic weepy, the Chinese wuxia film, Wong Kar Wai. I teared up a lot, for reasons having nothing to do with the plot. Tony Leung was an inspired choice to play Wenwu. Fala Chen was very good, but I would have loved to have seen Maggie Cheung, or Carina Lau, or even Zhang Ziyi.
It made me feel so sentimental, and very old. There were so many interesting types of popular film in the 90s, and now everything is just a subgenre of Marvel movie.
They're going to remake "My Diner with Andre" and it will include a ten minute long pod racing scene.
2 would watch
1 I hate superhero movies with a passion but I will watch this soley because of Tony Leung
3.2: I was worried that there would be, like, ten minutes of Tony Leung and I would be annoyed and bored for the remainder of the time. The ratios were fortunately reversed, and TL really does not disappoint.
It turns out you can only see this movie right now if you go sit in a room with a bunch of strangers.
Once you've shared a potentially deadly infectious agent with someone, can you really call them a stranger?
I was too young during the 80s to know.
Had a good weekend; got to join my wife at her practice yesterday and listen to her practice with the band. There was a pool and potluck, which was nice for those of us who weren't playing instruments. Also, one of my first adult "show up but bring a book" cultures -- with the band playing, talking doesn't work so well, so checking out into books made sense.
8: As long as you didn't put on headphones, I guess that's not too insulting.
folks may enjoy this article on the bus figt scene in the movie (and a lot more .... ) https://www.kqed.org/arts/13902470/shang-chi-bus-fight-chase-muni-chinatown-san-francisco
Climate change hit close to home last week, when Ida spawned the largest tornado in the history of the noble state of New Jersey, which touched down five miles from my house. Unaccountably, it bypassed a mobile home park and matchsticked a row of ten recent construction McMansions. It also damaged a few blocks of more ordinary homes and some farms. The McMansions had basements, and people received the warning, so no serious injuries. Probably would have been a bigger story except that New York City flooded out later the same night. Our own home was not touched.
The National Weather Service sent us simultaneous tornado and flood warnings, requiring us to both go down to the basement and stay out of the basement. Does this happen regularly in other parts of the country? We picked (b), which was probably the correct choice.
I've been within five miles of a more times that I can recall.
unpleasantly chaotic and messy to the point of incomprehensibility. Why are these films so popular?
Culturally neutral export commodity
I started Eve's Hollywood. I'm 10% in and apparently still reading the acknowledgments?
11: I seem to recall that you live close to my brother, who shared some tweet like "Be sure to seek cover in your basement in case of tornado and be sure to stay out of your basement in case of flooding."
16: Is it like a speech at the Oscars, but there's no orchestra?
Somehow, I didn't know that people drowning in basements was a thing. In Maryland, we only had one fatality that I know about -- a couple miles from me -- and that's how it happened. But I see that NY/NJ had a bunch of those, too. Cars I knew about ...
Barring unpredictable barriers, I'll be in Chicago for purely recreational purposes for about 52 hours from afternoon Tuesday 9/21 to early evening Thursday 9/23. No car of course. Any recommendations, biased toward but not completely limited to outdoor amenities?
It turns out you can only see this movie right now if you go sit in a room with a bunch of strangers.
That's what's keeping me from seeing Shang Chi at the moment. This was a fun bit about Tony Leung's involvement.
After his very first conversation with Leung as part of the casting process for the movie, Maui director Destin Daniel Cretton learned later on that Leung was in fact on the call to turn the role down.
"The first time that I spoke to Tony was on the phone, and he told me later that he wasn't going to do the movie," shared Cretton during a round table media interview with Geek Culture.
"But he agreed to get on the phone with me, and we just talked about life. We talked about our families, it was a very open conversation, and then we spoke about the character and what the character meant to me," said Cretton, who had no idea after the call if the Hong Kong superstar would sign on for the film.
...
I should probably catch up on watching all the actually good Tony Leung films before seeing this one, I realize.
24: That was fun to read. Thank you!
25: You didn't ask for recommendations, but I'm giving them anyway:
Really great:
City of Sadness
Hardboiled
Bullet in the Head
Ashes of Time
Essential:
Red Cliff
Infernal Affairs
In the Mood for Love
2046
The Grandmaster
My favorite movies of all time:
Chungking Express
Happy Together
Days of Being Wild
It's best to watch the WKW movies in order of release.
Thank you! I hardly ever watch movies, but I did get talked into "In the Mood for Love" a few years ago by friends, and thought the ending really kicked it up into a class of its own. I also loved "Chungking Express" to pieces as a younger person.
I was a bit confused by 26 before I realized there was a "My favorite movies of all time" category coming later.
If you want to see his ballsack, there's also Lust, Caution.
True story, RWM and my first date was supposed to be to see 2046 at the Roxie in SF, but we didn't realize that there were two screens at that theater and accidentally ended up in Prozac Nation and by the time we realized it it was too late to switch. Boy that was a Bad Movie.
22: I'll miss you by a day! Chicago has a not-especially-high caseload right now, but the weather should be gorgeous so outside ought to be a pleasant option.
Intelligentsia coffee is nice. Dark Matter is, too, but it's more out of the way. Lakeview is a nice neighborhood to stroll. The Art Institute is always great. The lakeshore has a nice long walk past the museums. Avoid Michigan Ave.
Horrible person closes amazing restaurant because he is horrible, opens new one and hopes everyone forgets he's horrible (haven't been to this one yet, but the prior incarnation was amazing):
https://www.noodlebird.com/
Rick Bayless makes tasty food. Also, there are a few neighborhoods where they've closed streets in order to put lots of tables outdoors.
Indoors, but an exhibit of privately held Banksy art:
https://www.banksyexhibit.com/chicago/
Ravinia is outdoor classical concerts. Not the best possible option for a show, but probably still nice.
https://www.ravinia.org/ShowDetails/1906/lincoln-trio
My son is trying to convince me that he shouldn't have to take honors geometry because its distracting from his YouTube channel. He makes a fair point: homework sucks.
28.2: :( I don't. What I actually want is, of course, to see Hong Kong headed out of the cinematic past into a different actual future, which might make revisiting the canon a squirmy experience. I think we talked about that already, though.
I enjoyed my few months of deluded optimism/ aggressive ignorance earlier this year. That was a great relief.
20- The stuff of nightmares. (Despite the screaming, or maybe because of it, the person in the video escaped.)
I don't want to say trying to see art is pointless in Chicago, but when I tried it they had put American Gothic out for rent and didn't even put up a sign outside saying so before you paid the entrance fee.
I guess I did see the one they stood in front of in Ferris Bueller.
30. Good advice , inexplicable omission to write Pilsen and Andersonville.
Divvy to get around works pretty well, city is mostly a grid. Side streets parallel to heavy traffic main roads often work. Extra attention at underpasses or 6-corner intersections.
I'm watching in the mood for love now. Great typewriters there.
26 is a great list of recommendations.
I'm not sure if there have ever been two more striking looking leads than In the Mood for Love.
Is Ferris particularly striking? He's cute.
He's striking a blow for the common self- centered future agent of the patriarchy.
Yes, he knows what's best for others.
I just successfully gave away a piano, after trying for years. I am so pleased.
Like a person showed up and took it? Or it went out the window without killing anyone on the ground?
Two people -- moving a piano by yourself would be tricky. It's going to a farm in the country a music school.
You need a building with a piano hoist.
You should have wished for a 12" pianist.
16. like emoji. The acknowledgements, especially her family background, are pretyy interesting.
Goddamnit. So Pokey tested positive on Thursday the 2nd. We're all wearing masks around the house and it sucks a lot. We decided to test him today to see if we could at least take the masks off...his OTC test pink line showed up within minutes. (You're supposed to give it 15 minutes.) He's still spewing out TONS of this shit.
And now that we're nearing the end, it would suck even WORSE if Rascal or Ace caught it from Pokey! I am growing faint.
52: yeah, that sucks. Do you have a HEPA purifier that you could put in the bedroom? Open all your windows too.
So, I realize this is asking probably too much, but could you take him to an indoor anti-mask rally.
This implies that he's not too contagious and could still shed for another ten days, which helps support why they don't require a negative test before returning to life: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/11/covid-19-most-contagious-first-5-days-illness-study-finds
You should still give each family member their own spoon at dinner.
Next time we're not letting them make out with each other, either.
Florida wouldn't allow you to have that rule.
My mom called me in advance of my birthday (I was mid-kid-bathtime and couldn't answer) in case I was out celebrating on my actual birthday. Then she speculated if I wasn't answering the phone because I was out celebrating tonight. She and my dad (divorced 30 years, but hey) are going out together tomorrow for my birthday. I approve of celebrating moms on the birthdays of their kids, but I'm wondering how to have the conversation that I'm still not going out anywhere.
The old "let's recreate the conception" play.
59: I think that's talking about PCR, because you can shed RNA for months. I don't know if that applies to the rapid antigen tests. That's also pre delta. People with delta seem to shed more, though it's not clear how much of that is infectious viriins. Where's Cryptic Ned when we need him?
So, if a woodpecker is pecking at my siding, does that mean I'm not a moment too late in having a contractor redo the siding?
A kid that sits behind Cassidy in one class tested positive over the weekend, so she was identified as a close contact on Tuesday (Day 10 of the school year). Home test came back negative so probably all clear, but this year is almost certainly going to be a shit show.
When I was contact tracing, our guidance was explicit. Ten days from a first positive test is the extent of isolation, regardless of future tests.
Ten days, pooping on heebie's sheets.
When you're sliding into home
And your pants are full of foam
Malaria
Malaria
Where are you all getting home tests? Utah's testing requires three hour waits in line right now, and it's only a matter of time before the Calabat gets exposed.
Around here (MA) most retail drugstores have supplies of rapid antigen tests (Most of the time. Supply is kind of bursty.)
Jeez. Yeah, here they're at grocery stores and any old walgreens. Can you order them off Amazon?
These are available online: https://www.emed.com/products/covid-at-home-testkit-six-pack? . I haven't used them, but AWB recommended them on FB.
I'm afraid that if I start testing, I'll never stop because coughing is a symptom of existing for me.
Also, the whole household is vaccinated.
I was skeptical of the idea of Matrix 4, but from the trailer it looks like the greatest movie ever made.
CVS.com has them available online for shipping.
I was skeptical of a Dune movie, but the trailer has got me wanting to see that one, too.
I have a very petty gripe and I'm disproportionately irritated about it.
Pokey tested positive on Thursday 9/2. If he'd had symptoms, then we could have backdated his isolation to the onset of symptoms. But he's asymptomatic. So 9/2 is day Zero. Sunday, 9/13 is day 10. He goes back on Monday.
The thing that's killing me is Pokey and Ace. They were last exposed on Thursday morning, and we started isolating Pokey/wearing masks by mid-morning, 9/2. HOWEVER. Their Day 0 is not until Friday, 9/3. That is KILLING ME. Why would Day 0 need to be postponed? How is that not the point of a day 0, other than to count as your exposure day? The nurse says that 24 hours has to be free of exposure to count as your Day 0. WHAT.
And what it means is that they have to stay home on Monday, 9/14. (Which is MASSIVELY inconvenient from the point of view of trying to get my own students to keep track of whether we're meeting remotely or in person. And thus my outsized irritation.)
(Jammies is going to stay home instead. It's fine. FINE. But it's SO DUMB. That's not how counting works!)
Have you considered, "My calendar was broken. It was mid-morning of September 1"?
I already politely explained that I thought maybe we had miscounted, and she politely explained how I didn't properly understand how many zeros you have to have before you can start counting.
If you are counting over 99, you need to be sure to start with two zeros.
79, 81: Just in case this hasn't gone around lately, here's how to make a blockbuster movie trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAOdjqyG37A
The trailers for Dune and Matrix 4 match up to this with almost by-the-second precision.
My calendar was broken. It was mid-morning of September 1.
And then the murders began.
76: Wow, that's pricey. Here in ETLE, you can buy what seems to be the same kind of test for about a buck a piece:
https://www.lidl.de/p/5er-set-clungene-covid-19-rapid-antigen-schnelltest/p100327202
Here I can walk across the street to the surgery where they hand them out in packs of fifteen.
89 and 90: My husband's bos was in Germany at corporate headquarters, snd I asked him to buy some and bring them back. I think they are free to residents but can be purchased by anyone for less than 1 Euro
Biden just announced a plan to get out more rapid tests, but it sounded like they were still going to be too expensive.
There's a trailer formula, but it's the best formula.
That would drive me crazy too. This is clearly a screw up at some point down the line, you're obviously right about the reason to start at zero. Do you know if this nurse is wrong or if it somehow got screwed up earlier along the line?
Also I'm in Germany! Feels good to finally leave the country, and also feels comforting during the pandemic to be in an actual society where people follow rules of behavior.
FB just recommended that I friend my high-school AP Physics teacher. Turns out he went to law school after quitting teaching, and spent years working in the office where I work now. We've even both won the Lefkowitz award for outstanding service to the State of New York (I mean, I've won it twice, but who's counting). Funny parallelism there.
He was really a very good physics teacher.
Maybe it's not his fault, but somebody didn't teach you what counting is.
Two, one, zero - der Alarm ist rot
Wien in Not
comforting during the pandemic to be in an actual society where people follow rules of behavior
I had this exact feeling in Mexico.
Mexico is known for its deeply ingrained sense of order.
We're on our 8th day zero, at least. Only a few more zeros and then it will add up to zero.
In seriousness, we got Ace and Rascal PCR tests yesterday. If those come back negative, and with Pokey on his 9th day zero since testing positive and never having symptoms, then I think we can at least take these goddamn masks off inside the house, and have kids go back to sleeping in their own bedroom and eating together, etc. That at least will make life easier.
100: Does anybody in the US feel that way about their own neighborhood? My personal experience is that people pretty much followed the rules through the pandemic.
105: My county has been great -- Maryland DC suburbs. I reluctantly agree that the kids needed to be back in school, with masks.
In the summer, when it looked like the pandemic was basically over (remember that?) the local Costco bottomed out at around an 85% mask-wearing rate.
I don't even have a membership because they can't sell alcohol here.
I've heard that a Costco is coming to Heebieville and I'm kinda excited.
Our locality lured Costco in via an absurd level of tax breaks -- and, uh, I don't mind. It's a terrific amenity.
My stupid state doesn't let them sell alcohol either.
Our state had the bizarre rule that any chain store can only sell liquor at three of their locations in the state. Some Costcos still have the physical setup from this rule, so at some of them the alcohol is in the store and you pay along with your six liter bottle of olive oil and gallon jar of pickles. At other stores you have to check out the go into a little separated space with its own registers and buy your alcohol in a separate transaction (which used to be an entirely separate business.) Although the people who look at your receipts on the way out check both of them.
Oh hey, got a new job. So when this one finishes at the end of the year (or pandemic) I am off up north to the Dark Sky Country.
Oh hey, got a new job. So when this one finishes at the end of the year (or pandemic) I am off up north to the Dark Sky Country.
Oh hey, got a new job. So when this one finishes at the end of the year (or pandemic) I am off up north to the Dark Sky Country.
Oh hey, got a new job. So when this one finishes at the end of the year (or pandemic) I am off up north to the Dark Sky Country.
Oh hey, got a new job. So when this one finishes at the end of the year (or pandemic) I am off up north to the Dark Sky Country.
Oh hey, got a new job. So when this one finishes at the end of the year (or pandemic) I am off up north to the Dark Sky Country.
I think you're going to succeed in making the per capita death toll in the UK lower than in the US. So I hope you get a celebratory vacation in between.
113-118: I googled this and according to google you are going to Niue. But, I'm pretty sure that is south of where you are now.
Is that where Ursula LeGuin set her trilogy, or am I thinking of the wrong writer? Congrats both to you and Heebie,
121: If you go far enough north you end up going south again. Round earth and all that.
124: Thanks, teo! That makes sense, but it seems like there might be an easier way.
The math is simpler if you assume a flat Earth.
Congrats! Is this the one with the multiple interminable interviews?
No. The elephants standing on a turtle.
Or vice versa. It's been a long time since I was in a science class.
Just remember that it's turtles all the way down.
The theory is underspecified on that point.
Congratulations ajay! I know how hard it is to get a job when you're interviewed by turtles and an elephant, since they such different priorities.
I think it's ajays all the way down, but congrats to all of them!
87: I want to see that movie, too.
112: A while ago there was a referendum to get that changed. Bizarrely it didn't pass.
The other one is the requirement that stores sell from Massachusetts distributors. So, if I want to buy a wine from some place like Ontario that a distributor doesn't carry it's nearly impossible. I believe that Trader Joe's had to set up as a distributor to sell 2 (3 really) buck chuck.
140: There was not a referendum to get that changed, as such. The 2006 referendum was to layer on an additional type of license that would be only for selling wine (not beer, not liquor, not sure whose head would explode if you tried to sell cider) and would be only available to food stores (though so carelessly defined that any random 7-11 with a basket of bananas on the counter would have qualified), but was not in fact limited in number. There was almost a 2020 referendum to allow a wine+beer license to food stores, driven largely by a convenience store chain, but it was withdrawn from the ballot measure process.
(And the per-owner license was raised from 3 to 9 over a period of years)
141 The grocery stores really wanted it to pass, and I'm not sure why it didn't.
Well, I'm probably going to be fired soon. Long overdue, really.
Good luck. Hopefully it's just imposter syndrome. If not, start looking around for what to drop in the toilet on your way out.
Thanks. It's real; I've been a shuffling husk of an only sporadically productive employee for five years now and the money, patience, and charity have run out.
Do you have an idea of what would work better for you for a next job? My general recommendation for "I can't even think about my life" for anyone with the general literacy level around here is to call a legal staffing agency and look for temp paralegal work, but you probably have a more specific plan.
"I can't even think about my life"
you probably have a more specific plan
It's like one moment you know me and the next we're strangers.
So, try it for what it's worth. Mindless work, but the kind of thing you need to be bright to do successfully, and pays pretty well.
Usually what people do when they need a job and have no specific goal is remake The Wicker Man.
I haven't been able to write anything coherent longer than two sentences since high school, and even that is difficult. I feel like that might be a problem for a paralegal, not to mention any number of other jobs.
I am prepared to defend my hopelessness against all comers.
Did you split that into two comments to avoid having written three coherent sentences?
153: Have you considered running for President?
152:. I'm not really sure what paralegals generally do, but I would be surprised if it involves more writing than an Unfogged comment.
The managing partner takes out the cock jokes before filing.
I'm sorry Eggie!
When Jammies was fired, he switched to teaching high school, and it is a staggering amount of work for shitty pay and disrespectful admin that are also frequently inept. Does that seem like something you'd enjoy?
So, I just learned that the arduous work capacity test for wildfire fighters is being able to walk 3 miles in 15 minutes with a 45 pound pack. In metric, that's 4.8 km in 27,000 deciseconds with a 20.4kg pack. I can do it in a bit under an hour.
I went over to FB just now and saw one of my oldest and dearest friends posted something ambiguously anti-vaxx, about medical freedom. And she stayed coy in the comments when people were like "is this about vaccinations?"
ugh, wtf. I noped out of there and I hate FB.
If it wasn't for pictures of my nieces and nephew, I'd delete it again.
I've been posting less and less to Facebook and apparently most of my friends are as well because it's almost all "name a fish without an e" and "your stripper name" any more. I keep checking it thinking I will find something interesting to read, but that's getting rarer and rarer.
Yeah, FB has really gone down the tubes lately. For all its own faults, Twitter seems to be where serious, substantive communication is happening these days on the interwebs. I still haven't signed up myself but I'm getting very close.
156: is it? LB would know, but I thought a lot of it was managing and organizing documents. As a client dealing with one in a non-litigation setting, they handled all of the routine pieces of an administrative application and coordinated with people but did not need to write the way that the lawyer needed to.
I enjoyed tutoring and used to want to be a teacher, but I don't think I can handle any job with that amount of social interaction. Maybe on my best days I could manage but on my bad days some social interactions and environments are reliable triggers for transient psychotic episodes.
Paralegals do a lot of things, but the sort of job I'm thinking of wouldn't be a writing job at all -- you'd need the writing skills necessary to send a clearly comprehensible email about how you'd sorted through a bunch of documents, but not to write prose about them.
159: Walk at 12 mph? That can't be right, regardless of the pack. Run with a pack, sure, but that's not a walking pace.
166: Eggplant - are you getting any help with the mental issues@? If you're not, you might find that you're able to do more than you realize if you can get help.
124: 121: If you go far enough north you end up going south again. Round earth and all that.
Also how we define north-south as opposed to east-west (what with lats and longs being different beasts).
I enjoy various "paradoxes"/odd facts that result.
Only able to go south at the North Pole is easy to see, then once you go south there are still a lot more ways to go southerly than northerly. And that is the case (to a continually decreasing extent) until you get to the Equator. Which also means except at the Equator east and west are not directly opposite each other. (I should figure out by how much at say 40°.)
Also the distance any point is east or west of you is not well-defined unless it is at the same latitude (unlike N-S). It is path dependent. At the extreme there is always two paths (through a pole) that only go north and south*.
*Hmm, but those paths also exist for points at the same latitude, however it seems intuitive to use the distance along the latitude as "westness." But then I think that generalizes to "westness" being the maximum net westness for any path. (And which I further conjecture will be a great circle route.)
168: Sorry, typo, 45 minutes, so 4 mph.
Yes. It looks like there are three levels of test:
Pack Test - This is a job-related test to determine an individual's ability to perform the minimum standards of arduous duty. It consists of completing a 3-mile walk over level terrain in 45 minutes or less while carrying a 45-pound pack.
Field Test - This is a job-related test to determine an individual's ability to perform the minimum standards of moderate duty. It consists of completing a 2-mile walk over level terrain in 30 minutes or less while carrying a 25-pound pack.
Walk Test - This is a job-related test to determine an individual's ability to perform the minimum standards of light duty. The test consists of completing a 1-mile walk over level terrain in 16 minutes or less with no load.
170.5
I don't follow. Do you just mean that near the poles the longitudes are closer together? Oh, I see: It's faster to go sideways when you're closest to the pole. I was thinking about great circles diagonally through the starting and ending point, and missing the point.
173; I'm still pondering that one (but not enough to stop doom-scrolling and playing online Boggle to put pencil to paper).
If my conjecture is correct, a great circle route is both the shortest path and the one that goes the most net west or east (not really sure how to measure that, I think integrate something along the path...
Marketing-wise, I think pretty much any place on the equator could market itself as the East Pole.
Anyway, supposedly 3 miles in 45 minutes with 45 pounds is the physical-fitness equivalent of being able to run 1.5 miles in 11:40 (unladen). I don't think I could run that fast, but I might be able to do the pack test if I keep at it. I would probably be a few minutes faster just by finding level ground.
If my conjecture is correct, a great circle route is both the shortest path and the one that goes the most net west or east (not really sure how to measure that, I think integrate something along the path...
I'm thinking the "longest east/west" route is just the one where you stick to longitude and latitude lines, and take the latitude that is most equitorial.
OR just start off going any direction at an irrational angle and just keep wrapping around until you get there.
I guess you have to keep bending as you go. Otherwise any straight path would loop you home again.
I always feel like I'm revealing myself to be the WORST mathematician when I muse about these things, because I basically haven't retained anything and just have to reason it out like a n00b.
169: Off and on for decades. CBT is probably the only reason I'm stable right now. Psychiatry hasn't been very helpful but I'm starting it again with the hope that my better grasp of my symptoms will lead to a better outcome.
169: Off and on for decades. CBT is probably the only reason I'm stable right now. Psychiatry hasn't been very helpful but I'm starting it again with the hope that my better grasp of my symptoms will lead to a better outcome.
Yeah, actually my thing is wrong. Go south (or north) to the Equator, go west to correct longitude and then go north. And that is for some level of "simple" path, otherwise you can go south a bit and just circle around forever. Forget I said anything.... The great circle thing was a brain fart.
180,181: oh good, we're all in agreement then
Sadly, federal wildland firefighters must be under the age of 37.
183 is excellent. Good luck and vent as much as you need to.
162 I'm not going to post this on FB, but it may be the best thing you read this weekend: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/the-other-afghan-women
163 Remember: never tweet, and only follow professionals. Curation is easier than FB, because it's unilateral. You can add and drop people without anyone caring at all.
186: We've tweeted for practical things. It was the most effective way to solve an issue with the Registry of Motor Vehicles. They monitor it and then follow up my Direct Message.
Did my first pack test this year. It was an uncomfortably fast walk. The weight was fine but it was fast enough you're like, 'you sure I can't just jog for a bit?' But no. Can't run around fires because of the tripping danger or something. I think it was the field test described above. If I do go to a fire (we can get deployed) it's just be for logistics anyway
I didn't realize anybody here knew about the test and I have a question. Are you allowed trekking poles? My hips don't like downhill without them.
So, today I saw a kid get hit by an SUV. I didn't know the kid and I'm not even certain he wasn't a youthful-look adult, but he was just crossing the street and he was with the light and in the crosswalk. It was very vivid, because of the watching him bleed from the head while waiting for an ambulance. The ambulance was very fast and the police even faster, but it still seemed like forever. The driver stopped, but started to walk back to his car saying he was going to park better. An older Orthodox gentleman in one of the cylindrical fur hats told somebody to go get the plate, which somebody did but not me since I was on the phone with 911. The driver did drive away, which seems poorly advised because there were like ten people there by that point and it's not easy to be inconspicuous in a Land Rover anyway.
190: ugh, that's horrible. I hope the victim is OK. My wife was there seconds after an old guy got hit two weeks ago and found out today he's still in a coma. It's upsetting.
It's not in the news, so I figure he must not be hurt that badly. Fortunately, there was a woman who was closer and she was the one who stayed right there with him.
Anyone else wondering if it's just a coincidence that Biden pulls the U.S. out of Afghanistan and the next week Steve from Blue's Clues starts appearing in public again?
I think poles would be okay? But it has to be flat terrain for the test so they might not help.
And sorry you saw that. Take care of yourself.
I'm fine. Unfortunately, my son was with me.
190: oh god, I'd have a hard time after witnessing that. How awful.
South Dakota tags? Probably the state Attorney General.
It wasn't very Dakotan. The cause was basically the Pittsburgh Left.
I got my flu shot already. I figure I've got enough things that seem like covid symptoms in my life right now, so I'll do what I can when I get a chance.
The United States looks ready to pass the United Kingdom in covid deaths per capita in the next day or two.
In fact, we have arrived. According to the Our World In Data web site, the US is at 1,982.40 deaths per million, and the UK is 1,972.30.
I don't think it's fair to blame them specifically for all the deaths.
I would like to see it on an excess deaths basis not just the official toll.
206: The FT's coronavirus coverage has excess deaths expressed as percentage increase over expected deaths. Compared to excess deaths per capita, that's probably biased slightly towards older or less healthy countries. And their graphs are tiny. Anyway, the UK is up 17%, the US is up 18%. There are quite a few countries that are even worse, notably Mexico at 55% and Peru at a heartbreaking 123%.
207. India's not among the FT's charts, but is apparently quite bad, reported covid deaths about 10% of calculated excess deaths. Roughly doubles global death toll.