Do deer understand windows? And like why they shouldn't jump through them?
It's just really creepy to have a couple of deer staring at me while I eat. I'm worried they want my sandwich because the bread is a brioche bun.
They're eating bark, which I'm guessing doesn't taste good.
6: Gosh, Moby, why? You know that's their favorite!
I once accidentally bought vegan brioche. I'm not opposed to vegan bread, but just don't try to call it brioche.
I'm currently reading Fuzz. I don't think it answers the deer question, but does provide a lot of information about bears breaking into houses.
They want meth and I don't have that.
They want meth and I don't have that.
Reportedly in rich areas of Colorado the bears have learned to tell the difference between premium ice cream and grocery store brands, and won't eat the Western Family ice cream.
Most cheap ice cream these days isn't even legally I've cream.
It had to come from the Ice Cream region of France
The fucks are making ice milk is what they are doing.
I am rethinking my aversion to watching sports, this is as good as Aerobics nationals from the nineties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IAZcYWS1cM
this is as good as Aerobics nationals from the nineties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IAZcYWS1cM
That's impressive, but what is that . . . ?
Reportedly in rich areas of Colorado the bears have learned to tell the difference between premium ice cream and grocery store brands, and won't eat the Western Family ice cream.
One time I was eating outside, at a restaurant, and a grackle flew over to an empty table. The grackle deliberately fished out a sugar packet and left behind a sweet-n-low packet. Maybe it did it more than once? Somehow it transpired where it seemed convincing that the grackle knew what was up.
They're still worried that artificial sweeteners have saccharine.
Fun in low-grade self-medicine. I've had some kind of sore throat for most of the past two years, and have Dr. Google'd myself into thinking that it might be LPR. So I'm experimenting with a course of Prilosec. It might be helping, but I am also now insanely anxious, and now I'm wondering if the Prilosec did that. So many people take it that "have you experienced X after taking Prilosec" is true for everything pretty much up to spontaneous human combustion, so not so helpful. And it's not like there's a shortage of things to be anxious about. (In addition to all the ambient things everyone is dealing with, I'm now shopping for a lawyer to help me get out of a solar-panel lease from a company that has left the system broken for 15 months and has accomplished nothing but damaging my roof in that time).
My sister and my doctor both said I should not be taking prilosec for years. I forgot why.
It was my pharmacist sister. Not the lawyer sister.
17: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexy_Dance_Fighting Similar techniques (using a shovel) have helped me to explain to deer that my backyard is not a teenage deer den for general hanging out, they need to buy something or leave.
In other news, DC really fucked up by not renaming the team the Department of Football
Everyone loved the Commodores. It will be fine.
My sister and my doctor both said I should not be taking prilosec for years. I forgot why.
I'd still be interested if you happen to remember the reason.
20: Ooh, I would love to hear more about the solar panels. We are looking into getting mini split heat pumps (either air or possibly earth), because MassSave offers great rebates, and working at home now, I need to be able to cool the house. I have fantasies about eventually installing solar panels and having ridiculously low utility bills.
Someone I know at work who has pretty poor arithmetic and financial planning abilities is doing a solar panel lease which makes me think the leases are a bad idea. What happened in your case?
An old friend turns 100 today.
Separately I'm stoked because this afternoon I'm going across the bay for a first consultation on facial reconstructive surgery. (Waiting lists are months to years, I wasn't even supposed to meet the doctor until August, but they had a last-minute cancellation.) As you can imagine, people on Twitter have strong opinions about whether it's ethical to do this hideously expensive thing that insurance won't cover because it's "cosmetic," and for a while I was extremely hand-wringy about getting colonized by cis beauty standards or whatever, but I've gotten comfortable with the idea that I really do want it. Super excited.
26: Apparently, an elevated risk of death.
28.1: The friend I'm always putting off getting together with.
28: That sounds really cool. We had a talk from someone in my department who now identifies as non-binary. Their husband said they weren't surprised but one of the things that made figuring out that identity was that sometimes it was hard to discern whether you were non-bi are or just anti-patriarchy and enforced cis-standards of beauty.
28.1: "usylessly unreadable Blue Book" -- nice description of the novel.
Now I realize why I had so much trouble with it -- my copy was red.
The link in 28.1 is great
Good luck lk!
I have failed to read even Joyce's shorter stuff and I've tried often enough that I'm confident the fault is his.
Yes. Best wishes for the surgery and recovery.
The solar thing is kind of a fiasco, and the take-away lesson is that you're going to be responsible for coordinating whatever repairs are necessary, even if the solar lease/PPA means someone else is technically responsible and/or the only ones allowed to actually touch the things. Buy your own system outright or don't bother at all.
We got a PPA with SunRun, installed in 2013, and it worked fine for years. The lease gave us a respectable rate on the power it generates (7.8 cents per kWh, when the going rate locally is more like 22 cents), and a relatively low up-front cost. We were relatively short of cash at the time, so it seemed like a perfectly respectable deal and made the maintenance - and the regulatory/market risk of the value of the renewable energy credits - someone else's problem.
In November 2020 it stopped working (the inverter failed, in a way extremely typical of that model of inverter, there are many examples of this exact failure online). In the following fifteen months, they have taken the panels down, tested them, put them back up, and just now proposed taking them down again to test them again, with no particular theory of failure since the last time they took them down. My roof has presumably taken a bit of a beating from the four expeditions they've made up there to no net effect. They have front-line people who answer the phone after an hour on hold, but after taking your message and swearing that it's "escalated" nobody ever calls me back. When I've occasionally gotten through to a "field service coordinator" it's been five different people over the course of this saga, none of whom had notes on the issue from their predecessors. The only way I've gotten them to do much besides the initial "this isn't working" tech visit is by filing a consumer complaint with the MA AG office and thereby getting assigned a "coordinator" at SunRun who is actually one of their lawyers. It's clear that their business model is very insurance-like: finance a vast pile of systems, try very hard to do nothing in the event that any of them break, since it doesn't take very many service calls to wipe out the money they make on me from the SRECs.
I bet you'd see some spontaneous human combustion if I picked up Ulysses and reread it right now. I'm deep in that fun pit of feeling like a failure at everything except keeping the checking account in the black and the house relatively free of mold. (Oh and, I suppose, unprecedented dental health awareness. Did anyone else go to the dentist during the pandemic and have the hygienist explain that they couldn't use various normal teeth-cleaning instruments for sanitation reasons, so their m.o. was just to scrape endlessly at your teeth until you scream? That kept me flossing daily for a whole year and counting.)
Someone I know at work who has pretty poor arithmetic and financial planning abilities is doing a solar panel lease which makes me think the leases are a bad idea.
I laughed.
38: No. they had us use special rinses and put in extra large HEPA filters. Initially they had me put something like a bit in one ride of the mouth (maybe to minimize spit?).
I'm enjoying the image of someone biting down on a giant HEPA filter. It's all so chaotic.
39: Well, I mean she did not want to do an FSA when she knew she needed dental work in January and had a quote of a cost of $1500 after insurance. In addition to saving on taxes it would have helped her with the upfront cost. Her husband who has a small business who employs independent contractors exclusively did not like the idea of the money in her paycheck being lower every week.
41: That would be more exciting than the reality. They are super backed up now because everybody decided at the same time to get care.
Still here. I went to the gym for the first time in almost two years yesterday. (I've got exercise more recently than that, but not in a gym specifically.) The kid has swim class, there's a room in the same rec center with treadmills and a few similar machines, I bit the bullet and gave it a try. It sucked, but at least I feel dutiful.
In the spirit of "low-grade self-medicine", people here have talked about a runner's high before, which I've never noticed. With five minutes of Googling I found this. To summarize, maybe I've never in my life exercised enough to get it - it says "several miles at a time", and the best I've done is probably 3.5, not sure if that counts as "several" - but apparently a lot of people don't.
I just had a real life "I don't always test my code, but when I do it do it in production" moment and sent about a thousand automatic notification emails to an internal list of ~20 people.
One day, back in the 90s, I stopped my boss before she mailed a few hundred copies of a letter with the typo "pubic schools." This was after they were printed and signed. I may have been laughing at the secretary for the rest of the week.
The consult was... a thing! This is a top specialist with a price tag to match, but I guess if there were ever something where you don't want to go cheap. Thanks so much for the good wishes, but just to be clear the actual procedure won't be for another year or so; this was just setting the mechanism in motion.
The scalpel is attached to a very long chain of dominoes.
This is at the bottom of the review of this movie in the NYT -- is someone there trolling poor Art Garfunkel?
The Worst Person in the World
Rated R. Sex, drugs and Art Garfunkel's cover of Tom Jobim's "Waters of March." In Norwegian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/movies/the-worst-person-in-the-world-review.html
I don't think Paul Simon ever stopped.
How can you like Art Garfunkel and Marvin Gaye? That's like saying you support the Israelis and the Palestinians.
I find it hard to understand having strong feelings about Art Garfunkel one way or another unless you know him personally. He does what he does.
Relentless dental and medical appointments for me at the moment. Dental is a filling that came out at Christmas and I've been getting bounced between NHS dentist and private endodontist with multiple x-rays and consultations, all of which to come to the conclusion that ... I need a filling. A fancy expensive filling that the NHS won't cover, but a filling nonetheless. Medical, I have a skin thing that the GP though might be a basal cell thing, but which the derm people don't know, so .. biopsy and a long wait. Biopsy stitches are being taken out later today. Neither of the dermatologists I've seen think it's anything cancerous, though, so it more inconvenient than worrying.
On the plus side, I've kicked off the proper work on my "Aztec" project which is a cool project, and the stuff done so far has all been going well, so I'm feeling optimistic and enjoying it.
https://anonym.es/?https://bit.ly/3uqNBLx
Also, another probably good sign, is I've been listening to and discovering a lot of new music recently, and usually when I stop doing that it's a sign of depression, and being enthusiastic and enjoying music again is a sign of the opposite.
We're not allowed to do human sacrifices at work. Religion is for after work.
54:. Not all human sacrifice is religious. Sometimes, it's just business as usual.
Plucking the still beating heart from out of an employee's chest is part of the Scrum methodology.
That explains why it caught on so fast.
Dancing on the user's grave, however, is Agile.
Important news!!
Wordle 230 2/6
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Just got the Taylordle in 3. The nerdle is an actually good math variant, unlike the primel which is kind of dumb.
One day, back in the 90s, I stopped my boss before she mailed a few hundred copies of a letter with the typo "pubic schools."
Nobody stopped some publishing company or other from shipping the first printing of Beverly Sills' memoir with this very typo on the first page, I think maybe the first sentence.
What, I never have an opportunity to mention this.
I would work out into every conversation I could too.
The math ones are bullshit because they don't allow commutativity.
Try dordle, two wordles in one. I'm sure there will soon be a trordle, quordle, etc.
67: If it doesn't come from the River Rouge region of Detroit, it's not a Fordle, it's just a trendy word game.
67 drives me crazy too.
However, with oodle you can intentionally submit incorrect statements, which is great because you can test more than one possibility in a single guess.
But like STARE and RATES are both words. Getting the right permutation is just built into the game. So the commutativity thing doesn't bother me at all.
But Stare and Rates don't mean the same thing like they do in the math statement.
This isn't the hill I'm going to die on, but I would argue that they don't mean the same thing in the math statement either, they happen to give the same answer but they don't mean the same thing. (I.e. a+b is defined by recursion via 0+b=b and S(x)+b = S(x+b), while b+a is defined by recursion via 0+a = a and S(x)+a = S(x+a).)
See: https://www.ma.imperial.ac.uk/~buzzard/xena/natural_number_game/
The counter argument is that although a+b and b+a don't mean the same thing, 1+2 and 2+1 do both mean the same thing because they both mean 3 when you apply the recursive definition. That is a+b = b+a are not definitionally equal, but but 1+2 and 2+1 are both by definition 3. But the counter counter argument is that then all true statements just mean true, and so all the statements in the game mean the same thing.
This is why I hated story problems.
Still positive for the coronavirus, although the line at the T is very faint. Doesn't this mean I just might test negative if I wait 12 hours?
76: When did you first test positive? The latest guidance I've heard (and I don't know if this is biologically sound) is test 5 days after symptom/1st test. Then at day 7 or 8 if positive on day 5. If still positive then, just wait until day 10. After 10 days no need to test.
I have to test to fly home. My test of Friday had a strong T line, which appeared in less that 5 minutes (you're supposed to wait 15 to see what lines appear). The faint line this morning surely means that I've got a lot less of the stuff in me . . .
Are home tests even allowed for reentering, don't you need a lab test (including telehealth)?
Going places is for suckers, so I don't even know the rules.
78 and 79: PCR tests can stay positive for a long time - even a month - not necessarily live virus, though. I don't know what the solution for CCarp is.
Should say active or replication competent and not "alive."
... infecting a brother or infecting a mother
You're stayin' replication competent, stayin' replication competent.
Rapid antigen tests are fine, but they have to be performed by a lab, not at home. Vaccinated folks clear virus significantly faster than non-vaccinated, an average of 5.5 days. You could also go the route of having a physician sign off that you had COVID and are fully recovered and cleared to fly (this requires a prior positive test and an actual physician, hard to imagine someone would sign off with a positive rapid test but easy to imagine with someone who still shows positive PCR).
I'd just keep testing every 12 h if cost isn't a factor. No need to wait longer.
I think lab tests should be free in Austria? The bigger question is how close the nearest site is, but my experience from Germany suggests even in small towns you should be fine. But yeah I think you want to get an official positive test soon in case you need to go the documented recovery route. And everything ydnew says is right.
I failed Wordle today. Previously, I'd succeeded every day since it was brought up here.
Wordle 232 X/6
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That inspired me to try it for the first time ever (but not in a mean way, I swear):
Wordle 232 5/6
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Still, I think I'll stick to sokoban.
Need an antigen test to be cleared to fly. Got the telehealth test kits from United, and they're good enough: whatever certificate I'm supposed to have to get into the US, which United has you upload as part of the check-in process, this method is supposed to deliver. The test has to be less than 48 hours before departure, and if I'm leaving Wednesday morning, that means Monday afternoon, or Tuesday.
I'm in Germany. There's a trailer on the street near me: sign says tests are free to residents of Germany.
I had a positive PCR on Monday, so very nearly a week ago.
I'm not going anywhere tonight, may as well do an antigen test in the am.
88:. I failed once a while ago. That was when I commented here that I changed my mind and now I hates Wordle. But today's I got in 3
78 etc: I missed this -- Charley, are you in Vienna? If so, there are 3 Teststraßen that do antigen tests, you need to book an appointment but I think you can do it right on the spot, at least when I went to the Stadion location Wednesday morning it was practically empty. The pharmacies are only free if you have Austrian insurance, but maybe they'll do it for you anyway for cheap, since they sell the tests for like €3 each. There's also the "sniffle-checkboxes" but it's unclear from online if you need an e-card there. Anyway, all the information is at this link, the English version seems to be missing a test location at least.
You probably know all this, but if you need help with stuff get in touch via the email. The Infanta was in k1 quarantine last Mon-Weds and may go back into quarantine again because her teacher on Thursday tested positive, so we are very current on testing infrastructure.
90: oops wrote my comment before seeing that.
This may have changed, but when I was in Germany the test was free for me too even though I wasn't a resident. They didn't actually seem to be set up to take payment.
Or maybe that's that it was a little town that didn't have enough foreigners to bother with setting up payment as an option.
Small German towns are sometimes unmarked.
I just found out my niece took a job as a "community manager" for a digital Beanie Baby NFT company, and is being paid in equity. I have failed as an uncle.
You can tell people she's in prison.
Wordle 232 5/6
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That was a hard one.
Between Christmas and New Year's, my father and his wife either held or attended a Xmas brunch that resulted in a NICU admit as well as a search for an ICU bed for a relative (wife's sister) who was a cancer patient (elderly, recurrent). She was not admitted at the time due to lack of beds, but apparently she just died of COVID. I was really, really shocked my my father's comments "Her cancer wasn't in remission; it was getting worse. It was just a matter of time. They aren't totally sure what killed her, but they took her off the ventilator and she died right away."
It is very weird that I can't figure out whether he's always been like this, whether his brain is rotting in the same way the QAnon folks' are, or whether this marriage is doing bad things to his (limited at best) sense of empathy.
100: Oh wow, that sounds like an intense conversation. Was the wife's sister with cancer vaccinated but immunocompromised or unvaccinated. Not caring whether your actions harm someone who tried to protect themselves with a vaccine feels different somehow. How did the baby do?
100: That's depressing. Please tell me the baby is O.K. That is, lie if not.
I wonder if covid has made it harder to steal babies from hospitals.
I'm guessing if I email the public relations people at the hospital to ask, I get put on a list again.
Thanks, X. I was in Oberlech, in Vorarlberg, while it was still January, and then Bavaria for the last 9 days.
That sucks, Charley. Are you running out of the test kits, or is that not an issue? If you run out and the local places refuse to give you one, worst case, you can show up a few hours early at the airport and take a test there, though I'm guessing they will charge an exorbitant amount.
I have four left. I can't fly Tuesday -- because of a silly work thing -- but maybe the 24 hour rule (for booking transatlantic flights) is real, so I'll test again tomorrow morning hoping to fly Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the 15k womens biathlon is brutal. Looking forward to the mixed jumping this afternoon.
It seems to be a myth, for what that is worth.
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Could one of the people with keys put up a post about the Ukrainian situation? Or could somebody with knowledge of foreign affairs submit one? In app's bio it says that as an undergrad apo specialized in Soviet and Eastern bloc countries.
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102/103: Sister with cancer was vaccinated and boosted, as far as I know (I was too shocked to say anything than standard condolences). As far as I know, the baby is fine (updates seem to be bad news only). He just truly didn't seem to care at all about the chain of events (they were not ill at any point) and asked us for some good news to shift the conversation. I suppose this gives me an excuse to decline all future invitations for events with her family. Because I'd hate to feel even slightly responsible for someone's death . . . and a death like that . . .
112: That sounds like a reasonable plan, since you certainly would not be able to enforce any kind of masking...and it's hard to get people who don't care to stick to outdoors.
111: oh, now everyone wants to discuss the Battalion Tactical Group in the attack.
When my great aunt died of covid, her kids decided to blame the workers who were remodeling their house (and never in the same room as her) instead of considering the far more likely scenario that it was one of them or their kids.
"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in mystery inside an enigma, but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
In app's bio it says that as an undergrad apo specialized in Soviet and Eastern bloc countries.
Well, 30 years ago, I studied an empire that disappeared right as I graduated. Not sure I bring much info to the table now that everybody else doesn't already know.
117: Winston! There's a Ukraine thread! Also it doesn't seem like that much of a mystery if the solution is they act in their own national interest.
It's weird how Russian national interest keeps leading to international exports of antisemitic propaganda.
115: You may not be interested in the BTG but the BTG is interested in you?
I ask you, what has changed? Has the danger from the Russian side been lessened? No. Rather, the delusion of the ruling classes of Europe has reached its pinnacle. Above all, nothing has changed in Russia's policy, as her official historian Karamsin admits. Her methods, her tactics, her manoeuvres may change, but the pole star -- world domination -- is immutable. Only a crafty government, ruling over a mass of barbarians, could devise such a plan nowadays.
WELL OURS COMES DOWN TO NOT LETTING ONE DOMINANT POWER CONTROL THE SCHELDT ESTUARY BUT THEIRS MAY BE SOMEWHAT MORE COMPLICATED. ANYWAY, IS IT CHAMPAGNE O'CLOCK AGAIN YET?
It's weird how Russian national interest keeps leading to international exports of antisemitic propaganda.
It's like the priest in Father Ted during the "Speed" episode... "Is there nothing to be said for trying another Mass?" except with blood libels.
Noting that I received my fourth (Pfizer) covid vaccine this morning. I wonder how many other people have received four covid vaccines and had zero covid tests.
I didn't know 4 was an option. I've never had a real covid test either. Just the home ones and never as a requirement for anything.
I guess this thread dropped off the front page and needs to be renewed.
128: Good idea!
127: Maybe you should explain this and not just be a smartass?
The amazing drug that allows me to lead an apparently perfectly health life with chronic myeloid leukemia is an immunosuppressant. Because of this, I'm in the first group eligible for boosters.
I'm very glad to hear the treatment works.
Whoa, I didn't have any idea you're on a miracle track like that. Good job.
How did you come back to that thread?
On my home computer, the different thread windows open up on top of each other, instead of automatically replacing each other. So I'm sitting on a stack of old threads and I don't even know it! It's very exciting. I suppose I closed some out and just refreshed this one.
I just now realized that this really is going back a ways.