One of the crazy things about this pandemic is that it’s all going to be over in a year or a few years at most. Done. History. Past tense.
Everybody who was going to get it will have gotten it, many will die, the rest of us will just get on with our lives. The disease itself might continue in the population, but it will be like the flu. Just part of normal life. No social distancing or special measures required.
And if the 1918 pandemic is a guide, we will not talk about it much and it will be all but forgotten in a generation.
A generation from now we will STILL be talking about the 1970s because that was such a crazy decade. But the “coronavirus pandemic?” What was that? Never heard of it.
Last night I was getting ready for bed and looked at my pedometer app and saw it was at 9,800 steps and said to myself, welp, guess I’m not making it to 10,000 today.
And then I got into bed and pulled the covers up and was all set up and cozy and ready to go to sleep and I looked at the pedometer app again and it was over 9,900.
And I got out of bed and walked around the house for about 5 minutes until I was over 10,000.
[Private equity] companies that “looted healthcare want billions in bailout.”
Corporations that went to binding arbitration to stiff consumers are screaming now that automation is threatening to make the playing field fair
E-voting is a nonstarter for secret elections but it’ll work for public votes by elected officials such as legislators
Republicans plan squads of ex-military and ex-police to intimidate black and Latino voters
“‘Job creators’ are job annihilators”
Eric Snowden warns that pandemic surveillance will become permanent. If you liked the PATRIOT Act, you’ll love pandemic surveillance!
Also: “RIP MAD’s Mort Drucker: One of ‘the usual gang of idiots:”
His daughter, Laurie Bachner, told the AP: “I think my father had the best life anyone could hope for. He was married to the only woman he ever loved and got to make a living out of what he loved to do.”
Drucker worked at MAD from the mid-50s on, helping to define the magazine’s caricature house-style.
I just cancelled my $119 annual Dropbox account, which expires in 10 days. I’m pretty sure I can get everything I need from iCloud plus the free Dropbox tier.
As a test, I moved everything out of the Dropbox sync folder except for one small folder that I still want to use with Dropbox. We’ll see if anything breaks!
I’ve been using Dropbox for at least 10 years, so this feels like more of a big deal than it probably actually is.
The vet gave us parking lot service: when I arrived, I called from the parking lot, a vet tech came out to the car, checked us in, and brought Minnie inside. I never entered the vet building.
Out of old habit I almost ordered a burger, fries and chocolate shake from the vet tech. But I stopped myself in time. Still, would’ve been nice if she’s cruised up on roller skates.
The vet phoned me while I was in the car trying to figure out how to get the iPad hooked up to the Verizon network (which I never did succeed in doing). She said Minnie has basically blown out her right rear knee. Minnie probably did the left one too at some point a while ago (the vet said), but recovered and has been compensating.
I’m thinking Minnie probably did the left one in September when we took her into the vet because she could barely stand up after zoomies.
The prognosis: Rest for two weeks, anti-inflammatories, and then we’ll see.
If that doesn’t work: Surgery. Which costs $4,000. So yeah, permanently disabled dog vs. spending $4K on surgery is a choice between unacceptable options. Let’s just say she’s going to recover fine after two weeks of rest.
The vet said Minnie will probably eventually need the surgery, when she is an old dog. But “eventually” is a long way away, and may never come, so I’m not going to worry about that now.
When I dropped Minnie at the vet initially, I asked how long it would take. They said a half-hour to an hour. I said OK we live a short way away so I’ll just turn around and go home and then come back to get her when I get the call that she’s ready. I figured it’d probably be more like two or three hours, just because things usually take longer than people say they will .
But nope, the vet called just as I was pulling up the road to the house. I finished the call in our driveway, went upstairs, had lunch, then went back downstairs and picked up the dog.
Julie took this photo of Minnie recovering from her ordeal.
Minnie was still hopping along on three legs this morning and looking pretty miserable. I called the vet and they’re doing parking-lot check-ins. So I’m off to the vet later this morning.
It’s pouring rain out. I know that’s no big deal to the real world, but we Southern Californians are big babies when it comes to any kind of foul weather.
A friend says dogs just do that sometimes, and she’ll get over it in a week. Maybe so. But Minnie is seven years old and she has never done it. She frequently strains herself after zoomies, but never like this and never this badly. And she seems pretty miserable, so anything we can do to make her more comfortable seems like a good idea.
Last year, Democratic state Senator and party leader Scott Weiner said,
“The federal government is no longer a reliable partner in delivering health care, in supporting immigrants, supporting LGBT people, in protecting the environment, so we need to forge our own path…. We can do everything in our power to protect our state, but we need a reliable federal partner. And right now we don’t have that.”
“The Pursuit of the Pankera” is a kind of metafiction – fiction about fiction. It is an alternate version of “The Number of the Beast,” which Heinlein published in 1980.
Both novels are about travel between alternate universes, and so they are alternate-universe novels about each other.
I have never liked “The Number of the Beast,” in part because it suffers from the sins of late-period Heinlein: Long-winded political preachiness combined with the author’s creepy sex scenes.
And a third problem for “Number:” It’s Heinlein’s love letter to the science fiction/fantasy action-adventure of his youth, particularly the Oz books, Barsoom books and E.E. “Doc” Smith.
None of those three series were childhood favorites of mine and Heinlein does nothing to make them seem appealing.
Brown says “The Pursuit of the Pankera” is a much better book than “Number.” and that’s what I’m hearing elsewhere. It’s on my to-be-read list, near the top.
Heinlein has been one of my favorite authors since I was 8 years old, but his most-popular books tend to be the ones I like least. I like his early and middle-period stuff.
When I ask if he is hoarding anything, he is outraged. “Not a hoarder,” he said. “In fact, in a few months, if I walk into someone’s house and stumble onto 50 rolls of toilet paper in a closet somewhere, I will end the friendship. It’s tantamount to being a horse thief in the Old West.”
“I never could have lived in the Old West,” he added parenthetically. “I would have been completely paranoid about someone stealing my horse. No locks. You tie them to a post! How could you go into a saloon and enjoy yourself knowing your horse could get taken any moment? I would be so distracted. Constantly checking to see if he was still there.”
For several months, my daily breakfast has been about a pint of a thick “nutritionally complete” liquid, called Huel.
Huel is a powder you mix with water to make a milky liquid, like a thin milkshake. You can add more water to make it thinner, or less to make it thicker. You can use vegetable milk, or mix it with fruit or peanut butter for added flavor. The powder itself can be unflavored, or vanilla, chocolate or berry flavored.
Kansas’s Republican-led legislator overturned the Democratic governor’s ban on gatherings during Easter and Passover.
Kansas legislature strikes down governor’s directive limiting size of religious gatherings
Kansas Republicans are claiming religious persecution, which is ridiculous because (1) The law is designed to save people’s lives and (2) The law does not single out any particular religious denomination or indeed single out religions at all. This is settled law in the US and has been for many, many decades.
Listening to the Monday microcast with @macgenie and @manton yesterday, I learned that you can use filters on micro.blog to search for text in a post you write, and automatically include that post in a category.
So you can automate micro.blog to search for any post containing the word “beer,” or the beer emoji 🍺, and put that in a “beer” category. Instructions are here.
Additionally, micro.blog uses emoji in lieu of hashtags, which I like.
On today’s Pluralistic by Cory Doctorow
Disney horror/comic mashups are appalling/delightful
Daniel “Kickpunch” Björk created an incredible set of Disney Comic/horror movie mashups.
The chemistry of cold-brew coffee
I can’t say I have strong feelings about cold-brew coffee. I like a nice iced coffee in hot weather. But even in hot weather, I like hot coffee.
The crisis is making heroes of IT workers
IT workers are pulling all-nighters and multi-day marathons to set up co-workers for remote work and provision systems for new workflows.
