As most of you know, my beloved husband Mike passed away a few months ago. To be honest, I’m still grieving him and probably will for the rest of my life. Being a Bat-Gran, I decided to feed into the stereotype and get a fuzzy friend to live with. My intention was to get a kitten, but like most things in my life, it didn’t quite work out that way.
This is Freya. She’s about three years old and was rescued from a hoarding situation. She spent the first week in the house hiding under the buffet in my dining room, occasionally howling like a Klingon announcing the imminent arrival of her beloved to Sto'vo'kor. Freya has settled in nicely and spends her time chasing the elusive yellow spring…
And a great deal of the time napping.
Being the furry friend of Bat-Gran means she’s a little …odd. For reasons I have yet to figure out, Freya loves to watch an old 1950s TV show called Perry Mason. No matter where in the house she is, once the theme song starts, she comes mewing into the living room.
Freya only watches for a few minutes before wandering off. That’s understandable since in every single episode, Perry will prove that his client is innocent by causing the true villain to break down and admit their guilt. She"ll usually return in time for the climax. Freya is surprised by Perry’s legal skills each and every time.
I’m afraid to introduce her to Law & Order since only God knows how she’ll react to Jack McCoy and his eyebrows of doom. Anyway, welcome home, Freya. May you nap in comfort (while slowly edging me off my recliner) for many years to come.
No other leading country wipes out your savings and equity when you get sick. Even with insurance.
#MedicareForAll
No other leading country wipes out your savings and equity when you get sick. Even with insurance.
My sweetie and I’s journey through the brutal Medical-Industrial-Complex bill collectors calling at 8am every morning for nearly two years. This was the county supposed “charity” hospital. They would not stop the phone calls up until a few days before she died, when she was literally on her deathbed in hospice.
The system is brutal. It’s evil. Just hideous fucking inhuman evil.
Contrast that with the absolute joy (although understandably much-delayed by suspicion at first) that being uninsured in California was, when I had a bad wreck a few months after I moved here. I was signed up for MediCal like immediately by the nice lady at the hospital, and it has been a true joy to have.
The clinic I go to is great, I absolutely LOVE my doc, she’s the best doctor I’ve ever had. I take like a dozen meds, and they’re all covered 100%. They pay for an eye exam every year (no glasses, tho’), and I didn’t realize it until a few months ago that they cover dental as well.
The med/dent clinics are at the nearest hospital in Oakland that’s easy to get to, the eye exam is in an office at the back of a mall in Hayward, easy access, no big whoop to get to.
I’m finally in the system for dental, and had a cleaning the week after my initial consult, and a game plan to fix what’s wrong will get made next time.
The rest of the country needs this.
The fact that it exists in California is PROOF IT WORKS! Fuck the “Insurance Industrial Complex”, too!
Exactly. I’m military retired. No matter what I do to myself (and I am entirely too skilled at that!) except for eyeglasses and dental, I’m covered and so would be my wife. My late wife spent weeks in ICU and at the end the medical bills I got, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, had a final entry. “And you owe $0.00.” Everybody should have that.
Send me to Mars with party supplies before next august 5th
No guys you don’t understand.
The soil testing equipment on Curiosity makes a buzzing noise and the pitch of the noise changes depending on what part of an experiment Curiosity is performing, this is the way Curiosity sings to itself.
So some of the finest minds currently alive decided to take incredibly expensive important scientific equipment and mess with it until they worked out how to move in just the right way to sing Happy Birthday, then someone made a cake on Curiosity’s birthday and took it into Mission control so that a room full of brilliant scientists and engineers could throw a birthday party for a non-autonomous robot 225 million kilometres away and listen to it sing the first ever song sung on Mars*, which was Happy Birthday.
This isn’t a sad story, this a happy story about the ridiculousness of humans and the way we love things. We built a little robot and called it Curiosity and flung it into the star to go and explore places we can’t get to because it’s name is in our nature and then just because we could, we taught it how to sing.
That’s not sad, that’s awesome.
*this is different from the first song ever played on mars (Reach For The Stars by Will.I.Am) which happened the year before, singing is different from playing
A small study in Texas suggests that human bird flu cases are being missed on dairy farms where the H5N1 virus has taken off in cows, sparking an unprecedented nationwide outbreak.
The finding adds some data to what many experts have suspected amid the outbreak. But the authors of the study, led by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, went further, stating bluntly why the US is failing to fully surveil, let alone contain, a virus with pandemic potential.
"Due to fears that research might damage dairy businesses, studies like this one have been few," the authors write in the topline summary of their study, which was posted online as a pre-print and had not been peer-reviewed.
Tw: almost dying, muscle spasms, seizures and weird body fuckery.
I just had my second ER trip of the month. I thought the amitriptyline was making my heart weird in a non-POTSy way and I had a feeling that something was just wrong. So I woke Mothman up and asked him to take me to the ER.
Which is just as well because as soon as we got there I started experiencing uncontrollable muscle spasms and my resting heart rate shot up to 150.
The triage nurse bolted me through the corridors into a room of about four doctors and seven nurses. The rest is a blur but I remember crying for Mothman because I couldn’t see him past the wall of medical people around me.
Turns out I was extremely hypocalcemic, as in my blood results for my ionized calcium levels were so low it was a medical emergency. If I’d stayed home and assumed my rapid heart was from POTS I likely would have had a seizure or possibly a heart attack.
The doctor in charge told me he’d only ever seen the spasmodic movements I was making in textbooks before, but it was so distinctive he knew right away it was hypocalcemia. Blood tests confirmed it. My serum levels were “normal” but my ionozed levels were virtually zero.
Also, my thyroid is shot. I need to get more tests done. Possibly linked to the hypocalcemia. Possibly why my migraines have been so bad. Basically it was the b12 fiasco all over again. All my test results looked normal until I almost died
Again.
Anyway. I’m home now after being given a massive dose of IV calcium and a ton of othe meds. Sadly, I’m not allowed to take the amitriptyline anymore, at least until we’ve figured out my thyroid and why my calcium was so low while still appearing normal. Thankfully I was only on it for a week at a very low dose so the side effects of coming off it cold turkey shouldn’t be too bad. I’m dreading the head pain returning. But who knows, maybe the massive dose of calcium will help with that. Keep your fingers crossed for me, eh?
I’m going to try and sleep.
Or just stare into the void for a bit. Haven’t decided yet.
Just to clarify: the amitriptyline didn’t cause this. I went to the ER because it was a new factor in my life that I was aware could cause symptoms and they uncovered something completely different.
They’re taking me off it as a precaution because they need to know what my heart is actually doing and also the amitriptyline was masking the nerve pain and numbness that was potentially caused by the hypocalcemia.
I just happened to crash into an emergency last night after taking it. Made a logical assumption it was the med, then got the rug pulled out from under me when they told me I was dying again from a major deficiency that wasn’t showing on normal blood tests.
I’m so tired of being medically interesting. I’d like to be boring. Please.
If you feel like a cat is laying on your sternum and purring really hard, but there is no cat, get calcium into your system ASAP. It’s an absolutely unmistakable and really weird sensation to have.
This is an early sign of calcium depletion, before it gets to hospital-level bad.
Drink a lot of milk. Eat a bunch of antacid tablets. Hell, eat some pudding or ice cream or cheese or yogurt. Stir some baking soda into a glass of water if that’s all you have.
I learned this when I was hooked up to an apheresis machine for several hours - the anticoagulant leaches calcium out of your bloodstream, so I was basically snacking on Tums nonstop to keep things in balance.
I just did Elmo, but Grover is a mostly-frugivorous muppet that uses his long, bendy arms and extreme agility to best effect in an arboreal lifestyle! there is nowhere that Grover cannot climb, as you have likely found to your dismay if you’ve every tried to set up a bird feeder on Sesame Street.
I think one of the consequences of getting older is finding out that your parents were kind of right when they complained about technology? At least you can see they weren’t entirely wrong.
I’ve been hearing from friends that it’s getting harder to find quality refrigerators that don’t connect to the internet. Why exactly does my refrigerator need wifi? Or even a computer, at that? Older fridges can last decades because they have so few failure points. They have one job and they do it well.
I tend not to use my smart TV very often because the damn thing glitches and it’s laggy and too much of a hassle unless I am really committed to watching a movie in my living room. And the worse thing is…can you even buy a non-smart TV these days that isn’t secondhand? Are they even making ordinary…yanno…televisions that don’t need software updates and internet connections, anymore?
Someone in the comments of this post asked how bluetooth earbuds are forced and everyone pointed out that a lot of phones (especially iphones) simply do not have the ports to plug in wired headphones anymore. You must get the apple wireless headphones - and I think that’s the crux of the problem. I am glad I have an android phone because I can use the old wired earbuds I’ve had for over 12 years. If I wanted to, I could buy wireless earbuds and use them instead, because my model of phone gives me that option.
And that’s the kicker: the problem is that as things are “advancing,” more and more, options are being taken away. It has nothing to do with consumer demand - obviously there are a lot of people that are not happy with these developments. But as we’re seeing, the products being made don’t reflect customer preference or choice. It’s always about is best for the companies making and selling those products.
Every day we’re hearing about new apps and tech startups and really…does anyone really want this shit? Is the nth attempt to make crypto work, the billions spent on the Metaverse, doorbell cameras; is a fridge with an IP address really allow it to do its job better? Is that actually going to improve the lives of anyone who aren’t the developers of that product? Just the other day I was reading about a tech startup that wants to be able to beam ads into your car’s GPS screen. Video ads! On a screen! To tell drivers what’s nearby when they can just…continue to look out the window because they’re supposed to be driving a goddamn car.
The problem of a world run by tech companies is that the tech isn’t being made to accommodate us, we are being forced to accommodate the tech.
I’ve said it before I’ll say it again.
Nostalgia tech is a thing that would make money if they would just fucking do it. That’s why they still make records and record players.
BUT. Now it’s a luxury and luxury items sell. As LUXURYS.
Because it’s now about money. It never was. It’s about control.
Y’all understand? It was always about control.
So I had a new boiler fitted the other day. The old one had done its job for a long time but finally gave up.
It wasn’t until the damn thing was all installed and ready to go that I was told that I would need to download an app on my phone and register my details and prescise location in order to set my heating.
I would no longer have a thermostat in my house. I would only be able to control it from my smart phone.
I am 36 years old and I went mad - not at the poor boiler engineer of course, but I refused to do what he was asking. I asked for an alternative. He initially said there wasn’t one. I told him to check with the company. He phoned the company and eventually someone spoke to me about it. Explaining that this was the standard for all new boilers. I told them it was ridiculous. What if I was an elderly person living alone who didn’t own a smart phone? What if I lost my phone? What if the wifi failed? What if there was an electrical fault?
It took over half an hour of exasperated bargaining before someone agreed to swap out the smart app connected parts of the boiler with a “standard issue thermostat”. At first they were gonna charge me an extra £100 to swap it out, but I argued my case there as well.
After a lot of back and forth and effort that totally drained my energy, eventually I got a standard thermostat fitted. No smart phone app or registration needed. No extra charge. Just a lot of extra effort that someone a bit less stubborn and determined to avoid this technological attack on basic living would have easily backed down on.
We are already living in a world run by tech companies, where every. single. thing. in our lives is slowly being transformed into another system where they can track our every move, steal our personal information, and make life that little bit more complicated.
The fact that even white goods like refridgerators and washing machines are starting to require app connections is worrying. It’s not a good thing, and its not being done for convenience. It’s being done for data tracking, location tracking, and finding new ways to inflict ads on us.
Sorry if this rant derailed the post a bit, but the memory is still fresh and so apparently is my anger! But at least this is an example where being persistent and stubborn does heed results against them!
In May, US polo team captain Maggie Steffens asked for financial help on Instagram. Flavor Flav – William Jonathan Drayton Jr – answered the call: “As a girl dad and supporter of all women’s sports, imma personally sponsor you, my girl, whatever you need. And imma sponsor the whole team.”
Flav signed a five-year sponsorship deal to “elevate the visibility and excitement surrounding water polo in the United States.” The sponsorship includes personal appearances and financial contributions to help with equipment, facilities, and anything else they need. This is how it’s done 👏
Anyone in the US can check their voter registration, or register to vote, at vote.org which is a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to providing voting guidance.
The photographer’s daily snaps are filled with light, capturing that little bit of quiet magic in amongst the mundane… plus a lot of her really cute dog.
At the gate for my flight home from visiting friends and there’s a woman here with a service Shiba Inu. No pics because he has a Do Not Disturb vest and taking pics of strangers is illegal but I need to stress how ON DUTY this animal is. Ears up. Eyes doing Lazer scans of everything. Examining everyone who passes within 10ft like a security guard. Ass planted on her feet. I have never seen a dog with such intense chivalric guardian energy before. He has tiny eyebrows and they are FURROWED with concentration.
Man behind me having unhinged phone conversation. There is an internationally famous dairy in the area I was visiting and he was commissioned by the lady on the other end of the phone to collect specific cheeses from there. The lady is very high strung about the type and condition of the cheese.
The man does not know from cheese. The man “ain’t never seen no cheese but orange before” and “I showed ya list to the cheese lady so if it’s wrong it’s her fault ok?”
I am 80% sure she sent him there for a really specific bleu cheese, 40% sure he does not have the very specific bleu cheese, and 100% sure he’s done with her shit.
Our flight is delayed.
He does not have the cheeses in a cooler, just a regular backpack.
I need to emphasize that there is no cooler bag in the backpack. He has Jansport backpack that is jam-packed with cheeses. There is apparently $405 dollars worth of cheeses in that backpack, which I know because he has been trying to get the lady to venmo him the expense, which she has failed to do. It is unclear whether his relation to the lady is romantic, familial or what, but I’m leaning towards “what”.
Two more people have joined us. One is a very elegant man with a perfect manicure in a tailored business suit, the other is a neon-haired person of indeterminate gender wearing a fox kirigumi. The Shiba Inu has been staring at the latter for three minutes now.
Uh oh.
Cheese man has been demanding payment because apparently he went like six hours out of his way and paid with his own money and between the cheese and price of gas, he is pretty sure he does not have enough money in his account for an Uber home.
The lady is FLABBERGASTED that he is demanding payment at all, as she was under the impression he was doing this for her out of the goodness of his heart.
He’s not having it. He’s insisting she told him she would pay him back- he would have gotten her maybe one cheese somewhere closer to his business in the area out of love, but he went out of his way because she agreed to pay him costs+ extra to cover it.
HE RECORDED THE CONVERSATION IN WHICH SHE PROMISED TO PAY FOR THE CHEESE, SHE’S THAT MUCH OF A FLAKE.
I am about to offer this man cash for some of these cheeses because our flight is now more delayed.
“YOU ALWAYS DO THIS! YOU ALWAYS DO THIS AND I FALL FOR IT EVERY TIME! NO! NO! FUCK YOU! IF YOU’RE NOT GONNA PAY ME, YOU DON’T GET FANCY CHEESE.”
“OR ELSE WHAT?”
“I’m gonna-? THE BABY SHOWER? MONICA CAN’T EVEN HAVE THIS CHEESE SHE’S PREGNANT!”
“The cheese lady asked if it was for someone because the mushrooms or whatever in the cheese are dangerous for the baby or something?? You wanna poison Monica?”
“WHY WOULD I LIE ABOUT THAT?”
“YEAH OF COURSE I GOT THE CHEESE, THATS WHY I DON’T GOT MONEY FOR UBER!”
“YEAH, GO TELL! GO TELL MOMMA I STOPPED YOUR STUPID ASS FROM KILLING MONICA OR THE BABY! FUCK!”
*hangs up phone*
*head in hands, borderline hyperventilating*
The man in the three piece suit is in the chair next to him. He waits a moment, then reaches into his carryon and pulls out an entire bottle of wine with the TSA pre check sticker on it, and taps cheese guy on the shoulder.
“If your friend doesn’t want it, would you be amenable to having it right now?”
Naturally, I have volunteered my box of wheat thins and offered to buy one of the harder cheeses which should be fine if it makes it home.
Meanwhile, Kirigumi has noticed that the Shiba Inu is staring at her and is correctly intimidated.
1. This is some fucking great Camembert. I have compensated cheese guy accordingly. So have like six other people. He’s recouped like half his losses.
2. Cheese guy is crying a little about the cash and opening up about his problems. The cheese lady is his younger sister. Suit guy is being very generous with his Pinot Blanc. We are having a picnic/improv family therapy session.
3. This is apparently the latest in a long string of his sister asking for something and then flaking when he asks to be paid back. Started with paying him back only some of what he was owed, then claiming something she paid for him was of equal value when it was not, then recently telling him his memory is wrong and he said it was a gift or that he’d do it for free.
“Yeah, the specific thing of trying to convince you your memory is unreliable is called gaslighting and it’s really fucked up.” I say
“yeeeeah. The other stuff I forgave because she’s never really had a good job so she can’t pay me back all the time but at least she was making an effort y'know? But that was. That was over the line.”
“If you haven’t already, check on the rest of your family’s finances. My brother started trying to gaslight everyone when he started stealing from our parents.” Says Pinot Blanc.
4. Shiba Inu Lady has purchased a cheddar. Apparently, the dog’s name is Donut, and he’s her service dog because she’s severely visually impaired.
“Oh, he’s a guide dog?” Asks cheese guy.
“oh, no.” She laughs. “He’s too short, and the way my eyes are, it’s easier for me to navigate with a cane. No, the problem I have is that some morally impaired people see the cane and think they can get away with stealing my bag or assaulting me because I wouldn’t be able to give a description- which is wrong, but rather than deal with that I got Donut, and he helps me by howling at anyone who gets in my personal space and biting anyone who grabs me!”
“Uh.” Says Kirigumi. “He’s been staring at me do I need to back up or..?”
“Ohdear! No, no- He wasn’t looking at you! He loves cheese but he knows he’s not supposed to beg so he decided the way to deal with something he wants but can’t have is to stare in the other direction.”
“OKAY!” Says Kirigumi. “I’m wearing fox pajamas and thought like. He thought I was another dog or something.”
“No, no- he doesn’t care about dogs, and you get a warning before he goes for the calves. Very helpful, when I was living in Italy!”
“Oh what part? I have family in Tuscany.” Says Pinot.
“Does he want a cheese? There is still so much cheese.” Says cheese guy.
Plane may be arriving. I am paying for in flight WiFi to keep y'all updated.
1. Cheese guy has sold all but two or three cheeses that he an Pinot are going to eat on the flight.
2. I know they’re planning to continue because Pinot talked to the gate agent so he and cheese guy can sit together and talk about family drama and cheese.
3. Pinot has been teaching him about different types of cheese and how to enjoy them.
4. Cheese guy apparently repairs computers and other technology devices for a living and is currently doing the software version of scraping barnacles and other crap off Pinot'macbook.
5. Pinot is now convinced that cheese guy is the smartest and most interesting man in the world.
Ok so the Wifi wasn’t working on the plane (also like, nonstop turbulence) and also they got seated in a different row from me, but:
Now that I’ve heard the word aloud, and they are an astrophysicist. Who correctly believes in being comfy as fuck on planes. They are also familar with the concept of a meet-cute and is rooting for them too.
Got to walk the nice lady and her Tactical Assault Shiba to her next gate because it was on the way out and talk for a bit. Donut is called that not because he is the color of a Donut (which he is) but because he likes to sleep curled up in a perfect circle. He has a sister who does the same thing named Bagel.
Lost track of Pinot and Cheeseguy for a bit but when I saw them again at Baggage claim, Cheeseguy was holding both their jackets, and Pinot was on the phone to his hotel about “Well do you have any rooms with TWO beds?”. The rest of the call indicated that yes, there were rooms with two beds, but Readers, I Had A Moment.
:)
Anyway, it’s 2AM, I need to sleep, if you feel like supporting this kind of hard-hitting reporting, I have a Tip Jar!
This is a continuation of the last piece I wrote on the weird shit that happens in classified facilities.
The building I work in has somewhere around 30-35 people in it. It also has around 20 fridges. There’s kind of a saga that goes into this, so I’ll start with the first part: The Hoarding.
And you can use their reality to keep them calm if they are panicking! We had a husband who was always panicking trying to find his wife. Telling him she had passed away was not an option, but through the family we figured out their routine and could tell him not to worry, that she was at the salon or getting coffee with MaryAnne and would be home soon. It calmed him down, stopped him from trying to climb out of windows looking for her, and kept him in his own reality.
If you are working with dementia patients and they aren’t your family, try to get small details from the family that can help!
We had an older gent who was always wanting to get in his car and drive off so we would tell him his car was in the workshop. Eventually someone came up with a car of a make and model he’d owned that was non-working so we parked it up in the garden and he used to get in and sit happily behind the wheel and go for ‘drives’ - he even used to give other residents lifts to wherever they thought they were going.
Trying to orient someone with dementia is cruel in the short term and ultimately pointless. You’ll only upset them by trying to tell them the truth and they’ll have forgotten in an hour and be asking after the same long dead people again. My mother has worked in dementia care for over 25 years and will often tell families “So-and-so is happy in their dementia world”
[image description: a tweet by user @indigenousAI saying
“fun fact: as a DV survivor i cannot register to vote because doing so makes my address public. anyone who is fleeing or hiding from an abuser is automatically disenfranchised from the political process and this is a feature, not a bug”]
I don’t know of the original poster might not be aware
but!
if you’ve been a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking, you can enroll into the address confidentiality program (free of cost!) and be registered to vote as an absentee voter and your name and address will not be made available for the public
it is super easy to get enrolled - the application takes like 5 minutes, but it has to be with someone who is certified to do it (most likely an advocate! try going to a family justice center in your area or calling the Attorney Generals office in your area!!!!)
ALSO :
you don’t need to have any police reports or have a protection order to qualify!!! you just have to sign stating that you’ve been a victim of one of the aforementioned crimes.
Links to the info for every state in the Wikipedia article:
One of the key reasons I prefer ThinkPads is that the little TrackPoint ClitMouse is one of the only pointing methods I’d still be able to use if I was shrunken down to legoman size. Trackpads, mice, touch screens, styluses? No way, not if you’re tiny. But that little red joystick? I figure I could manage it.
And part of my brain has been asking the question of “how could I use this thing if I got shranked all tiny?” since 1989, when I saw Honey, I Shrunk The Kids.
people in the notes of this post keep mentioning trackballs as a potential alternative and i think that’s nuts. anyone who thinks a trackball would be a usable input for a minifig-sized person must not have ever used one before. trackballs are my favourite pointer-control device as a normal-sized person and i KNOW they would be hell if you were small.
multiple people mention trying to stand on it and using it in a “log rolling”-type way, but even the cleanest trackball experiences too much friction to be rotated by someone who only weighs a couple grams walking around on it.
the alternative is like, standing on the base of the trackball and trying to push it with your hands, but the ball is smooth, has no handholds, and you’d still be struggling against the normal level of trackball friction. not to mention most trackball bases have shapes that don’t provide a good foothold. by the time you got the cursor from the center of the screen to the start menu, you’d be jealous of Sisyphus.
i am very much a trackball apologist but i just need to be realistic with you here.
What if we replaced the ball with a sort of mini-hamster-ball and you operated it from the inside?
ALT
