There was a science fiction short story with that plot. Evil Aliens hit a spaceship full of humans with a paralysis ray before boarding. The ship’s cat 1.) wasn’t affected 2.) had been entered into the system as a crew member as a joke. So, being the ranking crew member, the cat was in charge. Ship’s computer displayed the enemy ships on the tactical command touch screen and the cat swatted at the glowy dots, targeting the ships and activating the defenses.
today Meatball abruptly realized that there are refugee office plants in the kitchen (they have been there for weeks) and has decided his singular purpose in life is to eat them
we put up a 4 foot tall step-through baby gate when we brought the plants home, but it turns out he can actually squeeze his body through the bars. not in a dignified way, mind you. but he can
we have foiled him with a two-gate system: a short one with small openings that he can’t squeeze through, and the tall one that he can’t jump over. he is now sitting outside our kitchen door rattling the gates with his stupid little mitten hands like an animated ghost prisoner in a Spirit Halloween decoration
update: we underestimated him
why are your doors closed to the public
is this the same Meatball with the Hanukkah sweater????
it sure is
you may also know him as the Meatball who tried to jump into my toilet and the violent sweatervest-wearing accountant cat
tiny accountant harasses human, eats plants
i mean he has to find some way to unwind from his high-pressure job
update:
So how do you guys… get in there anymore?
well my original game plan was opening the white gate and kind of shoving my body through the gap between the wood gate and the grey gate and i am excited to announce that this was not a good idea at all
what about me could have possibly made you guys think i own this place
If the Government Treated Men Like It Treats Women
👏🏻This👏🏻though!👏🏻
And some men do not understand the point and the message and leave comments like that the condoms and contraceptives are not the same, therefore no sexism.
The PPE Portrait Project is being used at the UMASS Memorial Medical Center. Above, Michaela Essam Agbesi, RN, MSN, ACNP-BC, UMASS Palliative Care, April, 2020 (image courtesy UMASS Palliative Care)
LOS ANGELES — When a patient has a highly contagious virus like COVID-19, doctors and nurses must take the necessary precautions and wear protective gear from head to toe, exposing just a sliver for their eyes. From the perspective of the patient, it can be a highly lonely experience to not really see anyone for days, to not even recognize the medical staff helping you.
Back in 2014, during the Ebola outbreak, the Los Angeles-based artist and Occidental College professor Mary Beth Heffernan came up with a seemingly simple, yet ingenious solution to help patients feel more connected to their providers. With camera in hand, she went to Ebola Treatment Units in Liberia and took warm, friendly portraits of the medical staff and attached the photos to their suits, over their hearts — “to convey that the care is offered from the heart,” Heffernan explained over email. “Before taking the photo,” she said, “I asked the healthcare worker to offer the smile that they wished the patient could see.” Not only did patients report feeling more cared for, but healthcare workers also found the work environment more tolerable; as one doctor put it, “It makes it feel more like I am working with people, with my team, instead of inanimate objects.”
Heffernan sharing PPE Portrait with Augustine Bindi, Hygienist. ELWA 2 Ebola Treatment Unit (2015) (photo by Marc Campos)
It’s no surprise that Heffernan’s PPE Portrait Project (PPE stands for “personal protective equipment”) is making a comeback during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the artist has generally been the one to pitch hospitals, physicians and medical researchers are now contacting her, like Cati Brown-Johnson, a research scientist at Stanford, who asked to bring the project to the medical school’s Express Care center. Heffernan eagerly obliged and sent the project’s guidelines outlining how to take the portraits. She recommends “plain backgrounds and diffuse lighting,” and encourages all subjects to look “directly into the lens,” to make the patients feel like the healthcare worker is “directly engaging with them.” She also advises against “traditional glamour expressions, selfie overhead, or portrait poses like the 3/4 view.”
Ben Smith, Hygienist, photographing Reginald M. Poindo, PA, ELWA 2 Ebola Treatment Unit, Liberia (2015) (photo by Marc Campos)
Brown-Johnson and Heffernan have been in communication daily, “sometimes multiple times a day,” to evaluate the project’s roll-out and reception. “One patient actually said, ‘I love your picture,'” said one of the Stanford RN nurses, Anna Chico, who is trying out the portraits. “It enhanced my interaction with my patients, as they were able to see me and not just a full suit of PPE.”
Heffernan was also approached by Jennifer Reidy, the Chief of the Division of Palliative Care at UMass, where the project was urgently implemented by printing out healthcare workers’ UMass profile pictures (they plan to follow Heffernan’s photo guidelines eventually). “We’re looking for ways to humanize our connections with patients and each other during this pandemic, including things like video technology, PPE Portraits and everyday acts of kindness,” Dr. Reidy is quoted saying in the hospital’s newsletter.
Jennifer Reidy, MD, Chief, UMASS Palliative Care (image courtesy UMASS Palliative Care)
The Keck School of Medicine of USC is likewise in the process of adopting the PPE Portrait Project and Heffernan expects to work with more hospitals in the greater Los Angeles area, including the Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. The Gold Foundation, which has previously funded the PPE Portrait Project, is also seeking to bring it to hospitals in New York City and New Jersey, where populations are particularly hard-hit.
The artist’s goal is to give each hospital the tools to independently run the project. “It is my hope that after seeing the benefits of using PPE Portraits, that clinicians will continue their use beyond the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said, such as for cancer and transplant patients who see healthcare workers in masks.
Throughout her career, Heffernan has reflected on representations and expressions of the human body, from ghostly cyanotypes of skeletal forms to photos documenting the tattoos on the bodies of US marines memorializing fallen comrades. The PPE Portrait Project, straightforward in its aesthetic, may not obviously look like an artwork at first. Rather, its artfulness lies in what can’t be seen but is palpably experienced by those hidden beneath and separated by all the layers of protective gear.
My friend runs a lab in Belgium: Unfortunately, it's looking like there are significant issues with most of the serology tests that are starting to become available. We have none anywhere in our company that can pass process QA. There are something like 100 vendors selling shit in different colored bags
On CNN Tuesday, senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen warned that many of the antibody tests on the market for COVID-19 — the tests that show whether you are immune to the virus — are barely tested under the Food and Drug Administration’s new standards, and possibly ineffective. “So this test tells you, hey, look, you […]
During the pandemic, Perfect Duluth Day’s own Brian Barber has been posting draw-along videos on Facebook. In its series The Slice, WDSE-TV presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.
We’ve got an itinerant cheese-selling woman who comes into town every Friday morning to sell the cheeses she purchases from local farms, and I like this old-fashioned way of buying cheese (other people, like the mayor, find it mortifying that our village is too small to support its own cheese shop). She stations herself in the plaza and likes to share news about the farms and villages she’s visited this week (at the moment we get a lot of baby animal news, like new calf announcements.) She has the unfortunate habit of denigrating her own cheeses without meaning to because she is a cheese perfectionist. You ask for a bleu, she grimaces hesitantly and says “Ah, poor choice, it doesn’t look quite right to me today”; or you tell her “I really liked the brie I picked last time, so creamy!” and she shakes her head and goes “Ah, you got lucky, often that farmer gives me such shitty brie with a chaulky texture—” then she suddenly looks frustrated with herself, you can tell she’s thinking “why am I giving this information to a client?? I’m the worst cheese saleswoman ever.” It’s very endearing.
She also sells eggs, and always writes the name of the farmer she got it from on each carton so you can make sure to buy your friends’ eggs and avoid your enemies’ eggs. You’ve got to be like “Six Gilbert eggs please” and publicly announce where your loyalty lies, it’s a whole Thing. If one day you decide to go rogue and ask for Agnès eggs instead you can be sure people will notice, and they will talk. Getting my own chickens is the only way I have found to avoid pledging egg allegiance.
Quote from my friend that runs a lab in Belgium (big American company) Unfortunately, it's looking like there are significant issues with most of the serology tests that are starting to become available. We have none anywhere in our company that can pass process QA. There are something like 100 vendors selling shit in different colored bags.
Even with very effective tests, we'll still see false positives.
“Just a by the by: “private” messages sent to individual people during a Zoom meeting show up in the end-of-meeting transcript along with all other public messages.
Tell your friends, save a life.“
Honestly my partner has a lot of friends in the infosec community and they’ve all been lamenting the rise of Zoom because this is only ONE of very, very many reasons Zoom is an absolute security/privacy nightmare.
Zoom has sold people’s personal information to facebook even if you don’t have an account. A quick look though their terms of service shows this was never mentioned. They are being sued over it now.
Even with very effective tests, we'll still see false positives.
