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This is a personal message to the guys who were talking about CPAP. I had mostly quit using mine in the past couple of years because I couldn’t get new supplies (long story omitted.) Anyway I finally got the supplier worked out and after you all talking about it I decided to make the effort to start using it consistently again.
Last week I was swimming in molasses. This morning I got up, Played around the house, even made a cake. Thanks for the lift.
Hey P_NW...we need to get together soon. I'll give you a buzz...I'm sure you could use one. Or, you can give me a buzz - I'll take it.
I'm so jelly. Hey, maybe when Karen and I finally go up to Portland to see our daughter, maybe we can figure out a time to invite the two of you to dinner. Not in Portland...up where you guys are.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all. -Ogden Nash, poet (19 Aug 1902-1971)
On my face book this morning.... you can't make this shite up.... This is where I live.
"I want to share a small victory tonight. Walking by College Square I saw some brave Health Dept. workers doing free vaccines... and one yahoo staying in his designated area screaming disinformation. The young high-school age gatekeeper saw the look in my eyes and urged "Please don't provoke an incident!" I calmly replied "I'm considering my tactics. I won't do anything that will hurt your cause." Then I walked up to the Yahoo and started... singing. The first thing I sang was the alphabet song, but it so flummoxed him I kept singing: "American Pie," "Hotel California","Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow." He was so frustrated, he kept calling me fat like that was going to make me cry. There was a police officer there, doing his job, I wish I'd caught his name. When Yahoo complained about my "getting in his face", the officer said "He's got the same first amendment rights as you do." The coup de grace was when I sang "I Will Always Love You". Dude was absolutely silent while people laughed. The most gratifying thing was the health care volunteers had a laugh on a stressful night. Which brings me to the point of this post: let's create an Athens music Secret Service, where we stand by and help health care people do their jobs by drowning out the yahoos." 53 Comments
I went through the emotionally draining process of canceling our October Disney World vacation, yesterday. It was not as economically damaging as I feared (but not without cost). It's that I've been looking forward to, and planning, this vacation for months, so I've been very reluctant to take this action, even though its necessity has been becoming more obvious daily. But, the bottom line is, even though fully vaccinated, if my wife (who has significant health issues) needed medical intervention, it just might not be available. In Orange County 91.6% of hospital beds are occupied (4,375 of 4,779 beds), and 102.2% of ICU beds (875.7 of 856.5 beds used). It's just not worth the risk. [censored] DeSantis and the incredibly selfish population that supports him.
Saw a Golden Eagle today. It flew into the crotch of a eucalyptus tree right above my vegetable garden while I was watering. These things are BIG. No mistaking it for a hawk, and besides the hawks around here are all red-tails. The only other big birds around here are owls and turkey vultures, and they look nothing like an eagle. Apparently there are a few Bald Eagles here in San Diego County, but they don't look much like Golden Eagles. I've seen dozens of Bald Eagles eating a seal carcass in the Aleutian Islands.
That's the second time I have seen it up there, but I go water every afternoon, so it might be there more often. Funny thing: It had the same attitude today. Not interested in what I was doing. Just staring off into the distance, looking noble. Like "human stuff" was beneath it's notice.
It's a great perch for a raptor: 270 degree view from hundreds of feet up. You can see about 75 miles on a clear day. I do leave a bird bath filled there. Maybe it's coming for water. Not much accessible water around here.
The latest conservative media rant is that Liberals are manipulating Conservatives not to get vaccinated by telling them to get vaccinated. They say it's just human nature not to do what other people, doctors, CDC, etc. tell them to do.
Okay. The maximum penalty for stupidity has always been death. Why should that be any different now?
(It’s a very minor point, but it’s generally agreed that Geraldo Rivera is an ass.)
Men are not dangerous animals, nor are they beasts. That’s a convenient excuse for those men who lack any sense of self-control or humanity, when no excuse exists.
If she had not poked the beast, she’d still be alive? Truly I haven’t followed this story but unless she had a knife at his throat or a gun to his head, the fault for her death is not hers.
Is it always the man’s fault? If you mean violence against women, then no, not all the time. Probably about 90% of the time.
Welp Como is out. I think this is a good thing given that statement he made about "Me Too" in 2017 and in the months and years later. For him to say that he is of a certain age and guys this age hug and kiss is absurd. Given todays presser by Como, the right thing was done.
NO touching...keep your sexual urges OUTSIDE the workplace, be a gentleman, don't view the females at work as prospects. Not only are they not prospects, but in this day and age, 99.9999% of them are there to make their bones the same way anyone else is, so fooling around tells them that you aren't taking them seriously.
Some of us old guys got the message a long time ago. Some of us schmucks, like me, had to learn the HARD WAY. I got involved with a girl at work at one of my very first really good jobs. I was a gentleman, no harassing, we just wound up getting together, BUT....when feelings got tangled, turned out she had more "pull" than my dumb newbie ass and out the door I went when she got pissed off. I never forgot that lesson and I never ever got involved with any woman at work ever again.
And then some of us old guys, like Andrew Cuomo, apparently still thought he was living in the Mad Men era, and didn't get the message. I heard him try to palm it off on "being Italian". Hey guess what, I'm Italian and I get it, but in the intervening years women decided that all the Italian-ness in the world still has no place in the office. He didn't get the message. The message is, "Just don't do it, okay? Don't go dipping your pen in the company inkwell."
He did a pretty good job as Governor but sadly, due to his own stupidity and arrogance, this is going to wind up as his legacy.
It is particularly irking when old, rich, powerful men touch their young subordinates inappropriately.
When a guy gets to where he can't make the judgment call about what is appropriate touching and what is not, then it is time for him to be removed from power.
Just wait a few years. VR combined with these sort of algorithms will lead directly to being able to construct a perfect moving and speaking image of anybody you want, in real-time. Combine that with a brain-scan technology that lets the computer tell if you like what you are seeing, and you get perfect porn that changes constantly, and evolves along with your tastes. This WILL happen. We already have VR and POV porn, ""nudify", and Deep Fake for images and videos. It's just a matter of processing power before it can happen on every computer in real-time. Maybe that will be the solution for the overpopulation problem, as more and more people give up real sex for VR sex.
I read about this in a sci-fi novel several years ago. A young man was addicted to such a VR porn channel that changed all the time. Then he got stuck hiking across country with no tech connection for several months. When he got back to civilization he was dismayed to find his favorite channel had evolved into something that disgusted him!
Much as Cuomo accomplished policy-wise, his brain was in the 1960s (kinda like Trump's). I was sorry to see him go, but his arrogance was pretty overwhelming.
Desantis, on the other hand, is both incompetent AND and [censored]. I recognize that he's auditioning to be the new "Trump", but he's pretty weak. Then again, Rubio....
Florida is an interesting admixture of sophistication and gross hillbillyism. He's definitely got the hillbilly vote, but they're dropping like flies. It will be interesting to see where the voting goes in 2022.
Ivermectin is pretty safe, prescription or animal: Exactly the same stuff, as long as the animal drug has no other active ingredients. I read one article today that accurately stated the problem, and that is figuring out the dosage. If you take enough horse dewormer to treat a horse, you will wind up in the hospital. If you take dog heartworm meds that contain other drugs, you might wind up dead. If you take prescription ivermectin and have a leaky blood/brain barrier (like me?) you could have permanent brain damage. There are several diseases and conditions that cause that, none of them fun.
There is a new drug in trials called Molnupiravir, that makes RNA replication fail by substituting junk base pairs. The new RNA does not work, so the virus can't reproduce. The reason it works is that animals don't do RNA replication, just RNA viruses. Assuming the trials pan out, this could make early treatment flawless. And it's pretty unlikely they would get to Phase III trials if it wasn't pretty safe and effective. The Biden administration has agreed to buy 1.2 billion dollars worth of it from Merck, upon EUA. The bonus is it also works against SARS-COV1 and MERS. In fact, it will probably work against any positive sense single strand RNA virus! Such as Poliovirus, Rhinovirus (a common cold virus), Hepatitis A virus, Hepatitis C virus, Norwalk virus, Yellow Fever virus, West Nile virus, Dengue fever virus, Zika virus, Rubella virus, Chikungunya virus, and many more rare viruses. Less likely but still possible are the positive sense RNA viruses like Ebola virus, Marburg virus, Lhasa virus, Measles virus, Mumps virus, Nipah virus, Hendra virus, Rabies, and Influenza.
Because HIV is a retrovirus, that copies code into your DNA. But it is a single-stranded, positive-sense RNA virus, so maybe if Molnupiravir does work against the other positive-sense RNA viruses, it will also work for HIV before it can get into the DNA. Or maybe HIV victims will have to keep on taking it for life, like the current HIV drugs. Nobody knows yet.
Working for the positive sense viruses may not be possible, if the direction of replication is a big part of the drug's action. The viruses supply their own enzymes that construct the replicant strand of RNA either from the 3' end or the 5' end of the original strand, but not both. At that level, a lot of stuff happens or doesn't happen because of mechanical constraints. Something as small as a left-handed or right-handed amino acid enantiomer can screw things up.
I just got an alert on my phone from the Washington Post: the newly-named Jeopardy host has resigned.
Oh my giddy aunt, whatever would I have done had one of the nation’s largest newspapers not alerted me to this stunning event?i And I’ll bet the NewYork Times follows up with a similar “alert.â€
(checks watch) So by my reckoning it's 544th day of March, 2020; probably time to check in at RR...
We have a surprise election in full swing. It's so much of a surprise that only 2 parties are currently running in my riding, which my American cousins may recall as unusual for us up here. The other surprise is really the one being experienced by Justin Trudeau, who is not looking like he'll get the result he was looking for. Excitement and enthusiasm surrounding the whole exercise appears to be right up there with getting a COVID test...
Speaking of COVID, we're edging into our 4th wave in Ontario, with our provincial leadership AWOL. That's slightly better than actually having them at the helm, having steered us into waves 2 and 3 with the whole bus yelling at them to pump the brakes.
Otherwise, despite most of the west of the country being on fire or within a stray cigarette of a conflagration, Ontario is having a near perfect growing season...
Hi Mellowicious, BC, I think we last exchanged posts when my now 13 yr old son was a newborn... how time flies.
It's interesting that neither "Ted" Cruz nor Niki Hailey use their real fist name. "Ted" has the first name of Raphael and Niki uses her middle name as her first name is Nimratad.
I'll go out on a limb and surmise that neither use their real fist name because it would turn-off their base and both "Ted" and Niki know this.
Naples has got the Red Tide. That's worse than any hurricane.
A grandmother I never met was from Quebec, it's more a mythical homeland than anything else, I've never been there. I'm in a hilly little town in central Florida, as far as you can get from the ocean in either direction. So far global warming has improved the weather here too.
My house just went on the market for a ridiculous amount of money. I haven't lived there for nearly a year and the market has just gone crazy. I was hoping to get 260 but it just listed for 419...
Apparently, Righties are now taking horse de-worming medication so they don't get COVID. Just take the damn vaxx - those fetal baby stem cells are not going to hurt you.
...there goes the stock of Hydroxychloroquine now that ivermectin is the latest Fox News-pushed rightwing fad.
Mebbe Rightwingers should make leeches en vogue again.
How does that compare to clorox washed down by lysol? (dear god) WTF.
Hi y'all. I got poked (haha..told) about some old weirdos showing back up at RR and thought I'd look in and see what you're saying. This may be one and done but I did love y'all at the time. And I do miss having a life.
Thanks for the welcome. It's good to 'see' you guys!
Btw, I saw BC show up too. I had to look back.....page 5 here I think it was. Bob! Snappy picture!
Speaking of in person meetings of other ranters, Bama and Donna came to Atlanta to see Bama's son, on their way to Florida. 10 years ago maybe. We shared a meal there. Very cool. Remember Stereoman (Steve Livingston, Asheville, NC)? We've met up with him several times. Asheville isn't that far from Athens. He's as whacky as he was here. Enjoyed him for sure.
In 2016 we took a train trip across country, main destination Montana (where our youngest daughter went to grad school). Along the way we stopped in to check on Miss Mellowicious in Omaha for a couple of days (we have met a number of times and are good friends) ( love Omaha and she knew the best places take us for food and more). And then we had a really fun visit with Ken Condon, Eugene, Or
I miss Nick too. Does anybody know what happened to him?
I'm pretty overwhelmed by the all-ness of 'everything' that's going on but I'll stick around and holler when think I have something productive to say.
Ya know Ponderer I’ve long thought about that. How much of this discord is domestically generated or how much of it is exacerbated and written by foreign trolls. It’s unrelenting and usually after an article about any given subject, depending on if comments are allowed, one can almost make up the “outrage†depending on the theme of the article. And this just gets pounded in over and over again.
I try to avoid group discussions on sites that are particularly prone to one side or the other. I have concluded that for most things-except science and mathematics- the “truth†is somewhere in the middle. Or at least I think it to be so. I hope I have made sense in this comment.
So yes this all sorts of reminds me of the discussion I was having with Ponderer about nonsensical invectives being thrown about on the Internet. Where does one go with this? For many it is become impossible to have any sort of rational logical discussion about topics of importance.
Take Ivermectin for example. That seems to have gotten a lot of press recently regarding a Covid mitigator and it’s really difficult to determine how widespread that belief actually is. But it does make me wonder how these people could out of hand reject very effective Covid vaccines and instead in their minds replace it with Ivermectin.
A livestock dewormer. Nothing at all related to viruses but rather to internal parasites.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons, for the moment at least, I prefer the thoughts and interactions of non-human species.
There is nothing mankind can do to hurt the planet in any way.
It's a fecking ROCK! By the same token, there is nothing mankind can do to help the planet either. To imagine it can is hubris of the highest order. We might help ourselves to survive...but it's looking more unlikely as time goes on.
“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.â€
So here's the thing, the SCOTUS already weighed in on this in 1921 which ruled that the US government can compel Americans to get the polio vaxx.
...but you know how the three knuckleheads that Trump appointed feel about "settled law" - they "say" it's settled, then rule completely against the "settled" law.
Then again, it's no surprise that a Righwinger will say one thing, and do another.
Today in Shanksville, to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11, W said that domestic terrorists were “Children of the Same Foul Spirit†as Muslim extremists.
Trump supporters took offense at that remark even though Donald Trump's name was not invoked.
Foul Spirits.
If i looks like a duck, and acts like a duck - it's a duck.
Rick, I think we have been in some similar places. I got a CPAP about 10 years ago; it can be life-changing. I also had a brain MRI this year and was pleased that they found one.
I also had some preliminary testing for Alzheimer’s but they found no sign of it so at least for now I’m OK there.
I got really tired of doctors and physical therapists this year though. Apparently, you can get tendonitis in some really weird places.
It’s scary when your brain suddenly stops working the way it always has. I’m glad you’re better.
Getting an MRI on your knee has to be a lot better than getting a five hour long MRI on your spine! That really sucked. It would have been nice if I was drugged. Much worse (and much longer) than a brain MRI.
I know we can all laugh and joke about this and I enjoy doing so. But if it were not for the marvels of modern medicine and science I would’ve been a goner decades ago.I almost died of an asthma attack when I was 25. But then along came albuterol followed by the Advair discus that was a combination with a long acting bronchodilator combined with a steroid.
It has been a miracle for me and has allowed me to live a more or less normal life. I am sure most of you folks have equal stories about modern medicines that have helped you along the way.
But remember… Never ever ever!!!… Get that Covid shot. It’ll turn you into some sort of Democratic monster.
I re-read these posts. Man, I'm a physical wreck! Funny, I don't feel that way, although my son says I "walk like an old man."
Almost everyone our age begins to walk like an old man and I think I figured out something, although I am probably not the first.
It's YOUR BUTT!! I think as we get older our bodies seem to forget to use our butt muscles when we walk! I know I sure had, and I noticed it several years ago, so I began to consciously make an effort to exercise my butt muscles and it has made a big difference. And the thing that really surprised me is that it made a big difference in how I handle Karen, when picking her up and putting her in her chair or doing the reverse and putting her in bed.
A few years ago we were given a nice ceiling lift to help with the daily routine, but it's soooooo slow. Don't get me wrong, on bad days where I'm dragging ass, it's a lifesaver. But I am back to mostly doing the lifting myself again, and it's my butt that has made all the difference.
USE that BUTT! Make a conscious effort to work that booty, when you walk, when you sit, when you lift things, work that booty all the time, guys...and gals.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation. Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. -Jean Arp, artist and poet (16 Sep 1887-1948) Anu Garg - A Word A Day
What’s your experience with silence? Silence, of course, is not without sounds, just without human created sounds.
A top experience of my life was a hike across the Frank Church Wilderness in Idaho. Just me and a friend, we hadn’t seen each other for a year. The first day was an epic 12 mile slog from 3500’ to over 9000’ carrying 80 pound packs - talking all the while about life “back in town†- for me, Missoula - for Ron, law school in Nashville. Day 2 was a high elevation slow motion roller coaster, still reliving regular life and expounding our thinly shaped philosophies in conversation for most of the day, then suddenly (in an unnoticed and completely undramatic way) we lost the urge to chatter about things elsewhere in time and space, spending the vast majority of our time simply being present, hearing the scuffing thump of our boots carrying us along the trail, the wind in the pines, the steadier wind moving in and out of our bodies deeply and regularly, the crack and pop of pine burning in our camp's cooking fire. Not lost in thought, but floating in a quiet silence in the mind.
Eleven days later, as we summited the final ridgecrest between us and civilization, we heard the sound of a motor, coming from a boat on a lake more than 10 miles away. It was intrusive and foreign, though barely hearable. In a few more miles we could smell the stench of its two stroke exhaust.
Some six hours later I was walking on a sidewalk in Missoula to a friend’s house after hitching a ride from the trailhead. Still in full backpacker mode, I was immersed in the sounds, sights, and smells of suburbia, and it was surreal - disorienting, and pressing upon a feeling of calm freedom that I had grown accustomed to for more than a week and a half without interruption.
By evening, all was back to “normalâ€, chattering and drinking beer with friends in the Stockman’s Bar, where you are greeted at the door by a sign informing, “Liquor up front, poker in the rear.†Civilization… ahhhh!
Lovely. I have ADD. I can only contemplate when active. But, like you, I can get into silence when doing something. I remember a particular moment when I was skiing, and stopped along a ridge overlooking the St. Lawrence. The wonder surrounding me, the quietude, was profound. Contemplation can be an activity.
Ever notice it's always the same 30%? What's wrong with THOSE people?
Conservatism writ large. I'm pretty sure they have always existed, have always impeded progress.
Imagine where we might be today without them.
I've mentioned before that I used to consider myself to be "conservative". But the meaning of the word has changed so substantially, or maybe I have. I always thought it meant "to not change things that are working without a good reason," but also not retain things that don't make sense. That phrase has a lot of caveats: "working"; "good reason".
Today., though, those are not considerations for conservatism. Even things that are not working are kept, and no reason is good enough for change - unless it is to change back to an ersatz past, warts and all - emphasis particularly on the warts. Slavery was an abomination, and Jim Crow despicable, yet some people pine for those days and call them "conservative values", although thinky disguised with different words. Conservatives used to laud "good government", now they despise it.
Yes, those "values" we can live better without. But, I think my perception was always wrong. I don't think conservatism ever meant those things I thought, but those were the liberal nostrums that conservatives coopted and only paid lip service to. Today, everything of value only comes from "progressives." I now believe that has always been the case.
Unvaccinated Laura Elizabeth Loomer, who is an American far-right and anti-Muslim political activist, conspiracy theorist, and internet personality, was the Republican nominee to represent Florida's 21st congressional district in the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections, losing to Democrat Lois Frankel, states that her positive COVID test proves that the vaxx doesn't work.
What?!?
An unvaxxed person, has a positive COVID test, and that is proof that vaccines don't work. THAT is conservative logic for you.
This discussion i so abhorrent to me that I am not going to mince words.
To ascribe these matters to your reptilian brain is, as I said, no more than an excuse. But if you insist on doing so, I suggest you add that “deep response†to the need for art, for music, for the search for the meaning of life. After all, the oldest art in the world is, I believe, in the caves at Lascaux, at 17,000 years, and I may have read somewhere that older art has been discovered.
While it’s tru that most violence against women is committed by men it’s also true that the majority of men are not violent towards women, or anyone else - any more my own anger, provoked multiple times today, has given me the impulse to knife anyone. - and we know it does’talways have to be the man,right?
More importantly, the reptilian brain theory is very close to instinct, and instinct is not resistible. Instinct can’t be ignored, not for long.
So you’re really talking about socialization, or perhaps anti-socialization, or even social norms and mores. And I will tell you this for nothing: most men are not beasts, nor are they animals.I have met men whose idea of fun is a bar fight. I have met men who beat their wives. I consider them to be worthless uncivilized men, my only association with them secondary, in assisting the women they endanger if possible - unfortunately, not always possible.
Finally - if you are truly one of those who believes women provoke violence against themselves, if you believe that men have some bizarre makeup that makes them dangerous, then I see no reason to allow you into my life for so much as a cup of coffee. After all, you are, by your own description, dangerous. On the other hand, b6 my own description you are ignorant, as ignorant as any anti-vaxxer, and there is no argument you can make against it.
Before you can get all “up in arras,†understand this as well: I think you’re wrong because almost all the men I have known in my life have been non-violent. Some have been soldiers and some of those carried the weight of their experiences to the ends of their lives - not exactly a thirst for blood.
By far the majority of men I have known are human beings, not beasts. You insult them all as severely as you have insulted women.
Perhaps. But why is this event any sadder or more tragic than any of the rest of the horrible things that happen to humans all across the globe… daily.
Serious question.
I wonder the same thing (briefly) fairly often about a lot of stuff. I’ve been wondering why this young woman’s story has been grabbing my attention, and I confess I don’t know.
Asking the question opens the door to a humongous psycho/philosophical universe of the human condition that we occasionally glance at uncomprehendingly, then go immediately back to sleep.
Some “consciousness†gurus have said that if we humans were able wake up fully on the spot, the shock of it would kill us.
“I dunno, man… maybe I’ll ask the Golden Teacher?â€
I've wondered the same thing about my same reaction. My conclusion is, that it is easier to focus on the travails of one cute and innocent human than the mass of ugliness out there. It's a poignant story, starting in such optimism and ending in such horror. But, I've been unusually affected by it. It's so sad.
This topic was on All Things Considered this afternoon TU 09/21/21, second hour: Why do attractive young white girls get the missing person's attention, when hundreds of other missing non-white girls don't.
I think the over-reaction to pretty White girls being murdered, is actually a lot more fundamental than we think: Your lizard-brain sees her picture and thinks: "I would do her." Which is understandable because that part of your brain has a very limited repertoire. Then slightly higher parts of your brain register the loss of opportunity.
That is just gross.
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"Calm down Sparky, she wouldn't do either of us."
The female deputy who interviewed them while they were detained implied that she was the aggressor and that the relationship appeared toxic. There's a lot we'll never know."
Yep. That's what the police decided when they questioned them separtely. She was weepy and scared to death and said it was all her fault. He was over there yucking it up with the officer, comparing experiences with each other's women (girlfriend, wife). You know how women are.
There is no way she was faking the expression on her face. She was stricken.
Excuse me but the officers BIG TIME misread this situation.
I came away from that body cam coverage with a very uneast feeling.
Let me repeat, she was scared shitless and shivering and crying. He was charming, breezy, cutting up with the office about the woes of living with women, comparing notes. This had a very Jeffery Dahmer feel to it. I know I said I wouldn't speculate but I am. I don't believe she "poked" him other than to defend herself. Remember, the reason the police were following them in the first place was because of a 911 call reporting him slapping her. Abused women lie all the time to stay alive.
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Given todays presser by Como, the right thing was done.
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Funny, I don't ![[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]](https://i.imgur.com/jji71mX.jpg)