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The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
Here are the winners:
1 Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2 Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an [censored].
3 Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4 Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5 Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6 Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7 Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
8 Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it
9 Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafhalon (n): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido: All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor (n.): The colour you turn when you discover half a worm in the fruit you're eating.
The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.
And the winners are:
1 Coffee, n The person upon whom one coughs.
2 Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3 Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4 Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.
5 Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.
6 Negligent, adj. Absent mindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7 Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.
8 Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.
9 Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle, n A humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster, n A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.
Moderna uses a higher dose of mRNA than Pfizer, and the two doses are four weeks a part instead of three weeks. They picked doses that worked and interdose times that got their trials done ASAP. Turns out that even four weeks is not optimal. Mine was five weeks because of the Texas power grid failure leading to vaccine shipment shortages. But some virologists say 5 months would be WAY better. Immunologists have known this for a long time, but WarpSpeed's aim was to make as many somewhat immune as fast as possible.
Seems the immune system does a bunch of things that take time, and the first dose just gets some processes started. If they have run for a while, the second dose has activated T-cells to turn on and get B-cell antibody production really cranking. This is why infection followed later by one vaccination gives you super-immunity.
My thoughts on this is that MABs are pretty harmless. If you have an allergic reaction, that is treatable and would occur before you leave the infusion center. More of an itchy rash reaction than epi-pen time.
But they are pretty damned expensive for three months of immunity: The government is paying about $3000 per treatment, versus $30 per vaccine. And the vaccine will give you much longer lasting immunity. Then there is the little problem of efficacy: A recent paper reported the best MABs keep about 50% more people from getting hospitalized. mRNA vaccines keep around 95% of people from getting hospitalized!
When your three months is up, your health care provider is going to tell you get vaccinated before you get reinfected. MABs do NOT provide any long-lasting immunity like a vaccine does. Of course, neither does mulnupiravir. Five days after a treatment course, you could get reinfected because you have no antibodies or activated T-cells.
It's idiotic to waste MABs on people who could get vaccinated. We should save them for people with medical conditions that prevent them from developing antibodies.
That’s good, Rick. It really is hard to be supportive from a distance. Most of my good friends live in places I used to live instead of places I currently live. Makes things difficult.
It may have enough spike changes to evade the antibodies originally made by the vaccines. That would mean more vaccinated people could get infections. But the vaccines did two things that are going to fight any variant:
1. They made activated T and B-cells that respond to much wider viral epitopes than antibodies. When those T-cells encounter any corona virus (including SARS1 or MERS) they quickly get B-cells cranking out antibodies specific to that new variant. So the race between the virus and the immune system is fixed way in favor of the immune system.
2. If your immune system has a couple of months following vaccination, some "antibody evolution" takes place in the lymph nodes and other germinal centers. You start making all sorts of related, but different, antibodies. Pretty much antibodies against every variant possible. Evolution has selected for us making those related antibodies, just to keep up with virus mutation. That's called "co-evolution" and it's a very real thing.
What we should be looking for is how many vaccinated South Africans are ending up seriously ill or dead. The hospitalized number is not very useful in a country with so many poor people and lots of AIDS patients. Too many rich people get hospitalized when they don't need it, and way too many poor people have to just die at home. But eventually, a more deadly variant may emerge. The vaccinated or previously infected will do well. Non-immune people will die at a much higher rate.
I see the Arizona Fraudit announced their results today: Biden actually gained votes and Trump lost votes! (I wonder if this has anything to do with the Justice Department investigating them?) The net result is that Maricopa County has to spend millions on new ballot counting hardware.
Nevertheless, Republicans are repeating this idiocy, or attempting to repeat it, in several more states.
I think the only positive result will be that Arizona Democrats get a nice juicy campaign issue for the next election. Maybe Democrats in those other states, as well. Wasting taxpayer millions chasing psychotic conspiracies may not sit well with Independent voters.
Interesting research paper came out the other day. Some researchers associated with the Pasteur Institute in France (highly respected) collected virus samples from a whole bunch of bats in Laos, and found one virus that is nearly identical to SARS-COV2 in the Receptor Binding Domain. This is the part of the spike that binds to human ACE2, and lets the virus enter cells. This particular spike binds just as well to ACE2 as SARS-COV2. They showed this virus can infect human cells, and is neutralized by human antibodies against SARS-COV2. They performed a plaque assay, which is a test to show visually the virus killing cells on a culture plate, and it looked just like a SARS-COV2 plaque assay.
Then they figured out all of the molecular binding geometry, and showed why it works just like SARS-COV2! Then they showed how the SARS-COV2 virus is a product of 15 different recombination events, with almost all segments of it's RNA from one of 15 different corona viruses. They have a lovely figure that show all the common parts of all 15 viruses, with each segment labelled as to what other virus they share it with.
This utterly demolishes the "Lab Leak Hypothesis". And it also gives them a virus they can culture that can be used for experiments, that is harmless in humans.
I remember the first time I saw one of those we were in the Pike Place Market, of all places. I thought to myself “my god what is that?†That’s a big boy they’re allrighty. Ahem… and as I am sure you are aware but others might not be the pronunciation is gooey duck. How in the heck do they get gooey out of Geo?
The name geoduck is derived from a Lushootseed (Nisqually) word gÊ·ÃdÉ™q either a word composed of a first element of unknown meaning and É™q meaning "genitals" (referring to the shape of the clam), or a phrase meaning "dig deep", or perhaps both, as a double entendre.
So we know how it got the pronunciation. What we don't know is how it got the stupid spelling.
Moderna vaccinations are holding up much better than Pfizer or J&J, in terms of antibody levels. That seems to affect your resistance to infection, though all are still effective against serious illness. If they are going to give boosters based on antibody levels, they should give them to folks who had J&J vaccines first.
Good news for the vaccine-hesitant: Molnupiravir is passing it's drug trial with 50% reduction of hospitalization, and 100% reduction of death. That's pretty good, and the cool thing is it looks like it will work against every RNA virus! You do need to take it as soon as symptoms appear, so no waiting until you need oxygen to survive. That's too late for an antiviral, because with Covid most of the virus is gone by then. But you just take a pill twice a day for five days, as opposed to an IV for monoclonal antibodies, so it's a lot easier to get sooner.
It works by making RNA replication fail by introducing junk nucleotides into the new strand, so it is messing with protein synthesis similar to mRNA vaccines, but it prevents immune system involvement instead of inducing it. On the con side, I suppose it could affect fertility if some of the drug leaked into the nucleus of dividing germ cells, That might make nonsense DNA in sperm or ova, that would be lethal mutations. It is a powerful mutagen, so it would make non-viable replicate DNA when it is at full strength. But I worry it could make cancer cells as it fades after treatment. We shall see. Also, it probably prevents you from getting any immunity if you take it when it works best. So 10 days later you are healed, but still vulnerable to reinfection immediately. The best treatment would be to get it AND a vaccination 10 days later. You can't do both at the same time, because it would do the same thing to the vaccine mRNA!
It works because we do no RNA replication: That's only done by RNA viruses. Cool idea, but it's long term effects are a bit scary.
Alex Jones et al deserve a special place in hell. Too bad that does not exist. Neither does heaven. But I still wonder how those self-serving assholes can live with themselves.
Is money and fame the answer? And their only answer?
Alex Jones was found guilty of liable in two suits for knowingly and willingly lying about the tragic deaths of the Sandy Hook elementary school kids, stating the Sandy Hook parents were crisis actors and the tragic event didn't really happen...
This Rightwing nut job is whining that his First Amendment Free Speech Rights are being trampled.
Here's the thing about Rightwingers: They think "free speech" means consequence-free, speech.
Nobody has ever claimed that Righties are stellar thinkers...
It's a real pleasure having discussions with people who operate in the real world. I spend time on another board where that is frustratingly not the case. Understanding the biological mechanisms of inoculation. And of disease. And think about the actual real world consequences of policies. I really appreciate you guys and this forum.
I see the Governor of Texas has forbidden all vaccine mandates in the state, including government employees, schools, and even private businesses. He's equating it with a constitutional right, though the US Supreme Court long ago said vaccine mandates are constitutional. This doesn't seem very Republican of him, telling businesses what they can and can't do! I wonder how that's going to hold up against federal rules where they conflict. I also imagine the courts will toss his order about businesses.
It would be hilarious if every airline cancelled all flights in the state of Texas, since they have required mask mandates. I don't see how they can land there and obey both Texas and federal rules.
Jealous that a non-FDA-approved experimental drug can be gotten without a prescription by anyone? No.
You can't get a non-FDA-approved experimental drug even with a prescription. It's volunteer only!
Are we liberals the "fiscally conservative" ones now? Denying treatment to folks because of the cost?
Because they made bad decisions...
What better reason to deny treatment, than making bad political decisions about healthcare? There won't be enough MABs around for folks who followed health guidelines, if Florida sucks them all down. Possibly the worst implication is that the availability of a treatment for Covid, will be used by the anti-vaxer talking points and prevent the needed immunization rates to protect us, the good choicers! TAT
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. -Doris Lessing, novelist, poet, playwright, Nobel laureate (22 Oct 1919-2013) A Word A Day, Anu Garg
Title people have begun assembling the papers. A year ago I was expecting to get $260K. It just sold for $387K. Me and the ex haven't hammered out a deal on this place yet but we'll likely split it or somesuch. She gets this place back when I die anyway so it doesn't matter much. Depends a lot on which of us would take the lesser tax hit. She has f*ck tons of money...I have none.
Might be getting a roommate for the winter, a quadriplegic pro bicyclist. Name's Pierre so I'm guessing he's French. He trains here in the winter. Rides a handcycle of some sort.
Today I had an Anderson full-view storm door with interchangeable bug screen and glass door installed so I can have the front door open and get some fresh air, since only the bathroom and loft windows open and the other ones are stationary. I mentioned to the guy installing the door that the only heating source was a wall heater in the bathroom. He pointed to the Daikin mini-split and said: Doesn't that have a heating coil? They usually do. Check the manual.
Turns out he is right. All these past few months, I've been cold at night thinking the only heat source was a wall unit in the bathroom. I've never had a mini-split and always have had central air. I am warm and comfortable while I type this post
What ever happened to the good ol' days of logging and cabin building?
That's exactly what I bought - a 2020 built energy efficient cabin with a 350 sq footprint plus an additional 175 sq feet of livable space due to two lofts.
I'm expanding it into a real house though. In fact, I have Zoom meeting with the architect in 1 hr 20 mins.
I had two batches of trick or treaters, the first was a gaggle of teens. Very polite, took one piece of candy each and thanked me for it. There were maybe eight of them, totally mixed racially, that makes me happy. The later batch was older, fun but grabbed a ton of candy. I don't eat it so I was cool with it. Mostly they go to the "rich" densely populated areas. There was a lot of walking for not much candy around here...bunch of damned old curmudgeons cutting their lights out and hiding.
I think you should be pleased with your body’s response Rick as to me that means your immune system was kicking itself into gear. I had dissimilar reactions. I have had all three Pfizer shots, for the first one and the third one my arm was slightly sore for half a day, and the second one no reaction at all. I don’t know how to read that.
I was actually hoping for some sort of reaction like you had but it never happened.
So I will tell you something that I find curious. From my late teens until I was around 50 years old I would get the flu probably every three years or so. Reaching temperatures of about 102.5°. It became like clockwork, getting the influenza, suffer through it, and then recover. About 20 years ago I had an influenza that almost did me in. I had a fever of about 105.5 and I was sweating, I was burning up, I was shivering. As far as I knew I was dying.
Martha was about ready to call the ambulance but I told her no! And I sweated it out another day. Since then I have never caught influenza nor have I ever had an influenza vaccine since then. I don’t know what to say about that except perhaps my immune system might’ve been sent into overdrive. Those who know more than I do might want to weigh in on this assessment.
I'm turning 70 years old in November, and Social Security notified me they have approved my claim. I was getting spousal benefits from my wife's earlier claim, but now we get to switch roles and she gets to claim spousal benefits from me. The next big financial move is starting MRDs from a Fidelity SEP-IRA in a couple of years, but I suspect they will start that without me requesting it.
I'm gonna have several hundred thousand smackeroos drop into my account In December and it's liable to upset my carefully curated ruse as a pauper. I'm sure the CPAs will sort it out and put most of it in a safe place because I have no understanding, nor any desire to understand intelligent money management.
I've already got my eye on a sporty new wheelchair, reportedly capable of achieving a blistering 6 mph!
---Get a handicap accessible minivan!
VMI is the only handicap accessibility outfit worth considering because Braun has slipped to WORST. You can check out VMI's offerings here:
The Pacifica is by far the absolute best wheelchair van in the business. Sleek, handles like a car, fast, super economical on the highway (city - - meh...so so) super comfortable and reliable.
And they will outfit it so you can click your power chair right in behind the wheel and drive FROM your chair with either hand controls OR the regular pedals if your feet still move decently well. The best part is the Advanced Cruise Control because it's a stress reliever in rush hour freeway traffic. The stop and go accordion effect doesn't bother it at all, you just set your speed and you're all set...you only need to steer. So no more gritting your teeth about all the idiots jacking their brakes every five seconds.
When we drove from L.A. to Tulsa OK, once we got on the Interstate, I think I might have used the gas and brake maybe twenty times the entire trip because the ACC did it all.
The ONLY thing I do not like about our "Miss Ruby" is the rotary knob for the automatic transmission. Chrysler has discontinued using knobs for the gears as of 2020 because of all the hate mail from people who want to inform Chrysler that it's a CAR...not a WASHING MACHINE, and CARS use levers to shift gears.
I have an 84 year old friend in the Bay Area's who has had an ex-partner live with him for 15+ years. That partner passed last night at the my friends house.
My friend in inconsolable and I can't get much information from him. He has Parkinson's and he uses a walker right now. I feel like I should go down and be with him, but at work right now we're in "blackout" due to the holidays and time-off is not permitted. We need to support the warehouses.
Oh, Rick, I'm so sorry. It's really hard to not be able to "be there" when someone really needs you.
What a great friend you are, Rick. If you can, call him every day/night. That will help him feel less lonely. Also, send him some flowers or a plant in memory of his partner.
NW_P is correct about meal kit services: Too much packaging, but portions are exactly right.
After I posted yesterday about quitting the meal kit service, I didn't. I'm just not going to order any more meals which includes ground beef. In fact, I got a delivery on TH 10/30 and didn't get around to preparing it last weekend. I was actually going to toss the entire three meals yesterday. When I went to toss out the proteins (Chicken package, ground beef package, and a bacon package) I had placed the packages toward the back of the refrigerator and they were hard-chilled. The produce still looked good.
i thought: Welp, I'll make the meal with the bacon - Linguine Carbonara, bacon can't go bad. So I did, and it was delicious.
I put the chicken and ground beef toward the font to the shelf last night and made the chicken meal for lunch today: Chicken Dijon. It was delish.
I will not chance the ground beef. Later today, I'm going to the grocery store, I think I'll get my own ground beef and make the recipe tomorrow.
Jeannie O. said it best in what could almost be a Yooper poem. “A Yooper is a person who is native to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. A person who will help his/her neighbor and understands the meaning of the word “hospitalityâ€.
A Yooper is welcoming of visitors to their clean air, superior part of the country and knows how to deal with winter, mosquitoes, black flies, and extreme changes in the weather in a single day.
It's really just someone who lives in the controversial Eastern Wisconsin, or Northern Indiana/Ohio exurbs, AKA Southern Central Canada
An Appeals Court took mercy on orange Fatboy. Oral arguments are 11/30/21,
That is actually a good thing, although I want things to move as fast as possible. The DC Court is following normal process. Once the documents are released (as they will be), the cat is out of the bag. Courts should be reluctant to do that until the process is completed. I'd say there will be a ruling in December and a denial of Cert shortly thereafter.
The cat is out of the bag and back with resurrection of traditional 9 lives Avatar.
Yes, the process is going and crawling slowly toward the SCROTUS, and in December we will find out how little respect they have for presidential precedential privilege! All of us elders remember how close the ruling was with Nixon's tapes, but that was before the Federalist Society showed us how many of the previous judgements were flawed and need to be corrected. Merry Frigging Christmas from the Federalist Society! I'm very tired of coal in my stocking!
OK, I gave up somebody explain. If I shoot you, and you try to shoot me back because I shot you, and I shoot you again, how does that count as self-defense?
Steve just said something very fascistly obnoxious on his podcast when news came of the indictment. I'll bet ol' pock-mark face crapped his pants right then and there. i say sentence him to Maximum Security in Florence, CO. He should sit tight there for a few years, rotting.
Since my first day in office, I have promised Justice Department employees that together we would show the American people by word and deed that the department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law and pursues equal justice under the law.
I wondered why SNL mentioned soaking in Borax in their cold open last Saturday. I was thought it was just SNL being silly.
It was SNL (the sponsors of today's post), by quoting Qnuts directly. Today's GOP is BSC (bat s*** crazy). If one shows the semblance of rationality or talks in complete sentences, one is ostracized - which is fancy way of saying, "targeted for assassination by loyal Qnutjobs".
And now in Texas with the new open carry laws, all the 30,000 whack-jobs that were rejected for licenses can open carry wherever they want witout ANY restriction. Did you ever see a paranoid schizophrenic who was not always feeling threatened by most anybody they saw on the street. It gives so many new opportunities to exwhorsize the "Stand your Ground" Hunting license!
This is the thing that disturbs me the most. Extremists have taken over and removed any sense of sanity from the law. And this is the State where a whack extremist xenophobe murdered a Walmart full of people?
So Greger, by your formula Travis McMichael (and his father and interested neighbor who was part of the chase and filmed it) should go free too because Ahmaud Arbery tried to take his gun making it self defense. After all they just wanted to talk to him. Ask him why he was out jogging while black.
Weird: Trump and friends (IE Tucker Carlson) have decided Mitch McConnell has to go. Tucker is attacking Mitch as ineffective and impotent on every show. Trump is coming out with attacks through his various Twitter sock-puppets. But Senate Republicans mostly are ignoring it. Several of Trump's endorsed candidates have either lost races, dropped out, or are falling behind in the polls. Yet the Republican Party has decided they need to pay all of Trump's legal fees. Why? He does have a fanatic base, but he is losing power as court decisions and the House committee Justice Department referrals loom. And Mitch was quoted the other day saying we all need to know what really happened on January 6th!
Some Republicans think they can't win elections without his base. Primaries, yes. But general elections? Probably not.
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I'm very tired of coal in my stocking! 