2020
The vet gave us parking lot service: when I arrived, I called from the parking lot, a vet tech came out to the car, checked us in, and brought Minnie inside. I never entered the vet building.
Out of old habit I almost ordered a burger, fries and chocolate shake from the vet tech. But I stopped myself in time. Still, would’ve been nice if she’s cruised up on roller skates.
The vet phoned me while I was in the car trying to figure out how to get the iPad hooked up to the Verizon network (which I never did succeed in doing). She said Minnie has basically blown out her right rear knee. Minnie probably did the left one too at some point a while ago (the vet said), but recovered and has been compensating.
I’m thinking Minnie probably did the left one in September when we took her into the vet because she could barely stand up after zoomies.
The prognosis: Rest for two weeks, anti-inflammatories, and then we’ll see.
If that doesn’t work: Surgery. Which costs $4,000. So yeah, permanently disabled dog vs. spending $4K on surgery is a choice between unacceptable options. Let’s just say she’s going to recover fine after two weeks of rest.
The vet said Minnie will probably eventually need the surgery, when she is an old dog. But “eventually” is a long way away, and may never come, so I’m not going to worry about that now.
When I dropped Minnie at the vet initially, I asked how long it would take. They said a half-hour to an hour. I said OK we live a short way away so I’ll just turn around and go home and then come back to get her when I get the call that she’s ready. I figured it’d probably be more like two or three hours, just because things usually take longer than people say they will .
But nope, the vet called just as I was pulling up the road to the house. I finished the call in our driveway, went upstairs, had lunch, then went back downstairs and picked up the dog.
Julie took this photo of Minnie recovering from her ordeal.
I filed a bug report with Flexibits about a Fantastical 3 problem I had in February. I’m just getting a response now.
Um, yay?
Manischewitz wine is popular in Caribbean communities. [Nadege Green/WLRN] This story makes me happy.
Minnie was still hopping along on three legs this morning and looking pretty miserable. I called the vet and they’re doing parking-lot check-ins. So I’m off to the vet later this morning.
It’s pouring rain out. I know that’s no big deal to the real world, but we Southern Californians are big babies when it comes to any kind of foul weather.
A friend says dogs just do that sometimes, and she’ll get over it in a week. Maybe so. But Minnie is seven years old and she has never done it. She frequently strains herself after zoomies, but never like this and never this badly. And she seems pretty miserable, so anything we can do to make her more comfortable seems like a good idea.
Also, it seems prudent to have her checked out.
Gavin Newsom Declares California a ‘Nation-State’
Last year, Democratic state Senator and party leader Scott Weiner said,
“The federal government is no longer a reliable partner in delivering health care, in supporting immigrants, supporting LGBT people, in protecting the environment, so we need to forge our own path…. We can do everything in our power to protect our state, but we need a reliable federal partner. And right now we don’t have that.”
Yes.
[Francis Wilkinson/Bloomberg]
“The Pursuit of the Pankera” is a kind of metafiction – fiction about fiction. It is an alternate version of “The Number of the Beast,” which Heinlein published in 1980.
Both novels are about travel between alternate universes, and so they are alternate-universe novels about each other.
I have never liked “The Number of the Beast,” in part because it suffers from the sins of late-period Heinlein: Long-winded political preachiness combined with the author’s creepy sex scenes.
And a third problem for “Number:” It’s Heinlein’s love letter to the science fiction/fantasy action-adventure of his youth, particularly the Oz books, Barsoom books and E.E. “Doc” Smith.
None of those three series were childhood favorites of mine and Heinlein does nothing to make them seem appealing.
Brown says “The Pursuit of the Pankera” is a much better book than “Number.” and that’s what I’m hearing elsewhere. It’s on my to-be-read list, near the top.
Heinlein has been one of my favorite authors since I was 8 years old, but his most-popular books tend to be the ones I like least. I like his early and middle-period stuff.
Well, shit. Minnie injured her foot and now she’s walking on three legs. Nothing visibly wrong with it and she doesn’t react when I manipulate it.
Normally I’d say give it a day and if she’s not better tomorrow she’s going to the vet. But that’s not an option now. Not for this.
Larry David, Master of His Quarantine
Maureen Dowd at the New York Times:
When I ask if he is hoarding anything, he is outraged. “Not a hoarder,” he said. “In fact, in a few months, if I walk into someone’s house and stumble onto 50 rolls of toilet paper in a closet somewhere, I will end the friendship. It’s tantamount to being a horse thief in the Old West.”
“I never could have lived in the Old West,” he added parenthetically. “I would have been completely paranoid about someone stealing my horse. No locks. You tie them to a post! How could you go into a saloon and enjoy yourself knowing your horse could get taken any moment? I would be so distracted. Constantly checking to see if he was still there.”
I've been drinking a meal replacement shake called Huel for breakfast for months
For several months, my daily breakfast has been about a pint of a thick “nutritionally complete” liquid, called Huel.
Huel is a powder you mix with water to make a milky liquid, like a thin milkshake. You can add more water to make it thinner, or less to make it thicker. You can use vegetable milk, or mix it with fruit or peanut butter for added flavor. The powder itself can be unflavored, or vanilla, chocolate or berry flavored. I’ve tried all three, and settled on the vanilla as my favorite.
I used to eat a real breakfast every day, fruit and cottage cheese, but when I started Huel in November I needed to get a running start in the morning and keep running all morning.
At that time, I was working with an international workgroup. I’m based in San Diego, which means I got into work when everybody else around the US had already been working for hours and colleagues in the UK were already into late afternoon. I didn’t want to take time out to eat breakfast, even though my body demands it.
When I read about Huel in this article by Nicole Dieker, I said sure, why not. And I liked it and stuck with it.
And I feel fine. I no longer have that morning scheduling pressure but I’ve stuck with Huel. It takes some of the complexity out of the day. And I like it.
Some people, including Nicole Dieker, above, take Huel for two meals a day, but that’s too many for me, because I like to eat. Just not as often as my body seems to need me to eat.
Some people take all their meals with Huel, but that’s not a good idea, because you risk nutritionally deficiencies. Human beings are evolved to consume a variety of foods to get a broad range of nutrients; it’s why your dog and cat are happy eating kibble every day but you’d go nuts if you always ate exactly the same thing every meal.
Huel is one of several “meal replacement” liquids that have come on the market in the past few years. They all have pretty much the same marketing pitch: Eating three meals a day, plus snacks, is a hassle. Meal replacements are designed to replace the fast-food burger you consume at your desk, not the meals you enjoy with family and friends.
Meal replacements are particularly touted for people looking to get off a junk food diet.
Soylent is the most famous of these meal replacements. I’ve tried Soylent and like it fine, but I went with Huel this time around on a whim, because of that article.
Also, Soylent is made with chemicals but Huel is made with real ingredients: Oats, tapioca, flaxseed, sunflower, coconut, peas, rice, etc.
(Yes, I know that those so-called “real ingredients” are ALSO chemicals. You know what the fuck I mean, piglet..)
As Huel notes on its website: A liquid meal made from a powder sounds weird and dystopian, but it’s actually an old idea: Flour is an example of a powder that becomes food, and soup is an example of a liquid meal. Both have been around for thousands of years. Many people have smoothies for breakfast. Huel is just a variation on that. 🌕
Kansas Republicans are fighting to kill Christians and Jews [Zack Budryk/The Hill]
Kansas’s Republican-led legislator overturned the Democratic governor’s ban on gatherings during Easter and Passover.
Kansas legislature strikes down governor’s directive limiting size of religious gatherings
Kansas Republicans are claiming religious persecution, which is ridiculous because (1) The law is designed to save people’s lives and (2) The law does not single out any particular religious denomination or indeed single out religions at all. This is settled law in the US and has been for many, many decades.
The Pope and Saudi Arabia are canceling religious gatherings, including the pilgrimage to Mecca, which is a tradition dating back more than a thousands years and literally the holiest thing that a Muslim man does in his life.
Via Cory Doctorow, who says:
It’s another reminder that the right’s claim that it is the party of rational long-termism rather than squishy bleeding-heart reflex is just bullshit.
There’s literally nothing more politically short-term than dooming your core voters to die gasping deaths in a month because you’re afraid they’ll be angry at you on Easter Sunday. Angry voters might not vote for you. Dead voters can’t.
I do not celebrate anybody’s death but it is really hard to remember that when toxic people are fighting for the right to kill themselves and their followers. But even if I were cold-blooded enough to wish death on my enemies, they’ll take their neighbors and innocent children with them.
Remember this the next time you hear someone say the Republican party is pro-life and pro-common sense.
This is why I am a Democrat.
Sure, the Democratic Party is frequently fucked up – you want to complain about the DNCC, Congressional leadership, and the way the Presidential Primary played out, I’m right there with you.
But the GOP is a criminal conspiracy and death cult.
Automating micro.blog categories using emoji. Nerdy fun!
Listening to the Monday microcast with @macgenie and @manton yesterday, I learned that you can use filters on micro.blog to search for text in a post you write, and automatically include that post in a category.
So you can automate micro.blog to search for any post containing the word “beer,” or the beer emoji 🍺, and put that in a “beer” category. Instructions are here.
Additionally, micro.blog uses emoji in lieu of hashtags, which I like. Because emoji are awesome and hashtags are ugly.
Later, in the evening, I set up an automated, filtered category for “best of,” using the full-moon emoji 🌕 for a filter. I chose that emoji for no other reason than that it is a nice emoji, and won’t get in the way of people reading the post.
So now I have a blog category for my best posts, to distinguish them from the daily flow of ephemera.
I’m also thinking of using emoji with IFTTT or Zapier to control cross-posting to Twitter and Tumblr.
One of the things I love about micro.blog is that it manages to be both simple and powerful, which is a rare combination.
And now because this post contains that full moon emoji, it should automatically appear in the best-of category, without my having to do anything about it.
Appalling/delightful Disney horror/comic mashups! IT heroes! Forging PDF signatures! And more!
On today’s Pluralistic by Cory Doctorow
Disney horror/comic mashups are appalling/delightful
Daniel “Kickpunch” Björk created an incredible set of Disney Comic/horror movie mashups.
The chemistry of cold-brew coffee
I can’t say I have strong feelings about cold-brew coffee. I like a nice iced coffee in hot weather. But even in hot weather, I like hot coffee.
The crisis is making heroes of IT workers
IT workers are pulling all-nighters and multi-day marathons to set up co-workers for remote work and provision systems for new workflows.
Automating fake PDF signatures
The modern era has many tiny hypocrisies, but none quite so common as the mutual pretense by which you ask me to print, sign and scan a PDF and I pretend that I didn’t just paste my signatures into it."
But some firms shatter this tacit social contract and demand that you really engage in the ridiculous ritual of actually printing, signing and scanning.
Enter Falsiscan, a tool to automate convincing forgeries of this procedure.
Falsiscan takes in 27 variants of your signature and then feed these sigs and your PDF to it, with the (x,y) for each signature blank as arguments, and it will produce a slightly off-center, slightly degraded new PDF that looks like you actually signed it.
