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Masking in Japan, and Dec 09
Dec. 9th, 2025 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mindstalkSo, you know that Japanese people mask more than Americans or Europeans. But how much more? Some numbers from today: ( Read more... )
So, 40-50% generically outside, and 50-75% on trains. On the "masks and exercise" front, I'd note that many bicyclists have been masked, too.
Further, almost but not entirely all of customer-facing employees have been masked. Train, bus drivers, retail shop employees, the few waiters I've seen. I'd say at least 80% conservatively, 90% likely, maybe not much higher (it takes few outliers to push a ratio away from extremes.) I think Seki said that waiters often aren't, but I dunno.
Now, is this the New Normal after covid? Not necessarily. Japan has been having a bad flu season, huge spike in cases, and a major strain (coming soon to a school or hospital near you) wasn't in the vaccine this year, so I think the government has been urging people to mask again. Also it's winter-ish and some people here may have noticed "masks are like a scarf but better."
( Read more... )
Fujisawa 2025-Dec-08
Dec. 9th, 2025 10:53 ammindstalkSo, yesterday: I worried I'd gotten a germ after all, since I woke up with a slight sore throat and almost-congestion. There was an alternative explanation, "sleeping in a cold dry room", but who knows. I went out for a walk and ended up out for 3 hours, which suggests good health, though I was doing easy pace. ( Read more... )
But the soft and lovely silvers are now falling on my shoulder
Dec. 8th, 2025 07:29 pmsovayIt feels like cheating for the air to taste so much like the sharp tin tacks of snow when the sky is so clear that even through the white noise of the streetlights Cassiopeia comes in like pointillism and Polaris as bright as a planet. I saw none of the phi Cassiopeids, but the Geminids peak at the end of the week, with any luck on a night that cloudlessly doesn't make my teeth feel about to explode in my mouth. On that front, may I commend the attention of people in frozen boat fandom to this early twentieth century hand-painted stained glass window depicting Shackleton's Endurance? I spent my afternoon on the phone making sure of our health insurance in the bankrupt year to come: the customer service representative was a very nice science fiction person who agreed that it was time to reset this worldline on account of stupidity and for whom I apparently made a pleasant change from all the screaming and breaking down in tears, even more so than usual this year that never need have happened. I've been sent photographs of some really neat letters. Two cards arrived in the mail. My digital camera is showing further signs of deterioration, but a few evenings ago I caught one of those scratch-fired sunsets it's hard to wreck. I am aware of the collapses in the world, but I don't know what else to love.
more IRA paperwork
Dec. 8th, 2025 05:45 pmredbirdI went out in the cold today, took a shuttle buses that was replacing the central part of the green line, and walked into a Fidelity office to get the medallion signature I need on the BNY form.
They provided the medallion for my signature, but the woman who handled that told me she thought I would need to redo the _Fidelity_ forms once BNY had transferred the funds, because the inherited IRA would need a brand-new account, not the one I created for the purpose a few weeks ago. Having printed and signed those forms, I asked her to keep them, in case they are usable. (She may have been thinking I'm trying to move the money into an account that already has money in it.)
She also said I do need to put the form with the medallion signature in the mail to BNY, Fidelity can't send it to them electronically. I brought the medallion-ized form home with me, but before I put it in the mail I'm going to scan it and upload the scan to the Fidelity website, in case the previous advisor is right and they can do this electronically.
So that will be another outing in the cold, to a post office, in the hope the letter gets to BNY in good season despite both Christmas packages and the Republican effort to destroy the postal service. Fortunately, there are post office branches at this end of the green line, the part that's still running trolleys.
ETA: I scanned the document, and just uploaded it to the Fidelity website, with a message explaining that I will be mailing the hardcopy to BNY tomorrow.
They provided the medallion for my signature, but the woman who handled that told me she thought I would need to redo the _Fidelity_ forms once BNY had transferred the funds, because the inherited IRA would need a brand-new account, not the one I created for the purpose a few weeks ago. Having printed and signed those forms, I asked her to keep them, in case they are usable. (She may have been thinking I'm trying to move the money into an account that already has money in it.)
She also said I do need to put the form with the medallion signature in the mail to BNY, Fidelity can't send it to them electronically. I brought the medallion-ized form home with me, but before I put it in the mail I'm going to scan it and upload the scan to the Fidelity website, in case the previous advisor is right and they can do this electronically.
So that will be another outing in the cold, to a post office, in the hope the letter gets to BNY in good season despite both Christmas packages and the Republican effort to destroy the postal service. Fortunately, there are post office branches at this end of the green line, the part that's still running trolleys.
ETA: I scanned the document, and just uploaded it to the Fidelity website, with a message explaining that I will be mailing the hardcopy to BNY tomorrow.
Understanding Health Insurance: A Health Plan is a Contract [US, healthcare, Patreon]
Dec. 8th, 2025 07:42 amsidereaCanonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1890011.html
What we call health insurance is a contract. When you get health insurance, you (or somebody on your behalf) are agreeing to a contract with a health insurance company – a contract where they agree to do certain things for you in exchange for money. So a health insurance plan is a contract between the insurance company and the customer (you).
For simplicity, I will use the term health plan to mean the actual contract – the specific health insurance product – you get from a health insurance company. (It sounds less weird than saying "an insurance" and is shorter to type than "a health insurance plan".)
One of the things this clarifies is that one health insurance company can have a bunch of different contracts (health plans) to sell. This is the same as how you may have more than one internet company that could sell you an internet connection to your home, and each of those internet companies might have several different package deals they offer with different prices and terms. In exactly that way, there are multiple different health insurance companies, and they each can sell multiple different health plans with different prices and terms.
( Read more... [7,130 words] )
This post brought to you by the 220 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.
Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!
This is part of Understanding Health Insurance
- Introduction
- A Health Plan is a Contract – You are here
Health Insurance is a Contract
What we call health insurance is a contract. When you get health insurance, you (or somebody on your behalf) are agreeing to a contract with a health insurance company – a contract where they agree to do certain things for you in exchange for money. So a health insurance plan is a contract between the insurance company and the customer (you).
For simplicity, I will use the term health plan to mean the actual contract – the specific health insurance product – you get from a health insurance company. (It sounds less weird than saying "an insurance" and is shorter to type than "a health insurance plan".)
One of the things this clarifies is that one health insurance company can have a bunch of different contracts (health plans) to sell. This is the same as how you may have more than one internet company that could sell you an internet connection to your home, and each of those internet companies might have several different package deals they offer with different prices and terms. In exactly that way, there are multiple different health insurance companies, and they each can sell multiple different health plans with different prices and terms.
( Read more... [7,130 words] )
This post brought to you by the 220 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.
Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!
Understanding Health Insurance: Introduction [healthcare, US, Patreon]
Dec. 8th, 2025 07:41 amsidereaCanonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1889543.html
Preface: I had hoped to get this out in a more timely manner, but was hindered by technical difficulties with my arms, which have now been resolved. This is a serial about health insurance in the US from the consumer's point of view, of potential use for people still dealing with open enrollment, which we are coming up on the end of imminently. For everyone else dealing with the US health insurance system, such as it is, perhaps it will be useful to you in the future.
Understanding Health Insurance:
Health insurance in the US is hard to understand. It just is. If you find it confusing and bewildering, as well as infuriating, it's not just you.
I think that one of the reasons it's hard to understand has to do with how definitions work.
Part of the reason why health insurance is so confusing is all the insurance industry jargon that is used. Unfortunately, there's no way around that jargon. We all are stuck having to learn what all these strange terms mean. So helpful people try to explain that jargon. They try to help by giving definitions.
But definitions are like leaves: you need a trunk and some branches to hang them on, or they just swirl around in bewildering clouds and eventually settle in indecipherable piles.
There are several big ideas that provide the trunk and branches of understanding health insurance. If you have those ideas, the jargon becomes a lot easier to understand, and then insurance itself becomes a lot easier to understand.
So in this series, I am going to explain some of those big ideas, and then use them to explain how health insurance is organized.
This unorthodox introduction to health insurance is for beginners to health insurance in the US, and anyone who still feels like a beginner after bouncing off the bureaucratic nightmare that is our so-called health care system in the US. It's for anyone who is new to being an health insurance shopper in the US, or feels their understanding is uncertain. Maybe you just got your first job and are being asked to pick a health plan from several offered. Maybe you have always had insurance from an employer and are shopping on your state marketplace for the first time. Maybe you have always gotten insurance through your parents and spouse, and had no say in it, but do now. This introduction assumes you are coming in cold, a complete beginner knowing nothing about health insurance or what any of the health insurance industry jargon even is.
Please note! This series is mostly about commercial insurance products: the kinds that you buy with money. Included in that are the kind of health insurance people buy for themselves on the state ACA marketplaces and also the kind of health insurance people get from their employers as a "bene". It may (I am honestly not sure) also include Medicare Advantage plans.
The things this series explains do not necessarily also describe Medicaid or bare Medicare, or Tricare or any other government run insurance program, though if you are on such an insurance plan this may still be helpful to you. Typically government-run plans have fewer moving parts with fewer choices, so fewer jargon terms even matter to them. Similarly, this may be less useful for subsidized plans on the state ACA marketplaces. It depends on the state. Some states do things differently for differently subsidized plans.
But all these different kinds of government-provided health insurance still use some insurance industry jargon for commercial insurance, if only to tell you what they don't have or do. So this post may be useful to you because understanding how insurance typically works may still prove helpful in understanding what the government is up to. Understanding what the assumptions are of regular commercial insurance will hopefully clarify the terms even government plans use to describe themselves. Just realize that if you have a plan the government in some sense is running, things may be different – including maybe very different – for you.
On to the first important idea: Health Insurance is a Contract.
Preface: I had hoped to get this out in a more timely manner, but was hindered by technical difficulties with my arms, which have now been resolved. This is a serial about health insurance in the US from the consumer's point of view, of potential use for people still dealing with open enrollment, which we are coming up on the end of imminently. For everyone else dealing with the US health insurance system, such as it is, perhaps it will be useful to you in the future.
Understanding Health Insurance:
Introduction
Health insurance in the US is hard to understand. It just is. If you find it confusing and bewildering, as well as infuriating, it's not just you.
I think that one of the reasons it's hard to understand has to do with how definitions work.
Part of the reason why health insurance is so confusing is all the insurance industry jargon that is used. Unfortunately, there's no way around that jargon. We all are stuck having to learn what all these strange terms mean. So helpful people try to explain that jargon. They try to help by giving definitions.
But definitions are like leaves: you need a trunk and some branches to hang them on, or they just swirl around in bewildering clouds and eventually settle in indecipherable piles.
There are several big ideas that provide the trunk and branches of understanding health insurance. If you have those ideas, the jargon becomes a lot easier to understand, and then insurance itself becomes a lot easier to understand.
So in this series, I am going to explain some of those big ideas, and then use them to explain how health insurance is organized.
This unorthodox introduction to health insurance is for beginners to health insurance in the US, and anyone who still feels like a beginner after bouncing off the bureaucratic nightmare that is our so-called health care system in the US. It's for anyone who is new to being an health insurance shopper in the US, or feels their understanding is uncertain. Maybe you just got your first job and are being asked to pick a health plan from several offered. Maybe you have always had insurance from an employer and are shopping on your state marketplace for the first time. Maybe you have always gotten insurance through your parents and spouse, and had no say in it, but do now. This introduction assumes you are coming in cold, a complete beginner knowing nothing about health insurance or what any of the health insurance industry jargon even is.
Please note! This series is mostly about commercial insurance products: the kinds that you buy with money. Included in that are the kind of health insurance people buy for themselves on the state ACA marketplaces and also the kind of health insurance people get from their employers as a "bene". It may (I am honestly not sure) also include Medicare Advantage plans.
The things this series explains do not necessarily also describe Medicaid or bare Medicare, or Tricare or any other government run insurance program, though if you are on such an insurance plan this may still be helpful to you. Typically government-run plans have fewer moving parts with fewer choices, so fewer jargon terms even matter to them. Similarly, this may be less useful for subsidized plans on the state ACA marketplaces. It depends on the state. Some states do things differently for differently subsidized plans.
But all these different kinds of government-provided health insurance still use some insurance industry jargon for commercial insurance, if only to tell you what they don't have or do. So this post may be useful to you because understanding how insurance typically works may still prove helpful in understanding what the government is up to. Understanding what the assumptions are of regular commercial insurance will hopefully clarify the terms even government plans use to describe themselves. Just realize that if you have a plan the government in some sense is running, things may be different – including maybe very different – for you.
On to the first important idea: Health Insurance is a Contract.
Understanding Health Insurance
- Introduction
- Health Insurance is a Contract
Put your circuits in the sea
Dec. 8th, 2025 02:58 amsovayAfter years of not even being able to pirate it, spatch and I have finally just finished the first series of BBC Ghosts (2019–23), during which he pointed out to me the half of the cast that had been on Taskmaster. I recognized a guest-starring Sophie Thompson.
This article on the megaliths of Orkney got Dave Goulder stuck in my head, especially once one of the archaeologists interviewed compared the Ring of Brodgar to sandstone pages. "They may not have been intended to last millennia, but, now that they have, they are stone doors through which the living try to touch the dead."
I wish a cult image of fish-tailed Artemis had existed at Phigalia, hunting pack of seals and all.
Any year now some part of my health could just fix itself a little, as a treat.
spatch and I have finally just finished the first series of BBC Ghosts (2019–23), during which he pointed out to me the half of the cast that had been on Taskmaster. I recognized a guest-starring Sophie Thompson.This article on the megaliths of Orkney got Dave Goulder stuck in my head, especially once one of the archaeologists interviewed compared the Ring of Brodgar to sandstone pages. "They may not have been intended to last millennia, but, now that they have, they are stone doors through which the living try to touch the dead."
I wish a cult image of fish-tailed Artemis had existed at Phigalia, hunting pack of seals and all.
Any year now some part of my health could just fix itself a little, as a treat.
Deity Swag with Cartoonist Style!
Dec. 7th, 2025 07:02 pmlb_leeComics we got at MICE! All are great!
- BE NOT AFRAID, by LSJM(?) Black, white, and red one-pager that’s like if the angel from Pet was giving you a Trump-era pep talk.
- Secret Black Woman, by Ingrid Pierre. Autobio about anti-black racism, anti-Asian racism, passing, and being biracial.
- Default, by JCJB. Poetry essay watercolor about fighting empire and suffering. We think Phosphor of hungryghosts would like this!
- Prompted: an educator’s response to generative AI in the classroom, by Caroline Hu. Science, chatbots, and college. We think erinptah would like this!
- Cannon Fodder, by Eric Alexander Arroyo. Queer mecha pilots in love during wartime. Got it for the sci-fi library; we have now purchased all three printings of this, haha.
- Maintenance, by Cryptozoology. “What if a robot liked it when their creator performed upkeep on them (in a sexual way) and they were both girls???” Grabbed for sci-fi library.
- Silhouette, by L/V. Navy blue Riso robot porn. May also end up in sci-fi library because the art is so gorgeous.
Seventh Disadvent
Dec. 7th, 2025 07:45 pmpsocopteraAbout once a year the fancy windowshade by J's desk breaks and we invoke the warranty and replace it. We had been keeping the old ones thinking they might be useful for spare parts somehow but given that this has now happened several times and they always break the same way and it's not a way we can fix, it felt like time to give up on all three broken shades. Eventually we will fall off the warranty and we'll have to decide if we want to actually pay to keep feeding fancy windowshades to the demon who only eats the left tendon of fancy windowshades (or whatever the root of the problem is) or if there might be a lower-cost or lower-waste solution, but that is not today's problem.
time zones and food
Dec. 7th, 2025 11:34 pmmindstalkGonna take a while to get used to these time zones differences again. I realized in the shower that as I was preparing to go to bed before Monday, for most of my friends, Sunday morning was just beginning. Also, that's probably why Oglaf hasn't updated yet -- it's Sunday! My webcomics schedule is in confusion. ( Read more... )
New travel series begins
Dec. 7th, 2025 10:38 pmmindstalkAfter three years in friendly Very Cheap Rent houses, I'm back to nomadic life. After bouncing around Philly a few times to get things sorted, I'm now in Tokyo, because (a) Japan is cool and (b) old family of friend is old, tick-tock tick-tock. If you want to follow along, well, keep checking in for the travel2025 tag. Some random observations to start: ( Read more... )
(no subject)
Dec. 7th, 2025 06:49 amsorcyressThought to myself "I should go make a dreamwidth post", and holy shit, I knew it had been a while when I posted the anniversary post, but I hadn't realized it's been basically a _month_. Blugh. Blugh!
(we just figured out Blues Clues, y'all. :P)
Here's some stuff that's happened between Racheline and Patty's wedding and now:
*I have been struggling pretty hard with brain stuff, which is okay and happens, but is annoying! It's all the usual culprits come out to play --don't wanna do any grading or actual work, just want to burrow and hibernate because that's the correct way to do things when the sun goes away.
*I am real sad about living in the world I live in in 2025. I am sad that capitalism. I am sad that transphobia. I am sad that rampant xenophobia that's fucking up the lives of my students. I am sad, and it's hard and weird to just go on as normal.
*Tonight the polycool went out to see Club Drosselmeyer! I've been vaguely aware of this weird little Boston tradition since 2017, when I saw their unrelated show Save the Munbax, but never actually managed to try this one. It was fun! It's a lightweight puzzle hunt mixed with immersive theatre mixed with a dance floor. We had a very nice time, I think, and appreciated that we could sorta split up in ways that let those of us who wanted to just chill and work on puzzles do that, and those that wanted to go chat up all the characters do *that*.
*Thanksgiving was really good --Tuesday and I did it jointly with our collective families, down at my parents house. It worked out unsurprisingly well to have Cameron be in charge of the kitchen, with me providing big-sibling-bossiness as backup to their decisive understanding of what needed to happen. The driving from here and back was much less good, and I'm excessively grateful that I have train tickets for the next big trip.
*I don't know what else I've had in the way of ~adventures~ it's mostly just been the everyday. I liked the snow this morning, that greeted me when I went to bells. I've been trying to work on some projects, like actually getting the downstairs closet resorted and bringing some stuff I don't need to the school for coat drives and clothing swaps and the like. I'm teaching SCD this month at Cambridge class, so that's exciting! My weird tiny dance that I run is also really exciting, even if it's not as flashy --I feel good about it though!
My life is mostly good, but the ADHD and the seasonal stuff have been harder than usual. Millions of little ways to improve on that, I suppose. I picked up Habitica again, and that was helping for a time, but has maybe slipped out of grasp some. Hopefully tomorrow (don't look at the time, I mean Sunday when I say that) will be a good chance to catch up on a little bit of that.
Goodnight, I love you
~Sor
MOOP!
(we just figured out Blues Clues, y'all. :P)
Here's some stuff that's happened between Racheline and Patty's wedding and now:
*I have been struggling pretty hard with brain stuff, which is okay and happens, but is annoying! It's all the usual culprits come out to play --don't wanna do any grading or actual work, just want to burrow and hibernate because that's the correct way to do things when the sun goes away.
*I am real sad about living in the world I live in in 2025. I am sad that capitalism. I am sad that transphobia. I am sad that rampant xenophobia that's fucking up the lives of my students. I am sad, and it's hard and weird to just go on as normal.
*Tonight the polycool went out to see Club Drosselmeyer! I've been vaguely aware of this weird little Boston tradition since 2017, when I saw their unrelated show Save the Munbax, but never actually managed to try this one. It was fun! It's a lightweight puzzle hunt mixed with immersive theatre mixed with a dance floor. We had a very nice time, I think, and appreciated that we could sorta split up in ways that let those of us who wanted to just chill and work on puzzles do that, and those that wanted to go chat up all the characters do *that*.
*Thanksgiving was really good --Tuesday and I did it jointly with our collective families, down at my parents house. It worked out unsurprisingly well to have Cameron be in charge of the kitchen, with me providing big-sibling-bossiness as backup to their decisive understanding of what needed to happen. The driving from here and back was much less good, and I'm excessively grateful that I have train tickets for the next big trip.
*I don't know what else I've had in the way of ~adventures~ it's mostly just been the everyday. I liked the snow this morning, that greeted me when I went to bells. I've been trying to work on some projects, like actually getting the downstairs closet resorted and bringing some stuff I don't need to the school for coat drives and clothing swaps and the like. I'm teaching SCD this month at Cambridge class, so that's exciting! My weird tiny dance that I run is also really exciting, even if it's not as flashy --I feel good about it though!
My life is mostly good, but the ADHD and the seasonal stuff have been harder than usual. Millions of little ways to improve on that, I suppose. I picked up Habitica again, and that was helping for a time, but has maybe slipped out of grasp some. Hopefully tomorrow (don't look at the time, I mean Sunday when I say that) will be a good chance to catch up on a little bit of that.
Goodnight, I love you
~Sor
MOOP!
Sure as the morning light when frigid love and fallen doves take flight
Dec. 6th, 2025 10:47 pmsovayCrossing recent streams, tonight I participated with rushthatspeaks in a reading of The Invention of Love (1997) in memoriam Tom Stoppard with a Discord group that does a different play every week. I was assigned Moses Jackson, the straightest himbo ever to play a sport. I consider it a triumph for the profession that I did not catch on fire enthusing about field athletics.
When I read in passing that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) had begun life as a one-act comedy entitled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear, I went to fact-check this assertion immediately because it sounded like a joke, you know, like one of the great tragedies of the English stage starting out as the farcical Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter and then a ringing sound in my ears indicated that the penny had dropped.
Speaking of, I have seen going around the quotation from Arcadia (1993) on the destruction and endurance of history:
We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?
Stoppard was not supposed to have known the full extent of his Jewishness until midlife, but it is such a diasporic way of thinking, the convergent echo of Emeric Pressburger is difficult for me not to hear. I keep writing of the coins in the field, everything that time gives back, if not always to those who lost it.
rushthatspeaks in a reading of The Invention of Love (1997) in memoriam Tom Stoppard with a Discord group that does a different play every week. I was assigned Moses Jackson, the straightest himbo ever to play a sport. I consider it a triumph for the profession that I did not catch on fire enthusing about field athletics.When I read in passing that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) had begun life as a one-act comedy entitled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear, I went to fact-check this assertion immediately because it sounded like a joke, you know, like one of the great tragedies of the English stage starting out as the farcical Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter and then a ringing sound in my ears indicated that the penny had dropped.
Speaking of, I have seen going around the quotation from Arcadia (1993) on the destruction and endurance of history:
We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?
Stoppard was not supposed to have known the full extent of his Jewishness until midlife, but it is such a diasporic way of thinking, the convergent echo of Emeric Pressburger is difficult for me not to hear. I keep writing of the coins in the field, everything that time gives back, if not always to those who lost it.
(no subject)
Dec. 6th, 2025 06:40 pmlb_leeRogan: holy shit guys, the color version of Coming In or Staying Out came out GORGEOUS. Just Right Press did an amazing job and I will absolutely be hiring them again! I cannot wait to put it up for sale and show it off!
And it’s been the bestseller at MICE so far! I’ll be working a final shift at table 32 from 11-2 tomorrow on Sunday; be the first on your block to have some pink trans dongs!
And it’s been the bestseller at MICE so far! I’ll be working a final shift at table 32 from 11-2 tomorrow on Sunday; be the first on your block to have some pink trans dongs!
cat health worries
Dec. 6th, 2025 09:13 pmredbirdFirst: The cat in question seems to be basically well.
So,cattitude has been worrying on and off that our cat Kaja was getting skinny. A few days agp. that got to the point of calling the vet and then taking the cat in for a check-up.
At the exam, the vet told Cattitude that Kaja has not lost weight; if anything, she has gained an ounce or two. What's going on is, the cat has lost some muscle mass, which has led to some redistribution of her weight, and what Cattitude noted was that her legs were thinner. The vet said it was probably arthritis, drew blood to test for some more serious problems, and sent her home.
We got the results this morning, and they are reassuring: Kaja's kidney function, liver function, and thyroid are all fine. So is her blood sugar.
The email said we could have them do X-rays to check for arthritis, but that would require sedating the cat.
Or, they can assume it's arthritis, and give her monthly injections of a pain-killer to treat that, and see how she's doing in a few months.
The third choice is to just monitor the cat's health for now, and give her omega-3 supplements. We need to discuss the choices, but it's Saturday, and none of them involves "so call the vet and set this up right away."
So,
cattitude has been worrying on and off that our cat Kaja was getting skinny. A few days agp. that got to the point of calling the vet and then taking the cat in for a check-up.At the exam, the vet told Cattitude that Kaja has not lost weight; if anything, she has gained an ounce or two. What's going on is, the cat has lost some muscle mass, which has led to some redistribution of her weight, and what Cattitude noted was that her legs were thinner. The vet said it was probably arthritis, drew blood to test for some more serious problems, and sent her home.
We got the results this morning, and they are reassuring: Kaja's kidney function, liver function, and thyroid are all fine. So is her blood sugar.
The email said we could have them do X-rays to check for arthritis, but that would require sedating the cat.
Or, they can assume it's arthritis, and give her monthly injections of a pain-killer to treat that, and see how she's doing in a few months.
The third choice is to just monitor the cat's health for now, and give her omega-3 supplements. We need to discuss the choices, but it's Saturday, and none of them involves "so call the vet and set this up right away."
Defect
Dec. 6th, 2025 01:52 pmadrian_turtleI heard there was a new version of the musical Chess, much better than the original. I don't know the details, but I think they added some outside narration for context, to help it make sense? And changed the focus? (I am not really worried about spoilers. Even if they make the plot less inane, the audience should be there for the music, not the plot.)
A big problem with reviving a Cold War musical in 2025 is that there is a major plot point about a guy choosing to leave the Soviet Union and come to the US. It's 40+ years ago, so the Soviet government is the conventional Bad Guys. The only obstacles to this are coming from the place he's leaving; there aren't any worries that the US might not let him in. The song that nods to paperwork barriers plays it as a joke. Neither because he's from their great enemy, nor because he's just generally a foreigner. For an audience that doesn't remember the 20th century, that just doesn't make sense. The difficulty with getting INTO America is obviously the hard part.
https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-12-05/immigrants-kept-from-faneuil-hall-citizenship-ceremony-as-feds-crackdown-nationwide
(Story at link is about an incident yesterday. Immigrants with green cards who had paid all fees and passed all tests and screenings for citizenship, and were minutes from taking the oath of citizenship in a historic building in downtown Boston...were stopped because the government disapproves of their countries of origin.)
A big problem with reviving a Cold War musical in 2025 is that there is a major plot point about a guy choosing to leave the Soviet Union and come to the US. It's 40+ years ago, so the Soviet government is the conventional Bad Guys. The only obstacles to this are coming from the place he's leaving; there aren't any worries that the US might not let him in. The song that nods to paperwork barriers plays it as a joke. Neither because he's from their great enemy, nor because he's just generally a foreigner. For an audience that doesn't remember the 20th century, that just doesn't make sense. The difficulty with getting INTO America is obviously the hard part.
https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-12-05/immigrants-kept-from-faneuil-hall-citizenship-ceremony-as-feds-crackdown-nationwide
(Story at link is about an incident yesterday. Immigrants with green cards who had paid all fees and passed all tests and screenings for citizenship, and were minutes from taking the oath of citizenship in a historic building in downtown Boston...were stopped because the government disapproves of their countries of origin.)
Disadvent 6: an expensive mistake
Dec. 6th, 2025 12:44 pmpsocopteraI wore the same make and model of sneaker for something like 10 or 15 years and would happily have kept buying another pair every 15-18 months indefinitely, but my mom alerted me in late 2023 that the newest edition of them had been completely redesigned in a bad way, so I panic-bought two more pairs to put off the dread day of reckoning when I had to find a Different Shoe. I deployed the first of them in 2024 and attempted to deploy the second this past summer, at which point I discovered they were also Different, in that instead of the normal tongue-and-collar situation they had a sort of elastic ankle tourniquet that wasn't going to work for me at all. (One walk was enough to confirm that.) If I had taken a better look at them when I had gotten them, I would have tried to return them, but alas, at the time I had merely glanced in the boxes to see that they were the colors I had picked, and more than a year and a half later I was somewhat past the 90-day window for returns, oops. So that was an expensive mistake, but today I took them to Goodwill, and I like to think that someone who might struggle with the cost of nice running shoes will be pleased to find this practically-unused pair, as long as they don't mind having their ankles tourniqueted. (And I did successfully make it through the ordeal of finding a new brand and model of shoes that work, which I will now hopefully keep buying every 15-18 months until they also decide they're tired of having me as a repeat customer.)
Also I actually took last night's books to the library as a book sale donation.
Also I actually took last night's books to the library as a book sale donation.