Affogato

Long covid is also a thing. I understand we still don’t know the long term consequences.

I still wear a mask when I go out. Not generally outdoors and I do go to restaurants, but on public transportation, theaters, public buildings. Although older I don’t have autoimmune stuff going on. I probably will do it for the rest of my life.

I think a lot if people who had nice houses. Could stay in. Didn’t have intimates die. didn’t have to juggle schools and children. Had a well developed support system. And so on. Did okay. to add, In retrospect I didn’t i was unable to exercise enough. Unable to work from home. Lost many social outlets. Also got stuck where I was in survival mode.

Well, yes, all of this is probably true. Although I’m not sure about the med school thing. https://www.shemmassianconsulting.com/blog/medical-school-acceptance-rates-by-race The percentages of applicants from the largest ethnic/racial applicant groups—Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, and White—who were accepted and matriculated to medical school by race are as follows: Asian: Accepted: 50.5% Matriculated: 49% Black or African American: Accepted: 35.9% Matriculated: 34.1% Hispanic or Latino: Accepted: 43.4% Matriculated: 41.9% White: Accepted: 50.6% Matriculated: 48.4% The data show that Asian and White applicants tend to get into medical school at roughly the same rate, whereas Hispanic or Latino applicants are slightly lower, and African American students have a markedly lower acceptance rate.

Maybe more than stench because government is currently gutted and it will get worse. I honestly do not know.

I think we are struggling with the social media of it all, too. People support the coat tails they think will move them in the direction they want to go. In the case of the republicans, boy was that a mistake. The democrats are looking for that as well. I don’t know the solution. i prefer to think MAGA is not the current Republican party, as they continue to use it, because I want to leave room for the party to recover its dignity.

https://differencecamp.com/conservative-vs-liberal-differences/ Conservative Vs. Liberal – 8 Key Differences ByAshSeptember 13, 2022 ——— Note the date. This article does not state the position of conservatives’ , it is more of a Maga set of arguing points. much of it is the antithesis or irrelevant to actual conservatism. It is propaganda it was also the first article that came up in my search Contrast with https://insidepoliticalscience.com/conservative-vs-liberal-beliefs/ A Comprehensive Look At Conservative Vs Liberal Beliefs if you scroll down you can find shared values, like education and democracy. MAGA is literally a third, facist party

Online dating also means women have to fear their dates. Meet them in public places, meet them with friends, test drinks for drugs, have support on speed dial. Dating is hard and scary. There is something adversarial to it.

It really sounds like they may be lonely and bored. Need more happening in their own lives? Maybe encourage, if possible.

I tend to believe most of the feminine and masculine energy crap is garbage. I do remember a study that when male voles become parents they have a hormonal change, which … well, Musk may avoid becoming less aggressive and less toxic by using artificial insemination. At the same time a lot of the playing field supports people similar to Musk, who has a penis and is toxic, over many others. We live in a society that values these things. Rewards them. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/27/1152009605/prairie-voles-oxytocin-love-hormone-bonding-study different study. But be more like the vole.

No one is stopping men from doing this. In fact I remember Robert Bly’s iron john movement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_John:_A_Book_About_Men Here is the thing. Men have more economic and legal control. Seriously, empowerment. If a young man assaults a girl men leap to their defense. Don’t ruin his life, they cry. and simply, if you are in charge, well, responsibility needs to be taken. Man have been in charge. men are welcome to do what they want. Need. But they should not divert all the resources to themselves again, because they have had all the resources traditionally. it isn’t about women blaming poor white men, or blacks blaming whites. It is about getting equitable attention and help. So men, go for it, just not at the expense of everyone else. And, it is not a tragedy if more women go to college than men, or blacks blaming whites it is just a thing. Yes, if you have twenty jobs that would previously be filled by white men and now nly five are filled by white men, will there be resentment? Absolutely, even progressive men will cry into their beer. And have a point, because they would have had those jobs, not long ago. Also their upbringing makes them feel they should be the major breadwinners and there is a lowkey buzz of shame when their wife gets one of those jobs.

Isolation has a lot to do with scientology. I think in leah Rimini’s podcasts or/and tv show someone tells the story of getting a Kindle which was attached to the internet, which was forbidden to scientology members. The looked up the church to see the good it was doing and were horrified and left. And if you leave any family in the church is out of reach. fox news is a fairly isolating news source and a lot of people who buy into MAGA get a lot of peer pressure. Psychology Today has a good article on MAGA being a cult, but I couldn’t embed the link here. The thing is, this started long before Covid. Here is a talk with Katherine Stewart about her book “Money, Lies and God” which is illuminating. https://cambridgeforum.org/money-lies-and-god-with-katherine-stewart/ this whole thing did not come out of nowhere. Covid maybe hastened it, or not, but Trump was elected the first time before covid

You have to see that Trump rewards people who do him favors and punishes those that do not. A huge garish plane demands special treatment to the givers. As he would say ‘what a beautiful gift’. so it isn’t okay. It would influence his judgement. A lot of people bought them before they realized stuff.

https://cleantechnica.com/2025/05/12/more-tesla-woes-emerged-over-the-weekend/ quote: So, too, did Tesla employee trainer and manager Matthew Labrot, who set up a website called “Tesla Employees Against Elon.” It offered an open letter to the company to replace Musk as CEO. Labrot feels that Musk’s political views diminished Tesla sales and that Tesla’s leadership did not sufficiently guide employees on how to handle “protests and vandalism” against the company. Yet Labrot was reportedly fired by Tesla for his actions, which included spray painting his Cybertruck with anti-Musk messages. He was dismissed for “using company resources to build a website that did not align with the company’s perspective,” a Business Insider article explains. “I was very happy with my position, and I could have continued to work in that role my whole life,” Labrot said.

https://apple.news/AXgAV_kEsQ2mJGFIsw9Mzug Driving the news: The first flight carrying a group of South Africans granted refugee status arrived in Virginia on Monday, the State Department announced. The admission of Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority that dominated South African politics during apartheid, is in response to Trump's "call to prioritize U.S. refugee resettlement of this vulnerable group facing unjust racial discrimination in South Africa," the department said. The group has said they have been denied jobs and faced violence because of their race. More Afrikaner refugees will arrive in the U.S. in the coming months, per the State Department. —————— just what we need.

I’m not a doctor, but the medical mysteries and the fairly quick solutions seem very magical to me. However, I do believe that a lot of emergency rooms and primary care people can miss a lot of things that might come to light if you were looking at all of the weird bits of data. One example is people who come back with a toxic bite or tropical infection, something that isn’t normal in Pittsburgh. So It is possible that a lot of really rare genetic conditions might be seen by people who were at the center of a huge database, I just am not sure they are convincing me of it.

The show uses its characters to bring up a lot of themes, but Marge is basically good hearted and is often sidelined by the needs of the rest of the family. I see some good conversations there, if we were both volunteering at the same event. But, to go back in time, one of the points about Archie Bunker is that he wasn’t a completely horrible person, which is why the people we liked went to the trouble of trying to change his mind. Which is to say that I don’t insist on agreeing with everything, or even most of the things, a character does. Of course I haven’t watched it regularly for a while and currently don’t have streaming access to the Simpsons. I know that in a show that goes on this long there will be ups and downs. However, the Simpsons, even Flanders, were pretty strong characters. They had flaws and things that redeemed them, just as if they were real people.

Not so much. I can see them wanting to have something for everyone. Not a lot, but some programs that are suitable for children.

A lot of the paranormal romances … well, I don’t know that many. Nalini Singh’s Archangel Books has all the vampires/angels/whathaveyou, but the primary story is a billionaire (who happens to be an archangel) who meets a security guard and falls in love. What I’m saying is that you could have worked this story, and most of the others in the series, without anything supernatural going on. You would have to have a reason for said billionaire to be put into close contact with said normal (but feisty and plucky) young woman. Security guard, PI, cop, etc fits the bill. Or wedding planner, but that takes it out of the mystery genre. Once you set up the world you can have characters who start out as disabled city planners, or many other things, because the world is a fully functional one, even if it has a lot of openly unnatural types.

I was not bothered by Watson’s killing Moriarity, because Moriarity killed Holmes and had manipulated Ingrid into doing things she wouldn’t have done otherwise, had set up the situation with the twins and Shinwell, and generally was able to manipulate the dna of all of them. (I am a bit flummoxed by the cleverness with which they can genetically manipulate people, the delicacy and pointedness of it all, because it seems like magic). I’m pretty sure Holmes would have killed him too. It was logical. He isn’t someone you could lock up and keep safe, nor is he someone who will stop doing harm. Death was the only solution, the logical solution, the deductive solution. I enjoyed the Holmes thread in the show more than others, but I’m glad they ended this thread with the first season. I am in mind that Holmes surved Reichenbach Falls (against Doyle’s better judgement, perhaps) and that is a possible storyline going forward. I rather hope that a few other things show up from Watson and Holmes’ shared past. I hope they get better at plotting. Last episode when only one could be cured my first thought was ‘there is only one bed’, and that shouldn’t happen. I do enjoy this, I hope the streaming helps it survive it’s renewal timing. I think we all expected they would drag the moriarity stuff out, and the episode didn’t really have a cliffhanger (except for the Holmes box). They have been renewed, apparently.

As in Germany at one point jewish people, gay people were held up as the enemy. People scapegoated them. There was a hue and cry and others went about their business doing what they wanted. The immigrants were and are scapegoats. Yes, no doubt people bought into this scapegoating and blamed them for their problems. people probably thought that immigrants made them take fentanyl and took their jobs. But people were manipulated and it was dumb. Stupid. When someone says ‘look at that cloud’ do not let yourself be distracted. This is what it was. another scapegoat distraction? Trangender bathrooms. Kids wanting to change sex because it is cool. Absolutely people voted because of that. Still a distraction. Not a real issue. Meanwhile their freedoms and rights and safetynets are being dismantled.

Lol (rolls eyes)

Kathy Bate’s Matlock is a lawyer. Matt Murdock as well. ‘Busybody’ works, especially in small town cozies. Socialworker could work. Depends on plots, I suppose. Urban fantasy, psychic doctor. But PI and Police is comforting and familiar?

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-dementia-evidence-overwhelming-top-psychiatrist-1881247 from 3/24 Donald Trump Dementia Evidence 'Overwhelming,' Says Top Psychiatrist If he were to become president he would have to be immediately removed from office via the 25th Amendment as dangerously unable to fulfill the responsibilities of office," Dodes, who is also a distinguished fellow of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry, added, citing the 1967 mechanism that allows for a president to be removed due to unfitness.

I think we all would rather hang out with Marge and Lisa than with Homer and Bart….Or, at least, I would. MTM and Rhoda were good, and I loved Maude. I think I don’t watch the ones that do that? I watched Gilmore Girls, but I have trouble remembering very much about it. As opposed to,say, Buffy or Angel or Twin Peaks or Fringe. I guess it just slipped through the cracks of my alleged mind. I think I find it pleaasant to hang around the patter, but not too fond of the characters.