Taomeow

This your dream, not its, AI turns into its dream of smart nanodust

CMM

Another lawyer joke -- almost posted it in the "dry humor is gone" thread but then decided it's not dry enough for that, since it involves drinks. Which are, you know, wet. So these two lawyers walk in a cafe, order drinks and take their own sandwiches out of their briefcases. The waiter tells them, sorry guys, the policy here is, we don't allow customers to eat their own food at our tables. The lawyers look at each other, nod, and swap sandwiches.

Yup, I second that, though I never liked milk in my coffee -- but then those Bulletproof guys who advocate putting butter in coffee got me to try it and there was no going back. I put a generous half teaspoon in my cup of (those who know me know) strong, freshly ground every morning out of medium or light roasted beans, cezve/ibrik made (starting with cold water and adding 1 t sugar per 3 t coffee -- no sugar added as an afterthought, it's part of the brew) Armenian delight. I usually add a teaspoon of cognac as a final touch -- more is not needed and is in fact counterproductive, it's added for doing something magical to the flavor, not for turning it into Irish coffee. It's optional of course but I opt for this every morning. Why subtract from perfection? And I always drink a glass of water with my coffee, sip for sip. (I wrote why in that coffee thread of mine I mentioned earlier.)

Yes, the amounts of chemicals may be low enough to not be mentioned per some standards or other, and the standards may be somewhat sketchy (e.g. many American foods don't come close to meeting the European ones). What someone mentioned above regarding "Swiss Water Process" may be better, but I would have to have been there seen that. E.g. what kind of water is being used, and what amount of chemicals therein still meets the standards for it being classified as "water" rather than "solvent." I dunno. Coffee itself, not just/necessarily decaf, is a fairly robust peristalsis stimulant, so needing to go after the first morning cup is pretty normal for people with no oversensitivity to caffeine, IBS, or any number of problems with the GI tract along the lines of a tendency toward loose bowels. It is an excellent preventive/curative for constipation for many, so if the effect is within this normal range, it's rather beneficial. People with high stomach acidity may be getting too much of the good thing though, while people with low stomach acidity (a far more prevalent condition) might get a digestive boost from drinking coffee. I'm guessing if the effects are excessive in the case of decaf, just keep it on hand as a laxative for when/if you ever need it. See if you have the same effects with regular coffee, and if you don't, just (coffee propaganda self-cenzored).

The cheapest and most widely used method to extract caffeine from coffee used to be treating it with benzene, a generous portion of which remained in the final product. The current most widely used method is to treat it with methylene chloride (used in paint removers) and ethyl acetate (used in glue and nail polish removers). These have vast adverse effects on the human body. (I for one not only never drink decaf but never use nail polish either because those chemicals are hormone disruptors -- and, being small invasive molecules, are absorbed into the bloodstream even through the fingernails -- ten seconds after application.) That's one part of the story. The other part is, coffee the real thing is an extremely finely balanced herbal (sic) medicine all of whose thousands of components work best synergistically. A proper (sic) cup of coffee is not "caffeine" you get from the caffeine tablet, anymore than you can play music by continuously hitting just one loud note -- the loudest -- and call it a Mozart symphony. For more information on the subject of why it's a bad idea to strip coffee of caffeine and consume whatever remains (even if you don't count the chemicals added) you may want to check out the thread titled "TaoMeow on coffee" (with this spelling of my name used by Thelearner who started that thread, a long time ago) if you can find it. If you can't, AMA.

It is known that cats are masters of social distancing -- unlike humans. They tolerate isolation well, but are actually extremely social beings, and in social situations they are infinitely flexible (actually they are flexible in all situations unless their endocrine health has been compromised by all the things humans do to their pets that animals themselves don't do to themselves). I observed scened of this nature everywhere where there's free-roaming cats. They want to stick together but unless they're particularly close (mother and kittens, siblings who get along, best friends or more than friends), they don't stick together too tightly. People often socialize as though personal space is going out of fashion, and not to express intimacy at that (which with strangers is not warranted at all) but to invade -- to make more of oneself in space and less of the other. Cats, unless they're intimate for one of the above reasons, invade each other's space only when they mean to fight. (Of course I'm talking about cats in cat environments, not cats in human environments, that's a different animal.)

Pummeling the shore, the storm scatters fishermen. The crab takes a nap.

Not yet. Working up my courage.

The average life expectancy in Manchester in the 1850s--1880s was 17. We are usually officially informed that this kind of numbers are the result of high mortality in general and infant mortality in particular due to the absence of all the blessings of modern medicine. This was not the case. The main category that contributed to the statistics were children 9-12 years of age. They were destroyed by hard labor, in particular they were forced to carry heavy weights in the cotton processing industries, loaded day in and day out way beyond what a human child can endure without breaking. Malnutrition and pollution played their part as well. The second category that contributed to the statistics were women, also put to work carrying heavy weights. (Taken from the book "The Dark Defile: Britain's Catastrophic Invasion of Afghanistan, 1838-1842," by Diana Preston)

Here's an excerpt from my message in a private exchange on the subject (of TDB retreat, not mind-bending beverages): I don't know how much power of organizing stuff I have -- brainstorming, yes, definitely ready for that. Off the top of my head, I would perhaps want to see something similar to the last gathering of like-minded individuals (around a different thing altogether) I was part of some ten months ago. A fairly large group -- perhaps about 60 adults and a sprinkling of children -- rented camping grounds in the pine forest in Cuyamaca Mountains area. Some shared cabins available there (which were inexpensive, very basic), others pitched tents, and we spent three days there according to a program that involved planned performances, spontaneous performances, interacting and intermingling, sharing meals (most food was prepared in advance at home and potlucked, some was cooked on premises on an outdoor wood-burning stove -- including a huge cauldron of killer Uzbek pilaf which two volunteers invested hours into turning into a masterpiece), not abstaining from alcohol either, hiking in the woods, having lots of fun around the fire pit at night, stuff like that. I loved that place, but it might be easier to gather people somewhere on level ground -- the ride into the mountains was a bit of a challenge, at least for me -- and then finding the exact spot, ditto (no phone reception no GPS yada yada, and me and my party arrived the night before and ran out of daylight before we knew where we were, stuff like that). In any event, I do believe this conversation might lead to some nice outcome if we ever get out of the freakin' plague...

Already happened... Nature ignored in this thread, mental constructs rule.* ____________________ * "Haiku poems are typically about nature and usually about a specific season. Writing a haiku requires effort." Even Google knows that. Let's make an effort, shall we? Already happened. Snails left my patio plants looking like green lace.

I had to look up the recipe and it's positively scary. Where I come from it is one of the sacred beliefs that you mix beer with hard liquor only if your goal is to self-administer a lobotomy.

Ah, sorry about that. Good thing the camel didn't bite you though, I'm told it's even worse. I rode a camel once, but he behaved, and I enjoyed the ride very much. Made me think of the camel's nickname, "the ship of the desert" -- it does feel as though you are being rocked on the waves, but with no danger of getting seasick. The cocktail Camel Saliva is whipped with 1 part vodka, 1 part champagne, 1 part heavy cream.

Just put this one on my Kindle And this one: Edogawa Rampo is a pen name derived from the Japanese way to say Edgar Allan Poe.

Do tell. I know a few exotic drinks too, but not this one. Camel Saliva is a favorite.

So far, to my knowledge, there's never been a confirmed case where antibodies would still be going strong 4 months after the initial infection. They tend to disappear within 2-3 months or sooner, like with most other coronaviruses (for which the longest lived antibody mediated immune response may persist for several months.) This doesn't actually mean that there can be no long term immunity, but the specific antibody based kind seems unlikely at this point. Non-specific adaptive immunity vastly relies on T-cells, but since this virus has shown a robust ability to infect and kill them, it is not clear whether they can be relied on either unless there's a vast surplus where they come from (e.g. in children, whose thymus is still very active, the younger they are the more so). Our best hope in terms of immunity is a bunch of unknown, overlooked, undiscovered or ignored immune mechanisms, which do seem to be working for some people, only no one actually knows exactly what they are. If your test comes back positive for antibodies, please don't drop your guard.

I've spoken in my Batshit threads about it being impossible to assess the death toll of a pandemic while it's ongoing. Historically, it has never been possible, and not just in the course of a pandemic but years, decades, centuries and even millennia after the fact the figures arrived at in the course of various investigations sometimes differ by orders of magnitude. It's not just the direct impact of the disease that takes its toll on the populations but all the cumulative disruption it entails, its long tail not only spanning millennia but changing the world it has swept through permanently. Some historians of the Antonine plague, e.g. (165 AD--180 AD), which is likely to have been a combination of two strains of smallpox imported from China (and, as molecular biology was to discover nearly two thousand years later, may have changed the immune system of the survivors in a way that allowed a new disease, measles, to evolve and begin its assault on the human population a thousand years after the fact), believe that the ancient world never recovered from the blow. Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditations that even the pestilence around him was less deadly than falsehood, evil behavior and lack of true understanding. Of the people I know personally or indirectly (i.e. friend or relative of someone I know personally), seven died since the beginning of the year, and in every case but one they were neither old nor, prior to the fact, at a particular risk of dying from anything this year. Two suffered a catastrophic aneurism rupture. It is known by now that covid can cause multiple blood clots, including in mild cases, that may result in embolisms, strokes and all kinds of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events. However, neither one was registered as a covid death. Two more died of cancer -- the only old man among them, who registered as dying "with" rather than "from" covid since he did have (and beaten) lung cancer before contracting covid; and a man who had undergone chemo for (also) lung cancer a year before. One, who used to be a close friend, died of causes unknown to me. What I do know is that in the prior couple of years he suffered through a tremendous amount of stress, his whole life got turned upside down -- yet I knew him as a very sturdy guy both psychologically and physically, and exceptionally knowledgeable about the ways of health. One suddenly (within days) developed symptoms that led to the diagnosis of an inoperable brain tumor. One suffered a lethal heart attack -- at 27, with no prior history of heart disease. I wonder if anyone not directly affected by the pandemic has noticed a sudden increase of "death of all causes" in their human environment. If you care to share your stories (regardless of whether it's a "yes, same here" or "no, nothing of the kind"), please contribute. I'm trying to integrate the information from all kinds of sources.

You are absolutely correct in your "predatory" assessment, unfortunately. As for the system of insurance, the predatory process is actually coordinated with it at the highest level of corporate decision-making. The owners of medical insurance business and the owners of pharma companies and hospitals sit on the same boards of directors and plan their business activities together as one interconnected unit. Often it's also the same individuals who own that coin which merely has two sides to show but is the same coin. About 10% of these activities involve the wealthiest doctors, the only ones with a say in how medicine will be executed. The remaining 90% are taught accordingly, policed efficiently enough and compensated generously enough to make sure they will neither rock the boat nor interfere with its course. Aldous, incidentally, was a practitioner of the Bates method of eyesight improvement and has been maligned for this by people demanding that a natural method of healing which does not involve anyone buying any drugs or surgeries be always disregarded as quackery for all purposes in all circumstances. They were bent on "proving" that he never really improved his eyesight and was faking it for 25 years, no less. Well, as someone who dedicated the early to mid-90s to practicing this method, I could tell them that not only does it work if practiced correctly and diligently but it can open a whole lot of other kinds of vision (and lead to all the stranger things, as it did Huxley and as it did me too). But it can also reveal something that is not part of our current medical paradigm: namely, that there's no one kind of even physical eyesight for someone who has mastered some control, and it may not change from constantly very poor to constantly perfect, but it can start going over that spectrum and closer and closer to its good-better-best part instead of being stuck at the worst possible setting at all times for all purposes. Oh, and with easier-to-fix things like low diopter myopia or presbyopia, it can indeed fix it permanently. But it demands work from the individual, and we've been conditioned to take all our problems to the doctor-knows-best for solutions, for someone else to fix them. Which of course this someone else who knows best never does because that's not what the business model could possibly sustain.

Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left. -- Aldous Huxley

It goes without saying that every plan is dew on bamboo leaves. -- Dazai Osamu

Visual heckling.

I know a Jewish joke to that effect. A poor guy from a little village comes to the rabbi and tells him, god has forsaken me! In my house, I only have one room where we all live -- me, my wife, our four kids and my elderly parents, we're all cramped into an impossibly tight space and there's never any peace and quiet, not for a second! And now my in-laws have lost their home and have moved in with us! Can you help? The rabbi says, do you have any barn animals? Yes, a couple of goats, a dozen chickens, a milk cow... Take the goats in to live in that room with you. What?! Do it, you'll see that god hasn't forsaken you. A week later the same guy comes to the rabbi and says, with the goats in the house it's even worse! No room at all for anyone, and it's a madhouse! What should I do? The rabbi says, take in all the chickens! A week later: Take in the cow! End of the month, the poor man comes again, weeping so hard he can't get the words out. The rabbi says, Kick out all the animals immediately!! And a week later the guy comes again, happy and smiling, bringing some eggs and some homemade butter as a gift of gratitude. You were right! God has not forsaken me! My house is so spacious now, so calm and peaceful! Thank you!!