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royable

royable's Journal
royable's Journal
April 7, 2022

I've been cooking all my life, main dishes, sides, desserts...

I've never seen a prep time that came close to how long it takes me. Usually at least one and a half to two times as long.

I don't think, though, that prep time is meant to include baking time. It's supposed to be the time to mix ingredients and get the pan into the oven.

Prep time doesn't include realizing your sugar jar is almost empty so you need to empty another bag of sugar into it, or rummaging through your spice cupboard and the overflow spice cupboard for the strange spice you haven't used in a recipe in four years, or replacing a fuse after running your hand mixer and microwave at the same time blows it out.

April 1, 2022

Just because you figured out that the 2nd through 5th letters are "ound"

Doesn’t mean you can only try words that have those letters in those locations. If h b f and r are candidates, think of words that use 2 or 3 of those letters so as to rule the letters in or out. (Or, if it were to exist, which it doesn’t, a word with all four of the letters.) I don’t know it it’s in the wordle dictionary of allowed words but you could try “bragh” which uses three of the letters. Or try “abhor” which also uses 3 of the 4. Maybe you find yourself in a situation where you can only find a real word that uses two of the four. So use that. You don’t have to only pick words with O as the 2nd letter, u as the 3rd letter and so on.
As an example for today’s wordle I started with a word with three vowels and two common constants. The first letter, which was a consonant, was correctly positioned and colored green. Two vowels were both orange—letters in the solution but not in the correct position. For my 2nd try I used a word with all different letters but it contained a Y and the 4h vowel. The vowel turned green and one of the consonants turned orange. So now I know all five correct letters and the correct positions for two of them. And there’s only one word to try that meets those requirements—the solution. Yes, I was a bit lucky in my guesses but the same process can be applied if the first one or two guesses aren’t so lucky. Just don’t repeat letters in your tries if you don’t have to and you can test more candidate letters in the tries you have available.

February 15, 2022

True meta is when you get pop-ups telling you

how many pop-ups telling you how many pop-ups have been blocked have been blocked.

I don't know how anyone dares to use a laptop in a presentation any more, what with any number of popups that could appear at any time. [It's been 30 days since your last order of Fungus-B-Gone! Do you want to purchase now?] I guess you could disconnect the computer from the Internet but that wouldn't stop the popups on your computer related to internal timing, or warning you that you're not connected to the Internet.

January 15, 2022

Here's a thought experiment for you, wnylib.

Imagine a population where for every 1 person unvaccinated against COVID, 10 are vaccinated. Among the unvaccinated, 10 per some denominator, say 100,000, become ill with COVID and have to go to the hospital. Among the vaccinated, only 1 per 100,000 become ill and have to go to the hospital. That would result in the same number of unvaccinated and vaccinated in the hospital due to COVID. But if you're vaccinated, you only have 1/10 the chance of ending up in the hospital as an unvaccinated person.

In the real world, the fractions, percentages, and ratios are different, but it's the same sort of effect at work. A low rate in a large population can appear to balance a high rate in a small population.

Now, imagine if none of the population were vaccinated. The hospitals would be horribly overwhelmed (beyond what they already are). Vaccinations have many beneficial effects for an individual, for cutting down on the spread of disease, and also for keeping hospitals from being devastated.

January 15, 2022

Watching a minute of Hannity makes my stomach churn.

If I were the man being interviewed, every time I was rudely interrupted, I'd instantly stop speaking and hold up a sign that read something like, "I'm the expert here. Shut up and let me speak, you idiot."

January 9, 2022

It's one thing to see the COVID infection rate graph for my county turn into a vertical wall

in the past week, and it's quite another to physically experience just why that is happening.

I wear an N95 mask whenever I'm around anyone outside my little bubble. I don't go to any big events or indoor events. I go to two grocery stores about once a week or a hardware store and a handful of other such places every few weeks. At these stores, the staff is uniformly masked, and most of the shoppers are masked, with an uptick in masking as the local infection rate has risen since August. Customers in those stores keep a respectful distance from me, even the unmasked ones, and I from them. Why, I wondered, is the infection rate in my county more than doubling in the past week? Last night I got a glimpse of why.

On a whim, I decided to do something I very, very rarely do, which is to order take-out meals for us from a very, very popular local chicken fast food restaurant. I ordered online, and was given a time to arrive to pick up my order. I go to the restaurant and the inside is absolutely packed with people of all ages, but mostly younger, college age kids. Almost no one has a mask on, and those few who are wearing a mask have it under their nose, or under their chin, and if under the nose they still pull it down to expose their mouth when they talk to the person next to them. People are milling around waiting to order, jamming up against the cashier's counter, pushing by me ignoring my personal space, crowding together to pick up their orders at the counter, squeezed around the drink dispenser and the condiments and the napkins and the cup lids and straws, talking loudly and yelling and acting silly and behaving as if all our COVID precautionary behaviors of the past two years have not imprinted on them in the slightest. Is this what it will look like in a couple months in Florida spring break bars, I wondered.

The staff behind the counter were acting similarly careless, though I had more pity on them since their work area was so cramped. But still, among them, there were wearing masks inappropriately, under the nose and under the chin, or not at all. They were jammed against each other filling orders and passing orders out the drive-through window (which always has a 30 minute line of waiting cars, which is why I hadn't used it). I squeezed into a corner until I figured out that my pick-up order was waiting for me on a shelf behind me and then I got out of there as fast as I could. From what I could see, not a single other person of the dozens and dozens there were taking any precautions beyond the masks worn apparently for show as if they were a postmodern fashion statement.

I realized after I got home with the food and we ate that I felt very shaken, very disturbed. I felt like I was seeing a crowd playing Russian roulette, not just with themselves but with all of us, and with me. The infection rate in my county has jumped faster than it ever has since the start of the pandemic. On Christmas the rate was 33 per 100K, on Dec 31 it was 47, and on Jan 7 it was 100.

This is why we can't have good things.

January 5, 2022

Sorry, not _quite_ true.

You said, "Which honestly, is very unlike any other vaccines we've ever had. Polio, smallpox, and the like completely prevented the disease."

Looking up smallpox and polio vaccination prevention percentages at the CDC...

https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/vaccine-basics/index.html
"Historically, the vaccine has been effective in preventing smallpox infection in 95% of those vaccinated."
Boosters were recommended after five years.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/effectiveness-duration-protection.html
"Two doses of inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) are 90% effective or more against polio; three doses are 99% to 100% effective."
And so they recommended FOUR doses.

Perhaps there are vaccines among "the like" that do give 100% immunity with one dose; I don't know about that.

November 29, 2021

How would a mammoth tusk get 200 miles offshore?

A mammoth stuck on an ice floe? Live mammoth caught in a riptide current or washed off shore from a tsunami, or a dead mammoth body washed down a river, and carried out to sea? Tusk clenched in the teeth of a shark as a keepsake? Sharknado? Ancient astronauts? Giant fusion-powered albatrosses? The mind reels.

November 11, 2021

Lack of compliance, the non-brain-damaged warned,

"could result in labor challenges and high levels of illness from COVID-19. "Some employees could opt to die or be permanently disabled, which "could cause significant business disruptions, and could adversely impact service performance and result in lower mail volume and revenue."

Putting the foot in the other shoe and all that....

November 7, 2021

I keep thinking about how someone posted on DU few days ago about a kid asking about original sin

Something to the effect of, "They told me in Sunday School that I was born with original sin. Why does God hate me? Why am I bad?" And all these Christian white parents don't give a second thought to their li'l dahlinks being taught to hate themselves because they're born sinners. Someone should start a movement to protest the teaching of Critical Original Sin Theory in our religious schools. Think of the COST to our tiny tyke's delicate psyches! Think of how their thinking has been warped and damaged by these insidious teachings and those who promote them!

Sort of a twisted, turn-the-tables-on-them approach. See how THEY like it.

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