G+ Migration Blog

They're showing a super-spiffed up probably recut yet again version of Blade Runner at one of the local independent theaters this weekend. I hope I have the motivation to go see it. What's really important, though, is that they're showing Strange Brew at 11:30am tomorrow. Beauty, eh? Which I would go see, but am probably going to be doing something more productive at that hour. Such a hoser, eh? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with beer and jelly doughnuts in the Great White North.

Inspired by two of your posts, one music, the other about Congress. (The YouTube of the actual Beatles ones are all weird and wouldn't play, so have Annie Lenox.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8NK70cm-9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8NK70cm-9k

The first link is a summary article. The second is about the legislation itself. The thing that gets me is the list of groups opposing it. I really want to know why all those veterans groups and medical groups are against it. What the concerns are and what the evidence or reasoning supporting those concerns are. I know at least one overriding reason why the drug companies oppose it and am not sympathetic. The others, though, I really would like to understand. http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-proposition-61-prescription-drug-prices-20160915-snap-htmlstory.html https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_61,_Drug_Price_Standards_(2016) http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-proposition-61-prescription-drug-prices-20160915-snap-htmlstory.html

Heard about this on the radio. I haven't read the actual legislation, but it sounds like the pharmaceutical industry isn't happy about anything legislating against them. (I do not know what that picture is about, nice job google.) http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-sac-essential-politics-updates-ready-to-rumble-proponents-of-prop-61-1475090136-htmlstory.html http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-sac-essential-politics-updates-ready-to-rumble-proponents-of-prop-61-1475090136-htmlstory.html

I had never seen this, but they started showing it on a local station. If you're at all into the food show thing, this is spot on satire. Including the bit in the credits at the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzjR0yL4f0Y https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posh_Nosh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzjR0yL4f0Y

Maybe homeland security should be regulating washers. http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/28/news/samsung-cpsc-washing-machine-explosion-reports/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/28/news/samsung-cpsc-washing-machine-explosion-reports

Because a combination of yet more posts about the campaign and associated horrible people and the google doodle. I'm gonna presume none of the alt-right use ballpoint pens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_B%C3%ADr%C3%B3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_B%C3%ADr%C3%B3

What this here election needs is more nitrogen! Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger You may not know that there's a rich tradition of chemists writing, shall we say, rather bluntly about their trade. And one of the kings of it is Derek Lowe, a drug discovery chemist who writes a semi-regular blog titled "Things I Won't Work With," primarily about the research that people in other branches of chemistry do that makes him question their sanity. While it helps to know some chemistry to follow what's going on (that e.g., most of the molecules in your body use carbon for their superstructure, because nitrogen in the superstructure tends to want to get out of said superstructure rather quickly, which is to say "with an earth-shattering kaboom"), you don't really need to: "If you or I (’cause we’re sensible, right?) look at a well-known crater-maker like dinitropyrazolopyrazole, we’ll probably decide that it has pretty much all the nitrogens it needs,...

I can't believe anybody still gives this guy a forum, but it's certainly exactly what I expect from the general Trump universe. Gods help us if he wins. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/09/27/newt-gingrich-trump-won-debate-dont-believe-intellectual-yet-idiot-class.html http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/09/27/newt-gingrich-trump-won-debate-dont-believe-intellectual-yet-idiot-class.html

It's nice to know it's a worldwide problem. shakes head, walks away http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37482029 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37482029

Seems the type of leader who'd get along with Trump. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/world/americas/enrique-pena-nieto-commission-human-rights-investigate-rape.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/world/americas/enrique-pena-nieto-commission-human-rights-investigate-rape.html?_r=0

This article is old, but in talking about what has happened as states turned more and more Republican in their elections, it is making me wonder yet again why people keep voting for this or staying home, gerrymandering notwithstanding. Meanwhile, I have nightmares at the thought of what a Republican led Congress would do to the Supreme Court on top of what could happen if led by this particular Republican nominee for President. Essentially, it could abrogate the entire theory of checks and balances, because there would be none.   http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/08/19/one-party-system-what-total-republican-control-of-a-state-really-means/ http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/08/19/one-party-system-what-total-republican-control-of-a-state-really-means

Great. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-could-rig-the-2016-election-121548 http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-could-rig-the-2016-election-121548

History humor. Need the distraction. Mentioned offhand in an NPR interview, so I thought I'd look it up. Yep. #2. Legitimately read as do not adjust your bits in public. Lol. http://www.knowledgehouse.info/GeorgeWashingtonRulesofCivility.pdf http://www.knowledgehouse.info/GeorgeWashingtonRulesofCivility.pdf

Link excerpted from someone else's post:   ( I will HAUNT you ... The kale in your fridge will rot TWICE as fast ... I will spoil EVERY EPISODE of Game of Thrones! ... You can tell I'm a ghost and not a Trump supporter, right?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKuNveXwmwo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKuNveXwmwo

If you like that sort of thing ... https://dose.com/100-year-old-tango-theater-is-now-a-bookstore-and-its-spectacular-50c8b181b1df#.f5mhiegh4 https://dose.com/100-year-old-tango-theater-is-now-a-bookstore-and-its-spectacular-50c8b181b1df#.f5mhiegh4

Sigh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFe501SZkvQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFe501SZkvQ

Who's a puppy?! http://www.kare11.com/news/local/land-of-10000-stories/dog-becomes-legendary-for-daily-walks-to-town/304369559 http://www.kare11.com/news/local/land-of-10000-stories/dog-becomes-legendary-for-daily-walks-to-town/304369559

Is anybody else watching Drag Race All-Stars?

- locked - Hey, guess what? Most of my dad's ability to taste is still gone, but he actually almost tasted some strawberry jam, some lentils, some cilantro, and some vinegar over the last few days. This is huge for him. I hope it's not a tease and a measurable portion of his ability to taste comes back.

This is a ridiculous thing to be annoyed by, but I am not able to deal with seeing certain types of posts from someone who has other things they write that I like to read. They are obviously not included in this post, please respect that. I am very fond of reason and logic and facts, if you can find them and they bear a certain amount of testing and scrutiny. However, not to the exclusion of any awareness of context and sensitivity. Rhetoric is not a bludgeon that will magically remove the messy parts of thought and life, and it might be inconvenient, but feelings are a biologically wired in thing. Not to mention that this person is factually incorrect about their stated reasons for objecting to something. Here's a link if you want some fun background info: http://www.bustle.com/articles/184981-donald-trump-jr-ripped-off-this-feminist-mm-meme-from-2014 A) There was a great deal of criticism and arguing about the original m&m misogyny yesallwomen meme. Which was part of the larg...

Tiring but not bad weekend. Might post later.

That's no moon! http://patch.com/new-york/tarrytown/s/fvqre/harvest-moon-thats-not-a-supermoon-or-is-it-experts-disagree http://patch.com/new-york/tarrytown/s/fvqre/harvest-moon-thats-not-a-supermoon-or-is-it-experts-disagree

Very important, yup, as days named for things go. More importantly, it's about something cute, furry, and happy. Now when was the last time you could say that about the news? http://redpandanetwork.org/international-red-panda-day-2016/ http://redpandanetwork.org/international-red-panda-day-2016

Old article I just came across, totally an opinion piece, not some model of rhetorical excellence. I also don't appreciate that fact that it tries to both mention bigotry, and then dismiss it, because I also think that's poorly handled. However, every so often the issues of disenfranchisement and unemployment and economic damages get mentioned about what I'm guessing is a very good sized chunk of Trump supporters. If the people running the debates are any good, Trade (with a capital t) will be one of the topics. Whether or not we get a substantive discussion of it or not is up for grabs. Regretfully, it is much easier to rant about "those people" and what "they did to me", than dig into the complexities of how you balance benefitting the largest numbers of people the most in terms of jobs, wages, and futures. Plus, reality is that our country is in a place in the world that means politically and diplomatically it has to also consider that. Isolationism i...

Good night, sleep tight, don't let the polar bears bite. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/14/493893940/passing-research-ship-saves-weather-station-staff-from-polar-bear-siege http://larsonluvr.tumblr.com/post/52791492909/gary-larson http://larsonluvr.tumblr.com/post/52791492909/gary-larson

"For the love of Spock" - Went and saw. Had to go to this weird little, uh, I guess it's a theater? to see it. Had some interesting and audible audience members. For the tiny handful of you who might be concerned, here's your spoiler space. Although, I presume you already know this is about Spock, from "Star Trek", not the 1940's baby doctor dude. Plus there's already pretty spoiler filled reviews of it everywhere. Aaaanyway. Space the final frontier What? So it's an interesting movie if you like Star Trek at all; you do not need to be a die-hard, blueprint correcting fan. It's definitely got info about Leonard Nimoy and how this phenomenon took over his life and his family's, but it's also got a lot of humor and info on random craziness (that die-hard fans probably know all of, but would probably still be cool to see on screen). It's a little bit of a self-therapy project for Adam Nimoy, too, but that's ok. Because his father...

Yeah, it's concerning because of who could win the election. Yeah, you could mock them for "glue-gate". That's not why I'm linking this. I'm linking it because the first full paragraph contains one of those crazy long compound words in German. http://www.wsj.com/articles/sticky-situation-austria-cant-seal-presidential-election-until-it-fixes-envelope-flap-1473872988 http://www.wsj.com/articles/sticky-situation-austria-cant-seal-presidential-election-until-it-fixes-envelope-flap-1473872988

- tightly locked - I hate my brother SO much. Even if he wasn't prone to rages, even if his self-proto-therapy wasn't rainbow moonchild touchy feely crap, he is such a complete and total BRO. AUGH. With Mom being a wonderful little codependent helper. Jesus hopping monkey butts.

Somebody else's post led me to this. All I can say is that is scary, disturbing, and reminds me of so many ethnic and religious hatreds that are excused or fostered through violence and falsehood. (By which I mean that this report indicates this is so inflammatory that you can essentially say somebody had contact with beef and be allowed to kill them, even if there was no beef.) It's particularly concerning that the government may be tacitly/not so tacitly indulging in a religious/cultural war. I realize I have no personal approximation for what believers in the sacred cattle feel. Perhaps it's akin to some of the anti-abortion believers who really think you are killing a fully formed person by terminating a pregnancy. However, it's generally not ok to kill someone else as a response to that, and it's not legal, at least for now. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/09/12/493645849/india-s-war-on-biryani-mixes-caste-religion-cow-avenging-vigilantes http://www.np...

In the annals of gross understatement, this one's a doozy: “By today’s standards, they behaved very badly,” he said. Sounds like the ending of a modern fairy tale ... Once upon a time, at an academic institution far, far away, a tiny crystal of pure sucrose lodged in the eyes of influential scientists who loved money far too much ... P.S. By any time period's standards they behaved unethically. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html?action=click&contentCollection=Theater&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html?action=click&contentCollection=Theater&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

It occurs to me that Americans have an obsession with a hyper-masculine, macho, very physical image of leadership. I mean, I'm sure lots of places do, but it occurs to me that one of the difficulties in running for office as a woman is that we are super attached to binary gender norms informed by our own cultural mythos. Which means that things like intellect, thoughtfulness, deliberativeness, sympathy, empathy, etc. are all minimally regarded as essential to the task. It's like we're back many centuries, voting for the strongest, scariest warlord whose job is to stomp on people and let the politicians, diplomats, and scholars work all that out later. Forgetting, of course, that even warlords can be killed or get sick and die.

I knew it. The media is quoting the 50K+ number from the CDC for pneumonia deaths without any clarification or insight. You can look in those same sources and find that there's an incidence of 1,291 cases per 100,000 population over age 65, with 196 deaths per 100,000 over age 65. Of course, this is specifically for Streptococcal pneumonia, presumably culture confirmed if they can say what bacterium it is*, and the overall mortality rate from invasive pneumococcal disease, which is a specific thing, is 10% across all age groups. They have rates, too, but I think they are age-adjusted and those calculations always confuse me. The numbers sound better, though (37.0 incidence, 5.61 deaths). The point is, you can do responsible reporting with any of these, and probably other, numbers, but what the public, who doesn't know anything except the number you just quoted at them, hears and what they take from it is very different if you say "50,000" versus "5". *The r...

Offs, people (not you guys). The media has apparently decided that they, too, will swallow the propaganda about Sec'y Clinton's health. I mean, I know I have specific reasons for not having the same perspective as some people, but even the consulting tv doctors are all They should have told us! This is serious! Nonsense. You have absolutely no idea of how many times a sitting president may have had a headache, an upset stomach, a cold, walking pneumonia, etc. We've had a president vomit into the lap of a foreign prime minister because they had a stomach flu but were determined not to cancel any activities. (The same president - George HW Bush - was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and Graves' disease in office.) Clinton had surgery on his knee while in office; George W Bush had a follow-up colonoscopy for polyps while in office - both those things involved some anesthesia. In fact, Bush activated the 25th amendment, which meant Cheney was temporarily in charge. This w...

Kubo and the Two Strings - I'm sure this will get spoilery so I'll just say that I really liked it, although I can see quibbles arising. I don't think I paid attention to Laika being Portlandia? You might notice in this, though, so if you like noticing that sort of thing. Most of you are not music geeks? So I will say that is possibly the most bittersweet version of "While my guitar gently weeps" that I've heard. Considering that song, that's saying something. Ok Some Spoiler Space Just In Case They do credit the person who plays the shamisen throughout the movie, and as it's kind of one of the characters that's cool. Aside from the music, I would not take very small kids to this, there are bits that would be very scary. George Takei is cool about being self-referential briefly toward the beginning part of the film; it's quick, so you almost miss it. There's a lot of humor. There's also a giant flying centipede monster at the end (that...

- tightly locked - Good news, bad news. Good news: My mom apologized to me. Entirely in context and appropriately. Which is kind of wow. That's a surprising amount of insight coming from her after all this time. Credit where it is due. I very much appreciate it. Hope it's a trend. Bad news: It took all of just under 24 hours for my brother to behave inappropriately ragefully towards me. Whatever treatment he's getting ain't worked yet, yo. We're done. My parents are sad but understand, and I'm tired of making excuses for adults who can't adult. Not my job. Plus, it's never ok to treat people that way. I hope his treatment works; I hope he sticks with it, but I'm out. Lots of people have problems, but if you get to a place where you have to choose between your health and safety and someone else's health or need for support or whatever? No. Just, no. Meanwhile, he will be here until some time on Friday, away, back again Tuesday through Tuesday, gon...

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/09/02/492394717/fda-bans-19-chemicals-used-in-antibacterial-soaps http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/09/02/492394717/fda-bans-19-chemicals-used-in-antibacterial-soaps

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/30/491969011/u-n-health-officials-warn-gonorrhea-is-becoming-untreatable http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/30/491969011/u-n-health-officials-warn-gonorrhea-is-becoming-untreatable

- tightly locked - Excerpts from a conversation: After my mother threatened me with rewriting her will (such a threat from the last Vanderbilt heir - not), I pointed out that there were cogent reasons for not being present while my brother was. To wit, a history of multiple specific examples of unpredictable violence and violent threats directed at me. She responded to all except one with, "I forgot." So, ok, now that I had reminded her she remembered and calmed down and actually treated my concerns and reasons as real and valid. Oh, and acceptable. Gee, thanks, mom, for having your permission to not be a focus for irrational, uncontrolled violence and threatening behavior. Also, for having a clear view of which child you choose to protect, even in your brain, because it's just too hard for you emotionally to deal with reality. Yep. Carefully edited out the episodes of upsetting nasty behavior by one party, but all ready with the threats and criticism for the object of th...

I am home. I haz a sad. I am tremendously grateful that I have some of the most excellent friends to hang out with, ever. Thank you, Bethany Willick for much awesomeness. I'll always have Rumpuscon (t-shirts).

Even if I am not seeing any of you tonight, what am I having for dinner? My brain does not want to brain.

Things I am only just realizing. There is a serious time lag on catching up with the trendy train in some places. It's like a weird kind of culture shock.