The Mandelbear's Musings

Today I am thankful for...

• Linux Weekly News [LWN.net]
• Recovery (in progress). Also, plain dumb luck that it wasn't worse.
• My web host, DreamHost, which I can trust to handle the current PHP mess without my having to do anything much beyond checking DreamHost Status for reassurance. (OTOH it was a good excuse to do some upgrades and make sure all my sites have up-to-date authorized_keys files. And TIL how to find out the PHP version a WP site is using.)
• My to-DO loG file and Data-mining the Dog.

Some self-confidence would be helpful, but...

I guess it was a productive week, modulo some intensely bad moments and a lot still not done. On the good side, I got my US Federal income tax filed; I'd been waiting for our bookkeeper to finish our Dutch returns, but apparently it wasn't needed because HyperSpace Express didn't make any money. That, or it's still in the works, in which case I can file an amended return. I also, finally, posted The Total Solar Eclipse of 2026 on GoingSideways.blog. It had been mostly finished for several weeks; I'd gotten stuck at downloading the photos.

There are still some frustrating problem with the ActivityPub (Mastidon/Fediverse) plugin, I need to work on that this week.

I also had a GP appointment. It was frustrating because he was just barely fluent enough in English for us to get by; a lot of nuance probably got dropped. He ordered labs, but left some off that I think were needed; I tried to ask for them and probably should have insisted, but I'm bad at that. Getting there was frustrating, too, because (scooter)Gizmo kept stopping and needed its battery re-seated. When I got home -- and G retrieved the key -- it turned that it wasn't locked. (The key locks the battery but not the scooter itself.)

Getting to the clinic the next day was a lot more pleasant.

And I had a productive meeting with my financial advisor Thursday -- but also a LOT of frustration because somehow Zoom crashed in a weird way that locked up my keyboard but left the sound going, resulting in feedback when I tried to connect with (other laptop)Lilac. We went to phone, which worked, but phone. I hate phones, and can't be productive on them.

That was also a factor in making the GP appointment last week. And the whole thing sent me into a mental tailspin.

And on Friday I left the burner on under an empty T-Fal frying pan. Fortunately the coating does not seem to have taken any damage, but I charred my favorite wooden spoon, which I don't think will be salvagable.

On the gripping hand, I seem to have mostly recovered from Thursday's and Friday's ordeals, and my left hand and right shoulder seem to have recovered somewhat as well. And the new trackball (Kensington Orbit, with scroll ring) and mousepad (Starry Night) arrived on Wednesday.

Linkies:

• The Total Solar Eclipse of 2026 on GoingSideways.blog.
• [1990] Year Zero: when the World Wide Web was born — the Internet in 1990 | by Retro Tech Show | Medium first of (currently) 3 articles
• 'Wallace and Gromit,' 90% Alone - how Nick Park made A Grand Day Out
• And finally, Octopus Pounces on Lasers in Papahānaumokuākea -- shouldn't that be octoPUSS? (With a tip of the hat to ysabetwordsmith)

( Notes & links, as usual )

Today I am thankful for...

• My new pillow. Not perfect, but better than what I had. I think -- this is based on only one night with it.
• The World Wide Web. I don't think I've ever put the Web in a gratitude post before. Fish, meet water.
• My new-to-me refurbished Logitech Anywhere MX 2 mouse, which arrived a day or two ago from eBay to replace the one whose scroll wheel stopped working.
• Related, my pretty new Starry Night mouse pad. It's a bit smaller than my old one, so it fits better on my desk.
• My sling bag and (formerly Colleen's) scooter cape, both of which can be put on and taken off without having to move my right arm in ways that hurt my shoulder. NO thanks for whatever is wrong with the latter.

I would be more thankful for sleep if I was getting enough of it.

Today I am thankful for...

• My heating pad and rice bag. NO thanks at all for the pain in my neck and shoulder which makes them necessary.
• Compression gloves and socks. NO thanks for edema and trigger fingers.
• The life and works of Margaret Hamilton (RIP), arguably the first software engineer. She coined the term "software engineering". NO thanks for her death on Sept. 30, nor for my current, irrelevant, earworm (see Music:).
• Hope -- I'll take what I can get, but I could use a lot more of it right now. Universe, please take note.
• Coffee.
• Recycling.
• Mastodon.

Today I am thankful for...

• Good, or at least not worse, test results. I'm still anemic but the hematologist said it's nothing to worry about at this point.
• (Framework 12 laptop)Lilac.
• Good bread.
• Fried leftover rice. Also nuts roasted in the microwave oven.
• Fascinating etymological details. The Dutch word for eyeglasses is "bril", derived from beryl. And it's singular. The Dutch word for "microwave (as in oven)" is "magnetron".

Not a good week -- see yesterday's s4s post remembering Kathy Mar.

On the other hand, I seem to be regaining some mobility in my right shoulder, I got my COVID stab (here they call it a "coronaprik") Tuesday, and we picked up our new good-for-five-years ID cards on Thursday.

On the gripping hand, only four walks -- leaving the house tends to screw up my schedule -- and we had to get a new electric coffee grinder. And I acquired two deep new rabbit-holes on Tuesday. Doomed.

And speaking of doom, the US is still in the hands of a madman, religious fanatics, and evil trillionaires. "Evil" may be redundant in that sentence. And the ultimate horror: somebody has ported DOOM to SQL.

Ok, maybe that's not quite as horrible as DOOM running on nothing but regex find-and-replace. But the SQL version is a lot faster. You're welcome.

Linkies:

• American druid: how a 1960s campus prank became a serious lifestyle | Guardian
• the Nightmare Song from Iolanthe triggered by N taking the ferry between Hoek van Holland and Harwich. Replaced by Heaven-Con.
• Selena Ballerina and Abstruse Goose, the aforementioned rabbit-holes.
• This is going to be a problem: U.S. small biz can’t ship to the EU anymore.

( Notes & links; CW death Thurs. )

Today I am thankful for...

• DreamHost and Dreamwidth (not related, but both are very good).
• Git, SSH, Make, and Emacs. Also the rest of the GNU utilities.
• Linux. Also Mint, LMDE, and Debian.
• TeX, LaTeX, and Pandoc. Xmonad. Haskell, which is what Xmonad and Pandoc are written in, but to which I pay too little attention. I probably ought to learn Erlang.
• N and G. Our house. Our 5-year residence permit extension.
• Carleton College (I happened to have gotten an email from them yesterday with a pointer to an article in what is apparently a blog version of the alumni magazine.) The Arb.

Today I am thankful for...

• The Immigratie- en Naturalisatiedienst - IND -- the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service, for extending our temporary residence permits (which were only good for two years) for another five years.
• The Dutch–American Friendship Treaty (DAFT), which makes that possible by starting (or continuing) a business here.
• HyperSpace Express, the business in question, and N, whose Books are currently our most lucrative product line.
• Finally getting back into writing on a more frequent (if not more regular) basis. See also, Memoir: Homes and Bucket list item: Total Solar Eclipse here on DW, and Mind the Gap on GoingSideways.blog.
• WordPress.org. While I still prefer writing HTML by hand, WP makes it a lot easier to do the kind of flashy stuff that gets things read, and a lot easier for non-geeks to contribute.

Last Tuesday I had a dream about a house that reminded me somewhat of the house in Norwalk, Connecticut where I lived with my parents. And that suggested a topic for memoir posts, to which I will add the tag "homes". I'll save the Norwalk house for later; maybe the next post if I decide to continue chronologically. For now, I will go chronologically, and talk about the first two homes that I remember.

The first home I lived in was an apartment in Shanks Village, an old army barracks converted to student housing for veterans with families attending colleges and universities in the New York City area. Dad was at Columbia getting his PhD in Chemistry, in the same class as Isaac Asimov (whom I never had the opportunity to meet).

I only have a couple of memories from those days. Playing with tinker-toys with John R, the son of some family friends. Something about a sewing machine. When I was three Dad got a job at Perkin-Elmer and we moved to a flat in an old house in Ridgfield, Ct. that was owned by a couple of Scottish (IIRC) women who I knew as "Aunt Jean" and "Aunt Mag". They lived downstairs and we lived upstairs.

I only have one memory from that house -- falling down the stairs and bumping my head. One of the aunts gave me a bowl of tomato soup; I guess it was supposed to be comfort food. And maybe it was, but from that day to this I've hated cream of tomato soup, along with tomatoes in most other forms. I learned to like raw tomatoes only fairly recently, when Colleen introduced me to caprese salad.

It must have been shortly after that incident that we moved to the house in Norwalk where I lived until I went off to college.

To be continued...

The Mandelbear's Memoirs

Today I am thankful for...

• My family.
• Therapy putty and compression gloves. NO thanks for whatever is causing the persistent trigger fingers that make them necessary.
• Coffee.
• Emacs, especially grep-find, query-replace, next-error, and keyboard macros.

Today I am thankful for...

• timeanddate.com -- good for things like solstices, equinoxes, and eclipses.
• Replacement keyboards for my Thinkpad X230 still being available on eBay. Probably not for much longer, though.
• Coffee. Cheese, especially blue, but also babybel. Snack-size salami.
• Finding a closer place for blood tests. PSA tests. A good result on my PSA test.
• Compression gloves and socks. NO thanks for the conditions that make them helpful.
• As always, my family. Our remaining cats.

It didn't feel like a very productive week, but I got a few things done -- I'll take it. I finally finished the Total Solar Eclipse post (only two weeks late), and we launched the new, professionally-designed version of Naomi-Rivkis.com. There is still quite a lot of additional work that needs doing.

Only five walks last week, all of them short. But that's still better than the three short walks I took the week before. No music; this may be because my hands hurt. Or maybe I'm just lazy; that's more likely.

My body seems to be deteriorating, to say nothing of my brain. And people only a year older than me keep dying. I've been feeling somewhat mortal lately. In addition to feeling down on myself. But I'm not dead yet -- that's something, isn't it?

Linkies:

• mdlbear | Bucket list item: Total Solar Eclipse
• Project Gutenberg: "In which 'Winnie-the-Pooh' turns 100" - Mastodon and 'How a Bear Became a Book' celebrates the 100th year of 'Winnie-the-Pooh'
• The America We Still Carry in Our Hearts - the view from Europe.
• Dolly Parton (more links under Tuesday)
• In solarpunk cities of the future, tech follows nature’s lead | Aeon
• Some detailed advice about writing alt text.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Today I am thankful for...

• Not really caring whether I'm up to watch tonight's Partial Lunar Eclipse. I've lost count of how many total lunar eclipses I've seen over the years, and of how many partial solar eclipses. If you're in the US you'll get a great show, though; it'll be over 90% there.
• Still being able to find new keyboards for my X230 laptop on eBay.
• ...and while I'm waiting, my Thinkpad compact keyboard. Which also sees a lot of use with (my Framework 12)Lilac.
• Noticing that another of my bucket list items, the overnight ferry between Harwich and Hoek van Holland, was taken back in February. I need to think of more items.
• Cooler weather.

Today I am thankful for...

• Having seen a total solar eclipse. (Hopefully there will be a full post about it, but...)
• N and G, without whose help I couldn't have made that trip.
• Iberostar Selection Jardín del Sol Suites, for a very pleasant stay in Mallorca. NO thanks to Transavia and the PMI (Palma de Mallorca) airport, which did their best to make both ends of the trip miserable.
• The amazing astronomical coincidence that makes total solar eclipses such a magnificent spectacle on this planet, in this era.

On Thursday, August 6th (yesterday, as I write this), I held our dear pocket panther Bronx in my arms for the last time as he crossed the Rainbow Bridge, after a fierce battle with an illness that started as an ear infection and ended up as meningitis and encephalitis.

The first time I noticed that there was a problem was Tuesday July 21st; he had hidden under the bed instead of spending at least part of the night with me; the next morning he had trouble walking -- his hind legs kept going out from under him. He also had a runny nose; we thought maybe that was affecting his balance. We called AniCura Haaglanden in Rijswijk and got him an appointment for 4pm.

As we were getting ready to leave, he flew into a rage when the vet tried to give him one more shot (for nausea). I'd never seen him that angry. He had another appointment the following Friday, for an MRI and more bloodwork; we came home with an antibiotic -- he was going to need it for another six weeks -- and an appointment for the following Thursday.

He seemed almost himself Monday morning, but sometime in the afternoon he went into his carrier, which has been his safe place for the last few years, and turned away from food, even tube snack (laced with antibiotic) on my finger. I left a bowl in front of him, but it was untouched in the morning. They admitted him, and he was not happy about it. When we went in to visit him he bared his teeth and snarled.

Wednesday during visiting hours, he did the same, but seemed to calm down a little when I sang to him. Thursday he just lay there in his kennel and let us pet him. He hadn't eaten since Monday. They asked if we wanted to have them in a feeding tube, through a hole in his neck, but that would have meant more suffering, more rage, ... and he would have to come in for another surgery to drain his ear, and still might not make it that far. We couldn't put him through that.

A little while after we bought our house on Whidbey Island, N and I went to the local shelter in search of a cat. Usually we would go into a room with a few cats, and wait to see if one wanted us. This time was different, because there in a large cage were two recently-arrived kittens curled up together. One was black, and the other one was a tuxedo. We were told that they were three and two months old respectively; the older one was called Bronx, and the younger one was called Happy. N and I looked at each other and N, a former New Yorker, said "We'll have to change Happy's name to Brooklyn, you know." And that was that.

When we brought him home Bronx had a bit of a cold, which soon got worse instead of better. His stay in the animal hospital, just as he was starting to bond with us, gave him a lasting fear of being abandoned.

He was always an "up" cat, seeking out the highest places to hang out. On top of my wardrobe was one of his favorites. He didn't use the top of the cat tree as much, possibly because Ticia had beaten him to it the day it was installed. (The wardrobe required two leaps of about a meter; Ticia couldn't manage that, but she could still climb.) He would also nip occasionally, and was sometimes careless with his claws, but he was also cuddly and would let me carry him and sometimes sit on my lap. Not when I was trying to type something, though.

He and Ticia usually slept on my bed; after she passed there was no-one to chase him away from the coveted spot next to my face.

As the sedative started taking effect we slid him out on the towel he was curled up on; I gathered him into my arms and N and I stroked him and said our last farewells. All the fear and fury was gone, all the pain and confusion, leaving nothing but love to carry with him on his final journey. I think -- hope -- the last thing he heard me say was Ï will always love you.

Links:

• More details in the notes on last Sunday's post, as things happened.
• The Rainbow Bridge
• Bronx's page
• (Photos: moved to the web page; will be available next week)
• AniCura Haaglanden in Rijswijk
• Dierencrematorium Haaglanden/

Today I am thankful for...

• My family, especially for support, help, and hugs during a very difficult week.
• AniCura Haaglanden in Rijswijk, who took care of a very sick Bronx and helped ease his passage across the Rainbow Bridge.
• N, who was there and helped me through it.
• Compassion. Also, oddly enough, grief.
• The people person who will be taking care of our (remaining) cats next week.
• Physical therapy helping a little. I know, I have to give it more time. I HATE exercise, except for walking. The PT is supposed to be helping that, too. I am an impatient bear.
• Better than being an inpatient bear, I suppose.
• Gin.

It's been a long month this last week. Bronx had another vet appointment, this time with a specialist, including an MRI scan. (A CAT scan would have been more appropriate, but not as informative.) He has a severe ear infection, which we should have caught sooner, and will be on antibiotics for about the next 6-8 weeks. Fingers crossed.

We crush the pills and mix them with tube treats. For Reasons.

It's just barely possible that my lower back exercises are already making a difference. I'm not shuffling as much around the house. OTOH my right shoulder is still in bad shape; I don't think the PT is quite getting to the right spot.

Linkies: 15 Kitten Photos That Will Make You Feel as Warm and Fuzzy as the Tiny Felines Themselves. The World's Only Klein [bottle] Train Station Arnhem Centraal -- more links Tuesday.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Today I am thankful for...

• More vet care for Bronx. Referral to neurology, tomorrow morning.
• N. More than I have words to express.
• Slightly cooler weather today. I'll take what I can get.
• More PT exercises. I'd considered doing a PTuesday post, because that's when my appointments are, but ran short on round TUITs.
• Desti, who crossed the Rainbow Bridge five years ago today. I am grateful for the time we had together, and can only wish that it had been longer. There's a lot of that going around this month.

My cat, Bronx, is sick. Tuesday night I noticed that he hadn't eaten, and was having trouble walking. Wednesday I alerted N, and we called the local animal hospital, because our vet is on vacation until the end of the month. He also had what looked like a severe cold. He's now on a daily dose of metacam (meloxicam suspension). Hard to say whether his balance is improving, but at least he seems to have his appetite back.

But Thursday morning, a verse and chorus of Tom Paxton's song Ramblin' Boy [lyrics] got into my head, so I sang Bronx as much of it as could remember -- which wasn't much -- because he's my dear little boy and I'm worried about him.

Late one night in a jungle camp The weather it was cold and damp He got the chills and he got 'em bad They took the only friend I had So here's to you my Ramblin' Boy May all your ramblin' bring you joy So here's to you my Ramblin' Boy May all your ramblin' bring you joy

I hope he sticks around to ramble with me for many more years. I'm not ready to lose anyone else right now.

Not a bad week. Missed a day of walking due to time confusion. Two days if you don't count the roughly .6km going to and from PT. Got a new set of exercises - these are supposed to be three sets each, every other day. I had to buy 1kg dumbbells and a set of resistance bands.

On the other hand some things, mostly paperwork, got kicked down the street for another week. But on the gripping hand I got some things done! In particular, setting up WordPress for the new version of N's author site. (It won't be up until next week sometime. Or later. I'll let you know. Meanwhile consider buying her book.)

I also wrote about five years without Colleen, but since you're reading this I assume you've seen it.

Linkies: When Germany Built a Flying Train 125 Years Ago, a City Coalesced Beneath It. It Has Moved Royalty, Commuters and Tourists—and One Elephant—Ever Since Enthralling: An interactive introduction to the terrific experience of rendering Arabic typography and its technical debt Legendre Transform Explained: One Picture, Five Fields APOD: 2026 July 18 –Shadow and Rainbow - APOD is often beautiful, but this is one of their best.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Today I am thankful for...

• A fridge with a functioning ice maker. (The cold-water tap hasn't worked since before we moved in, but of the two I'd rather have ice.)
• Dishwasher-safe, double-walled, stainless steel drinking vessels (coffee mug and water tumbler).
• Physical Therapy. (Though it really falls more into the category of things I would be thankful for having done.)
• Still being able to walk. Way less time and distance than I would prefer, but it beats the alternative.
• lwn.net and DistroWatch.com (the latter subtitled "Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.") Part of my regular Thursday tab set.

Sunday, July 12, 2026, is the fifth anniversary (is that the right word?) of Colleen's death. (I'm starting this on the Friday before; don't know when it will be finished and I'll probably edit this out anyway.) We had been married fpr 45 years, and a couple for 50. Best friends for longer than that.

I'm torn between wanting to tell a story, and wanting to say what things are like for me now. (Of course, to do the latter, I'd have to figure out what I'm feeling, and that's always been difficult.) Maybe I'll start with a story. Sort of a story.

Back when we were living in San Jose, we used to love going for a drive. Sometimes it would be to get someplace -- a convention in LA or Portland, a restaurant in Monterey or Big Sur, a show or the zoo in San Francisco... Sometimes it was a late-night drive trying to get a baby to go to sleep. That worked with our older kid, but not the younger -- everything was way too exciting. Oops.

The longer drives had a sound track -- Oak, Ash, and Thorn; Stan Rogers, Dave Clement, The Grateful Dead, ... I'll save that for another time, maybe a Saturday.

But eventually Colleen told me what I should have figured out sooner: that she just liked sitting next to me when I wasn't distracted by a book or a computer. Sometimes we'd talk; sometimes we'd get into an argument, but mostly we'd just look at the scenery and quietly enjoy each other's company. Often we'd take SR9 over the hill to Santa Cruz, North on Highway 1, over 92 to the ridge where we could turn onto SR35 and go home. There were redwoods at both ends, the ocean in between, and a conveniently-located fruit and vegetable stand somewhere between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz. Sometimes we'd just turn around at Santa Cruz, or turn South and go to Gilroy or Monterey.

After we moved up to Seattle, we could circumnavigate Lake Washington, sometimes after a trip to our dentist in Bothell, and after moving to Whidbey go up over Deception Pass, South on I5, and back using the ferry from Mukilteo. It was always the journey that mattered, and the coming home.

I miss those drives.

I'm on a different journey these days. At least three journeys, actually: one literal and two metaphorical. And unlike my drives with Colleen, my immigration journey, my life journey, and my grief journey are both one-way. One foot in front of the other. "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow..." I often wake up with a quote or a bit of a song in my head. Sometimes I recite it to Bronx before I get out of bed, but I don't think he pays it much attention.

Recently, increasingly, the poem fragment I wake up with is the last verse and a half of Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium":

Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

That's going to be a Songs for Saturday post as well some day. I'm not too happy with my body these days. It works even less well than it ever did. I'm not too happy with my brain, either. At least they're both still working.

I don't have any illusions about immortality -- eternity scares me -- nor any kind of afterlife besides the one I imagine in my memorial posts, which you can find in my Rainbow Bridge pages. But when I'm gone, I'll live on with her there as long as our friends, our families, and the Internet Archive remember us. That will do.

And somewhere over the The Rainbow Bridge Colleen is sitting, surrounded by cats, and holding a tall glass of gin-and-tonic. She raises her glass in the general direction of Midgard and takes another sip.

Today I am thankful for...

• Compression gloves and socks, diclofenac topical gel, and associated equipment and exercises. Now if only I could see some actual results.
• Still being able to walk, at least a little. And having a physical therapist within easy walking distance.
• Finally getting one of my prescriptions un-screwed-up.
• A good, long video chat with my son on his birthday. NO thanks for crappy audio in Discord -- we had to switch to Zoom. Also no thanks for Zoom's UI, though most of my problems were probably due to unfamiliarity.
• Electric fans; the one on my desk in particular.
• The indoor/outdoor thermometer that G bought recently.

Today I am thankful for...

• Feeling cheerful yesterday morning. I can't explain it. I think the effect was still present this morning, but less.
• Bronx, who may have something to do with the above.
• My compression gloves, which seem to be helping with my trigger fingers, and definitely protect against accidental Bronx bites. He also likes to nuzzle them. He's a good nuzzler.
• Finally getting PT for my shoulders. Although I'm not sure the exercises are helping all that much yet.
• Plink, my travel guitar. NO thanks for my right shoulder, which won't let me lift my arm high enough to play Flame.

NO THANKS for my body's ongoing deterioration.

A mildly productive week for once; see the last two s4s posts. I have also gotten back to working on my memoir, also at N's suggestion. And I went for a walk every day, for the second week in a row.

I have also been somewhat busy with immigration stuff, having received a huge stack of forms to be printed out (done) and signed (today), except for the ones that need to go to our bookkeeper first.

On the gripping hand -- well, that's ironic, because one of the things I'm worried about is my hands, and in particular trigger fingers. I'm not sure it's RSI this time. Also pain in my shoulders and feet, and lower-back pain from walking (improving a little?) or standing. I have a PT appointment scheduled for Tuesday, but they say they'll only work on one thing per session. We'll see. I'm thinking the shoulders this time.

Last Sunday of course was Father's Day, and I heard from both of my kids, which made me happy for a while. But I'm worried sick about R -- neither he nor his partner can find work, and while I'm okay with paying their rent, I don't think I'll be able to pay their health insurance if Medicaid drops them. I HATE the current regime in the US.

Pundits are predicting a Democratic landslide in the midterms, but that assumes that the elections are actually fair, which the fascists are and will continue to be doing everything in their power to prevent. I'm pessimistic. Which is probably affecting my health as well.

Thursday Ticia came home, or at least her ashes did.

Links: The Best-Designed Town in the Netherlands (and therefore, the world) - YouTube, A Handy Guide to managing everyday activities with one hand (see Monday for more), National Heatwave Plan to be activated on 18 June | RIVM. Quite a few good links on Saturday; the best may be Dr.Seuss and the Call of Cthulhu - Adult ReadAlong.

This one is infuriating (see Saturday for title and quote), though maybe not enough for a separate post. It advocates team sports as a way of preventing depression and other mental health problems among teenagers. Correlation is not causation. I'm not sure I have the energy for the full rant today; I'll just mention the current moves to block trans kids, who are most at rist, And to say that I found middle school and high school PE particularly loathsome.

Have a good week, and stay safe in the heat. Maybe by next year the AMOC will have shut down and we'll have an ice age.

( Notes & links, as usual )