bittertwee

[bittertwee]

One of the greatest sentences in all of journalism is buried in a WaPo style piece on how online dating sucks and is getting worse

[bittertwee]

Hey posting 3 times in the last year just got me a "Top Posters Club" badge!

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Unfair

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Lost in translation

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Today in Real Estate listings: Looks like someone got a wee bit carried away with that pandemic TP hoarding. It's over a year since peak hoarding; the mind boggles at what this room looked like in April 2020.

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🚨🚨🚨

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100% Kombucha Girl reaction while reading this

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I was watching a youtube video on what appears to be a Russian state TV archive, and noticed the archive logo (left) looks a lot like the short lived (for obvious reasons) Trump Pence logo from 2016. Hmmm!! Coincidence?

[bittertwee]

During this past year I've gotten in the habit of going to the grocery store right before it closes, because there are fewer people so it's safer and quicker. Usually I'm in and out without incident. Tonight I ended up there 15 minutes before closing, and in that 15 minutes: a woman with some teeth missing came up to me and yelled I WANNA GO DANCIN', HOW ABOUT YOU?; a guy kept bugging me at the dairy case about where to find coconut milk "Because that's what she uses to make that drink, you know, that drink" (I was like "A pina colada?" "Yes!" We never found the coconut milk, nor did I ever learn who "she" was); AND a guy wearing a fedora and a blue plastic tarp as a cape was riding a rental bike up and down the aisles with about 6 stuffed Target bags on the handle bars. Then the shopping-cart guy who's kind of off and usually shouts at customers about how much he hates his job came up to get my cart in the parking lot, and was like "It's a full moon! That's why everyone's crazy tonight!". I looked at the moon and it actually wasn't full, but he insisted it would be once the clouds cleared.

Bottom line: I think I might start going to the store a bit earlier in the future.

[bittertwee]

Current status: celebrating my 2 (vax) plus 2 (weeks) by taking the T into Boston for the first time since last summer to get this mess of hair cut off! Oh T, I never realized how much I missed that godawful screech as you round a corner. Nature is healing, etc

[bittertwee]

The nurses at the vaccine clinic I went to today were super nice.. clearly their priority was to make sure everyone felt safe and reassured, as opposed to moving masses of people through quickly. They took the time to talk with me both before and after the shot (which I barely felt) because I think they could tell I was panicky (which I kind of was! I was in a gymnasium full of people being injected with something for which the long term side-effects are entirely unknown! How is that not a bit unsettling?). When I said I'd get going so they could get shots to more people, they were like "You're not holding us up! Every person is important!"

So I don't mean to be disparaging at all when I mention that I then asked them, because I've been curious, which cells the vaccine instructs to make the spike protein. Like, is it all my cells? Just the ones in my arm? And they were like "I don't understand". So I was like "You know, how the mRNA tells your cells to make the spike protein, so your immune system can recognize it and fight it.. I was just wondering what cells are making the spike protein?". And they were like "I'm not sure what a spike protein is?" So I was like "It's the spike on the virus", but then just dropped it, because they clearly had no idea what I was talking about. Then they went on about how, no, what actually is happening is the vaccine is boosting your body's immune system, etc. And I was honestly shocked that I was apparently completely wrong in my understanding of the vaccine.

Until I sat in the waiting area and a 2 second google showed that I was right. And the answer to my question, as far as I can tell, is that it's the body's immune cells that are making the spike. And then other immune cells fight the spikes until they're all gone. What fun! Some good sources are here and here.

So yeah, it just seemed odd to me that the nurses didn't know any of this?

[bittertwee]

Shot #1 in 17 minutes! Still haven’t decided what to wear!

[bittertwee]

Today in Real Estate photos:

“If you keep acting up, I’m putting you in time out.. in the DEER ROOM”

[punk-chicken-radio]

iggy pop & kate pierson - candy

-ax and TOS

[3dprintmeafucktogive]

[bittertwee]

Someone Should Pay for Your Pain by Franz Nicolay

Starting at the midlife crisis of an early-aughts indie rock never-was, Franz Nicolay delivers a tight-fisted gut punch of a novel, weaving a road-weary world with a lyricist’s skill for evocation, emotion, and economy. A requiem for the non-glamour of every minor scene that once, briefly, felt enormous, and an unflinching and finely rendered vision of old anthems clashing with new ideals, Someone Should Pay for Your Pain is a story of an “Xennial” reckoning unto redemption, which fans of Nicolay’s band, the Hold Steady, will appreciate, and which will leave anyone who reads it brimming with ragged hope. A knockout fiction debut from a longtime troubadour. —Alex Houston, the Seminary Co-op

Posting this book review mainly to share my horror that we’re so far along in this century that an “early-aughts indie rock”er could be facing a midlife crisis, and also my additional horror at the term “Xennial”, but.. That being said, this book honestly looks interesting.

[orangerful]

My Mom surprised me with some awesome homemade birthday presents.

[bittertwee]

These are adorable! All the details! Those little puppets!