ischade @ischade@mastodon.technology

stay safe out there, peeps. :(

aaaa

"The pandemic of 1957-58 ultimately caused 1.1 million deaths worldwide, and it follows the 1918 crisis as the second-most severe influenza outbreak in U.S. history. Some 20 million Americans were infected, and 116,000 died." - June 2020

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/united-states-vaccine-1957-flu-pandemic-180974906/

In comparison, 30 Nov 2020:
US covid deaths, at least:
267,000
US infections, at least:
13,521,000
world covid deaths, at least:
1,466,000
world covid infections, at least:
63.2 million
(Washington Post)

RIP, Ben Bova. my guess is a lot of people would know him for THX-1138. apparently I know him mostly from Omni, and as a person authors I read looked up to.

https://www.tor.com/2020/11/30/legendary-science-fiction-author-ben-bova-has-passed-at-the-age-of-88/

today's belated fluent-forever sale is $10 USD for 3 months.

https://fluent-forever.com/app/cyber-monday.html

S7 has been particularly galling. bad "psychology" and bad medicine.
like any of the episodes where they're trying to help people deal with their mental health issues have been mostly terrible.
like, a couple seeds of things in there. but there's so much bad stuff thrown in, like, no. even in the 90s there were medical people who knew better than this tripe. they needed to get some medical consultants and listen to them.
some of this is actively harmful.
humph.

in the words of Sigorney Weaver as Gwen DeMarco in Galaxyquest, "This episode was badly written!"
...except it's been most of the series for me. the writing is too inconsistent.
I'll give them props for is the Civil Rights issues & some other social justice issues they went after more directly than other comparable shows I've seen. that's nice.
I've enjoyed some of the episodes, they've been fun.
but if this is the best the Star Trek franchise has ever created, eh.

sorry for the late post, I haven't been online much today.
anyway, $16.18 USD for 6 months. I'm guessing it's access to 1 of 9 languages.
https://fluent-forever.com/app/black-friday-deal.html

*harmonica solo*

(farscape reference. waiting on work things. no worries, we're all fine here.)

guildmate has posted a video of their cat begging for her daily shower, and it's adorable.

Extremely Polite Hummingbird was also around today. normally it would've bailed on the area by now. the hummingbirds really don't seem to like it here once it starts getting nippy. I can't blame them, it probably gets too cold for them to sleep through the night, even with their slowed nighttime metabolism.

I didn't see the deer today, but judging by the amount of car horn beeping, they were in the area for a while.
I actually saw a bird using the birdbath today, which is a first. I think it's been too deep for them to feel comfortable with. I'll stop keeping it so full and see if that helps.
I even saw one of the late August/early September lizard hatchlings. I'm surprised at how large it's gotten so quickly. I'm also surprised it was out & about. It's nippy here these days.

...and those are just the things they're willing to admit to doing.
eventually they got so mortified about the things they were doing, they gave up on ambien, and went back to being sleep deprived.
(the long term fix for their insomnia was convoluted. they're doing better now at least.)

in retrospect I wonder if they were on ambien. a different friend of mine was taking ambien for a while, and wow did they do some weird shit while they were on it.
the friend would wake up in the morning and wouldn't be able to find things they needed b/c apparently they'd re-arranged stuff during the night.
they also bought a lot of those useless weird things you see on the late-night shopping channels.