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ghostoffuffle  ·  1467 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski COVID-19 Round-Up #1

This is exactly what my wife heard from her old work cohort. This feels like a waking nightmare.

We're not yet out of surgical masks or respirators, but with conservative use we'll still be out by next week, just before the shit is really projected to hit the fan. The president of our ED physician's group has told us not to bother soliciting the community to sew masks, as there's essentially no evidence to suggest that they're at all effective.

CDC, as I'm sure you know, is recommending bandanas. It's like if we sent our soldiers to war without body armor. And then recommended that when they ran out of bullets they should just point their finger at the enemy and make a shooty sound.

The first cases are trickling into our hospital. Had one guy last week in a serious way and his chest CT was sobering. He's now on a vent and people are saying critical but stable, but given that average stay in ICU before death was something like 19-21 days in China, I'm betting his ticket comes pre-punched. Then two days ago we had two more like him. I'm off until Tuesday, and I have no idea what I'll go back to.

I'm a hundred percent gonna get it at some point in the following months. 35 is not young enough to feel like I'm gonna glide through. And I'm relatively healthy? But I've also had a chronic cough since I was about 15 and I'm betting my cilia are beaten all to hell. I've had at least one major panic attack per day, but I'm back on my anxiety meds so I got that going for me. But until they kick into full effect, I feel like I'm constantly progressing through finer and finer striations of dread. The dread of what work will be like when I go back. Dread of whether I'll be the one assigned to the COVID-heavy pod. Dread of what my PPE will be like. The dread of waiting for symptoms to kick in. When they inevitably do, eight to twelve days of dread waiting for my breath to get shorter and shorter until I can't talk in full sentences.

ghostoffuffle  ·  1645 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Self-Impeaching: On the Trump-Zelensky Conversation

Dude, did you see the press conference last night? I'm not sure Pence is feeling all that chipper this morning.

I couldn't help imagining the interactions between congressional Democrats and Trump yesterday-

PELOSI: All right, boys, let's give him just enough rope to hang himse...

TRUMP: Is this all the rope you got? I need more rope. This knot only has seven coils, I need to make thirteen. Only the most beautiful knot. Hey, that guy doesn't have rope. Get that guy some rope, too.

ghostoffuffle  ·  1650 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: September 5: Trump tries to force Ukraine to meddle in the 2020 election

So here's a thought. The gist of the Mueller report: it's unclear whether or not Trump obstructed justice; since he ordered his administration to obstruct, but they didn't, the case for obstruction isn't as cut and dry.

Now there is, absurdly, new dirt. How did we get here oh my god. The acting director of National Intelligence presumably has the dirt. The acting director of National Intelligence has been asked by Congress to deliver the dirt: the acting director of National Intelligence refuses to give the dirt, citing orders from on high.

    Mr. Schiff told CBS that Mr. Maguire had told him he was not providing the complaint “because he is being instructed not to, that this involved a higher authority, someone above” the director of national intelligence, a cabinet position.

-NYT

Is the director of National Intelligence then actually protecting Trump? Or, by following orders not to comply, actually providing grounds for unequivocal obstruction of justice charges?

BONUS QUESTION: does any of this matter, or will status quo be upheld no matter what this guy does? haha JK rhetorical bonus question

BONUS BONUS QUESTION: remember when a bunch of people decided they were gonna sit the last election out because Trump and Clinton were equally unpalatable and Bernie was the only reasonable choice and since it wasn't Bernie it didn't really make a difference? Remember that guys haha remember hahaha

I'm drunk but waaaaay not drunk enough. For the last three years and probably the next five

ghostoffuffle  ·  2359 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: October 11, 2017

It is so good to hear from you, and with solid advice and a good perspective to boot. Guess it makes sense, given your current track. I don't know half the shit I need to as a nurse yet; they say it takes a good five years before you can really even consider yourself a novice in the field. I'll get there, though. In the meantime, jams are forthcoming at some point. Hope your education is going well- breaks are not a bad thing. In retrospect, wish I'd taken one. How long you have left?

ghostoffuffle  ·  2885 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: May 4, 2016

Just spent the last week in Portland with my folks. Five days would've been perfect. interesting watching them interact with my kids as an outside observer. Gives me some understanding of why they acted the way they did towards my brothers and me when we were kids. Doesn't make it totally acceptable, but takes the bite away a little bit.

Last night we were there, dad got explosively angry at me for buying the wrong kind of peanuts for the dinner he was making. Put me in a place I haven't been for a long, long time. Nevertheless. I'm a grownup now, so I felt okay telling him to fuck off and then going to play with my kids. Unexpected: the tenderness I felt watching him nibble at the periphery of the scene, wondering how to make things better. Like I said, distance fosters understanding. We got really drunk that night, like every night.

I should say: my parents have given me so much throughout my life, including a very comfortable childhood, and the continuing opportunity to grow. They're also a lot of fun, so long as I can escape when necessary. Take the good with the bad.

ghostoffuffle  ·  2923 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 168th Weekly "Share Some Music You've Been Into Lately" Thread

Weather turned this weekend and I needed some good sunny day driving music. Second Feelies album.

Older daughter tolerated that for a while, and then requested "girls music," i.e. anything sung by a woman. Sick of playing Haim, so I dug out Sharon Jones, which she'd never heard. Liked it. Me, too. Reminds me of a beautiful night five or so years ago when I got to see her live at some outdoor venue at SXSW.

In my spare time, I'm getting into some Kentucky roots:

ghostoffuffle  ·  2933 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Can some explain to me why would anyone vote for Trump?

This isn't entirely accurate. The stark majority of RNC delegates are bound- that is, they are required to vote at convention how their state voted in the primary. So they actually did commit to that decision.

So while it's vaguely accurate to say that nobody's really voted yet... kind of... very loosely... it's equally accurate to say that in some ways a lot of people have already voted without yet having even put pen to paper.

I don't think it helps anybody at this point to just say "don't believe the hype" and sweep the issue under the rug. I do think it's abundantly clear by now that plenty of people that "haven't ever voted for Trump" (nod wink) will have no problem voting for Trump should he make it to the generals. And given that he has a good number of bound delegates at this point, we all ignore that possibility at our peril... as the Republican party has already demonstrated.

Beyond that. The fact that somebody who has voiced the opinions Trump has voiced (whether he believes them or not) and accepted the support he has (explicitly or implicitly) can win such vocal support by any more than a piddling minority should be of great concern to all of us, whether or not he makes it past convention.

Think it's okay to get a little sucked in.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3197 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ask Hubski: Guns. Do You Have One? Do You Want One?

Really sorry to hear that happened, ammo. Never brushed up against any experience so violating as that, but had experiences similar enough to understand some of the sense of non-security/general offense.

Would echo what rd95 said re. buying a gun as a reactionary measure. Do you expect it to happen again? And if so, do you expect enough of a grace period to learn how to safely handle and own a firearm, if there is any such thing? Have you exhausted all other precautionary options? Security system, stronger locks, automatic lights?

My objection to guns is largely philosophical, so it seems wanky to expound here in light of your significant other's and your trauma. I will say that with three kids, I'm fairly certain that the risk of accidental death would outweigh the chances of 1) a home intrusion and 2) a successful fending off of the same.

Besides that, can only add that I hope it doesn't happen again, and I hope never to experience anything like it either. I'd like to think that if it did, it wouldn't shake my value system, but who knows. Sorry again.

EDIT Also, and I guess this should've come earlier- what does your girlfriend think? It happened to her, after all- shouldn't she ultimately have agency over how she controls her sense of security in the future?

ghostoffuffle  ·  3257 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Are Hubski's best days ahead of it or behind it?

Two days away from living in our own place again, ten-ish days from having a computer again. At which point I might have some stuff to send you and kleinbl00 after a long silence. [edited to remove KB shoutout out of respect for his posted request from a few days ago... guess that's one thing I missed right off the bat.]

Has humanodon dropped off the grid? Who else? For that matter, care to give a quick breakdown of what I've missed in the past few months?

On that note, don't think I'm qualified to weigh in on subject at hand since I haven't seen much site content/interaction for a while. But I see a lot of familiar handles in this post, so the site can't be going down that quickly.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3271 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Who was I talking to?

Yeah, that was me before I ghosted. Still remember that convo. On that note, I sent flagamuffin a thought re prez elections a while back and then didn't get time to respond to his response.

More I think about it, more I'm inclined to vote party line, and for practical reasons rather than philosophical. I don't trust the presidency as an institution, so I'm likely not to trust anybody running for the office. President still has power to appoint cabinet and judicial posts, though, and that could mean the difference this time between generations of conservative influenced SCOTUS judgements and circuit appointments vs that of the progressive mindset.

Also, Flag and bfv and anybody else I mightve talked to about this- you know who chooses FISA judges? Chief Justice. That guard ain't changing anytime soon, and I know the mechanism itself is flawed, but if it's going to remain status quo, I'd rather have a liberally-appointed judge making those decisions in future generations. Anyhow. Vote for prez is a vote for the judiciary. Esp with Bader Ginsberg most likely on the way out.

In other news: I'll return soon. House sale should close soon (so long as bank doesn't bat too much of an eye at our limited income... urg), and then I'll have Internet and a computer bigger than my wallet again and then I can re-connect with the world.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3377 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Tween scifi book recommendation.

Not entirely sci fi, but what about the His Dark Materials trilogy? Maybe more fantasy. Got some sci-fi-ish elements, though, esp. later on in the series. Perfect age for those books, anyhow. Is she familiar w/ sci fi at all, or is this her first rodeo? Think I read Dune for the first time around eighth grade, but if she's unfamiliar with the genre, maybe not a good place to start.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3379 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What are your plans for 2015?

My resolution for last year was "listen more, talk less." It worked out okay, so I'm going to try it again this year, to a greater degree.

Gonna cut back on booze. Trying to cut back on meat consumption, that'll take baby steps. Planning on getting rid of all non-essential items in the house. So I guess the overarching theme is leaving a smaller footprint, moving away from conspicuous consumption. Subtract!

Congrats on the little'un!

ghostoffuffle  ·  3416 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Grubski Challenge #6 Voting (better late than never)

TNG with a bullet. He managed to incorporate fire into everything, including the bisque. That's dedication. Also, looked delicious.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3417 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: November 19, 2014

Been a tough couple weeks, but I think I'm coming out of it. Time to start participating again.

I know there's a lot of appreciation for Sun Kil Moon around here, but Mark Kozelek is a steaming piece of shit.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3468 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Grubski Challenge #1: $20 One Dish/Pot Meal

Okay, so I did an adaptation of this recipe with some amendments to make it one-pot friendly and just better in my opinion. Used a dutch oven for the whole shebang. Left out the Chinese sausage because I couldn't get it at the store and sausage is expensive anyhow. Added ginger in a couple formats. More garlic. Rehydrated mushrooms in chicken stock for better flavor all around.

Purchasing procedure was kind of a cop-out. I had pretty much all of the oils/seasonings already, which together would have cost and arm and a leg. Proof:

Which means that my bill was:

Chicken thighs: $5.91 Ginger: $0.71 Scallions: $0.50

Also already had the rice, garlic and the dried mushrooms as those are staples. Swapped oyster sauce w/ fish sauce, because that's what I had. The chicken stock I'd frozen from homemade (so much better/cheaper than store-bought). So let's say maybe a buck for the chicken stock (original whole chicken was around $6, carcass divided between around eight c of stock... can't do that math this late at night, just say a buck). It should be noted that the 6-ish dollars for the chicken thighs is actually kind of unconscionable. They only had "100% natural" thighs, which I've heard translates to "100% bullshit."

Total: $8.12

Recipe:

In dutch oven, heat 2 c. chicken stock to boil, then remove from heat. Add dried mushrooms, let steep for at least 30 min. Take mushrooms out and put them on your cutting board or something. Transfer stock to measuring cup, previously used to measure said stock (NOT A POT, STILL COUNTS).

Meanwhile, add brown sugar, corn starch, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, fish sauce, rice wine, sesame oil, 1/8 t salt and 1/4 t black pepper to chicken pieces in a gallon ziploc (another cop out, but who's counting at this point). Refrigerate and marinate for at least 30 min.

Rinse rice in colander under cold water until water runs clear.

Dice scallions, keeping white and green parts separate. Skin a 2 in. piece of ginger, halve. Fine dice one half, chop other half into large pieces. Separate.

Dice 5 cloves garlic, add to fine-diced ginger. Re-heat dutch oven to med-hi, throw in some oil (I used peanut), add garlic and diced ginger. Heat until fragrant, maybe 30 sec.

To that, add the marinated chicken sans marinade (reserve that, though). Cook chx on hi until browned all over. Take it out of the dutch oven, leave in the drippings.

To the drippings add the rice, stir frequently until well-coated and a little bit toasted, risotto style. Add chicken/mushroom stock to that, throw in the coursely-diced ginger and white parts of the scallions. Add reserved marinade. Stir.

Bring to boil over med-hi, then reduce to low. Cover and simmer for about 15 min, giving a brief, brisk stir every few minutes.

Add the chicken, keep simmering on lo for another 15 or so, or until no liquid is present in the rice mixture and chicken is cooked through.

Put it in a bowl, add green scallions and sriracha if you so desire.

Doesn't look like much:

But it tasted like a whole lot.

EDIT Oh, and drink pairing- wanted as hoppy a beer as possible with it to balance the sweet/earthy flavor of the dish. Best I could get from my store was Lagunitas Hop Stoopid (another 5 bucks to the tab). If I'd had my druthers I would have gone with a Green Flash Brewery "Green Bullet," which I had recently and was blown away by. Nice grassy thing going on that would have gone well with this.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3469 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Grubski Challenge #1: $20 One Dish/Pot Meal

Think I might steal the chicken thigh idea... those things look goooooood. Question: is this strictly "make it up yourself," or are prearranged recipes allowed?

ghostoffuffle  ·  3470 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski, what are you doing tonight!

Shun. I'm sure you have a good knife, but just in case there's anybody eavesdropping that doesn't- a good knife is bar none the most important piece of kitchenware anybody can have. More important than pots and pans (although I swear by my pans, more in a sec), more important than measuring cups or mixing bowls or anything. I can cook in any old kitchen so long as I have one good knife. But goddamn does it drive me crazy to cook in somebody else's space (read: in-laws) when all they have is cheap, dull, wobbly crap.

Never had the tomato sauce eat the seasoning on my cast iron (so far as I know, although I have needed to replace it twice), and never even tried with my good carbon steel- learned through trial and error to use that shit almost exclusively for searing meat and then deglaze/sauce-making.

Fucking you had to mention oxtail right before my leftovers meal. That sounds incredible. For grubski: ongoing list of cheapo meat products that are way better than the expensive dry-aged song and dance or else enhance the same. Humbly submit chicken livers (most versatile organ I've ever messed with), marrow bones, caul fat. Would include sweetbreads but those guys are expensive.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3483 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why

Oh, maybe it's because I follow the "politics" tag and he's labeling everything as politics. Shoulda thought of that. Thank god I can filter out only his politics tags, eh? Score one for that idea, thenewgreen, time has proven me wrong. Consider me a convert.

To the personal tagging idea, not the whole anti-semitism thing.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3498 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Let's talk about two things they say never to talk about:

1. Philosophically I'm pro-choice. I also see the practical aspect of providing legal services in order to pre-empt a much more dangerous black market system. I don't judge people who've made the choice. Except for my aunt, who had two abortions but remains a rabid and very vocal social conservative. And even then, I don't begrudge her her choices, I just resent her hypocrisy. However. I couldn't imagine having a hand in making that choice in regards to my own family. Just couldn't do it.

2. Not keen on capital punishment, for the following reasons: A) the whole "more expensive to society than life in prison" thing. B) Not clear if it actually works as a deterrent. C) I don't believe in the notion of justice as an eye for an eye. I believe in justice as a restoration of balance. There's a difference. Not many things worse than taking a life. But killing a murderer doesn't restore the life lost, it just adds a tally mark to the side of the dead. In a just system, the response to loss of life would be, what, an addition of something of equal or greater value to the world. That's pretty philosophically nebulous, but there you go. Here's an example of what I mean:

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/i-would-like-you-to-know-my-nam/Content?oid=9434642

And then:

http://proxy.bellstrike.com/about

I heard an interview w/ Hopper a few months ago on our local NPR affiliate. She displayed not only strength and bravery on a level I know I wouldn't be capable of, but also an overwhelming amount of empathy for other victims, her partner, her assailant's family, and even her assailant. She took something unspeakably horrible, and she leveraged it into a social movement for healing. She's sort of a superhero in my book.

Anyhow. I'm not convinced that capital punishment can provide that level of justice, or any level of justice. There are exceptions- only one I can think of right now is in the case of I dunno a serial killer- in which case maybe cap punishment is as much a service to the killer as it is to the survivors of his deeds. Still not even sure about that, though.

Man, you're going straight to the heavy stuff tonight. What ever happened to pubski. Think it's implied in your post, TNG, but where do you stand on these matters more specifically?

ghostoffuffle  ·  3506 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hi I reached my 30 book goal for the summer

Sheeeeit, this is making me feel uncultured. Re. Chabon: Telegraph Avenue. Started it, never had time to get into it, regret having dropped it. Probably worth picking up, I've heard it said that it's even better than Cavalier and Clay.

Got this for my birthday, making my way through it. Beautiful. But. I feel like a hallmark of the modern cartoonist I mean Graphic Novelist is to make sure that everybody knows the work is SERIOUS by way of making all characters very very sad and conflicted. Would it kill you to put a dude slipping on a banana peel every few pages? No, as long as he's very contemplative about the results afterward.

There's plenty of good modern fantasy, just gotta know where to look. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is one of my favorite books ever. Read it maybe five times now, get something new out of it every time. The Magician series by Lev Grossman is great, very tongue-in-cheek, a must-read for anybody just out of school. Added perk, the final one in the trilogy just came out. The Name of the Wind series is only two books in right now, but it's great. Not as heavy as Jonathan Strange, not as smart as Grossman, but good clean fun. Oh, and speaking of magicians, Gene Wolfe's "Wizard Knight" duo is great. Dense, hallucinatory. Also not really a fantasy, I don't think.

Making my way through The Fatal Shore right now, which should count as two or three books. Keep meaning to quote it on the quote thread, but I could easily quote the whole thing, which would take a while.

Kudos, this is an impressive list.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3507 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Take out your phone, your camera and show the scene you are in RIGHT NOW!

Looks like Guitar Center yakked on my workspace carpet. This is godawful embarrassing posted in the same space as thenewgreen's clean living room and kleinbl00's orderly command stations.

God, everybody's day looks so interesting... what a great post idea, TNG.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3508 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: August 20, 2014

Random thoughts I've been having recently (only two come to mind right now because I just woke up, might add throughout the day as they resurface):

- I have a voice-crush on Nina Totenberg

-"Apeshit" would be a great party band name and I wish somebody would start a party band and use it. IMMEDIATE EDIT just bothered googling for the first time, there's already a band called Apeshit. Prompting two more thoughts:

-google has made thinking up band names way more difficult

-I should sue the guy in France who appropriated my old band name. Surely he googled before he decided to use it?

-Physical attraction is such a weird concept. Being attracted to a person based on how they look at a fleeting moment in their lives, when behind them lies infancy and in front of them eventual decrepitude. It's like being attracted to an MRI cross-section. And then maybe basing many or all future romantic/logistical decisions on your interpretation of that cross section. Ideally love shouldn't happen until one or both or all people in a relationship are dead. Only then can you see them in their entirety- thought, deed, physical space. And how trippy would physical attraction be then? Would you find attractive those who occupied the largest space (traveled the most, say)? Or those whose ultimate physical pathway displayed the best symmetry?

Whoo, that was a long one

ghostoffuffle  ·  3508 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.

Kind of like your paraphrase better.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3510 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I want to brag a little bit - Hubski brag party

1. It's incredible what lengths a parent will go for a screaming baby. That's an unstoppable force, I wouldn't have done anything different in your shoes.

2. At five months, your kid already has more bust-these-out-at-a-dinner-party stories than most grown-ups do (starting right out the gate, as it were). He's going to have an amazing life.

3. My wife is from them thar hills. The southern hospitality/screaming paranoia dichotomy is very pronounced, and the old "equal tooth to neck tattoo/gun ratio" stereotype is depressingly accurate in some areas. Not all, but some. Such a strange place. My god is it beautiful though or what.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3517 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Update on my nonprofit

Godspeed, white. This sounds like a monumentally complex project, but from a layman's perspective, you definitely seem to have your ducks in a row. Hope things keep moving forward!

ghostoffuffle  ·  3531 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A moral justification for Israel's invasion

    True, Israel only targets combatants and takes unprecedented efforts at avoiding civilians (making personalized phone calls to civilians before striking areas near them)

They call you personally! Can you imagine how that phone call goes down? "Hey, uh, we're planning on bombing your neighborhood later on today, and there's a chance, you know, I don't want to give probabilities? But definitely a chance that your home won't be standing when we're done. With the bombing and such. So you're going to want to leave your last shreds of wealth and security behind for like a day or so. Maybe more."

If that isn't courtesy, I don't know what is.

On the other hand, a ground war against unmarked combatants in a territory what, a third the size of Los Angeles? Populated by 1.5m... that's gonna be a tough sell (pretty sure you can map the logistics of this way better than I could). I see how they'd want to just stick to missiles for as long as possible. But then don't paint it as the Moral Option. That's a slap in the face. It's the Easy Option.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3540 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Mute feature: from team hubski

That's just about all we goddamn do these days. Used to spend hours on elaborate meals, there's no time for that now. Which is a shame because it was one of my main methods of decompression.

Slow cooking is great but I'm getting to the point where I could use some meat that doesn't have to be put on a sandwich or served in a bowl.

humanodon I was deadly serious about those biscuits, though. They're happening tonight come hell or high water and I don't care how many children I have to neglect in the process of making them.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3542 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: "you are muted here"

Dude. I've asked to be unmuted to apologize to you a couple times now through third parties. Still muted. What the what?

Don't like bugging you publicly, too much unnecessary drama, but can't PM you because I'm muted.

Would happily apologize for dickish behavior, but I can't without being unmuted. Pretty please? Cherry on top? Don't have to be all buddy buddy with you, but I do have to apologize regardless.

ghostoffuffle  ·  3547 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Is Hubski An Echo Chamber?

You saved me a post. Spot on.