She was taken to the hospital an hour ago. Do not know what they can do, cannot get clear take from my brother’s texts. She cannot come back to the house at this point, he cannot care for her. Apparently her condition has deteriorated significantly since I was there Monday, and it was pretty bad then; much worse than when I was there 2 weeks before that. And it wasn’t good then either.
But he still isn’t willing to say that a home health aide won’t be enough. So what can I do?
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March 5, 2024
End of her road approaching, one exit left
My mother is dying. This is a terrible thing to say, and a difficult and painful thing to accept. But it’s true nonetheless. While her physical health is pretty good, her mental health gets worse almost every day, and her body follows along with it. As of this week she can hardly walk. She doesn’t have the strength to stand up from a chair or the couch even with the assistance of a walker to hold on to. She can’t dress herself, or undress herself, or do much of any personal hygiene. She’s pretty much lost all bladder control. Sometimes she can talk and sometimes she can’t, as the dementia ravages her mind. And she’s barely eating. She can’t manage a knife, fork, or spoon; she can barely manage a small cup. Even though the doctor got her appetite stimulant pills, she continues to lose weight. I took her to her doctor yesterday. She’s lost another 5 pounds since 2 weeks ago. There really isn’t anything that can be done. He’s putting us in touch with county hospice, who can do some kind of at-home assessment and give her some palliative care in the time she has left.
She’s lost the will to live, she’s lost the will to eat. Her mind is deteriorating at an alarming rate. 3 months ago she could walk around inside the house and follow most conversations; 5 months ago she could walk around out in the yard. She could carry on conversations and even do some light cooking and housework, and was at least a bit aware of the news and the outside world. 4 years ago she was driving, and was as sharp as she ever was. 3 weeks ago she could control her feet and legs enough to get in and out of my car, although she hasn’t been able to figure the seat belt for some time now. Yesterday getting her out the door, in and then out of the car, and up the elevator to her doctor was nearly impossible.
She will be 89 on April 7. I really don’t have much faith she’ll make it that long.
I cried and cried for hours when we got home last night. But there’s nothing that can be done. My brother lives with her, and will try to get her to eat and stay reasonably clean and fresh. And that’s it.
I can’t write anymore.
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February 29, 2024
Once upon a time, long long ago, I think today was known as the calends. Because it’s the end of the calendar. A free extra day. Because the “modern” calendar the West has been using since the Roman Empire is slow by around 6 hours a year, so every 4 years we add an entire day to mostly square things up again. And in general, that’s accurate enough. Ok sure, some bloodthirsty seriously anal Central American culture figured out a truly accurate system hundreds of years ago, but moving great big stone rings around was a pain, not to mention the constant upkeep on all those weird-ass looking carvings. And the buckets of blood. The lakes of blood. Um, no, I’ll keep my Timex, and we’ll add a day every once in a while. Much easier
Personally I think the entire world should just take today off. No work, no wars, no shopping. Have a drink or 3 and go back to bed. I dare say we could all use a day like that far more often than once every 4 years.
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February 22, 2024
Ok, this works. Scale it up if you want more dough. Once well rested and matured, this is a super extensible dough that can stretch out to “windowpane” thinness, and will bake nicely in a 500-500 oven in just a few minutes.
Autolyse, or autolysis, is the term applied to the way flour breaks down when wet. Without any yeast or any heat, damp flour will soften up and start to form glutens. This is a good thing. About an hour is long enough.
A poolish is a “pre ferment”, in which a little bit of commercial yeast is added to a good amount of some very wet flour and left alone for half a day or so. Not only does it use less yeast, it creates lots of flavor, as the little flour bacteria start to breed. It’s kind of halfway to being sourdough, but with supplied yeasts, instead of what occurs naturally on the wheat in the field. A poolish is very wet, often 100% hydration.
Hydratian level is the amount of liquid in a dough, expressed as a mass percentage of the total amount of flour in a recipe. So 100% hydration would have a certain weight of flour, and the same weight of water. 50% hydration means the water weight is half that of the flour weight. Another kind of preferment, called a “biga” often uses 50% hydration. Bigas can be harder to work with because they are very stiff, but they are also rather forgiving time-wise to their peak yeastiness, whereas poolish is pretty close to flour soup but the yeast peak is a more narrow time window.
A New York style pizza dough needs to be a bit firmer than a Neopolitan dough, but also not brittle; a NYC street slice is a long thing, and everyone folds it in half lengthwise so the toppings don’t drip off.
Mix together
323 grams King Arthur Bread Flour
139 grams King Arthur All Purpose Flour
then put 300 grams of the mixed flour in your mixer bowl. Set the remaining 162gm mixed flour aside.
To the mixing bowl add 270 grams of warm water. 270/300 = 90% hydration, so this will be pretty soft. You don’t knead here, just mix it up. Rough mix is ok; you can do this with bare hands or a wooden spoon or the beater in your stand mixer.
Cover the bowl and let it sit for an hour. It’s just flour and water.
Next, dissolve 1/4 teaspoon of instant yeast in 30ml of water, which is 1 fluid ounce. A good excuse to get out your cocktail jigger! Add this to the autolysed wet flour, then use the mixer to thoroughly mix in the yeast water. Cover, and leave it in the bowl on the counter for about 12-14 hours. When the poolish is ripe you will see plenty of little moon crater bubbles on top.
To the remaining flour, add an mix in 12 grams of salt, 1 teaspoon of instant yeast, 2 teaspoons of white sugar. Pour this onto the poolish along with 2 teaspoons of Extra Virgin Olive oil. Mix on low speed for a minute or two, then knead on speed 2 for only 3 minutes. This slack dough will not require much kneading at all!
Now cover it up, leave it on the counter for 90 minutes, then into the fridge for at least 8 hours ... 2 or 3 days is fine; the longer it’s in there the better the flavors you’ll get.
When it’s time to make some pizza, dip both hands in plain all purpose flour, and carve off about half the dough, and work it. The flour on your hands will dry things out just a bit (it might take 2 dips in the flour) and leave you with a very soft dough you can play Pizza Guy with to your heart’s content. You can stretch this stuff out and out and out, to the point where you can easily see light through it. Windowpane!
and it tastes good too.
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February 20, 2024
Maybe, maybe I might be starting to get well. Or less sicker?
I have been very sick for 3 weeks now. A few days into the huge doses of Augmentin and the Prednisone, along with a ton of vitamins and some Mucinex tablets, and I might be turning a corner. Might. Not quite as much coughing, nose running much less.
The initial positive reaction was just initial; it’s still a fight and it doesn’t always go my way. but I’m doing everything I know how to do.
Sorry, that’s about all I have.
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Ok, I tried making pizza dough yesterday. And then found out later that there is a tremendous difference between a Neopolitian dough that’s designed to bake up in a minute in a 1000 degree oven, and the more or less New York style dough that will do well in a typical home oven which tops at at perhaps 550 degrees.
And all that other baker stuff ... use a biga, use a poolish, do an autolyse, do a chilled 72 hour ferment ... oh gak, a bit more than I could handle. But that was yesterday. Today I feel up to experimenting with a small amount of flour and water, enough to make one decent sized pizza when all is said and done.
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I might do some kind of beef and bean burrito thing for dinner. Keep it fairly small. Not sure what kind of cheese we have or how much. Beans and chiles, no problem there!
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February 17, 2024
Another week of light posting. Another week of being sick. Ok, I finally broke down and went to the local clinic. The extremely young woman PA set me up with some strong antibiotic and a heft 12 day dose of prednisone. Both prescriptions together cost me $2.26. Got home, took the first dose of each, and within an hour my nose is not running and I am not coughing and my chest is not congested. Son. of a. Gun.
]]>NYC Ship Sinking, Rats Long Gone
]]>New York City is home to 118 billionaires, more than any other American city. New York City is also home to nearly one million millionaires, more than any other city in the world. Among those millionaires some 8,865 are classified as “high net worth,” with more than $30 million each.
They pay the taxes. The top one percent of NYC taxpayers pay nearly 50 percent of all personal income taxes collected in New York. Personal income tax in the New York area accounts for 59 percent of all revenues. Property taxes add in more than a billion dollars a year in revenue, about half of that generated by office space.
...
The budget for a city as complex as New York is a mess of federal, state, and local funding sources. It can be sliced and diced many ways, but the one that matters is the starkest: the people and companies who pay for New York’s poor are leaving even as the city is already facing a $7.4 billion tax revenue hit from the initial effects of the coronavirus. The money is there; New York’s wealthiest individuals have increased their net worth by $44.9 billion during the pandemic. It’s just not here.
...
While overall only five percent of residents left as of May, in the city’s very wealthiest blocks residential population decreased by 40 percent or more. The higher-earning a neighborhood is, the more likely it is to have emptied out. Even the amount of trash collected in wealthy neighborhoods has dropped, a tell-tale sign no one is home. A real estate agent told me she estimates about a third of the apartments even in my mid-range 300 unit building are empty.
...
Fewer than one-tenth of Manhattan office workers came back to the workplace a month after New York gave businesses the green light to return to the buildings they ran from in March. Having had several months to notice what not paying Manhattan office rents might do for their bottom line, large companies are leaving.
But the news has all been bad
And the whole world seems so sad
I ain’t had much else going on
So I sat down and wrote this song
I miss my mom, I miss my dad
I miss the road, I miss my band
Giving hugs and shaking hands
It’s a mystery I suppose
Just how long this thing goes
But there’ll be crowds and there’ll be shows
And there will be light after dark
Someday when we aren’t six feet apart
Now UPS has brought out “Follow Me”, a real time, self-updating, GPS driven mapping application, that let’s you see the big brown truck driving all over with your package in it. Not sure if this is going to help or hurt, because most people won’t realize that there are 300 other boxes in that truck, and yours is almost guaranteed to be last in line. It was already a bit frustrating just following the data, watching my box go from Florida to Edison NJ in hardly over a day, but then on to Allentown PA, right past my home, and then have to go on to another truck to come back to NJ days later and to get delivered ... later today? Maybe. “Out for delivery” for 3 days? Oy vey.
]]>I thought I posted this the other day, but it seems to have evaporated. Whatevs.
Anyway, this is actress Kelsey Asbille Chow. She had a small but regular role in the One Tree Hill drama a few years back, and was in the 2017 film Wind River. Currently she has a supporting role on Paramount’s cowboy drama / Kevin Costner vehicle Yellowstone.
We watch Yellowstone, it’s great, and it’s interesting to see her character developing from a whiny liberal into someone more normal. That’s going to be long journey. She is super attractive though.
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Funny, I kind of thought it was the President’s job to keep people aware of new possibilities and to give them even temporary hope. But the Left may be right on this one. Like the blind squirrel ...
Most Americans have been praying for a cure to the Chinese Communist Party virus. Such a prospect turns out to be horrifying, however, if you are a Deep State bureaucrat, someone invested in open-ended and lucrative research into unpromising medicines or vaccines and/or a political opponent of President Trump.
Hence the vehemently hostile response of a leftist publication called Axios to information about Oleandrin, a natural supplement that has proven in clinical experiments and limited human trials in Texas to crush the CCP virus. Rather than celebrate this development and call for an urgent effort to validate such findings with widespread, life-saving trials, Axios touted the uninformed criticisms of naysayers determined to snuff further work on this apparent breakthrough.
To the alarm of some government health officials, President Trump has expressed enthusiasm for the Food and Drug Administration to permit an extract from the oleander plant to be marketed as a dietary supplement or, alternatively, approved as a drug to cure COVID-19, despite lack of proof that it works.
Driving the news: The experimental botanical extract, oleandrin, was promoted to Trump during an Oval Office meeting in July. It’s embraced by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell, a big Trump backer, who recently took a financial stake in the company that develops the product.
OMG, if Mike Lindell is behind it, you know it’s deathly anathema.
Oleandrin is an extract from the oleander plant. Researchers have suggested that it could be useful to treat cancer because of the way it affects cells, and that it could enhance the effects of other cancer therapies.
Professor Sharon Lewin, the director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at the University of Melbourne, is an international authority on antiviral drugs and has a laboratory working on COVID-19.
Asked about oleandrin’s potential efficacy as a COVID-19 treatment, Lewin told Axios, “Oleandrin looks to have antiviral activity at high doses in a test tube model. You’d certainly want to see more work done on this before even contemplating a human trial.”A July 2020 study from the University of Texas at Galveston shows, in a laboratory setting, that oleandrin can inhibit the coronavirus in monkey kidney cells. This study has not been peer reviewed and one of the authors of the study, Robert Newman, is chairman of Phoenix Biotechnology’s scientific advisory board — the company developing the oleandrin product.
The bottom line: Scientists around the world are in a race for cures, treatments and vaccines for COVID-19. Government regulators are investigating hundreds of products. When a biotech executive like Whitney can take his case directly to the president, it casts doubt over the scientific rigor of the drug development process.
Using Vero cells, we found that prophylactic oleandrin administration at concentrations down to 0.05 μg/ml exhibited potent antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2, with an 800 fold reduction in virus production, and a 0.1 μg/ml dose resulted in a greater than 3,000-fold reduction in infectious virus production. The EC50values were 11.98ng/ml when virus output was measured at 24 hours post-infection, and 7.07ng/ml measured at 48 hours post-infection. Therapeutic (post-infection) treatment up to 24 hours after infection of Vero cells also reduced viral titers, with the 0.1 μg/ml dose causing greater than 100-foldreductions as measured at 48 hours, and the 0.05 μg/ml dose resulting in a 3578-fold reduction.The potent prophylactic and therapeutic antiviral activities demonstrated here strongly support the further development of oleandrin to reduce the severity of COVID-19 and potentially also to reduce spread by persons diagnosed early after infection.
In years past the FDA has been dinged for major slow walking and foot dragging when it comes to testing and approving new medicines. Many drugs are available to the rest of the world that are not yet available to us. With this pandemic that slowness has become an issue, but I don’t think the best idea is to throw caution to the wind and let anything fly. That way leads to snake oil. There has to be some level of significant proper, fair, testing.
OTOH, the Axios article does mention how this could easily be marketed as an herbal supplement, which could NOT focus on any curative ability. To which there’s an easy work around; “We’re NOT ALLOWED to mention that this cures Covid, and thus cannot recommend a dose of 2 pills a day for 2 weeks. This product is for dietary supplemental use only, and we bear no responsibility for it’s use in any other manner.” kind of advertising.
OTTH, shouldn’t President Trump know by now when to keep his fat mouth shut?
Consumption of even one Nerium oleander leaf can be fatal. Onset of toxicity occurs several hours following consumption. Symptoms include vomiting, abdominal pain, cyanosis, hypotension, hypothermia, vertigo, respiratory paralysis and death.
However, a carefully controlled tea made from the flowers could be an effective cancer and AIDS treatment. But more trials are needed!!
A hot water extract of the plant, known as Anvirzel™, has been developed as a potential treatment for cancer, AIDS, and congestive heart failure. It consists of a mixture of oleandrin and the glycone oleandrigenin. Experiments suggest that a combination of Anvirzel and cisplatin may be more effective than cisplatin monotherapy . In an earlier study, Anvirzel appeared safe in humans when injected intramuscularly, although adverse effects such as injection site pain, fatigue, and other GI symptoms were reported.
Anvirzel™ is not an approved cancer treatment in the United States. Until more data regarding its efficacy and toxicity are available, this product should not be used outside of clinical trials.
Anvirzel may be a modern version of a medicinal extract of oleander that goes back to the dawn of history.
Historical records prove that Oleander plant has healing powers; thus it was highly regarded by the Mesopotamians in the 15th century B.C. During the age of the Babylonians up to the Romans it was used as a relieved for hangovers. To the Arabs it has better worth since the plant was used for cancer medication in the 8th century A.D.
OTOH, the Romans also used it to commit suicide.
I looked up the entry at Wiki ... and I think I’ll pass on this one. There may be too much risk in a cure made from just a little bit of deadly poison.
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De Blasio’s New York has finally hit an all-time low: the once bustling city is now on the verge of looking like a demilitarized zone. Between the pandemic and the riots in the city, iconic 5th Avenue now looks more like a dystopian nightmare in a recently shot video posted to Twitter.
The video follows a car driving down a deserted 5th Avenue, with almost all of the area’s high end stores boarded up and shut down. There are few people seen on what is usually a busy street.
“Look at everything. Everything’s boarded up. Even the hotel. Boarded up,” the video’s narrator, who is obviously fed up with how the city looks, says.
He continues: “This is all Manhattan, boarded up. Have you ever seen Manhattan look like this? The media will not report this.”
“Everything boarded up. They don’t want to show this to you people because they’re afraid. Saks 5th Avenue - boarded up from end to end. They put up barbed wire. Everywhere you see boards, windows are gone. Look at New York City - what happened,” he says.
The video runs over 2 minutes and shows dozens of boarded up businesses.
No, it’s not a war zone — it’s Manhattan.
Video shows once-bustling Big Apple streets nearly deserted and dotted with boarded-up, spray-painted and bashed-in buildings after days of looting.
The footage taken Tuesday and Wednesday in Midtown and Soho shows the windows of popular stores shattered while others — such as Burberry, Sephora and Sunglasses Hut — are covered in plywood to protect against looters.
...
Only a handful of masked pedestrians and police officers are seen walking on eerily empty sidewalks. Some plywood panels put up by shops were tagged with graffiti reading, “Justice for George Floyd” — the black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pinned him to the ground for nearly nine minutes.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, many Big Apple retailers have been closed for months prior to protests over Floyd’s death.
These riots happened at the end of May ...
Sidewalks across the SoHo neighborhood, Union Square and Fifth Avenue were covered in broken glass. Multiple police cars had been burnt to nothing but ashes. Stores, including a Duane Reade, Urban Outfitters and Swatch, were looted. Banks were ravaged. An Equinox gym had been broken in to. Graffiti covered retailers’ logos up and down some of the glitziest shopping districts, which normally would be hosting a hotbed of tourist activity this time of year.
The New York Police Department has since said it arrested almost 350 people Saturday evening, following protests across parts of Harlem, Brooklyn and Staten Island. NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said in a press conference held Sunday that more than 30 officers suffered minor injuries due to clashes with demonstrators.
It’s now the middle of August. More than 11 weeks later. And these businesses are still closed, still boarded up. Whatever stock that wasn’t looted has been sold online.
Do you really think these storefronts are coming back? Even if the beneficent dictator of NYC allows them to open, with 25% customer capacity and ridiculously paranoid levels of isolation and plexiglass protection inside the stores? Somehow, I kind of doubt it.
Greatest city in the world, killed by policy in half a year. This was not an accident.
]]>In NJ, everyone speeds. Everyone. Nearly everywhere. The only place we make up for it is in those 25mph zones near schools, parks, and downtown. People generally do about 17 in those.
NJ has a scheme in place on the highways. They “let” you drive 65mph, but fines are doubled. Should there be a traffic cone by the side of the road, or a permanent sign saying that bit of highway is also a construction zone, fines are doubled again. So getting a speeding ticket on the highway can be a darn costly experience.
Generally, highway traffic moves at 75mph in good conditions, even in the slow lane, but on the weekends it flies. 85 is typical, 95 is not unheard of, with cars maybe two lengths apart traveling in packs.
And NJ keeps points for 5 years, with a big long list of how many points for whichever of the 65 or so moving violations they have. Get more than 6 in a 3 year period, and get an extra fine to pay. There are a fair number of 0 point offenses, but they are not on the list. Good luck trying to find them, although we all know that the seatbelt one and the red light camera one are no-pointers.
How many points are on your license? Like many other states, you have to pay the DMV to find this out. Gosh, wouldn’t you think that this would be part of their regular job? Available online for free, given that this is a microscopic database inquiry? Heck no.
But there’s a game involved. There are a good number of offenses that don’t have points. Just a fine. So most cops short circuit the plea bargaining process, and give you a break and just write you up for some 0 point offense. It puts donut money in their coffers, nobody wastes time going to court, an you just go online and pay the fine with your credit card.
So I got pulled over for doing 85 in a 65 zone on a demarcated highway. I wasn’t racing, or playing artful dodger, or zooming down the road alone. I was just cruising along with traffic. The Statey did his job in about 2 minutes and I was back on my way.
He wrote me up for the 0 point offense of Delaying Traffic.
Haha, very funny.
]]>I haven’t had rhubarb in ... probably 45 years. Pretty sure my parents used to grow it in the vegetable garden, but that’s loooong ago in the past.
So we’re making strawberry rhubarb pie, and, since we have so much of the stuff, we’re making a strawberry rhubarb crumble as well. Both are a great excuse to get hold of some good vanilla ice cream.
Rhubarb has an unusual taste, but it’s one that I’ve always loved. Can’t wait to get to baking things up and trying them out. Might even have enough to send her to work Monday with another crumble.
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Oh goody, and I guess I’d better go look outside. Amazon says my copy of Law of Nations and John Locke’s Two Treaties of Government were delivered today. Along with my new Solo 2L hand sprayer, as the old one died after a decade of use.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser for the White House coronavirus task force, said this week that there is “no reason” Americans are not able to vote in person for the 2020 presidential election in November.
Fauci emphasized that voting in person would not need to be avoided as long as voters followed CDC guidelines and maintained social distancing.
“I think if carefully done, according to the guidelines, there’s no reason that I can see why that not be the case,” Fauci told ABC News. “If you go and wear a mask, if you observe the physical distancing, and don’t have a crowded situation, there’s no reason why shouldn’t be able to do that.”
Fauci noted, however, that those who are at high-risk if exposed to coronavirus or have a compromised immune system should stay indoors and use mail-in voting.
OK, 99% right. I think most absentee ballots should be dropped off well ahead of time at the polling centers, logged in, and signed for ... once proper ID and voter registration is checked. The USPS is highly leftist, so I would not trust them too much.
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