In the latest episode of their feathery but unruffled podcast, Ken and Robin talk history spoilers, political pigeons, Sarah Bernhardt, and the Dark Watchers.

In the latest episode of their safely sheltering podcast, Ken and Robin talk remote play tips, secret museum scans,  war movies you can nerdtrope into Yellow King RPG: The Wars scenarios, and USAF involvement in UFO patents.

Congress Sets Up Taxpayers to Eat $454 Billion of Wall Street’s Losses. Where Is the Outrage?

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 7, 2020 ~ Beginning on March 24 of this year, Larry Kudlow, the White House Economic Advisor, began to roll out the most deviously designed bailout of Wall Street in the history of America. After the Federal Reserve’s secret $29 trillion bailout of Wall Street from 2007 to 2010, and the exposure of that by a government audit and in-depth report by the Levy Economics Institute in 2011, Kudlow was going to have to come up with a brilliant strategy to sell another multi-trillion-dollar Wall Street bailout to the American people. The scheme was brilliant (in an evil genius sort of way) and audacious in employing an Orwellian form of reverse-speak. The plan to bail out Wall Street would be sold to the American people as a rescue of “Main Street.” It was critical, however, that all of the officials speaking to the … Continue reading →

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U.S. Unemployment Reaches 14.7 Percent – Chart from Great Depression Shows Risks Ahead

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 8, 2020 ~   The data is out this morning and it’s not pretty. Nonfarm payrolls collapsed by 20.5 million jobs in April and the unemployment rate rose to 14.7 percent. The United States is now seeing the worst unemployment rates since the Great Depression. We prepared the above chart from data available at the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) archives at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Following the stock market crash of October 29, 1929, it was not until August 1931 that the unemployment rate reached 15.01 percent. We’re now at 14.7 percent unemployment from a rate of 3.5 percent just two months ago in February. Consider using the chart above to figure out just how much cash on hand you need to maintain.

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The Swiss hockey federation says it won't seek to host the 2021 men's world championship after losing this year's event because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju said the first priority for this would be given to those who have qualified for the Olympics.

Three-time Olympic champion Sun Yang has lodged an appeal an appeal to the Swiss federal court in an attempt to overturn his eight-year doping ban.

Most stakeholders agree that holding smaller competitions will be the best way forward post-lockdown.

Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing says his two Olympic gold medals along with his 1984 NCAA championship ring were stolen.

Distance runner Dathan Ritzenhein announced his retirement Thursday, closing a career during which he made three Olympic appearances.

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It used to be the tradition around these here parts to post fan art on Thursday, comic themed, but not comic published, art by fans or professionals.

So share your commissions or interesting art you've seen. (If in doubt, check with the artist it's okay to post it and if they say no, then it's a no!)

( Just for fun )

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Mohlo by se zdát, že pojišťovny budou v koronavirové době zaznamenávat zvýšený zájem o sjednání životních pojistek. Zejména kvůli krytí rizika pracovní neschopnosti, což se vztahuje i na onemocnění infekcí covid-19. Praxe je ale zatím opačná.

Česká rodinná firma SSI Group vznikla v době, kdy jsme ještě neznali mobilní telefony a podnikatelské prostředí 90. let bylo poměrně divoké. Přesto se ji Václavu Vodrážkovi společně se synem Janem a dalšími členy rodiny dařilo každý rok posouvat o něco dál. Letos tak na trhu významná bezpečnostní agentura oslaví 30 let svého působení na trhu.

The finalists are:

• Tommy Arnold
• Rovina Cai
• Galen Dara
• John Picacio
• Yuko Shimizu
• Alyssa Winans

Just looking up those websites has given me a lot of pleasure - my art knowledge continues to be "I don't know much but I know what I like" - and I'm looking forward to taking more time to consider each of the finalists more carefully.

I'm pleased to see Galen Dara on the shortlist, I've seen her work frequently in Uncanny, Lightspeed & Fireside Magazines, and usually like it. I was lucky enough to get into a kaffeklatsch with John Picacio at Dublin Worldcon last year (although I came there sideways, through interest in his work founding The Mexicanx Initiative, which was a finalist for Best Related Work), which was a great experience.

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New Murderbot novel today! It made me laugh on the first page and squeak aloud in delight in a number of places. I read it over the afternoon in and around doing a worse job than usual of supporting schooling.

In less happy news, Delfont Mackintosh theatres confirmed today that Hamilton performances in London are now cancelled through to the end of June, so this year I will not be continuing my self-indulgent tradition[1] of seeing it for my birthday. At some point I'll get contacted and offered a refund or an exchange for a future performance and obviously I'm going to go for the latter. Oh, I hope actors and theatre staff come through this okay.

[1] As I learned at DWCons, anything done more than once is a tradition ...

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Oops, yes, this blog has been almost entirely scheduled posts in Irish or about the Hugo finalists for the last month. So what's going on with me?

Household
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Exercise and masks
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Essential shopping
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Less essential shopping
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Remote events
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So that's me for the last month. How about you?

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Thanks to ambyr's rec, we watched Dukhtar ['Daughter'], (2014, directed Afia Nathaniel).

ambyr described this very well: it does include misogyny and violence, but ultimately it's a hopeful film. The film feels almost like a stage play; it is almost entirely about the characters, a mother trying to save her young daughter, and the roadster who reluctantly helps them. The camera doesn't dwell either on the beautiful scenery (there are mountains in the background, but no gorgeous cinematic shots) or on the violence; there are quite a few shootings in the film, but it's never gory because it's not about gun porn, it's about trying to escape from that violent world of gang / tribal violence. Quite a bit of it is filmed in shaky-cam style as if it were just incidental video of people's lives.

The characters are all really vivid, and I cared about them a lot, partly because the film is so careful to avoid piling on the drama. The tribal enforcers who go around shooting almost-random people in order to make people fear them are squalid, not glamorous. The elder who is desperate enough to sell his 10-year-old daughter for protection is basically pathetic rather than evil. The main character, Samiya Mumtaz' Allah Rakhi is beautiful and brave, but not really a heroine, she's desperate and runs away with her daughter with almost no plan for how they're going to survive. In other words she's really plausible for a barely literate woman married at 15 and sent to a remote, very patriarchal village in the mountains.

The romance between Allah Rakhi and Sohail is likewise really understated. He's not a white knight saving the princess, and in fact they even joke about how much he doesn't fit that romantic stereotype. He's a troubled person who has survived and escaped from the Taliban training camps, and he doesn't really want to get involved but can't just abandon a desperate mother and daughter to their fate. They have a certain amount of tenderness, but don't instantly fall in love and it's not clear whether their relationship will last, or whether it will end up being romantic or more friend-based. I also really liked that the dashing, handsome man who is avuncular with the kid and flirts with the mother in a rather aggressive way turns out to be a bad guy, not the love interest.

The ending is really odd. The credits just happen in the middle of a desperate car-ride taking the heroine to hospital bleeding from a gunshot wound. I think we're meant to infer that she survives but it's really not clear.

Next up: Nigeria, our first African country. Any recommendations of Nigerian films? Ideally from the 21^st century, and not primarily about violence or depressing real-world history.

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As of some time last night, I have novel respiratory symptoms. I'm basically fine but it feels safest to act as if I am infected.

My lungs hurt, and it's not the tightness I associate with mild asthma symptoms, or the tired muscle ache / burn I associate with a bad cough (whether asthma or viral). Not badly, but pretty much continuously. I'm coughing a bit but not severely, and I don't feel feverish. I have a slight headache and sore throat, but that could be just about anything including stress. I am somewhat distracted but I've been able to get on with useful work today.

I'm probably being over-cautious, but I feel like the balance of probabilities points towards suspected case. So this morning jack and I activated our self-isolation plan. We've divided up the house so that I "live" upstairs and he stays downstairs apart from using the bathroom. We have separate towels and we're cleaning metal bathroom surfaces constantly. jack has taken on food prep for both of us and he's leaving me plates of food and cups of tea and retreating to the bottom of the stairs.

And we're preparing to avoid leaving the house at all until it's more likely that we're not infectious than that we still are. We have plenty of supplies, and we managed to get an online supermarket delivery order in by virtue of going on the website just after midnight last night, which was fortuitous timing. It's going to suck, more so if my symptoms progress beyond the almost ignorable level, but since we can do this I think it's the right thing.

The most likely (and in some ways comforting) narrative I can come up with is that I picked this up when I had to attend a dental appointment two weeks ago. I had very mild symptoms (including a tell-tale sore throat) within a few days of that surgery, which in retrospect I can imagine might have been the first phase. And now, 12 days after the first symptoms, I have potential lower respiratory tract symptoms, so hopefully this is the second phase. That's comforting because it suggests my source of infection is a necessary medical appointment rather than either something frivolous I did, or just being unlucky even though I've stayed at home except for exercise for ten days now, and jack has been doing minimal necessary shopping with careful social distancing. And if I picked it up at the dentist it's unlikely I infected the dentist or any of his staff or patients. Also, if my guess is right I'm probably approaching the end of the infectious phase.

We are really not sure how long we should maintain full isolation at home. UK guidelines say 7 days from start of symptoms (me, today), or 14 days from contact with a symptomatic person (Jack). But I suspect this is not entirely adequate especially as it's much less restrictive than the WHO advice. If my symptoms don't get any worse than this and jack doesn't get sick at all, which is definitely the brnach of the timeline I'm hoping for, I won't know whether I've actually had Covid. Currently we're thinking that if nothing changes we'll start interacting with eachother again after 7 days, but not go outside until we're more confident the incubation period has passed; I think the safest is 14 days from the end of symptoms but we might not be able to sustain that.

Send hugs and support to jack, please? He's doing amazingly in a somewhat scary situation.

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I'm doing basically fine but continuing to be careful.

I still have the same single worrying symptom I had on Thursday, sore lungs. I don't otherwise feel ill, feverish, tired or anything else, so I'm really second guessing myself over whether isolation was the right choice.

The last few days have been mostly pleasant though stressful for jack who's handling everything on his own and worrying about me getting seriously ill or possibly infecting him.

Friday was 19 days since the government started taking action. I worked in my new upstairs den (previously jack's den.) We had a weird date where jack brought me up a tray with the Shabbat ritual things, I made kiddush sitting at the top of the stairs and he sat at the bottom, and we ate dinner in parallel but at a distance. And then we played Potion explosion over Steam, which worked pretty well.

The weekend was ridiculously lovely, and we were both good and only sunbathed and exercised in our own garden. Saturday, day 20, I went to virtual shul, which on only the second iteration starts to feel almost normal. Bigger than usual congregation, including some of the people who are usually strict about not using electronic technology on Shabbat. And in the afternoon I attended the second half of wildeabandon's Stardust readthrough which was generally satisfying and companionable. And I had a long phonecall with ghoti_mhic_uait.

Sunday, day 21, had slightly fewer online social commitments. We had a lot of time in the sunshine in the garden, remaining carefully distanced. cjwatson came by to wave to me from the street while I looked out of an upstairs window like some ridiculous fairy tale princess. We video chatted to jack's university friends; it's been a long time since the original trio got together since one of them lives in Croatia and has two small children. And I did my online chevruta just like the previous week, slightly sheepishly admitting I was Skyping from bed because I was isolating for basically no reason. And I had a long conversation with cjwatson in the evening.

Since today is day 22, and two weeks of lockdown, it's now been a whole two weeks since I last interacted directly with anyone other than jack. jack has also not left the house or allowed delivery people to come close to him since I got the weird symptoms on Thursday, so five days so far.

I now know eight people who have pretty clearly been through a bout of coronavirus, and 21 who like me are being careful because they have suspicious symptoms.

Thanks to everyone who made nice comments on my last post, I really appreciate all of you.

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Continued from Day Four. (From the beginning.) On Friday we packed all of our stuff back up and headed out.  We were barely out of the resort when: This tire is flat. Apparently all that gravel out to Horne Lake Caves the day before also included a small screw.  We limped around the corner to … Continue reading Summer Horrification — Day Five — Englishman River and Rathtrevor

Laundry. Built deer protection for my garden. Purchased materials for deer protection for my apple trees. Dishes. Mended one sweater and one pair of jeans. Reinforced neckline on another sweater in an attempt to have it fit better. Culled my wardrobe. Verified that garden deer protection withstands wind warning type winds.

Wow, the end of February really snuck up on me! I wrote this on the morning of March 1 and backdated it. :(

Aside from some uninteresting work travel and a bit more progress on Pac Tom, the main notable thing from February was work on my SIGBOVIK papers. It is now possible to submit, so you can too! Thank you for your suggestions for my chess paper (see previous post); it's not too late for more ideas there. I also have one non-chess paper, which turned out to be pretty fun. For that I spent a solid chunk of the weekend manually routing this bad boy:

Design rules check pass!

It may end up to be too hard to solder, but isn't it aesthetically pleasing?

So this is week…4 (I think?) of self-isolation.   The days blend in together.  I look through the news to see when this will all pass but there are no clear answers.  Lately though I’ve read small hints about the … Continue reading →

If you’re anything like me you are fairly desperate for good podcasts to make you forget your own thoughts exist, so today let’s share.  Here are the podcasts that are my new best friends as I walk into the kitchen … Continue reading →

We started going to a personal trainer at the end of the summer, and it’s been really good–building strength, getting healthier. But the one thing that she badgered me about was bread. “You have to stop eating bread! Gluten is terrible for you. It’s what’s making your knees hurt. It’s causing inflammation in your finger […]

I’ve been working a regular, 40-hour week since December now. Before that, I had Fridays “off”–I worked on client work, yes, but I also ran all the errands and did all the chores, leaving me both weekend days pretty much to myself.   What I’ve discovered, in the past three months, is that I resent […]

New projects:

• anypool — General-purpose pooling library — BSD 2-Clause
• avl-tree — An implementation of the AVL tree data structure. — MIT
• cl-aubio — Aubio bindings for Common Lisp — GPLv3
• cl-interval — Intervals, interval trees — NewBSD, LLGPL
• cl-liballegro — Allegro 5 game programming library bindings for Common Lisp — Allegro 5 - http://alleg.sourceforge.net/license.html
• cl-mime-from-string — A one function library to return a mime-type based on the file extension found at the end of a string. ie abc.txt -> text/plain. The common types implemented are from https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Basics_of_HTTP/MIME_types/Common_types — MIT
• cl-telegram-bot — Telegram Bot API, based on sovietspaceship's work but mostly rewritten. — MIT
• dns-client — A client for the DNS protocol. — zlib
• feeder — RSS, Atom and general feed parsing and generating — zlib
• perceptual-hashes — Perceptual hash algorithms for images — 2-clause BSD
• portable-condition-system — A portable condition system for Common Lisp — CC0
• ten — Template System for Common Lisp — MIT
• trivial-custom-debugger — Allows arbitrary functions to become the standard Lisp debugger — MIT
• trivial-with-current-source-form — Helps macro writers produce better errors for macro users — GPLv3
• vom-json — A json-formatted logger for vom — MIT
• vp-trees — Perceptual hash algorithms for images — 2-clause BSD

Updated projects: 3b-bmfont, 3bgl-shader, 3bmd, 3bz, a-cl-logger, alexandria, april, async-process, bdef, bp, ccldoc, chunga, cl+ssl, cl-ana, cl-capstone, cl-cffi-gtk, cl-collider, cl-containers, cl-environments, cl-gamepad, cl-gserver, cl-inotify, cl-markless, cl-pack, cl-patterns, cl-python, cl-rdkafka, cl-shlex, cl-sparql, cl-str, cl-tui, cl-utils, cl-webkit, clinenoise, clip, closer-mop, concrete-syntax-tree, croatoan, cserial-port, dartscltools, defenum, deploy, dexador, diff-match-patch, dissect, djula, doubly-linked-list, easy-routes, eclector, escalator, fast-generic-functions, fast-io, flexi-streams, flexichain, float-features, fset, fucc, functional-trees, fxml, gendl, graph, gtirb, hu.dwim.computed-class, hu.dwim.def, hu.dwim.perec, hu.dwim.presentation, hu.dwim.quasi-quote, hu.dwim.walker, hu.dwim.web-server, hunchentoot-multi-acceptor, ironclad, keystone, lispqr, literate-lisp, maiden, maxpc, mcclim, mmap, modularize, mutility, nodgui, numcl, numpy-file-format, origin, osicat, overlord, parachute, patchwork, petalisp, petri, phoe-toolbox, plump, policy-cond, polisher, postmodern, pzmq, qtools, quilc, qvm, roan, rpcq, s-graphviz, s-http-client, s-http-server, s-sysdeps, s-utils, sanity-clause, scalpl, sealable-metaobjects, sel, select-file, serapeum, sketch, skippy-renderer, snappy, softdrink, spinneret, staple, stumpwm, sucle, swank-client, swank-crew, tooter, trace-db, trivial-features, trivial-file-size, vgplot, woo.

Removed projects: cl-password-store, fomus, rfc3339-timestamp, rpc4cl.

All the removed projects are removed because they no longer build. For the first two (cl-password-store and fomus), I was unable to get a response from the authors. The other two (rfc3339-timestamp, rpc4cl) the author was responsive, but has abandoned the projects.

To get this update, use (ql:update-dist "quicklisp"). Enjoy!

A number of people support Quicklisp with a monthly contribution through PayPal. I recently set up a Quicklisp Patreon page as an alternative - if you are interested in supporting Quicklisp, feel free to check it out.

So hey I think I managed to break a leisure record this Virgo Month of Leisure! The bad news is that’s because I’ve been feeling borderline punk for a few months now. I always thought of myself as someone in pretty good shape, but every so often I just come down with… sinus nonsense, or […]

As I was driving back from Kate’s house after a three-day Thanksgiving trip (as opposed to a nine-day one which is my usual MO) I was thinking of a list I’d put here. Whether I’m online or off, I’m usually thinking of lists. To do lists, reading lists, library lists, “crap to fix in my […]

So I’d been kind of waiting until I had a positive “Hey I’m feeling better!” update. I had my head down, doing my thing, being basically okay but a little crabby at having felt kinda lousy since August. And two things happened. 1. COVID-19 2. The medicine my doc gave me for GERD (or something […]

A convocation of the Lover Triad of United States Grand Lodge will be held in Cleveland, Ohio, August 14-16 2020. Registration for the convocation is now open. See this site for more information.

The Worst Things For Sale is Drew's blog. It updates every day. Subscribe to the Worst Things For Sale RSS!