Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Misc. comments 66: ( terminology, the river Thames, recipes and ingredients, family trees, classifying fruit, covid precautions, learning math, subscription prices, reasons for blogging )
( covid vaccination and masking )

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minoanmiss was talking about kids at the place she works trying to get out of math class. amaebi talked about her son's math classes, and I wrote:

Reading this comment, I think part of why I came out of high school still liking math may be the teachers, and another part may be the slightly odd curriculum they were using. It was the "experimental" math track per my high school, and "unified" according to the university that promoted it; we got a lot of the standard material, up to calculus, but also propositional logic (in eighth grade), Cartesian geometry (instead of Euclidean), and combinatorics. The school also had a "regular" math sequence, and students who found experimental too difficult (or, I would guess, whose parents thought it was too weird) could move into those classes, which also led to calculus).

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In response to brithistorian wondering about weird magazine prescription costs:

My guess, beyond late stage capitalism being weird, is that they're somehow still selling advertising to companies based on the number of people who are reading, or at least getting, the print edition.

If so, it benefits them to be sending out more paper copies, even to people who read the digital version and will throw the paper magazines away without opening them. It sounds like the prices of daily newspapers increased when they were selling fewer ads. What I paid at the newsstand in the morning was about enough to cover the paper and printing costs, and the reporters' and editors' salaries, the fees for syndicated comics and columnists, and any profits all were paid for by advertising.

It's not quite "if you aren't the customer, you're the product," but it's a little bit in that direction. At one point, my daily English-language newspaper options in New York included several that cost about 50 cents, plus two free papers given out at subway and railroad station entrances, and the Wall Street Journal and Women's Wear Daily.

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finch was talking about "why do I blog anyway?" and I said:

Part of why I post here is for my own later reference, which includes both things I hope will be interesting to others, and minutiae of stuff like starting on new meds. I made a bunch of posts early in the pandemic because I could feel time just slipping away, then.

My posts here are also about talking to people, which is sometimes conversation and sometimes "here is information I think you might find useful.".

There's a pinned post at the top of my Dreamwidth account page, which says this is [partly] an online substitute for a paper journal, and also invites new readers to introduce themselves.

I've done more around the house today than I'd planned, because cattitude isn't feeling entirely well--so, I took out the trash and recycling and moved the bins to the edge of the street for pickup, made French toast for lunch, and reheated yesterday's chicken soup for supper.

I also did a few of my PT exercises. In particular, since I was outside on a not-too-cold afternoon, I did the exercise that needs stairs (or, at least, one step), which I didn't get to earlier in the week because of the weather.

The other thing I did was ( masks )

My Airgami N95-equivalent mask arrived a couple of days ago, and this afternoon's mail brought a package of 10 KN95s, so we should be set for a bit. I haven't used the Airgami yet: it seemed like it might be finicky, so instead I double-masked, cloth over a medical mask, on my way to adrian_turtle's yesterday and then home this morning. The other part of being careful is that I took a Lyft yesterday, because I am not getting on a rush hour bus in current conditions. Traveling not in rush hour this morning, I did take the bus, but I didn't go to either Quebrada or LA Burdick, because shopping at either of those bakeries would have required going into the store. Instead, I placed a takeout order at Bagelsaurus, which is handing customers the bagels, cream cheese, etc. through a window on Mass Ave.

The other cool package was a Groundhog Day gift exchange package from [redacted], in festive wrapping paper, which I am saving to open on 2/2.

I spent most of the past weekend with adrian_turtle, before coming home Sunday afternoon.

We mostly took things easy, except for cooking, and the meals were pretty simple. Saturday, we each did a few Duolingo lessons(Hebrew for her, French for me, and I got a brief tour of (a particular font of) the Hebrew alphabet after noticing her Duolingo keyboard.

I took a Lyft to Arlington, and buses back, and ran errands that took me into stores, carefully: Apothka in Arlington for cannabis edibles (which Massachusetts isn't currently allowing delivery of), and CVS for two prescriptions, because the software wasn't cooperating with my attempt to have them both delivered this time. Also, briefly, the food shop on Trapelo Road, next to the outbound bus stop, which I decided would be safe after looking through the plate glass windows; they turned out not to have the bread I was looking for, so I turned around and left. Since I was walking home from CVS, this was essentially on my way.

I double-masked in both directions. On the trip to Arlington, I discovered en route that the outer (cloth) mask had slipped, leaving my face covered [only] with a medical mask. On the trip back, I took Adrian's suggestion of using a medical mask as a filter layer inside a cloth mask, which worked better.

My glasses fogged badly on the way home, which I don't think is connected to the double-masking. I was trying an anti-fogging spray that Adrian uses, but it didn't help and if anything made the fogging worse.