38 thoughts on “April 26, 2020: Thanos-ed”

  1. Who made Word god of grammar? No thank you.

    Years ago Boeing (one of their merged StL companies, actually) went to spelling employee as employe to save on keystrokes. Yeah, me neither.

    1. Noah Webster had a whole bunch of ideas for improving the spellings of words. Some of them definitely caught on (I believe he's the one who removed those British "u"s from colour and so on), but others definitely did not.

      Examples of spellings he proposed, taken from the book Noah Webster's Fighting Words:
      center instead of centre
      jail instead of gaol
      iz instead of is
      riter instead of writer
      hed instead of head

      1. I wrote with one space for a year before my manager caught on and advised me to follow the style guide.

    2. I love my double space still, but seeing those darn squiggly lines will probably actually get me to change. Grr.

          1. I don't believe WordPress will, but HTML does. All spaces are collapsed into a single space.

            (Take a look at my comment from the WordPress editor.)

              1. This is where the non-breaking space ( ) comes in. Those will not be collapsed into one. They have a Unicode number too but I don't know what it is or how to enter them except with the HTML escape.

                  1. Non-breaking spaces are helpful when preparing something for publication because there are times when you don't want something (such as . . . ellipses) to be split up by a line break.

    3. Proportional typefaces did it. Ideally if you were typing with a monospaced typeface, using two spaces to separate sentences would be okay.

  3. Knock-off Chilaquiles for brunch today. (Tortilla chips, left-over slow-cooker enchilada chicken, eggs, black beans, sour cream, salsa, onion, red bell pepper.) So good. So easy.

    2. BullDog NordEast in Minneapple has some fine Chilaquiles - we go there for breakfast every year after the Moustache Run.

      1. It's been called Stray Dog for a couple of years now. New ownership, but I believe they kept the Bulldog chef,

  4. Younger Daughter spilled on her MacBook and shorted out some keys so she's bringing it over today for repairs. I finally get to be the genius in the bar.

    1. I think latest Windows 10 update is hosing me. I'm getting 100% disk usage for the first 5-10 minutes, and it's rebooted a couple times while hibernating at lunch; I think it's accessing invalid memory and blue screening. Hopefully they roll out a fix shortly

      1. If you have a memory issue, or rather an issue with the OS reading the physical memory, that could trigger excess swap file reading/writing that would account for the high disk use.

    2. Recent MacBook keyboards are notoriously difficult and expensive to repair. Too much dust could permanently break some keys.

      1. Hers would be about six years old by now. She said she bought the whole top unit with keyboard, touchpad and bezel, so it should be a pretty straightforward replacement.

        1. Holy crap, you were right, this is basically a full transplant job, everything out of the old case into the new case. I got halfway home when I ran into the star-drive screws holding on the motherboard and had to abort. I'll get some mini-star screwdrivers this week and do the job next weekend. She's using an external keyboard so she has a workaround until I get to it. Not a difficult job, just a lot more involved than I anticipated.

  5. I feel that lots of friendships are going to be tested as we start to peek our heads out in the coming months.

    Today the organizer of my wife’s Outlander watch group asked if the group would be comfortable watching at social distance in her house rather than on Zoom as has been done since the pandemic began. With all four of our parents still here (we want to keep it that way), a (currently not working) nurse as a wife, a doctor as a sister, a strictness that we've had keeping our kids away from friends, and a general rule-following demeanor, we have resigned ourselves to being part of the “hold the line” group. My wife's answer was a kindly worded, " Even though I desperately want to be with you tonight and see your faces in person, we've been strict with our kids, I need to walk the walk and stay home."

    The thing is all of us are going to start applying assumptions and implications on top of these exchanges. We are certainly assuming that there's a bit of an unsaid "don't you trust us?" response on their end. We're also aware that another in the group has self-diagnosed as already having had the disease. They believe they are immune. It is an awful lot to ask your friends to trust both your self-diagnosis and the currently undetermined science about the antibody response to this disease. On the other end they're probably assuming we're being overly cautious because, well, at social distance we should be fine. I don't necessarily disagree!

    The local soccer association sent out an email today talking about how they will be sending team assignments out soon. The MYSA plan is for a June 1st start date to a shortened season. The email took care to address parent concerns around how their children are being placed without tryouts and so on. It was written very well. But it didn't offer to answer any obvious questions around what scenarios might cause the season to be cancelled, how to pull one's children from the team, if there would be refunds, etc. It struck me as completely tone deaf – the whole reason the email was sent was as a result of an international pandemic! I've heard some parents have already emailed the association saying their children will not play. They were told there will be no refunds.

    This big soccer family is going to notice when some players are there and some are not. Both sides are going to judge those choices. Coaches will judge those choices. While I'd like to make the call now as to what we're doing with our children, we're going to wait it out under the assumption that it will all be shut down anyway. How could it not?

    (To be clear, I don't envy the association's position and I'm not stepping up to be on the board. I generally try to avoid complaining in these cases, but my mind is completely, 100% boggled.)

    I've been pretty realistic about this pandemic all along the way. I've generally seen the writing on the wall a week or two before the next announcement, which has helped me weather things a bit. I didn't anticipate this one, though. I think this pandemic will test all of our friendships as some of us begin to feel more comfortable going out than others. As part of the "hold the line" group, I believe we will be left out of social engagements and we will be judged for being overly cautious. I think that will unfortunately cause subconscious feelings in our friends. They may feel that we distrust them or maybe that we don't care enough to take a "tiny" risk to see them. Naturally we won't be able to help but judge those who are making different decisions.

    I'm still trying not to make value judgements on people's decisions. Some context might be worthwhile. We are in the third largest city in southern Minnesota. Still, it is a rural/less-populated area. It is frustrating to see businesses shut down here, to be told we can't sit at distance in each other's yards, etc. Given strict practices of mask wearing, social distancing, etc, we could be going out a bit more. If we all did this perfectly well, it'd probably be pretty fine. The problem is that the people who push the boundaries will just push at the new boundaries. I see very few masks in our city the way it is. Maybe I'm underestimating how well a "you can now go out, but must keep 6 feet away and wear a mask" would work here?

    In any case, I just needed to write somewhere about my new mourning…the friendships forever changed and the friendships forever lost.

    1. Brought the kids over to my parents' yesterday to have socially distant ice cream in their yard. (They hadn't seen their grandparents on person in two months.) While there, I watched the block have a socially-distant happy hour that was anything but.) I made a few subtle comments about it to my parents to hopefully persuade them to either stay away after we left or, more likely, at least stay distant if they attend.

      1. We've had a few impromptu social distance gatherings in the cul de sac recently. It generally starts when Paul and his wife are out working in the front yard and I take Harper out for some Frisbee and then Nathan lets his dogs out to run around and sniff Harper's butt. Sometimes Charles or his son will join in. We talk for about 15 minutes then go back to our own things. Expect for the distance observed, it's pretty normal interaction for the neighborhood.

        1. This is pretty much how our neighborhood - indeed, much of our town - is. I've seen a handful of people actually getting together and disregarding social distancing, but for the most part I see people chatting but keeping their distance. I think the nature of a particular neighborhood might make all the difference here - in communities where people's friends and acquaintances are spread more widely, it's going to be more isolating. In communities where the neighbors are the friends and acquaintances, it'll be easier to keep the normal connections a person needs, while still maintaining the distancing.

    2. I think this summer will have an even wider have between cabin families and non-cabin families. I like sticking around in the summer for concerts, Twins games, etc. With those all cancelled, there will be much less to do.

    3. thankfully, we almost never see our friends anyway, so we should be fine!

      Our kids are young enough that they don't have super close friends or sports leagues they are expecting. And the immediate family currently is all very cautious because there's many immunocompromised people among us. I'm anticipating sheltering the entire summer and hopefully the decision about school come fall will be simple for all involved, but I suspect not.

  6. Bagar Baingan

    First had this dish at a vegetarian Keralan joint in London, Rasa W2. Was great for lunch today. A spicy classic.

    Cut an eggplant into cubes and soak in salted water for 10 minutes.

    Toast some coriander seeds and dried Chinese red chili with a little oil. Grind in a mill.

    Fry some onion and chopped jalapeno until the onion is brown. Mix the onions with the spices and some yoghurt, and a handful of dessicated coconut.

    Drain the eggplant. Heat 2 tbsp of oil, and add some mustard seeds and curry leaves (you need to cover, as the seeds will start to pop and make a mess).

    Add the eggplant and a little salt. Stir fry until the eggplant is light brown and soft.

    In a mill, grind up raw cashews, then add some cream to make a paste.

    Stir the eggplant & onion sauce till tender. Serve with the cashew paste on top. Pair with Resin Double IPA or Dark & Stormy.

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