Well, this web log was set up on 8.6.26. at 6 p.m. I'd been awake all day but Microsoft wasted all of the connected hours except for the ones I spent on this week's Substack and on reading parts of two chapters of a very long and "heavy" new e-book. No links there. Nevertheless...
Animals
Some things bison do, when they're not using stupid tourists as soccer balls:
Serena's surviving kitten? He's an absolute blue-eyed wonder--a kitten born to a Seralini cat, subjected to vicious prenatal and postnatal chemical spray poisoning, yet still somehow born viable and apparently healthy. Everybody loves him. Silver wanted to help nurse him from the day he was born, and wasn't pleased that no help was needed. Drudge is back in his good-big-brother role and obviously loving it. I hesitated to give him a name for the first two months, but he's already figured out that his name is Wonder. Serena teaches kittens these things.
He accepts that he's put in a cage for security at night, but thinks the game is using something to interfere with the locking mechanism so he can get out. He's always eager to bounce out in the morning. He started eating solid food as soon as he was given a chance, digested food easily, still likes mother's milk but could live without it.
I'm pretty sure that he is a social cat. His father doesn't seem to be one, but he is. I greet the adult cats, release Wonder, set down food, turn away. Wonder bounces across the porch, wanting to say good morning, nonverbally, before he even eats. At the end of the day I sit on the steps sharing a bottle of Pure Life water with the cats. As they finish their evening meal, first Drudge, then Serena, then Silver, then Serena again, take turns sitting on my lap, being petted and told how wonderful they are. Wonder scampers off to the sand pit, then takes his turn on my lap. Serena calls him to extract the last drops of milk for the night. Drudge makes sure my lap stays warm. Then Serena calls Drudge to walk a few steps away from where she's been nursing Wonder. Wonder lets himself be caged for the night, but only after he's said good night to Drudge. Did I just see that? An adult tomcat doing a good night kiss ritual with another tomcat's kitten? That doesn't happen with normal cats. Almost anything can happen with social cats!
Health News
Los Angeles admits that a combination of (1) closing restaurants, thus driving alley rats to forage more adventurously, and (2) allowing people to crowd together on the streets, and (3) discouraging alley cats from eating the alley rats, has brought oldfashioned diseases you didn't think anyone ever got any more back to Southern California. Typhus? What is typhus, you might mutter. Or you might remember it from the endnote at most editions of Anne Frank's diaries: Anne was not directly murdered by gas or shooting; she and her mother and sister died of typhus. Angelenos are now learning more about this antiquated disease.
Typhus is spread by fleas, which travel from person to person when people fail to maintain a healthy interpersonal distance. Ironically, regulations intended to help people maintain better distance promoted contact between street dwellers and alley rats--and, as more people lost their homes especially after the last big fire, contact among huddled masses of street dwellers.
In addition to alley rats...although the fleas can't survive on possums for very long and although they are most likely to get onto cats or possums when those animals kill the rats, fleas sometimes reach humans by way of cats or possums. But they're most likely to reach one human by way of another human, especially when the humans in question are a homeless family group sleeping in a huddle for security. Fleas are specialized to feed on one species of hosts or another, but they do not know this and may jump onto anything that is or is not a warm-blooded animal, first, and consider whether it's a host animal they can use later. You could pick up an infected flea ANYwhere. Fleas sometimes look for their next host while perched on plants or rocks.
Typhus is a completely different disease from typhoid fever, which is spread by one type of salmonella bacteria. (Both diseases were named after Typhon, an ancient mythological demon of disease.) Typhus is spread by Rickettsia bacteria. (A similar, less fatal infection, sometimes also called typhus, can be spread by chigger mites.) There are two "species" of these bacteria, one of which is easily transmitted between humans even at a healthy distance, one of which is not transferred directly from human to human unless it is spread between humans by an infected flea. What Los Angeles is now dealing with is the flea-dependent type.
Typhoid fever feels like extreme food poisoning, because it is. The midsection puffs up, the digestive system goes spastic, and fresh red blood may appear in vomit or diarrhea. Most people survive, although they feel miserable, but typhoid epidemics used to cause some fatalities even a hundred years ago. Fevers can spike, causing some risk of neurological or other damage. Chances of survival are improved if patients don't eat, or eat as little as possible, while suffering through the disease.
Typhus feels like a plain old fever, which it is. Symptoms include a high fever, headache, muscle cramps, aches and pains, sometimes a skin rash. The digestive system is sometimes involved but is not the primary battleground for these bacteria. Most people feel bad enough to call for emergency help right away and can be cured with antibiotics. The flea-dependent kind of typhus is not a serious threat to human society today. Most people always did survive typhus; with antibiotics the death rate from typhus is one in a hundred, or less. Untreated people sometimes show long-term or permanent damage to organs or bloodvessels.
A writer who does not deserve a link suggests that setting out "anticoagulant" rat poison--warfarin--would protect people from typhus or other rat-borne diseases, that the only reason why Governor Newsom isn't doing that is that Newsom cares more about "wildlife" than about people. I can tell this writer a little about trying to control rodents with warfarin:
1. You don't. Rodents are clever little pests. When something that seems edible is spread out before them they watch and see how it affects the first rodent who eats it. Warfarin will kill one or two rodents in a generation. Thereafter the other rodents will ignore it. Before another rodent tests the bait, rats will have had time to ruin your favorite armchair and gnaw holes in your clothes.
2. Warfarin does not kill animals other than rodents. It's popular because it's guaranteed not to kill cats and dogs--or toddlers. However, it avoids killing them by making them sick, and although as an anticoagulant, or blood thinner, a different formulation of warfarin is sometimes used to treat advanced cardiovascular disease, the anticoagulant effect itself doesn't feel good. If your pet, or a wild creature you've been watching, were to eat warfarin you'd very likely spend the next 24 hours wondering whether it was dying. One valid reason not to set out warfarin rat bait outdoors is the high probability of violent retaliation from pet owners.
(And in desert country, like Southern California, much of the native wildlife are rodents--cute, innocent little things, endangered by rats, by the diseases rats carry, and by the things people do to get rid of rats. Such as setting out warfarin outdoors. One bait station might kill one alley rat and twenty wild mice, pack rats, gophers, and groundsquirrels. That's mere pointless cruelty. I don't think the writer was an Angeleno; certainly he wasn't thinking scientifically.)
3. A combination of natural predation (free-range cats, dogs, possums, raccoons, hawks, owls, and skunks) and lack of extra food supplies does get rid of rodents. Alley rats overpopulate on humans' food waste. Wild animals and birds produce more young when they get a richer, more varied, higher-protein diet. Leaving pet food out for nibbling-at-will is often blamed, and is likely to bring infected rats into contact with house pets, but alley rats congregate near humans' garbage cans and dumpsters. Rats gnaw on peelings, bones, shells, etc., as well as the parts of food humans consider edible. Rats eat, and like, food that humans regard as spoiled and unfit to eat. Rats chew on wood and will eat paper and plastic, so food packaging is another attraction that stimulates rat reproduction. Burning or burying these things is another important way to keep rodent populations low in residential neighborhoods.
Music
Judas Priest. (These links came from a report on a fundraiser that tried to offer something for everybody...Judas Priest and Dolly Parton and general musical diversity run wild.) Note, however, that no writer anywhere should have any sympathy for the idiot boy in "Breaking the Law." We know what financial desperation feels like, and what we do with the feeling is write.
Generated by the computer of "A Wise Moose."
Rush...trying to play along with the computer game version of one of their popular songs. They could play actual rock music but it turned out they couldn't play the game "Rock Band."
Rush playing the song onstage:
Dolly Parton. (Yes, there was a time when pop culture expected this kind of attitude from women. I was really too young to be listening to this song when it came out, but I listened, and my mother said, "What a stupid song! No matter how pretty the other woman is, or how rich or whatever else she may have, do you want to wear her underwear? If he wants that other woman, let him go to her. Good riddance to rubbish." Mother was the beauty expert and Dad was generally considered a good visual match for her, and the four, later five, of us were all at home by nine o'clock every night. I think this attitude helped keep my husband at home at night, too. If he hadn't been, he knew I would've been on that overnight Greyhound and gone. To women who don't have a house of their own, may I suggest packing the cheater's belongings in a U-Haul and parking it in front of Jolene's house? It is refreshing to hear the story behind the sweet, I'm-so-helpless-and-pitiful-I'd-scare-most-men-right-into-another-woman's-arms, song on this video...meh. I still wouldn't want to pick up Jolene's underwear. I still favor the U-Haul approach. The only way to be married in a city swarming with Washington courtesans is to learn how they think.)
The Killers.
Kentucky All State Choir. (Right, so you're not supposed to dance to the National Anthem. Sing along. It's a workout for the diaphragm muscle.)
Carl Andrewes.
Hank Williams.
Johnny Cash.
The Kiffness.
Politics, and Mental Health
Wisconsin has a candidate running for Governor who is literally a mental patient. She finds it "incredibly painful" that people celebrate Thanksgiving, staying home and eating turkey, while she and her husband are trying to sell ramen noodles. Seriously. They built a restaurant to serve people the cheap junkfood college students can cook by turning on the hot water in the dorm room. They haaaate Thanksgiving! How not?!
This Francesca Hong also admitted a drastic overreaction when people didn't realize that she spoke English. Per-lease. It does get stale, but it's an opportunity for anyone who belongs in the public eye, even as a businessman, to do a little self-promotion. "Too many old White people who didn't think we spoke English," indeed. Politics, poor child, is full of old White people. Not just nice harmless retired ones at a family-style restaurant, either.
Clearly Hong is unfit for public office, but should men say even she is "crazy" or even "emotional"? I think, the less men say about Hong, the better. Let women publicize the fact that she's been hospitalized and apparently still suffers from a phobia of her potential electorate. Men should get to know her opponent and, if that opponent is less than heroic, surround person with an awesome support team.
Politics, Philosophy of
Posted on X by James Lindsay Anti-Communist. Found on the Mirror.
Technology
The "guitar hero" plagiarism-bot-generated video linked above is danceable all by itself, and Scalzi's thoughts about it are worth reading...especially the comments, in which people mention that using that plagiarism-bot your browser tries to encourage you to use is feeding those "data centers" nobody wants.
What can we do to discourage the "AI" maniacs? The situation may seem hopeless. You can all but literally smell how moist some eager beavers become as they push plagiarism-bots into your face. Still, we need to make the effort, whether it saves the Internet or not. Your browser has a "settings" page. For most of you, that page is reached via a button with a vertical row of three dots on it, just below the top right field on your Chrome screen, below the "close window" button. It's worth going through the "settings" every few months, anyway. Make the time to shut down all things "AI"-infested, today.
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