MM

ETA13 8-13-23 9:18pm: You can read the new support request here. I closed the last one shortly after submitting it last night when I realized there were even more things wrong I hadn't seen until "roughly the same minute I submitted it" along with things I knew were wrong that I simply forgot to fully check into because yay hi yes, me.

You can safely ignore anything below this line unless you really want to pick through some damn weeds with me - which only tells part of the story, anyhow.

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*feel free to ignore*

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It didn't look like this last night around this time. Now it looks like Notepad *squees*

Color-coded aka syntax highlighting:

I like the line numbering especially.

Only off things I notice are the textbox is about half the height it used to be and is missing the thing. You know the thing, the semi-triangular thing with three lines in the lower right corner that you can pull on to make the textbox bigger? That. What is it called? An expander? It seems to be missing.

ETA1: It's also missing a scrollbar. Up and down arrows, here I come. Eh.

ETA1b: The scrollbar only appears if I start scrolling by using the up or down arrows. If I don't put a cursor inside the textbox and start using it, there's no scrollbar.

(Seeing this is on desktop Firefox 115.0.3 64-bit/Windows 11 with Fx extensions enabled; haven't tried disabling extensions nor tried this in other browsers and/or on mobile.)

ETA1c: restarted Firefox in Safe Mode/aka Troubleshooting Mode - all extensions disabled, with cache, cookies and history deleted: still no scrollbar (no expander, either). A super-thin black scrollbar appears as the page loads, only to disappear as soon as I try to grab it with my cursor.

Again once I use the up or down arrows within the textbox the scrollbar becomes visible and stays visible and usable from there on out.

ETA2: Another issue seen in Troubleshooting Mode: The old style textbox flashes in on page load, only to be overlaid/overwritten by the new style as page load finishes. Disconcerting.

Also why I decided to use Troubleshooting Mode tonight as I thought I'd seen that with extensions enabled and almost worried it was my ancient Web Dev extension or even my actual copy of Notepad infiltrating into the textbox somehow.

ETA3 3:00am: Think I might've figured the scrollbar issue out upon noticing just now that Chris Pederick's Web Dev extension for Firefox does the same thing. That tells me the problem's endemic to Firefox alone and/or Firefox perhaps solely on Windows 11. Without testing other browsers/OSes I can't be sure but I got a feeling.

It's possible (though I can't say without examining add-on source/DW backend code) both Chris and Dreamwidth went with unstyled scrollbars. In Firefox those might take system default styling and my guess is system default styling's not working right on Windows 11, with Win11 being perpetually in beta and all. Just maybe my not so wild guess.

ETA4: Guess it'd be helpful to mention I'm not and wasn't using Canary (a bleeding edge release of Dreamwidth available to beta testers that I didn't know existed until about an hour ago) when I encountered the above oddities.

ETA5: We can no longer use the browser Find function to find CSS within the textbox. So to find anything you wish to change once it's in there you have to Ctrl A then paste it somewhere else just to find it.

And I know without even poking at it this'll be because of ETA2: old style textbox flashes in on page load/refresh to be replaced by new style textbox once page load completes. The entire box is not real, nor anything in it. It's all being pumped in via JS. Grrrrr.

ETA5a: Confirmed! Just turned browser JS off and refreshed the page and sure enough got the old textbox back. At least now I know how to find a usable one.

If it was going to have this little functionality right out of the box it should've been offered up as a Beta tester option.

ETA6: "To insert indentation or open the code hint menu, press Ctrl + m" doesn't work, either. I'd say "no longer works" but I've never tried Ctrl+M before so I can't say.

That said, I want to cross-browser test the new textbox style before I submit anything. Another time, I guess.

ETA7, 8-13-2023: Sooooo happy. Submitted a support request tonight for the Firefox scrollbar issue as I see it on Win11, then realized I still have a tower running Win10 and couldn't replicate the issue on it, so my original hunch was right - it's a Win11-not-playing-nicely-with-Firefox issue, yay.

And with further testing I see Firefox's Find works in every browser I tested (see support request for my list) except for Firefox on Win11 where Adblock Plus interferes with it somehow.

My laptop runs Win11. I do 100% of my CSS edits and updates from it. And edit my CSS a lot. I usually only post changes after code pushes where global journal style changes wind up affecting how I do things, so maybe a few times a year, as ever since creating Pride I don't much want to change my style anymore.

That said, unless/until DW dev fixes the scrollbar issue I've found I can just disable Dreamwidth's JS and scroll and Find same as before the JS overlay got added.

ETA7a, 8-13-2023: closed the Support request as I just saw our Perl compiler's having the same scrollbar issue in Firefox on Win11, then realized I forgot to check textbox expanders for their very existence or lack thereof in any browser tonight to see if that's still an issue. The scrollbar is a an important issue by itself (usability, accessibility) but I'd rather roll all issues/all instances (CSS editor, compiler) into one request.

Will update with a new Support request link when I get another chunk of time to look at this.

Not sure what time he died but last night around 7pm for no discernible reason as I hadn't heard he died I intentionally sought out a song of his on Youtube while making dinner: Sundown - you know the one that goes:
"Sundown you better take care
If I find you've been creeping 'round my back stairs" and
"Sometimes I think it's a sin
When it feels like I'm winning when
I'm losing again"
...and hoo boy do I ever know that feeling, then I let autoplay take me to The Wreck of The Edmond Fitzgerald and not for the first time marveled at how anyone can memorize the words to it, though I'm sure many people have. I love hearing it but couldn't string five words together with my back against the wall. It's true storytelling.

What gets me is how he's probably one of the last singers still living - until yesterday - who I grew up listening to my mom play on repeat - so him, John Denver, Jim Croce, Charlie Rich (which actually led me to want to hear Gordon Lightfoot on Youtube last night - it started with some random desire to hear The Most Beautiful Girl for the first time in years), Duane Eddy and all the 50s and 60s doo wop, Motown and girl bands, amongst other favorites.

Most of them have been dead for a while and all of those guys in my first sentence are now - and their music in particular shaped my musical tastes and dancing starting from before I could walk (I could walk at eight months, so the legend goes, so my turnaround time on this was pretty quick).

To be born at a time when I could benefit from my mom's taste in 50s, 60s and 70s music (she even got into disco) and to grow up while the greatest music got made in the 80s-90s - that alone makes it feel like right place/right time.

I can't imagine being born any earlier or later and what I would've done about only being exposed to music that came before and after my more formative years. Luckily I never had to worry about it*.

*Though I did, anyhow, and just taking last century's music into account most of it's a big old No for me. No 1910s, 20s, 30s, 40s music, no mid-90s on. It's not that there wasn't, hasn't been or isn't at least some good music made during those eras, it's that most of it's just not to my taste. And when I was young music as I knew and most enjoyed it propelled me into wanting to live the way little else ever could, so probably too pivotal to compromise on.

I mean the ones triple-stacked in my dish drainer and on an overflow dish mat taking up an entire counter and filling the dishwasher as well - not what we ate, though that, too.

It's pretty traditional that I don't feel like eating traditionally on holidays with the rare exception of lamb on Easter. This year I didn't feel like having Easter.

Still can't figure it out - spent a week wondering why I wanted nothing to do with it. Maybe only getting two or three days off since late March figures in somehow? By Friday night I'd softened up some and decided that if one possible guest felt up to it we might have seafood.

He did, so we shopped that night. Things were all set, or so I thought.

Saturday my boss, who spends almost every holiday over here anyhow, called me offering to bring over filet mignon, sides and wine, as well.

I couldn't really say No so now both him and my friend were coming over. I was like, "Wow, that escalated quickly from "hide in my house" to "it's a party"".

The day started off with baked potatoes already in the oven set to cook for around two hours, wine* and an appetizer my friend made - piles of snow crab legs steamed with Old Bay and served with drawn butter.

Then I started a fresh broccoli cheddar cheese bake while he made steamed fish - skinless flounder fillets in a bed of melted butter with Italian seasoning in foil. He makes this all the time using different fishes, usually skin on and it's really good.

Next up: garlic bread from a Puerto Rican loaf (Pan Sobao). I've never tried PR bread before. It's the softest bread I've ever touched. It makes potato bread seem hard as a rock, so wasn't strong enough to stand up to my butter spread untoasted.

The garlic butter - fresh garlic mashed in a mortar and pestle with dried parsley - was made up last night so I warmed it, cut the bread into pieces, reassembled it in the pan to pre-toast it on both sides, then buttered and top-broiled it. *chef's kiss*

Then my boss forgot to cook the filet mignon and side he brought so we're having it for dinner tomorrow night, lol.

The broccoli bake was...serviceable (I really need to look up better recipes than the ones I fly with for holiday side dishes), the fish was great, the potatoes were bang-on perfect as I broiled and crumbled bacon to top them along with the sour cream and butter, then we all had Moose Tracks ice cream for dessert.

By then two out of three of us needed naps even as I was still thinking, "Wow, that escalated quickly, imagine if I'd done nothing" but we really did have a good time after all. And made a lot of dishes.

*BYO wine. I had cab sauv, boss drank a sweet red and my friend had red muscadine which is about 1,000 times sweeter. I'm still the only dry red wine fan I know.

Brings* a whole new meaning to "go eat a bag of dicks", doesn't it?

*Didn't buy it; left behind by a former tenant - though I did check it out on Amazon as I could not believe my eyes.

My county has early voting and vote by mail.

I squeaked in by late last week, dropping my ballot in a post office mail slot* as it was the only way to avoid contention over a) using a drop box - our county has just one, b) voting in person then getting held up before, during or after by a "volunteer poll worker", actually one of my worst nightmares or 3) dropping it in a blue postal box only to have someone nefarious, ie "up to no good" fish the damn thing out at some later point.

Life's just a series of Rubik's cubes like that - so which way do I turn the pieces to solve these little puzzles, again? Not this way - that's for sure.

But voting shouldn't have to be this fraught with apprehension and difficulty for some of us and fraught with terror or impossibility for the rest of us - though this is Terror Lite compared to what's coming if the Rs get their way, and so far I fear they will (hoping they won't), but until the results are in and we can make sense of them who knows.

In the meantime one can hope you did your civic duty (by) today and voted. Dems are strange like that - known for being the political affiliation most likely to register but then the least likely to get out there and vote, so even if you're sittin' there all white and privileged and shiny-like it takes a cattle prod to shove some of you off your couches and out to the polls or over to the nearest mailbox to drop your ballot in.

I don't understand it, not when, if you've been paying attention, free elections and our actual civilization are at stake. If that doesn't get you going nothing will or else by the time it does...there's the buzzer...too late. Seriously?

Especially if you're a Dem, this might be the last free and fair election you'll get to vote in - by 2024 our right to do so might not exist anymore or might be in name only and/or strictly for show purposes, a la Rossia, by then.

That's the R dream - tear it all down, install their own then contest, suppress and arrest the rest, and every one of you who doesn't cast a ballot - but could've - simply speeds up that process. If it comes to that remind me why you didn't vote before you start in - I don't want to hear it if you could still freely participate in a democracy but then chose not to.

"I didn't know!", which I'll hear dozens of times between now and this time next year and any variation of "One vote doesn't matter" aren't valid excuses nor actual reasons to watch it all burn.

*My ballot was recorded as counted by early the next afternoon so bravo USPS and bravo the county I live in - great job.

She was part of so many of my childhood and young adult memories between watching Grease and listening to her music. My favorite song?

Makes me cry even though I've listened to it maybe hundreds of times.

Farewell Global Liberal Cannibalistic Conspiracy

I resigned a long time ago and miss eating the babies, too - they kind of taste like veal.

On the question of "Should I keep them?" so far 80% of poll takers say Yes, 40% of the Yes-sayers say "Yes, but without multi-colored links" ( 😟 ), 19% say No, and one outlier wants to agree "There is no No" - which I guess counts as an unqualified Yes.

Against the color palette in use for the first few days of the poll (a very bright, bog-standard Pride rainbow) poll takers were 80% feeling multi-colored links were harder to read, with 20% saying they made no difference (about as easy to read as standard-color links).

I've refined colors twice since then with my latest edits done tonight and have decided to keep the multi-colored links, for now. For those advocating for a flag: I can't do a Pride flag atm, not in the standard flag place - say, the top left corner of the header. The Ukrainian flag was there to start off with and now I have the Ukrainian colors in my title and subtitle; besides, the header's so dysfunctional for doing normal header things I'd have to switch styles to pull off anything much more complicated.

That said, I'm open to hearing any and all suggestions, ideas for improvements, and from whomever wants to tell me "Gosh darn it I always view posts in your style and now I can't for [reasons]". If it were up to me there'd be a button up top to switch back to my old (arguably more readable) style, as we've probably all seen done on certain blogs, but Dreamwidth's not currently set up to allow that, afaik.

In the meantime feel free to take the poll (though keep in mind I'm keeping the Pride CSS active indefinitely given my feelings on the current political climate) and to leave comments as you wish here or there. The CSS in question is available by right-clicking for source on this journal or by viewing it on Pastebin.

The Other Side's seizing power fast as they can, as boldly in your face about it as they dare.

See the last few months at the Supreme Court.
See the gerrymandering that will lock up state legislatures for years - in one state, Dems can't take majority control again until 2031.
See every red or red-leaning or red-gerrymandered state passing draconian laws on abortion, book banning, educational principles, guns and more.

Why is it the more principled side fighting for human rights, for criminal and reproductive justice and freedom for all - truly all - have to be so timid about it?

We've crawled along for hundreds of years getting issues like slavery advanced but not abolished and winning some rights for women while not having the word "woman" appear once in the Constitution. Not one Constitutional amendment gives women rights and not one act of Congress gives them abortion rights.

Lacking even these most basic protections we're told abortion was taken away because it shouldn't have become a Constitutional right all at once and told losing the right was so inevitable the only quibble even John fucking Roberts could come up with was uh, maybe we should do it a bit slower, guys? In other words lose the right, either way. Stop making changes so fast.

LGBTQIA+ people have existed since the dawn of time but hey, they moved too fast to gain rights. Blacks got the vote but moved on it too fast, as well - time to turn it back.

Meanwhile we see the Other Side, the Beam Me Back To The 1860s Scottyians, withering away in the numerical minority. They serve no one that well so much as hate groups, abusive misogynists, white supremacists, bigots of every stripe and all of our precious Karens and Kens. But moving fast, moving boldly? They sure are, so why can't we?

It's an ugly day when all of the above plus a tiny handful of white lords of the manor and their sole Black collegue can tell the rest of us we pushed too far too fast so here, take this - and that and that and that, until they've ruined the lives of so many between who gets hurt directly and who gets hurt by being unable to stop those who put themselves in charge.

It turns out Clarence "Every time a bell rings a clump of cells gets its wings" Thomas wants to play the originalist game, in exciting news for all of us, especially for Black folx like himself.

Since he wants to end revisit the legality of gay marriage (among several other things) one cannot help but with a flutter of eyelashes to see that any originalist reading of the Constitution risks ending interracial marriages, too (Loving vs. Virginia).

Yet he doesn't seem too worried about his own marriage being outlawed. This points to hypocrisy in thinking SCOTUS can pick and choose what, exactly, to get all orginalist about or to him thinking he can wriggle out of having his own marriage made illegal by talking the other judges who rule alongside him out of taking up any cases on it.

That aside, there's nothing to stop this court from going as far as anyone's imaginations might take them except its own consensus on what it will or will not do - chuck all the amendments out the nearest window as they're not original to the Constitution, either? Sure, why not, it's turtles all the way down.

Speaking of unchecked power...I didn't think this was how the three branches of government were supposed to work (at least, it's not the way they were taught to me), yet somehow here we are.

ETA 6-24-22: Based on early responses indicating rainbow links can cause readability issues I've changed yellow to a more golden color (hex #ccd104) and added a color stop to limit how far the color carries. I might (or might not!) make future changes to tone down colors some more.

If changing yellow to gold and adding a color stop has improved or fixed readability for you and you feel like letting me know and/or changing your vote please feel free to do so.

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For those driving by or else who've never seen my journal in my style, it's a pretty standard layout with red, black and gray accents and red links on a white background, like so:

I've favored these colors pretty much forever (since 2006) and would go back to them but I'm liking links done up in Pride colors, which I was not expecting to like so much:

Pros:--can visually celebrate and show support for Pride year-round
--more cheerful than my usual blah thing
--easier to see and find links in long, wordy journal entries
Cons: --the colors, as used, are quite possibly blinding (could be modified via a more pastelish palette); people might get the same effect as from marquee text and have strokes
--I wonder if multi-colored links are harder to read if say, stacked within link lists (live example)

Ticky boxes!

Do you ever open your freezer and there are something like 15-20 storage containers of frozen seafood broth staring back at you all comprised of liquids from steaming mussels and shrimp in their shells?

Well I do, all the time. So a few days ago I'd had it (the buildup was from late last year through now) so I dumped all the containers, lids still on, in the kitchen sink to force myself to defrost their contents into a large pot to make fish stew.

It's probably the worst fish stew I've ever made as my ratio of broth to veg, aromatics and fish was out of whack so the stew came out comparatively...weak? The flavors of garlic, onion, green pepper and white wine, which makes the whole dish, just weren't there.

That said it's a good, serviceable fish stew* no one would turn their noses up at so I'm eating it, though I took what was leftover after last night's bowl, strained the solids into a storage container, added just enough broth to cover, then froze the leftover broth for another time/dish.

And I did all that because my still too-small freezer was so full of fish broth before fish stew happened there was no room to make and freeze chicken stock, which I use in everything, so here I am, half my freezer full of fish broth I only use once or twice a year, another quarter holding most of an entire leftover Costco rotisserie chicken and three Ziploc bags full of veg scraps going wtf, the ingredients to make other things are taking up all the space I could use to make (and store) other things!

Nothing like when your freezer's contents self-morph into a paradox.

So today I dragged the chicken carcass and veg scraps out to make chicken broth, drained it, froze roughly 3-4 cups, put the carcass and scraps back on the stove with another eight cups of water and am now making chicken stock which should be done about...now.

Crises (though I soooo badly want to say "crisises" because that sounds right but noooo, the English language won't let me) solved!

*For fish stew I follow a recipe called Dad's Fish Stew (here's one example). I'll sub in homemade seafood broth for clam juice, add different fish or seafood components and always toss in fresh grape tomatoes whole, a chopped bell pepper or two and a few ribs of chopped celery, then add more garlic and at least one more cup of broth.

ETA 4-23-22: forgot to list the garlic and onion powder (about 1 teaspoon each; now included in recipe).

• 1/2 lb 73/27% ground beef
• 1 large egg
• about 1/3 cup cooked quinoa (mine was tri-colored made in homemade chicken stock)
• about 2 tablespoons Italian breadcrumbs
• about 1 tablespoon dried oregano
• about 1 1/2 tablespoons herbs de Florence
• about 1 teaspoon onion powder
• about 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• a few shakes of table salt
• a few grinds of freshly ground black pepper

Ok, so this recipe was made out of thin air. I had leftover quinoa, leftover canned red sauce, leftover canned diced tomatoes and leftover mushrooms and onions from liver and onions I made the other night so added quinoa to the meatballs, then added quinoa and the mushrooms and onions to the red sauce and diced tomato mixture.

We're not gonna talk about the sauce (I would never ever add quinoa to red sauce again) but the meatballs were divine. I could eat them by the truckload - and I don't even like meatballs so I'd have to say this recipe worked.

How: mix the above, shape into roughy 1 1/2" size (I thought this size was wildly innovative only to browse other recipes to see it's not) then bake in a 420ish oven for 20 minutes, then around 440ish for another 10 minutes (I used my large 6 year old toaster oven which tops out at around 450 on the broil setting; I used the bake setting throughout so ymmv).

They were *sigh* tender, juicy, flavorful, melt in your mouth with a lightly crisp outer crust and I could live on them. I ate them with my pasta and sauce that night, for a snack later on, for lunch the next day, for a snack that night, dropped one into leftover homemade oyster stew as today's lunch and have just one leftover now.

I forgot to take an After pic (as usual) so here's the last one left, looking rather lonely:

And oh boy, how I'd do this one again.

It's up to a couple of more dollars per pound, you know, and does nothing but burn more easily if it's Kerrygold, a butter I've gone from "knowing nothing about" to "developing an intense dislike for" in the space of one week, or else is more yellow regardless of if it's Kerrygold or Costco's version, which does not burn so easily but is equally nothing to write home about.

I blame everyone from Food52 to Eat This Not That! to independent food bloggers, TikTokers and Instagrammers for my miseducation: I was told by these fine food flippers that grass fed butter has less water, therefore more butterfat, therefore tastes better - richer, deeper, more buttery if you will, only to watch Kerrygold in particular hiss and spit and spatter out of every pan all over my stove as though I'd dumped water on it to watch it burn, all while it does not taste any different at all.

Maybe this is an American thing - like thinking American cheese is the only way to make a tasty grilled cheese sandwich - but my eyes can't handle the yellow of grass fed butter, either: it's blinding. I keep glancing back at various pans going "What is that?", as though someone pissed in them while I wasn't looking.

American/USian butter is paler and whiter and blends better. Try caramelizing onions - like I did tonight - then going, "What's this yellow liquid?" I was stymied, thinking someone pissed in the pan, before finally realizing it was this butter I keep buying because it's soooo much better.

Grass-fed butter is bullshit - Love, someone who's bought and used one pound of Kerrygold and one pound of Costco's version, who therefore has the right to call it.

I know, I know, usually the title finishes off with "you turkeys!". Perhaps I'm trying to be *cough* nicer this year, I dunno...

In news that will surprise no one (even randos who've never been to my page) I hate turkey and am not much fonder of Himalayan salt lamps ham so tonight's main course was pork roast procured then prepared by my guest, who pre-marinated it for several days in fresh garlic, ginger and pineapple.

It was delish.

Alongside Your Author presented a fresh green bean casserole, though forgot to check the pantry for canned mushroom soup (on-hand supply: 0, which she did not know until roughly...midnight) so she did what anyone would likely do and made her own.

Luckily I had lots of mushrooms along with a bag that had partially dried out. Have any of you tried partially dried-out baby portabellos? No? (Me, neither.) Should you? Yes! The concentrated flavor was amazing and the dark black they turn as they cook was a decadent sight to behold.

Once they got toward done I scraped them from the cast iron pan, sauteed yellow onions in their butter, added a bit more butter until they fried pretty brown, tossed in crushed garlic, scraped it all out after a minute, made a white wine pan reduction, stirred in evaporated milk and heavy cream, then dumped the mushrooms, onions and garlic back in, stirred and it was done.

Trimmed and cut the green beans, mixed the ingredients together in a baking dish, popped it in the fridge, cleaned up the kitchen and it was 1am by then, yay. My house smelled so freakin' good I wanted to bake the casserole right then and there.

After rushing through some of today's pre-planned chores (Bowie spent a good 20 minutes puking all over the house - after following him around with a garbage can, rags, and spray-on carpet shampoo my nerves were basically shot and I was waaay behind on what I hoped to get done) my guest arrived and popped our roast in the oven.

Then I started other sides: roasted wild heirloom carrots (the multi-colored ones like purple, yellow, black) which eventually finished under high heat in a butter, maple syrup and honey glaze, baked some sweet potatoes and of course lovingly sliced the cranberry sauce straight from the can, because I have to have at least one tacky side, it makes me feel better.

An entire bottle of Shiraz* went...somewhere and there was even a nice (store-bought) pumpkin pie. By then my guest looked like they needed a nap so I'd count this a blazing success as Thanksgiving doesn't amount to much without at least one person ready to keel over upon completion.

*Aldi: Winking Owl wine, $2.50 a bottle - something I've never tried before, just grabbed it on, "Oh, why not?" impulse. It drinks as smoothly as something you'd find at a fine wine competition, not that I've been to those. Highly recommend!

Cuddled Bowie then didn't know what to do with him, so just put him back in his bag.

That if you press the Post to: [your username] button on Dreamwidth while Dreamwidth's having a 504 Bad Gateway Error your post blows right into space.

Dreamwidth thought it published my post so I was unable to recover it by pretending to make a new one: there was no "Restore from saved draft entitled "TIL..."?" dialog once the 504 Bad Gateway Error ate it up.

And I only got that far once it hit me I couldn't go back to Dreamwidth's online editor (I'd closed tabs and cleared History by then) which is probably the easiest way to recover some post that's been blown to bits.

Luckily my Preview window was still open so for Dreamwidthians who encounter a similar situation, here are some steps:

Note: for those who use auto-formatting it's possible you can skip this and copy/paste your entry from the Preview window into a new post without hitting source but I don't use auto-formatting, myself (I write my own HTML) so I don't know how well that might work from a formatting perspective.

1. Press the Post to: [your username] button while, unbeknownst to you, a 504 Bad Gateway Error meteor is about to hit it
2. Find you can't use the "Restore from" dialog because there is no dialog - DW thinks your post went up. Meanwhile, a meteor hit your post
3. Hopefully the Preview window's still open (this might vary by browser/OS but for Windows 10 users with default browser settings the Preview should be in its own window sitting on the browser icon in the taskbar); find your Preview window now
4. Left-click anywhere within the Preview then select View Page Source
5. Now to the browser's Menu Bar or hamburger icon: select Edit --> Find in Page or press the F3 button on your device and type .entry-content into the search box. Alternately you can scroll down to .entry-content on the source page
6. Copy and paste everything between .entry-content and the first div after the last sentence of your entry into a new post. You'll have to manually re-enter your post title, tags, metadata and any custom post settings, then you should be all set.

No particular theme tonight, just in an anti-COVID mood.

• Millions of iPhones, TVs and other devices could go offline next week — here's why
• How To Charge Your Phone When There's No Power
• Pennsylvania Republicans Are Subpoenaing Millions Of Voters’ Personal Information To Determine "Whether Or Not They Exist" (Part 2,345 of the continuing saga "Some Presidential Election Featuring A Narcissist, Interrupted")
• Paul Ryan spoke to a doctor and extensively researched how to deal with someone with narcissistic personality disorder after Trump won: book (this shows some semblance of a backbone. Maybe)
• AOC breaks down basic biology after Gov. Greg Abbott said women raped in Texas had 6 weeks to get an abortion
• These Single Moms Are Forced to Choose: Reveal Their Sexual Histories or Forfeit Welfare
• This stark visualization proves it: You should be making a lot more money
• Scientists Believe They’ve Found Physical Evidence For One Of The Most Infamous Biblical Stories
• Difficult Conversations: Tips on How to Handle Tough Talks (to paraphrase: "deciding if you should even have one" and "if you have one what is the ultimate take-away for all parties involved" are things I've become a bit of an advocate on "not glossing over")
• Overeating 'not the primary cause of obesity', claim scientists (it's...foods with high glycemic loads?)
• Barnacle Glue Inspired MIT Scientists to Make a Paste that Can Stop Heavy Bleeding in Seconds
• Want to Be Smarter at Work? A New Harvard Study Says This Simple Change Pays Off Big Time (an article exploring "How to be smarter at home, school, work, and all other entrapping places" might be more relevant)
• Fifteen years of research suggests that sleep training for babies can cause them more distress (so...raise your hand if you were sleep-trained?)
• ‘I’m a Urologist, and You Should Follow the 20-Second Bladder Rule’
• Death as an unnatural process (fell down a rabbit hole after googling one line in one article (not this one))
• Stories or Music Can Synchronize the Heartbeats of Everyone Listening into a Single Rhythm
• One Mozart Song Calms The Brains of People With Epilepsy, And We May Finally Know Why
• Plumber Has Landed Record Deal After Music Mogul Heard Him Singing –While He Fitted His Bathroom
• This measurement is more than 2,200 years old, and its accuracy is remarkable (*whistles, calls flat-earthers*)
• Americans Are Sharing The Iconic Foods That Instantly Give Away Where They're From — And I'm Wondering If You Agree
• You Can Grow Your Own Blueberry Bush From a Single Berry (single berry? I've got more than one)

My last COVID inbox link-clearing was a while ago *ahem last November*. The older links seen here stand the test of time and/or have become newly useful and/or need to know in light of mutations - and it's mutations all the way down.

And vaccines, and 203 doctor's opinions on vaccines. Seems it's vaccines or the seven stages - your choice. Here's one lady who thought she chose wisely. And here's a mom who felt she also made the best choice.

Older links first, newer after the jump.

• It Only Takes This Long to Get COVID in a Room With Someone Who Has It
• Coronavirus 'can infect you from 20 feet away in just 5 minutes' restaurant study says
• Studies hint that over-the-counter treatments could be effective against COVID-19
• Keeping indoor air clean can reduce the chance of spreading coronavirus
• Smallpox and the photos anti-vaxxers don't want you to see
• If You're Not Doing This, Your Mask Won't Protect You, Study Says (what no one does now)
• It’s not your imagination: Wealthy people really do practice more social distancing
• Government should be shouting about vitamin D (governments should still be shouting)
• This common drug may reduce your risk of COVID-19 infection | Study finds fenofibrate’s ability to reduce Covid-19 infection | $15 drug gets COVID patients off oxygen support in under week – study
• Smokers at Lesser Risk of COVID: Findings from CSIR Serosurvey | Drugs that mimic effects of cigarette smoke reduce SARS-CoV-2's ability to enter cells
• One in eight recovered COVID patients die from illness complications within 5 months: UK study (this scared the crap out of me for months considering our mid-October COVID-like illness)
• Study says Pfizer vaccine immunity is so strong, it might prevent COVID-19 transmission (ah, for those days again)
• People who've gotten both shots simply aren't getting COVID (how I wish this was still true)
• What to do, and not do, before and after your Covid vaccine shot
• Donald Trump hit with $1 trillion lawsuit over massive COVID-19 death toll in US

---

To make for more cogent reading I've taken the liberty of, as needed, grouping the following links in un-chronological order by topic to give them some flow.

General Info

• Highly mutated SARS-CoV-2 emerged from someone living with advanced HIV who could not clear SARS-CoV-2 until their HIV infection was suppressed with effective antiretroviral therapy
• New study finds people with COVID-19 have antibodies that target their own immune systems
• Study suggests people who develop severe COVID-19 have blunted antiviral responses in the nose, throat
• Canadian study identifies protein in blood that may be causing COVID-19 deaths
• Long COVID Might Be The Manifestation of a Different Virus Reawakened in The Body
• Massive numbers of new COVID–19 infections, not vaccines, are the main driver of new coronavirus variants
• Docs break down COVID side effects, pediatrics, ivermectin, death, and, yes, vaccines (money quote: "[...] the Delta variant is so aggressive that it's mutating to protect itself from antibodies - including mutating more than 16 times in the last 30 days!". 16 times. Sixteen. Times)
• Fight-or-flight response is altered in healthy young people who had COVID-19
• How does COVID-19 affect the brain? A troubling picture emerges | Large study finds COVID-19 is linked to a substantial deficit in intelligence
• ‘I Thought Patients Would Be Breaking Down My Door’: Effective COVID Treatment Is Available In Minnesota (yes, just Minnesota. dreamshark, et al)
• How your diet can impact the severity of Covid-19 infection
• Aspirin, common anti-inflammatory drugs may prevent COVID-19 deaths
• New drug may be a cure for both COVID-19 and herpes
• A 'supertaster' gene that makes people more sensitive to bitter flavors may also help protect against COVID-19
• One antibody stops all strains of COVID-19 from infecting cells
• Scientists Now Know Why Some People Gain 'Superhuman' Immunity to COVID-19 (what dreamshark once said)

Vaccine efficacy/new and existing variant transmissibility

• Israel says Pfizer Covid vaccine is just 39% effective as delta spreads, but still prevents severe illness (39%. Thirty-nine. Percent)
• Pfizer picked a COVID-19 vaccine dose far lower than Moderna's to minimize side effects, its top scientist says (spoiler (literally): side effects are about the same)
• This Is How Much Each Vaccine Protects Against the Delta Variant, Studies Show
• How Long Does COVID-19 Vaccine Protection Last? New Study Raises Red Flags
• New data on coronavirus vaccine effectiveness may be "a wakeup call"
• No deaths, few hospitalizations, but 74% of those testing positive for COVID-19 in Massachusetts outbreak were vaccinated
• Covid horror warning as fears erupt over 'alarming' vaccine-resistant 'New York' variant
• ‘Assume the worst’: coronavirus variants in Africa worry scientists
• Vaccinated People Who Get COVID Have These 3 Things in Common, Study Shows
• If You Got This Vaccine, You May Have More Antibodies, New Study Says
• New Study Finds Yet Another Health Benefit Of The COVID Vaccine
• I was a breakthrough case. Here’s what ‘mild COVID’ was like for me

Bullshit - and a poll

• Adults laughed at a teen who was talking at a Tennessee school-board meeting about his grandmother dying of COVID-19, video shows
• Alabama man dies of cardiac event after 43 hospitals with full ICUs turned him away (yes, ICUS all over are *that* full thanks to COVID-19 disbelievers patients)
• Studies show COVID-19 helping to remove Republicans from gene pool in more than one way (at least there's some silver lining to them killing everyone else in the process?)
• 'Don’t come here’: Florida residents are warning fellow Americans to stay away from DeSantis's disease-ridden state (ah yes, welcome home MM)
• Study finds coronavirus-related polarization is stronger among people higher in cognitive ability (*grabs popcorn*)
• POLL: Do you think you may have had Covid-19 around Christmas of 2019? (disgruntledgirl: "yes")

Just like human babies do.

Case in point: today. Location: living room. Time: early afternoon. Circumstances: Bowie sitting on one of his toy-festooned scratch pads, yelling non-stop for The Hoomun to play with him. Again. Initial reaction: *rips hair out*

When I realized he was now in the kitchen to yell even louder at me (I'd been playing with him on and off all day) I looked down at him as he stood wide-eyed and aggressively yelling from the kitchen floor and said to him in a loud, clear, firm voice: "Young man (he's five, lol) it's time to put you down for a nap".

He was making his quieter brother so restless and jumpy with all his yelling he was wandering around in circles trying to discover what Bowie's problem was, so this was a total crisis.

Before taking over the situation: I don't have a before pic, so here's a representative image:

After:

To begin to resolve this first I called Bowie upstairs.

He follows me wherever like a dog. His brother follows him thinking there might be a treat involved (90% of Pip's brief bits of consciousness are over how he thinks "there might be a treat involved" while the other 10%'s divided between "destroying the litter box YAY" and "needling mom's face/neck/elbows/armpits with my long, pointy meat hooks and poking her skin with my cold, wet nose as she falls asleep").

Once we were situated upon the bed Bowie curled up in his favorite corner, Pip aligned somewhere behind him, and after mom crept away a few minutes later they slept soundly for the next few hours - SANITY RESTORED!

BONUS FACT: the long-tailed green fur poof nestled between them is Pippy's favorite toy. He's been leaving it as a gift for The Hoomuns to find on their favorite sitting and sleeping spots for five years now. If he were an outdoor cat I guess instead of Green Fur Poof he'd leave me dead birds and squirrels. I'm grateful he's not an outdoor cat.

More like wound-up nervous energy dump, gotta go somewhere.

• Obsessed With Your Pet? Science Says You're Neurotic (And Needy) (but, uh not all bad...)
• The Higher Your Anxiety, The Higher Your IQ (Says Study)
• Jeff Bezos is sending us all a frightening message with his colonial space flight
• How a couple from New York make around $3,000 a month from their dumpster diving side hustle (oh speak to my heart!)
• Facing chronic shortfalls, North Korea tells citizens to start supplying their own food (like they weren't already)
• Listen to the oldest song in the world which was written 3,400 years ago (would make a great hit today and is not copyrighted, I've been thinking)
• Two-thirds of long-term romantic relationships have this in common
• Women in relationships ‘more likely to struggle with depression and self-esteem’ (noooooo waaaaaay)
• 15 Words That People Say Aren’t Real—But Are (got killed a while back for "conversate"; wish I'd seen this as I wouldn't have been like, "I. Am. Just. KIDDING! Using. Funny. Words" jfc)
• Accents in Britain (did not know there were so many)

I installed it as recently as last month on this laptop and last week on Kitchen Server #1 (the tower) so I thought it existed up until then on AMO, though now it doesn't. That was the greatest (perhaps only and/or best-working) extension for removing the damn Google redirect for clean copy/paste links without the waiting or any fuss.

Google to developers: We take down your extension, because we can (this article addresses Google, not Mozilla, taking down his extension. Ironically enough he tells us to switch from Google Chrome to Firefox to preserve our use of GSLF and/or to protest Google's strangely applied policies in his case - but none of this addresses what's happened to the extension now on Mozilla, nor why).

ETA1: found his Github page; the only thing he says about the missing extension is one word: DISCONTINUED. Talk about tight-lipped.

ETA2: The extension still exists in the Classic Add-Ons Archive extension in Classic Waterfox. I explain how to install and use the extension in this post. This doesn't help modern Firefox users much, though, including myself (I only use Classic Wx for running older CSS editing extensions like Web Developer) - unless Classic Add-Ons Archive still works within modern Firefox (don't think I've tested since writing the how-to).

ETA3, 7-19-21: The extension's missing from AMO and Google Play but is still available within Edge (just installed it).

ETA4, 7-21-21: matagus's very similar extension, Google Redirects Fixer & Tracking Remover, is still going strong on AMO (just installed it). If it sounds familiar that might be because I used to publish its only fork to date - a GreaseMonkey script to improve stripping of redirects on image results. It worked great on regular search results so am assuming it still does. Opening results in new tabs is still experimental and seems to require installing an older version of the add-on.

ETA5, 7-21-21: squirrelitude kindly found me the page where Mr. Palant discusses what happened to the extension on AMO. Quote: "I took it down. I asked Mozilla to stop promoting it last year already." 'Scuse me, grumbly much now are we...

ETA6, 7-21-21: It's strange that the same guy who told us to switch from Google Chrome to Firefox over Google removing his add-on from their store tells someone else in another venue more recently that he's been trying to get Mozilla to "stop promoting" the same add-on since "last year already". I had wanted to talk to him myself to find out what happened but after seeing that...OK, nevermind.

Slightly O/T, but do you all remember when it seemed like him and Tim Berners-Lee practically ran the interwebs - that is, if you used them from an old (single-digit version, up until maybe version 4) copy of Firefox? I do - he created ABP (or at least, the only version of it that matters to most people who know what it is). Now he's got just one extension left on AMO - and I've never heard of it.

Some people just don't get the credit they deserve - for Google first and now Mozilla (see addenda) to do him like this really seems just miserable.

Thank all that's good for JavaScript Toggle On and Off. I only used it today to disable JS globally on my journal, as I do every now and then to make sure my CSS styles don't blow right off the page without JS.

It was my good luck that I first happened to disable it on a longform comment reply page - which brought back the (perfectly centered!) spec of dust sized icon next to my comment forms - the same spec of dust sized icon I thought I'd eliminated in my last go-round, but then I caught a glimpse of it while logged in via my phone's Firefox browser the other night (does Firefox on Android disable JS for Dreamwidth? Not sure it does or why it would, so I can't say if what you'll see below fixes that issue, as well). Hmmm.

So I started looking through my CSS - thinking it must be my CSS, since apparently Dreamwidth uses JS to display my custom #postform usericon CSS - which, when you think about it, is rather odd. Sure enough, it was this (guilty party emboldened):

.ljuser img,.entry-content a img[alt=info],#postform img,.admin-post-icon img {margin: 0 .1em 0 0!important;width:14px;height:14px;vertical-align:baseline!important;background:none!important;border:0;padding:0!important}

Changing #postform img to #postform label img, as imprecise and clunky as that still is, fixes things up so that even with JS disabled the usericon next to the comment form displays at full-size instead of 14px by 14px, which did look super fucking weird. Well, at least it displays correctly in Firefox on the desktop. I have no idea how it looks on the phone just yet. Anyhow...yay.

June 2021

Raw | diff | blame

Raw

Raw gold
Dull
Covered in grime and dirt
Takes time
To shine up, to
Polish and smooth

Diff

I found
Diamonds amongst it
Uncut joy
Sparkling amidst
Buried treasure
You watched as I had
No one to give it to

Blame

Those who think
Gold can't be found
In grime and dirt
Aren't charmed by it
Their dreams
Haunted by it
Pushed aside