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You're gonna need a bigger turnout.

-related question: seeking recommendations for easy-to-use, free or very inexpensive , -compatible for .

Currently I'm working on a writer's bible for the Stationverse, called "The Silmarillisaurus" because of course it is. For my own use, mainly—a shared world would be neat, but if that ever happens it will be a long time from now. This is for me to keep track of everything.

What I have in mind is really basic. I don't have Tolkien's sketching ability, so I figure I'll draw something simple and then try to pretty it up a bit on screen. Drawing and cloning symbols for mountains, trees, etc., along with lines for shores and rivers and roads, then cloning and pasting as needed.

(*Dedicated* map-making software that allowed me to do things like topo lines would be nifty, but I'm not expecting that.)

Untold æons ago, I was actually pretty decent with Illustrator, at least for a non-artist. Those skills are gone now, like tears in rain, and so is a registered copy I can use on anything resembling a modern OS. Simple and cheap is what I'm after.

Oh yeah—I'm also open to working with an artist who can take my crude sketches and turn them into something publishable. I can pay, just not much right now, and I don't want anyone to feel ripped off. You may be noticing a theme here.

Like many memes about , this is superficially appealing but falls apart the more you look at it. do a lot of self-congratulating on how we are, but what that's translated into is more support for than any other generation, including the reviled . We're cats.

@Jirikiha I think you're spot-on about the economic argument.

I am a . If you know nothing else about me, know that.

Whatever happens, wherever you are, whoever you are—call me and I will come for you. That's what medics do. That's what we are.

Mostly.

npr.org/2025/05/21/nx-s1-53877

I've made my living many other ways over the decades. , , development, administration, , , . Maybe one of these days writing again, for more than a few months this time. All of them have shaped me to one degree or another.

They're all things I did, all part of who I am. Medic is what I am. If you're lucky enough to have your own "what" as well as "who" ... well, you understand.

Until World War One, more in every war died of than of received on the . The decreasing death toll of modern wars (you can look it up) is directly due, in large part, to advances in military public health. Those advances travel both ways, back and forth between the military and civilian worlds, preserving life all the while.

and and and aren't TV fodder, generally speaking. It's hard to make them look glamorous. They're just the reason you're alive to read these words.

, taken as a whole, is unquestionably the greatest advance in medical history. Nothing else even comes close. Arguably it's the greatest advance in history, period, with no qualifiers needed.

Deliberately breaking it is mass .

I am a medic. I am also a human being. The alleged human beings responsible for this monstrosity, if they ever call me, will call in vain.

As of today (May 21, 2025) through tomorrow, the is taking public on the proposed rule change for . I have no idea who will read these comments or if they'll do any good. But it seems like we have to try. Please add your voice at regulations.gov/commenton/FDA-

Note that you have to choose a category for your submission. I picked " industry" since that's where most of my work is these days. Those still in patient care should choose " professional. For everyone else, "Individual consumer" is probably appropriate. My letter appears below.

Good morning, and good luck.

===

Recently announced plans to change the covid vaccination approval process will, if implemented in their current form, make it difficult to impossible for people under aged 65 without serious medical conditions to receive vaccine boosters.

This proposed change seems to be rooted in the idea that covid is a serious threat only to certain groups. Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course older people, and those with underlying medical conditions, are at greater risk of morbidity and mortality from covid infection. However, healthy younger people do can and do die from the disease.

Consider that as of July 2022, about 8,000 people in the US aged 18 to 30 had died of the disease. This is greater than the number of US military deaths in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, over a much shorter period: two and a half years for covid, vs. eight years for Iraq and twenty for Afghanistan.

The idea that vaccination and boosters should be restricted is a lethal myth. As a biomedical researcher and former military medic, I consider this change deeply unwise, and urge the FDA to continue using current approval protocols.

Daniel Dvorkin
Ph.D., Bioinformatics, University of Colorado, 2013
M.S., Biostatistics, University of Minnesota, 2007
Medical Service Technician, United States Air Force, 1989-1997

is slaying her thousands, and may slay his tens of thousands. But will slay his millions. Exactly as I predicted.

npr.org/sections/shots-health-

The day may come when someone makes a good, entertaining, and reasonably accurate about humans interacting with (non-avian) ... but NOT THIS DAY. Clearly.

youtube.com/watch?v=6m1eOoUoVa

By "accurate," to be clear, I don't mean something that actually could happen, or have happened, according to our current understanding of the universe. The WISP (Work In Some Progress) depends on a portal. Lost world scenarios, extinct organisms resurrected from preserved material, whatever ... any setup requires breaking the rules of at least one of , , or as we know them. Usually more than one.

*Given the gimmick*, I want to believe the rest. And given my proclivities, that's not hard to do. A tiny bit of effort is all it takes.

I'm just waiting for . Not that I expect it to make much sense, but I do have some hope it will be better than anything the * franchise has turned out lately, or ever will again.

To be clear: I'm not asking if the supposed mob etymology is the origin of the term. I know it isn't. What I am asking is whether anyone knows if it's ever been used that way, *after* it became common slang in the "leave and don't come back" sense.

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"Eight miles out, six feet down" smells like an urban legend to me. It's certainly not the origin or common usage of "86," but I'm willing to admit the *possibility* that some mobster used it that way. Does anyone have any real knowledge about this?

The Supreme Court just blocked the use of the Alien Enemies Act for deportation on a 7-2 vote. I'm sure you can guess which two.

The Big Beautiful Bill just failed in the House. Mainly because some RWNJs don't think it's draconian enough, but I'll take the win, for however long it lasts.

Becca and I are planning an afternoon hike.

It's shaping up to be a pretty good day.

And okay. It is possible that someone, somewhere, sometime has used "86" to mean "kill." But that's not what it generally means, and anyone who pretends it does is a fucking liar.

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Open access article, and the "non-technical summary" section near the beginning gives an overview everyone can understand. 🧪🦖

cambridge.org/core/journals/jo

Very short version: was considered a valid for well over a century, until it was merged with about a decade ago, and due to specimen quality Stenonychosaurus took priority. Now careful examination indicates Troodon is a valid genus again.

This process is familiar from other famous genera, most notably and . Even *living* animals are hard to classify a lot of the time; nothing between and is really set in stone. The tension between "" and "" never ends.

Troodon is special. Maybe it was intelligent, in a way we'd recognize as such, and maybe it wasn't. But it was almost surely *smart*, and quite possibly social, and likely an omnivore. Does that remind you of anyone?

Maybe I'm fooling myself, when I feel a kinship across deep time. And maybe I'm not.

This is how start. It's going to be really bad.

For anyone who doesn't know, the , , , , and are all tributaries of the . So the entire is in *deep* trouble. The and are equally important: much of and southern depend on the former; and , , and of course Arkansas itself on the latter.

As rough as it will be in Colorado, downstream it will be worse. We have the for all the major rivers across about a quarter of the country ... and our water-sharing agreements were written during an unusually wet period. The fighting will begin in the courts, but I'm not at all sure it will stay there.

Seriously: there has never been a time in the entire history of the when the wasn't a position. The new 's politics don't line up exactly with the political spectrum, and neither did the last one's, but that hardly makes them . You can't "politicize" someone who's already there.

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On a friend's post, a FOAF says, "Don't the ." Uh ...

"Like anybody actually KNOWS this."

"Yes, we do know this. 'We' in the general sense, that is: clearly you don't, but smart people do."

I said I was cutting down on the rage. I made no promises about snark.

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