I need help organizing my itunes. Yes, I am using itunes. I don’t want to hear about alternatives to itunes. I want apps that help organize my library, add art to albums, and gets rid of dupes.
Help me borg.
by John Cole| 59 Comments
This post is in: Tech News and Issues
I need help organizing my itunes. Yes, I am using itunes. I don’t want to hear about alternatives to itunes. I want apps that help organize my library, add art to albums, and gets rid of dupes.
Help me borg.
by Betty Cracker| 185 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads
As I mentioned in the thread below, this morning I tried to talk my husband into observing a holiday of my own invention, Bad Saturday, which entails brunch, mimosas and Bloody Marys consumed while viewing an MST3K marathon. No chores allowed. Only fun and debauchery.
He doesn’t take to indolence as readily as I do, so we compromised: hiking first. Here’s a roadway canopy we saw on the way:
And here’s a lovely swampscape:
Now we’re off to a swampy boardwalk that is supposedly great for birdwatching. Hope it is snake-free.
Open thread!
This post is in: Dolt 45, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Trump Crime Cartel, Decline and Fall, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?
Area President Who Criticizes Reporters' Anonymous Sources Wants Anonymity For White House Visitors: https://t.co/AY7lyWXPPC pic.twitter.com/JT2h2Ueyc0
— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) April 14, 2017
I guess when Trump said Obama was the least transparent president ever he was talking about skin tone
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) April 14, 2017
Lord Smallgloves’ motto: No grift too small, no scheme too petty.
Apart from reinforcing the truth of that, what’s on the agenda for the day?
As a reporter who writes abt ethics & lobbyists, not having WhiteHouse? logs is a very big deal. A major rollback. https://t.co/Iexu2Io9zb
— Eric Lipton (@EricLiptonNYT) April 15, 2017
The same WH that just agreed to sell your browsing history won't disclose visits to WH to protect privacy of lobbyists. Swamp wins again. https://t.co/CaWgxxa8H4
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) April 14, 2017
Why is @BarackObama spending millions to try and hide his records? He is the least transparent President–ever–and he ran on transparency.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2012
It continues to amaze me that there is one of these for every occasion. https://t.co/BVkgxbtovJ
— Paul Blumenthal (@PaulBlu) April 14, 2017
Watchdog group will sue to have White House visitors log released. https://t.co/dDvcYwBQud
— Anthony De Rosa ?? (@Anthony) April 15, 2017
Saturday Morning Open Thread: SEKRIT NO PEEKINGPost + Comments (180)
This post is in: John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House"
It was a long fun week here at Home, Crap Home.
On Saturday I flew to Connecticut, and on Sunday we drove down here with her two children and they spent the week here and left this morning to go back to their dad’s for Easter. As a life long bachelor and curmudgeon, the house is really quiet and I haven’t even yelled at Thurston for barking.
We had a whole list of stuff that I wanted to do with the kids, go to Oglebay Zoo and see the otters, take them to the Carnegie Science center, and so on, but I had forgotten how good Bethany is for kids. They were content playing with the lacrosse sticks, walking to the park and getting filthy in the creek, riding bikes, and chasing Thurston and Rosie. Gerald (my neighbor and the fix it guy who did so much on my house) took them fishing with his kids, and they liked that a lot, too.
They are from urban and suburban areas in NY and CT., so this was the first place they had ever been where they could just look to mom and say “We’re going to the park” and then just go on their own. I’d forgotten how important that is when you’re a kid, that feeling of freedom and independence. I’m hoping they are going to come back for a couple weeks this summer.
Thurston has been moping around the house looking for them, and at one point today I could not find him and he was up on the third floor sleeping in one of their beds. At any rate, if mom approves maybe I will post a picture of them later on. I did finally figure out you don’t need to worry about what you make for them- just don’t cook anything for yourself and eat what they don’t- they’ll find something they like and eat it.
One thing that was amazing is that they were very intuitive with the pets. Rosie never really growled, they were rougher with Thurston, and they treated Lily like a dainty lady. William loved Steve and would close himself into the bathroom downstairs every morning (I have to feed him in a separate room to keep Thurston away), open the cat food, give it to Steve, and then sit there and pet him the whole time he ate. Steve really liked it. When they were leaving his mother asked him if she said good bye to Steve, and he said “I had some quality time with him this morning.” I forget that even though kids are young, they are still little people.
ABC hung some curtains and did some more decorating, so when I clean up a bit and have some good light I will take some pictures. We repainted the dining room and I have not shown you that yet.
How was your week?
by Betty Cracker| 126 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Here’s a photo shared by faithful reader “cope,” who reports it was taken during a rafting trip on the Colorado River between Grand Junction, Colorado and Moab, Utah:
Cope says: “For the observant, there is a formation in the cliffs in the foreground known as Scooby-Doo Rock. See him?”
I don’t see him! If you see Scooby, please share his precise location in the photo in comments.
Otherwise, open thread!
PS: We’re watching the rebooted MST3K on Netflix. If you’re a fan of the original series, check it out!
by Adam L Silverman| 206 Comments
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Faunasphere, Open Threads, Silverman on Security
While I’m sure all of our reader, commenter, and lurker cat owners are already aware, just a quick Easter weekend cat health PSA:
Easter Lilies are Deadly to Cats
Lillium sp. and Hemerocallis sp. of lilies, including Easter, Asiatic, tiger, and day lilies are all incredibly toxic to cats. It is not known what causes this toxicity.
Ingesting any part of the Easter lily plant causes acute kidney failure in cats. This appears to be due to the death of kidney cells, but the exact mechanism by which it occurs is not known. Cats can be poisoned by Easter lilies in the following ways:
- Eating less than one lily leaf can cause a cat to develop kidney failure.
- Cats may rub up against the lilies or walk through pollen that has dropped from the flowers. When they groom the pollen off of their fur or paws and ingest it, they can be poisoned.
- Chewing on and swallowing the flower of the Easter lily results in toxicity.
Signs of Easter Lily Toxicity in Cats
The following signs are seen in cats that are poisoned by Easter lilies:
- Within two hours of ingestion:
- Vomiting is often the first sign of Easter lily toxicity.
- Anorexia, or unwillingness to eat accompanies the vomiting.
- The cat develops lethargy, and doesn’t want to move around or play.
- Increased urination may be present in between two and twelve hours after the cat consumes the lily. After that, the cat may stop producing urine altogether, as the kidneys shut down.
- Death usually occurs within three to four days of lily toxicity that is untreated.
If you know or even suspect that your cat may have ingested any part of a lily plant, take your cat and the plant, if you have it, to the veterinarian immediately.
The following therapies are all used to treat cats that have ingested lilies:
- Induction of vomiting to remove as much of the plant as possible before it is absorbed into the cat’s system. This needs to be done fairly quickly after ingestion.
- Activated charcoal is administered to the cat to absorb as much of the remaining plant product from the stomach as possible and carry it through the GI tract without allowing to be absorbed.
- Intravenous fluid therapy is administered at a high rate in order to flush the system of the lily toxins and support the kidneys.
If treatment is delayed until eighteen hours or more have passed since ingestion of the lily, your cat’s prognosis for recovery decreases dramatically. When it is caught early and treated aggressively, lily toxicity usually carries a good prognosis for full recovery.
For those who observe have a Happy and (cat) Healthy Easter. Everyone else: have a nice weekend.
A Holiday Public Service Announcement for Our Cat OwnersPost + Comments (206)
by David Anderson| 25 Comments
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance
I incidentally saw the Ellen DeGeneris “I’m Gay” Time magazine cover this afternoon on Twitter. In the top right hand corner of the cover is a header for a backlash against HMO practices story. That sent me down a rabbit hole. Cost control is hard. Cost control is predicated on either doing less or paying less. Doing less can be done by either a strict form of no, or generating a healthier population. “No” produces far more immediate results and more importantly results that can be captured by the nay-sayer. Population health management through improved vaccination or preventative care or whatever else may bend the long run cost curve but those efforts are seldom captured within the first eighteen to thirty six months. Paying less can be achieved by either rate setting efforts like paying providers only Medicare rates or shifting utilization from high cost hospitals to low cost hospitals or from low cost hospitals to out-patient community based clinics.
No matter what effort is made, cost control means someone is making less money or someone is out of a job. This is tough.
And as I stayed in the rabbit warren, I read this New York Times article from 1996 on HMO practices that highlights the struggle:
Although managed-care companies insist that capitation is not designed to deny medically necessary care, the practice stirs strong emotions. In Oregon, Dr. Gordon Miller, a Salem ophthalmologist, is gathering signatures for a voter initiative seeking to outlaw capitation….
12 states guarantee a patient’s right to go directly to certain types of specialists without first getting approval from a primary care physician, who insurers call a “gatekeeper.”…
The California Nurses Association’s ballot proposal and a separate initiative sponsored by the Service Employees International Union would prohibit rules that prevent doctors from criticizing health maintenance organizations….
Ophthalmology is effectively a license to print money. It is one of the ROAD specialties where reimbursement has not matched productivity gains. It is a chronic target of incremental variable cost control for insurers. It is also a specialty that leans Republican. On the other hand, the CNA and SEIU are core Democratic supporting groups. Their interest is maximize healthcare spend to maximize healthcare industry employment. Cost control costs their members jobs and wages. Finally, patients don’t want to be told no so they try to avoid gatekeepers.
We could go through this article and do minor re-writes, changing names and dates, and this piece could be pitched today.
Cost control is hard. Yhere are very concentrated benefits to decreasing the percentage of GDP spent on healthcare for a given quality and outcome level. There are numerous well organized and well trusted groups who would see a lot of pain. This pains would promote them to scream in public if healthcare costs stabilized as a function of GDP and then declined on a demographic adjusted basis. Concentrated pain beats diffuse theoretical benefits almost every day of the week in American politics.
Less is less or the battle for cost controlPost + Comments (25)