Bartimaeus

?

He's previously stated that he's okay with murder as long as it's not someone he cares about. He's not exactly known to be high on the empathy scale. My friend at the MN hospital just said they were told today that they are to turn away any sick coming from nursing homes - i.e. let them die. Italy started implementing similar protocols a couple of weeks ago, I guess supplies are already in such critical condition that they're pre-emptively doing it. If the crisis ends up being even worse than expected, I imagine the age cut-off will start getting more and more severe. (e): And his rationalization is "lmao I got a girl I guess you must not if you have empathy for other people". Definitely not pathetic at all.

What's terrible is she's the type that can't really cook at home and loves to shop. She'll probably be okay - probably - but I wonder how many people she'll have infected from running around town every day over the past few weeks with little regard for other people's safety. Makes me wonder places like Florida with high senior populations and little to no regard for public safety yet (because it's not yet "serious enough") will turn out...my guess is "not good". I've seen some people make comparisons to the mayor who refused to close the beaches in Jaws...

Rich says he won't do Star Trek: Discovery season 3, but I'll bet he'll have forgotten that by the time it comes out.

Looks like the virus likely just hit where I lived. Have a friend at the local hospital, and it went from literally one patient last night (they've been trying to keep it empty and pre-emptively sending all but critical cases home to try to reduce the spread - hospitals have been a common vector for its spread in other countries) to all but one room filled tonight with people who are having respiratory failure. First night, and virtually already at maximum capacity... Additionally, my older sister (who lives more southern) has been sick and running a fever for like...a week now? - tested for a variety of things including influenza A and B, and all negative...but they're not allowed (or don't have the resources?) for testing for coronavirus in all but the most critical cases, so they told her to quarantine herself and act like she has it...because she probably does.

Yeah, Guard Dog posted it a couple of days ago. It won't make a huge difference unless it's sustained (which, uh, depending on how bad this gets, it might be...), but it is neat nonetheless. The fishies will grow strong while we grow weak..

Might be a tough sell right now with all that's going on...ya'd think people would welcome a distraction, but I'm just not really particularly feeling it either...

Speaking of...

There have been a number of cases of incompetent leaders (both big and small) throughout history where, upon suddenly being faced with an honest-to-God crisis, that leader(s) had a coming-to-Jesus moment where they actually started taking things seriously and at least started to attempt to do what was right and best for those who they were responsible for. I feel supremely confident that Trump is not one of those people, but I am happy to be proven wrong, and if that's the case, he'll get deserved praise by the end of this.

I wanted a hazmat suit even before this pandemic. It'd just be a cool thing to own!

It seems so rare that the people actually responsible for a giant, unnecessary ****up with untold and unneeded suffering for everyone lower in the foodchain actually personally suffer for their actions (or inaction - Trump's done a lot of both so far). Trump's a notorious germaphobe, though - he's probably washing his hands hourly...or minutely. Even so, I'm not sure I necessarily want Trump to come down with coronavirus...at least he's scared of the virus and has personal reason to eventually really start taking it seriously (and is at least taking steps now...), as opposed to Mike "Pray-It-Away" Pence. ...Also would have to imagine the country would descend into absolute madness if Trump was seriously incapacitated or worse, so I don't really want that to happen either. (e): I would also like to claim that "basic human empathy" comes into play at some point during my thought process, but I'm pretty sure Trump has all but burned every last vestige of that, so I'm just going to be thankful that there are rational reasons for not wanting him to get coronavirus.

You can always use more basmati rice!

In this order: Whisper of the Heart...Only Yesterday, My Neighbor Totoro....Grave of the Fireflies, Howl's Moving Castle...Kiki's Delivery Service, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind...Pom Poko, Porco Rosso. Everything else besides Earthsea and Arrietty (...and Ponyo and Marnie to a lesser extent) I enjoyed, but wouldn't necessarily say were favorites.

There are so many varieties of white, brown, and black rice that it's difficult for me to even establish what I like. The main rice variety I use is basmati white rice, which you can obviously turn into yellow or fried rice (and I very often do both), and as of late, I've also been mixing in some variety of thai black rice. I tend to stay away from jasmine (another very popular variant) as well as short grain rices in general, and I usually can't take most brown rices for texture reasons (gritty rice, bleck!). Years back, I used to use an expensive Japanese ricecooker...and then I learned the "secret" of good stovetop-cooked rice which creates such vastly superior rice to ricecooker rice that I'm disgusted with myself that I ever put up with any kind of ricecooker rice. It is a little more work, but you do get much more control over how the rice actually turns out. (e): The couple of kinds of black rice I've had have been a bit oddball in my experience. Very wet and soft, but they take in flavor like no kind of white rice I've ever had can. That's why I like mixing it in with white, to get the best of both worlds so to speak - black will do the heavy-lifting in terms of (absorbing) flavor, while the basmati's texture and consistency will take care of the rest. (e): Words. I grew up with an Asian-cooking mom, so rice is kind of a big deal to me: my diet will legitimately be in trouble if I can't get a hold of any (especially troublesome for me because I can't really eat bread for health reasons!). Right now, I have about 40 pounds worth left, but that's only a few months' worth at best. Hopefully that'll be enough until more gets in stock...I'll be keeping my eyes peeled, since currently everything local is gone and everything online is either gone or 3rd party price-gouged crap. That might be more than enough, or...it might not be, depending on how long the crisis lasts.

I cook and eat rice almost every day! No more rice means no more Bartimaeus,

I played through all of Subnautica semi-recently. It's a little janky (made in Unity...), but it was a pretty awesome game. Unlike most survival games, it's not a ridiculous "FARM A MILLION OF EVERYTHING" game, and there's a main quest and objectives to follow along (or don't if you don't want to). I was pretty thoroughly impressed with it, and I say that as somebody who rather expressly dislikes the survival genre. Everyone I knew that played it seemed to love it, and, well, I guess here I am also recommending it as well!

Basmati rice is like $80 for ten pounds here now. I might as well already be dead.

Tales from Earthsea (2006). Terrible and inexplicable writing. Bizarre and unlikable characters. Film moves at a snail's pace - nothing ever seems to happen, which is all the more unforgivable when there's absolutely nothing going on character or even action-wise. Decent animation and forgettable music is about all I can say for it. Ocean Waves (1993). Solid. Better than I expected given its reputation. Although it had somewhat confused characters and plot, it still managed to be decently entertaining and I was probably only annoyed once or twice (compare to the above, where I was annoyed about 5 minutes in and it never let up). I've finally watched every Ghibli movie.

"Anybody that needs a test gets a test; they're there, they have the tests, and the tests are beautiful," Trump told reporters during the visit, touting the administration's response as more than 270 cases of the virus were confirmed across more than two dozen states as of Friday. "The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect, the transcription was perfect, right?" he added later. "This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good." "The tests are beautiful" -Trump on Coronavirus

Frozen II. I got through the first fifteen minutes and pretty much wanted to shoot myself and ended up pausing it. Has anybody that's seen this have any words on whether it gets better after that? Does this have to be exclusively watched with little girls (i.e. my nieces) to enjoy? I always try to watch these types of movies by myself the first time so I'm mentally prepared before watching them with anyone else (because I'm weird like that), but I'm finding this really painful.

You can even literally just say the complete opposite, that those without degrees often look down upon those with it for being "liberal-educated" or "wasting 4 years of your life and thousands of dollars getting a worthless degree", etc. People (all of us!) tend to like looking down on each other either way you go - even if there's no logical reason to do so, we'll eventually come up with a rationale. Just one small measure of feeling self-important and better than others.

Four controllers in two years means I'm officially buying knockoffs in hopes for a more reliable alternative: https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Xbox-One-Wired-Controller-Version/dp/B07D12RPHX/?th=1 to you, Microsoft. Xbox 360 controllers lasted way longer - really wish I could buy those again.