Mostly lemon based

Day: January 20, 2016

  • Making it happen (slowly)

    So things are plodding along. I’d like to make things happen faster, it feels bad being at home while Kathryn’s out working. I feel like I should be doing something more productive with my day, but until we make decisions like “long term where will we be living” and “we want our house to look roughly like this” then it’s all fairly nebulous.

    I’ve got a rough price for our house build, found what will be a workshop on Straw Bale construction I hope to attend (no date for it yet), people who can help with building, I’ve got rough guestimates for prices and some geothermal (ground source heat pump) kit supplier prices. I’ve found solar panel kits that I think we should be able to afford… I am going to have a wander around the library at some point to see if I can find some books to inspire.

    But really, I feel that vague I need to do something without the something to do.

    This is, of course, going to change when I start working. But getting references across country lines, and all that jazz, it takes a while.

    Still it’s given me some time to refresh my auscultation skills which are a little rusty. And I’ve got my volunteering which I start tonight. About which I’m feeling more than a little teeny bit nervous.

    Anyhow, other than that, there’s been some sticker shock. The value of the dollar was, when we came over about 3/4ths a quid. Which meant that price labels are going to freak me out, anyhow. But on top of that, two things that are our current big expenses, cars and food, are already more expensive here. That is proving unnerving as I’m waiting to start working, and our money quietly gets sucked away.

    Still, Kathryn’s been sketching interesting house layouts, and I think we’ve got a good potential car to go look at. So.

    I’d quite like to feel a bit more settled, but at the moment it’s still a bit floaty. And life is full of minor irritations like – the google play store not wanting to switch country (done now, with a bit of help – turns out it has your home address in multiple, unlinked places). But gradually I’m getting there. I am, of course, saving up the ‘I need to go see a doctor at some point’ fun for another day. I rang the insurance company and checked, and it is just ‘go see a doctor, they’ll bill us, we’ll pay the bit we want to pay’ to summarise (some companies seem to want pre-alerting to the fact you’re going to see a doctor (seriously? How complicated do you want to make it?!)). So at some point I’ll find an LGBT friendly doctor (there seem to be scant few who list themselves as such in Oly) – I’ve got one a few names (both in Seattle) that might do.

    But I’d rather not trek to Seattle just to see the doc. Just for my regular meds. Y’know?

  • shadesofmauve:

    marlynnofmany:

    drferox:

    areyoutryingtodeduceme:

    packetofcrackers:

    taiey:

    sarah531:

    I just realised where Kylo got his name from:

    Ky = sKYwalker

    Lo = soLO

    Ren = literally just his birth name with an R

    which means that when he was choosing his super scary Dark Lord name, he just mashed up the surnames of the most positive figures in his life. poor sod can’t even evil right

    literally a ‘what is your star wars name’ meme

    2nd two letters of your mother’s last name
    Last two letters of your father’s last name

    1st three letters of your name but with an R

    My name would literally be Ooee Rara I want a refund

    Uder Rar.
    I sound like an angry, uneducated cow.

    If I use my mom’s maiden name, I get Cgee Rar, which is fun to try to pronounce.  Sounds like a keyboardsmash orc name.

    If I use her married name, I’m Aree Rar, which isn’t much better.  Maybe the name of an intelligent pterodactyl or something. 

    ILON RAR!

    I r evil dinosaur. NOM NOM NOM.

    Ictt Rat

    I’m not even sure how to pronounce that first one… 

  • micdotcom:

    micdotcom:

    A running list of all the people Donald Trump has offended while running for President:

    Women

    Mexican people

    Black people

    Iowans

    New Jerseyans

    Jewish people

    People with disabilities

    Refugees fleeing the Islamic State group

    Overweight people

    Asian people

    Veterans

    Native Americans

    Muslims

    America, this is your Republican presidential front runner. These highlights don’t even mention babies, civilians and half the country.

    (This post will be updated as Donald Trump continues to distribute his two cents’ worth.)

    Time to add another group to the list:

    Football players with head trauma

  • micdotcom:

    Now it appears Michigan’s governor and other officials may be more guilty than previously thought.

  • David Cameron: *cuts £45m from English for Speakers of Other Languages colleges*
    David Cameron: Muslim women must learn English or leave.

  • Untitled post 9352

    christel-thoughts:

    Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha –  the doctor credited with discovering how bad the lead poisoning had actually gotten with the children of Flint, Michigan.

    from CNN

    At first, the state publicly denounced her work, saying she was causing near hysteria. They spent a week attacking her before reversing their narrative and admitting she was right. “Their information wasn’t flawed. They had the data, but they were being told by the DEQ [Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, the government agency that ultimately failed this city and its people from the beginning] that there wasn’t a problem, they just dismissed it,” said Hanna-Attisha and confirmed by the state-appointed task force. “There was almost like blinders on,” she added. CNN contacted DEQ’s former director, Dan Wyant, who made the decision and later resigned over the issue. He did not respond.

    “If you were to put something in a population to keep them down for generation and generations to come, it would be lead. It’s a well-known, potent neurotoxin. There’s tons of evidence on what lead does to a child, and it is one of the most damning things that you can do to a population. It drops your IQ, it affects your behavior, it’s been linked to criminality, it has multigenerational impacts. There is no safe level of lead in a child.” – Hanna-Attisha

    ~ 40% of Flint’s residents are below the poverty rate. 

  • Where’s Rey?

    Where’s Rey?

    dollsahoy:

    dduane:

    This is the article that caused the “whiny emo pissbabies…” response regarding Kylo Ren.

    Another interesting takeaway from this:

    The industry insider confirmed that the Black Widow character is widely
    considered “unusable” within the toy industry. “She has a tight black
    outfit. Our main customer is concerned with ‘family values,’” said the
    insider.

    So that’s Wal-Mart’s fault, then? Notice taken. (Not that I’d set foot in the place unless dragged in at gunpoint. Fortunately, when you live in Ireland neither condition is likely to occur.)

    And this is worth noting too:

    At the same time, however, it’s increasingly apparent that marketers’
    perceptions are seriously out of touch with consumers’ tastes.

    “Princess toy sales are in freefall. Disney can’t give away princess
    toys anymore,” according to the insider. And yet, the insider said, the
    directive is there: Maintain the sharp boy/girl product division. Marginalize girl characters in items not specifically marketed as girl-oriented.

    The toy industry is more gender-divided now than at any time in the past 50 years, according to Elizabeth Sweet,
    a professor of sociology at the University of California at Davis.
    She’s a noted authority in the sociology of gender-based toy design and
    marketing. Analyses of historical toy catalogs show that in the 1970s
    more than half of toys were not designated as being specifically for one
    gender, whereas now, very few toys are marketed as gender-neutral,
    according to Sweet.

    Marcotte points back to the deregulation of the advertising industry
    in the 1980s under Pres. Ronald Reagan as the origination point for the
    gender-division trend. “Once that happened, toy manufacturers realized
    they could increase sales by designing toys to be more narrowly
    targeted. Instead of having just a ball, you could make it pink and put a
    princess on it; or, paint it blue and put GI Joe on it. Now parents
    have to buy two sets of toys, one for their daughter and one for their
    son.”

    But that long-term trend has had significant sociological impacts.
    “Girls and boys do not play together as much as they used to,” Marcotte
    said. “These gender divisions are hard-coded into their toys and it
    informs their behavior in ways that has lasting results on their
    presumptions.”

    “… it’s increasingly apparent that marketers’
    perceptions are seriously out of touch with consumers’ tastes.“

    This supports my tenet that marketing is not some evil insidious science–just people waving things in front of other people hoping they’ll notice.  It usually does work, which keeps the same approaches going, but, now, hooboy has it gone wrong with Star Wars.

    (And the next sentence supports my idea that Hasbro got the Disney Princess line because Mattel didn’t want it anymore…)