#A different Karen variant than the average

[oceanfloorfires]

In our first '23 meeting the other week my boss was like "you probably notice that Karen isn't here, she's no longer part of the [REDACTED] team... Its because..." and then gave like a well thought out but brief explanation of why she parted ways and I thought that was impressively diplomatic bc we all fucking knew she was a fucking Karen

[nelliievance]

Odd Symptoms During and After Long Ride.

On Thursday I week ago, I did what I want to become my long, easy ride each week. This is to ramp up my time on the bike for the century in October. I rode for four hours and 37 minutes, at what seemed like an easy pace on the bike. No muscle aching so it was an aerobic pace, and relaxed pace, no labored breathing. But after about the half hour mark my heart rate started creeping up, into the 130s and later the 140s. Since I felt great, I decided to press on and just go by perceived level of exertion, which I tried to keep easy. Here is the result:

My average speed was 13.2 and my average heart rate 136 (max 151) for the main four hour part of the ride. The other 37 minutes were a warmup and cooldown that I did not track.

I must admit that I was shooting for an average speed of 13 mph. This would make for a century under 8 hours, and hopefully I could speed that up in the next couple of weeks.

Keeping track of speed made me, at least unconsciously, push the pace. As it turns out, this was a bad day to pick to do that. To avoid that temptation in the future, I have removed speed and average speed from the display of my Garmin watch . I can always check them later after I save the ride.

Later that day I had what seemed like flu-like symptoms, a little muscle aching, and a mild case of chills. By Friday I also had a slight fever (100.2 F, or 38.4 C). I had some upcoming activities involving human interaction, so I googled “covid19 symptoms with vaccine”. I also tried “covid19 delta variant symptoms with vaccine”, since that is predominant in my county. I did not have the main symptoms for either of these, which are all mostly respiratory (coughing, runny nose, reduced strength of smell, and breathing congestion). Karen also suggested checking with the health insurance nurse. I first found an pretty goo online questionnaire on the health insurance site which appeared to be backed by artificial intelligence, and it concluded I did not need covid testing. I then called the nurse to get advice from a human intelligence, and he confirmed covid testing not needed.

My major concern was that A dear friend was having her 82nd birthday party on the following Wednesday. I would have hated to miss that, but didn’t want to endanger her. Sharon, the birthday girl, is fit and one of the healthiest people I know, but still we have to give some concessions to immune system decline with age.

Fortunately on Sunday I was able to get into urgent care to see a doctor. He detected white blood cells in my urine, indicating a bacterial infection, probably a urinary tract infection. I was indeed having other unpleasant symptoms we needn’t go into that fit that diagnosis. So he put by on an antibiotic, which worked its wonders very quickly. By yesterday, one week since the first symptoms, I was pretty much 100% better. And I was able to go to the birthday party.

This was an interesting experience to go through. it definitely confirms that health is more important than fitness, and when there’s any doubt, like the elevated HR symptoms, I should back off or even cut the activity short. But it’s also interesting how we think about this differently in the time of covid. If not for covid I would have just said, “I must have caught some kind of bug” and just rested till the symptoms were gone. But covid is still there looming in the background in our minds.

Odd Symptoms During and After Long Ride. published first on https://steroidsca.tumblr.com/

[kingofthenorth49]

the world as we thought we know it

Ed. Note -- As I wrote this blog this morning, yet another Ontario family is moving into my neighbourhood, escaping the clutches of a tyrannical woke Ontario (their words, not mine) for the peace of the east coast. I’m pretty sure when this all shakes out this town is going to be radically changed for years to come, but here’s to hoping. - Jim

I know, ya’ll think my tinfoil hat is on too tight these days. Maybe it is, and maybe that’s not a bad thing, but at this point does it even matter, we are watching a train wreck of epic proportions and no one seems to care. It’s like the words from Trooper’s Santa Maria, “But nobody moved, from where they were laying, cause nobody really cared”. I guess Netflix and Chill means more than I had thought.

I was watching (listening) to Scott Adams last evening as I do every few nights and for those who don’t know Scott, He’s the guy who draws Dilbert, and hosts a daily vlog (or whatever the kids are calling them these days) which I enjoy, as there are few left leaning types I can really listen too, and he’s one of the best. We don’t often agree, but the past few nights he and I have been in lockstep on a few things, and that’s very rare but interesting when it happens. Last night however it was something he said about midway through his podcast that really caught my attention. He started out by saying that as you get pulled “behind the curtain�� (a showbiz reference I guess) you get to see/learn things that most of the world doesn’t, as if the elites really do run the world (hint: they do) and he teased the crowd by saying something to the effect that he learned something this week that’s bigger than any news story, something so large it would shift people’s minds completely. He went on to say that he couldn’t say what it was because they’d come after him, but that people should question more of what they see and hear. He framed it in the context that people would not even believe the truth if they heard it.

I agree 100%. I believe the average person on this planet now is so afraid, confused, and polarized that they don’t know which way is up, hell just the fact that the world rolled over so quickly makes me sad, but it wasn’t unexpected. We are weak, soft, entitled humans.

As much as you want to deny it, we are in the world’s largest Psyops experiment right now. Governments are pushing the boundaries of human endurance, and we are beginning to turn on one another, whether it’s for not wearing a government mandated facial shaming device when outside your home, or if your neighbours son, fresh home from out-of-province school is out on the patio on his tablet chatting with his best girl when he’s suppose to be self isolating in the basement chained to the wall and fed with a stick.

Disclaimer: Yes, it’s a particularly bad flu. Yes, people will die from it. Yes we should be cautious and prevent catastrophe.

Speaking of being cautious, what is up with the average person beating down their neighbours in the rush to get an experimental unapproved chemical concoction thrust into their arms? WTF dude?

I’ll never understand that mentality. Yes, vaccines save lives and can stop the spread of viruses. Yes vaccines form part of any strategy to manage a pandemic, but it’s just one part. The idea that people are lining up 9 months after a vaccine is started into development for a “new” coronavirus and calling for a mandate to compel every human to take this vaccine is absurd.

It’s madness.

First of all, the concoction they are jabbing into your arms at 0.5 mg/dose isn’t even technically a vaccine. The CDC states a vaccine is “a product that stimulates a Peron’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease. It also defines Immunity as part of the vaccination process to say you can be exposed to the disease without becoming infected.

The current “vaccines” do neither. You can still become sick, and you can still spread it, there are several examples from Washington State, Florida, and Pennsylvania right now where fully vaccinated individuals now have the Coronavirus.

So why get the jab if you can still get it (albeit not be as sick) but you can still spread it? Why are we on a full out campaign war on “getting the jab” followed closely by “vaccination passports”.

It’s about control. It’s about gaining your compliance when told to do something. It’s about stripping your freedoms away all the while you feel like you don’t need them anyway.

I posted a video on social media yesterday of a Pastor of a Calgary church on Good Friday telling a bunch of Calgary police to leave the property and not come back without a warrant. He was very passionate in his calls for them to leave, and believe me when I say that video made me feel great despite the insults he was hurling at my brother’s and sister’s who were sent there to bring justice to the community.

Watch the video, it does a heart good.

Why? Because we have something called the Bill of Rights, and despite the fact it’s “granted” by our “government” it’s the only thing that holds this country together under one set of guiding principles, and despite some doctors proclamation of doom and gloom, people have the right to practice religion, they have freedom of speech, and security of the person and property. Our forefathers fought and died for those rights and we should be a bit more like the Pastor in preserving them. He’s a Polish pastor, who knows what happens when a government is allowed to run unchecked and what happens to the population when it does, and he wasn’t having any of it.

But the more telling story isn’t his fire and brimstone sermon aimed at the poor police (I bet his Good Friday sermon was off the charts!), it was what the police did next.

They left. As Monty Python would sing with a minstrel or two, “They turned their tails and ran they did, they turned their tails and ran and hid). Sorry, but the police don’t just leave when a crime has been committed, or they feel a crime will be committed by the parties in question. He literally shouted them away. Why did they leave?

Likely for a couple reasons. One, they didn’t want to be there in the first place. They were following orders or were dispatched to the church because some politician or Karen felt there were too many people practicing their religion on the holiest of days in the church. Two, they knew there were no grounds to be there because of the recent court ruling that freed the other Alberta pastor who was jailed for holding religious services, remember him? In Canada we jail religious leaders.

Say that again real slow. In Canada, we jail human beings who bring comfort and relief to those who need it in the name of a higher power under a constitutionally protected provision of religious freedoms. Or at least we used to. Now we are no better than the backwater republics we shamed as the former leader of the free world.

So if they knew the courts were not going to support them, why bother? That’s a great question.

I’m not even a religious person, we had Chinese (am I allowed to say that?) food for supper Easter Sunday, but I will fight for your right to practice yours just as hard as I’ll fight against any government mandating forced vaccinations or passports against freedoms.

Over a year ago we were told it was 15-days to “bend the curve” to get back to the “new normal” and such and now look at us a year later at the hands of a government run amok led by over-jealous reality tv stars who haven’t the first clue how to govern and couldn’t stick a hot poker in a snow bank to save their lives.

Folks we are rolling over at an alarming rate and accepting the removal of our rights and freedoms under suspicious circumstances, and you can “tin foil hat” me all day long, I don’t care. Things don’t add up, there’s too many red flags flying and yet as a society we simply want to turn to those “in charge” and say “Please sir, may I have some more”.

They say you won’t miss it until it’s gone and I firmly believe this to be true, especially when it comes to things like mobility rights. Imagine now if they do require vaccinations before you can travel, work, shop etc., (especially ones that provide no protection to others and only minimize your symptoms). We haven’t even talked about those who’ve died, or those who have had their lives changed forever from the initial side effects of the vaccines.

Yes, I said initial. What will happen a year from now as the COV-SARS-19 virus continues to produce hundreds of variants a day (despite what they want you to focus on like some B.1.1.3 etc.) and you come to find out in that rush to get jabs in the arms that the vaccination of the older population first drives the virus into the younger people who then start getting sicker than they originally did because the virus is morphing to stay alive. That’s right, things like Antibody Dependant Enhancement[1] can occur when you start messing with the human bodies abilities to fight off disease naturally as it has for hundreds of thousands of years.

All I’d ask is for you to do your research and have informed consent before you get the jab, and don’t shame others’ who chose not to for their own personal reasons. Like me. I won’t be getting the jab because there’s no compelling reason for me to do so at this time. I’m relatively  healthy (Yes, I’m obese so I fall into that risk category) but I have no real heath issues aside from the extra weight I carry around, and I know how to protect myself from the virus, so I’m choosing not to get vaccinated. I. Or people like me, shouldn’t be shamed because our beliefs are different from yours, and the solution doesn’t solve the problem, you only think it does because that’s what you are being told. \

Make your own decision and live with it. If I get the COVID and get sick enough (4% of my age category) to be hospitalized, so be it. I’ll take my chances on that versus being forced to have a chemical injected into my body that will do Gawd knows what to my immune system or any other system for that matter.

The other thing that just baffles me is how people actually believe the flu was eradicated this year. Sorry, are you serious? Do you think every single person in Canada was so diligent at washing their hands that we had no flu season this year?

I should have been a real estate salesperson in Florida selling swampland to tourists. Actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea for the next phase.

Anyway, wash your hands, stay socially distant, stay home if you’re sick, and wear a government mandated facial shaming device so you can conform and not be publically humiliated by Karen at Costco as you go to give your Easter offerings to the commerce Gods when you aren’t allowed to go to church to pray to whatever God the constitutions protects your right to bow to.

Get it yet?

Jim Out.

[1] Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of COVID-19 vaccines worsening clinical disease, Timothy Cardoza, Ronald Veazey

[suzanneshannon]

Is Web Design Easier or Harder Than it was 10 Years Ago?

Is it harder or easier to build a website now than 10 years ago? Has the bar gone up or down? I don't have any data for you, but I can shell out some loosey-goosey opinions.

HTML

HTML5 was the only big HTML change in the last decade, and it wasn't particularly dramatic. It's cool it's the looser variant (instead of getting XHTML3 or something). More compatible this way. Maybe I'll close my <br /> and maybe I <br> won't. Having better semantic tags (e.g. <article>) is great. Input types are wonderful. But none of this pushes HTML to be significantly easier or harder.

Same.

CSS

CSS has gotten easier. We use way fewer "hacks" all the time. I can literally feel it. The CSS we write today feels so intentional and direct. 10 years ago I feel like every other element had some kind of weird hack on it, and today, almost none. If CSS feels any harder, I'd wager it's because the sites we're building are bigger and more complex so the styling systems for them need to be all the more robust and the dangers of getting it wrong more stark.

Easier.

JavaScript

I'm sure there are strong arguments to be made both ways here. The language, perhaps, with all its recent syntactic innovation... perhaps easier. But what JavaScript is being asked to do, and what we're doing with it, is so astronomically larger that more difficulty comes along for the ride. It's similar to CSS in that way, but even more pronounced since we're not just doing what we were before on a new scale; we're building entire interfaces with the language in a way we just weren't before.

Harder.

Domains

I mention this one because it's such a crucial step in any given person's ability to go from zero to actually having a website.

I don't think buying a domain name is any easier. Domain names are a commodity market, so the companies selling you them are selling you them for some other reason, meaning the incentive is very high for them to push other products on you. For someone entirely green, I can imagine the confusion is either high or they don't know enough for the confusion to settle in yet. Do I buy it through this page builder thing? Do I have to buy it through this page builder thing? Do I need the WHOIS protection? Oh god, what even is DNS? I guess I do want email, right? Or is that like some weird special hosted email? Ughjakd. I'm gonna call it a wash. Nothing has made this any easier or harder in a decade.

Same.

Hosting

There is so much money in hosting it kind of blows my mind that we don't see deeper innovation here. I might argue it's a little easier these days. But commodity low-end hosting isn't terribly different or being any more or less helpful than it was a decade ago. We're still largely stringing together our own bespoke build and deployment processes like we were 10 years ago.

Large-scale stuff might have seen a lot of innovation, a la AWS, but nobody is going to argue that stuff is anywhere near easy.

The most innovation we've seen is from companies like Netlify and Zeit who are looking at the developer experience wholistically from helping you run things locally, to testing builds in staging, to immutable deploys. I'd love to see all hosting companies realize that every single one of their customers needs to get their code onto their platforms and they have a massive opportunity to help us do that directly.

Slightly easier.

How people actually do it

I like thinking about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. But of course, precious few people actually start with those technologies to build actual websites from scratch. Really they end up being treated as underlying technologies you dabble in amongst a slew of other tech.

You can build a website from just an index.html file. I'd argue more people should. But people reach for more "complete" solutions and customize from there. I know I did. The first websites I ever created were WordPress because it was a whole website in a box (with its own struggles) and I customized it. People still do that today, probably more now than 10 years ago, and I don't feel like it's significantly easier or harder. Or they reach for something familiar. I made a one-page index.html site not long ago, only to have it picked up by another developer who turned it into a create-react-app site but otherwise changed nothing. They just didn't know how to work on it without React.

Or they use WordPress.com, or Squarespace, or Wix, or Shopify, or BigCommerce, or you know what I mean. This isn't about what people can do, it's about what people do do. And for most people, these apps significantly lower the bar of creating a website.

So, for the average person, is it easier or harder to go from zero to having some kind of website?

Much easier.

Can people actually do it?

If we're talking about creating from scratch, it's interesting to see who feels like they even hold those keys anymore. The whole idea for this post came from a conversation I had with someone who has been a front-end developer and was asked to build a website by a friend. They declined because they didn't know how.

Chatted with someone who’s been working at a company as a front-end developer for 3 years. Their friend asked them to help build a website, but they had to decline. They didn’t know how.

— Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) October 14, 2019

Some part of that doesn't surprise me. As I write, the world is awfully full of React-specific developers working on huge sites (partially due to boot camps, partially due to market demand). They understand that very specific ecosystem and are perfectly productive within it, but don't have a wider understanding of how it all comes together to make the complete site.

Specialists are specialists!

Them: What do you do? Me: I’m a web designer Them: Cool! Can you help me build my website? Me: [laughing] Oh god no, I have no idea how to do that

— Karen McGrane (@karenmcgrane) October 14, 2019

Another part of me is surprised. You know an index.html file with "Hello, World!" in it can be a website, right? Even React devs are generally highly aware of create-react-app and how that scaffolds out a ready-to-rock site. Tools like Stackbit slap together a JAMstack site for you that can go anywhere. For developers, it seems to be going from zero to website is a heck of a lot easier these days.

Much easier.

The post Is Web Design Easier or Harder Than it was 10 Years Ago? appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Is Web Design Easier or Harder Than it was 10 Years Ago? published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/