First off, your rheumatologist is the most important doctor you will be dealing with. For some reason the field collects some odd ones with poor people skills. You may get lucky and find a good one right off the bat. However if the doctor seems to not be listening to you, understanding and explaining your symptoms, go for a second opinion or a third or a fourth opinion. It took my wife 5 different ones to finally find a good one. It’s a 3 hour one waytrip to see him but it’s worth it. We will likely be moving up closer to him in a few years.

Second be patient with the meds. It will likely take several tries to find something that works. However not too patient, waiting too long can make the disease progress further. However once the right cocktail is found you’ll feel a bunch better, until you don’t. Changing meds is common and normal no matter how long you have it.

Last, if your in the U.S. and have to deal with our shitty system, get ready to fight insurance. It will be a constant battle if you geton one of the criminally prices drugs. Just don’t give up and eventually you will win. One drug refill took my 2 months of twice weekly calls to push it through.

If it ain’t broke …

I like to hear the howl of the coyotes and the hoot of the great horned owl nearby at night. We have no issues with cats roaming the neighborhood.

My personal theory:

First off, raw milk does taste noticably different than pasteurized and homogenized milk you find at the store.

Pasteurization: heating the milk triggers the unfolding of proteins (Denaturation). This is what kills the bacteria but can also change the flavor of the milk.

Homogenization. This process breaks up the fat into smaller segments so they stay in solution in the milk. The result is a less creamy flavor.

People instinctually associate flavor with nutritional value. They think that better flavored food = better for you. This sort-of works in tomatoes and a few other fruit/vegetables. However taste perception is a complex blend of genetics, environmental conditions, and psychology. So the results are inherently unpredictable and completely unreliable.

The unpasteurized crowd all fall for the 'it tastes better so it must be better". They then make all sorts of excuses to justify their instinct. " Big corporate milk is evil!!" Blah blah blah.

Terms and conditions are NOT copyright law. They are a separate agreement that is the companies “wishlist” of things they want the consumer to agree too. It’s common for them to spell out terms in direct conflict with copyright law.

The reason that an iTunes video purchase is encrypted is because it is illegal to break the encryption in order to make a copy (DMCA). However capturing the playback and transforming it to another medium is for personal use is fair-use.

There is also no time limit to how long a person can save the copy for. As long as they had legal access to the content at the time of making the copy. For example say I recorded a football game from a streaming service. I can save that copy for personal use for the rest of my life even though I purchased a one time only streaming.

Not an expert, but in the U.S. making a copy of a broadcast for personal use is legal under fair-use. Anything that loads up on your computer screen you can make a copy and save it for personal use. So screen captures are by definition legal.

How exactly you copy the material on your screen gets tricky under the DMCA clusterfuck. Breaking encryption to copy the material is illegal unless there is an valid exception for fair-use. What exactly those valid exceptions are is above my paygrade.

The issue with wine is quality control is dependent many factors, weather, fertilizer management, water management, disease pressure, pest pressure, harvest conditions, unpredictable fermentations and the skill of the winemaker. The more variable the conditions the more unpredictable the finished wine product is.

A good bottle is really tough to make. A mediocre bottle is difficult to make. A poor bottle is what is usually made. I’ve never had an excellent bottle of wine and I think it is a myth. Pricing is mostly unrelated to the quality of the product as well.

When you usually put out a poor product people tend to avoid it unless there is a cultural expectation of low performance. What’s changing is the cultural acceptance of drinking horrible tasting stuff.

The wine industry in needs to adapt and put out a better product or else they will go under.

Not really exeptional except it is commercial grade. It’s not the random stuff you get from the local brand. The local brand is whatever. Sometimes it’s really good, other times it’s pretty poor.

The most common difference is in a test called “falling number”. Falling number is a fast easy way to figure out if an enzyme that degrades starch has been activated (alpha-amylase). Intact starch in flour creates a matrix in solution and thickens it. When alpha-amylase is activated it degrades the starch and makes it thinner.

For baking you want a thicker dough that holds together. It’s how you get light and fluffy breads. The thicker dough traps CO2 produced by yeast or an acid/base reaction better.

Timeshares are written up as if they were property. Property that she shares with other people and is contractually required to pay for the upkeep. It’s basically a never ending money generator for the owners. Think of it a hotel where all the rooms are rented out to people who agreed to pay for them no matter if they use it or not.

As the owner of “property” she has a few choices. First off read the contract.

The management company sometimes reserves the right to buy the property back. Usually a good option - the “Owner” loses money but gets out of the never-ending bills.

She can also sell/give the timeshare to somebody else on the timeshare selling site. This transfers the ownership to somebody else who might like it.

If the property has degraded in value because of lack of maintenance from the management she might be able to get out by civil lawsuit. This is unlikely as most timeshare companies do exactly the bare minimum to meet their contractual obligations.

I have a Dyson. It’s really quite terrible with weak suction. I got it free from my sister-in-law when it “broke”. It took me an hour to disassemble it and clear out all the clogged sections. In order to keep it working it needs a full disassemble and cleaning around once a year. It’s an excellent example of a shitty design.

My other vacuum is one I got 18 years ago that still works well. The brand has since gone to shit so I can’t recommend them now.

What to look for:

First look at the amps on the bottom. Amps = suction power. The more amps it draws the stronger the motor is.

Second you want a beater bar. This is the belt driven part that spins. This makes the vacuum much more effective on carpet. It gets pet hair a lot better.

Third you want something with common easily replaced air filters. These clog easily and need to be replaced constantly. Look for machines with oversized filters.

And last, look for something simple to break apart and fix that you can find affordable replacement parts for online. Fixing a broken vacuum is generally pretty simple.

These are generally midrange machines not the cheapest but not the most expensive. In the long-term these tend to be the most economical in terms of performance/cost.

“He doesn’t lie a out everything!” They think.

Sadly the are wrong.

Tsk… tsk… tsk… For clarity JS actually claimed to have:

“Read glowing writings off a stone placed in a hat.”

Its much more believable that way…

According to a friend of mine in California who went through the process. Grading on the bar exam there is simple. On every test, 50% pass and 50% fail. You either make the cut or retake the test. Somewhere around 70-80% of people fail to pass on the first try if I recall correctly.

He was not much fun to be around when he finished law school and was cramming for the bar. He passed it on the 2nd attempt.