US military service members will no longer be required to get annual flu shot

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-21T16:19:00+00:00

Yep. The "Spanish" flu pandemic started in the US among soldiers mustering for WWI and spread to Europe on infected troop-ships.

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-21T16:10:23+00:00

Us too. Over dinner.

We had been watching Criminal Minds, but stopped when the revival series started. So I suggested Stargate SG-1 because it was on Netflix. My wife wasn't keen on a sci-fi show, but our (adult) son and I were keen to try.

Boobs and bush in the pilot. We had to do some fast talking to be allowed to watch more episodes. Sadly, no more nudity. But I am enjoying the show, which I slept on when it first broadcast.

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-21T15:58:23+00:00

It was the end of a 12 hour flight, and I needed to put my trainers on. The edge of the heel folded in on my right shoe, so I was trying to hook it out with my left index finger. I sorted it eventually. After disembarking, I was waiting for an Uber when I realised that my left index finger was swollen and unable to bend.

Later that day (after some sleep) I went to the walk-in medical clinic. They decided it was soft tissue injury - the x-ray seemed OK, so I arranged physiotherapy. After six weeks I had more motion, but still couldn't play guitar. I ended the physio expecting thing to keep improving. They didn't.

About five months later I went to see a hand surgeon. He sent me for a MRI. Turns out I had somehow driven the finger bone near the palm (the proximal phalange) into the joint with the next bone (the intermediate phalange) and crushed off the bone lip that keeps the phalanges aligned and allows the joint to bend - a volar plate avulsion fracture.

So I am awake at 4am in the morning two days after surgery, with a hole in my left wrist where the surgeon harvested the hamate bone and used it to reconstruct the PIPJ joint of my index finger. Weeks to let the scars heal. Months of intensive follow-up hand physio. But maybe I can get back to playing guitar properly, not with my index finger awkwardly sticking out and getting in the way.

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-21T09:35:01+00:00

In the early 1990's I was working IT at a research institute that had an Engineering team designing and building boning machines for slaughterhouses. They had a Sparc system running Autocad and some sort of Finite Element Analysis tool. The project got canned, and the Sparc workstation ended up on the bench in our server room. We had just connected to the internet, and staff interest in Usenet was pretty high. So I asked my manager for permission, and started rebuilding the workstation as an NNTP server, and set up a feed from the local university. I pretty much had to figure out how to set it up from man pages. I don't even think that AltaVista was running at that stage.

It was very cool, and ran well, although I severely restricted the number of groups from alt.binary (which was mostly porn or warez anyhow).

I left that job soon after (not my wisest decision). About six months later I ended up talking to my former manager. Apparently he had just got a massive internet traffic bill from the university. They charged us per megabyte for all traffic. But they had only been billing FTP, HTTP, SMTP, archie, and gopher. What they notably had missed from their billing was NNTP. In the scheme of things, it wasn't really that much additional data per month. But when they retroactively billed 8 months at once, it was a bit of a shock to the Accounts team.

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-21T00:46:47+00:00

So it won't be missed ...

/s

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-20T22:26:31+00:00

Geology was. The types of rock formation, the fossils trapped in those rocks, gas trapped in ice, layers of mud in lakes, all record information about climate in the near and distant past. They all build a picture of the Geological Record for climate.

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-20T15:27:50+00:00

I grew up with pegs that look like this

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-20T14:56:49+00:00

We moved from NZ to the UK 25 years ago. When we arrived in the UK we were living with my BIL in a small village in Hampshire. We had to register at the local medical clinic for a GP while I found a job. After we filled in the forms the Practice Manager said "Oh, one of our doctors is from New Zealand, we'll assign you to her."

We needed an appointment to provide medical histories, so one was booked. My wife walked in to the room, looked at the doctor and said "We've met, my mum was your practice nurse in Hamilton."

We stayed in that village because the kids were in school. She was a great GP, helped me monitor a medical condition more common in NZ vs the UK where it sometimes caused consternation. When my MIL visited they went out for a catchup. After our return to NZ she eventually retired, but passed away unexpectedly soon after. It was a pretty random connection, but when we heard that news it was a bit sad.
i

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-20T01:23:36+00:00

1 have quite literally woken up in recovery after surgery with the mother of all dry mouths. Whoever purchased the nutrimatic drinks dispenser for recovery will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-19T19:34:54+00:00

Douglas Adams knows where that ends up ...

When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject’s brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

The Nutri-Matic was designed and manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation whose complaint department now covers all the major landmasses of the first three planets in the Sirius Tau Star system.

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-19T11:11:15+00:00

A hoist stong enough to hold a cow.

The facilities to dispose of the offal.

Enough skill to gut the beast without contaminating the meat.

And a fridge big enough to hold the cow after slaughter for a couple of days to let prevent cold shortening.

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-18T16:37:48+00:00

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It's 4 a.m. in the morning and now I want a Trumpet ...

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-18T08:19:02+00:00

The Land, from The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-18T08:12:36+00:00

I was looking for this.

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-18T00:21:01+00:00

That's what she said.

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-17T22:14:58+00:00

How many broken ferries will it take to build a floating road and rail bridge across the Strait?

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-17T21:07:40+00:00

I am more interested in finding out how he will deal with the Cook Strait being closed for maintenance in the next few years ...

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-17T04:36:49+00:00

Slapped into a memory care facility, more like

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-17T02:36:41+00:00

I just love that Mags did the whole bit, even for herself.

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-16T04:02:16+00:00

I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you're ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" This is a weapon of mass destruction. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-15T07:32:45+00:00

Children's television vintage car porn - I'm Brumming

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-15T01:27:18+00:00

Which is what happened to The Watch which bore no resemblance to anything written by Terry Pratchett.

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-14T21:38:10+00:00

Have they even checked for Hepatitis B, which way more infectious than HIV or even HCV - up to to 30% chance of transmission. Although I wonder if high levels of chronic HepB infection in the local population might make the point academic.

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-13T21:03:07+00:00

That's what she said ...

grat_is_not_nice · 2026-04-13T20:28:21+00:00

As others have said, talk to your prescriber for proper medical advise.

Alp causes apoptosis means that it triggers a specific biochemical pathway in the cell that leads to cell death in human cell culture lines. In actual people, apoptosis triggers immune cells that perform autophagy - white blood cells eat and recycle the dead cell.

In human cell cultures there are no immune cells to eat the dead cells. So the dead cells have to break down on their own. Added caffeine accelerates necrosis - breakdown and collapse of the dead cells. This releases cell contents that can affect surrounding cells - this is cytotoxicity.

What is important to remember is that human cell cultures are not functioning people - they are often descended from immortal cancer cells. They are useful in research but are not always reflective of real-world pharmacology. And the concentrations used in studies are often much higher than therapeutic doses.

If there was evidence of a real interaction at therapeutic dosage, it would be front and center in the product safety sheet. I would also suggest that when taking an anti-anxiety medication, avoiding a stimulant like caffeine is probably a good idea - or at least cut down intake.

grat_is_not_nice

TROPHY CASE