Who knew that Albrecht Dürer wrote—and illustrated!—his own fencing manual? I ordered a copy of Dürer’s Fight Book: The Genius of the German Renaissance and His Combat Treatise.
It predates Meyer, and covers wrestling, dagger, longsword, and messer.
People expect the Fed to cut rates, because they are high. But interest rates are not high:
That’s the real fed funds rate going back to the month I graduated from high school. I’d say a real interest rate of 2.0% to 2.5% is more “normal” than the negative-to-zero rates we’ve had since 2007.
One signifier of a fast-approaching birthday (when you get to be my age) is that you get ads for life insurance. I mentioned to Jackie that we don’t need life insurance, and she said that it especially didn’t matter because she was counting on me to outlive her.
“For one thing, you’re younger than me. For another, you’re doing all you can to do so. Well, not to outlive me, but to live a long time.”
“I’ll admit,” I replied, “It’s getting rather late for me to die young.”
I didn’t get a view of the aurora, because I didn’t stay out long enough for the sky to get fully dark. (I’m an early-to-bed kinda guy.) I did, however, get a rather lovely post-sunset dusk sky picture while I was waiting for full dark.
New glassware at the Esperanto group’s meeting venue.
Sometime after May 2nd my posts quit propagating to my Mastodon account at @philipbrewer@wandering.shop.
@help I can probably figure out how to start it up again, but I thought I’d mention it in case it’s a symptom of some larger breakage.
I got my signed hardback copy of Revin’s Heart by Steven D. Brewer!!
“… my steampunky fantasy adventure with pirates and airships and a trans protagonist.”
says Steven
Ashley’s place on the sofa is no longer in the sun. #dogsofmastodon 🐕 Although it may look like Ashley spends all her time lounging on the sofa, in fact she has had three walks since the previous photo.
Ashley’s place on the sofa is also her place in the sun. #dogsofmastodon 🐕
A Manhattan for Jackie. “I’m only in it for the cherries,” says she.
Today was a rest day, but yesterday I did three rounds on my rings:
Jackie and I took Ashley to Homer Lake and walked the West Lake Trail. #dogsofmastodon 🐕 🥾
Back in 2020 I bought a set of gymnastic rings, and used them for pull ups, dips, and inverted rows during the period that fitness rooms were closed due to the pandemic. More recently, I’ve been doing a lot of club and kettlebell swinging—using equipment that was unavailable during the pandemic, but that I’ve purchased since.
I like the club and kettlebell stuff. However, probably because I’m not programming the workouts as well as I might, I don’t seem to be making progress. In fact, in some ways I’m backsliding. So, now that the weather supports getting outdoors and putting my rings up again, I’m going to do more of those workouts.
Today I did a circuit with three rounds of:
This picture has nothing to do with my workout. I took it while walking the dog at dawn.
Today’s workout was hill sprints at Colbert Park. Did a few warmup sprints at 40% up to 80%, then 4 working sprints at 90–95%.
Broadly speaking, every walk you take is both preprandial and postprandial.
The closure of Blind Pig Brewing has left a gap on the shelves of the beer aisle in the grocery store which is being filled with other Illinois brewers. In the Cards is from Pollyanna Brewing Company, based in Lemont, Illinois (up towards Chicago). It’s an okay hazy APA, but lacking in distinctive hop flavors.
In 1990 (or thereabouts) I helped my dad drive to Florida for a sabbatical. While there we visited the Everglades, and while we were there, we had a little picnic, which was attended by a number of rather bold #crows. #corvids
My dad got a photo:
Instagram would have me believe that I have 30 followers there who want to follow me on Threads.
I assume this means that 30 people who follow me on Instagram have Threads accounts.
If you want to follow me, follow me either on this site’s RSS feed or else on on my Mastodon account: @philipbrewer@wandering.shop. (Or, if you’re the appropriate rare breed, follow me as https://micro.blog/philipbrewer.)
I just asked my senators and representative to oppose a law that would allow laws to be copyrighted, allowing standards bodies to control access to things like building codes—rules that we all need to follow.
Click that link to join me in doing so. (Link only useful to people who live in the U.S.)
An excellent piece by @doctorow. Not just clear, accurate economics, it also gets at the heart of why I always wanted to be a rentier:
By contrast, rentiers are insulated from competition.
Source: Pluralistic
Me and Ashley, out for a #run. Once again, she’s a much better running companion than she is portrait model. 🏃🐕 #dogsofmastodon
Because of dog-related complications, I didn’t get good stats on the run, but it was about 2 miles and maybe 30 minutes (including time to water the dog and pose for photos).
The books say not to take your dog running until they’re at least a year (better: 18 months) old, so they’re running on mature bones and joints.
Early on, I instead let Ashley take me on runs, letting her drag me on the leash while she sprinted off in random directions at breakneck speed for 30 or 40 seconds, only to cut in front of me and then come to an abrupt stop. It wasn’t really satisfactory. After I fell and badly split the skin on my knee, I mostly quit doing that. If I wanted to go for a run, I’d leave the dog behind with Jackie and run by myself. But that was unhandy for all of us.
Now that it’s spring, and we’re getting some nice running weather, I thought I’d see if Ashley could run with me.
I’d done some preparation: In the winter I took a “loose-leash” walking class, and she’d gotten a lot better at walking with me. For loose-leash walking I wrap the leash around her chest and then back through that loop you can see on the collar in the picture. That has a couple of positive effects: the leash is effectively shorter, and when she does pull, the friction from the leash constricting around her chest makes the pull gradual, rather than an abrupt hard yank. The key, though, is that it serves as a signal that I want her to walk like a pet, and stay by my side, and she’s gotten pretty good at doing so.
Yesterday I thought we’d give running together a try, and it worked great! I walked her a few blocks on a long leash, so she could get her sniffies in. Then, once we reached a multi-use path that’s about a quarter mile away, I put her on the leash wrap, and started running—and she did just what I wanted her to! She ran along, next to me, at my pace. She didn’t try to run off in some other direction. She didn’t try to sprint ahead. She didn’t lag behind like she didn’t want to run. She just loped along next to me.
It was great!
I had neglected to bring water for her, so I was a little worried that she’d overheat, but she seemed to do okay. We ran a mile, then turned around and walked partway home, but when it seemed that she wasn’t overheated, I picked up the pace again and we ran the rest of the way back to our starting point, then I put her back on a loose leash and we walked home (where she did proceed to drink a whole bowl of water).
For future runs I will bring water. I’ll also make a point of getting out early, before the weather gets hot.
If this doesn’t turn out to be a one-off thing, and she’s willing to run with me on a routine basis, I’ll start taking her running every other day, sticking to short runs for a while to make sure we don’t over do it, then gradually increase the distance until one or the other of us hits some limit or another. (I’ve been routinely walking her over 6 miles nearly every day, so we’re both already in pretty good shape.)
A view out my study window, where the flowering crabapple tree is in full bloom, and a dandelion flower with a pollen-covered bee. #bloomscrolling
I got a phishing email that would have just been lame, except it pretended to come from a company I do business with. I wasn’t fooled, but I had to take tens of seconds out of my day to check.
Things should be better. I propose a joint FBI-NSA task force to track down phishers and render them to the US for prosecution.
Nia grup-kunvenejo ne plu nomiĝas la bierfarejo Blinda Porko, sed ili ankoraŭ uzas la samajn glasojn. Hodiaŭ mi trinkas bieron “No Call No Show,” kiu estas malfacila por traduki Esperanten. Estas frazo por kiam laboristo ne aperas ĉe laborejo, kaj ne antaŭe telefonas por diri tion.