A couple of days ago Jackie braised some wild-caught venison, and today there was just a bit left that she included in some fried rice that she served as a side dish along with the wild-caught sockeye salmon that I cooked (cumin and zaatar as seasonings).

No pics, but trust me: A lovely and very wild main meal of the day.

Playboy magazine and Helen Gurley Brown. That’s what last week’s New York Times opinion piece, Barstool Conservatism, Revisited (on the weird agglomeration of libertarians, crypto- and tech- bros, and incels who ended up voting with social conservatives) made me think of.

My thoughts draw on a book I read about Hugh Hefner, Playboy, and Helen Gurley Brown. The basic thesis, as I recall it, was that Hefner wanted a society where young men could enjoy an extended youth. The best way to make that work, he thought, was for women to be able to support themselves—so that they’d be willing to sleep with men, rather than feeling that they had to hold out for a man who would marry them.

To that end, Playboy magazine was very active at promoting equal rights for women—so they could earn money, own property, etc. Because only when they were able to support themselves without needing to get married, would they be willing to sleep around. And women willing to sleep around, were what the Playboy demographic wanted.

That social experiment played out pretty much just the way Hefner wanted through most of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Women could earn enough to afford an apartment, food, clothing, and the other necessities, which meant that they didn’t have to get married just to survive.

However (and this was key, even though I don’t think Hefner really thought about it much) men earned more than women.

The result was perfect for men. They had enough money to buy fancy cars, fancy stereos, fancy watches, expensive liquor—all the sorts of products that advertised in Playboy—with enough left over that they could afford to take women out on nice dates and buy them little gifts. The women earned enough less that, although they could get by, they couldn’t have really nice things, except when men bought them.

Things began to change the 1990s, when women’s incomes grew to the point that they could afford nice things. That produced two changes. First, women that could afford not merely a tiny apartment, but their own house, weren’t so reliant on men to make them comfortable. Second, with so many women taking top jobs, there were fewer top jobs for men. That meant that more and more men found it tough to earn an income that let them improve a woman’s standard of living.

This situation is what has the incels so unhappy. For decades, even after women weren’t legally subservient to men, men generally had enough money that they had something very tangible to offer a woman. Now that’s only true for the top few percent of male wage earners.

Of course, any man with either ambition or good sense could work around this situation. Becoming one of the 1% is hard, but simply having enough ambition to get into, let’s say, the top 50%, means that you have enough of a surplus to be able to raise the standard of living of a woman. And good sense is all it takes to do a bit of an analysis and realize that following the strategies of the pick-up bros isn’t going to lead to what you want nearly as well as coming up with things to offer to women besides cash. (Different things for different women, but: getting fit, wearing nice clothes, learning about the arts or science or history—whatever any particular woman is interested in, paying attention to them when they talk, being supportive of their efforts, are all things that might work.)

But incels as a group don’t seem to want to make even that modicum of an effort. They’d rather blame women.

The other groups I mentioned are broadly similar. Even the rich, successful tech bros are often dysfunctional to the point that they have trouble attracting women. Libertarians are often attracted to the movement specifically because what they yearn for is a world where people have minimal legal protections from the wealthy (and for no good reason, they imagine that they’ll be wealthy enough to take advantage of that). Crypto bros are the same, except they have a specific (rather than vague) notion of where their money is going to come from, even if it’s a fantasy.

So I understand that article. I think that is why all those disparate groups came together, even when their actual interests are pretty disparate.

The big question is, will these groups hang together going forward? Or will the fact that they have nothing much in common except a fantasy of enjoying being on top, lead to infighting and failure?

I’m hoping for failure, but it’s still too soon to say.

Ashley has found her place in the sun. 🐕

If I were a bio-terrorist, I think my next project would be to engineer a fish flu, hoping to enormously build on the damage to the human food supply caused by bird flu. (I am a fiction writer, and neither a bio-terrorist nor a genetic engineer, so no worries. Plus, I rather like fish. Even as I type, Jackie is making salmon burgers.)

I do get a fantastic number of steps, almost entirely just walking Ashley.

I keep hearing this stupid ad which, due to an infelicitous pause in the audio, seems to say, “Before you invest carefully, consider the funds objectives, risks, charges and expenses.” I always want to respond, “Before you invest carelessly, don’t bother.”

My most active period of the day this year was at 5:00 PM. This is when we wrap up cocktail hour, and I take Ashley out for her last walk of the day. The evening walk is actually shorter than her morning walks, but it’s got a nice, crisp start time:

Jackie walked Ashley successfully for a couple of days right after we brought her home from the shelter, but then we had a couple of incidents where the dog pulled her over, or yanked the leash out of her hand, and we realized that it wasn’t safe for Jackie to be the dog walker.

Over the past couple of years though, Ashley has gradually become more tractable, and today we decided to experiment once again with Jackie being the dog walker.

It worked great! Ashley pulled some, but I don’t think Jackie was ever in danger of being pulled over, or of losing the leash.

We were thinking of it especially because tomorrow I’m going to spend close to 10 hours at an all-day sword fighting workshop organized by my local club TMHF, which is bringing in three well-known HEMA instructors to teach classes. There’s a group lunch, but I’m going to have to miss it to dash home and walk the dog. But since this outing went so well, hopefully next time there’s something like this, Jackie will be able to do the dog walking. It’s also a useful backup, just in case I’m sick or injured, to have Jackie able to do what’s necessary.

I’ve scarcely fenced with the students since the groups split a year ago. It was made clear that I was welcome to come train with the student group, but most of the training sessions were the same time as my group was meeting, and anyway my shoulder and elbow issues meant I had to reduce the amount of training I was doing, so I ended up training with my own group.

That changed this week when the student group had a “fancy-dress fechtschule,” and invited the TMHF members to join in.

A fechtschule (which just means “fight school”) is a particular kind of contest where the point is not so much to “win” (although you want to do that too), as it is to display artful fencing. To encourage that the rules call for only head hits to count, and prohibit things like thrusting (too likely kill your opponent), grappling, pommel strikes, etc.

Because only head hits count, it seemed reasonably safe to wear just masks and not full protective gear, enabling a fancy-dress version, which seemed to me like great fun. Many of the women showed up in dresses or gowns of one sort or another (some in heels!). Many of the men wore suits. I wore a coat and tie.

The call for attending was simply to wear “the most formal thing you own that you are willing to fight in.”

After a youth during which I couldn’t imagine “dressing up” any more than absolutely necessary, somewhere along the line I figured out a few things, one of which was that men’s dress clothing is actually more comfortable than casual clothing, because it is altered to fit well, rather than just being “the right size.” These days besides wearing dress clothing whenever it will give me an advantage, I also wear it anytime it seems like fun. (While traveling—on a plane or a train, and while in a station or an airport—you get much better service if you’re wearing a coat and tie than if you’re wearing shorts or sweats.)

There was a great deal of artful fencing.

It has taken most of three years, but I’m finally doing a pretty good job of keeping my arms extended while doing longsword. (Partly I just needed to develop the habit, but I also needed to build strength and endurance in that arms-extended posture.)

It was glorious fun. I even did okay in the contest. (I think Milosh went easy on me.)

I do need more work on fencing artfully.

I have an idea for reducing surveillance capitalism:

Every time a company sells (or gives away as part of a commercial transaction) any information about you (name, location, unique identifier, website you visited, etc.), they have to mail you a postcard telling you what they sold and who they sold it to.

Bonus: Boosts the post office as well!

Jackie shared this with me, and now I want a bear-fur cap. (Actually I read it as a bear-fur cape, which might be even better, but I’d settle for the cap.)

He was wearing a striped goat-fur coat, a bear-fur cap, and sturdy shoes with bear-leather soles

Source: Bear-leather shoes and Roman ‘good-luck’ coins: The lost worlds emerging from glaciers

During today’s longsword and rapier class with my HEMA group, Tempered Mettle Historical Fencing, we noticed that a banner had gotten crooked, and took a break to adjust it.

I took this image to document the scar from Ashley getting nipped on the nose by a neighbor dog, but it was such a handsome picture, I figured there was no point on dwelling on the scar. #dogsofmastodon

First hot cocoa of the season. (And well-deserved. It’s cold outside, and not so terribly warm inside.)

Just before my summer trip to Amherst, I got a Covid booster—even though the new Covid shot was just about to come out—because I wanted to minimize the chance of catching Covid on a plane or at an airport, and bringing it to my mom or brother.

Since then, I’ve been waiting for four months to pass, so I could get the new shot, now that it’s available. (It turns out that now you only have to wait two months, but nobody told me that.) Anyway, the four months are up, so I got my Covid booster and a flu shot this morning.

My left arm is now moderately sore. In fact, it roughly matches my right arm, which has been sore for months now. (I think originally dog-walking injuries to my right elbow and right shoulder, exacerbated by sword fighting, and exercise. I’ve recently started walking the dog left-handed, cut my sword fighting practice to just once a week, and cut the weight way down on my kettlebell clean&press. Oh, and I have a modest bruise on the right bicep where yesterday I took thrust that just missed the protective plate on my fencing jacket. The jacket is also padded though, and the thrust wasn’t that hard, and the sword was nicely flexible to make it safe for sparring between friends.)

“Mounjaro and the weight loss drug Zepbound slashed by 94 percent the risk that overweight or obese adults with pre-diabetes would develop diabetes… a lot of those same people could have had a great outcome with lifestyle intervention”

Source: NYT

Great outcomes from lifestyle interventions are why almost nobody in the US has diabetes.

Ashley would like to make it Very Clear that the number of treats provided so far are Insufficient.

Let me start by saying that, judging from his previous term, most of what the incoming president says has no particular bearing on what he’s going to do. But I think a few trends look likely enough that it’s worth thinking about the results on the dollar’s value.

The things I’m thinking of are tariffs and tax cuts, which I expect to lead to higher inflation and larger deficits, both of which will lead to higher interest rates.

Tariffs

The president can impose tariffs on his own, with no need for congressional action. Whether we’ll get the proposed 60% tariffs on Chinese goods, or whether that’s just a bargaining chip, I have no idea. But I think some amount of tariff increase will be imposed, which will feed through directly to higher prices.

That’s not to say that tariffs are necessarily bad (although usually they are). But they do feed through to higher prices.

Tax cuts

Tax cuts need to get through Congress. If the Republicans get the House as well as the Senate, it’s highly likely that legislation will preserve the 2017 tax cuts set to expire next year, and probably some additional tax cuts, such as a much lower rate on corporate income. It’s also possible that we’ll see the proposals to cut tax rates on tip income and on overtime pay enacted, although I doubt it. (The incoming president only cares about his own taxes, not about those of random working-class folks.)

The main thing taxes cuts will do is dramatically increase the deficit. The tariffs will bring in some countervailing revenue, but not nearly enough to fill the gap.

Other things that raise inflation and cut revenue

There are all kinds of other proposals that were bandied about during the campaign, such as deporting millions of immigrants, that raise costs both for the government, leading to higher deficits (the labor and logistics both cost money, and not a little) and for employers (they’re employing the immigrants because their wages are lower), which they will try to offset with higher prices.

What this means for our money

Rising costs will feed directly into higher prices, which is going to look like inflation to the Fed, so I think we can expect short-term interest rates (the ones controlled by the Fed) to get stuck as a higher level than we’d otherwise have seen.

At the same time, lower taxes will mean lower government revenues, leading to larger deficits. For years now, the government has been able to get away with rising deficits, but I doubt if the next administration will have as much success in this area. (Why not deserves a post of its own.)

My expectation is that higher deficits will mean higher long-term interest rates, as Treasury buyers insist on higher rates to reward the risks that they’re taking.

So: Higher short rates and higher long rates, along with higher inflation.

What to do

I had already been expecting inflation rates to stick higher than the market has been expecting, so I’d been looking at investing in TIPS (treasury securities whose value is adjusted for inflation). I’m still planning on doing so, but not with as much money as I’d been thinking of, for two reasons.

First, I’d been assuming that money market rates would come down, as the Fed lowered short-term rates. Now that I think short-term rates won’t come down as much or as fast, I’m thinking I can just keep more money in cash, and still earn a reasonable return.

Second, I’d been assuming that treasury securities would definitely pay out—the U.S. has been good for its debts since Alexander Hamilton was the Treasury Secretary. But the incoming president has very odd ideas about bankruptcy. As near as I can tell, he figures the smart move is to borrow as much as possible, and then declare bankruptcy, and then do it again. It worked for him, over and over again. I’m betting that Congress won’t go along with making the United States do the same, but I’m not sure of it.

Of course, if the United States does do that, the whole economy will go down, and my TIPS not getting paid will be the least of my problems.

I’m only surprised this doesn’t happen way more often. Surely a lot of people go into health research precisely to try to cure illnesses they have. If they come up with something very promising, why not try it on themselves?

A scientist who successfully treated her own breast cancer by injecting the tumour with lab-grown viruses has sparked discussion about the ethics of self-experimentation.

Source: Nature

After the last 8 or 16 years, I shouldn’t be surprised that racism and misogyny would motivate an actual majority to go to the polls and vote against their own interests. (Not to mention the interests of the United States, the Western world, and all human beings who live on this planet).

Because I am not as clever as Cory Doctorow, I just frittered away 15 minutes setting up my domain to be verified as my Blue Sky handle: [bsky.app/profile/p...](https://bsky.app/profile/philipbrewer.net)

I post almost nothing there—basically, just links back to my blog here—but you can go find me there with the other cool kids who are not as clever as Cory Doctorow.

Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) writing for the economics journal “Duh!”:

I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will.

Source: Pluralistic: Bluesky and enshittification

Ashley caught the vole living by our front door yet again. This time the vole did not survive.

The picture below is of a dead vole. Sorry not to be able to hide it behind a content warning. Just move along if you don’t want to see it.

Ashley caught a vole! I wouldn’t let her eat it, because who knows what parasites she’d get from eating a raw wild animal, but she took it very well when I made her drop the vole.

It seemed to have survived being in Ashley’s mouth for several seconds. So Ashley will get to try to catch it again!

Have I mentioned lately how jealous I am of Ashley’s lean, muscly physique? #dogsofmastodon

Halloween is one of my two favorite holidays (the other being Groundhog’s Day), but last year we had a slight mishap: The kids who knocked on our door had already opened the screen door, so when I opened the door, Ashley ran outside and chased the kids around.

She was really just doing zoomies, but the little kids were very reasonably terrified to be chased by a dog.

So this year we’re not going to open our door. But we will be giving out candy. There’ll be a bag on our doorstep, with this sign on the door itself.

I’ll put it out at 5:00 PM or so, and then do my best to remember not to open the door until trick-or-treating time is over.

It seems like every business now has its own app, which usually offers remote ordering, as well as discounts. I do my best not to use any of them, because they demand (and transmit to the business) all sorts of private information from my phone. This seems to me like something my phone ought to fix.

It ought to be pretty easy on the phone to provide a virtual machine which only passes to an app whatever information the phone owner wants to pass on. For example, you could configure a video loop to provide, if the app wants to turn on the camera, or an audio file to provide if the app wants to turn on the microphone.

You could get quite fancy about things like location, if you wanted to. For example, a fast food app could be provided a random location, but one that was a configurable distance from the fast food restaurant. (I’m imagining that the fast food apps either already do, or soon will, adjust the price based on where you are. For example, if you’re already in the parking lot, they can raise the price, assuming that you’ve already decided to buy from them. They can cut the price if a competitor is closer to your location, to reduce the chance that you’ll stop there instead. The phone could pick a location to maximize your discount, to the extent that people had been able to figure out and share the algorithm.)

These sorts of tweaks would be easy to implement, but there’s no functionality in phones to provide them. It’s as if the manufacturers of the phones want to rat you out to every business with a phone app.

I resist by strictly limiting which apps I install on my phone. But I’d be a lot happier with a virtual machine which would put me in control of what data about me those installed apps could get.

I’m a bit surprised that the billionaires are so blasé about a fascist taking over the government. Yeah, yeah—maybe their taxes will go down. But maybe not—Trump only cares about his taxes, not theirs.

More to the point, don’t they know what’s been happening to the billionaires in China and Russia these past few years?

I do not understand why anyone would want their drivers license on their phone (iPhone Driver’s License Support Expands to Iowa). It purely facilitates a cop taking your phone away and doing who-knows-what to it.

Maybe on a burner phone….

For much of my life I thought that the key to losing weight was just exercising more. Especially in the mid-1980s, when I lived in Utah and California, I’d get out for some long hikes in the mountains and deserts and think, “If I could just do this all the time, it would be easy to maintain a proper weight.” That turns out to be both true and false.

The fitness influencer types like to say things along the lines of “You can’t outrun your fork,” meaning that you simply can’t burn enough calories to get ahead of eating way too much. I knew that wasn’t completely true. Read about any long-distance endurance athlete (ultra-marathoner, Tour de France rider, etc.) and you’ll have a window into really extreme efforts to eat enough just to keep going, let alone enough to recover for the next day’s effort.

I also have a slightly more ordinary example. A couple of guys I knew tried to bicycle around Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, and had to abandon the effort halfway through, because their riding (100+ miles per day) burned so many calories (perhaps 5000 calories on top of their basal metabolic rate, so maybe 7500 calories per day total), they ran out of money for food.

It’s tough to eat 7500 calories per day even without the financial limit, so it seems like, if you have all day to do nothing but exercise, and the will to exercise hard for several hours a day, perhaps you could “outrun your fork.”

Recent research shows that this is not the case, except in the very short term. People who are very active all day, like hunter-gatherers (but also subsistence farmers, and laborers of other sorts), burn more calories than people who are sedentary all day, but only modestly more.

A recent study showed that among of Hadza people, activity was almost insignificant as a predictor of total energy expenditure. They were remarkably active, but their calorie consumption was pretty ordinary. The study suggests that body size is just about all that matters

In that study, average total energy expenditure among Hadza men was 2649 calories per day. The average is higher among western men, but only because their body size is greater. (Hadza men averaged 50.9 kg (112 lbs), while Western men averaged 81.0 kg (179 lbs). Differences in BMI are more stark, with Hadza men having a BMI averaging 20.3, while Western men’s BMIs averaged 25.6.)

The point here is that it seems like your biology is attuned to wanting to eat 2600 calories and wanting to burn 2600 calories. (Adjust for frame size. It seems the Hadza men averaged about 5′ 2″.) You can be sedentary, under-eat to match, and not gain weight, but it’s not in tune with what you’re body wants, so you’ll be hungry all the time, as well as having all the side-effects of under-movement.

You can also try to exercise enough to burn more than 2600 calories, but it seems that as soon as you go over that level, your body starts trying to compensate—turning down whatever is easy to turn down, such as your immune system, and muscle-building system.

That doesn’t happen immediately. If you go on a century ride you will burn the extra 5000 calories that simple arithmetic would suggest. That would probably continue if you went on a three-day bicycle tour. But pretty quickly—probably just in a week or so—less-essential body functions would ramp down (and of course fatigue would ramp up) bringing your total consumption back down toward 2600 calories.

You can see how this would work well for hunters. You go for a hunt one day (or two or three days), hiking or running for miles, finding prey, tracking it, and finally killing it. Then you (and your whole tribe) have lots of food to eat for a day (or two or three). During extended periods of excess activity maybe your immune system and muscle-building system ramps down, but then during periods of ample food and less activity, maybe it ramps up extra, allowing for full recovery.

Consuming more calories than you burn for more than a few days, however, quickly leads to problems. Increased fat storage is probably the least of them. Insulin resistance is another. Systemic inflammation is another. Those extra calories will go into the things that get turned down when you’re extra-active, such as the immune system. I don’t know that there’s any evidence, but an obvious possibility is that a lot of auto-immune disorders are just an immune system that never gets turned down because people are never active enough to burn more calories than they eat, if only for a day or two.

I think it’s true that you can’t out-exercise excess calorie consumption. However, you can definitely under-exercise—and trying to under-eat to match that will also cause problems. Humans evolved to thrive with an ideal level of activity.

It’s also true that you don’t need to hit that particular level of activity and food consumption every day. In fact, I’m sure you’d be better off to be moderately active most days, and then very active 1–3 days a week. My long-ago dream of being able to hike 10–15 miles every day and then eat all I want turns out to be a terrible idea. Rather, you want to walk 5 or 6 miles most days, and then hike 10–15 miles just once or twice a week. (Feel free to swap in bicycling or rowing or whatever you like for the long days of vigorous activity, although you probably want to keep in the basic walking if you possibly can.)

In Central Illinois fall colors are often a bit diffuse: the early trees turning brown and losing their leaves while the later trees are still green, with only a few trees showing their full autumn colors.

This year is something of an exception.

I bet a few letters of marque and reprisal issued to privateers could put a stop to that.

Russian Oil Flows Through Western ‘Price Cap’ as Shadow Fleet Grows – The New York Times

I keep seeing posts urging me to check my voter registration while there’s still time to register if my registration has been improperly deleted, and thinking, “Oh, right. I haven’t done that! I should check!” And then I remember that I voted last week, so I’m all set. Phew!

At 10:00 AM on the first Tuesday of the month, the county tests its emergency sirens. #dogsofmastodon

The very first month we had Ashley, we happened to be walking right under one of the sirens at the moment it started up. Ashley started howling along with it, which made me laugh. And Ashley looked a little embarrassed, thinking she’d done something wrong. I didn’t want that, so I started howling as well.

Since then, Ashley and I (and Jackie when she’s with us) have howled along with the emergency sirens every month.

Our neighbors have not complained, although I suppose they think we’re rather weird.

I don’t get why people are treating Helene like some unpredictable catastrophe, rather than just the way things are now.

I’m like, “Hey, it’s going to be like this all the time from now on—either impending disaster, disaster occurring, trying to rescue people from the disaster, or recovering from disaster—from now on.”

It’s weird that people don’t understand that. I mean, it’s so obvious to me, but people are still treating each new disaster as an unpredictable one-off.

Although some people are getting a clue. Zillow, for example, will now show climate risks for property listings in the US.

Most years about this time I’ll see a couple praying mantises, like this one I saw yesterday.

To celebrate voting (and because the dog is at her Canine Academy) we’re having lunch out. I’ve got a Three Floyd’s Zombie Dust (yummy—I’ve had it before), and Jackie has a Big Grove Old Fashioned.

Jackie and I have exercised the franchise.

You can’t really see it in this photo, but there are a wide range of diverse, multi-ethnic “I voted” stickers this year.

There’s a small creek that runs behind Winfield Village. It feeds the ponds in the Lake Park subdivision, and then the water flows on to the Embarras River.

It usually has only three or four inches of water in it, but after heavy rain it swells quite a bit.

Frua je Esperanto kunveno, Do tempo por sipi mian bieron.

I wish I had as lean and muscly a physique as Ashley. But I don’t wish it enough to switch to eating nothing but dog food as a way to get it. #dogsofmastodon 🐕

For years now, I’ve been trying to figure out (and writing about figuring out) how to exercise in ways that support all the different things I want to do. My latest hobby, HEMA (sword fighting), has seemed like it required more support than most of my other activities, which prompted more (and more different) exercise than I’d been doing before. I’ve worried for a while that I was overdoing it, and I’m now pretty sure that’s been true.

The specific experiment that convinced me was skipping a few HEMA practice sessions. My HEMA club has two-hour practice sessions on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Two weeks ago I just wasn’t feeling it on Tuesday, and then again on Thursday. Each of those two days I skipped practice, but otherwise did my regular workouts—and started feeling more energetic each day. Last week I repeated that. Not only did I continue to feel better, I also was able to step up my regular workouts a bit.

I’ve had two specific issues: a sore elbow and a sore neck.

I’m pretty sure the sore elbow is not HEMA-related, but rather dog-walking related. I think I’ve fixed the issue with how I was handling the dog, but my elbow has been slow to recover—probably because of either how I was handling my longsword, or else how I was exercising to support my longsword training. Having taking a break from longsword training (just going on Sundays, when we’ve been doing rapier training), and having my elbow get much better, even while I continued doing the rest of my exercise regimen, I’m pretty sure it was the actual longsword training that was keeping my elbow from getting better. As I write this, it’s feeling entirely better.

The sore neck, I suspect, is also HEMA-related, I think due to the asymmetrical stance of longsword. (Rapier stance is even more asymmetrical, but I haven’t been doing it as long or as vigorously.) Anyway, after a couple weeks of less training, my neck was, and is, feeling much better.

Of course I’m doing all the regular stuff to enhance recovery: stretching, good diet, trying to get plenty of sleep, etc.

I’m still working toward a plan for exercise. My current thinking is to give up one of Tuesday or Thursday HEMA practice. Then I’ll do four days a week of general exercise focused on support for my HEMA activities: Specifically, I’ve started two different programs of steel club swinging, one 1-handed and the other 2-handed, with a plan to do each of those two days a week. That would add up to 4 days a week. Add to that 2 days a week for HEMA training, and I’d be exercising 6 days a week, with one day of complete rest.

No one day of that should be completely exhausting, so maybe I’ll be able to recover better than I have been.

My new Sigi Forge rapier arrived!

The default length (normal), is probably several inches longer than ideal for Meyer rapier fencing, but there are advantages to having a longer blade.

I’m very pleased.

Right from the start I referred to Ashley as my “pupperdog.” After a while though, I realized that she was actually my “pup ur-dog”—that is, some proto-dire-wolf aspect of a pit bull / boxer cross.

You can see it in her eyes. 🐕 #dogsofmastodon

I use micro.blog to send out my newsletter. I’m generally pretty happy with its newsletter system, but it does have a serious mis-feature: There’s a very narrow window for editing the newsletter between when it generates it, and when when it sends it out.

The main thing I want to edit is the front text that goes at the top of the email, ahead of the blog posts that I’ve identified as ones that should go into the newsletter. As near as I can tell, there’s no way to create that text until micro.blog gives me the draft newsletter. By default (the way I had it set up until a few minutes ago), there is then only 30 minutes before the newsletter goes out.

That might be fine, except in practice it turns out that the alert arrives after I’ve left on my main morning dog walk, and then the newsletter goes out before I get back.

As a stop-gap I’ve increased that gap to 3 hours (the largest gap the system allows, it would appear). That’s not perfect—I’d like to be able to write the front-matter anytime in the month before the newsletter goes out, and then edit it repeatedly over the month. But it’s good enough that at least I won’t keep missing it just because my dog gets to luxuriate in a long morning walk every day.

Somebody in the local HEMA Discord shared:

“The fact I gotta train 3–5 days a week to keep my body at “moderately broken,” while my cat sleeps all day, and can do parkour with ease, is a crime.”

Another guy said:

“Maybe the reason the cat’s ok and needs to sleep all day is because it spends all it’s waking time doing parkour. If you did parkour all day and then slept for 12 hours you’d probably be able to keep up with the cat.”

To which I said:

“I have spent the last 15 years of my life trying to arrange it exactly like this. I have not yet achieved complete success, but I haven’t given up.”

Now that I’m over 65 I qualify to get the pneumonia immunization. The doctor mentioned that it has much less in the way of side-effects than common viral immunizations—flu, covid, shingles, etc.

Maybe that’s true, as far as the fever and body ache side-effects. But as far as the soreness-in-my-arm side-effect, it is really, really not true.

I’ve been whacked in the arm with a steel bar and not had it hurt as much as my arm hurts right now. (Admittedly, I’ve mostly been whacked with steel bars very gently.)

Ow.

Here’s a dog wearing a cooling vest.

As someone who’s been paying attention to AI since the 1970s, I’ve noticed the same pattern over and over: People will say, “It takes real intelligence to do X (win at chess, say), so doing that successfully will mean we’ve got AI.” Then someone will do that, and people will look at how it’s done and say, “Well, but it’s just using Y (deep lookup tables and lots of fast board evaluations, say). That’s not really AI.”

For the first time (somewhat later than I expected), I just heard someone doing the same thing with large language models. “It’s just predicting the next word based on frequencies in its training data. That’s not really AI.”

Happens every time.

This guy has an app for bulk unsubscribing (and text in Section 230 that perhaps protects it).

Personally, I’d like the opposite of what this app is described as doing: I want a plugin to purge my feed of everything except posts by people I follow. (All the rest of that stuff is “objectionable material” as far as I’m concerned.) That would make Facebook usable again, maybe.

… focused on a part of Section 230 that spells out protection for blocking objectionable material online.

Source: NYT

Copper River sockeye salmon cooked in coconut oil with a soy-ginger-mustard-maple glaze. Cahokia brown rice. Sautéed red onions and red peppers. Delicious!

Jackie almost always gets up before me and makes the coffee. But every few weeks I’ll wake up first and then I’ll be the one to make the coffee. And when I do, I bring Jackie a cup of bed coffee.

Ashley routinely stays in bed until the second person gets up. #dogsofmastodon 🐕

I have written very little in a long time. But today I started working on something new, and I have a plan to get another (related) thing that I wrote a while ago ready to submit.

The older thing is a bit of steampunk-esque whimsy that I started as an experiment in voice, and found I rather liked. As it grew, I realized that it was longer than a short story, and a market I was interested in was about to open to novella submissions, so I thought I’d just let it grow.

One thing I do when I’m writing is to just drop bits in that seem cool, as possible set-ups for later bits. This often works out very well. Sometimes, though, those bits of set-up imply stuff that doesn’t get written. That happened this time, and I made a list of bits that either needed the follow-up stuff written, or else be deleted.

Since I was aiming at novella length (and I wasn’t there yet), I figured that I could just write those bits out. But several didn’t end up working out. So now my plan is to make another pass through the planned novella, delete the bits that didn’t go anywhere, turn it into a novelette, and get it submitted somewhere.

But that is all work for another day. Today I’ve started on something new: a sequel to that story. I remain delighted by the characters, by the steampunky world, and by the voice I used to write the story. And yesterday I came up with part of a new idea.

Just now I jotted down a few sentences, which I very much hope to get back to later today.

Ashley is on her Very Best Behavior since picked up after being boarded for our trip. I don’t know if they did a bit of training (insisting that she not jump, having her sit to put her leash on), or if she’s nervous that we might take her back if she’s not a good dog.

As one of many pleasant outings during our visit, Steven took us to the New England Botanic Garden. It was a good choice for the group, providing opportunities for walks of all different lengths for people who wanted to walk further or less far.

There were, of course, lots of plants to see (f you’re a fan of diverse hostas, you’d be in heaven), but I found myself drawn to the art, and particularly enjoyed the sculptures. Although not religious myself, I don’t mind religious art, but I do find the endless Christian iconography one tends to find especially in the Midwest to be tedious. So I always enjoy anything different.

The New England Botanic Garden had a lot of western classical art, one sort I particularly enjoy. (I always like allegorical personifications (like Liberty and Justice, but lots of others as well), and I saw figures for Summer and Autumn (although I failed to get pictures of those). I also like classical western architecture—especially faux architecture, such as follies, which they had one of, along with a Temple of Peace. And I did manage to capture a photo of the statue of Pan.

Well worth visiting, if you’re in the area, and like botany or classical western art.

Me and my brother, @stevendbrewer, together in the pollinator garden at UMass, Amherst.

It’s almost as if our response to Covid wasn’t all Trump’s fault after all.

“Most American dairy farms are not regularly testing for H5N1… seeing the possible stigma of admitting they have H5N1-infected cows as a greater risk than the virus itself.”

—https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/07/opinion/bird-flu-covid.html

Sitting on Steven’s patio with him and my mom.

Look at the stickers on my laptop! Steven gave me a new Puzzy Cure sticker, created to promote his collection Better Angels: Tour de Force.

I wish candidates (and others) would put legit links in their email, because then I could look at them and be reasonably confident they were legit.

I want to make a donation to a candidate, but I want to make it in the most efficient way possible—without some intermediary siphoning off a bunch of the money. I especially don’t want some rival tricking me with a bogus solicitation.

The email looks legit, but the link to click.actionnetwork.org followed by several hundred random characters does not fill me with confidence. (Some research makes me think it is legit.)

I was sick for three weeks (and took another six weeks to fully recover) when I caught West Nile fever a year ago.

Do not recommend.

I jerked awake at least three times last night, yanked out of sleep by some stress dream. Eventually I figured out it was because I hadn’t packed for our upcoming trip. Now I am packed, except for the few things that need to wait for after my last night’s sleep.

I’m sure I’ll sleep well tonight.

I’ve been thinking about longevity too long and too hard. It isn’t something that I suddenly started doing when I reached my 60s, or even when I hit middle age. I can remember as a high school student figuring out that I’d need to live about two thousand years to have time to learn and do all the stuff I wanted to learn and do.

Sadly, everything we know now suggests that lifestyle improvements can get you a life extension of 7 years—maybe as much as 11 years, if you get serious about it. I mean, that’s not nothing, but it’s not going to get me to two thousand years, or even to eleventy-one, like Bilbo. (That’s what I lowered my sights to, when I realized that two thousand years was unlikely.)

I was briefly pretty hopeful in the late 1980s, when it looked like nanotech might produce amazing longevity gains. But, no. Turns out except for a few materials-science things—stuff like that tweaking the surface of glass to make it self-cleaning—the only nanotech that anyone has been able to get to do anything remotely interesting is biotech. I mean, MRNA vaccines are awesome, but nothing like the nanotech we were promised.

Considering how much is written about longevity, the stuff that actually works offers pretty minimal benefits. Getting a life extension of 7 to 11 years look pretty easy, just by doing the obvious, boring stuff, and practically none of the fancy bio-hacky things have any evidence behind them at all.

So what are the boring things that work?

Eat food

Don’t eat industrially produced food-like substances. Eat in reasonable amounts. Eat diversely. I saw one study that suggested that any exclusion-based diet—keto, carnivore, vegan, etc.—seemed to be associated with poorer health outcomes. (On the other hand, if one of those things produces benefits in the short term—for me, it’s eating low-carb—there’s no reason not to do it long enough to reap those benefits. But long-term you want a diverse diet.)

Exercise

Until recently the only real evidence-based exercise advice was for 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise (brisk walking, basically). But recently it has become very clear that maintaining muscle mass, strength, and power are beneficial in multiple ways (everything from reducing falls to providing a glucose sink). Separately, a high V̇O₂ max is strongly associated with a longer life. So although there’s little evidence for weight lifting, running, or high-intensity cardo, there is now very good evidence that the entirely expectable results of those exercise modalities are excellent for longevity. So: diverse exercise is going to help you live longer.

Manage your blood pressure, blood glucose, and blood lipids

Really good diet and exercise can maybe eliminate the need for drugs. But taking the drugs if you need them can help a lot.

Enjoy life

There’s good evidence of benefit from social connection. There’s good evidence of benefit from time spent in nature. There’s good evidence of benefit from having a positive mental attitude. (All those are suspect, because being sick makes them tougher to do, so you’re selecting out some fraction of the people who are going to die young, which makes the statistics misleading. But there’s not much point in a long life unless you’re going to enjoy it, so why not?)

Other stuff

I’ve refrained from mentioning the bio-hacky stuff that I’ve spent way too much time thinking about. Not just the nanotech stuff, but also all the rest: All of the supplements, sleep hacks, drinking more (or less) coffee (or tea or bone broth or mushroom-enhanced beverages), etc.

It’s not that things like sleep aren’t important. It’s that there’s essentially no evidence that any specific intervention is going to help in a measurable way. In fact, there can’t ever be any such evidence. The experiment can’t be done. And if it were done, the effect wouldn’t be measurable.

I mean, if you have a diagnosis for a problem—sleep apnea, for example—then treating that problem could very easily be transformational, not just for your longevity, but for your life right now. But giving everyone a CPAP machine would do no good. Furthermore, picking a few random sleep hacks—avoiding caffeine after mid-day, wearing blue-blocker glasses, or tweaking your pre-bedtime routine—isn’t going to make any difference across the population. (Any one of those might help you in particular, and if it does, more power to you. But none of those, even if adopted by 100% of the population, is going to add a year to the average lifespan.)

If you’re interested in details, you might look at the recent New York Times article “The Key to Longevity Is Boring.” Another option would be to read the Peter Attia book Outlive, or listen to his most recent podcast episode, Longevity 101, either of which does a great job of covering the handful of things that will give you that extra 7 to 11 years of life.

A downed branch in Winfield Village. #lichensubscribe

Jackie found a sticker with the logo for Buff yesterday, even though we haven’t bought any lately. I told her I could put it in the envelope of stickers I’m saving for my next laptop. This morning she left another sticker for me. And just now another sticker.

They’re coming thick and fast.

I’m not going to be going to WorldCon after all, so I’ve got an attending membership that I won’t be using. If you want it, let me know before July 31st, and I’ll try to figure out how to transfer it to you.

Have you ever seen a more lovely loaf of bread? 🍞

Cory Doctorow points out a key—and helpful to us—aspect of Project 2025:

These are the conflicts that are so central to the priorities of blocs that are so important to the coalition that they must be included, even though that inclusion constitutes a blinking “LOOK AT ME” sign telling us where the right is ready to split apart.

Source: Pluralistic

I was bitten by a mosquito this morning. My first thought:, “Well, I had West Nile Fever last year, so I probably won’t catch it this year.”

Now I see this:

“… at least one person in Central Illinois is reported to have dengue fever….

There is currently no antiviral medication to treat dengue, but most cases subside within a week or two. Severe cases … can result in death.

Source: WCIA

From the first day we met her at the animal shelter, Ashley has liked to sit on benches with both Jackie and me. Still does. #dogsofmastodon 🐕

Likes to sit (and stand) on benches. Doesn’t much like to have her picture taken.

I think it’s funny to pronounce baklava like balaclava. Fortunately, Jackie says it’s okay, as long as I’m not talking to the baker.

Yummy desert.

Lilies are past their peak. Today #lilycount 1, although not the last one. #bloomscrolling

I’m finally sending out my newsletter! An “issue zero” just went out, but starting next month you’ll be getting actual newsletters. My first cut at a title is “Sword fighting, writing, and a dog,” because that’s what I seem to be spending my time on these days. (I’ll try to get more writing stuff in than I have been just lately.)

If you’re interested, subscribe here: https://philipbrewer.micro.blog/subscribe/

Over the months we’ve had her I’ve described Ashley as being puppish, puptastic, and pupalicious. But just recently I’ve realized that she as best described as being doggedly pupstanding in her field. 🐕 #dogsofmastodon

Prompted by a poll on “Are you reading a book (paper, electronic, or audio)?” I realized that I’m reading one of each kind just now. On paper I’m reading non-fiction The Art & Practice of 16th Century German Fencing. On the kindle I’m reading a novel Dance for the Dead. On audible I’m reading Consider Phlebas.

I like the time of morning when the tops of the trees are lit by the sun, but the bottoms of the trees are still in shadow.

Rice Philip: ½ shallot, chopped, 1 T minced garlic, 1 cup bone broth, 1 can chicken breast meat, ½ cup brown rice. Soy sauce to taste after serving.

If you live in Illinois, and care about vulnerable people, consider signing this petition for mask mandates in healthcare facilities: https://chng.it/WdnkRXGkXx

The sort of thing Jackie might say on any ordinary day (such as today):

“Consider using a shallot as your allium in today’s lunch.”

(To be fair, just yesterday I told her I wasn’t using the shallots, assuming that she’d gotten them with some particular dish in mind.)

Wow! Today’s #lilycount is 63! I think that’s the highest lilycount we’ve ever reached. Bonus: You can see Spleenwort, our front-step gargoyle, way over on the left. #bloomscrolling

Last night, in celebration of my birthday the day before, my local HEMA club (Tempered Mettle Historical Fencing) honored me with what’s called a “bearpit”: I faced all comers with rapier or longsword for three passes each.

I made a video:

A guy who used a cane had his phone slip out of his pocket on the bus, so I offered to pick it up for him. Taking it he said he appreciated young folks looking out for old folks like him.
I thanked him for thinking of me as a young folk, and didn’t tell him it was my birthday. Or which birthday it is.

Yesterday’s lilycount 23 (with bonus dog):

Today’s lilycount 42:

Jackie and I are each drinking a Rhinegeist Terror Bird imperial IPA, to go along with BBQ for our main meal of the day. Yummy.

Today’s lilicount 17.

All consumer-grade heart rate monitors have issues. Chest straps are pretty good. The optical captures from wrist (Google Pixel watch, etc.) or finger (Oura ring) are quite a bit less accurate.

I’ve generally just tolerated it—taking the reported data with a grain of salt—but sometimes it would be nice to get good data. Today I did a little experiment with my Google Pixel watch—tightening the strap at the midpoint of my run—and found that it seems to give me pretty good data this way.

What you see is my warm-up, followed by 1 mile out and then 1 mile back. The HR shown for the “out” phase (averaging maybe 180 bpm) is ridiculous—what it’s capturing is not my HR, but rather my step rate.

In the second half my HR goes from about 160 to slightly above 170 (gradually rising as I get tired), and that’s probably just about right.

(The standard formula for estimating your maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age, which would give a max HR of 156 for someone of my age. But that’s clearly wrong for me. I pretty regularly see peak HRs of just over 170 that seem entirely legit. I assume that my genes and my training history just give me a higher max HR than typical. Sadly, it doesn’t make me faster, as you can see from my average pace for this run. I was running literally as fast as I thought I could maintain for 2 miles.)

Anyway, I think I can recommend tightening up the Pixel watch band as tight as tolerable, for getting the most accurate data.

Jackie got some pineapple juice for some cocktail or another, so I seized the opportunity to make us each a Zenaida Dove. (Her’s has a bonus Luxardo cherry.)

I didn’t get my lilicount photo posted yesterday, but since there’s just one lily today, I’ll go ahead and post yesterday’s lilicount 10 photo a day late.

First of our lilies. lilycount 2

In a NYT op ed, Mitch McConnell reminds us to avoid the mistakes of the 1930s:

“Of course, Americans heard much less from our disgraced isolationists after the attack on Pearl Harbor.”

Source: Mitch McConnell

Too bad he couldn’t say:

“Of course, Americans heard much less from our disgraced insurrectionists after the attack on the U.S. Capitol.”

In my previous post, I talked about RDL (Romanian dead lift) the exercise. In HEMA practice RDL refers to something else: the writers of three famous glosses of Lichtenauer’s Zettel (a long didactic poem on sword fighting) by Sigmund ain Ringeck, Pseudo-Peter von Danzig, and Jud Lew.

So far, I’m reading a different gloss of the poem (although I’ll probably get to those as well):

I recently bought a new adjustable kettlebell. I got it specifically because the adjustable kettlebell I already had has a rather large gap in weights: It goes from 25 lbs to 35 lbs (11 kg to 16 kg).

I’d been doing clean and press at 25 lbs. (I do a reverse ladder, where I do 5 left and 5 right, then 4, 3, 2, and 1, then put the weight down. That’s one set.) I started at 4 sets, and over a few weeks worked up to doing 10 sets, at which point I figured it was time go up in weight.

Sadly, it turned out that I couldn’t make the jump. After a failed attempt, I cut the reverse ladder down to start at 3 (rather than 5), and started at just 3 sets. I managed one workout like that, but when I tried to do another workout, I didn’t even make it as far as I had the first time.

So, I bought a new, more adjustable kettlebell: the Wildman Athletica competition adjustable kettlebell. It will allow me to make ½ kg jumps, if that what it takes to be able to go up in weight successfully.

It starts at 12 kg, which by happy coincidence is right where I need to be for my clean & press workouts.

The downside of the Wildman kettlebell is that it isn’t so easy to adjust the weight. Whereas my other adjustable weight kettlebell can be adjusted with a quick click of a dial, the Wildman adjustable kettlebell has to be opened up with a hex wrench, and then have weight plates added (or removed), and then tightened back up again. This is no big deal if you have to do it once or twice a month as you finish one cycle in an exercise program, but is pretty tedious if you have to do it every day or two as you switch between exercises—and 12 kg is rather low for lower-body exercises (for me). My other adjustable bell goes to 40 lb (18 kg) and my fixed-weight bell is 53 lb (24 kg)), and either of those is a much for appropriate weight for, let’s say, kettlebell swings.

So, I was trying to think of a lower-body exercise I could do with just 12 kg, and still get a reasonable muscle-building stimulus. I thought about hand-to-hand swings, which would work okay for the upper body, but wouldn’t make much difference as far as the lower body goes. Then I thought of single-leg Romanian dead lifts.

If I were doing regular (2-legged) Romanian dead lifts (RDL) with a barbell, I’d be able to use close to 135 lbs. You might assume half of that would be about right for a single-leg RDL, but the SLRDL turns out to require a much higher level of skill, because it’s a tricky balance exercise, as well as a strength exercise. In particular, it really works the smaller muscles of the feet and ankles—needed to keep from falling over.

All of which is to say that I think SLRDLs will turn out to be a very fine exercise for my purposes, at least for a while. I started at 5 sets of 5 left / 5 right, and just like with the clean & press expect to be able to run it up to 10 sets. Then, just like with the clean & press, I should be able to go up in weight. At some point—when I get the skill component nailed—I’ll probably see the weight I want for the lower-body exercise go up faster than the the weight for the upper-body exercise. But at least for a little while, I think I’m all set.

I had completely forgotten this picture existed! Taken on the same trip as the “Picnic with Crows” pic I posted a while ago, this was taken in some park or wildlife area in central Florida. A woman who worked there had trained the scrub jays to take food from people’s hands.

“… the largest part of the active author community has settled at Blue Sky where they are once again suckling on the teat of venture capital.”

Steven D. Brewer https://stevendbrewer.com/social-media-as-an-author/

Jackie and I both have the Maplewood Crushinator. Pretty good session ale.

I ordered a Sigi rapier back in February, but it won’t be ready for another month or two. But my HEMA group started a rapier training class last week! Fortunately, Purple Heart had a fairly nice rapier in stock, so we put together a quick group order. Behold!

The periodic cicadas are not yet out in full force, but they’re out. Probably by tomorrow the woods around Homer Lake will be deafening with their calls.

Oh no! I’ve finished Revin’s Heart by @stevendbrewer! Whatever shall I do?

Looked at properly, inflation is the money getting less valuable, which shows up as rising prices. It’s opposite, deflation, is the money getting more valuable, leading to falling prices. Something that used to be very obvious, but has perhaps become less so, is that inflation sucks if you have money, whereas deflation sucks if you owe money.

TL;DR version: You can reverse inflation, as long as you’re willing to grind into the dust everyone who owes money, making them work more and more, to earn less and less, to pay back debts that get higher and higher (because the dollars it takes to pay them off are getting more and more valuable). Society has done that many times in the past. Sometimes it works out okay; other times it produces terrible impoverishment of ordinary people, leading to social unrest.

The rest of this post looks at this in a bit more detail. I was prompted to write it because recent polls have suggested that young folks—Millennials and Gen-Z—continue to be unhappy about inflation, even though the inflation rate is down a lot. When you talk to these people, it turns out what they’re unhappy about is not inflation but rather prices: They remember what things used to cost, and they cost more than that now, which they find annoying, even if the price has largely quit going up. (And of course prices change all the time, so some prices are always going up.)

Older folk—people who lived through the inflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s—have a different perspective on that, partially because their parents and grandparents lived through the Great Depression.

Basically, they remember what happens when you try to push prices back down to what they were before a period of inflation.

There’s a sense among the “hard money” types that inflation is impossible when the currency is backed by gold, but this is false. There is often inflation under a gold standard, but it (often) ended up getting undone, meaning that looked at from the perspective of a century, it looks like there wasn’t much inflation. And indeed there wasn’t much inflation on average.

This was especially true during the heyday of the gold standard, roughly the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1816 the pound sterling was defined as 113 grains of pure gold, where it remained until 1931. (Before that it was defined as 5,400 grains of silver—about a pound of silver, hence the name a pound sterling—but in terms of value it was a similar amount of purchasing power.)

A big part of the reason that people remember the gold standard fondly is that it worked pretty well, especially for people who had money. With stable prices, it was even possible to value land not at a market price (because who would sell land?) but at the income that land would produce—an income that would remain stable for generations at a time.

However, as I said, there was still inflation. Inflation came from many sources, but two important ones: new discoveries of gold, and war. When the quantity of gold increased—as during the 1840s and 1850s when large amounts of gold were found in California and Australia—the rising quantity of gold (i.e. money) would produce inflation just like rising quantities of money produce inflation now. The other common source of inflation was war, because paying for a big war without inflation is almost impossible.

For example, there was a big inflation in the U.S. during the Civil War, when the Federal Government printed “greenbacks” to pay for the costs of the war. (The Confederates did the same, but as they lost the war their Confederate dollars ended up being worthless.) Dollars, on the other hand, were gradually revalued, with greenbacks gradually being withdrawn from circulation producing a grinding deflation that went on for more than a decade.

Like always in economics, there were other things going on at the same time. Industrialization was going on at the same time, meaning that things produced by industrial firms were getting cheaper, leading to deflation, while gold discoveries were leading to an increase in the supply of gold (= money) leading to inflation.

On balance there was deflation, meaning that people who had money were getting richer, while people who owed money were getting poorer. As long as that happens only in a small way, and as long as people sense that it’s “fair”—that nobody is cheating the system to take unfair advantage—it’s kinda nice. If you don’t owe money (and most people didn’t, because there were no credit cards, and virtually no student loans), then whatever meager savings you had got gradually more and more valuable. At the same time, wages tended not to drop (for the same reasons that wages tend not to drop these days as well), so somebody with a job ended up gradually better and better off.

Of course rich people got vastly more well off, so they loved it. The main people who hated it were farmers and small businessmen, because they generally needed to borrow money (to buy seed or raw materials), so they were constantly screwed by the fact that the money they had to pay back was worth more than the money they’d borrowed.

I started this post meaning to suggest that “kids these days” just didn’t understand the dynamics of deflation, But upon reflection, I think there’s another layer to it. Kids these days (as opposed to the Gen-X kids who trusted their parents and guidance counselors, and borrowed as much money as necessary to go to the best school they could get into) don’t owe so much money, so they’re not in the position of being utterly screwed by deflation. Many of them may be in the position of ordinary people in the great post-Civil War deflation, who ended up doing pretty well, with their wages or salary rising in value, while industrialization and globalization helps hold down prices.

The fact is, though, that deflation can absolutely destroy a generation of ordinary people. After WW I, for example, Britain, having funded the war through inflation, decided to return to the pre-war gold parity, which required a grinding deflation that lasted until 1929—great for people with money, bad for people without, devastating for people with debts. France decided instead to revalue, punishing people with money, coddling people with debts (which has its own downsides in terms of social disruption). German, the loser of WW I, saddled with debts denominated in gold, made a valiant effort to pay them back, giving up and starting WW II only when that proved utterly impossible.

The lesson of that period, understood by pretty much everybody from the 1940s through the 2000s, was that the best thing to do after a period of inflation was to bring the inflation rate back down near zero, but accept the price increases that had already happened. (If the inflation rate is brought back down to, let’s say, 2%, prices will be generally stable. The slight remaining inflation will be barely noticeable, hidden amidst the ordinary rise and fall of prices due to changes in fashions, technological improvements in the means of production, depletion of resources, etc.)

It’s very interesting to see young folks returning to the instincts of the 18th and 19th century, thinking the prices should go back to what they were before the inflation. It goes very much against what I learned as an economics student, but who can say that what I learned was right and that their instincts are wrong?

Seems like a situation of “time will tell.”

Sources:

• https://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-history-of-pound-sterlings-medium-of.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation
• https://www.britannica.com/money/money/Standards-of-value

When she was new, I told my pup that she was puppish. Then I started adding that she was puptastic, and later that she was puppelicious. Just lately I’ve realized that she should be described as pupstanding in her field. 🐕

Not too long after we moved here, I saw an enormous snapping turtle, the size of a dinner plate. This is probably that same turtle, now the size of a serving platter.

Not a great picture, because Ashley was Very Interested in the turtle, and letting them play would have ended badly.

The first periodic cicada of the year. Or, you know, the decade-plus.

I dragged Jackie out to see it. Because—you know—who knows how long it might be before she has another chance to see one?

(Yes, that’s a joke.)

I often claim that I like hot weather, to the point that I don’t mind exercising in the heat. However, the best thing about hot weather is that it gives me an excuse to sit in the shade, read, and drink beer.

Time to sit on the patio with Revin’s Heart (by @stevendbrewer), a beer, and Ashley.

Whenever I have to go out and do things, especially when I have to see people, or worse yet have to talk to them, and I actually do, I ask the rhetorical question, “Am I not the most socialist of all possible butterflies?” Today I was the most ice cream socialist of all possible butterflies!

Putting my fencing mask on always pushes my glasses askew, and often mashes them up worse than that. So, a couple of weeks ago I ordered a pair of prescription goggles, and today they arrived!

They look okay:

And my mask just went on over my goggles no problem!

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.

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:

• Jump rope
• Dips (best set x 2 + 5 negatives)
• Walking lunges
• Inverted rows
• 3-way core (30″ each hollowbody, inverted plank, shoulder taps)

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:

• Jump rope (x110, x120, x120 jumps)
• Dips (sets of 1 full dip + 5 negative dips)
• Wall sit (1 set of 30″ left/right legs, 2 sets of 45″ two-leg)
• Inverted rows (x7, x9, x9)
• 3-way core (30″ each of hollowbody hold, inverted plank, shoulder taps)

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.

A great #run! 🏃 My feet and knees felt great throughout. And it looks like the weather will finally support getting out twice a week. (This was my “long” run. I also want to do a “fast” run.)

At 10:00 AM on the first Tuesday of each month, they test the warning sirens. The first time Ashley heard them, she wanted to howl along. I didn’t want her to think that she shouldn’t howl, so I joined in howling with her. Now we do it every month. #dogsofmastodon

Sometimes I’ll tell Ashley she’s my best girl. Then I’ll lean close to her and, in a loud whisper, say, “Don’t tell Jackie I said that.” #dogsofmastodon

A couple of aspects of longsword turn out to be hard not from a skill perspective, but from a simple strength and endurance perspective. Look at the guys in this picture. Their arms are fully extended, either forward or upward. That’s just hard to do for minutes at a time. Besides that, they’re in a pretty low lunge position. That’s also hard to do for minutes at a time.

A couple of days ago, I had a chance to ask celebrity trainer Mark Wildman how he’d program for building arm strength and endurance. It turns out he’s a huge longsword geek. Here’s the video, cued up to where he reads my question (should be 41:57). The related stuff goes through 48:50).

My original question was: “I’m doing longsword. One issue is arm strength and endurance. I’m doing kettlebell clean&press and pushups (for holding the sword overhead and extended forward). Any other ideas?”

Here are my notes on Mark’s reply:

Mace & Club

Single-arm heavy club program (a program that isn’t for sale yet, but that is pretty easy to deduce from the videos on Mark Wildman’s youtube channel).

Basis of Strength (2-Handed club program that does exist, although it’s pretty expensive).

Mace 360s. (The mace equivalent of a club shield cast: You bring your hand past your opposite ear, swing the mace behind you, and catch it back in front.)

Cut the Meyer square for time. (I don’t think he said WHAT time would be appropriate. Maybe do a 10-minute emom, where you do the full square, rest until the end of the minute, and then repeat. Or maybe 30 seconds on/30 seconds off.)

He emphasized training both dominant hand and non-dominant hand.

This, by the way, goes against the advice of Liechtenauer, who says:

Fence not from left when you are right.
If with your left is how you fight,
You'll fence much weaker from the right.

I suspect that the difference has to do with your goals. Liechtenauer was speaking to someone who had to win sword fights. Wildman is speaking to someone trying to get fit for a hobby.

Push ups as part of a warm-up. (Since I had mentioned pushups.)

Instead of pushups, do burpies in full HEMA gear. (Oy.)

Don’t do actual sword movements with mace or club. Do those with an actual longsword.

Mace drop swing in Meyer stance (4 versions: contra- and ipso- lateral with each foot forward): Here’s two videos of that:

I’ve ordered a mace so I can try that (and other mace stuff). I haven’t yet pulled the trigger on the (expensive) Basis of Strength program, although I’m tempted. While I ponder that, I’ll start doing mace drop swings while in a lunge, and see if I can get both my extended arm strength and endurance up, while also improving my Meyer fencing stance.

Pretty good Pete Townshend interview. This line spoke to me:

“… rock ’n’ roll is really good at dealing with the difficulties of aging. Watching Keith Richards onstage, trying to do what he used to do — it’s disturbing, heart-rending, but also delightful.”

Source: NYT

Personal quirk #339: I think it’s funny to pronounce the word “dregs” as if it were spelled “dredges.”

In histories of the period before modern medicine, people were often “sickly” in some fashion or another.

That’s been much less true the past hundred years or so. With a few exceptions (terrible accidents, horrific war injuries), if whatever you had didn’t kill you, you probably got entirely better.

Since I first heard of Long Covid, I’ve been expecting a return to the historical norm.

Looks like I was right:

A total of 17.6% of American adults have ever experienced long Covid symptoms, the survey found.

Source: The Guardian

For Pi Day, Jackie baked me an apple pie. Yum!

Here: Have a pretty Pi Day sunrise.

You couldn’t see it, even if it weren’t behind the Oura ring “activity” sticker, but there’s a Great Blue Heron near the middle of this photo.

Anyway, “Go me!” for getting an activity score of 100 from my Oura ring.

Just a piece of bark with some lichens on it. A little moss too, I guess. #lichensubscribe #mosstodon

Big open-grown oak in the Sangamon River Forest Preserve. #thicktrunktuesday

Me: Ashley, we’re out for a walk! We’re not out for a “stand and stare at a squirrel”!

Ashley:

#dogsofmastodon

Dramatic sky. Not quite as dramatic as this filter would have you believe, but pretty dramatic.

Ashley has been hearing about the Fightin’ Ball training that Tanuki has been doing, and has been keeping her eye out for the essential equipment. Today, she found it. #dogsofmastodon

I figure the marks showing healed damage to the trunk of this sycamore tell us how deep the water gets when the Sangamon River floods. Photo taken yesterday while walking the dog at the Heron View Forest Preserve. #thicktrunktuesday

I’ve been training in longsword for almost a full year now—I just looked and saw that my first two classes were in the last week of March last year—and I’d gotten kind of discouraged. I did okay the first few weeks, but then plateaued. For months I felt like I was making no progress at all. Finally, on Thursday, I felt like I had taken a step forward.

I’ve come up with training-at-home plans a couple of times in the past year, thinking that I need to work out my Meyer stance (very low lunge, with the front thigh almost parallel to the ground), and of course my cuts. (This pictures shows me doing a zwerchhau, and the cut looks pretty okay, although the stance isn’t nearly low enough.) That is, I’d come up with the plans, but I largely hadn’t followed through. Today, with the encouragement of having done okay on Thursday, I got out with my sword and spent a while working on low stance, Meyer square cuts, and zwerchhaus.

Several members have done a “bear pit” for their birthdays: The birthday boy faces everyone in the group for a pass or three, one after another. The exact details vary, but the idea is to pick some metric (passes or opponents) and do enough to hit your age. I’ll turn 65 in mid-June, and I’d like to be able to carry on the tradition. I think I’m within striking distance on the basic fitness. (I was doing 2-hour runs at the end of last summer, and my last run was 1 hour 14 minute.) But it wouldn’t be much fun to face opponent after opponent and get beat every time, so I’m pleased to finally feel like I’m making some progress.

If you’re local, and you think swords are cool (and who doesn’t?), you might check out our group: Tempered Mettle Historical Fencing.

🎵 Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side 🎵

Ashley is very long.

Ooh! My signed hardback copy of my brother Steven D. Brewer’s book Better Angels: Tour de Force has arrived!

Is that not a spectacular cover? I particularly like the image of Tau (the Neoboxer). And, of course, a couple of the angels, one as a singer/dancer and one as a commando. And Sssindy.

My lowest resting heart rate has crept up these past few months. My Oura ring keeps saying that I need to take it easy, but I think I need to do a few more long runs. So I’m going to test that theory.

My brother, @author_sdbrewer, tells me this is a mlem, as opposed to a blep. #dogsofmastodon

Forty-five minutes after getting her toy, Ashley struck stuffing. Five minutes later, the stuffie is completely disemboweled. #dogsofmastodon

We are just home from Ashley’s class on loose-leash walking. It was graduation, so we got to pick out a toy for her. Jackie said she hesitated to get a stuffie, because Ashley destroys them so quickly. The teacher said, “But does she like them?”

#dogsofmastodon

Bitter cold here today, and I felt bad making Ashley wait while I got a picture. But when I tried to take her home, she decided she would rather do some zoomies in the dog park, so I retroactively didn’t feel so bad after all #dogsofmastodon

I had a dream in which I met an adult woman who had been found at sea as an infant. The sailors who found her named her Jessica Shipwrecked, but gave her a bunch of aspirational middle names. I’ve forgotten all but one of them, but they were things like Author, Teacher, Navigator, etc. The one I remember was Cyborg. One key point in the dream was how she had to figure out how many of her middle names she could fit in when she got an account somewhere.

• Sun HEMA
• Mon 1-handed 13.75 lb club: outside circles, shield cast, inside circles 9 x 5L/5R. Then 15 lb 2 x 5L/5R
• Tue HEMA
• Wed kettlebell clean & press @ 25 lb: 7 x 5L/5R reverse ladder
• Thur–Sat rested hurt pinkie
• Morning exercises & dog walking daily

Heading out for her evening walk last night, the dog saw one of the neighbor dogs that she likes to tussle with, and lunged that way. I didn’t let her get loose, but the leash did twist my pinky, which is now all sore and swollen. (The swelling even spread to my ring finger, so I took my Oura ring off, just in case. But it fits okay on my left hand, so I haven’t had to quit wearing it.)

I’m managing the injury okay with rest and ice (and drinking some collagen), but I fear I’m going to have to miss my HEMA class this evening: My hand isn’t up to swinging a sword.

I did make my bluevardier last night. It was kinda sweet. Not a surprise, as triple sec is sweeter than sweet vermouth. I usually make boulevardiers replacing half the Campari with Aperol. I’ll not do that, and see if that gets the balance closer.

It is pretty though:

I have invented a (I think) new cocktail: the bluevardier! It’s a boulevardier, except that the sweet vermouth is replaced with blue curacao.

I’ll make one for cocktail hour and post a picture!

There’s a cybersecurity company that advertises on some podcast that I listen to. Their tagline is “We stop breaches!” My brain immediately adds, “But not culottes!”

The dog seemed happy to laze about for an extra half hour this morning, so I wasn’t out in time to see the dawn, but I got this nice view just after sunrise.

Reminder: Your local spring is forecast by your local groundhogs. Ignore celebrity groundhogs!

I’m looking forward to an early spring, despite my dread of the other effects of global warming.

After week after cloudy week, where dawn was just the sky going from black to dark leaden grey to light leaden grey, today we get an actual dawn.

I just thought of a possibly actually useful use-case for large language models (what’s being called AI these days): Generating metadata for your photo library.

This is useful, because almost nobody is willing to generate their own metadata for photos. Most people have vast libraries with literally nothing but the date, time, and location captured by their phone or camera, the image itself, and details of the capture (exposure time, ISO, etc.).

Using the date, time, and location info, together with the image itself, AI could:

• Write a brief description of the image.
• Tell you where it was taken from (not just the latitude and longitude, but the name of the place where you were standing).
• Look up if an event were underway at that place and time and say what it was (county fair, protest march).
• Tell you any number of arbitrary things, like if there was something going on with the weather at that time (blizzard, wind chill advisory)—but only if it was interesting.

I know Google Photos can already do some of this. I don’t think it writes metadata for you, but it will find all of your photos that were taken in St. Croix, for example. (I’d heard that it could locate all your photos of a particular sculpture, but it didn’t work for the sculpture I just tried to find.) In any case, an LLM running on your own computer, saving the data to your photo library, would have all kinds of advantages. There are the obvious privacy advantages, but also sharing advantages—the metadata (or a subset that you selected) would be available to be included when you shared the image with a friend.

Street lights on the ice glaze left by freezing rain.

The package I was waiting for came! My new Sigi Maestro, by Sigi Forge! Look at that glorious etching!

It is light, nimble, and agile. I can’t wait to try it out! #HEMA #longsword #sigi #sigiforge

An ice storm has made it way too slippery to walk further than absolutely necessary. Plus, I have a package coming that I need to sign for. So, for the dog’s third walk today I kept her within my front and side yards.

Happily, there was this nice patch of lichen right there. #lichensubscribe

The very first breakfast Jackie ever cooked for me was some Tassajara Bread book pancakes. (They’re special because you beat the egg whites and fold them in, which makes the pancakes super light and fluffy.)

Jackie is away to attend a tapestry weaving workshop, so today I decided to make my own pancakes.

You know the white tank-top style undershirts that for years have been called “wife-beaters”? I’ve just run into a style blog that’s started calling them “wife-pleasers,” which I think is hilarious re-branding.

“Now that the Tesla cybertruck is finally out in the wild, it’s being forced to contend with a hazard no one could have foreseen: Snow.”

Source: Tesla Cybertrucks Keep Getting Stuck In Snow

And by “no one,” I assume they mean “anyone who is not a moron.”

Not really a micro.blog thing (although it _could_ be), but if you spend any time on Mastodon, you should probably know about StreetPass:

1. Mastodon users verify themselves by adding a custom link to their personal site.

2. StreetPass lets you know when you’ve found one of these links, and adds them to your StreetPass list.

3. Browse the web as usual. StreetPass will build a list of Mastodon users made up of the websites you go to.

If there’s anything better on a cold day than a warm dog and a cup of hot cocoa, I don’t know what it is. #dogsofmastodon

I put Ashley in her new coat, put on my Alaska Pipeline coat, and went out into the bitter, bitter cold. Ashley would have liked to come right back in, but I made her stay outside until she had accomplished a couple of very important tasks. #dogsofmastodon

At the airport it’s currently -9°F, with a wind chill of -34°F (-37°C).

Although I haven’t quite achieved my aspirational goal of doing all the workouts I want to do, I have been getting workouts in, and they’ve been going pretty well. Last week I did my club swinging workout twice, my kettlebell clean & press workout, my kettlebell swing workout, and my HEMA practice all once each.

I’ve gotten this week off to a good start by hitting the fitness room and doing a bodyweight circuit (jump rope, negative pull ups, Hindu squats, Hindu push ups, and my 3-way core circuit) for three rounds, plus some incline press and some dead hangs.

The negative pull ups, in particular, were better than I’d expected. Something I’m doing—probably the kettlebell swings, but perhaps also the club swinging—is working the lats and biceps more than is obvious while I’m doing them.

I’d gotten my workout log notebook out for writing this post, and failed to put it away, with the (dog induced) result visible above.

After yesterday’s brightly colored dawn, a dramatic change: Today’s rather somber snow on the sycamore tree.

I took Ashley out just a little earlier than usual, because the dawn sky was so pretty. And good that I did, because now it’s pretty much just grey out there.

“Have you been happy?” Julie asked.

“Of course,” I said, not noticing the tense she’d used.

“Even having to hide?”

“That may have been the best part.” I’d hidden myself pretty well, I thought. New country. New name. New hobbies. A job that let me get by without drawing on family accounts. “Well, second best,” I said, reaching to draw her close.

The door opened and three men came in. “Quite a little love #nest you’ve got here,” father said.

“Sorry,” Julie said, her face against my chest.

My HEMA group will be starting up a new beginner class later this month. If you’re local and interested, come see what we do! Ask me here, if you have any questions.

Jackie fixed cornbread yesterday, and today we had some for desert. She put apricot preserves on hers, while I put honey on mine.

Turns out, apricot preserves are loaded with added sugars, whereas honey has no added sugars at all! So my desert was obviously much healthier than hers.