faithbooksfiber - Tumblr blog

[faithbooksfiber]

Because the original post is long and made of pictures instead of links, ive re-transcribed it and removed the non-resource and non-working links-

camelcamelcamel - shows amazon price history and gives an alert when the price drops

whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner - Profane recipe suggestion generator 

accountkiller - shows you how to delete social media accounts forever

skyscanner - lets you search flights by date, price, and budget

downforeveryoneorjustme - tells you if a site is down or not

printfriendly - makes any website print-friendly

chessacademy - teaches you how to play chess

typehere.co - can leave typing here and come back later

rasterbator.net - make a printable poster out of any image

gutenberg.org - free e-books

spreeder - improve your reading speed and comprehension

infinitejuke - loops a song indefinitely

myfridgefood - tells you what you can make based on the ingredients you have

asoftmurmur - ambient noise

ripetrack - tells you when your favorite produce is in season

manualslib - pdf library of user manuals

wolframalpha - computational knowledge engine, solves problems for you

[faithbooksfiber]

Useful

Opinion Here’s how to get free Paxlovid as many times as you need it

When the public health emergency around covid-19 ended, vaccines and treatments became commercial products, meaning companies could charge for them as they do other pharmaceuticals. Paxlovid, the highly effective antiviral pill that can prevent covid from becoming severe, now has a list price of nearly $1,400 for a five-day treatment course.

Thanks to an innovative agreement between the Biden administration and the drug’s manufacturer, Pfizer, Americans can still access the medication free or at very low cost through a program called Paxcess. The problem is that too few people — including pharmacists — are aware of it.

I learned of Paxcess only after readers wrote that pharmacies were charging them hundreds of dollars — or even the full list price — to fill their Paxlovid prescription. This shouldn’t be happening. A representative from Pfizer, which runs the program, explained to me that patients on Medicare and Medicaid or who are uninsured should get free Paxlovid. They need to sign up by going to paxlovid.iassist.com or by calling 877-219-7225. “We wanted to make enrollment as easy and as quick as possible,” the representative said.

Indeed, the process is straightforward. I clicked through the web form myself, and there are only three sets of information required. Patients first enter their name, date of birth and address. They then input their prescriber’s name and address and select their insurance type.

All this should take less than five minutes and can be done at home or at the pharmacy. A physician or pharmacist can fill it out on behalf of the patient, too. Importantly, this form does not ask for medical history, proof of a positive coronavirus test, income verification, citizenship status or other potentially sensitive and time-consuming information.

But there is one key requirement people need to be aware of: Patients must have a prescription for Paxlovid to start the enrollment process. It is not possible to pre-enroll. (Though, in a sense, people on Medicare or Medicaid are already pre-enrolled.)

Once the questionnaire is complete, the website generates a voucher within seconds. People can print it or email it themselves, and then they can exchange it for a free course of Paxlovid at most pharmacies.

Pfizer’s representative tells me that more than 57,000 pharmacies are contracted to participate in this program, including major chain drugstores such as CVS and Walgreens and large retail chains such as Walmart, Kroger and Costco. For those unable to go in person, a mail-order option is available, too.

The program works a little differently for patients with commercial insurance. Some insurance plans already cover Paxlovid without a co-pay. Anyone who is told there will be a charge should sign up for Paxcess, which would further bring down their co-pay and might even cover the entire cost.

Several readers have attested that Paxcess’s process was fast and seamless. I was also glad to learn that there is basically no limit to the number of times someone could use it. A person who contracts the coronavirus three times in a year could access Paxlovid free or at low cost each time.

Unfortunately, readers informed me of one major glitch: Though the Paxcess voucher is honored when presented, some pharmacies are not offering the program proactively. As a result, many patients are still being charged high co-pays even if they could have gotten the medication at no cost.

This is incredibly frustrating. However, after interviewing multiple people involved in the process, including representatives of major pharmacy chains and Biden administration officials, I believe everyone is sincere in trying to make things right. As we saw in the early days of the coronavirus vaccine rollout, it’s hard to get a new program off the ground. Policies that look good on paper run into multiple barriers during implementation.

Those involved are actively identifying and addressing these problems. For instance, a Walgreens representative explained to me that in addition to educating pharmacists and pharmacy techs about the program, the company learned it also had to make system changes to account for a different workflow. Normally, when pharmacists process a prescription, they inform patients of the co-pay and dispense the medication. But with Paxlovid, the system needs to stop them if there is a co-pay, so they can prompt patients to sign up for Paxcess.

Here is where patients and consumers must take a proactive role. That might not feel fair; after all, if someone is ill, people expect that the system will work to help them. But that’s not our reality. While pharmacies work to fix their system glitches, patients need to be their own best advocates. That means signing up for Paxcess as soon as they receive a Paxlovid prescription and helping spread the word so that others can get the antiviral at little or no cost, too.

{source}

[faithbooksfiber]

Stories to keep track of and read.

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

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You can have fun with actual hymnbooks with this; find a melody you know and look for other songs that have the same meter and mix and match. Some hymnbooks have a special index that facilitates this. It startles people when they're expecting to sing one thing and some other song entirely comes out of the organ/piano and it fits.

we hunt the mighty pasta BEAST

and breadsticks are its BONES

ALFREDO FLOWS inside its veins

its organs are CALZONES

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Effects of Niblings on Youtube

Watching my grandniece a couple days a week has really done a number on my youtube feed. When I don't have a toddler, I don't watch Babyshark five times a day, Blue's clues, the Wheels on Bus and Old MacDonald in endless iterations. But big blue eyes and lisped 'myshark!!' "wound and wound (with motions)" "eieiei" and "blueblue" get me every time.

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Rereading the Lord of the Rings series recently, and it's so fascinating to me how much the series is a denial of the typical juvenile power-fantasy that is associated with the fantasy genre.

Like, the power-fantasy is the temptation the Ring uses against people It tempts Boromir with becoming the "one true king" that could save his people with fantastic power. It tempts Sam with being the savior of Middle Earth and turning the ruin that is Mordor into a great garden. It tempts Gandalf and Galadriel with being the messianic figure of legend who brings salvation to Middle Earth and great glory to herself.

The things the Ring tempts people with are becoming the typical protagonists of fantasy stories that we expect to see. and over and over we see that accepting that role, that fantasy of being the benevolent all-powerful hero, is a bad thing. LotR is about how power, even power wielded with benevolent intent, is corrupting.

And its so fascinating how so much of modern fantasy buys into the very fantasy LotR denies. Most modern fantasy is about being that Heroic power-fantasy. About good amassing power to rival evil. But LotR dares not to. It dares to be honest that there is no world where anyone amasses that power and remains good.

I guess that's one of the reasons its so compelling.

[faithbooksfiber]

If anyone's looking for really gentle or disability friendly exercise...

Doctor Jo on YouTube is a physical therapist who offers lots of therapeutic stretching and exercise videos for specific conditions and pain relief. [x]

Leap Services is a Canadian physical therapy group that has a YouTube playlist of gentle exercise routines. All of these exercises are done in a chair (except for one which is done on the floor) and are intentionally adaptable to different bodies and needs. [x]

Yoga with Zelinda on YouTube has yoga that's adapted to a large number of conditions, for instance, providing a playlist of routines that don't require kneeling and another of chair yoga. She also offers yoga for specific health challenges, like fibromyalgia and mobility issues. There's a playlist of yoga routines for people with bigger bodies as well. [x]

Santosha Spirit on YouTube has yoga routines for people with chronic fatigue, chronic pain, POTS, and EDS. [x]

Yoga with Shaunneka on YouTube has a playlist of slow seated yoga, including chair yoga, as well as a playlist of gentle yoga. [x]

Qinergy on YouTube has tai chi sets broken down into easy tutorials. There is a seated version of her shibashi set. [x]

Perth Tai Chi Academy on YouTube is similar to Qinergy. It provides a seated version of daoyin yangshen qigong. [x]

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I'm just going to leave this here, because this woman said what I've been trying to articulate for ages much more effectively and succinctly than I've been able to

[faithbooksfiber]

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTdQuxw52/

I think I found my new favorite rabbit hole. This voice actor does Shakespeare scenes in a southern accent and I need to see the whole damn play. Absolutely beautiful

[faithbooksfiber]

Hey all, you know how internet searches suck now? When the results are awful, full-of-AI, death-of-the-internet levels of bad?

Start appending date constraints to your searches - "before:2023".

My results have gone from 90% AI bullshit to ~60% usable - which frankly at this point is a huge improvement.

[faithbooksfiber]

know someone who enjoys horror stories? share this one! it's true!

hahahahahahahahahaha aarrggghhhhhhhhhh 3,000,000 deaths due to COVID-19 last year. Globally. Three million. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. The reason people are still worried about COVID is because it has a way of quietly fucking up your body. And the risk is cumulative.

I'm going to say that again: the risk is cumulative.

It's not just that a lot of people get bad long-term effects from it. One in seven or so? Enough that it's kind of the Russian Roulette of diseases. It's also that the more times you get it, the higher that risk becomes. Like if each time you survived Russian Roulette, the empty chamber was removed from the gun entirely. The worst part is that, psychologically, we have the absolute opposite reaction. If we survive something with no ill effects, we assume it's pretty safe. It is really, really hard to override that sense of, "Ok, well, I got it and now I probably have a lot of immunity and also it wasn't that bad." It is not a respiratory disease. Airborne, yes. Respiratory disease, no: not a cold, not a flu, not RSV.

Like measles (or maybe chickenpox?), it starts with respiratory symptoms. And then it moves to other parts of your body. It seems to target the lungs, the digestive system, the heart, and the brain the most.

It also hits the immune system really hard - a lot of people are suddenly more susceptible to completely unrelated viruses. People get brain fog, migraines, forget things they used to know.

(I really, really hate that it can cross the blood-brain barrier. NOTHING SHOULD EVER CROSS THE BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER IT IS THERE FOR A REASON.) Anecdotal examples of this shit are horrifying. I've seen people talk about coworkers who've had COVID five or more times, and now their work... just often doesn't make sense? They send emails that say things like, "Sorry, I didn't mean Los Angeles, I meant Los Angeles."

Or they insist they've never heard of some project that they were actually in charge of a year or two before.

Or their work is just kind of falling apart, and they don't seem to be aware of it.

People talk about how they don't want to get the person in trouble, so their team just works around it. Or they describe neighbors and relatives who had COVID repeatedly, were nearly hospitalized, talked about how incredibly sick they felt at the time... and now swear they've only had it once and it wasn't bad, they barely even noticed it.

(As someone who lived with severe dissociation for most of my life, this is a genuinely terrifying idea to me. I've already spent my whole life being like, "but what if I told them that already? but what if I did do that? what if that did happen to me and I just don't remember?") One of its known effects in the brain is to increase impulsivity and risk-taking, which is real fucking convenient honestly. What a fantastic fucking mutation. So happy for it on that one. Yes, please make it seem less important to wear a mask and get vaccinated. I'm not screaming internally at all now.

I saw a tweet from someone last year whose family hadn't had COVID yet, who were still masking in public, including school.

She said that her son was no kind of an athlete. Solidly bottom middle of the pack in gym.

And suddenly, this year, he was absolutely blowing past all the other kids who had to run the mile. He wasn't running any faster. His times weren't fantastic or anything. It's just that the rest of the kids were worse than him now. For some reason. I think about that a lot. (Like my incredibly active six-year-old getting a cold, and suddenly developing post-viral asthma that looked like pneumonia.

He went back to school the day before yesterday, after being home for a month and using preventative inhalers for almost week.

He told me that it was GREAT - except that he couldn't run as much at recess, because he immediately got really tired. Like how I went outside with him to do some yard work and felt like my body couldn't figure out how to increase breathing and heart rate.

I wasn't physically out of breath, but I felt like I was out of breath. That COVID feeling people describe, of "I'm not getting enough air." Except that I didn't have that problem when I had COVID.) Some people don't observe any long (or medium) term side effects after they have it.

But researchers have found viral reservoirs of COVID-19 in everyone they've studied who had it.

It just seems to hang out, dormant, for... well, longer than we've had an opportunity to observe it, so far.

(I definitely watched that literal horror movie. I think that's an entire genre. The alien dormant under ice in the Arctic.)

(oh hey I don't like that either!!!!!!!!!) All of which is to explain why we should still care about avoiding it, and how it manages to still cause excess deaths. Measuring excess deaths has been a standard tool in public health for a long time.

We know how many people usually die from all different causes, every year. So we can tell if, for example, deaths from heart disease have gone way up in the past three years, and look for reasons. Those are excess deaths: deaths that, four years ago, would not have happened. During the pandemic, excess death rates have been a really important tool. For all sorts of reasons. Like, sometimes people die from COVID without ever getting tested, and the official cause is listed as something else because nobody knows they had COVID. But also, people are dying from cardiovascular illness much younger now.

People are having strokes and heart attacks younger, and more often, than they did before the pandemic started. COVID causes a lot of problems. And some of those problems kill people. And some of them make it easier for other things to kill us. Lung damage from COVID leading to lungs collapsing, or to pneumonia, or to a pulmonary embolism, for example. The Economist built a machine-learning model with a 95% confidence interval that gauges excess death statistics around the world, to tell them what the true toll of the ongoing COVID pandemic has been so far.

Total excess deaths globally in 2023: Three million.

3,000,000.

Official COVID-19 deaths globally so far: Seven million. 7,000,000. Total excess deaths during COVID so far: Thirty-five point two million. 35,200,000.

Five times as many.

That's bad. I don't like that at all. I'm glad last year was less than a tenth of that. I'm not particularly confident about that continuing, though, because last year we started a period of really high COVID transmission. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. Here's their data, and charts you can play with, and links to detailed information on how they did all of this:

Here's a non-paywalled link to it:

https://archive.vn/2024.01.26-012536/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates

Oh: here's a link to where you can buy comfy, effective N95 masks in all sizes:

Those ones are about a buck each after shipping - about $30 for a box of 30. They also have sample packs for a dollar, so you can try a couple of different sizes and styles.

You can wear an N95 mask for about 40 total hours before the effectiveness really drops, so that's like a dollar for a week of wear.

They're also family-owned and have cat-shaped masks and I really love them. These ones are cuter and in a much wider range of colors, prints, and styles, but they're also more expensive; they range from $1.80 to $3 for a mask. ($18-$30 for a box of ten.)

[faithbooksfiber]

This sounds useful. The silliness would also help regulate your own mood.

The best piece of advice I ever got was not meant as advice, but as an edict. If I was going to threaten people as a joke, it had to be so far out of proportion with what happened that it would be obvious I was joking. This changed how I expressed frustration with others. It then changed how I expressed frustration with myself.

Not “I’m going to hit you” but “I am going to buy a tuna sub from the gas station and hide it under the seat of your car”

Not “I’m going to kill myself” but “I am going to walk into the desert and let the scarabs take me”

The other side then happened. When I mess something up, instead of saying it’s bad and perpetuating negative thoughts, swing hard the other way.

Not “this art is terrible” but “this shall be framed and mounted on the wall in my museum exhibition as testament to the suffering I had to overcome”

Have been doing this since high school. It was my drama teacher who asked me to please stop scaring the actors. The other half of the edict was that I had to say it in a polite tone, and end it with either please or thank you.

Life changing. 10/10 Mr Muëller. Highly reccomend.

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I just tested positive for my second round of Covid. This sounds like every round is going to be, "is this the one that disables me?" That's not great.

I gotta say the Orwell quotes are getting way less snappy these days.

"the pandemic is over but covid is a leading cause of death" isnt as good of a soundbite as "war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength"

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Cat in the Hat:

"The German Health Minister gave an important update on the Covid situation yesterday.

I’ve written up the section of his speech from the video below for easy reading.

It’s immensely refreshing to see a government minister warning of the harms of Covid in such a transparent way."

https://x.com/_catinthehat/status/1732092683508678954

Prof. Karl Lauterbach

Health Minister, Germany

4 December 2023

"This second (long Covid) round table was very interesting, lasting three and a half hours. It serves as a unique forum for dialogue among scientists, researchers and those affected by long Covid, facilitating the exchange of ideas.

There are many new findings about long Covid. Not all of them are good news. One piece of not-so-good news concerns the fact that long Covid is actually still a problem for those who are newly infected. One estimate that has been put forward is that the risk of contracting long Covid now, even after vaccination, is around 3%. Now you may say, "that's not such a big risk" , but there are tens of thousands of people who are repeatedly affected in a short period of time. And so, the long Covid problem has not yet been solved.

We have also established that there really are many subgroups of long Covid and that we do not yet have a cure. And it was clearly pointed out that we are also dealing with problems here that will challenge society as a whole, because vascular diseases often occur after long Covid. Throughout Europe, we are currently seeing an increased incidence of cardiovascular disease in the middle-age group - from 25 to 50. This is associated with the consequences of Covid infections.

We also very often find cognitive impairment in older people. And one participant pointed out that it may well be like the Spanish flu, where 20 years after the Spanish flu there was a significant increase in Parkinson's disease and probably also dementia.

This is something we must pay attention to, as the past infection afiects how the immune system in the brain functions, as well as the brain's blood vessels, potentially increasing the long-term risk of these major neurodegenerative diseases. This is why we need to conduct very intensive research. This research has played a major role.

What is the overall assessment of the situation now?

We have to be careful. Long Covid is not curable at the moment. We also know that over 40% of those who have several manifestations of long Covid, for example, five or more, still have symptoms after 2 years, so it doesn't seem to heal spontaneously. We also know that those whose symptoms are more pronounced at the beginning are less likely to heal.

So some of what we know from the demographics of long Covid has been confirmed, and we now know more precisely which mechanisms in the brain, but also in the blood vessels and the immune system, are responsible for this. Professor Scheibenbogan will explain this briefly later.

At this point, I can only say the following - this is particularly important to me:

First of all, long Covid is a disease that stays with us and that we cannot yet cure. And we are seeing an increasing number of cases as the waves of infection continue to affect us.

Secondly, Covid is not a cold - with a cold, you don't usually see any long-term effects. You don't see any changes in the blood vessels. You don't usually see an autoimmune disease developing. You also don't usually see neurological inflammation - these are all things that we see with long Covid. Therefore, one should not assume that Covid infection is just a common cold. It can affect brain tissue and the vascular system, and we still lack an effective treatment, making these studies crucial.

Significantly, we know that the risk of long Covid decreases when you're infected but have been vaccinated. That's why it's concerning that only 3 million people have been vaccinated with the new, adapted vaccine. That is a very bad result.

Please protect yourself from severe infections.

Please protect yourself from long Covid.

Currently, the danger posed by Covid is indeed being underestimated. Nothing is worse than infecting someone at Christmas who then becomes seriously ill and may not fully recover."

Alt text is included in all images of this post.

[faithbooksfiber]

Actual roman epitaph for a dog

[faithbooksfiber]

My tiny 'second bedroom' in this forty year old mobile home agrees; it's jam-packed full of yarn, fabric, notions, tools, thread, trimmings, patterns, and vintage/antique sewing machines. Come to that, sitting at my desk in the living room, I'm within arm's reach of three yarn projects and a vintage Necchi in a cabinet that's being used as a printer stand. My front room has books, rabbit, parrot, and ten more old sewing machines.

I got my first vintage one at a yard sale for six dollars; reading about it sparked an interest and for a while there, old sewing machines were endemic in thrift stores and yard sales and I bought rather indiscriminately. I have a few that were bought online because they filled a spot - a Necchi supernova in a mid-century modern cabinet, a Wilcox and Gibbs chain machine, a 140 year old hand-cranked. I have to pick carefully, because I have no space and should probably rehome ones that I got as projects or that I'm not too attached to, and only keep the ones I use. That's going to be a task for later.

Anyway, to crafts. The vintage machines work far better than my two cheap modern ones. And being able to make quilts and clothes is great. Finding time is hard, but if I want a top that fits, I have to make it because i have to do full-bust adjustments. And the clothes I make last years longer than bought clothes. I can't make jeans yet; I'm still learning tops, pants would be far harder, but I do have multiple skirts. I get a lot of material in thrift stores or on sale/clearance. Same for yarn; I love yarn shops, but get most of my stash thrifting. (Unless traveling; then I'll go to a yarn or quilt shop and get a souvenir skein or fat quarters.) There are often very nice yarns, not just polyester redheart, that people have donated due to either downsizing or clearing out Grandma's place. And I'm lucky enough to live half an hour from an all-crafts thrift store; I've gotten quite a lot of nice materials there.

Listen I'm a little drunk but... yarn crafts are so important. Textile arts are the backbone of society. All of us take our clothing and accessories and upholstery for granted and it's honestly shocking

I used to buy affordable t-shirts and they were comfy and nice, now I buy them in the same price range and they're sandpaper. They don't wick away moisture and the print comes undone after two washes. I buy denim and the crotch falls apart in months. I read about how modern Singer sewing machines are disappointing and then look at the delicate machining and the beautiful finishes on my 1857 machine and wonder if this is progress?!

Reblog if you're desperate for clothing that doesn't feel like sandpaper or if you like machines that go thunk instead of going obsolete in two years

[faithbooksfiber]

Christmas Baking

So my kitchen (which is quite small) is full of cookies; triple chip, gingerbread, sugar. I have rice crispy treats at request of husband. I'm making caramel brownies and spice cupcakes. Then I have to frost everything. Tomorrow is the cookie exchange at my parents; bring a few dozen of a couple kinds of cookies and trade to maximize cookie variety for holidays. I may have overdone it, but so did Mom. (She baked a couple weeks ago and froze everything because she had surgery this week and won't be able to use her arm for a month.)

Also, I'm a pretty good baker. Everything will taste good; I don't do fancy baking and my decoration is really basic (put sprinkles on the frosting), but it is delicious.

I didn't have to make that many, but I wanted these kinds and I wanted them made well. So, cookie overload. There are half a dozen other kinds I wanted to make, but no time, energy, or space. I'll have to do them another time.

Last night, husband was like, "you can bake in the morning and we can go do something in the afternoon!" I explained a few times that won't work; he didn't believe me until he saw that five hours of baking in, I'm still pretty far from done. Yes I did take a vacation day for this.

Tomorrow for house church I also need to make an egg casserole for breakfast and I'm making peanut noodles for lunch.

Also, in an hour, husband is going to pick up grandniece as grandma can't watch her like she usually does on Fridays when her dad goes to pick up her half brother for the weekend. I think she'll be very glad about the preponderance of sweets that are just reachable, and also will be very much underfoot.