WTF-Beta

I can't shake the feeling that we are headed for a bird flu pandemic and would like to stock up on KN95/N95 masks now. I made it through covid only wearing surgical masks - I never found a KN95 I liked and since we hardly ever left the house I didn't feel the KN95 was necessary. Bird flu is a whole different story and I'd like the best mask possible. When I look on Amazon, I see a number of generic knockoff brands that all have maybe 90% good reviews and 10% of "this is the worst piece of crap i ever tried".

Anyone have a brand they recommend? Bonus if they are individually wrapped. Extra bonus if they are reasonably priced (e.g. not 3M!), as I'd like to buy a stash for several family members as well.

@wtg Amazon. And it was less than $150 too, which is amazing.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DMSSJ93Q/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_3?smid=A3LRDQCJ73A2H4&th=1

(The first review is mine, LOL! When I bought it there were only like 6 reviews and only 1 or 2 had (very blurry far away) photos. I wanted to fix that for future buyers LOL!)

Our first ever fake tree is up and decorated, and i have to say I'm pretty impressed. It is truly the most lifelike fake tree I have ever seen! Even better -- it was less than $150 for a 9 foot tree!

I've always had Samsung Galaxy S series phones, but I recently saw my coworker's new Samsung Galaxy A25. It's got 90% of what the S series phones have and it's like 1/3 the price. He paid $250 for his at Best Buy, unlocked so it can be used with any carrier. And it still has a headphone jack, which the S series no longer has and which I would sorely miss, which is why I haven't upgraded my phone in 5 years (still on the S10, which was the last one with the headphone jack.) Maybe $250 in spare change is a little easier to find in your sofa cushions than $399? If you haven't already looked into the A25, I'd check it out! Anyhow, good luck with your phone fixing and shopping!

Covfefe. Although I'm guessing that'll be making a comeback in about 6 weeks.

For some reason, she popped into my head this morning. I don't think she's made her way over here, but it seems like it's been a long time since she posted anything at the OG WTF as well. I know she had some heatlh issues and I hope she's ok.

Steve, I'm so sorry to hear you are going through this - that sucks. In Sharon's honor, I made sure to zip my purse shut at all the stores I went to yesterday - it's a crossbody and usually in front of me, but just in case.....

And pique, until a few weeks ago I would have said that I lived in an area like that - we have accidentally left our front door unlocked for weeks on more than one occasion and we have never ever locked our cars (parked outside in our driveway). But about a month ago, I realized that all 3 of our cars had been rifled through overnight - they took the cash we had stashed in the car for drive-thru runs but nothing else (thankfully our wallets weren't in the cars) so they probably made off with $35 total. To get to our cars, they would have had to walk up our VERY LONG driveway (500+ ft) and stand next to our side porch opening and closing car doors. I had heard that others in town had gotten stuff swiped from their cars a few weeks earlier but never imagined someone would have the stones to come all the way up our driveway - you can't even see our house from the road so it would be hard to even know we had cars there. Plus we live in an area where most homeowners are armed and just dying for a reason to test out the stand your ground law so I dunno - I figure the person had to be either very dumb or very desperate.

Anyway, we lock our cars now and double check the house doors every night. The world, it's a changin'.

Good luck Steve getting it all straightened out.

I assume the wifi is your home wifi? Have you tried it on other networks (like gone to a coffee shop and tried their wifi? Have you rebooted both the tablet and the phone?

We bought LL#1 a Shark Rocket Pet stick vac a few years ago. Paid around $120 for it - a similar one seems to be on sale at Macy's right now for $100. She has cats, and it has been a lifesaver vs using the hand-me-down-from-a-roommates-parents vacuum they were using. It's lightweight but does a great job. The cup fills up pretty fast and the filters do need to be cleaned regularly, but that's easy to do (and you know when it needs to be done because the vacuum pretty much stops sucking up the dirt!). The one annoying thing I've noticed when using it is that it doesn't stand up by itself - you have to prop it against the wall or lay it on the floor. Other than that, it's been awesome. If you want something small, maneuverable, and easy to store that still does a great job, I'd recommend it. Not sure if it's heavy-duty enough to be your main/only vac in a large carpeted house, but for a small aparment, single floor, or just quick cleanups, it's awesome.

Every year we have schlepped out to the local tree farm with the kids and made a big production out of picking the perfect tree. But this year, neither kid will be home until a couple days before Christmas, so it would just be Mr. Lisa and I doing the tree farm thing. That plus the fact that until a few days ago, our area was in a serious drought - like not a drop of rain between about the end of September and now - which puts the trees under serious stress and makes them more likely to die faster when you bring them in the house - has made me break down and order my first ever artificial tree. It's kind of depressing actually. I always said that if I was going to go with a fake tree, I wanted something that was stupidly obviously fake (like the silver foil trees of the 60s) but I couldn't find one of the size I needed, so I went with a hopefully-realistic-looking one from amazon that was on a good sale. A lot of the artificial trees now have like plastic branch tips with realistic plastic needles and then the regular more paper-y textured needles to fill in the middle and I wasn't a fan of the 2 different types of needles. The one we ordered supposedly has only the plastic realistic needles, so we'll see. It's a bit sparse, but I have a LOT of ornaments, so here's hoping I can fill it in. We ended up getting it for a banging price (not much more than a live tree runs at the farm), so if it sucks, we will just go back to a real tree next year I guess. (We were looking at the super fancy ones from like Balsam Hill but there's no way I'm spending $1300 on a Christmas tree!) This is the one we got: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DMSSJ93Q/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_3?smid=A3LRDQCJ73A2H4&th=1 I am going to miss the smell of the live tree, but I won't miss the sap or the needles everywhere!

The LeopardsAteMyFace subreddit has really picked up since the race was called. I'd imagine it's going to be an excellent source of schadenfreude over the next 4 years.

Read more about it here: https://methodshop.com/what-is-the-origin-of-leopards-ate-my-face/

@ShiroKuro said in What do I do with this?:

And anyone who's brain isn't made of rocks will see that my analysis is very critical (but again, not re politics)....

The "brain isn't made of rocks" part here is key. Did you hear that google searches for "Did Joe Biden drop out" and "Is Joe Biden running" skyrocketed..... ON ELECTION DAY? And that in the past few days, one of the top searches on Google has been "What are tariffs and who pays them?" In other words, the intellectual ability of the average American honestly seems to be about the same as the average rock.

I do think getting the opinion of your department chair would be good, but I like the idea of calling them JP and AP - you aren't calling anyone out and your article isn't even overtly critical. Like Pique said about the KKK article, Trump supporters may even like that you are showing how "tough" and "manly" his rhetoric is and it wouldn't surprise me if Trump himself was flattered that someone wrote an academic article about him, especially if it's comparing him to another hardline politician that he admires.

Also, I don't think that not naming names would make you look like a coward --- you'd look "discreet" and like you didn't want to embarrass the subjects of your research (aren't most research subjects anonymous anyway?) And if the journal really asks you to name names, you could -- like I said, I don't think there's anyone in his base who's avidly flipping through academic journals anyway. Just my 2 cents - and I'm very sorry you have to deal with this.

I actually think it would be really interesting. I would think about submitting it without naming names - people can (and most likely will) draw their own conclusions but you wouldn't be outright criticizing anyone. Furthermore, I doubt there's a whole lot of rabid Trump supporters reading linguistic analysis academic journals. And who knows -- the orange one's ego is so large that he might be flattered to be the subject of someone's research and think that he comes off looking "terrific, just terrific, many people say I give the best speeches, college professors are even writing articles about my speeches......"

Disclaimer: Ty did something similar for a college class, feeding Trump's vs Obama's SOTU speeches into some kind of AI analyzer thing and analyzing the frequency and tone of words used, and it was honestly fascinating how different they were. And when I taught freshman composition many years ago at tOSU, I'd VCR the SOTU speech, play it in class, and we'd all analyze it together looking for the different rhetorical techiques that I was teaching them about. So maybe I just have a thing for linguistic analysis of political speeches, which case, my opinion is clearly biased LOL.

@pique said in Reports from the heartland:

When I look at who bankrolled Trump I have to wonder if we aren't actually seeing some form of election interference we aren't familiar with.

I do find it astounding that there were something like 18 million fewer votes cast this election than in 2020 -- 3 mill fewer for the Rs, and 15 mill fewer for the Dems. This does not jibe with reports I've been hearing about lines at polling places nor with my own experience yesterday, where I was voter #401 at 9:30 am at a polling place that is lucky to see 400 voters for an entire election day.

You cannot tell me that, knowing what was at stake, 15 million Dems just decided they were going to sit this one out. No freaking way. I would not be suprirsed if Russia or some other power is manipulating the totals somehow. I think that's the reason Elon was so very positively sure that Trump was going to win that he swore he would give away his entire fortune if he lost. And if that's the case, our elections are well and truly screwed forever.

It's not even like I'm canceling to stick it to Jeff (like I said, I don't think my $29/year is gonna make a difference - he probably makes more than that every millisecond just by existing).

I'm canceling because I'm paying for trustworthy reporting and I don't think they are delivering that anymore. When a newspaper can't do it's one and only job, it's time to find a better newspaper.

Mik - everyone who voted for Biden implicitly also voted for Harris last time. If Biden kicked the bucket tomorrow, she'd be president as the result of that vote. I'm a Dem and I'm not offended at not having had the chance to vote for my party's candidate in the primary - heck, by the time PA gets around to holding their primary election, the candidate has already been chosen anyway, so I never get a say in the presidential primary ever - it's no different this time. But for what it's worth, I would have had no issue voting for her - I've been way unhappier with the folks chosen for me by Iowa, NH, and SC in the past........

Oh and I did cancel my WaPo sub on Saturday. I always talked them down to a $29 rate for the year so I doubt they'll miss me much, but screw them. "Democracy dies in darkness" my ass.

I'm so sorry Daniel. ((Hugs))

Oh SK I didn't answer your question. Yes Carshop (at least the one I used) has a garage where they do their own maintenance. One of the cars I was looking at had a chip in the windshield and they were going to replace it for me if I bought that one. And I ended up negotiating a brake fluid flush and change on the car I bought because it was overdue for one according to the carfax and manufacturer service schedule. I could take it back there if anything went wrong under their warranty period or I could take it to the dealer since it still has a few months of dealer warranty as well. And they do regular maintenance stuff too, but we already have a regular mechanic so I won't be taking it to carshop for any of that. But it's available if I needed it.

@wtg

We have done this too (the email/online shopping), for the rare occasion where we purchased new (maybe 2 or 3 of our cars since we've been married). But even when you get to the bottom line price, I've found the finance office plays games with all sorts of stupid add-ons. You have to watch them like a hawk. And that goes for the certified used purchases we made (which are harder to shop between dealers because they're used, so not really comparable between dealers.)

Carshop was the first car buying experience ever, of my entire life, where I didn't feel like the paperwork process was one long pickpocketing session where I had to keep my guard up the whole time repeatedly saying no to all the shady stuff they were trying to pull. I just signed the paperwork, paid the price they originally said I would pay, and left in my new-to-me car -- it took like 15 minutes. So refreshing!