flummery

I was supposed to meet up with someone yesterday, and we had the following email conversation:

them: We operate out of Location A and Location B. I'll be at Location A Saturday afternoon from 2:00 on.

me: Great, I'll be at Location A a few minutes past 2:00 on Saturday!

me at 2:15 pm: Hey, you're not here yet so I'm going to run a quick errand and come back.

me at 2:30 pm: You're still not here, so I guess we'll try again next week? I hope everything is all right on your end.

them at 3:00 pm, after I was already home again: We're at Location B.

It's not a huge deal, we will connect next week, but damn, I would have appreciated even a perfunctory "Oops, my bad," you know?

the_shoshanna

Quick final update: coffee everywhere except at home tasted fine, and coffee at home was vastly improved after we, uh, disassembled and thoroughly cleaned the grinder, which had never been done. So I guess I was just hypersensitive to the buildup of ick after several days away from it? Anyway everything is fine and I did not have COVID and I can enjoy my morning coffee again, yay.

marthawells

It's Murderbot Day again, though the episode actually dropped yesterday on Murderbot Eve.

Here's an interview with David Goyer where he says nice things about me:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timlammers/2025/05/22/murderbot-ep-david-s-goyer-on-alexander-skarsgrd-and-staying-true-to-martha-wells-books/

“No one was interested. They were like, ‘This is just RoboCop’ and we were like, ‘No, it's not at all. It's the anti-RoboCop,'” Goyer recalled. “It's about neurodivergence. It's about humanity.”

And an interview with Paul and Chris:

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/05/the-making-of-apple-tvs-murderbot/

Paul Weitz: The first book, All Systems Red, had a really beautiful ending. And it had a theme that personhood is irreducible. The idea that, even with this central character you think you get to know so well, you can't reduce it to ways that you think it's going to behave—and you shouldn't. The idea that other people exist and that they shouldn't be put into whatever box you want to put them into felt like something that was comforting to have in one's pocket. If you're going to spend so much time adapting something, it's really great if it's not only fun but is about something.

the_shoshanna

I posted yesterday about coffee recently tasting unpalatably bitter to me, and a number of people noted that yes, that could be a COVID symptom. Which is true. (And thank you all for weighing in!) But I feel fine (which I know doesn't prove anything), nothing else tastes strange to me, and I tested negative yesterday (which I know isn't worth much, but it's something), and today I went out and got myself a coffee from Tim Horton's, which tasted fine. I mean, sweeter and milkier than I normally have it, but without any of the bitter layer that milk and sugar at home was only kind of lying on top of without ameliorating. And Geoff confirms that he opened the bags of coffee we're currently working through a few days ago; I can't remember exactly when the bitterness started, but the timing doesn't not match up. (I have realized that it definitely didn’t start before I left: I was fine with airport coffee through a sip valve in my mask, and with hotel and homemade coffee the whole time I was in Virginia.)

So I'll take another test just for the heck of it, but I'm pretty confident that there's something amiss with this batch of beans, which Geoff, who has a notoriously deficient sense of smell, just isn't picking up on or bothered by in the same way.

I hate that I have to do this calculus. Stupid pandemic.

the_shoshanna

For the last week or so, coffee has tasted incredibly bitter to me. I mean, it's bitter from the start, but I drink it with sugar and milk and I've always really liked it; Geoff makes our breakfast coffee every morning and it's a nice little thing for us. (Sometimes when he goes away overnight he grinds coffee for me to have the next morning before he leaves.) But lately I've been finding it unpalatably bitter; even when I add extra milk and sugar, they just layer over the bitterness without easing it. Nothing about our brand, roast, or brewing method has changed, only how I taste it.

(I went away last week: four days in Virginia for a memorial service, which meant my first plane flights since February 2020, which was a bit of a mindfuck, plus a bunch of socializing, and Geoff says he's heard that things changing taste is a possible COVID symptom. I've never heard that, only that losing the sense of taste can be, and I feel completely fine, so I really doubt that's it. Plus iirc it started before I left.)

But this is a bit of a problem, since a) I like coffee, and b) having gotten only three swallows into this morning's cup before I had to stop, it was ten am before I could get my act in gear to start being productive. By which I mean, make a cup of black tea instead. But I don't like tea as much as I (used to) like coffee!

I miss coffee.

ETA: Okay, I have taken a COVID test, and it is negative, for what that's worth... (I think it's six months expired, but they're generally supposed to be good for a year or so after stamped expiration date, last I heard.)

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Reading

give the governor a "harrumph"

all in good taste

Episode 3 Available Now

tasteful update

changing taste

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