oh man i had a notion ages ago to start doing like an october-ish Event of getting a bunch of people together to get flu shots and donuts (or something else tasty idk) and I forgot about it til today
I think if getting yearly vaccines was more of a fun social event it’d be a lot easier to do it promptly
and it’s like– if you have a reaction and the vaccine(s) end up making you feel sick the next couple days, well, at least you just got some fun social in right beforehand!
Tags:
#happy General-Population Flu Shot Availability Day to all the Ontarians out there #(in theory anyway: I haven’t received a notification from the pharmacy where I’m on a waiting list) #(they *did* let me get the new COVID XBB shot about a week and a half ago though) #interesting ideas #vaccines #illness tw? #food mention
“Adult Canadian residents”, give or take, so maybe tens of millions of dollars.
I was going to say “and you have to live somewhere where food prices are low enough to make the math check out, so, like, not Nunavut”, but then I did some checking and…none of the grocery stores in Iqaluit seem to have online catalogues, but there’s a Real Canadian Superstore branch in Whitehorse, Yukon and it claims to be selling Cheez-Its for exactly the same price as the Superstore in Kitchener ($3.39 for one or 2/$5).
(I do kind of wonder if maybe it was too clever for its own good and ignored me asking for Whitehorse data, but OTOH I guess if any food *were* going to be the same price in Yukon it’d be a lightweight non-perishable like crackers. Hmm…okay, a 3L jug of store-brand apple cider is $3.99 in Kitchener and $7 in Whitehorse, so it looks like this is real price data. (Although I was honestly expecting the apple-cider prices in Yukon to be even worse.))
Maybe the main issue is *how many* grocery chains are in your area: the more options you have, the more likely one of them has a good sale on a given week. And since the receipt has to be from a (fairly long, but still) whitelist of specific chains to count, looks like the folks in Iqaluit are out of luck no matter how good a Cheez-It price they get.
I *am* wondering now if Brother is obtaining a larger fraction of his own food than I’d realised. But even if 0% of my food spending were for him (*definitely* not true), that would still only be USD$8.21.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #oh look an update #food #fun with loopholes #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #adventures in human capitalism #our home and cherished land
“Adult Canadian residents”, give or take, so maybe tens of millions of dollars.
I was going to say “and you have to live somewhere where food prices are low enough to make the math check out, so, like, not Nunavut”, but then I did some checking and…none of the grocery stores in Iqaluit seem to have online catalogues, but there’s a Real Canadian Superstore branch in Whitehorse, Yukon and it claims to be selling Cheez-Its for exactly the same price as the Superstore in Kitchener ($3.39 for one or 2/$5).
(I do kind of wonder if maybe it was too clever for its own good and ignored me asking for Whitehorse data, but OTOH I guess if any food *were* going to be the same price in Yukon it’d be a lightweight non-perishable like crackers. Hmm…okay, a 3L jug of store-brand apple cider is $3.99 in Kitchener and $7 in Whitehorse, so it looks like this is real price data. (Although I was honestly expecting the apple-cider prices in Yukon to be even worse.))
Maybe the main issue is *how many* grocery chains are in your area: the more options you have, the more likely one of them has a good sale on a given week. And since the receipt has to be from a (fairly long, but still) whitelist of specific chains to count, looks like the folks in Iqaluit are out of luck no matter how good a Cheez-It price they get.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #food #adventures in human capitalism #fun with loopholes #our home and cherished land #tag rambles #fun fact: I did the math after seeing a discussion of U.S. food stamps recently #and in 2022 we spent USD$6.16/person/day on food + soda #(I normally categorise soda under ”recreational drugs – caffeine” rather than ”groceries” #~~in order to (not-so-)subtly express my disapproval~~ #but it does in fact contain sustenance) #((it’s USD$6.02 without the soda‚ and yes these two figures *do* count restaurant spending)) #apparently this is substantially less than a food-stamp budget #but it requires more ability to exploit-sales-to-maintain-stockpiles than someone living paycheque-to-paycheque would have #some fortnights I spend $350 at the grocery store and others I spend $100: depends on what’s cheap enough to resupply on this week #(and how many loyalty points I had piled up from previous trips) #(I got over $800 of loyalty points last year‚ which I treat as a discount) #I still feel like we have a lot of room for improvement in our food spending #(indeed‚ I’ve *made* improvements since 2022: things are shaping up to be cheaper this year) #((and not entirely because I’ve been getting more food as ~gifts‚ though that is also happening)) #but Vimes Boot Theory is nevertheless a hell of a thing #as are the plans of a sublimated accountant
how many digits of pi (after the decimal point, so 3.?????? etc) do you have memorized?
“anyway I am surprised that 5 is such a popular answer, I can understand 2, but why 5, it’s so lopsided” (via @brin-bellway )
I answered 5! In my case, it’s because I once saw a nerdy math cheer that included those digits – something along the lines of “local math team, we’re so fine, 3.14159” – and it stuck.
Tags:
#conversational aglets #math #pi #the more you know #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #surveys
a few years back zinc acetate lozenges were doing the rounds and I love a good superstition so I went ahead and incorporated that into my belief system. been a while so I thought I’d check to see if the state of the science on the subject had shifted since then
afaict there hasn’t been much work on the subject in the intervening time, and nothing much to change your mind one way or the other. good work everyone, you may return to your superstition behavior.
some details:
one study¹ recently reported a null result, but based on the going theory for zinc lozenges that’s what you would expect (zinc acetate was administered by capsules). also the study was lacking in other ways.
another² has a good looking graph and is maybe positive for the concept. haven’t read the fully study yet
that’s maybe about it? my method for researching this research was to search pubmed for “(zinc) AND ((acetate) OR (gluconate)) lozenge” plus some other words instead of lozenge, as there were too many results without an additional keyword for filtering. I am sure there are other places results are published besides pubmed. feel free to catapult relevant studies into my inbox
yeah that sounds fucked up! had no idea that was the case for some people, I always thought of a cold as a 1-3 day kind of thing. but presumably if someone gets 20 day colds they’re probably very glad to cut a week off that
The third week of a cold sucks a lot less than the first week so, like, maybe only as much as a normal person’s cold, but yeah if there’s a pill for cutting that third week off, I’m interested regardless of whether it helps with the main brunt of the cold. Gonna have to look into this.
you want zinc acetate, or if that’s not available, zinc gluconate. it has to be a lozenge or otherwise dissolve in your mouth, since the theoretical method of action is coating some tissue or receptor or something with ionic zinc. preferably with as few additives as possible. if it doesn’t taste bad and feel astringent, it’s not working. in the US everyone buys the life extension ones. idk about elsewhere
it is ideal to start as soon as possible. preferably in the not-sure-if-im-actually-sick-yet phase. starting once the infection is well developed seems to be much less effective
tbh I will actually take one prophylactically if I feel like I was in a high exposure environment. this is a not the protocol the research was done on but it seems reasonable and as long I don’t do this every day it is at worst a bad tasting zinc supplement
iirc the studies mostly had a protocol along the lines of one lozenge (of varying size and type?) every 1.5-2 hours while awake until symptoms subside. that’s a lot. it seems to produce some effect in the studies. I do not know that anyone has done any real study on taking more or less to compare, so it’s unclear what the optimal amount is, or how long it is worthwhile to persist in taking them
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#conversational aglets #recs #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #the power of science #illness tw
Brinens and Things 