Phil Landmeier @shuttersparks@social.cleverlibre.org

@ExpatRepeat Yeah, the medications thing here in the U.S.A. is very weird and I'm not sure why it is that way. Everything is tightly controlled with criminal penalties.

I remember the first time I spent a summer in Europe in the 1960s. I was in Germany and ran out of my prescription allergy meds. Went into an Apotheke and explained my problem to the pharmacist. (I spoke fluent German). "Ermagherd, I ran out and don't have my prescription." The pharmacist seemed puzzled and asked me what it was. I told him and he came back with the little yellow and white capsules, and asked how many I wanted. My jaw dropped. And then I realized that I was the weirdo, coming from a place where pharmaceuticals and alcohol were tightly controlled. I realized that nobody thought twice about my 15 year-old self having a beer in a Bierstube. Ahhh. I'm starting to get it.

Then lived in Guatemala for almost 15 years. You can buy anything you want at the pharmacy. And it's the freshest you'll find because the 40 some-odd pharma companies all have their primary manufacturing in Guatemala City. And cheap! In the case of 4th generation antibiotics that you pay $30 a pill for in the U.S., it's like 80 cents. Hahaha. A full course of Mebendazol is under a dollar. Wait. What?

Interestingly, there's no noticeable drug problem there. The only drug problem I was aware of was some extremely poor street youths were sniffing glue/solvents (which is extremely bad of course). No visible opioid problem.

So yeah, I'm not impressed with how things work in the U.S. On the other hand, yes, in Guatemala you are expected to act responsibly. Your safety is on you. The government will not protect you from yourself. And yet there are no significant problems. Interesting.

@realTuckFrumper That's all fine and dandy, but will she take her clothes off for us?

@ExpatRepeat Yeah, the fact that I've had it means nothing because there's no immunity. And here in the U.S., drugs are tightly controlled so I can't even access the medications I need if I catch it again.

Time is of the essence with malaria. Waiting for ages for a doctors appointment so I can get a scrip for the meds will be too late and I'll end up with chronic malaria.

When I had it the first time I was not in the U.S. and I could just walk to the pharmacy and buy all the chloroquine I wanted.

@_L1vY_ I've had it once. I've scratched it off my bucket list. No desire to repeat.

@ExpatRepeat Yes, the wide-eyed looks. I've had malaria back in the 1990s. Weird disease. And it's coming to the U.S. thanks to climate change.

@lovelylovely I think Biden is also sending a message to Hezbollah, that if they get involved in Gaza we will not stand by.

Hezbollah is large, heavily armed, well trained, and more than the Israelis can handle. Over the years, Iran has made sure this is the case. We have to prevent their involvement in this Gaza mess.

@annmlipton Yup. I've been rocking an HL-2300DW since 2015. Card stock, labels, manuscripts, tens of thousands of pages, and it continues to work flawlessly.

@AAronL1968 Oh, good.

This is a serious problem, very bad...for the Russians.

@awgonnerman Haha. Good one. But even if they can read, they won't. Even if they wanted to, they'd have difficulty processing the information. But they don't want to because it conflicts with beliefs.

@osma Sitting on pat theories is not only boring but you don't learn much. I'm an astronomer turned engineer and am fond of pointing out that when everything works as intended you don't learn anything. You learn things when something breaks, when something fails, when the bridge falls or the plane crashes. Unfortunate, but that's when you learn something.

For many years, Fermilab and CERN were focused on completing the Standard Model. When CERN identified the Higgs, the model was complete. Now what? Shut it down and go home? No, shut it down to build it up in order to run at even higher energies. The hope of most is to break the Standard Model. Then we'll learn something new.

It was hoped that JWST would be so good that it would seriously shake things up. It is doing that. Over the past 30 years we've observed things that make no sense given our current theories, but we couldn't see well enough to learn much. JWST is wrecking old theories left and right, and this is excellent.

@scozmos Hmm, I'd guess yes. Seeing the colors depends on the angle between the light source, cloud, and observer. It looks like those in the plane have a similar angle to the photographer. Close ehough, anyway.