Was that painful.

The doctor warned me that the nerve blocking injections he gave were only going to block about 40% of the pain. And he was probably right about that. After the fluid injection, which I thankfully did not feel, I think he stretched-out my shoulder four times. And I have never felt pain like that. Just blinding all-consuming pain. I did heard the scar tissue breaking up on the third one! I couldn't hear during the first two. Whole thing took about 20 minutes. But wow. Ten of them were insane.

And after that I was an absolute wreck. I could barely walk. I think I shook in my chair for a good ten minutes, trying to calm down, trying to get my breathing under control, completely unable to move my right arm (because of the nerve blockers), just trying to think straight.

So... I would recommend sedation. Or at least a Valium or something.

My shoulder responded to two months of physical therapy by becoming more sore and more immobile.

PT people said "This ain't workin. Maybe you should talk to an orthopedist?" So I did.

Ortho doc said "Sounds like a tear. Get an MRI." So Monday I did.

Tuesday I got my MRI results from the hospital network's cool online info sharing network thing, and... holy crap!

"Distal supraspinatus tendinosis with partial-thickness interstitial tear/articular sided tear along the anterior margin of the distal supraspinatus at the insertional footprint traversing approximately 50% of the thickness of the cuff" And "posterior inferior labral tear" and "possible low-grade SLAP tear".

!!!

To my ears, and Google's pictures, that sure sounds like the kind of thing that leads to surgery. So that meant two days of "Oh great. Shoulder surgery. What will the next six months of recovery be like? Who will mow the lawn? Shit."

Today, Thursday, I talked with Ortho doc and he said surgery wasn't needed. Take an MRI of the shoulder of anyone who is active and over 50 and you'll find tears. If the tendon had completely torn in half, he'd operate (and I'd be screaming, not wondering about mowing the lawn). But he said I needed to get the adhesive capsulitis fixed. OK. How?

"High-volume fluid injection with steroids, followed by manipulation". They're going to inject a lot of mystery fluid into my shoulder joint and then grab my arm and crank on it until the joint loosens up. They're going to frack my shoulder joint. And I won't be sedated for this. Yipes.

I guess it beats surgery?

In case you needed any further proof that the modern anti-abortion movement is an outgrowth of many centuries of virulent misogyny and violence against women, Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked opinion draft striking down Roe v. Wade relies heavily on a 17th century English jurist who had two women executed for “witchcraft,” wrote in defense of marital rape, and believed capital punishment should extend to kids as young as 14.

“Two treatises by Sir Matthew Hale,” Alito wrote in his argument to end legal abortion across America, “described abortion of a quick child who died in the womb as a ‘great crime’ and a ‘great misprision.’ See M. Hale, Pleas of the Crown.”

How interesting that Alito would cite Pleas of the Crown! That’s the text, published in 1736, 60 years after Hale’s death, that defended and laid the foundation for the marital rape exemption across the world. Let’s go straight to the text:

“For the husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband which she cannot retract,” Hale wrote.

Where does the Constitution describe the Supreme Court's right to privacy?

The European Space Agency’s website also showed land surface temperatures to be nearing 55 degrees Celsius over many parts of northwest India and crossing 60 degrees Celsius over several pockets.

60°C is 140°F.

Also, medium-rare.

"Visualized right hemithorax is grossly unremarkable."

Aw shucks, Doc. You're not so bad yourself.

Inflation and scarcity will continue.

With Shanghai in a near total lockdown, this is a map of the commercial ships currently waiting offshore to be loaded and offloaded of goods; exacerbating global supply chain woes pic.twitter.com/Md6PtpF3VE

— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) April 18, 2022

Casey Lewis was scrolling through Seamless looking for a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich when it occurred to her: “What are all of these random ass breakfast offerings?” Lewis has lived in Williamsburg for years and describes herself as a regular user of Seamless, but on April 6 she noticed a slew of new businesses listed on the delivery app: All Day Breakfast, the Best Breakfast Company, Anytime Breakfast Sandwiches, and others. “The names were so generic,” she says. “Something seemed off.”

It turns out all three of the businesses — and more than a dozen others — are tied to the same address in Williamsburg, which belongs to the neighborhood’s decades-old 24-hour diner Kellogg’s.

At first glance, the businesses tied to Kellogg’s might resemble ghost kitchens, but they’re actually part of a newer class of online restaurants called “virtual brands,” according to Scott Landers, co-founder of delivery consultancy Figure 8, whose clients have included restaurant chains like &Pizza and Mexicue.

While ghost kitchens operate out of separate commercial spaces that don’t have a physical dining room, virtual brands operate out of brick-and-mortar restaurants that already exist. Companies come up with the brands — which usually consist of just a logo, a name, and a short menu — then license them out to restaurants and bars, who execute the recipes and package them for takeout and delivery.

https://twitter.com/NikkiMcR/status/1515130557675581442

LOLWUT