I’ve had a long week–I ended up in the ER for a reason only tangentially related to my pancreas last weekend.

Last fall, I received a contaminated lot of insulin from my pharmacy and realized about the middle of last week that it was the culprit behind my recent blood sugar woes. I immediately switched to a different lot number and saw improvement with my control within hours. And three days later, the last place where I used an infusion set with the contaminated lot of insulin developed an abscess that was getting redder and more swollen more or less as I watched. So off to the ER we went, but to the nice one about 10 miles south of here where they don’t take trauma cases because there is no hospital attached so the wait times are shorter and if you need admission, they’ll ambulance you up–but not until you’ve been assigned a bed. Luckily, no admission for me, just a ultrasound guided procedure to drain it and a prescription for 10 days of antibiotics even more hardcore than the ones I’m on prophylactically. I’m healing up nicely and have an appointment with my primary care doctor tomorrow to confirm.

So all that plus a pretty challenging coding project at work–I’m trying to program a Vue.js component and learn how Vue.js works at the same time–has meant I haven’t been thinking about words as much as I normally do.

• I’m a recent convert to mechanical keyboards and one thing that’s really surprised me is how expensive and challenging to acquire custom keycap sets are–often as much or more than the actual keyboard. It’s not surprising, then, that lower cost and lower quality counterfeits are proliferating. (I really like this set, pictured in the article. Or this one.) And just in case anyone asks, I’m typing this on a Drop Alt 65% keyboard and it’s worth every penny.
• The exercise made it easy to understand why an artist or creator without legal training would be intimidated out of sending their own takedown notices–she says even law students were rattled by the pushback. “There are all sorts of obstacles that are thrown up in front of artists who are trying to use the minimal tools afforded to them under the [DMCA].”
• The Harebrained Scheme to Turn Magic: The Gathering Cards into NFTs. Much like collectible card games, tulips, and Beanie Babies, cryptocurrency is a pyramid scheme which benefits early adopters and the wealthy.

I’m sure that these next two links are wholly unrelated to the first three:

• Subtweetpunk, shadecore, and other subgenres. “…naming something sometimes allows the term to define it, and to some degree can help shape how the public learns about it, thinks about it, and even searches for it. But naming also legitimizes a concept, and formalizes it in ways that are often unexpected.”
• The Literary Crimes of Rob Bob Robinson. I don’t know about anyone else, but good Lord, the experiences I’ve had to endure on panels with Rob Bob. He needs to be yeeted into the sun.

And a fun announcement: I’m this week’s guest on Scott Edelman’s Eating the Fantastic podcast! We had a fabulous brunch the Sunday of Worldcon and, as always, Scott is both fun to talk to and a great person to share a meal with. He’s the only man I know who could ever get me to eat scrapple okonomiyaki (which was not this meal, that was a few years ago at a 2 Nixons pop-up). It was delicious, by the way.