klwilliams

A while back, I noticed a self-driving car turn right from a left turn lane, so I sent my observation to the Mr. Roadshow column in the local paper. He forwarded my letter to a woman writing an article for the San Jose Mercury News on testing autonomous cars in Sunnyvale. Apparently, a local reporter for the Washington Post saw that, and asked to interview me. The link is below (and Chaz is mentioned as an award-winning science fiction author), for the story and for an accompanying video (where I look old and fat and pale, but I think I sound smart).

There's a paywall, but it's very cheap.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/03/silicon-valley-pioneered-self-driving-cars-some-its-tech-savvy-residents-dont-want-them-tested-their-neighborhoods/

I've been accepted by Clinica Ruiz in Puebla, Mexico, to enter their program to receive what's called autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant. What that means is that the treatment I'll be undergoing is the chemotherapy used for leukemia patients. What happens is that the doctors will give me something to stimulate stem cell growth, then will harvest some of my stem cells. That will be followed by ten days of chemo, which will target my blood cells, essentially killing off my immune system. Immediately following chemo my harvest stem cells will be reintroduced, thus giving me a rebooted immune system.

What this means in practice is that in three weeks I stop taking Tecfidera, my main MS drug, which has been keeping me relapse-free for four years. This drug inhibits white blood cell growth, so I need those healthy when I get my stem cells harvested. Not taking the medicine will affect my ability to walk even more, and I may even have a new relapse. I hope not. I'll be trying to stay relaxed, eat right, and exercise before I go. It also means I'll be stepping down from my board position at the American Bookbinders Museum, though I'll still be going to jury duty every Thursday.

Oh, and I'm raising money, because just the treatment alone will cost almost $60,000. My friends started a fundraiser for me, if you're interested: https://www.youcaring.com/karenwilliamsbrenchley-847292.

One thing I've learned over the years is just how awesome my friends are.

My cat, Mac, and I have a ritual we perform. Tonight when I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth I found him waiting for me in the dark seated on the edge of the tub. Usually he just follows me in, but I guess I was late. Once I'd turned the light on and gave him proper scritches, he jumped up onto the edge of the sink and licked up some of the water already in the sink. After a bit he moved to the side so I could turn on the tap just a bit, so then he started lapping up the water as it pooled in the sink. Then he was done, so I turned off the tap and he jumped onto the toilet seat, where he waited for me to open the door. So I did, and he jumped out.

I have such odd rituals with this cat. I've never known another one like him.

As it turns out, those mass sexual assaults in Germany didn't happen. Trust snopes to ferret out the truth: http://www.snopes.com/2017/02/15/german-mass-assault-without-foundation/.

ETA: [Removed, because it was incorrect. Orwellian editing at work?]

ETA2: The first sentence of the article says, "German media reports of mass sexual assaults that reportedly took place on 31 December 2016 and 1 January 2017 have been withdrawn after local police discovered that the rumors were completely baseless."

The final sentences say, "The debunked German “sex mob” claim was one of many popular yet unreliable claims about refugees and crime sprees to spread throughout Europe before then appearing in American media.

In 2016, large numbers of robberies and sexual assaults were reported during New Year’s festivities throughout Germany, particularly in Cologne. Germany’s federal police found that at least 1,200 women were assaulted across the country, igniting a debate about immigration after many of the suspects were reported to be of North African origin."

This reads to me not as a negation of the first paragraph but as supporting information for what was debunked.

ETA3: A link from the BBC about 8 Iraqi men being convicted of gang rape that happened in Vienna on January 1, 2016: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39142620.

So I've been trying to understand why the Trump supporters are, well, Trump supporters. My uncle Joe lives in Louisiana. He's a Vietnam vet who believes firmly in the ideals of the '40s and '50s. What I gather from that is that he believes in serving his country and protecting women and children, among other things. He's basically a nice guy, reasonably intelligent, and not a Fascist by any stretch.

I asked him to be specific about why he doesn't want Muslims in the US, and he said it's because of stories like these that he claims aren't being reported in the mainstream press. I googled on "germany islamic men rape women" and found many articles about what the wikipedia article talks about, including this from The Washington Post. Go ahead and take a look. I'll wait.

I read the San Jose Mercury News every day, cover to cover, because it's not nearly as thick as it used to be. Still, it has a decent national and international section, though the international news seems to be mostly about ISIS and the countries where they have footholds. I hadn't read anything about the rapes in Germany and Sweden. However, looking at the sites that are reporting on these rapes, I see some are from fake news sites, like this one.

So, is this really happening? It's certainly one of the fears from the grand old days of the '40s and '50s, that black men might rape white women. It might be happening. When I was in high school I was raped by an Iranian college student, who said the same kind of things to me as are reported in these internet stories, so yes, this happens. But, I don't see this happening, certainly not on this scale, in the United States. We do a much better job of vetting our refugees, and while we probably get a terrorist or two, I don't think we're importing enough for this kind of thing to happen. However, my uncle is concerned enough about this happening that he doesn't want any Muslims to enter the country at all. It's an interesting problem.

I downloaded this journal, which gives cvs files will all the journal entries for a single month. Downloaded them by hand is really fast, but then I started peaking at the largest file per year. Which led me to the month maestrateresa died, which lead me into three years where my life changed dramatically, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Interesting reading, for me, at least.

One thing I'd like to do with my csv files it to try to do some NLP* processing on it, to see if I can figure out things like how positive/negative the entries were, and what topics I wrote about the most (probably not Chaz. no, really.), that kind of thing. If I come up with anything interesting I'll post it somewhere so other people can run it on their own journals.

I've also trimmed my journal somewhat. The people I removed were people who hadn't posted for years. If I took you off my list and you're still reading here, I'll add you back. About half of my list are still people who post regularly, most of them writers, so that's OK. I don't know how many are on dw.


*Natural Language Processing

I may or may not move over here. At the moment I feel like all my friends have moved away.

When I first met Mac and Barry, they greeted Chaz and me at his front door, their little noses sniffing at the outdoors. When they moved here with Chaz, we had discussed letting them be outdoor cats, and quickly decided against it. Mac disagreed with this choice. He would try to get outside, and on occasion succeeded, but he usually ran for the closest clump of grass and starting eating. I got him a harness, and about once a week I take him outside for a few minutes and let him explore the back yard. He seemed to enjoy this.

I went to visit my mother at the beginning of October, and when I came back home Mac had managed to lose his collar. It was no big deal, since he's an indoor cat. We finally found where it had ended up (on the floor in Chaz's study, mixed in with some other stuff), and its safety feature had worked but it was no unusable. Oh, well, we though, he's an indoor cat.

A week ago on Thursday, when we had our regular group of friends over for dinner, I didn't see Mac inside right after the gang had moved over to the clubhouse. No problem, I thought. He'd been by himself in the bedroom, so he was probably just in one of his nooks. Nope. When I went back to the house to feed the boys, there was only Barry. I called in the house, but no Mac. Chaz went out the front door and called, but I went out the back door and called. A little gray furry shape raced out of the darkness to me, and I picked him up and brought him inside. Crisis averted, I thought.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and again no Mac once everyone (only about six of us) had gone over to the clubhouse. No one saw him go out, just like last week. Still, it was soon obvious he had gone out, and he wasn't in the back yard (or at least he wasn't coming when called). We had dinner (which was astounding delicious. Chaz really has figured out American Thanksgiving dinner.), and I worried, since we were eating at 6:00 and the boys' dinnertime is 8:50. At about 7:00, though, I went outside to check, and mentioned loudly that it was treat time (Mac's cue that it's time for our outdoor time to end), and once again a gray furry shape raced out of the darkness. I picked him up, and he leaped out of my arms to get inside and have his treat.

I'm pleased that he's coming back, and that he seems to be having fun, but I really don't want him to go outside on his own. He's a smart cat, and still very agile, but he's also ten years old. We'll have a new collar soon, so his tags will jingle, and dinner guests need to wait until I've put Mac in our bedroom before they head across to the clubhouse. I want Mac to enjoy his life, but I really don't want him outside. He's been less purry to me today, and is sleeping very deeply, so I think he had an exciting time yesterday. I hope he treasures the memories, because I really don't want him to do it again. (Mac disagrees.)

The new "Where the Hell is Matt" video is out as of today, though since it was Kickstarter funded he renamed it "Where the Heck is Matt?" It's a lot of fun, and has some cool bits in it. San Jose didn't make the cut, so I'm just as glad I didn't go. Stanford made it, but I haven't looked at it closely to see if I know anyone. There are three shots from Cuba, which was interesting, plus some good spots chosen from places I've been (and some that I'd like to go to now). Check it out for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBJi0jZR7oQ&feature=youtu.be.

I occasionally take Mac outside on a harness to explore the backyard. Since I've started doing this, he's stopped trying to get out the front door nearly as much, though stalks me whenever I near the back door. One thing he's serious about is that the back yard is HIS. The nextdoor cat, Leo, is an outside cat by day who goes inside at night. Leo wanders the neighborhood as if he owns it, and likes to roll around in the dirt in our garden. (I don't understand why cats like this, but it may be to cool off.) Once Leo was in the backyard when Chaz opened the back door, and Mac went racing out after him. He and Leo rolled around in a fight, then Leo broke away and dashed over the tall fence to the nextdoor yard, Mac hot behind him. Mac stopped on the top of the fence, though, whether because it was the border he was defending or because of the large yellow lab who lived in the yard, we don't know.
( This time was different. )