nicole @nicole@myna.social

TIL I need to recalibrate my JPY to USD heuristic. I’ve been using 100:1 for 30 years, but I knew the Japanese economy has been sluggish for at least that long.

The conversion today is 150:1.

Has anyone tried the new Activity Pub plugin for Wordpress?

It’s out of beta now.

I have a Wordpress site (which I need as an author) and a Mastodon instance (which I need because I am a control freak).

If Activity Pub works as it should, I won’t need both — but we can’t get Activity Pub to work on a Wordpress site.

Has anyone tried this?

I will trade legal analysis for technical help. (Fediverse economics)

It’s October, so I’m squirreled up with a small press collection of creepy stories, The Faces at Your Shoulder.

The first story turns out to be an even more-Lovecraftian spin on Campbell’s Who Goes There? (i.e., The Thing). It’s set at the tail end of the Gold Rush, but, other than its setting, it’s derivative as all get-out.

Doesn’t matter: the literary equivalent of a Spooky Sounds CD is exactly what I was looking for. 🎃

Starting to feel the itch to go home again. #fromthearchives #tucson

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5944393/

This is most absurd clinical findings ive seen regarding trans females. It states they prescribed "oral estradiol" starting at 2mg and increasing in dose over a year to try and achieve levels above 100 pg/ml with an aim towards monotherapy between 2008 and 2018 looking at 184 trans women in their clinic.

Looking at their scatter chart they state 1 patient achieved about 90 pg/ml on 1mg oral, 2 patients achieved over 100 pg/ml on 2mg oral, and 21 achieved over 100 pg/ml on 4 mg oral.

For these results to be at all useful in terms of monotherapy they need to have been done at trough level (ie 24 hours after the last dose) as you need to keep your estradiol level above a set amount to manage such a feat.

The issue? a patient on 1mg oral will not see estradiol levels above 25 pg/ml at peak, a patient on 2mg oral will not see estradiol levels above 50 pg/ml at peak, and 4mg oral will only break 100 pg/ml at peak at 6-8 hours and then crash below 40 pg/ml after 24 hours.

So whats going on? well a minority of their patients who somehow magically achieved the impossible, as usual were doing what trans girls in the US do all the time, they take the medication they're given and then took it sublingually (and likely broke up their doses through the day) because you get far higher levels that last longer that way.

The only other explanation is these patients had their estradiol levels tested incorrectly either not at trough or there was an aberration in the test.

Thirteen Women (1932)

Myrna Loy portrays Ursula, an embittered woman of Indian/Japanese descent, dead set on the destruction of the members of a sorority who prevented her from gaining acceptance in white society in her youth. She has, as her weapon, the Power of Suggestion.

If it weren’t for Ursula’s ongoing attempts to outright murder one of her tormentor’s children, her actions might be read as comeuppance: childhood alone can not excuse the life-destroying racism of the privileged elite.

Murders in the Zoo (1933).

Sadistic, possessive, wealthy zoo collector delights in ghoulishly dispatching his wife’s paramours.

Hi jinx ensue!

Once the grisly murders have played out, prepare yourself for a history lesson on why the SPCA is a presence on movie sets today.

SwiftUI pros: How do I make a List with style .insetGrouped fit to the device's readableContentGuide?

Doctor X (1932).

I’ll watch anything shot in two-strip technicolor. The palette—peach and green—makes a fever dream of everything.

We begin with a police tour of a gallery of scientist suspects, any of which might be a lunatic serial killer. But which one? (They’re all quite mad).

The sprawling sets are absolutely glorious—perfect for stalking stranglers and shadow play.

And comedy; because, at heart, this is a goofy movie, full of pranks and fools.

❤️❤️❤️💔

“Vote NO on Woman Suffrage” 🙄

Not ancient #history, but just a century ago.

Source: State Archives of North Carolina

Mitchell Baker from Mozilla tells the German news agency that we shouldn't "leave AI development to the tech-giants", that somehow "the training data should be controlled by users".

And that does on a surface level sound nice. User control and criticizing tech giants. Great. But it accepts the tech-giants' narrative: That "AI" is inevitable and that all data *has to* be dumped into these systems, that unfairness is a tech issue to solve with more data. That is not true.

We can also decide not to build these huge and wasteful statistical systems.

Criterion Channel has at least four different horror film slates running for October this year.

Between 90’s Horror, Hopping Hong Kong Vampires, Art-House Horror, and Pre-Code Horror, I’m paralyzed with indecision as to what to watch.

What can I say about Disney’s Galactic Starcruiser?

Let’s find out, shall we? ☺️