That's so white it's like listening to mayonnaise.....

That's why when I was in the piano business I threw bid request forms in the trash can.

@Axtremus said in Ohio GOP Senate candidates debate:

Any idea who the GOP primary's winner will run up against from the Democratic side?

Tim Ryan.

To make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.

@Horace said in Ganging Up:

Nearly meaningless. This was about guns.

"Machine guns," @horace.

Aqua's sister in 1...2...3..

Reynard didn't kill himself!

The fool on the hill also works, but might be pushing the Liverpudlian influence on Washington a bit.

@Catseye3 said in Water lilies indoors:

@brenda Love that art! Please show it here when you're done.

Maybe a compatible mix of his art and a same-only-different selection of water lilies without animals?

This one is a 3'x5' rug pattern, and there's still lots of room for some water birds. I'll see what appeals, and whether it adds to the piece or doesn't. The water lilies for this design are in the central medallion and the interior border, with an outer border of oversized cattails. There are two hares peeking through acanthus leaf foliage of the William Morris style, and the stork and frog duo make an appearance on each end of the rug among the foliage. This is a floor rug, so it has matching images on each end and each long side. Wall rugs tend to have a definite top and bottom orientation, while floor rugs are usually meant to be viewed from all sides.

You are correct that the water lily theme could stand alone for an entire rug, too. I can see that becoming a runner for a hallway. I've been mulling over a hallway rug plan, and that would be a fun one to explore. Thank you!

I'm mixing the William De Morgan and William Morris ideas, because they are of the same era, and the men were friends as well as business associates. Morris was primarily into fabrics and wallpapers, while De Morgan was mostly into pottery and tiles. They both had other uses of their works, but they seldom crossed over to the other's dominant field.

De Morgan gets top billing for this rug with his distinct animals, although many Morris works include hares, other animals, and birds, too. Perhaps the runner should be more Morris-ish, with water lilies, but I've only seen his yellow lilies that are not water plants. I'll look again for water lily themes in his work, although that's a real 'rabbit hole' activity for me. Once I get started searching through De Morgan and Morris images, it can be hours before I resurface.

Of course, for water lilies, Monet beckons, and that's yet another rabbit hole. Now you know why it takes me a while to design a rug. Since I will be spending a year or more hooking it, I had better love the design, which requires some serious time in creating it.

BTW, for creating my own personal designs, not ones for commercial use, there is no worry about copyrights, especially with design elements that have become ubiquitous in art, such as the Morris acanthus leaves. Even though I don't copy the designs of others, I certainly get inspiration and design concepts from them, so I have asked permisson to use work from living artists, or from estates of writers whose words I want to incorporate into a design. No one has ever said no, but there was an estate representative who said I could use a quote in my design, but it could never be shown in prints, photographs, or in any way in public. I thought that was odd, but not a problem. I made the rug to use up a boatload of scraps, so I had no plans to show it anyway. I've never had a 'show' of my projects other than the pics here.

Just finished Peacemaker. Giving James Gunn a longer story telling format and going rated R was an excellent choice…

One could get that impression.

@Aqua-Letifer said in Phibes:

I burned through that circa 2020. (I think I posted it here, too?) Anyway, it is indeed awesome.

Well, thanks for posting it here, Aqua. Perhaps you're the one who deserves the credit after all.

That's like the ultimate embarrassment for gators.

We find evidence in 71 of these reports, spread nationwide, that brain death could not have properly been declared. In these cases, the removal of the heart during organ procurement must have been the proximate cause of the donor's death.

Yeah, the "must have been" quotation is interesting, isn't it?

The PRC papers we have identified do not describe how the donor was incapacitated before procurement, and the data is consistent with multiple plausible scenarios. These range from a bullet to the prisoner's head at an execution site before they are rushed to the hospital, like Tsai's description, or a general anesthetic delivered in the operating room directly before procurement. Paul et al. have previously proposed a hybrid of these scenarios to explain PRC transplant activity: a lethal injection, with execution completed by organ procurement. They write: “in cases in which thiopental's effect is insufficient and organ explantation begins immediately after cardiac arrest, the inmates may suffer from excruciating pain induced by organ explantation surgery, the surgical opening of the abdomen and/or chest.”11 It is also possible that a specialized device was used to inflict brain death in close quarters and thus insulate medical professionals from the process. A patent for a “Primary brainstem injury percussion machine” was held by a former PRC police chief involved in organ transplants.53 The patent description says it was to be used for medium-sized animals. There is no public evidence that it was ever used on humans. Previous anecdotal, eyewitness, and textual evidence is consistent with these accounts—including procurement from donors prior to death,12 and targeted execution procedures intended to forestall cardiac arrest and thus minimize warm ischemic time.

There's a lot of speculation in the paper, and the only thing that I can see is that they can't document brain-death prior to organ harvest in those cases.

Again, I completely believe that execution by organ procurement is a real possibility (China is an asshole), but I don't see this in the meta-analysis here.

You?

@Klaus thanks for catching that. It's been forever since I looked at TMN classification, but your post reminded me that size of tumor can be a determining factor.

Interestingly, the Wiki link makes a >7 cm mass a stage 3.

I wonder whether the doctors were really motivated by considerations of finding the best use for the lungs, or whether things like getting in the news/writing a paper/being the first to do ... also played a role.

@jon-nyc would know more, but it might be that there was not a suitable recipient for this particular set of lungs other than the guy with lung cancer.

Liver transplants are done on patients with hepatomas and other tumors, iirc.

@Axtremus said in Gun Deaths, Sacramento and Dallas:

Shooting in downtown Sacramento, 6 deaths 10 injuries:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article260065985.html

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-05/sacramento-shooting-suspect-got-out-of-prison-early-despite-da-opposition

The man arrested for possessing a machine gun at the scene of Sunday’s deadly shooting in Sacramento was allowed to leave prison in February despite opposition from the county’s district attorney to his early release.
Smiley Martin, 27, was convicted in 2018 and was serving a 10-year sentence for domestic violence and assault when he was released.

He was arrested Tuesday morning at a Sacramento hospital on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of a stolen handgun that was converted to be a fully automatic weapon.

Police said he was injured in a gun battle in downtown Sacramento that broke out about 2 a.m. Sunday outside a series of nightclubs, causing the deaths of six people and injuring 12.

Almost exactly a year ago, Dist. Atty. Anne Marie Schubert’s office opposed Smiley Martin’s release from state prison to the Board of Parole Hearings in a two-page letter, first reported by the Sacramento Bee. The district attorney’s office asked that he not be freed because he is a career criminal and a danger to the community. Schubert released the letter after a records request but would not comment further.

“Inmate Martin has, for his entire adult life, displayed a pattern of criminal behavior,” wrote Deputy Dist. Atty Danielle Abildgaard. “While the current case on review may not be ‘violent’ under the Penal Code, Inmate Martin’s criminal conduct is violent and lengthy.

“Inmate Martin has committed several felony violations and clearly has little regard for human life and the law, which can be shown by his conduct in his prior felony convictions of robbery, possession of a firearm and prior misdemeanor conviction of providing false information to a peace officer.”

The kid in me loves that. The parent in me thinks that is dangerous.