CBD Research

Years ago, Katie was trying to come up with recommendations to help fix T's sleep schedule as well as deal with her anxiety and chronic pain, and was enthusiastic about a "CBD" sleep gummie. She was confident that it was better than other OTC sleep aids. I did some research because I was interested to find out if there had been any investigation of whether CBD was safe for kids. But what was funny was that the gummies that Katie thought were safe for kids because they were "non-prescription" in fact simply had a bunch of melatonin.

Here is a fairly stuffy report on CBD by the Mayo Clinic that just covers the basics without a lot of additional info: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/expert-answers/is-cbd-safe-and-effective/faq-20446700

Not sure if this site is MSM or a cleverly disguised alternate health promoter. The big takeaway from this site are a list of things it seems to be good at treating, and mention that any treatment mechanism is not actuallly known: https://www.verywellhealth.com/cbd-oil-benefits-uses-side-effects-4174562

This article claims to be a roundup of "evidenced-backed" health effects and also side effects: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/cbd-oil-benefits?c=206704570355

This "Harvard" article promises to explain "what we know and what we don't." But it's from 2018 back before legalization. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/cannabidiol-cbd-what-we-know-and-what-we-dont-2018082414476

A compelling lead line from this NYT (i.e. paywalled) articles asks "Does it help?": https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/style/self-care/cbd-oil-benefits.html

Sticker Club

Just to save some links from my research, some links about the curse of Sticker Club. This is an insideous attempt to use children as an excuse for chain letters. Who thinks chain letters would be a good idea? It would be all in fun except that the text of the letter is so shitty. We got this from treasured friends, but I was so temptmpted to alter the letter befor forwarding it that we never finished the project. I hope that N's friend at least got some stickers from more compentent parents.

I think this is a reprint of the article from a parent whose sympathetic atitude for the sticker club dilema convinced me to give it a try. https://indyschild.com/the-first-rule-of-sticker-club/

This is the now-dead link to the original artilce, I think: https://www.npnparents.org/posts/36,1st-rule-of-sticker-club-smile-just-do-it

Rachel Ray of all people is promoting this abomination. This is probably something that helped this take off: https://rachaelray.com/blogs/news/the-sticker-club

Another parent who hated this as much as I did: https://mumturnedmom.com/2014/03/26/welcome-to-sticker-club/

And finally another resistor: https://community.babycenter.com/post/a76223195/i-thought-i-was-done-with-chain-letters-in-1989

The google search turned up all kinds of variations in the letters which seemed to hint at the trail that this fad evolved through. I was looking for a nicer version of the letter and where it went so toxic.

Can I contribute to a 401k and an IRA?

Short answer: No because my 401k contributions are high enough that it wipes out any headroom for tax-deductable IRA contributions. Slightly longer answer but you can still do Roth (pfft!). Some links:

This is a basic regurgitation of the rules, which admittedly are complex enough to require a review. https://www.personalcapital.com/blog/retirement-planning/can-contribute-401k-ira/

This article explains a little bit better what's hinted in the first article, namely that you can contribute to a traditional IRA up to the limit, just won't get the tax deduction, and that you have more personal freedom to chose the investments with IRAs. Also give some examples that point out when being in a lower tax bracket helps on either end.https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/07/401(k)_ira.asp

HSA forms

This horribly formatted link is to an explainer page by an HSA-specialized bank for what all the tax forms are that are associated with HSAs. Accessed via a google search when I was working on the 2020 taxes.

Low-dose naltrexone

LDN is an alternative medicine idea for chronic inflamation. We tried it, it didn't seem to have an effect. Looks great on paper though. Here are a couple of links from typing what is low dose latrexone into Google:

A high-level explainer. From "The LDN Research Trust" so a bit biased: https://ldnresearchtrust.org/what-is-low-dose-naltrexone-ldn

A paper published on the NIH website, so somebody respectable seems to have taken a look into it (discaimer: no real clinical tests done yet): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3962576/

Inflatable Pools

Some links from a research on large inflatable pools:

A nice pictorial summary of some different inflatable pool products "for adults": https://www.pinterest.com/pin/464011567839765743/

The main thing I learned was to search for brand H2OGO on eBay. Interestingly this search no longer produces links for the big deep rectangular one that we got; everything is back to normal now and inflatable pools are for kids again: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=h2ogo+pool&_sacat=0&rt=nc&LH_PrefLoc=1

It seems that Amazon no longer sells the big hexagon pool that was available in 2020 either: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=h2ogo+hexagon+family+pool&crid=1IHGRFU4F6Y6O&sprefix=h2o+go+hexagon%2Caps%2C183

Parental controls for a chromebook

I swear that I wrote up a gigantic post about attempting to lock down a chromebook but I can't find all that stuff I wrote. Maybe it was in text only and I never uploaded it. Bottom line, there are only two things you can do. First of all, there is only one single parental control product for chromebook, Mobicip. Mobicip has a lot of good features; it monitors websurfing and makes reports, and has some remote locking capability. But oddly access to the app store is completely unrestricted and can't be turned off. The other option, which I had to go with is to install FamilyLink, which did everything I wanted but is such a beast to install and has some things which are too tightly controlled (only YouTubeKids allowed for example).

Mobicip: https://www.mobicip.com/

Online education

Looking for alternatives to in-person school for a kid (gee I wonder why), there were some nice options but they all required some self-motivation to use which sadly was not present. These are some of my favorites of the ones recommended to me:

Elephango, a membership service that looks really friendly, broad, and deep. Pricey though. https://elephango.com/

Codemonkey, a great top-down approach to teaching coding basics and mindsets and then languages. Requires a student who doesn't have to be dragged through learning things though. https://www.codemonkey.com/

Khan Academy, a lot of peoples' go-to for math, they do organize their curiculum very well but barely seem to have more than a few examples for each subject. They do have other subjets also, but mostly everyone cares about the math. One video per lesson so if you don't get it and you aren't capable of looking up alternative lessons on a topic yourself you're stuck. http://www.khanacademy.org/

Setting up a Kindle account for a kid

I was trying to set it up so my kid could order kindle books using amazon gift cards. Bottom line, at least in 2019, was that there was no way to do this. The only way to order kindle books was with 1-touch, which required a linked credit card. The system that I finally had to use was to send books to her account as gifts, and do the ordering myself. Also she didn't figure out how to use email until a couple of years later, so her account is linked to one of my own emails which meant that I was sending the books to myself, opening the gift email myself and accepting it so that it would go to her device. Here is the trace of the research that I did on this problem two years ago.

This thread seems to indicate that it is possible to use a gift card to buy a kindle book, but the account still has to have a linked credit card which was a non-starter for my case: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116313

This YouTube vide seems to rely on some sort of glitch when setting up 1-click purchases and it didn't work for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVA5d9-jXeg

There are a lot of hits for my question. The answers from 2010 don't seem to apply any more. There were other variations on the theme of the youtube video which was "set up 1-click but don't actually enter a credit card" so there must be something to it. https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+kindle+no+credit+card&oq=amazon+kindle+no+credit+card

Lastly, because it's not at all clear how to send a kindle purchase as a gift, here's a page showing what it looks like to do it, followed by a sneaky advertisement for DRM removal software: https://www.epubor.com/how-to-gift-kindle-books.html

Python-docx

The amount that I have learned about they python-docx library could fill a book. Fortunately all of that information is still online where I originally found it. For the purposes of closing tabs, here are some selected lessons and links:

In word tables, to set cell sizes and other cell properties it isn't really set up to do it like a person would and set properties by row or column. Most properties are set at the individual cell number, but it's a computer, make it iterate through all the cells in a row and column to get the desired look. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43051462/python-docx-how-to-set-cell-width-in-tables

Here's the online python-docx docs page about tables. Doesn't fully illuminate the ideosyncracies, mostly a general explainer on how docx is xml and what tables look like in this particular xml. Apparently there are only two table-wide properties, because everything else is cell properties. The table-wide properties are alignment and fixed-width vs auto-width columns: https://python-docx.readthedocs.io/en/latest/dev/analysis/features/table/table-props.html

WFIRST Primer

A great article by Doug Messier explaining how WFIRST will work: http://parabolicarc.com/2020/05/06/a-tale-of-two-telescopes-wfirst-and-hubble/

Minus Sign/En Dash

Partly due to my timesheet program not accepting a dash as a minus sign, I ended up researching all kinds of interesting information about minus signs, em-dashes, and typography in gherneral.

This page does a wonderful job explaining the differences between the different minus signs and their names, and even shows what they look like in regular print. https://jakubmarian.com/hyphen-minus-en-dash-and-em-dash-difference-and-usage-in-english/

A great discussion about this that includes not only the coding perspective but an answer that shows it from a typesetting perspecitve. Surprsingly, the different dashes have different heights! https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/68674/what-s-the-right-character-for-a-minus-sign

Hunter x Hunter 1999

I have spent way too long watching episodes of and reading about Hunter x Hunter. Of the two Anime versions, the 1999 one seems to be canonical as far as I'm concerned, except that it doesn't have any of the story from the Magna that was written after 1999, arguably the defining arcs of the series, and has wacky "filler" episodes that invent whole stories not in the original magn. Aside from the "Beetle 7" phones, most of the character design and story changes made in the 2007 series are embarassing, although overall the consistency of both series to the magna is surprisingly high. Here are some links:

The list of 1999 episodes: https://hunterxhunter.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Episodes_(1999_series)

The Boston Massacre

Thanks to T studying the Boston Massacre in her history class, I ended up doing a deep dive of my own. This is a placeholder for some of the links that I found but later lost. Among the many interesting details I learned were that 8 soldiers involved in the incident were arrested, which must have been an astonishing assertion of civilian authority over a soveriegn military at the time, that John Adams was the defendant's lawyer at the trial and his defense is fascinatingly disgusting, only two were convicted and their punishment was hand branding, and Paul Revere published the famous engraving which he totally stole from somebody else. A public letter from the commander of the soldiers was published with their side of the story; it is as equally biased as "Patriot" reporting and T had to read it in her class. T was also greatly amused by the detail of a random dog in the engraving.

For starters, the wikipedia article on the Massacre, which pretty much has all of this info but for how long: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Massacre

McDonald's All-Day Breakfast

It wasn't until October 2021 that I began to notice that the all-day breakfast had disappeared from the menu at my local McDonaldses. This apparently happened more than a year ago. Googling, I found news items about its discontinuation when it originally ocurred, and several news items indicating that it was about to restart. However as far as I can tell it never came back in my area.

Here is a corporate news release promising a restart in October 2021. None of my local stores had even heard that this was a thing however. https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/en-us/our-stories/article/ourstories.all_day_breakfast.html

L-glutamine for biofilms

One of T's diagnoses was "Platelet Aggregates", for which she as assigned L-glutamine "from Amazon" and Baby Asprin. It is hard to find cooborating information for this diagnosis. The test that this diagnosis is based one was a Brightfield Microscopy Blood Smear Imaging. Brightfield seems to be a fancy term for optical backlit microscopy, distinguished from Darkfield Microscopy which is microscopy lit from above, which seems to be mostly used to highlight surface features of structures being observed (in our case blood cells).

Information and diagrams for a Brightfield microscope. Looks super standard: https://microbenotes.com/brightfield-microscope/

This collection of articles demonstrates just how far this simple practice can be used in complex diagnosis: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/bright-field-microscopy

This skepticism article is mostly directed at diagnoses made using darkfield microscopy, helping explain the difference, but is generally interesting: https://www.microscopemaster.com/blood-microscopy.html

The test was performed by TLab, which has an unexpectedly small web footprint and seems to do tests not duplicated by anyone else (a poor sign), but their two "products" seem to be non-magical microscopy:

TLab's site, as far as I can tell: https://www.tlabdx.com/

The features supposedly revealed by the brightfield microscopy were "Biofilms" with the description "Paltelet Aggregates, Amorphous Aggregates" and Neutrophil Degranulation. Neutrophil Degranulation is interesting in that it seems to be a standard immune response to infection. This could be an indication of autoimmune response but I haven't found actual links for this supposition yet. In general, Neutrophil Degranulation seems like such a normal process that its indication seems meaningless.

Here is Wikipedia's fascinating general explanation of Neutrophils: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrophil

This explanation of degranulation does link it with Cytokites, but in general this seems to describe the natural immune system functionality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degranulation

This fascinating article appears to have little to do with the general explanation of Neutrophil Degranulation associated with it in Google, which states "Neutrophil degranulation a process in which neutrophil cytoplasmic granules are mobilized to fuse with the cell membrane or phagosomal membrane, resulting in the exocytosis of soluble granule proteins or exposure of membrane granule proteins at the cell surface.": https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1471490619300067#:~:text=Neutrophil%20degranulation%20a%20process%20in%20which%20neutrophil%20cytoplasmic,of%20membrane%20granule%20proteins%20at%20the%20cell%20surface.

Again another really interesting article from a Google summary which reads "In response to infection, neutrophils leave the circulation and migrate towards the inflammatory focus. They contain several subsets of granules that are mobilized to fuse with the cell membrane or phagosomal membrane, resulting in the exocytosis or exposure of membrane proteins.": https://reactome.org/content/detail/R-HSA-6798695

Ok, this article at least shows that somebody is researching a link between neutrophil degranulation and chronic infammitory diseases, but on the other hand it also seems to indicate that the process is complex and poorly understood: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26579547/

"Biofilms" turns out to be a word with a basic meaning of apparently any kind of bacterial aggregation. One of the significances of biofilms is in how they can accidentally contaminate other test results. Another significance is in simply understanding how bacterial infections can form and spread. Biofilms also seem important for cultivation of desirable bacteria.

Most illustrations of biofilms contain diagrams similar to this article, which shows the stages of biofilms in order to identify a variety of disruptors of each stage: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7045314/

It is clear that I have a lot to learn before understanding this article, but it is interesting in that it happens to identify glutamine as necessary for biofilm growth: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-25401-z

Which is also what this figure is supposed to indicate; https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Glutamate-and-glutamine-are-essential-for-biofilm-formation-A-Biofilm-quantification_fig4_325012642

Here is a folksy guide to supplements that says a lot of what's in the first article without the diagrams: https://selfhacked.com/blog/44-science-backed-ways-to-inhibit-biofilms-naturally-with-references/

Probiotics, Crons Disease, Biofilms, this too-good-to-be-true "alert" has it all: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/631373

So how is L-glutamine a treatment for biofilms, or even platelet aggregates? At this point I don't get the link. The top hits for L-glutamine and the claims for the supplements all seem to tout its effect in building up probiotic bacteria or treating leaky gut syndrome. Both of which are desirable but seemingly unrelated to the link that we were given between the test results and the prescription.

L-Gluamine and Glutamine? No diff according to this article, which hints at its uses for improving immune response, gut health, and says that it's an essential ammino acid and found in all kinds of foods: https://www.trueprotein.com.au/blogs/nutrition/a-quick-guide-to-glutamine

This pretty basic summary seems really focused on Glutamine for intestinal health: https://www.uofmhealth.org/health-library/d07315a1

Medical News Today, sounds legit right? This covers a lot of the infomation seen everywhere else about Glutamine including its potentially magical relief for IBS, but interestingly cautions against Gluamine if you have Reyes Syndrom, "a swelling of the brain". Also mentions the info I've seen elsewhere how it is like food for cancer cells: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320850#other-supplements

Biaxin for Bartonella

Is Biaxin the best prescription for Bartonella?

The generic name for Biaxin is Clarithromycin: https://www.drugs.com/biaxin.html#:~:text=Biaxin%20XL%20Generic%20name%3A%20clarithromycin%20%28kla%20RITH,roe%20MYE%20sin%29%20Brand%20name%3A%20Biaxin%20XL

Clarithromycin appears in several lists of treatments for Bartonella, but not usually at the top:

https://www.treatlyme.net/guide/kills-bartonella-a-brief-guide https://www.townsendletter.com/July2015/bartonellosis0715_3.html

There are many stories of combining biaxin with a companion drug:

https://www.treatlyme.net/guide/kills-bartonella-a-brief-guide

This discussion includes amoxicillin, plaquinel, Rifampin or Rifabutin: https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=4017465

There are a lot of stories of terrifying reactions to treating Bartonella.

This person reports fatigue and depression: https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=1260105

One of my previous links brings up the term 'herxing', which is a reference to the Jarisch–Herxheimer reaction.

This has a picture of a hives-like reaction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarisch%E2%80%93Herxheimer_reaction

This has some info but seems to mostly be trying to sell an idiotic looking product: https://naturallyunbridled.com/articles/herxing-what-is-it-and-what-can-you-do-about-it/

This has a lot of useful details and timelines. The peak is 4 weeks in? https://www.lymedisease.org/lymesci-herxing/

Jayco Flight SLX 7 ball size and height

It is surpisingly difficult to find information online about the ball size and height for the Jayco Flight 7' wide trailer series. The manual from Jayco is absurdly general, and while ball size and height are specified on Jayco's website for some trailer years it wasn't specified for 2020 models for some reason. Basically most answers involve looking at the tag on the tounge of the trailer to find out, but since I can't do that yet until I pick up the trailer the other option calling the company to find out (although some people have reported not getting a good answer from doing that either). It also doesn't help that most people online are looking for info about the Jayco 8' wide trailers, which seem like they may have a different ball size. It appears as though there are only three standard ball sizes, 1-7/8", 2", and 2-5/8". It looks like the 8' trailers use the 2-5/8" ball, while the 7' trailers may use the 2" ball.

This expert at e-trailer points out that convertable balls are a purchasable product that can be made to do any of the sizes: https://www.etrailer.com/question-335215.html

This is a question from somebody who has an SLX 195 which is probably a 8' trailer. However his question includes the tidbit that his coupler height is 18.5" which I think I've seen elsewhere. That's a pretty high height considering that my hitch height is 11" for the Sienna! The answer to this question is notable because it contains links to info about all kinds of other things that I've never heard of before, like a trailer weight tester and a weight distribution shank. https://www.etrailer.com/question-523734.html

Here's my 174BH on a different website that at least has the courtesy to specify the ball size. This has it at 2". Also this page has the best pictures I've ever encountered of this model: https://rv.ruckify.com/2019-JAYCO-JAYFLIGHT-SLX-174BH/

New Zealand Ancient Continent

An interesting article about geology research into an ancient continent with an improbable mythology:

https://www.microsoftnewskids.com/en-us/kids/science-tech/chunk-of-an-ancient-supercontinent-discovered-under-new-zealand/ar-AAMsUYt?ocid=msedgntp

Flying Tigers 923

For such a dramatic accident and rescue, this incident is underreported. But there is a survivor's site gathering information and a new book about to be out.

Here is an excerpt from the new book maybe: https://www.microsoftnewskids.com/en-us/kids/people-places/the-true-story-of-the-miracle-pilot-and-his-120-mph-water-landing/ar-AAMvCqv?ocid=msedgntp

Here is the site with an endless scroll of information: https://flyingtiger923.com/