A fair amount of pharmaceutical research happens through the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which shares the results with all--including pharm companies--for free. Which I'm fine with, but if you're a US citizen, there's a non-zero chance you've paid for some of your medication's research costs through your tax dollars. Depending on the issue being treated, you may also have given money to charities that support research. So some lucky ducks pay for their meds three times.

The latest Miss Fisher's Murder Mystery had a funnel web spider as the murder weapon. And Phrynne is desperately afraid of spiders. Jack was very cruel to her about that.

I think that's kind of awesome. Isn't it set in Melbourne? Because the first reason I'd be choosing a spider as my murder weapon - well, is because they're awesome, but the second reason is to make it look like an accident. And if you have a funnelweb in Melbourne, then clearly it was premeditated.

Tell me they had a scene where the killer was getting roughed up by the other prisoners for thinking "our Melbourne spiders not good enough for you, is that it?".

"I'm 57, I don't know this computer stuff." If he annoys me any further, I think I'll say "I'm 55, and I fix this computer stuff."

When I was at Best Buy people would say "oh it's like your younger generation, I didn't grow up with computers. Nobody in my generation did anything wtih computers." And you never ask age but I'd work in that I was 40.

And then I also would point out that people who built the computer technology we are using now are probably in their generation.

Sometimes it helped and sometimes it didn't.

And if you have a funnelweb in Melbourne, then clearly it was premeditated.

The spider was explicitly identified by the coroner as a Sydney funnelweb, and everyone went "Yup, murder." Later, Phrynne finds another scary looking spider in her room, but it's pointed out that it's "just" a trapdoor spider. She's not impressed.

Yeah, I kind of feel like if you're 90 and retired in 1991, maybe you never had to do much with computers. But even then, my dad was having to use one at work (even if he likely was just word processing. He did not have any sort of tech job). So...if you have been in the workforce at all in the past 25 years, you've had to use a computer, especially if you have a white collar type job. You may not be great with them, but you really can't be like "oh, I just don't get them I'm too old" if you're 60. That means you have been working with a computer since you were 35. Please.

I'm not seeing so much billowing smoke, so maybe it is out. I would like a reassuring notice from the city, though.

Please.

At least it's been a long time since I had anyone try "Oh, I'm just a woman, I don't know these things." Really. Probably about 15 years ago. I said, very flatly, "I'm a woman," which more people didn't realize back then. She said "Oh" very quietly and stopped trying to justify why she didn't know what was going on.

Yipes -t, I hope you get the all clear soon. I remember when there was a big fire in Irvine when I lived there and we had to watch the approaching fire line and decide if we wanted to stay put or head out. Ultimately we decided to go up to my folks house for the night just to get a good night's sleep.

Thanks, Burrell. Never did get any notification, couldn't even find a tweet, but I am pretty sure it's out now. That was a fuckload of smoke for a while, there, but that's clearing up.

I started to get disgusted by suspicious little black dots all over my new ceramic pan until I recalled that I heated up some everything bagels in it Sunday.