oiling door hinges

My superpower!

Okay, not much of one, but pretty useful. I can think of at least 7 doors or gates that I've oiled in the past 3.5 years. Four of them in one house: my door, the bathroom door, the front door, and the door of my host's office (the latter two being near my room and quite audible.)

It still seems like magic. I don't use a WD40 can or anything to squirt oil, I just rub olive canola or vegetable oil over the hinge, maybe trying to push some into the cracks via fingernail. Soon enough, silent operation.

My first use was on bicycle folding baskets, where the concern wasn't noise but folding or unfolding smoothly at all. I didn't think it would work but figured it was worth a shot. It worked.

covid and other crippling diseases

So if you've been paying attention to the reality-based community, you've heard that covid-2019 isn't just a matter of live or die, it can leave you wheezing, missing a sense of smell, with organ or brain damage, and other exciting gifts.

I think of most diseases as "live or die", so this seemed pretty unusual. Almost lends credence to the bioweapon idea: asymptomatic spread, long incubation time, long term effects...

But recently I remember polio, the diseases that left FDR in a wheelchair. So there's precedent.

And I've been reading Kurlansky's Milk, which happened to include these passages:

"Bovine tuberculosis, a disease found in cattle, is transmitted to humans through milk. It attacks the glands, intestines, and bones. Humans who survive the disease often become hunchbacked or deformed in other ways."

"It caused what was called Mediterranean fever, whose symptoms were severe joint pain, sweats and chills, and fevers that lasted as long as six months. On occasion, the symptoms were permanent. The bacterium that caused the disease was named Brucellosis,"

"A similar discovery, bad news for goat’s-milk advocates, was that raw goat’s milk can carry a bacterium called Brucella melitensis, which causes undulant fever, heavy perspiration, and aching joints, a condition that can last for weeks or months."

So not so unusual. Just unusual among First World diseases of recent decades.