> I have only one unpleasant memory of the summer holidays in
Norway. We were in the grandparents’ house in Oslo and my mother
said to me, “We are going to the doctor this afternoon. He wants to
look at your nose and mouth.”
> I think I was eight at the time. “What’s wrong with my nose and
mouth?” I asked.
“Nothing much,” my mother said. “But I think you’ve got
adenoids.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “It’s nothing.”
I held my mother’s hand as we walked to the doctor’s house. It
took us about half an hour. There was a kind of dentist’s chair in the
surgery and I was lifted into it. The doctor had a round mirror
strapped to his forehead and he peered up my nose and into my
mouth. He then took my mother aside and they held a whispered
conversation. I saw my mother looking rather grim, but she nodded.
> The doctor now put some water to boil in an aluminum mug over
a gas flame, and into the boiling water he placed a long thin shiny
steel instrument. I sat there watching the steam coming off the boiling
water. I was not in the least apprehensive. I was too young to realize
that something out of the ordinary was going to happen.
Then a nurse dressed in white came in. She was carrying a red rubber
apron and a curved white enamel bowl. She put the apron over the
front of my body and tied it around my neck. It was far too big. Then
she held the enamel bowl under my chin. The curve of the bowl fitted
perfectly against the curve of my chest.
The doctor was bending over me. In his hand he held that long
shiny steel instrument. He held it right in front of my face, and to this
day I can still describe it perfectly. It was about the thickness and
length of a pencil, and like most pencils it had a lot of sides to it.
Towards the end, the metal became much thinner, and at the very end
of the thin bit of metal there was a tiny blade set at an angle. The
blade wasn’t more than a centimeter long, very small, very sharp and
very shiny.
> “Open your mouth,” the doctor said, speaking Norwegian.
I refused. I thought he was going to do something to my teeth,
and everything anyone had ever done to my teeth had been painful.
“It won’t take two seconds,” the doctor said. He spoke gently,
and I was seduced by his voice. Like an ass, I opened my mouth.
The tiny blade flashed in the bright light and disappeared into
my mouth. It went high up into the roof of my mouth. It went high up
into the roof of my mouth, and the hand that held the blade gave four
or five very quick little twists and the next moment, out of my mouth
into the basin came tumbling a whole mass of flesh and blood.
I was too shocked and outraged to do anything but yelp. I was
horrified by the huge red lumps that had fallen out of my mouth into
the white basin and my first thought was that the doctor had cut out
the whole of the middle of my head.
>“Those were your adenoids,” I heard the doctor saying.
> ...
> That was in 1924, and taking out a child’s adenoids, and often
the tonsils as well, without any anesthetic was common practice in
those days.
That search engine is like a gold mine! I searched for "black people love us" in DDG and it was the first result, followed by an article written this year explaining how it came about and .. the web felt like such a smaller place back in 2002 and I just don't remember this at all.
Which makes me wonder about how newspapers and free to air tv kept the culture pretty shallow before exploding with the internet and now, possibly contracting again as our filter bubbles shrink? Just an errant though.
But so much novelty and interesting stuff at wiby.me - search for 'trump' and the first result is just surreal.
> I'm honestly puzzled as to why so many people seem to be actually offended by the very fact that I'm asking the question
Comment quality and civility has dropped in the last few months.
I don't use or even like Atom but if this natfriedman says it will be continue to be supported post-merger, then it isn't, then he needs to clear the air.
If you're a fan of the Model M then you must know about Unicomp[1]
ergodox that usually put out a split ergonomic keyboard have recently released a cut down keyboard called the Planck that might interest you[2]. But to go from a gigantic beast of a keyboard to such a wee thing might be daunting.
The /r/mechanicalkeyboards dwellers might be able to help you out as well[3] as well as the mechanicalkeyboards website[4]
FWIW I happily used a Filco Majestouch for years before switching to an 'ergonomic' keyboard (ergodox). The Microsoft Ergo Sculpt is really good for me as well, I still use it on my secondary desktop.
Still got my HP TouchPad, still works, mail app is quite superior. Screen is starting to go and casing is getting a little cracked in places but I just love the UI
I just realised last weekend was the fourth weekend without toilet paper on the shelves in my local supermarket. I'm sure they're getting it in, it's just never there when I go to (quickly, furtively) shop on weekends.
I bought a device with the express purpose of installing Lineage OS and not having to worry about it for the next ~5 years. Less than four months later support was removed.