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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

It's September, and I have already heard multiple flocks of Canadian geese fly overhead in the past several days. Yet this evening, my wife finally found one of the chrysali in our Bronze Fennel hatching into a Black Swallowtail butterfly. There are 3 more chrysali and 3 caterpillars yet. /1

The first
Black Swallowtail butterfly emerging from it's chrysalis.

The same new butterfly less than ten minutes later, drying out the wings.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Welp, I got through surgery at Penn and was home by late Saturday afternoon. By Monday morning, I was in the local hospital ICU with sepsis and recurrent pneumonia. And the push will be for discharge to a rehab hospital to address the likely reason for the recurrent pneumonia.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

If I seem cranky tonight, wait until a week from now. G'night folks. You too, Em.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Hell, I am old enough to have actually been on a school tour through the factory, smelling cocoa and getting an honest to God Hershey Kiss that had probably rolled off the line within the past 24 hours. Not that bullshit ride you go through now.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Trying to decide if I am going to call out my Mother-in-law after she told my wife that she doesn't like Trump. Really? After voting for him three times and telling me in his first term that "He's my guy!"

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Today's adventure? Seeing "The Odyssey" on IMAX, followed by some utterly banging Kosher Chicken Noodle Soup and a pastrami Sammich (pronounced "sandwich", dammit) because tomorrow is more surgery and I think that we're going to put that whole soup theory to the test. And I bought a shirt.

My wife doesn't appreciate the shirt, despite that it's apparently true.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

I served as a Judge of Elections in PA for several years. Unfortunately, I had to send several college students to their home towns to vote because it's a function of where they were registered.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

In 1966, Time Magazine ran a cover asking "Is God Dead?" Afterwards, the NYT ran a declarative headline stating "God is Dead: the Debate Widens." Now, my wife's Atlantic cover proclaims that "The Age of Reading" is dead. I call bullshit. Apart from my TBR pile (only a few seen here)... /1

The original 1966 Time cover asking if God is dead.

The subsequent NYT 1966 article using the declarative.

My wife's recent Atlantic cover declaring that "The Age of Reading is Dead."

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Here's one of those "who coulda thought this might happen?" downstream effects when the Right Wing conservatives dream of a world in which private enterprises aren't compelled to pay attention to anything but the profit margin... Youngest son is enrolled in a private trade school. /1

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Hell, yeah. I jumped at the chance to buy a Ford Maverick hybrid pick-up.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

A nearby city, York (PA), has an unaffiliated minor league baseball team in the Atlantic League. They forfeited their Pride Night game because multiple players refused to wear Pride jerseys. /1

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

As I deal with *gestures everywhere*, I am slowly proceeding with the Affairs in Order list...and reading. Just finished "The Admirals" and will shortly start "Lonesome Dove". But it just feels...strange.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Youngest son moved to Philly and spent time at a neighborhood bar, two blocks from a Nazi bar. The bouncer and bartender confirmed that if they hadn't shut a guy or two down early, they would have become the Nazi bar.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Another stray is about to become a member of the household within the next month. She listens for my wife and immediately joins her on the porch because "treats" doanchaknow. And we just discovered that the evening kibble left for her is being eaten by a neighborhood fox.

The new stray inspecting resident female, Tillie. Or being inspected by.

Who knows.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Kinda expect that other chokepoint nations will have "fees". If they develop a maritime Speedpass/EZ Pass system, will ships need separate devices for each, or one Speedpass to rule them all?

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

And remember, kids... If you buy a Long Term Care policy in 1999, make sure that you always know where it is. (I did).

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Y'know, this pancreatic cancer treatment regimen is radically different from the lymphoma treatments of 1987. 1987 was an old school curb-stomping of my body. 2025-26 is literally death by a thousand cuts. Just one damned thing after another, all somehow related like a Faulknerian family. /1

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

Didn't know that Dana White could officiate weddings, but stranger things happen. But I do appreciate the intensity of their shared gaze into one another's souls. Kinda like me and a cream filled glazed donut.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Welp, importing millions of eggs from overseas didn't hurt.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

When I first went to the Cancer Center in November, my first encounter was with a financial counselor. Not a nurse or a patient advocate. I was, and still am, livid.

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Reposted by The Pop

Richard Ferro, MD MSc @richferro.com · 30/05/2026

Saw a patient in urgent care last night who was sobbing because she’d recently learned she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer, and now she was struggling to afford the treatment. We need Medicare for All.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Foreign travelers aren't stupid. Do you honestly think that more than a few won't just not bother coming? They aren't going to fly to Atlanta, DFW, Orlando just to spend more money getting where they need to go? Honestly, fuck the red state and their antebellum overseers.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Especially when one damned thing leads to another. But today, I proved to the local ER that as the late Jean Shepherd (A Christmas Story) once wrote "...he was an artist, and profanity was his medium." Fucking hell, that hurt. This is the product of a reader whose father was an old army DI.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

75% of the parenting of adult kids is simply listening, asking questions and reinforcing that you're proud of them and yeah, they got this.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Right wing "talent" has been taken from modeling agencies (Presler, Owens, Boebert, etc). Given the paucity of details about shooters, where are they these people from?

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

And oh, yeah, auditory hallucinations are a whole thang by themselves. Woke up this weekend with a huge brass fanfare ringing in my ears, like the final overture lines of an early 1950s Broadway production starring Ethel Merman. Thanks, side-effects. Woot.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Kinda fun to sit with one medical specialty and hear them throw shade on another, describing another specialty as "plumbers." Not because they aren't good plumbers, but they don't provide any meaningful aftercare. Take their billable shtick and run.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

I am not following NYT routinely but this came across another site. This is only an example of what Congress' abdication of Article 1 has allowed. The spending with the "budgeted" set by omnibus bills has become a slush fund. The US Government is a slush fund. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | Here Are 1.5 Trillion Reasons Not to Trust Pete Hegseth’s Budget

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

So here's the question for #cancers. How far should one go in planning their own memorial service? Yeah, it's 2 AM and I haven't slept since before this morning's failed procedure. I have had only one meal since and am NPO since midnight until after I return from the upcoming next try at 1 PM /1

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

My wife and I have narrowed our food sources ti support local businesses. A summer farmer's stand that prices his food below everyone else and makes up for it in volume. A local orchard. A local grocery. The orchard just lost it's entire crop in a late April freeze. It might not even survive.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Realistic take is this view of the GOP. All non-GOP voters count as 3/5 of a person because it's in the Constitution. All of the ralk about the need for voter turnout is an unconsidered, but very real acknowledgement of that reality. Chew on that.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Living with cancer is a negotiation. A negotiation between what you want - and plan - to do, and what actually happens.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Remember, for Asshat! brand Ivermectin, we don't need no steenking counters. Hell, just chuck us a Twenty from your car and we'll toss you some Asshat! For a Fifty, we'll include packaging!

As Hantavirus ramps up, so is the interest in Ivermectin.

Asshat!

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Asshat brand Ivermectin will cut her price in half!

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

How do I support small business while having pancreatic cancer? When the GI tract misbehaves while a way from home, I always look for corporate retail instead of small business. Because I do give a shit. Today...Starbucks.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Yep. But re-packaging exercise and diet make it way more palatable to many. Also, way more profitable. BTW, my own branded Ivermectin ("Asshat!") will soon be available to prevent and cure Hantavirus. (If you spell it as Hauntavirus, I also sells "Asshat!" brand Ouija Boards).

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Guess that I'll have to re-stock the Ivermectin, what with this "Haunta-virus" thing starting. Should I get a cat, or a Ouija Board as well?

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Ya know, this works for me. (The Marine Band being drowned out by thousands of boomers boxes blaring EW&F "Celebrate").

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

I kinda wonder why he needs a ball room when he's in adult diapers. They've gotta be really constricting. I mean, they're pointless otherwise, amirite?

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Back during the 2008 Crisis period, some economists were pitching that spending was preferred and saving money was just "hoarding cash."

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

My wife commented the other evening that during her most recent foray, there was only one open register and a long line. And yet, Walmart is phasing out self-checkout at 650 stores. There's a reason you can't pump your own gas in NJ, and Walmart is picking up on it.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

Hey @jesseduquette.bsky.social ... I discovered last Fall that a local pharmacy here in beet-red Pennsyltucky also sells firearms at their store. Nope, I didn't use that one. Great cartoon though.

Excellent cartoon. Unfortunately, it's not so utterly outlandish because there's a local PA pharmacy which sells firearms at its location.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Went to a minor league game tonight, first as a season ticket holder. Decent seats by main concourse so minimal steps, and under the upper level in case of rain. Damned shame that the home team batters treated visiting pitchers like newborn baby seals. Three pitchers in one inning. /1

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Fucking hell. Just...fucking hell.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

We've shared with our adult kids that this cancer is not surgically "curable" for me, and that everything now is about containment. We buy time. But what to do with that time? The necessities... 1. Do large household jobs now before my condition becomes an impediment. /1

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

This farm stand attracts customers, many older, from multiple states. For this farmer, it's also a ministry (in the best sense). I want to see his prices in 4 months.

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Better Half recently helped interview a Nurse Practitioner. The NP showed up at the interview with her original copy of the book and asked her afterwards to autograph it. Two yrs ago, a nurse recognized her as the hospice doctor who cared for both her parents a quarter century ago. Be the impact

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Once went to a restaurant and overheard someone ask the waiter, "how's the chicken?" The response: "dead."

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Went to the season opener of our local minor league team. The opposing pitcher was Cy Young winner (2020) Trevor Bauer, who has had *ahem* multiple personal issues that led him to playing overseas after a lengthy MLB suspension. A no-hitter. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_...

him.to

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The Pop @familinomics.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

This kid spent several years subsequently doing film production on crew. He once literally broke his face doing something stupid and sent photos to a friend who does make-up. She uses that photo for a guide on re-creating facial injuries.

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