Not too long ago, I learned more about sudoriferous or sudoriparous glands. These are basically our sweat glands, if you’re human. My reading instructed me about the apocrine sweat glands, and eccrine sweat glands. I never gave sweat glands much thought before, but this was related to something I was writing, in a really thin tangenital way. I don’t want to get all pedantic about it because most of your probably already learned these things that I’m just coming upon, but all sweat is not the same. I kind of guessed that from the smell and feel of sweat in my armpits and groin area versus everywhere else there where sweat glands reside. Also, check out how tiny these sweat glands are on this photo of a fingerprint. Pretty amazing, right?
Human sweat gland pores on the ridges of a finger pad
In an aside, it’s good to have the net available to provide this info. I ding the net for not being perfect but it really can be helpful.
At 4:07 AM, the cat announced, “Let’s go!” Yes, he batted and chatted me awake enough to sleep walk to the door and release him back into the wild. He didn’t stay in the wild long. Cold, wind, and hunger drove him back in. “Not that wild, are you?” I asked him. He meowed back.
Thus began Twosda, April 22, 2025, much as many other days begin. Twosda and Thirstdas are the worse for me in this regard. My wife gets up early on Mun-Wen-Fri to attend exercise class. She deals with the cat between 6:30 and 8 AM on those days. But today has Papi testing the limits, in and out. I suspect he has two twins and they’re taking turns at this.
It was 39 F at 4:30 AM. If you trust Alexa. I asked it the temperature after Papi came back in. I was curious because it felt cold to my half-naked body. Like Sun & Mun, today features a clear blue-sky sauce and a glaze of sunshine with a tincture of wind and mild temperatures that lose their punch in the mid to upper sixties.
Trump continues to pile instability on instability, crazy on crazy, losses on losses. Like all great leaders, he sets ridiculous goals using ideologically-driven data, fails to take many details and factors into account, and then pretends it’s going great as everyone else prepares to get out the toilet plunger because this shit is overwhelming the crapper. He is consistently terrible and proud of it. Living in a Teflon-coated bubble, he’ll probably never recognize his insanity and the disastrous, negative impact he delivered to millions of people.
Unless, of course, his secret goal is to completely undermine and destroy the United States. That’s also possible. He could well be in collusion with Russian and oil oligarchs and are busy setting the table up to establish a powerful global cabal. Makes as much sense as any other shit he spreads.
They say that the Roberts Court is finally getting a backbone. “They’ll reign Trump in.” Ha. I think Trump is already smirking at the Roberts Court as he says, “Hold my Big Mac.” Harvard and other universities are suing the Trusk Regime. He doesn’t care. He’s already destabilized and disrupted our education systems and research programs. A third of the national NOAA weather offices have lost their leases. We’ll see what that does to the ability to warn about weather disasters. Then, Trump and Noem have been dismantling FEMA, so when these disaster squat on communities and drop a load, the state and community will struggle to recover and rebuild. Meanwhile, DOGE is raiding personal data and will probably weaponize that on behalf of Russia. He’s truncated international alliances and friendships that effectively worked for over half a century, isolating our nation. Besides all that, he’s been running due process over with a golf court.
And Trump and his supporters think this is just great. Anyway…onward.
When I first heard this Led Zeppelin song when I was thirteen, I thought, holy fucking shit. That was a startling development because I’d never sworn before that. That’s when I took up coffee, too. It all seemed to go together.
The song — “How Many More Times” — is in my morning mental music stream for reasons which The Neurons have sealed. They have better security than Kristi Noem and keep secrets more effectively than Pet (Pete) Hegseth. Not saying much, given how terrible and sloppy the Trump Regime has demonstrated itself to be, outside of the Musk-driven DOGE dogs.
Here is the music. When I listened to it today, my inner thirteen-year-old sat up and said, “Holy fucking shit.” This is a recording of a live show. Anyone familiar with Zep knows it’s gonna be a jam and will vary a bit from what was on the album.
Coffee has again insinuated itself into my body’s systems. I’m prepared to rock another day, at least until nap time later today. Hope your day is as purpose-filled as you need it. Carpe diem. Cheers
My primary time suck comes down to the three Rs: Reading, Riting, and Research.Yes, I spelled writing wrong, dropping the ‘w’. But it’s a silent ‘w’, isn’t it? Does riting sound that different from writing? Does riting sound rong?
Looks weird as hell, I admit.
I could have also just changed the title to The Three Ws, adding a silent ‘w’ to reading and research, creating wreading and wresearch.
I enjoy words. Their histories fascinate me. And I enjoy making things up. That’s why I rite fiction.
I also love reading, or, as some might rite it, wreading. The ‘w’ is silent. I read multiple genres, although I shy away from horror and wromance. Science fiction narrowly leads fantasy and historical fiction, but I enjoy thrillers and mysteries, too. I also enjoy non-fiction about history, economics, politics, quantum mechanics, and time.
Besides wreading and writing, I enjoy wresearch. Wresearch can easily become a time suck. Once upon a time, a show called Connections aired. The British science historian, James Burke, hosted the show. The show explored technological and scientific progress but veered off into tangents and side effects about how such advances were employed, resulting in surprising revealations. That sort of revelatory pingpong the show employed stirred me to continue such wresearch. The Internet is a tremendous catalyst to such wresearch.
My wresearch goes everywhere. Some of it is anchored to childhood memories of sports, politics, historic events, science, and pop culture. I remember things but often want to validate my memory. Verifying that I correctly remember matters causes me to delve deeper into details and background information, and often triggers side journeys into related matters.
When I was employed, my three time sucks secured me solid positions and helped foster my success. Now a retiree, I happily pursue them every day.
We’ll discuss (almost) everything at Mom’s house (the off-limit topics are known by all even though they’ve never been discussed). So it was that we talked about toilet paper. Somehow I ended up telling Mom about the toilet paper caddy that hangs on the cistern’s side at my house so we always have another roll available.
“Doesn’t it get wet when you flush?” Mom asked.
“No.” I was puzzled.
She continued, “When you flush, water, particles, and germs go all over the place.”
“I know,” I answered. “Don’t you close the lid before you flush?”
“No,” she replied.
“Anyway,” I asked, “what’s that have to do with the toilet paper getting wet? With all that stuff flying around, I’d be more worried about what’s going into my mouth and nostrils or coating my skin.” I told her about an article I read about flushing toilets a few months ago and the plume effect. (I was researching, and one thing just led to another.) Those researchers concluded,
The particles primarily traveled upward and backward toward the wall behind the toilet, but some also moved chaotically in other directions. Once airborne, some particles traveled up to the ceiling, then spread out along the wall and into the room, the researchers noted.
Michael Seidel, writer 