Archive for the ‘Urine’ Category

Obit watch: May 22, 2026.

Friday, May 22nd, 2026

The archiving service I use has been having problems for the past few days, and I’m running low on NYT share links.

Kyle Busch. ESPN. Oddly, I don’t see any coverage of this in the NYT: it looks like they’ve shuffled off the coverage to their sports vertical, “The Athletic”, which they make you pay extra to read.

41 seems awfully young these days.

Edited to add: Shortly after this went up, the NYT posted an actual obit in the obituary section. I apologize that this is paywalled, but, as I said earlier, archive.is is having problems and I only have three share links left until June 1. (No, they don’t roll over from month to month. I wish.)

Kirk Foyle. He was a local man: Tuesday night, he was eating on the patio at Green Mesquite (one of our local barbecue restaurants), when a tree fell on him. He died from his injuries the next day.

Tomorrow is promised to nobody, whether you’re a NASCAR driver or a barbecue eater. Be prepared.

Sam Sianis. He owned and ran the Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago, also known as the “Cheezborger cheezborger cheezborger cheeps cheeps Pepsi!” place from SNL. (Though my understanding is that sketch was also heavily influenced by the Belushi family, who were in the restaurant business as well.)

The Billy Goat Tavern is also famous for triggering Cubs fans.

Mr. Sianis’s uncle Billy bought the bar — which was originally across from Chicago Stadium (now United Center) and called the Lincoln Tavern — in 1934. After a goat wandered in the door, he renamed the bar the Billy Goat and adopted the animal as a pet.
The goat, called Murphy, became something of a celebrity himself. In 1945, the elder Mr. Sianis brought him to Game 4 of the World Series, between the Cubs and the Detroit Tigers, at Wrigley Field.
It began to rain. Murphy began to stink. The Cubs’ owner, Philip K. Wrigley, kicked them out.
As he was leaving, Billy Sianis put a curse on the team, vowing that it would never win a championship. When the Cubs lost the Series that year, he sent a note to Mr. Wrigley: “Now who stinks!”

…

In 1984, when the Cubs were contesting the National League championship, the team relented and allowed Mr. Sianis bring a goat onto the field.
But the Cubs did not win a World Series until 2016.
Watching the tiebreaking seventh game that year from the tavern, Mr. Sianis banished the curse by ringing the bell that had been worn by Murphy in 1945. The current goat stood beside him, looking as nervous as the rest of the crowd. Then it urinated on the floor. Mr. Sianis led it away.
“Don’t touch the goat,” one fan said, according to The Financial Times. “It’s bad luck.”

“Then it urinated on the floor.” I cannot tell a lie: one of the reasons I enjoy NYT obits so much is the telling details.

Posted in 1970s, Food, Goats, Mammals, Obits, Sports, TV, Urine | No Comments »

“Toilets, toilets, toilets.”©

Thursday, December 4th, 2025

© Steve Ballmer, 2024.

One of my cow orkers sent me a link to a TechCrunch story (by way of Slashdot). I don’t think the actual TechCruch story is all that interesting: does the Kohler Dekoda actually use end-to-end encryption or not? The story is based on this blog post by Simon Fondrie-Teitler, a security researcher, and the answer seems to be “no”, at least in the way end-to-end encryption is defined:

However, responses from the company make it clear that—contrary to common understanding of the term—Kohler is able to access data collected by the device and associated application. Additionally, the company states that the data collected by the device and app may be used to train AI models.

What I think is more interesting is what the Kohler Dekoda actually is. Kohler, as you know, Bob, is a large plumbing and fixtures company.

The Kohler Dekoda is a camera.

It attaches to your toilet.

Dekoda uses science now available for the first time at home to analyze your urine. It evaluates hydration levels and alerts you to changes in real time.

Dekoda’s advanced sensors analyze your waste. It passively tracks the frequency, consistency, and shape, then decodes that data into practical insights you can use to create habits for a healthy gut.

Yeah. So what it’s doing is taking pictures of your bodily waste, “analyzing” them, and sending you reports on your health.

“01. Download the Kohler Health app

Install the Kohler Health app. Then create your profile where your scores, health & wellness data, and trends are updated after every bathroom visit.”

Of course it needs an app.

02. Install Dekoda

Attach the Dekoda to the inner rim of your toilet. Dekoda is designed to fit most toilet bowls thanks to its innovative clamp. No tools required.

03. Use the bathroom

Visit the bathroom as you would normally. Dekoda uses advanced sensors to passively analyze your waste in the background.

Thank God I can use the bathroom normally!

How much would you pay for a camera on your toilet that tracks your bodily wastes and sends you reports? $50? $100? Or would someone have to pay you?

The Kohler Dekoda sells for $600. But wait, there’s more! And I bet you already know what that “more” is!

Yes, it also requires a subscription. $7 a month ($70 a year) for a single user, or $13 a month ($130 a year) for a “family plan” that’s good for up to five users.

So if you have an average 2 1/2 bath home, and want to make sure you have coverage everywhere you “go”, you’d need to spend $1,800 on the hardware. It isn’t clear to me if the subscription covers multiple cameras, or if you need one subscription for every camera. It also isn’t clear to me how the camera would be able to distinguish between various users (husband/wife), or if you have to tell that app each time that you’re the one on the throne.

I get that there are some people with health conditions that might find this useful, though I question whether it would be $600 plus an ongoing $70 a year useful. I also get that “gut health” seems to be the next big health advance, though it seems to me that “gut health” has been a thing for a while, and what do we have to show for it?

As for hydration, you can print this and hang it above every toilet in your house for a couple of pennies worth of ink.

And if Kohler is using anonymized data to train AI models, I say: awesome! Because the last thing in the world I want is humans (outside of a specific medical context) analyzing bodily wastes, even if they are getting paid for it.

Posted in Geek, Urine | 1 Comment »

Your NFL loser update: week 7, 2025. (Plus: firings!)

Sunday, October 19th, 2025

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

NY Jets

And the Sharks are 0-5 in the NHL.

Next week: the Bengals in Cincinnati. Cincinnati is 3-4, and a slight favorite at the moment.

The worthless Bills had a bye this week. The game with the worthless Chargers is in progress at the moment, and what is up with that alternate uniform?

In other news: Billy Napier out as head coach of the University of Florida. 22-23 overall in “three plus” seasons, and the team is 3-4 this season. ESPN.

Jay Norvell out as head coach at Colorado State. 18-26 overall, the team is 2-5 this season, and lost to Hawai’i yesterday. ESPN.

And a non-firing, non-loser update that I don’t have room for anywhere else: Curry College is a D-III school. They beat Nichols 71-27 yesterday, and rushed for 522 yards.

Oh, wait: did I say the team rushed for 522 yards? I mean one guy, running back Montie Quinn, rushed for 522 yards by himself. 20 carries, seven touchdowns, and a NCAA record.

Posted in Firings, Loser, NFL, Sports, Urine | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 23, 2025.

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025

Ozzy Osbourne roundup: THR. NYT. ASM826 by way of Borepatch.

In honor of Mr. Osbourne and ASM826’s obit, please feel free to share your favorite “inappropriate public urination” story in the comments below. You can remain monogamous if you’d like: I’m certainly not going to out anybody.

The quartet released its debut album, also called “Black Sabbath,” in 1970, and followed with seven more over the next eight years. The band’s music was largely reviled by critics and snubbed by radio stations, but its albums were consistently certified platinum, and songs like “Paranoid,” “Iron Man” and “War Pigs” became anthems for generations of disaffected youth.

…

Mr. Osbourne had long drunk to excess, but as Black Sabbath became successful he could afford a wider variety of intoxicants, and he enthusiastically pursued all of them. As he wrote in his autobiography, “I Am Ozzy” (2009), “Over the past 40 years I’ve been loaded on booze, coke, acid, quaaludes, glue, cough mixture, heroin, Rohypnol, Klonopin, Vicodin, and too many other heavy-duty substances to list.” Throughout his career he frequently announced his sobriety, only to backslide into addiction.

Sarah Morlok Cotton. She was the last survivor of the Morlok quadruplets. And this is one of those sad stories from before my time. I think this is sort of before my mother’s time, even.

They were born in 1930.

Donations poured in almost immediately. The city of Lansing provided the family with a rent-free home. The Massachusetts Carriage Company sent a custom-made baby carriage with four seats. Businessmen opened bank accounts for each child.
“Lansing’s Morlok quadruplets,” The Associated Press wrote, “are the most famous group of babies on the American continent.”
The Morloks charged visitors 25 cents to visit their home and see the babies. Carl Morlok, who ran for constable of Lansing in 1931, used photos of his daughters on his campaign ads with the slogan, “We will appreciate your support.” He won in a landslide.

The Great Depression was ongoing, so their mom turned them into song and dance performers. All four girls were also abused by their father.

He banged the sisters’ heads together when they wouldn’t go to sleep. A germophobe, he forbade them from going to the library because he worried that there were germs on the books. Worst of all, Ms. Farley noted, he sexually abused all of the girls when they were teenagers.

When the girls were in their 20s, they began to show signs of mental illness.

Eventually, a doctor who had been treating the sisters in Michigan referred them to the National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland. Intrigued by the connections between the genetic and environmental causes of mental illness, a team of researchers there studied the quadruplets from 1955 to 1958. Each woman had her own psychiatrist, though only Sarah was able to engage in meaningful psychotherapy.

…

Only Sarah recovered enough to live on her own. Ms. Farley attributed that to two factors: She had endured less abuse from her father than her sisters had, and she had benefited from exceptionally good psychotherapy during the study in Maryland.
“She knew quite clearly that she got better at NIMH and her sisters didn’t,” Ms. Farley said in an interview. “And she always had survivor’s guilt about that.”

…

Sarah met George Cotton, an Air Force officer, at Luther Place Memorial Church in Washington, D.C. They married in 1961, and for many years she worked as a legal secretary and typist.
Mr. Cotton died in 2023. In addition to their son David, Mrs. Cotton is survived by four grandsons. Another son, William, died in 1994. As for the other Morlok sisters, Wilma died in 2002, Helen in 2003 and Edna in 2015.

Posted in Music, Obits, Urine | 2 Comments »

Bagatelle (#121).

Friday, November 1st, 2024

Shot:

Chaser:

“The thing I hate most in life,” Ballmer once said, “is arenas where you have to wait in line for the bathroom. I’ve become a real obsessive about toilets. Toilets, toilets, toilets.”

Posted in Bagatelle, Sports, Urine | Comments Closed

Ketchup.

Thursday, March 7th, 2024

Apologies for the silence the past two days. I have been busy assisting the police with their inquiries.

(more…)

Posted in Admin, Cops, Law, Urine | 1 Comment »

The world is still a smaller, colder, lesser place…

Tuesday, October 19th, 2021

…and Sotheby’s is going to be auctioning off part of Ricky Jay‘s collection starting October 27th.

Link to the auction. Sotheby’s video.

NYT article tied to the auction. It’s worth reading, if for no other reason than the story about Siegfried and Roy’s tiger at the beginning. (Alternative link.)

Not that Jay was a hoarder. With the help of assistants, he photographed and cataloged every item in a digital database. His books were arranged by category — magic, circus, eccentric characters — and his file drawers were labeled, which made it easier, say, to find that handbill for “Prof. William Fricke’s Original Imperial Flea Circus.”
Under “flea bills,” of course.

There’s a punchline at the end that I won’t spoil for you, because Mr. Jay would haunt me in the afterlife.

I don’t think I’ll be placing any bids, as I expect anything from the Ricky Jay Collection will be way out of my price range.

Posted in History, Magic, Urine | 4 Comments »

TMQ Watch: August 22, 2017.

Tuesday, August 22nd, 2017

“The Year Without A Tuesday Morning Quarterback” was one of Rankin-Bass’s lesser holiday specials.

Then a year ago this time, I took a year off to complete my next book.

Oh. Is that what it was? (By the way, Gregg Easterbrook has a new book coming out.)

But now, he’s back. And so is the editorial “we”. Not to be confused with the editorial wee, though we plan to purchase one or more of those really nice Toto smart toilets when we win the lottery.

Welcome back to TMQ Watch. After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

(more…)

Posted in Books, TMQ watch, TV, Urine | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: August 30, 2016.

Tuesday, August 30th, 2016

Your Gene Wilder round-up: NYT. LAT. A/V Club.

In a statement, his nephew Jordan Walker-Pearlman said that the decision not to disclose his condition was not made out of vanity but so that the many children who loved Wilder from his role as the eccentric candy-maker Willy Wonka wouldn’t feel worried or confused. “He simply couldn’t bear the idea of one less smile in the world,” Walker-Pearlman said.

And:

In his first major role on Broadway, Mr. Wilder played the chaplain in a 1963 production of Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children.” The production ran for less than two months, and he came to believe that he had been miscast. The good news was that he met the boyfriend of the star, Anne Bancroft: Mel Brooks, who wore a pea coat the night he met Mr. Wilder backstage and told him, “You know, they used to call these urine jackets, but they didn’t sell.”

Posted in Movies, Obits, Theatre, Urine | Comments Closed

Random notes: July 16, 2015.

Thursday, July 16th, 2015

The Birdman of Altiplano.

“There is already a significant problem every single weekend with widespread, out-of-control peeing,” Mr. Johnson, who represents much of Manhattan’s West Side, said.

(I love the “Citations for public urination” graphic that goes along with this article.)

I’m a little surprised this one hasn’t made FARK yet: local police find an unresponsive man in a car. He had bite marks on his wrist, and there was a non-venomous snake (and other animals) in the car. Man dies.

And it seems like his venomous cobra snake may be on the loose. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

(Huh. I didn’t realize that Frederick Forsyth won an Edgar for “There Are No Snakes in Ireland”. That’s not a bad story, but I like “The Emperor” from the same collection a little better.)

Edited to add:

Austin Animal Services is not actively searching for a missing monocle cobra that may have killed an 18-year-old Temple man on Tuesday.

You know what this means, folks. If Animal Services isn’t actively searching for it, it’s up to the rest of us to be on the lookout. Get that Taurus Judge out of the gun safe and load it up with snake shot! Fun for the whole family! At least, until someone gets bitten…

The monocled cobra causes the highest fatality due to snake venom poisoning in Thailand. Envenomation usually presents predominantly with extensive local necrosis and systemic manifestations to a lesser degree. Drowsiness, neurological and neuromuscular symptoms will usually manifest earliest; hypotension, flushing of the face, warm skin, and pain around bite site typically manifest within one to four hours following the bite; paralysis, ventilatory failure or death could ensue rapidly, possibly as early as 60 minutes in very severe cases of envenomation. However, the presence of fang marks does not always imply that envenomation actually occurred.

Edited to add 2:

Oh, thank God. They’re going to start an organized search. I was afraid they’d be engaging in a disorganized search.

(Hattp: the Austin Cobra Twitter. Hattip on the Austin Cobra Twitter to the great and good Joe D. in the comments.)

Posted in Birds, Books, Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law, NYPD, Reptiles, Sarcasm, Snakes, Urine | 1 Comment »

The men who pee at goats.

Friday, July 8th, 2011

According to an AP report picked up by the Statesman (but originally from the Peninsula Daily News), hikers in Olympic National Park (upstate Washington, nearish to Bremerton) are being told not to urinate near trails.

Why? Apparently, hiker urine attracts “aggressive goats”. At least one person has been gored to death in the past year (which gives the Olympic goats a body count equal to the Yellowstone bears).

In addition, park staff plan to implement “adverse conditioning”

…such as setting off sirens and compressed air horns, and shooting rubber projectiles and bean bags.

Actually, I had three reasons for linking to this story:

  1. Slow news day.
  2. The use of the phrase “long, linear salt licks“.
  3. It gives me a chance to ask the question: what gun for goat?

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Urine | 4 Comments »