Category: Local / Living

Can I Get the Covid Vaccine Even If I’m Not Over 65? What Conditions Make one Eligible?

Short answer – Yes.
I got the shot and no questions were asked.

From my local pharmacy. Note – two common conditions in bold.

The 2025/26 COVID-19 vaccine is FDA approved for everyone ages 65 and older and patients 6 months to 64 with certain health conditions that put someone at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19 virus. Conditions include but are not limited to:

Diabetes
Past or current smoker
Physically inactive
Body mass index greater than 25
Weakened immune system
Heart disease, including high blood pressure
Pregnancy
Cancer
Substance use disorders
Mental health conditions
Chronic lung disease including cystic fibrosis
Chronic liver disease
Kidney disease
Dementia or a neurologic condition
Blood disorders (including sickle cell disease)
HIV or tuberculous infection
Solid organ or blood stem cell transplant
Any other conditions or situation that places you at high risk of severe illness from COVID-19 (consult your pharmacist or medical provider if you are unsure)

Chicago – September 9, 2025

Lincoln Park
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Park,_Chicago

Chess Records
https://bluesheaven.com/

From Keith Richard’s memoir Life:

2120 South Michigan Avenue was hallowed ground—the headquarters of Chess Records in Chicago. We got there on a last-minute arrangement made by Andrew Oldham, at a moment when the first half of our first US tour seemed like a semidisaster. There in the perfect sound studio, in the room where everything we’d listened to was made, perhaps out of relief or just the fact that people like Buddy Guy, Chuck Berry and Willie Dixon were wandering in and out, we recorded fourteen tracks in two days. One of them was Bobby Womack’s “It’s All Over Now,” our first number one hit. Some people, Marshall Chess included, swear that I made this up, but Bill Wyman can back me up. We walked into Chess studios, and there’s this guy in black overalls painting the ceiling. And it’s Muddy Waters, and he’s got whitewash streaming down his face and he’s on top of a ladder. Marshall Chess says, “Oh, we never had him painting.” But Marshall was a boy then; he was working in the basement. And also Bill Wyman told me he actually remembers Muddy Waters taking our amplifiers from the car into the studio. Whether he was being a nice guy or he wasn’t selling records then, I know what the Chess brothers were bloody well like—if you want to stay on the payroll, get to work. Actually meeting your heroes, your idols, the weirdest thing is that most of them are so humble, and very encouraging. “Play that lick again,” and you realize you’re sitting with Muddy Waters. And of course later I got to know him. Over many years I frequently stayed at his house. In those early trips I think it was Howlin’ Wolf’s house I stayed at one night, but Muddy was there. Sitting in the South Side of Chicago with these two greats. And the family life, loads of kids and relatives walking in and out. Willie Dixon’s there….

Lakefront trail
www.choosechicago.com

Miscellaneous

Chicago – September 6, 2025

Palmer House Hotel
https://www.palmerhousehiltonhotel.com/

Hop on Hop off Bus
Chicago Bus Tour

The Bean (Cloud Gate)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Gate

Crown Fountain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Park

Protestors
https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/09/06/thousands-march-downtown-to-protest-trumps-deportation-threats/

Buckingham fountain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckingham_Fountain

Taste of Chicago
https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/taste_of_chicago.html

Drone Show

 

Gray Rocking, Definition of

Gray rocking is a technique for disengaging with manipulative or abusive people by becoming as dull, boring, and uninteresting as a gray rock, thereby removing the “supply” or emotional reaction they seek. This involves giving brief, non-committal responses, keeping your tone and expressions neutral, and avoiding sharing personal information that could be used against you. While it can be effective in managing difficult interactions, especially in inescapable situations like co-parenting or workplace relationships, it can also be emotionally exhausting and may lead to feeling disconnected or numb.

Definition from Google AI

Colorado Govenor Chats with Reddit Users

brosef321
What are you going to do about the dictator in the White House who is actively rigging future elections and imposing martial law in blue areas?

jaredpolis
Verified – Governor of Colorado
We are in 29 active lawsuits against Trump right now.

Bella_Climbs
Are you planning to do anything at the state level to make the covid vaccine more accessible after the CDC’s recent and unpopular change?

jaredpolis
Verified – Governor of Colorado
YES, and I think it will be fixed early this coming week

Haroldhowardsmullett
What(if anything) can you do to safeguard our public lands against future attempts to sell/develop them?

Mike Lee’s recent horrible proposal was stopped for now, but that’s just a single battle in a war that’s definitely not over. There will be future attempts to do the same thing.

jaredpolis
Verified – Governor of Colorado
I am so grateful and glad the effort to sell off public lands was defeated (for now! we must stay vigilant.) I will continue to lobby against selling off our public lands.

OtterlyDeplorable
What are your thoughts on ManBearPig? What is your administration doing about him?

jaredpolis
Verified – Governor of Colorado
We are continuing our work to make Colorado 100% powered with renewable energy by 2040 and 80% by 2030.

TheyCallMe_OrangeJ0e
Manbearpig was South Park’s allegory for climate change.

https://www.reddit.com/r/boulder/comments/1n4b3m1/im_jared_polis_governor_of_colorado_former_member/

Routine-Activity Theory and Serial Killers

There is a third possible explanation for the serial-killer epidemic, and although Fraser doesn’t mention it, it happens to be the prevailing inclination among contemporary criminologists. “Routine-activity theory,” which was first elaborated by sociologists in the late nineteen-seventies, treats crime as a matter of ecology. The “golden era” of serial killers was made possible by the contingent rise of some technologies and practices—the automobile, the interstate highway system, the prevalence of hitchhiking—that happened to facilitate crimes of opportunity. In the last quarter century, the development of other technologies and practices—surveillance cameras, phone tracking, interjurisdictional coöperation, and DNA evidence, along with a much greater degree of interpersonal paranoia—have drastically limited those opportunities. Ted Bundy might have been profoundly lead-poisoned, but he also lived in a time and a place where it wasn’t hard to kill with impunity.

Did Lead Poisoning Create a Generation of Serial Killers?
Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and many other notorious figures lived in and around Tacoma in the sixties. A new book argues that there was something in the water.
Gideon Lewis-Kraus

No One Is Really Average

Even though I was born in Perth, Western Australia, I have lived in the UK for so long, my accent is now 60 to 80 percent British. While I enjoy sports, I’m not a super-fan of any of them, and it has been a very long time since I’ve applied a prawn to a barbecue. I’m not a typical Australian. But then again, no one is.

After the 2011 census, the Australian Bureau of Statistics published who the average Australian was: a thirty-seven-year-old woman who, among other things, “lives with her husband and two children (a boy and a girl aged nine and six) in a house with three bedrooms and two cars in a suburb of one of Australia’s capital cities.” And then they discovered that she does not exist. They scoured all the records and no one person matched all the criteria to be truly average. As they rightly pointed out:

While the description of the average Australian may sound quite typical, the fact that no one meets all these criteria shows that the notion of the “average” masks considerable (and growing) diversity in Australia. – Australian Bureau of Statistics

…
Having unmasked one Mr. Average, I was prepared to make amends and find a replacement. I contacted the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to see if it was possible to find someone with the reduced criteria the newspaper used, instead of the full average Australian range of statistics. The fine people at ABS found my request interesting enough to dig through the data for me. Expanding the population considered from West Australia to the whole country subtly changed the averages: Mr. Average is now a woman with one fewer bedrooms in her house. They estimated that, for the loosest definition of average (using only a few main statistics), there would only be “roughly four hundred” matching people out of Australia’s then population of 23,401,892. So there you have it: 99.9983 percent of the Australian population is not average. I’m in pretty good company after all.

Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World
Matt Parker

Recommended book

Supermarket Music Sounding Good These Days

Meirl
byu/Contemporary_Scribe inmeirl

cutedorkycoco
I heard Fall Out Boy on a classics station once and wanted to cry. Spotify made me a playlist called divorced dad rock alternatives and I don’t understand the need to be so violent. I’m not even a guy or divorced!

INeedReasons
Omg this made me snort laugh so loud. The divorced part is so unnecessary yet perfect

cutedorkycoco
Yeah I was so mad because I knew what it meant, but I didn’t like it. Like, just let me listen to The Killers in peace.

lordretro71
Jammed out to Sk8tr Boy at Walmart this morning…

Particular_Ticket_20
The oldies station in my area that played doo-wop and motown and 60s pop now plays the music I listened to in college and high school.

My local grocery store just plays cheesy over the top patriotic music now.

i_should_be_coding
I got out of the car once just as Everlong finished playing. Went inside the store and Everlong started playing. Took me a second to recompose myself.

alphi10
I remember this change literally happened the day I graduated high school. I worked in a grocery store the last three years of HS and had to listen to Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand all day. The day I graduated and quit they started playing TLC, Destiny’s Child, Britney and Christina. I was like, I guess I’m an adult now