Notices by David McMullin (mcmullin@musicians.today)

@skinnylatte
No, Shanghai

@skinnylatte
The first time I visited their home for dinner long long ago, my wife’s parents made a big multi course meal for us. It was a high stakes situation where we all wanted to make a good impression and were all afraid of giving offense or not getting along. They were (needlessly) afraid I wouldn’t like Chinese food so they went overboard with a million different things to try. I made sure to eat a lot of everything and to praise equally what Mom made and what Dad made… 1/n

@skinnylatte
Everything went great, the food was delicious, I was relieved and happy. In the car as we left, my wife (girlfriend then) said:

“I am so angry at my mother right now!”

“What, why?”

“The food she made for you”

“It was great, I loved it—what are you upset about?”

“That’s exactly what I’m upset about!”

“Huh?”

2/n

@skinnylatte

“You see, she doesn’t care at all about food. It’s just calories and nutrients to her. She always made sure I was adequately nourished, but all my life, nothing she made me was ever good to eat. And I never held it against her, because I know she doesn’t care about food herself, so I figured of course she can’t cook; that’s just the way she is. But after tonight, I know: she CAN make good food when she tries—and for me she never tried.” 3/3

@skinnylatte
My mother-in-law is like that. She hates lamb and beef, and cannot eat anything even the tiniest bit spicy. Pepper (not chili pepper, just salt-and-pepper pepper like every diner has in a shaker on the table) is more picante than she can handle. Other than that, she’ll like anything in direct proportion to how sweet it is. If she could survive on the diet of a hummingbird, she would. Meanwhile her husband really loves and cares about great food. Opposites attract!

@skinnylatte
(But they’re both Chinese, for what it’s worth.)

@arendleejessurun
I haven’t tried it but Buttondown (@buttondown) is another option that looks promising.

@skinnylatte
Tangential irrelevant question (sorry): Why’s there a Roman centurion (or whatever they are) on the California seal? Seems an odd choice.

Why am I still wearing a mask in 2025? For exactly the same reasons I wore it in 2021. Because nothing has changed.

Except maybe the way people look at me. But funny looks don’t transmit viruses. Inhaled aerosolized particles do.

From: @ducky
https://mstdn.ca/@ducky/114094800072331423

@cyberlyra
I would guess that very few people in the US TikTok demographic have any idea what the original little red book was. Am I underestimating people?

@cyberlyra
A useful correction:
https://hachyderm.io/@liztai/113848757311154768
(@liztai @zdl)

@Iva852 @bmacDonald94
Hope is more than just wishful thinking; it’s related to perseverance.

Secret tip: If you take almost any line in one of my “classical” scores and play it with the feel, accents and inflections of post-bop jazz, it will work, and will sound closer to the way I hear it.

https://musicians.today/@mcmullin/113686795827733483

@nat
Now that I think of it, if a newborn in a NICU gets COVID, you know for certain that they didn’t catch it somewhere else. So even if they don’t care about patients, but only about legal exposure, they really ought to be careful there.

@nat
It was extremely telling to note the timing of when mask mandates were lifted in hospitals here (in Boston). It wasn’t when vaccines came out, or when infections or deaths dropped below a certain level, or when wastewater measurements showed less COVID. It was when the disease became prevalent enough in the community at large that it was no longer possible to prove you caught it at the hospital. “We don’t care if we give you the plague as long as you can’t sue us for it.”

@nat
It is insane that no one even masks in hospitals now. No masks on doctors, nurses or patients in ICUs and oncology wards. Anyone smart enough to work in a place like that surely must understand that, statistically speaking, their “personal choice,” their stand for “freedom” and “self expression,” is •guaranteed• to kill some of their patients. But no one sees anything wrong with this.

@FlashMobOfOne
Sure, they still may not start taking precautions. But the more they see it, the less impossible it will seem.

Almost everyone has decided that they would rather suffer permanent brain damage than the social stigma of being the only one around who doesn’t want brain damage. I don’t get it.

Please be that one masked weirdo who still cares. It will give the second, third and fourth weirdos permission to care too.

#CovidIsNotOver

@KydiaMusic

This implies an interesting corollary, toward which I’m already inclined. They recognize that it doesn’t matter what we fight about as long as we fight and distrust each other.

That would suggest it also doesn’t matter what we care for as long as we care. To act lovingly, even on a small scale and with no obvious connection to politics, directly undermines their efforts.

https://musicians.today/@mcmullin/113447994027797889

@liztai
I’ve always been curious about this. In my home now we speak English and Mandarin, but only my wife is fully fluent in both, so her parents and I each speak to each other with a different proportional mixture of the two, either switching back and forth, using a stray word from the other language here and there, or using the vocabulary of one with the grammatical structure of the other.