A Knock On The Door

I'm not one who thinks there's a reason to avoid answering the door. These days I understand a lot of people do have that reason, and not for anything they may have done, but for the bad intentions of the knocker. I suppose in  a different neighborhood, with ICE on the prowl to fill their "quotas", someone with a surname that would easily be mistaken for hispanic, that might change. (Nevermind the surname comes from my late ex husband, and around two centuries ago was a misspelling of Rousseau, from the French side of his family.)

Here and now, most people at the door are delivering something, or home care nurses and PT people here for Steve while he's still recovering. The unexpected ones usually are selling something, or at least trying. The usual answer is "No" but they keep coming. Mom trained me to always be polite, but sometimes after the door closes again my honest reactions surface. So it was the other day.

It didn't help that I was on the phone with a friend I'd missed for three years. While polite, I was still as short as possible. The young man was "in the neighborhood helping my neighbors, and could he help me too?" Last one of those was a roofing crew who would be happy to see "if I needed a new shingle or two.... sides of the roof done" is how I'm sure he would have finished that if I let him. 

I wasn't interested then. I was only mildly curious this time, having several new neighbors and wondering what they thought they needed help with. So I asked. It seemed they were having an incursion of weeds in their lawns. My reaction is if it stays greener than the grass does (usually) and doesn't grow a foot tall between the required weekly mowings here (never) , who the heck cares? I would have expressed an opinion on that but he kept going with more "vital" services to sell. It seems the neighbors were also having an incursion of mice.

Seriously? What on earth were they leaving out and around that would attract mice to their yards? Squirrels, yes. Rabbits, yes. People do set out food for them, whether or not on purpose. Gardens are also food stores for the right hungry crittters., though never mice in my experiences here. Some neighbors do like to watch squirrels and give tips on how to lure them, as well as setting out bird feeders.

I don't need tips. The peanuts and peanut butter that I bait live traps with do the job  just fine. Then the squirrels humanely go bye-bye to that patch a few miles away where oak trees abound. I've also sent a rabbit and a raccoon to the same place, all of them alive and healthy upon arrival, if temporarily frightened. What I don't do is eat outside and leave food crumbs all over. Mice don't cross the street to visit our yard. We have no droppings inside our home, no nibbles on a plastic bread bag left on the counter overnight or cracker boxes in the pantry. So what exactly could the neighbors stop doing - for free - to end a mouse problem? More money than sense was my (unspoken) reaction. I simply indicated I wasn't interested and returned inside.

I was polite, if abrupt. Honest! I didn't actually laugh in his face. Doing it here isn't rude, is it?

Thoughts On Being Feminine

 What brought this up? It's one of those things one looks back on from the perspective of age. In this case, seventy-seven years of living on this planet, and being at a place in life where few would find it - me - particularly feminine. I recently got a haircut and held a chat with the woman doing it on how hair changes over the years and does or doesn't fit in with fashion trends, particularly since I currently do not have a hair on my head over two inches long, just how I like it for practicality. Let's top it off with my finally watching "The Devil Wears Prada" on TV. Yeah, I know, but it was free (promoting the new movie sequal)  and I was bored  enough that a tiny bit of curiosity pushed the decision.

Societies have - as far back as we can tell - had different ways of setting the genders apart, presumably so they can get together in approved ways with approved rituals. The more leisure one has while still surviving, the stronger the differences. It is a luxury, after all, only available when survival is mostly taken for granted. When the next bite of food is assured, unimportant things can become rules. Childhoods include play, the need to work is pushed off, and older lifespans are expected and achievable. A lifespan of 40 is much different than four score and seven. Femininity goes beyond reproduction of the species and turns into status, where it gets complicated.

I was born into the time when status was key. As a species we'd spread across the planet into every survivable space and even into many not so survivable. We weren't ready to acknowledge it yet, but were were already overpopulating, destroying our resources. Where societies decreed one man could only "have" one woman, choices had to be made, limitations imposed. The choice became heavily laden with concerns for status. She had to be amenable, attractive, healthy, wealthy enough to contribute to his holdings. If she managed to survive childbirth, he was pretty much stuck with her. If she died, he was free to switch, publicly. Privately he still did pretty much what he wanted with whomever he wanted. But in order to be secure about which children were his, she had to be restricted to just his attentions.

Have you  noticed yet that these rules developed along the lines of possession? The feminine had become a matter of ownership. She was his property. Matriarchies disappeared, patriarchies arose. The "rules" for what was feminine revolved around possession. If the male, the "owner", had to be out doing things, according to his set of imposed rules, he needed assurances that his property would be there and waiting for him upon his return. He could hire bodyguards and build fences and walls. Those were costly and even risky, unless the bodyguards were eunuchs. Or societies could develop approved fashions. What was approved was whatever imprisoned the female, kept her property.

In some places and times, this meant keeping her hidden. Veils, even burkas were required if she appeared among unrelated men. Adding beauty to them kept her happier, a relatively small price to pay. Changing the kind of beauty, styles, color, amounts of ornaments, kept her bound to the person able to pay for those new things, and in turn his need for status kept him, at least to some extent, paying for those changes. Maybe you couldn't look upon his woman but you could admire the outer coverings.

There were other ways fashion kept her bound, and more literally. In China feet were bound to stay tiny, painful, and mostly useless. She literally could not walk away. Western societies demanded tiny upper torsos, requiring binding again, this time preventing the deep breaths needed for movement, for work, for any kind of independence. Pregnancy then required months of being kept out of sight since that bulge violated the size requirement, while it also served to keep the prized female out of the sight of others who might desire her, as well as her without options to observe and value other males.

Women mostly weren't schooled either, and in places still aren't. An education gives one options. One can provide one's own livelihood, think one's own thoughts and not depend on the masculine viewpoint to make all decisions. Feminine became more self-defined, at least by some. It may well have cost a price unwanted, or welcomed for being unpaid and thus a divide to separate one from the expectations of others. Much depended on whether the price to be paid became one's life, whether from violence imposed from without, or being prohibited from earning enough to stay fed and sheltered. Having new territory to spread into generally added options, especially if it became an escape from a determined foe, aka owner, or at least into a new society with easier rules for a single independent female to survive in safely. If she came equipped with, or quickly learned the local plant lore, she became valued. Other job skills could save a life, offer a future, and may have avoided the trap of being labeled a "witch" for having too much knowledge with concoctions feared poisonous, ammunition against ultimate destruction ... or its eventual cause.

Primary Elections, Arizona versus Minnesota

 I got a phone call out of the blue from a long-lost friend yesterday from Arizona. We bonded almost instantly at our first meeting in one of the activities clubs in Sun City. I'd been there a while, she was new, and I stepped over to greet her. A typical introduction down there due to so many people being snowbirds includes your other state or country of domicile. Yes, we had members from Canada and even England, as well as that real rarity, permanent residents. Joyce was permanent, just new to Sun City from Phoenix proper. When I mentioned Minnesota, she referred to a town there called Mora where her ancestors came from. Between that and personalities, we clicked. We literally could talk for hours, and did, several days a week in the walking pools getting our cardio workouts. We'd stop for a leg cramp or a sudden realization we'd been in the pool for three hours!

We lost touch after Steve and I returned to Minnesota for good, except for Christmas cards. I tried to call occasionally, but her voicemail box  was always full and she was seldom near her phone. Eventually I gave up. So it was pure delight when she called in the early evening. This time we only talked for two hours because I hadn't had supper yet, and was also worried that my phone battery would die since I hadn't charged it the night before. 

I mentioned to her we had our primary election here today, when she informed me she never voted in those. I was surprised, knowing her strong viewpoints matched mine. She clarified that she didn't feel comfortable having to ask for the ballot for her particular party. It was nobody's business which side she supported, but everybody would know who  she voted for by which ballot she requested. It's not something that bothered me when we voted there, but we also got our ballots in the mail and the only people who would know were the ones sending them out.  Like here, the general election lets you cross party lines with any selection but the primary won't. Their primary has a different sheet of paper for the primary so all your selections on it are the same party. They know which party you vote for. Joyce didn't want that information shared,  period.

Here in Minnesota the primary election ballots also are the same piece of paper given to everybody, and your vote remains secret until you feed it into the machine. Even then, no person is close enough to read your choices. They sit a few feet away and point to the machine, demonstrating if you need it which end goes in first and which side is up. 

In the Minnesota primary, a column on one side of the ballot is Republican, on the other is DFL - our version of Democratic - and all your marks have to be on only one of the sides. If you put any mark on the other side your vote is void. Any non-partisan contests go on the back in their own columns where everybody can vote. All the election workers know here is who showed up. They can't even plan ahead precisely because we have "motor-voter laws where we can show up and vote the same day, provided you bring ID and certain kinds of address verification.

Like A Cosmic Rose (screen shot)

I've become a fan of certain programs on public TV. In this case I've been following Nova programs about the universe and what we know - at this time - about its creation. The photo below is a screenshot captured after several tries - since I saved the program on DVR just to do this -  of a shot sent back to us from Hubble. Remember that "failed" space telescope? Forgot about that mission to make corrections/repairs? This is a clumsy version of one of my favorite pieces of photography sent back and used in the program about the Big Bang. 

It's been called the Cosmic Rose, or the Rose galaxies.  It shows two galaxies colliding with each other. Note the faint tip up of stars on the point of the small one closest to the large one. Its light took so long to get here that this is what it looked like 300 million years ago. Or we could just say it's 300 million light years away from us. UGC1810 is the name of the larger galaxy, and from a previous program which mentioned colliding galaxies, it's likely there was so much space between stars that very few had any kind of a physical impact on anything else. Look how far we are from our nearest star. It's not that we'll ever know of course, though we were told our own Milky Way had its own collision with another smaller galaxy, and just judge from that.

Notice the TPT logo in the lower right corner's middle, along with the channel's symbol, illegible in this photo, plus whatever is in the three lines on the far right. At any rate, I make no claims for anything but rewinding and shooting again, and again, doing my best to capture what the screen showed. This is my personal best of over a dozen tries. First my camera over-compensated for a dark room at night. Flash! Then daytime shots tended to be about a second late for a fast-moving screen and wording across it, as well as catching some window glare. Oh well, this is just a teaser anyway. I expect research could get you a much more impressive online shot of the two. Maybe somebody will make and sell posters, eh? I wouldn't mind one, right over my bed.

 

Addendum:  Yes there is an uploadable file and much clearer:

https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/hubble-poster-2024-arp-273.pdf

More "Artificially Stupid Stupidity"

Do they call that "ASS"?  "AI" just seems so tame sometimes.

Somewhere in the depths of this blog is an earlier rant on  AI failing on the job, specifically manning the phone lines at my pharmacy. That is, unless you consider its job is actually to annoy and confuse customers until they either take their business elsewhere, or simply refuse to refill their meds any more and just crawl off and die. 

Sometimes that almost does seem the more sensible option.

There's a lot of uneasiness about AI these days. People are so leery of getting bad information online that Google offers the option of cutting it out of its system completely (just one search at a time though) when you simply add -AI (minus sign with  AI ) at the end of your question. Three key strokes and AI's gone... until the next inquiry when you have to block it again. (Should I repeat that again?)

There was a repeat run of a TV show earlier this week, NCIS  Sydney, where first AI appeared in a much too friendly fridge, creeping certain characters out and amusing others at their expense... because we're supposed to think mean is funny, I guess, It was followed by the main plot of AI being put in drones and killing people it considered a threat. Spoiler alert: it opens with killing a kid. 

In the real world, people as yet unidentified around the Twin Cities apparently fear AI in "flock" cameras so much for tracking them in their cars, that daily there are increasing reports of them being stolen by cutting down the entire pole of them and removing them, a whole "flock" at a time. They get replaced, with tax dollars which could go elsewhere or stay in our pockets. Such is our fear when a system isn't restricted. The three laws of robotics are still just fiction. (Read Asimov.)

My issue is nowhere so scary, just annoying or amusing, depending on my mood of the moment. I'm assuming the big pharmacy chain my Part D insurance approves of is cutting prices by installing machines for routine tasks so they could cut costs from not employing real people. Shame on them!  Every one of the people I've met across their counter has been doing a great job, on their feet all day, non stop, error free over the years. The lines we wait in have gotten longer, enough that they have a twisting pattern of stanchion and rope barricades to guide people back and forth and back and forth while they inch their way forward to get their needed meds,  or occasionally a chat with the pharmacist about a new med and how to take it or what not to combine it with. Were another covid-type pandemic to break out again, even two-foot distancing would be a royal challenge, nevermind six feet, with people surrounding you in all directions. Cozy! Cough, cough, gag, gasp, drop.

Is this a share-your-germs-and-we-can-sell-more-meds program? Just a beta test?

Meanwhile there's an AI manning their phones, very reluctant to give up its power to thwart understanding. The first thing it does, if you as a customer hadn't been paying attention to your meds levels at home, is to call you and remind you that it's time to refill something. Perhaps a few somethings. It identifies each by giving you part of its name, like this: "...starting with lis" or whatever the drug name starts with. If you are lucky, you not only know what it's referring to, you have only one medication starting with those three letters, and know whether it needs refilling yet or not. Perhaps you've been taken off of it for a bit, or have been under medical care in a hospital for a bit, and still have plenty in the bottle. Perhaps your doctor has changed the medication or the dose or even stopped it. Do you want that one?  Are you sure? It's not like you can ask the AI a clarifying question. The AI doesn't give you more than a few seconds to decide if you need that medication in the next few days. My first impulse is always to hang up and go check what's low in my supplies. 

But impulses aren't always actions, or I can be busy, or away from home or in a noisy place. So who knows what I'll do right then in response? There have been times I've responded to "you have three medications..." with a blanket yes and hung up. Even in retirement I can occasionally be busy. It can be sorted out at the counter in the.... OMG! Ten days before it's ready?!?! It really takes that long to refill? Somebody give this staff more human help! 

Oh, right. Sighhh.

Then of course, nobody has apparently figured out how to get AI to correctly pronounce a medication name. My earlier rant on this centered around metoprolol. Humans have enough of a problem with that, usually inserting an "r", reading the first half of the name as "metro"instead of "meto". These days AI can't figure out how to divide longer (as in just 4 syllables) names and just where to accent the syllables. Monotone would be easier to understand most days. But many names are compound words made with one familiar term in it, or at least have a simple word incorporated into a product name. 

Take the category of statins. They keep fats from building up in your blood vessels and clogging them. Everybody who needs to take one can pronounce it with the first syllable getting the emphasis. "STA - tin." The names get more complicated by brands distinguishing their statin from the next company's statin. The "STA-tin" part of the name is still pronounced the same, so the rest of the syllables get accents assigned accordingly, keeping the longer word as simple to pronounce as possible.  The one I happen to be taking these days, because at my age one does take them... or else ...  is atorvastatin. Pronounced uh-TOR-vuh-STAT-in. STA-tin is still emphasized the same for easy pronunciation and identification.

Did you think AI has been programmed to deal with that? Of course not! Obviously either that lesson was skipped or the programmer hasn't a clue how to pronounce the specialized terms of the art it will be used for.

But let's start that day back at its beginning. I had to go pick up some meds for Steve. I hadn't gotten my AI robocall that I had meds to pick up, but thought I'd ask while I was there. Mine was ready, I grabbed both, and drove home.

NOT the end of the matter. Because of course not, or why would I write this?  Or you keep reading it? About an hour after getting home, I got a robocall telling me I had one to pick up.Timing is always fun, right? I had no clue what was to be picked up, whether I had just done so but the programming didn't pick up on outgoing orders to stop calls to "come and get them" after the fact, or there was something else in my cue I needed to go back for.... some other time. That was already a 22 mile trip. Gas costs more then the meds. I'd at least wait until I needed ice cream again.

So I called the store to find out.  AI answered., as expected. Most times there is a way to get it to stop insisting it can handle your order faster and it will (protestingly)  shoot you over to a real human. "Transfer prescription" usually works since it doesn't have any references in its records... yet. You go straight to a human with actual intelligence. For whatever reason I continued to deal with the store AI, asking what did I have ready to pick up? Maybe I was just bored? It's programmed to tell me it recognized  my phone number, and asks me to verify I'm the name they just gave me from their records.  (Hey guys, ANYBODY with my phone could fib and say yes and get my medical info just by calling your machine. You want security? Make me give you the name instead of you giving me the name !!!)  But of course I did verify myself, and the AI provided its own rapid-fire unique version of the medication it still thought was in the store:  "Ah-tor-VAY-stuh-TIN" !

Righhhhhht!  I wonder if a pharmacist would actually understand that if I said it that way. I have met some who couldn't pronounce metoprolol but usually even it's not garbled that badly.

I think it's time to go play in the gardens for a while.

Dastardly Disappearing Diaper Pins!

 It's a mystery wrapped in a conundrum liberally sprinkled with the never loosening pesky glitter of frustration. Where do all the diaper pins go? Especially when I'm the only one in the house who finds a use for them.

I remember decades old humorous writings about other things common in homes that would disappear regularly with seeming no explanations on a regular basis. Things like socks, clothes hangers, pens. Some would apparently transform into others which only grew more numerous. Clothes dryers were regularly blamed, especially for the wild increase in unpaired socks. In this case I'm not buying that laundry is to blame, because even the spare diaper pins have vanished, and nobody (sane) throws  a diaper pin holding several other spare diaper pins on it still waiting years to be used into the laundry. Seriously, nobody does that, right?

First, let's clear the air. I don't use them for diapers. I used to, fifty years and more ago, when I was taking care of my own babies. Pampers were just coming on the market but - and this is a big but - home laundry was much cheaper than shopping for packages every week of disposable diapers. Sure the adhesive tabs were "safer" - if you were ever klutzy and ignorant enough to poke the baby instead of the fabric. Yo, parents: Just slip your hand under the cloth and then push the pin through and up again. Instant education on which direction to send the pin! You bleed until you learn, baby doesn't. Simple.  If you don't do that, baby tells the world you're a monster!

One can also open a pin, check the diaper, and decide it's not soiled yet, so instead of tossing away a whole clean disposable diaper because the adhesive already has stuff stuck to it and won't adhere to anything again ever, one can just pop the pin back and it's as good as it was. One also learns early that opening up a warm diaper for a check on a full baby can easily cool the kid down, contracting the bladder into the newest loveable bathroom fountain. Boys perfect that trick instantly. Use discretion!

One could also rant at length on how all the plastics in disposable diapers fill up the landfills in a growing hazard to the environment. But for me the big drawback was always the cost, with a functioning washer and dryer already in the basement, and a diaper pail with a fairly good seal plus an (alleged) deodorizer in the lid. Dip in the bowl, wring out, and accumulate a load for laundry.

 Have you tried to locate diaper pins these days? One store will have them in the baby department, the next in pharmacy with diaper creams, the third disavows all knowledge of such items. Well made ones are still the best large safety pin available! It doesn't matter why you need a large safety pin, eventually you'll find a reason. Or perhaps it will find you. It's a way to fasten something on a hanger so it stays with the rest of what's on the same hanger. It can hold coils of wire in one spot when the distance between outlet and appliance is a third of the length of the cord and it's tangletown on the floor when you need to replug that phone or laptop or 90 other things. (One assumes a power strip of course.)

It also can keep your pants up. I'm talking the ones without belt loops because fashion doesn't think women need belts. When the waist elastic wears out as it will in, say, your favorite pair of sturdy. old, reliable jeans, they're great. You do know they mostly make women's denim pants without loops, right? And sure, elastic is mostly comfortable. And halleluia that the denim is sturdy enough to last for years, gets softer with age, and the elastic is adaptable as your sizes change. Now lots of other fabrics for pants have drawstring wastes as well as elastic, helping simplify that problem of drooping drawers. And some budgets are flexible enough to cure the problem with another bout of shopping... except that those favorite pants just don't stay on the market with all the features and colors that you fell in love with after you've loved them long enough to wear them out....uh, make them comfortable.

And then of course there's the issue of changing weight. I happened to lose a bunch of it over recent years, mostly with health issues contributing. I've been noticing the summer wardrobe, hung up for 9 months or so, is becoming a star in the "How Fast Can You Drop" contest for pants. Yes, thank you, thank you for your applause and well wishes. but it happens gradually through the day as the fabric molds and relaxes around your shape.  If I'm not paying attention, or mostly just delighted that I can pull my own pants up with just one arm while the other is still in a sling healing, I have been known to ignore exactly how loose the waistband has gotten until I'm somewhere out in public and the legs of the shorts are sliding over the kneecaps.

If you see me clinging to a handful of shirt hem bunched in my fist, you are not supposed to notice that the phone and keys in my pockets are aiming for the floor. On a bad day it's the tissue determined to slither away with whatever it can drag along, And no, it's not full of buggers! Honest! (OK, not full exactly.)

A decade or so ago, after an early weight loss, I hunted and hunted for diaper pins. That's how I know how ignored they are by the shelf stockers. That was back when my knees hated me, hated shopping, and determined to make every unnecessary step agony. OK, even the needed steps. I hate hate hate shopping! even more I hat stores than can't settle in a single place to keep something so I don't have to hunt.

For those pants issues, not trusting a weight loss if forever, I gather a fold over my front (navel) and pin it together on the inside. The pants keep that pin in them through dressing, the laundry, remaining ready straight off the hanger to fit well again. The things never spring open, never poke, don't rust, and only when I'm lucky do they need to collect up a bit more fabric. Since my shirts have been aging in the same manner and for the same reasons, there usually is the same allowance inside them so pins and extra folds don't show, nor the fabric lumps collected therein.

I never used to lose those pins since they stayed where they were placed until adjustments were again needed. I kept the extra pins in the bottoms of some of my shallow southwest pottery bowls on my shelves, handy but invisible in the catch-all where folks were busy either looking at the designs or just scurrying quickly past on their way to the bathroom. But now the pins have started disappearing. Clothes come off their closet hangers sans pins. The bowls no longer hold spares. And pants are sliding, sliding.....

I keep telling myself I need to order some when I put in grocery orders so I don't have to hunt through a huge box store. Of course I forget when I'm concentrating on the right kind of yogurt or chunky soup or raisin bread or crackers. But this morning Steve was putting in an order and asked if I wanted to add something. I finally remembered, and he pulled up the choices. I chose. They arrived! A bit tired from some garden transplanting I was delighted to avoid half an hour in the store. Yesterday's jean shorts needed the security since they were already showing mud streaks from tugging up while I was digging down. 

I took my next break from anything to break open a package while tucking the other two packages in the kitchen hardware drawer. The extras from the opened package went into a pottery bowl while I opened one pin to deal with my pants. Or at least I tried to. 

Has anybody mentioned they're not making them......... as strong as they used to? Maybe because they haven't made then for so long they forgot they needed to be sturdy. The wires in these were bent! 

Now you're scratching your head, envisioning diaper pins, and mentally counting all the bends in them that are need to make them work properly, and wondering just how crazy I am in complaining that diaper pins are bent! Right? These have the straight parts of them bent, and badly enough they come out of the package tangled together. Worse, I had to pull the long ends apart enough to allow the sharp point to come out of the safety cap holding it in place. THAT should tell you just how flimsy the metal in the pins is, if I both need to and can adjust them that way. It sure isn't steel!

I guess, since one is currently holding my pants up, that I'll keep them.  I'll know to use them carefully, and if they won't stay fastened, I'll have to get out and do some quality shopping. Maybe a fancy baby supply store, where I can expect the pins to actually be stocked where every clerk knows where to find them, and they bother to go for good steel pins. Or... I wonder if the several local thrift stores take them in to sell.  We'll see.

Not Something Of Value???

 Morning news was interesting today. There was a complaint against Mike Lindell's disregard of campaign laws in Minnesota.

You've heard the name. He's the "My Pillow guy", and a buddy of Trump. He decided to run for Governor of this state - as a Republican of course. Somehow making pillows which are reputed to be totally uncomfortable for sleeping on, and being a buddy of our Idiot In Chief, qualify him to be our next governor. So far as I know, he doesn't live here and never has - but I could be wrong of course, having been out of the state for a few years. Allowances are made for relocating after an election is won, though the relocation is not always followed through. Oopsie!

Trump's endorsement? Looking over his cabinet picks and their "qualifications", which seem to begin and end in slathering the praise on Trump the way he slathers ketchup on the White House walls, creating numerous scandals and making us the laughingstock of the world, just don't seem to me to qualify Lindell for any carpetbagging office. 

I also wouldn't trust Trump's good wishes for what happens in Minnesota after we had the temerity to put up our Governor to run with Kamala Harris against his slate for President/Vice President last go-round. We've been high on his target list ever since. So anybody Trump endorses for any office starts off with strikes against them rather than any supposition of good will or competence, in general but especially for us.

None of that violates campaign laws of course. The complaint came out of Lindell's campaign people distributing his pillows at his campaign events in the state. The law prohibits exchanging anything of value for votes. It's illegal to buy votes here, as it should be everywhere. Lindell's campaign counters that the pillows are not something of value, within the parameters of the law which put a limit of $5 for the definition of value. $4.99 is legal, $5 not. The pillows which were distributed - per the campaign - sell for $4.99. They are smaller than bed pillows, hence the low price. So no problem, right?

Well, if the claim is true, not a legal one. Of course to buy one a person would have to pay sales tax, meaning the price would be above $5.  Over the threshold in practical terms, but legal? Not my area of expertise.

But I clearly recall the results of a psychology experiment many years back, with results so unexpected at the time that it still resonates.  They were testing for the amount of a reward which had the most power to persuade another person to do whatever you wanted, a detail specified in the experiment, whether it was a specific action, or loyalty, or simple gratitude. The expected results were that a higher gift value would be more persuasive. The stunning result was that a very modest one worked much better. If I recall correctly, the small gift was seen as an act of friendship, no strings attached. In turn, the recipient was much more inclined to reciprocate, a gift for a gift, friendship for friendship. A large gift was seen with strings attached and more likely to cause resentment for its implied obligation.

So perhaps the Lindell campaign knows exactly what it is doing. Unless those pillows are as uncomfortable as the large ones and it backfires, eh? Just what are their value?