Mitchell Report

In a game where health and strategy collide, every move counts, and the stakes are personal.

Well, I have been officially out of Camzyos for over a week. I finally got it after calling the insurance every day for a week and being told something different. It started out that the ECHO hadn't been uploaded to their portal. Message to doctor on MyChart. Sent it to the wrong cardiologist. I have 3: a cardiologist, a HOCM specialist, and an electrophysiologist. So forgive me for picking the wrong one. The message still got to where it needed to go. Didn't matter anyways, as the insurance then found another thing they didn't like on Wednesday. They didn't like the dosage the doctor ordered because they didn't think it needed to be increased because of the ECHO. So they had to reach out to the doctor. Again, another message in MyChart, same thread that I was told I messaged the wrong office. Again, got to where it needed to go. At least they are all looking at the same messages.

Echoes of a family’s journey across time and borders.

I’ve been wanting to blog about this for a while. This will probably be a long one—and it might even turn into a series of posts around a central theme. My mother—more than me, but me too—has always wondered about her mother’s family.

A Childhood Cut Short

My grandmother was born in Poland in 1926, before World War II. She was just 13, almost 14, when Germany invaded. According to my mother, my grandmother was at school in Kraków when the invasion happened. She was taken away from her parents, older brother, and sister. The last time she ever saw them was before going to school that day.

I just learned this part while preparing for this post: my grandmother was taken to a concentration camp and was “in line for a shower.” She was seen by a German officer, who pulled her out of the line. She was forced to serve as an au pair—but in truth, she was a slave.

My mother told me that, surprisingly, my grandmother was treated well by the German and his family and was almost certainly saved from death by that officer. My grandmother never knew why she was chosen out of everyone in line.

We all know what “going into the showers” meant. But I don’t think it was just fate that saved her—I believe it was divine intervention. If not for that moment, how would my mother be here today—and, by extension, my brother, sister, and me? God has a plan for all of us, and He always makes sure His plans are carried out.

I’ve made more progress on my blog poster program. I’m doing a few minor changes and adding new features before moving on to another service/platform. The images haven’t changed since my last post, so there are no new ones this time.

I added a Kudos button to my Write.as custom domain, michaelmitchell.blog. It’s powered by Tinylytics. I’ll probably be adding more features soon and doing some digital gardening along the way.

Late-night coding with multiple blogs open, in a Hopper-inspired scene of focus and isolation.

I posted a vague toot recently saying I was working on “something wonderful.” Time to explain what that actually means.

I got tired of manually posting the same content to multiple blogs, so I'm building a Python program that does it for me.

🚨 AI voice cloning + robocall scams are rising—don’t fall for fake loan calls!

For nearly a month now, I've been getting a phone call almost every day from numbers all over the U.S., numbers I don't recognize at all. I've only answered twice: the first time it was a female voice, and the second time a male voice. Both were obviously AI-generated, pitching some kind of personal loan.

From pay toilets to high-tech pods—two eras of public convenience.

This has been on my mind lately. I was listening to the Planet Money Podcast and caught an episode about why it’s so hard to find a public toilet. It made me think of London. I’ve never been, but I watch a YouTube channel called London City Walks, which often films around Horse Guards Parade. The host strolls through the area, narrates what he sees, and points out that this busy tourist spot barely has any public toilets, except a few in the Underground.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk today is a tragic reminder that political violence is never the solution. It only creates deeper divides and encourages an “us versus them” mentality that is actively harming our society. The proper place to resolve political differences is at the ballot box and through civil debate.

This destructive rhetoric and division is not new. It has been encouraged for years and has been festering over time. The current environment reinforces a dangerous dynamic that threatens our democratic institutions. I have said this before, and I will say it again: politics is just one aspect of life, but its current state is consuming our nation. Politicians on both sides have not helped by trying to one-up the other party in order to stay in power, and it is a disservice to the public they serve.