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Random thoughts
I'm at work but it's been pretty calm today, so I'm hopeful I will be able to get a quick update done without too many interruptions. I mean, how dare work interfere with my blogging? :P
The fallout from Friday continues. The White House is now yammering on about how this incident "put into doubt" whether Zelensky should be the one to continue negotiations for Ukraine, and that statement is honestly flabbergasting. The entire world is in agreement that the US wildly mishandled that whole situation, yet here they are acting as if they're the aggrieved party. I did expect them to do everything in their power to save face, so I'm not surprised or anything, but it's still wild to see.
In related news, there are serious measles outbreaks in the country in Alaska, California, Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York City, Rhode Island, and Texas. And of course we have one of our own here in Toronto, the most serious one we've had in decades. Measles is a Disease You Don't Fuck With, but of course with the rise in anti-vaccination movements we have dropped below the levels of vaccination needed for herd immunity. Measles also has a fun long-term symptom of causing immune amnesia, which can last for months or years (funnily enough, it looks like Covid has a similar symptom, but it's closer to HIV than measles). So we're fucking up our children for no good reason. I got an MMR booster about ten or eleven years ago, and I'm considering getting my titers checked to see if another booster is in order.
Covid of course continues to run rampant, but the lack of reporting on all fronts is making it increasingly difficult to track. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop on H5N1, and it doesn't quite seem to have happened yet. Or maybe it has, but again, the US just isn't reporting on numbers in any accurate fashion. I haven't seen any significant numbers coming out of Canada yet, but given their shitty track record with Covid, I don't trust any of it either. We're having a record season for Covid/flu/RSV, so who knows how many of those flu cases are actually H5N1 but aren't being typed beyond "Type A" because we're just not testing for it?
*lies on the floor*
And in the meantime liberals are having a field day trying to come up with the Worst Takes Ever. Greatest hits include "What if we treated the violent annexation of Canada as a fun thought experiment?" and "Surely history has taught us that Trump doesn't mean what he's saying this time!" Today's hot take included a "You can be the poorest person in the world financially, but as long as you have social capital you'll always have a place to live!" *beats head on desk* As if we don't have a housing crisis and tens thousands of people unhoused, hundreds of thousands in the US. Are we seriously arguing that these people have nowhere to live because they lack social capital? Fuck right off with that.
In an attempt to stay sane in the face of all this, I've continued watching Critical Role, and I've also been reading The September House, in which I can identify perhaps a little too much with the protagonist, a middle-aged woman who finally becomes a homeowner and buys the house of her dreams for a ridiculously low price, only to discover that the home is haunted by a whole host of spirits, some more malevolent than others. Rather than giving up on the home, she clings to it more tightly, and just learns to "work around" the ghosts, stepping over the pools of blood that oozes from the walls in September, buying earplugs to deal with the screaming and moaning at night, nailing the door to the basement shut and wallpapering it with pages from a Bible, dodging around the little ghost boy who tends to bite anyone who gets too close, and making friends with the ghost housekeeper with the giant axe wound in her head.
Like, honestly, I totally understand this woman. It's so hard to get secure housing these days, let alone a beautiful clawfoot tub and crown moulding, or whatever, that I too would probably find workarounds rather than admit defeat. The sunk cost fallacy is a tough one to resist, especially when it's something you've wanted all your life. The book is a metaphor, but it's a very thinly veiled metaphor. :P
The things we do for love, right?
On that note, work is picking up again, so I have to wrap this up. Catch you later, friends!
The fallout from Friday continues. The White House is now yammering on about how this incident "put into doubt" whether Zelensky should be the one to continue negotiations for Ukraine, and that statement is honestly flabbergasting. The entire world is in agreement that the US wildly mishandled that whole situation, yet here they are acting as if they're the aggrieved party. I did expect them to do everything in their power to save face, so I'm not surprised or anything, but it's still wild to see.
In related news, there are serious measles outbreaks in the country in Alaska, California, Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York City, Rhode Island, and Texas. And of course we have one of our own here in Toronto, the most serious one we've had in decades. Measles is a Disease You Don't Fuck With, but of course with the rise in anti-vaccination movements we have dropped below the levels of vaccination needed for herd immunity. Measles also has a fun long-term symptom of causing immune amnesia, which can last for months or years (funnily enough, it looks like Covid has a similar symptom, but it's closer to HIV than measles). So we're fucking up our children for no good reason. I got an MMR booster about ten or eleven years ago, and I'm considering getting my titers checked to see if another booster is in order.
Covid of course continues to run rampant, but the lack of reporting on all fronts is making it increasingly difficult to track. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop on H5N1, and it doesn't quite seem to have happened yet. Or maybe it has, but again, the US just isn't reporting on numbers in any accurate fashion. I haven't seen any significant numbers coming out of Canada yet, but given their shitty track record with Covid, I don't trust any of it either. We're having a record season for Covid/flu/RSV, so who knows how many of those flu cases are actually H5N1 but aren't being typed beyond "Type A" because we're just not testing for it?
*lies on the floor*
And in the meantime liberals are having a field day trying to come up with the Worst Takes Ever. Greatest hits include "What if we treated the violent annexation of Canada as a fun thought experiment?" and "Surely history has taught us that Trump doesn't mean what he's saying this time!" Today's hot take included a "You can be the poorest person in the world financially, but as long as you have social capital you'll always have a place to live!" *beats head on desk* As if we don't have a housing crisis and tens thousands of people unhoused, hundreds of thousands in the US. Are we seriously arguing that these people have nowhere to live because they lack social capital? Fuck right off with that.
In an attempt to stay sane in the face of all this, I've continued watching Critical Role, and I've also been reading The September House, in which I can identify perhaps a little too much with the protagonist, a middle-aged woman who finally becomes a homeowner and buys the house of her dreams for a ridiculously low price, only to discover that the home is haunted by a whole host of spirits, some more malevolent than others. Rather than giving up on the home, she clings to it more tightly, and just learns to "work around" the ghosts, stepping over the pools of blood that oozes from the walls in September, buying earplugs to deal with the screaming and moaning at night, nailing the door to the basement shut and wallpapering it with pages from a Bible, dodging around the little ghost boy who tends to bite anyone who gets too close, and making friends with the ghost housekeeper with the giant axe wound in her head.
Like, honestly, I totally understand this woman. It's so hard to get secure housing these days, let alone a beautiful clawfoot tub and crown moulding, or whatever, that I too would probably find workarounds rather than admit defeat. The sunk cost fallacy is a tough one to resist, especially when it's something you've wanted all your life. The book is a metaphor, but it's a very thinly veiled metaphor. :P
The things we do for love, right?
On that note, work is picking up again, so I have to wrap this up. Catch you later, friends!