Archive for January 18th, 2023
Here are 150+ Sources on Covid to Share with Everyone You Know
Jessica Wildfire of OK Doomer has a good reference list for those times when you are told that Covid’s over so no need to worry or take precautions. She writes:
Two things seem clear at this point. First, the general public vastly underestimates the threat Covid poses to them, nor do they grasp the depth of the government’s deception to convince them to disregard their own health for the sake of the economy. Second, nothing is going to change until more people start learning the truth. So I looked for better ways to arrange and share information.
Earlier this month, I started making lists with a social bookmarking app. There’s something reassuring about a wall of organized sources. In my experience, it does something to see everything all laid out in a way that’s visually accessible. It’s hard to ignore the overwhelming evidence.
For a while now, I’ve wanted to respond to some of these Covid minimizers with a mic drop, and I think an evolving mega-list comes close.
Let’s dig in.
Here’s a collection of studies on Covid:
https://raindrop.io/JW_Lists/studies-on-covid-30427558
The first collection provides overviews of what Covid does to your brain and body over the long term, and why letting it spread unchecked is a very, very bad idea. This collection covers the impact Covid has on adults and children. It also addresses cardiovascular health and brain damage in multiple age groups, including mild cases and vaccinated people. I’ve taken time to make brief summaries of each article, focusing on the discussions and conclusions. Sometimes I also include a news piece that describes or comments on the study.
Here’s a collection on Covid & the immune system:
https://raindrop.io/JW_Lists/covid-and-the-immune-system-30487300
These sources cover the impact Covid has on your immune system, especially how it depletes and exhausts T cells. There’s been a lot of minimizer talk on this point lately. These studies offer compelling, overwhelming evidence that Covid makes you more vulnerable to viral, bacterial, and fungal infections. These studies go back to 2020, which means there was never any legitimacy to the promises of herd or super immunity through vaccination or infection. There’s also strong evidence here that Covid does damage on par with HIV. Combined with the first collection, it’s clear that repeated infection does nothing but break down your immune system and increase your chances of disabling illness.
Here’s a collection on “immunity debt”:
https://raindrop.io/JW_Lists/about-immunity-debt-30427557
The public still operates under the illusion that “immunity debt” exists on an individual level and that it explains why so many children and adults are getting sicker and requiring more hospitalization. This collection provides a wealth of resources debunking immunity debt completely. As the information shows, getting sick doesn’t strengthen your immune system. Your body needs beneficial microbes, not pathogens. The next time someone references this myth, you don’t have to scramble for tweets and articles. Share this link with them.
Here’s a collection on masks: . . .
1st Prize Winner ECU Guitar Competition 2019
Oscar Somersalo, 1st prize winner of ECU GuitarCompetition 2019
Music:
Variations on Carnival of Venice by Francisco Tárrega
1st movement, Fandangos y Boleros from Sonata by Leo BrouwerPerformed on July 16, 2019
Guitar: Gabriele Lodi
We’re Never Getting Back to Normal. You Don’t Have to Pretend Anymore.
Jessica Wildfire writes at OK Doomer:
A woman walks down a road in China. She’s recording hundreds of dead crows on her phone. It looks like something out of an M. Night Shyamalan movie. The comments are worse. The conspiracy theorists are blaming 5G. Someone else says, “It was lightning.” If you say the obvious, that makes you a fearmonger. People around the world are stumbling across scenes like this one everywhere. Meanwhile, three grizzly bears tested positive for avian flu.
So did a little girl in Ecuador.
So yeah, welcome to your worst nightmare.
Can we just accept it?
It’s almost funny how many optimists want to accuse you of panicking or fearmongering just for describing what’s happening. Scientists widely acknowledge that we’re living through the worst bird flu outbreak in history, by a long mile, and that it’s not slowing down anytime soon.
Bird flu is here to stay. It’s learning how to jump to humans before our very eyes, and yet so many want to pretend it’s not happening. They want to believe their problems will stop with a temporary price hike in eggs. Newspapers want to run clever headlines about the “shell-shocking cost.”
It’s like listening to Fozzie Bear.
That’s just the tip.
As many of us already know, an avalanche of scientific evidence is saying now that Covid slowly hijacks our immune systems, one infection at a time. It makes us vulnerable to other viruses, bacterial and fungal infections, you name it. Even there, a chorus of professional minimizers make desperate arguments that somehow it’s fine to allow this virus to run wild forever.
We’ve worn out our vaccines and treatments.
The drug shortages are getting worse, not better. The media continues to play that off too. They’re saying it’s normal for us to run out of common painkillers, antibiotics, and anti-inflammatory drugs.
You might wonder what our leaders are doing about all this. If they’re not bickering over gas stoves, they’re congratulating themselves online for letting the Federal Reserve tank the economy—because none of them will stand up to corporate corruption. The Surgeon General is tweeting spiritual wellness platitudes that belong in a Rachel Hollis book. He’s got no plan for Kraken or anything else. One state just passed a law saying women have to cover their arms when they’re in Congress. Another state wants to ban the sale of electric vehicles by 2035 to stabilize the very industries that are destroying the planet. Honestly, we’ve seen better leadership in The Simpsons. At least last year we got Fly Formula.
This year, we’re getting life advice.
You know, I think it’s pretty clear. They’re not coming to save us. They never were. Our president has gone full vice president mode. He’s flying around cutting ribbons and giving lukewarm speeches.
If you wanted permission to talk about doom, this is it. Our leaders have abandoned their posts. They’re all clinging desperately to power, and they’re just fighting for attention now . . .
Continue reading. There’s more.
Potatoes+carrot ferment
As I mentioned on Mastodon, I liked the previous raw-potato ferment so much, I decided to repeat it right away and get the next potato ferment underway. As I filled the two 1-liter jars (using them to measure how much to prepare, I realized I should have bought two more of those redskin potatoes.
I diced the five potatoes I had and added those to the jars, along with 1/2 the red onion (halved again and then cut across into slabs), 6 garlic cloves (each sliced into fourths), a segment of ginger root (peeled and sliced thin), and 4 Thai red chiles (stem removed and cut in half across). I then used diced carrot to finish filling the jars. I did have a small piece of carrot left over.
The vegetables weighed just over 1kg — 1.016kg — and I tossed them with 25g grey sea salt. As I did, I separated the onion slabs into quarter-rings. I totally forgot the Medjool dates I had planned, but I think the lactobacilli will find plenty on which to feast.
At right the ferment is in the jar, covered with 2.5% brine with fermentation weights in place. The slight coloration at the top is because I added some brine from the jar of Beets & Leeks in the fridge, to serve as the starter culture.
I will try for two weeks with this batch: until February 1.
First jar declared ready after 3 weeks
One very valuable lesson learned: some of my ferments — among them the previous potato ferments — developed a film on tops, probably kahm yeast. That’s one reason I cut short the fermentation time on my previous potato ferment.
So this time I was extra careful to ensure a clean ferment. Just before I started, I washed in hot water and detergent the (already clean) jars, airlocks, fermentation weights, and bowl in which I mixed the vegetables. I scrubbed and rinsed the cutting board and then wiped it well with white vinegar. I carefully scrubbed and rinsed the potatoes and carrot to ensure they were totally clean.
And I used 2.5% salt by weight for the veg, and made sure they were submerged under 2.5% brine.
The result? Even after 3 weeks, the fermentation liquid is clear, with no trace of any surface film at all. I had planned to ferment the potatoes for just two weeks, but I continued past that and stopped one jar after 3 weeks only because I wanted to taste it. So one jar is in the refrigerator, the other still going. I dipped out a small amount (see right) to try at once, and it’s delicious!
This is a very successful batch. When the liquid was still totally clear of any film after two weeks, I ordered a vegetable brush because I’m going to do this some more and a veggie brush will make scrubbing the potatoes (and carrot) easier.
The nice thing about raw potatoes: they have zero net carbs. The sugars are still bound into starch, and that starch is resistant. Thus I can get the nutritional benefits of potatoes (e.g., potassium, mostly in the skin) without a blood-glucose hit from the sugar.
And I have to say this combination is very tasty indeed. I may have another bowl, and I will certainly make another batch.
How to give advice on the internet without being an utter menace
Some excellent advice by Another Angry Woman:
f you don’t think you need to read this post because you’re always giving Good, Helpful Advice as a Good, Helpful Citizen, this one is for you. I’m sure you probably mean well, but it is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that you’ve likely annoyed the hell out of someone at some point or another. Probably more than once. Maybe it’s a regular pattern of behaviour. This post is for you.
And if you’ve ever been in that situation where all you wanted was to make a funny post on the internet about your cat drinking water from the toilet, to be deluged with links to cat fountains and lists of various germs that may or may not live in a toilet, this post is for you, too. Just leave the link there.
Here is a guide to reply menace behaviour, and how to just not be that menace.
Why is unsolicited advice so annoying?
At best, it is draining and exhausting. Most people just want to post in peace. Unless you’re on Quora or the specific questions-focused forums, the general function of social media and the internet is not asking for advice about every little thing. Maybe it’s just venting. Maybe it’s saying something funny.
Remember Clippy from Microsoft Office? You’re just trying to write a letter, and this insufferable little paperclip is popping up constantly with his vapid googly eyes and awful eyebrows and that fucking condescending smirk and his horrid little bendy body and oh god the colour of that speech bubble, like slightly worrying vaginal discharge, and the “it looks like” why is it so passive aggressive why- Sorry, I lost myself there. In short, Clippy was an irritation, and you’re giving someone’s notifications tab the vibes of using Word in 1997, which nobody wants to go back to.
At worst, it makes someone feel stupid. This is particularly pronounced if you’ve decided to shower advice on neurodivergent people. It can dredge up memories of unhelpful teachers trying to “correct” you because they think you’re fucking thick. Thank you for telling me to use a ruler before underlining a title, Mrs Dobson, I never would have thought of that myself, for I am but a big ol’ dunce.
An advice reply can feel that way. It feels like you think I’m so dim-witted that it never would have occurred to me that you can buy harissa in a supermarket when I mentioned making a small batch of emergency harissa.
There is a gendered element to this, too. Mansplaining is something which most women on the internet have experienced fairly frequently. It is exhausting. It is patronising. It is the background hum of patriarchy.
You might not personally be mansplaining. Maybe you’re not even a man. But those who have been on the receiving end of mansplaining are sensitive to it. Your attempt to help can come across as mansplaining, and throw you straight into the draining and exhausting pile.
If you are offering advice to a woman, be aware of this context. Be extra rigorous in checking that your advice will be in any way helpful or welcome.
Anyway, that over, and a few weirdly specific grudges aired, let’s get on with a little checklist of Clippy behaviours, and how not to do them.
Is someone asking for advice?
Study this carefully:
?
This is a question mark. When it appears in a sentence, it means a person is asking a question. If it is not there, it means they are not asking a question. A question is an invitation for a response, and perhaps a request for advice. If someone’s asking a direct question, they are soliciting advice. In this situation, advice is probably welcome – although please work through the other points in this post to make sure you’re giving helpful advice.
When someone is not asking a question, they probably do not want advice. This means, you have not been invited to give it. Your advice is not welcome. No matter how much you think there’s a solution to their predicament or they could do things a little differently, you’ve not been invited to share your advice. So don’t.
Is your solution helpful now?
Sometimes it’s clear someone has a question. The question mark is in the post. Is your advice helpful to the current and specific situation that they are asking about? If it isn’t, then don’t bother. Here’s a few examples of relevant and irrelevant advice.
“I keep getting [specific error message] in Windows! Why is this happening?“
You might think to yourself that this person should be using Ubuntu, because you think Ubuntu is much better. However, . . .
Although she uses “advice,” what is offered (and equally unwelcome) may not be advice but information, particularly information intended as a correction (perhaps because the person is offended by the idea that they might be wrong and are not open to learning, or because the correction is beside the point and derails the central thrust of the argument, as telling a soldier who’s charging the enemy in the heat of battle that his shirt collar is turned under).
Black Beer No. 1 and Wee Scot: Endurance effort
I decided to try again to see how many passes I can get from the post-Vulfix Wee Scot. I chose another Meißner Tremonia alcohol-themed shaving soap, Black Beer No. 1, and loaded the brush well.
The three shaving passes went very well. Grooming Dept Moisturizing Pre-Shave is a miracle prep, and this is quite a good soap. Its ingredients include clay, but I had no trouble loading the Wee Scot.
Aqua, Stearic Acid, Cocos Nucifera oil*, Glycerin*, Beer, Potassium Hydroxide, Orbignya Oleifera oil*, Sodium Hydroxide, Rosmarinus officinalis leaf oil, Macadamia terifolia oil, Talc, Red Clay, Cympopogon flexuosus Herb oil, Citric Acid, Simmondsia chinensis oil*, Maris sal, Citral, Geraniol, Limonene, Linalool.
* Organic
I do like Rockwell’s 6S shaving system: sturdy, efficient, comfortable, and friendly. I got a wonderfully smooth result with no problem, and then I lathered as if for a 4th pass. I did have ample lather, but somewhat less — enough for a pass, though. Still, I thought the 5th pass lather would be rather sparse so I left it at 4.
I finished with 1 drop of the Rejuvenating Serum, which left my skin feeling first-rate.
This is a coffee morning, and I’m enjoying it. I have the Clever Coffee brewing process down pat, so it’s quick and easy — and it makes great coffee, though of course that depends a lot on the roaster. Victoria has several excellent coffee roasters in town, so we have a good selection.
Later On 