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erik-even-wordier · 1 year

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I really don’t owe my Trump-supporting friends an apology. I’ve been critical of Trump these last several years, and am still exhausted from the experience.

But to be fair, Trump wasn’t that bad…………..other than when:

1. he incited an insurrection against the government,

2. mismanaged a pandemic that killed a million Americans,

3. separated children from their families, lost those children in the bureaucracy,

4. tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church,

5. tried to block all Muslims from entering the country,

6. got impeached,

7. got impeached again,

8. had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history,

9. pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden,

10. fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia,

11. bragged about firing the FBI director on TV,

12. took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community,

13. diverted military funding to build his wall,

14. caused the longest government shutdown in US history,

15. called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,”

16. lied nearly 30,000 times,

17. banned transgender people from serving in the military,

18. ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions,

19. vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers,

20. refused to release his tax returns,

21. increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion,

22. had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history,

23. called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers,

24. coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist,

25. refused to concede the 2020 election,

26. hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House,

27. walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl,

28. called neo-Nazis “very fine people,”

29. suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID,

30. abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey,

31. pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans,

32. incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic,

33. withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords,

34. withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal,

35. withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances,

36. insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter,

37. pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op,

38. failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies,

39. called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries,

40. called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,”

41. claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere,

42. forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader,

43. believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,

44. berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe,

45. suggested the US should buy Greenland,

46. colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges,

47. repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,”

48. claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases,

49. violated the emoluments clause,

50. thought that Nambia was a country,

51. told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public,

52. called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Constitution,

53. nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet,

54. nominated a corrupt head of the EPA,

55. nominated a corrupt head of HHS,

56. nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department,

57. nominated a corrupt head of the USDA,

58. praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies,

59. refused to allow the presidential transition to begin,

60. insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death,

61. spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president,

62. falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote,

63. called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser,”

64. falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year,

65. considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions,

66. mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID,

67. locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones,

68. used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus,”

69. hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser,

70. pardoned several of his shady associates,

71. gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressmen who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories,

72. got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!),

73. had a Secretary of State who called him a moron,

74. forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history,

75. botched the COVID vaccine rollout,

76. tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him,

77. charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties,

78. constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate,

79. claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear,

80. called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas,”

81. used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise,

82. opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling,

83. got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers,

84. claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US,

85. ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings,

86. blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining,

87. redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle,

88. got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters,”

89. threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution,

90. botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico,

91. threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them,

92. pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes,

93. thought that the Virgin islands had a President,

94. drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane,

95. allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing,

96. rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos,

97. pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID,

98. rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers,

99. held blatant campaign rallies at the White House,

100. tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man,

101. refused to attend his successors’ inauguration,

102. nominated the worst Education Secretary in history,

103. threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted,

104. attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci,

105. promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t),

106. allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues,

107. struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble,

108. called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ,”

109. threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders,

110. went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic,

111. claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,”

112. seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution,

113. demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director,

114. praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles,

115. completely gutted the Voice of America,

116. placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service,

117. claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower,

118. suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country,

119. suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public,

120. overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported,

121. reduced the number of refugees the US accepts,

122. insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames,

123. gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address,

124. named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties,

125. eliminated the White House office of pandemic response,

126. used soldiers as campaign props,

127. fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him,

128. demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade,

129. hired a shit ton of white nationalists,

130. politicized the civil service,

131. did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government,

132. falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts,

133. claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won,

134. insulted reporters of color,

135. insulted women reporters,

136. insulted women reporters of color,

137. suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs,

138. attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him,

139. summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election,

140. spent countless hours every day watching Fox News,

141. refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas,

142. hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer,

143. tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him,

144. acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney,

145. attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a prominent lady who accused him of sexual assault,

146. held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present,

147. didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media,

148. stopped holding press briefings for months at a time,

149. “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power,

150. led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform,

151. claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers,

152. tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course,

153. suggested that the government nuke hurricanes,

154. suggested that wind turbines cause cancer,

155. said that he had a special aptitude for science,

156. fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure,

157. blurted out classified information to Russian officials,

158. tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida,

159. fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban,

160. hired notorious racist Stephen Miller,

161. openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them,

162. interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel,

163. abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war,

164. tried to get Russia back into the G7,

165. held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden,

166. seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive,

167. lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated,

168. falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t,

169. shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies,

170. still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan,

171. still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks,”

172. forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID,

173. told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,”

174. fucked up the Census,

175. withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic,

176. did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,”

177. allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act,

178. seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican,

179. stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win,

180. constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump,

181. claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened,

182. said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake,

183. claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him,

184. claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President,

185. created a commission to whitewash American history,

186. retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain,

187. claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there,

188. hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims,

189. had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others,

190. bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties,

191. apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House,

192. stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians,

193. falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police,

194. said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about,

195. tried to rescind protection from DREAMers,

196. gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic,

197. tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax,

198. said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states,

199. deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented,

200. claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln,

201. touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all,

202. retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile,

203. forced through security clearances for his family,

204. suggested that police officers should rough up suspects,

205. suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs,

206. tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender,

207. suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher,

208. nominated a climate change sceptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy,

209. retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden

210. had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event,

211. hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags,

212. accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address,

213. claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia,

214. mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault,

215. obsessed over low-flow toilets,

216. ordered the rerelease of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release,

217. called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek),

218. hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech,

219. took advice from the MyPillow guy,

220. claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists,

221. said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure,

222. never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign,

223. falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent,

224. announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest,

225. insulted the leader of Canada,

226. insulted the leader of France,

227. insulted the leader of Britain,

228. insulted the leader of Germany,

229. insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!),

230. falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues,

231. blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually,

232. continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,

233. said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked,

234. left a NATO summit early in a huff,

235. stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of 5 knows not to do that,

236. called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary,

237. refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise.

238. Don’t forget that he took many classified & top secret documents with him when he left the White House, many of which have not been recovered & may have been compromised.

I’m sure there are a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment.

Plz copy and paste. Whoever wrote this deserves credit but I don't know who it is.

#donald trump #popular #long post

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talkethtothehandeth · 6 months

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Here is a video that talks about the reality of living with Long COVID. This is another reminder that this virus is still prevalent and just as deadly, if not more. COVID has killed nearly seven million (documented cases) people worldwide. You are not immune, you are not invincible, and this is something you should still be taking seriously. It’s not in the past, it is still spreading and mutating and harming and disabling and killing.

Wear your masks, get the vaccines if you can.

Video Length: 1m 16s

Transcription:

"Hi, my name is Hannah, and COVID took my life from me. I was 23 when I got sick in August of 2020, and I'm turning 27 this month. I was an athlete for 10 years, and I had straight A's all through high school. I graduated with honors, multiple scholarships, and I was years in the school for my PsyD. I loved going on adventures, traveling, reading, painting, drawing, I even loved having a job. I even had a healthy immune system, and that was all until I got COVID." - "I've been diagnosed with epilepsy, and the back to back seizures have caused brain damage; it has caused dementia type symptoms, spelling problems, mood changes, POTS, which haused caused me to be hospitalized multiple times with concussions and injuries. I'm on IV infusions and medications for that." - "I have to use a wheelchair, I can no longer legally drive; diabetes, an autoimmune disease, chronic and debilitating fatigue, vision deterioration, had to have my thyroid removed, lost half my hair. I still have a hard time breathing and have low oxygen at points-- chronic pain, muscle aches, tooth decay, increased mental health issues and ideations. I had to quit my job, withdraw from school, and I never see anyone but my family and doctors I can longer draw, travel, and I really struggle with reading, which is my favorite thing." - "My loved ones are terrified to leave me home alone, and I'm scared to even sleep at night because I'm afraid that I won't wake up. I spend my days alone in bed because life has to go on without me. This is the reality of it [long covid]. And 1 in 5 infections cause long COVID. I promise you, you are not invincible."

#you are not invincible #long covid #covid #covid 19 #autoimmune #immunocompromised #get vaccinated #chronic illness #chronically ill #disabled #physically disabled #hypothyroidism

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southeastasianists · 2 months

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A deadly stampede outside a passport office that took two lives and unending lines outside embassies - these are just some examples of what has been happening in Myanmar since the announcement of mandatory conscription into the military.

Myanmar's military government is facing increasingly effective opposition to its rule and has lost large areas of the country to armed resistance groups.

On 1 February 2021, the military seized power in a coup, jailing elected leaders and plunging much of the country into a bloody civil war that continues today.

Thousands have been killed and the UN estimates that around 2.6 million people been displaced.

Young Burmese, many of whom have played a leading role protesting and resisting the junta, are now told they will have to fight for the regime.

Many believe that this is a result of the setbacks suffered by the military in recent months, with anti-government groups uniting to defeat them in some key areas.

"It is nonsense to have to serve in the military at this time, because we are not fighting foreign invaders. We are fighting each other. If we serve in the military, we will be contributing to their atrocities," Robert, a 24-year-old activist, told the BBC.

Many of them are seeking to leave the country instead.

"I arrived at 03:30 [20:30 GMT] and there were already about 40 people queuing for the tokens to apply for their visa," recalled a teenage girl who was part of a massive crowd outside the Thai embassy in Yangon earlier in February. Within an hour, the crowd in front of the embassy expanded to more than 300 people, she claims.

"I was scared that if I waited any longer, the embassy would suspend the processing of visas amid the chaos," she told the BBC, adding that some people had to wait for three days before even getting a queue number.

In Mandalay, where the two deaths occurred outside the passport office, the BBC was told that there were also serious injuries - one person broke their leg after falling into a drain while another broke their teeth. Six others reported breathing difficulties.

Justine Chambers, a Myanmar researcher at the Danish Institute of International Studies, says mandatory conscription is a way of removing young civilians leading the revolution.

"We can analyse how the conscription law is a sign of the Myanmar military's weakness, but it is ultimately aimed at destroying lives... Some will manage to escape, but many will become human shields against their compatriots," she said.

Myanmar's conscription law was first introduced in 2010 but had not been enforced until on 10 February the junta said it would mandate at least two years of military service for all men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27.

Maj-Gen Zaw Min Tun, the spokesperson for the military government, said in a statement that about a quarter of the country's 56 million population were eligible for military service under the law.

The regime later said it did not plan to include women in the conscript pool "at present" but did not specify what that meant.

The government spokesperson told BBC Burmese that call-ups would start after the Thingyan festival marking the Burmese New Year in mid-April, with an initial batch of 5,000 recruits.

The regime's announcement has dealt yet another blow to Myanmar's young people.

Many had their education disrupted by the coup, which came on top of school closures at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2021, the junta suspended 145,000 teachers and university staff over their support for the opposition, according to the Myanmar Teachers' Federation, and some schools in opposition-held areas have been destroyed by the fighting or by air strikes.

Then there are those who have fled across borders seeking refuge, among them young people looking for jobs to support their families.

In response to the conscription law, some have said on social media that they would enter the monkhood or get married early to dodge military service.

The junta says permanent exemptions will be given to members of religious orders, married women, people with disabilities, those assessed to be unfit for military service and "those who are exempted by the conscription board". For everyone else, evading conscription is punishable by three to five years in prison and a fine.

But Robert doubts the regime will honour these exemptions. "The junta can arrest and abduct anyone they want. There is no rule of law and they do not have to be accountable to anyone," he said.

Wealthier families are considering moving their families abroad - Thailand and Singapore being popular options, but some are even looking as far afield as Iceland - with the hope that their children would get permanent residency or citizenship there by the time they are of conscription age.

Others have instead joined the resistance forces, said Aung Sett, from the All Burma Federation of Student Unions, which has a long history of fighting military rule.

"When I heard the news that I would have to serve in the military, I felt really disappointed and at the same time devastated for the people, especially for those who are young like me. Many young people have now registered themselves to fight against the junta," the 23-year-old told the BBC from exile.

Some observers say the enforcement of the law now reveals the junta's diminishing grip on the country.

Last October, the regime suffered its most serious setback since the coup. An alliance of ethnic insurgents overran dozens of military outposts along the border with India and China. It has also lost large areas of territory to insurgents along the Bangladesh and Indian borders.

According to the National Unity Government, which calls itself Myanmar's government in exile, more than 60% of Myanmar's territory is now under the control of resistance forces.

"By initiating forced conscription following a series of devastating and humiliating defeats to ethnic armed organisations, the military is publicly demonstrating just how desperate it has become," said Jason Tower, country director for the Burma programme at the United States' Institute of Peace.

Mr Tower expects the move to fail because of growing resentment against the junta.

"Many youth dodging conscription will have no choice but to escape into neighbouring countries, intensifying regional humanitarian and refugee crises. This could result in frustration growing in Thailand, India, China and Bangladesh, all of which could tilt away from what remains of their support for the junta," he said.

Even if the military does manage to increase troop numbers by force, this will do little to address collapsing morale in the ranks. It will also take months to train up the new troops, he said.

The junta had a long history of "forced recruitment" even before the law was enacted, said Ye Myo Hein, a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

"So the law may merely serve as a facade for forcibly conscripting new recruits into the military. With a severe shortage of manpower, there is no time to wait for the lengthy and gradual process of recruiting new soldiers, prompting [officials] to exploit the law to swiftly coerce people into service," he said.

Even for those who will manage to escape, many will carry injuries and emotional pain for the rest of their lives.

"It has been really difficult for young people in Myanmar, both physically and mentally. We've lost our dreams, our hopes and our youth. It just can't be the same like before," said Aung Sett, the student leader.

"These three years have gone away like nothing. We've lost our friends and colleagues during the fight against the junta and many families have lost their loved ones. It has been a nightmare for this country. We are witnessing the atrocities committed by the junta on a daily basis. I just can't express it in words."

#Southeast Asia #Burma #Myanmar #Military Junta

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probablyasocialecologist · 3 months

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Much is often made by people living now of how silly it was that medieval people didn’t manage to figure out that the Black Death was caused by the bacteria yersinia pestis. This is despite the fact that there were several often quite complex and intelligent suggestions of what might, in fact, be causing the plague. One of the most wide-spread explanations was probably miasma theory, which had been rather in vogue since your boy Galen had written about it back in the second century. Medieval people, of course, were mad for Galen, so it’s no surprise that they were quick to nod toward his theories in the midst of the plague. The Bishop Bengt Knutsson in Sweden remarked that bad air might cause plague, “as when we see a privy next to a chamber or any other particular thing which corrupts the air in substance and quality, which is a thing which may happen every day. … Sometimes it comes of dead carrion or the corruption of standing waters in ditches or in sloughs or other corrupt places, and these things are sometimes universal and sometimes particular.” Others in the German lands said that following an earthquake, a “corrupt and poisonous earthy exhalation [was released and]… infected the air in various parts of the world which when breathed in by people suffocated them and suddenly snuffed them out”. Others, like a physician in Montpellier, were even able to see that the plague had become air born, noting that “the air breathed out by the sick and inhaled by the healthy people round about wounds and kills them, and that this occurs particularly when the sick are on the point of death.” This isn’t a million miles off of actual factual germ theory, in that we do get sick from inhaling gross stuff, and from being around other sick people. It’s just that what makes us sick is usually odorless and also a tiny living organism that we can’t see. Interestingly a form of miasma theory being used to explain the prevalence of the Black Death also lives on and is repeated now in myths about the medieval period. I have repeatedly heard people now refer to the fact that “medieval streets were full of shit” to explain the spread of the Black Death. This is interesting because it is 1) not true – most medieval cities tightly regulated the disposal of human waste very strenuously and 2) would be irrelevant anyway even if it were true (it’s not) because that’s not how yersinia pestis travels. It needs to be introduced either through the skin via flea bites, or via inhalation because it has been breathed at someone – much as COVID is spread. So, shit in the streets (which again, I cannot stress enough, was not a thing) would just be gross – not an active way of spreading plague.

#medieval history #disease #conspiracy theories #black death #antisemitism

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victimsofyaoipoll · 10 months

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Round 1

Propaganda Under Cut

Katara

Katara is constantly mistreated by the fans in favor of the Zukka ship (Zuko × Sokka.) They make her out to be mean, homophobic, and completely out of character just to add drama to the Zukka ship. In reality, Katara is very compassionate, and would never act that way toward anyone.

Zutara was a popular ship but when zukka got popular over covid during the atla renaissance there were a million posts about how zutara was problematic while zukka was perfect usually for racist reasons. Meanwhile katara and sokka are siblings so it didn't even make sense. They did not have to be so illogically rude to her to ship zukka and it was weird

Katara is FANTASTIC I fucking love her to pieces she is so cool and yet the entirety of the ATLA fandom treats her like garbage because she “talks about her mom dying too much” (even though she BARELY does & also was parentified from a young age due to her mother’s death) and, of course, because she’s a more feminine women when compared to her counterparts. Even in the show itself she’s mistreated: she’s ALWAYS shown cooking for the rest of the gaang, doing their laundry, any ‘womanly’ task. She ends up with the guy who kissed her twice without her consent & who she never showed any real attraction to and apparently (despite being a badass warrior-doctor!!!) after the show ended she just… settled down in the South Pole and had a bunch of kids and never did anything else. She didn’t even get a statue :( Anyways during the ATLA renaissance, despite Zutara actually not being canon, people felt that Katara threatened the sanctity of the new almost entirely baseless yaoi ship, Zukka. Unfortunately for them, due to the fact that Katara and Sokka are siblings, the usual anti-Zutara arguments didn’t work as well. So they resorted to just… slaughtering her character. If she was lucky, they’d just make Katara a background character, wingwoman, &or throw her together with her canon love interest. If she was unlucky they’d do anything from make her homophobic (??) to killing her off! Fuck’s sake, she never even got a token spare-the-pairs wlw ship! Sorry for getting so heated, that whole debacle made me FUMING MAD.

Suki

she is a kickass warrior and she is so so beautiful and kind and outstanding in every way but gets thrown in the trash frequently because people love the gays (zuko and sokka)(I like them but you cannot remove suki from the equation she is integral)

My girl is a whole fucking badass warrior, who has an equally bad ass warrior boyfriend, who gets completely ignored and disregarded by the Sukka or whatever the Zuko/Sokka fandom is called. They could a done a cool poly thing but nah, fully forget about my girl's existence. Mad disrespectful

a great warrior and leads a group of women warriors at kyoshi island. intelligent but empathetic. wields a fan. a tough feminist and is ALSO part of the atla GAANG @ fandom and also dear god please stop sidelining/ignoring her/forgetting/killing her @ fandom) and she deserves better in the narrative too.

#poll #katara #katara atla #suki #suki atla #avatar the last airbender #atla #round 1

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 9 months

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Young Americans are piling the blame for their student debt balances on conservatives, according to a poll by Generation Lab provided exclusively to Axios.

Why It Matters: The high court's recent decisions on education, including student loans and affirmative action, could drive young voters to the polls.

• Tens of millions of borrowers in the U.S. collectively owe more than $1 trillion.

Catch Up Quick: The Supreme Court's six conservative Justices recently killed President Biden's historic forgiveness plan — and the coming payment resumption carries significant economic and political implications.

• Under Biden's plan, qualifying borrowers would have been forgiven for loans up to $10,000 if they made under $125,000 per year or $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients. Its announcement last summer incited immediate GOP backlash.

• Republicans drove the lawsuits challenging it, criticizing it as a "bailout for the wealthy," and GOP presidential candidates immediately praised the Supreme Court's decision.

By the numbers: Most respondents blamed SCOTUS and the GOP for student debt going unforgiven:

• 47% said the Supreme Court was responsible.

• 38% said the Republicans were responsible.

• 10% said Biden was responsible.

• 5% said Democrats were responsible.

More than half of respondents did not agree with the court's ruling last month, according to Generation Lab.

• 17% agreed with the decision, and 21% were unsure.

• ¾ of people polled said they were aware of the SCOTUS ruling prior to the poll.

Driving The News: Meanwhile, Biden has begun rolling out his plan B and aims to appeal to young voters.

• The administration said Friday it would alleviate $39 billion of debt for 804,000 borrowers.

The Biden re-election campaign could lose voters who care about student debt forgiveness if it doesn't clearly align with them, said Analilia Mejia, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy Action.

• "They obviously need to ensure that there is high enthusiasm across the voting bloc to secure victory" in 2024, she said.

Of Note: Public confidence in the Supreme Court has been staggeringly low in recent months, particularly since it overturned Roe v. Wade.

• "Young people are right. It's a radicalized Supreme Court," Mejia said.

The Big Picture: The coming student loan cliff is the latest in a string of withdrawals of pandemic-era supports.

• Federal student loan payments will resume in October after years of COVID-related pauses.

• Americans with student loan debt tend to be younger, with lower incomes — they're spending a higher share of their income already, so an additional monthly payment will hurt.

Methodology: The Generation Lab, which measures youth trends and perspectives, polled 783 college students and recent graduates nationwide July 12–17 about who's responsible for student loans not being forgiven.

Go Deeper: Who owes the most in federal student loans

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pipzeroes · 7 months

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Excerpt from the above link:

First thing’s first. If the phrasing in the title feels unfamiliar, it has a purpose: We are eliminating the passive voice from the pandemic. Right now.

Someone INFECTED Neil Gaiman with COVID-19.

And many someones in overlapping layers of responsibility ENABLED this infection.

This linguistic shift from the passive to active voice might seem irrelevant but, instead of just echoing the framing we see in the headlines — that Neil Gaiman got COVID-19— it’s time to own that somebody has infected Neil.

The passive voice has served a macabre purpose in this pandemic. The passive voice, by erasing the subject of the sentence, neatly obscures accountability, and with it our own role in unmitigated infections. Moreover, it has prevented us from identifying the layers of responsibility in enabling infections on a mass scale. This mental block is the first obstacle to advocating for effective mitigations and constructive solutions. It stops us from preventing infections. But that is changing now.

It is time to own the damage that we are causing by infecting others with COVID-19. I believe that we all know, deep inside, that we are causing harm. And many of us are suffering from the cognitive dissonance of pretending that we aren’t. Because, in a pandemic, this is serious and large-scale harm.

This harm that, according to estimates, has killed over 25 million people and disabled at least 65 million and counting. The sooner we face the harm we are causing by infecting other people, the less damage we will cause to ourselves, to our loved ones, to our community, to strangers on the other side of the world. And to people who entertain and inspire us, like speculative fiction author and TV creator Neil Gaiman. And inspiration is necessary when we are facing so many challenges. It’s that simple.

COVID-19 is a serious, multi-system vascular disease that creates severe and cumulative damage.

Reinfections tend to be more severe and Long COVID occurs in 1/10–1/3 infections.

Up to 60% of infections are spread asymptomatically… Wait, let me rephrase that. People, who are asymptomatic, or presymptomatic, are infecting others with COVID-19 in up to 60% of cases.

A person who is presymptomatic can transmit a COVID-19 infection up to two days before symptoms arise.

People infect other people with SARS-CoV-2 through aerosols. An infected person expels them just by exhaling. The aerosols accumulate in the air, and spread across large spaces like cigarette smoke. They also remain in the air for hours, so even if a room is empty, if a symptomatic person was there earlier, the aerosols will still be there. Crowded, indoor spaces are high-risk for transmission.

We are currently in a wave caused by a new variant for which a vaccine has yet to be developed. In a crowd of 100, statistically 1-2 people will have active infections.

If we put all of this together, we see that live events in crowded, indoor spaces are particularly dangerous, and that masking only when someone is symptomatic is woefully inadequate to prevent infecting others. So, in order to not infect other people, we need to individually mask at these events, and to collectively apply pressure to venues that are enabling these infections, as well as to lawmakers who have removed protections.

That’s the tl;dr. Now, if you have some time, and feel motivated to prevent further infections, let’s look more systematically at the problem of people infecting other people, especially at live events, and how to constructively address it.

Neil Gaiman requested masking at his events, from both venues and audience members

It’s fucked-up that, three days after Neil Gaiman requested that attendees voluntarily mask at his tour events — because the venues themselves refused to enforce audience masking — Neil announced on social media that he has another COVID-19 infection and “this time it means business.”

This infection — and any COVID-19 infection — is terrible, but unfortunately not surprising. We are in a wave caused by multiple variants, and lawmakers worldwide dropped most COVID-19 public health mitigations earlier this year. So people who are appearing at live events now are at an incredibly high risk of being infected. The risk is also increased due to a swarm of new variants — so many versions of the virus are circulating now, you can get a case in August and another in September

As a fan of Neil Gaiman, I guess I wished that somehow it would miss him. COVID-19 infects the brain, and his brain has created my favorite TV series, Good Omens, a queer love story between an angel and a demon. This series has helped me, and countless others, heal from religious trauma. It also rekindled my appreciation for David Tennant in his role as the demon Crowley, who witnesses everything from Old Testament atrocities to a modern-day armageddon, and seems to be the only one suggesting that God might be a tyrant. With so many of us experiencing a dark night of the soul in the pandemic, it’s much-needed validation.

What also worries, but not surprises, me about Neil’s infection is that, if his statement that “this time it means business” is anything to go by, (especially for someone who can be quite understated), this infection is more severe than any previous ones. This unfortunately is also not surprising, as reinfections tend to be more severe. The damage from these infections is cumulative, and SARS-CoV-2 attacks the immune system, in many cases after a person has recovered from an initial infection. Viral reservoirs continually attacking the body are believed to be the mechanism of Long COVID. However, his more severe course reminds me of other performers who are currently touring, almost without exception at massive, indoor, unmasked events.

Actually, it’s more accurate to say that it scares the hell out of me.

Actors from another TV series beloved by queer fans, Our Flag Means Death, including Rhys Darby, Vico Ortiz and Samson Kayo, will appear at London Comic Con on October 27–29th. The event will have more than 100,000 attendees and does not require masks. And David Tennant, who sparked my motivation to advocate for safer venues, will appear at New York Comic Con October 12-15th. NYCC will have over 200,000 attendees and also does not require masks. I checked.

The math on the likely damage is pretty fucking grim.

It’s estimated that in a crowd of 100, 1–2 people have a COVID-19 infection. So that’s at least 2,000 attendees spreading the virus.

Each person infects 2–3 other people. This is total, so they may not infect people at this event. But because the venue is extremely high risk: indoors, crowded, no mitigations, they may infect more people than averge.

So, from 2,000 people who go to Comic Con with infections, that’s at least 4,000 people that they will infect.

Between ⅓–1/10 infections result in Long COVID, so at least 400 people statistically may develop Long COVID. From one event.

tl;dr 200,000 attendees/100= 2,000 infections x 2= 4,000 newly infected/10 =400 Long COVID cases

And that’s the conservative estimate. The upper-end estimate, based on data, is up to 2%.

You can bet that I’m well-aware that David Tennant has a .2%-2% chance of developing Long COVID from this one event, especially because he’s due to play MacBeth in London this winter. The luckiest person who ever existed would statistically develop Long COVID after their 50th event.

It’s not just headlining performers who need to worry about infections. Any attendee has a .2% chance of developing Long COVID from this one event, and that’s a tragedy in the fan community, but also for people working on staff who don’t choose to be there. I wonder what would happen if the damage were immediately visible, like setting fire to 400 guests, fans, and staff people at the door. What then?

If you have read my first article sounding the alarm on unprecedented numbers of performers becoming seriously ill and dying in the pandemic, you will know that my own fannish devotion to David Tennant inspired me to advocate for COVID-19 mitigations at venues and nourishes me with the love and compassion to do this work. With Neil Gaiman’s infection, it hits home that everyone who is currently doing live events, particularly large ones with no mitigations, are quite likely going to be infected. And in the fourth year of the pandemic, that means reinfected, which means that, like in Neil’s case, it will probably be more severe.

Performers are just my own corner of advocacy, but we all breathe the same air, so these new infections will affect everyone. And people with disabilities, who work in service and customer-facing jobs, or who have inadequate access to medical care, will be the most vulnerable. But most people now have had at least one infection, so we’re all facing danger here.

This is why I want to prevent people from infecting people at events, and by doing so to raise awareness in the wider public that this is an escalating emergency. And I think it’s achievable.

The first step is identifying the causes, both individual and structural. Then to come up with workable interventions at each point of responsbility.

Individual responsibility: someone infected Neil Gaiman with COVID-19

Preventing infections begins at the individual level. As the founder of #FansMASKUP, which is dedicated to raising awareness in the fan community about masking at live events, my first feeling was rage at the person who infected Neil. The incubation period for COVID-19 varies widely, from 2–14 days, though on average 5–6. So, if Neil developed symptoms on October 5th, it’s possible that someone in the audience on the October 2nd event infected him. And if that person is such a fan of Neil that they paid to see him live, I ask: why didn’t they just wear a mask? But even this is not so simple.

From my conversations with other fans who have been diligent about masking, they sometimes experience harassment, and fear for their safety and mental health. And since so many of us are LGBTQIA+, neurodivergent, BIPOC and/or disabled, we are statistically more vulnerable to people harassing us, or even assaulting us, if we are the only ones masking. So as much as I’d like to judge this person for infecting someone who they admire, I have to admit that safety is too often a real concern for our community.

What can we do on an individual level to promote safer venues?

If we feel sufficient safety to mask at live events, then we should do so.

If we are going with friends, we can encourage them to mask too.

We can connect on social media and find other fans who are attending and mask together.

Heck, if we have a spare $20 (which not all of us do), we can even give out masks at the event so that we’re not the only one.

Aside from fear and social pressure, people may have stopped masking due to exhaustion, despair and misinformation — we MUST start again. Every masked person can break a chain of transmission and save many, many lives. Maybe even Neil Gaiman’s life, and certainly the lives of your loved ones, including fellow fans.

Institutional responsibility: venues are enabling people to infect other people with COVID-19

It would be a mistake to lay all of the responsibility on the person who infected Neil. There has been systemic neglect, and even malfeasance, at every level of responsibility, and the people who are making these decisions are enabling people to infect others. Though this reaches into the level of policy, let’s begin with the most direct enabler in this instance: the venues.

Remember, Neil said on social media that he requested audience masking at venues, but they refused. Then after his first tour date, he announced that someone had infected with with SARS-CoV-2. We can’t know whether someone infected him at this particular event, though the timing is consistent with the virus’s incubation period. Regardless, the venue has approximately 1,700 seats, and if Neil’s event was sold-out, as most are, that’s: 17 active infections, 51 new infections, 5 cases of Long COVID. So wherever someone infected Neil with COVID, it is worthwhile to advocate for venues to use mitigations.

The mitigations required to significantly reduce people infecting other people at live events are relatively simple and have been proven time-and-again to reduce the the transmission of SARS-CoV-2:

Audience masking and vaccination

Making use of HEPA air purification/filtration.

This is achievable, and venues should have been doing this since 2020. Some venues do it, and it is certainly possible, and not terribly complicated, for more venues to adopt these simple precautions.

Now, the more complex question is: if it’s so simple, why are venues refusing to use mitigations? Some of it is simply greed. It costs money, though not a lot of money, between £300–600 ($370–740) to purchase a HEPA air filter. And for truly cash-strapped venues, vendors likes Smart Air UK are renting out HEPA air filters for events. So there really is no excuse. For those who are unfamiliar with HEPA, here’s a primer from outreach coordinator (and fan herself) for Smart Air UK, Guilia Villanucci.

I’m quoting at length, but tl;dr: HEPA purifiers can remove more than 99.97% of virus particles from the air, and protecting Neil at one of his events would only have cost between $400-$700. And you can’t put a price on his brain, so…

HEPA stands for “high-efficiency particulate air.” HEPA air purifiers are nothing else than a box with a filter and a fan inside. Researchers agree that, based on their efficiency, air purifiers can remove more than 99.97% of virus particles from the air when used continuously. Now, does this extra layer of protection have to be very expensive? It can be, especially if you look only at brand names without paying attention to the technical specifications. I recommend Smart Air products, partly because I work for Smart Air UK, but mostly because these air purifiers are cheaper than most on the market, are highly efficient, and are pretty quiet. NOTE: If you are a performer based in Chicago, USA, you should check out Clean Air Club, they loan air purifiers at no extra cost to artists and touring musicians. If you are a venue or a performer based in the UK, you can rent air purifiers from us, or purchase them to take them on tour with you, just like singer and songwriter The Anchoress does. An investment of between £300 to £600 will probably be enough to keep performers safer in a venue if you purchase from Smart Air UK.

Again, HEPA air purifiers are effective and affordable and I can only think a noxious mix of greed, inertia and denial are preventing most venues from using this basic precaution.

There may be other financial considerations. Requiring masks could lead to lost revenue as people who refuse to mask will not attend. And, as of yet, venues face no financial liability for enabling infections. Though with lawsuits winding their way through courts regarding liability for COVID-19 infections, this may change.

However, like fans, venues may also have legitimate concerns for safety, The far-right has so politicized masking that the people responsible for venues are likely afraid of repercussions, ranging from the awkwardness of barring an unmasked person from attending an event, to someone throwing a brick through the window, or even assaulting a person on staff. These fears are not entirely unreasonable. But we need to make clear that these venues are enabling people to infect their headliners, Neil Gaiman or David Tennent or Taylor Swift. Additionally, lack of mitigations endangers attendees and people on staff, and lawsuits against employers who have exposed employees to COVID-19 infection have had more success. This changes the risk calculation.

What can we do to encourage venues to create safer event spaces?

We can contact the venues themselves, beginning with the ones who likely are not using basic mitigations. These can be any venue where you or one of your favorites will be in attendance.

We can also start with the venues where Neil was scheduled to appear. Here is a list of these venues with the ways to contact them.

Emerson Colonial Theatre (888) 616–0272 [email protected] Twitter-X/IG: @BroadwayBoston

The Westport Library (203) 291–4800 Twitter-X/IG: @WestportLibrary

Cooper Union [email protected] (212) 353–4100 Twitter-X/IG: @cooperunion

Peter J Sharp Theatre (212) 864–5400 [email protected] Twitter-X/IG: @SymphonySpace

Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts [email protected] 407.839.0119 @DrPhillipsCtr

Venice Performing Arts Center [email protected] (941) 218–3779

Zoellner Arts Center at Lehigh University 610–758–2787 [email protected] @LehighU @ZoellnerArts

Frikirkjan i Reykvavik+353 552 [email protected] @iclandnoir

Piggott Theatre (British Library) +44 (0)1937 546060 [email protected] Twitter-X/IG: @BritishLibrary

New Jersey Performing Arts Center 1973–642–8989 [email protected] @NJPAC

If, like me, cold-calling gives you anxiety, here’s a script that you could follow:

“Hello, I am calling to ask what COVID-19 mitigations you use. [If they require audience masking and use HEPA air purification, consider thanking them for their conscientiousness. If they do not, you could say:] Neil Gaiman requested COVID mitigations at venues, but now someone has infected him. To prevent infections at your venue, I am requesting that you require audience masking and purchase a HEPA air purification unit. These are proven to significantly reduce COVID transmissions.”

I know, it’s a bit wooden, so feel free to improvise. But remember: please don’t harass these people, because most likely you will be talking to a staff person and not the person who has made the decision not to use mitigations. And if the person answering the phone is on your side, this has a better chance of success.

You can also request mitigations through social media and e-mails, although phone calls bring the most attention. But do what’s at your comfort level. Most of us who are aware of the ongoing pandemic are burnt-out and need to conserve our energy.

To sum-up, we need to hold ourselves and other fans accountable, but they face real risks and cannot be held wholly responsible. Same for venues. We need to apply pressure for them to adopt COVID-19 mitigations, but they are not wholly responsible. This brings us to the final level of accountability for people infecting other people with COVID-19.

Structural responsibility: governments are enabling infections by eliminating COVID-19 protections

The highest level of responsibility falls to governments, generally, and public health authorities specifically. It’s alarming how quickly people have reverted to using little-to-no precautions. But, remember, for many places lawmakers only eliminated public health protections within the past few months.

The state of affairs in which we find ourselves is not normal, and I think it is a brief interlude in which politicians and the very wealthy are encouraging us to continue with business-as-usual, but as those around us become sicker and sicker, we know that this is not sustainable. If 10%-30% of COVID-19 infections lead to Long COVID, and we conservatively assume that most people are infected once per year, what will that look like in ten years?

The most wide-reaching change required to stop people from infecting other people is on the level of policy. There is a basic social contract for governments to ensure public health because, in a complex society, individuals cannot carry that entire burden themselves.

In a simpler example: governments are responsible for putting stop signs at intersections. If a government legislated that there should be no more stop signs, people would get seriously injured or die in more car accidents. And we could blame the individuals who cruise their cars through the intersections and t-bone other people in their cars, or the city whose employees removed the stop signs — but the lion’s share of responsibility falls onto the government who legislated that there should be no more stop signs.

In the widest frame, we also need to advocate to our city, county, state, provincial and national lawmakers for a return of COVID-19 protections.

We also need to advocate for improved public health communication. It’s alarming how many people lack the basic facts of how not to infect themselves and each other with COVID-19.

In a nutshell: If you have learned anything new about COVID-19 from this article, that’s a problem.

**A concerned David Tennant fan should not be doing science communication that is the rightful job of public health officials.**

We need to pressure public health authorities to improve communication, and meanwhile to educate ourselves and each other about COVID.

What can we do to bring back COVID-19 protections on a societal level?

1. Call or write to your representative. By mail, if you can. I know, it’s a pain and an archaic throwback to pre-digital times, but this is most likely to be heard. But if it’s not possible, call or e-mail as it does make a difference.

Find your representative: US: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative UK: https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP

2. Educate yourself and your community The Pandemic Accountability Index maintains a large repository of research on COVID-19 and its effects on the body here:

https://www.panaccindex.info/p/what-covid-does-to-the-body and here: What SARS-CoV-2 Does to the Body (2nd Edition, July 2023)

3. Stay updated on COVID news. Folks on social media have been sounding the alarm on the pandemic, like @1goodtern and performers specifically, like @MeetJess and me, @WaltzTales.

A twitter user has also kindly provided this list of scientists and concerned people worth following: @kprather88 (full credit to efforts to educate about all things covid) @jimrosenthal4 (C-R box, ’nuff said) @linseymarr (MacArthur genius grant https://forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2023/10/04/macarthur-foundation-names-the-winners-of-its-2023-genius-grants/?sh=6c3c96af4379… ) @joeyfox85 (mitigating airborne spread) @c19vaccinefacts (safe & effective) @scienceupfirst (not just covid!)

The final level of responsibility: the universe

This may sound a bit woo-woo, but if you read my first piece, which started with a loving-kindness meditation, you’ll have clocked that I think attending to ourselves emotionally is necessary for facing this emergency.

I honestly don’t know if there’s anything like a God who has an overview of the situation. And even though my Theology professor said the question of theodicy (“why is there evil in the world?”) isn’t a particularly interesting question, my answer is:

But *gestures broadly at everything.*

If there is a God they have a lot to answer for. But I do think that a real emotional crisis we’re facing is black-pilled misanthropy where we want to let the world burn, and all humans in it. But Neil Gaiman is a human. Whoever inspires us is a human. The feeling of being inspired in this particular way is your human experience. We humans aren’t more special than other animals. We only have the experiences that are unique to us in the landscape of all things, including high-concept science fiction from dynamic minds like Neil Gaiman’s.

I don’t think we should deny or suppress our feelings of despair and rage, or even hate, but to acknowledge and take care of them, and at the same time to nourish those aspects in us which support our joy and thriving.

It is possible to suffer and thrive at the same time. Perhaps if we could come up for a word for it, it would capture an essential strategy for moving forward with this pandemic. What do you think: Suffriving? Thrivering?

Let’s try leaning into some “Thrivering” together by advocating for safer venues, so that people like Neil Gaiman can continue inspiring us.

Special thanks to: Giulia Villanucci, Smart Air UK, Outreach Coordinator Nerdcake78 for the scoop. And for the slow-burn Aziraphale cuddlefic that is keeping me sane.

And everyone who is providing information, amplifying posts, and offering support. I would not be able to do this without the people who are helping out of simple kindness and solidarity.

#should have been more explicitly clear about this but too late to edit as it's been reblogged: this is an excerpt of someone else's article #this is not my own writing I am just quoting the link here #neil gaiman #david tennent #covid is not over #covid is airborne #covid is ongoing #pandemic #mask up #sars-cov-2 #long covid #masks #covid #covid-19 #long post

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jakethesequel · 9 months

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I need to prune the followers a bit. What are my most important controversial takes.

I am an anarchist. Yes this includes your favorite heirarchy. The United States is an evil of unprecendented power. Abolish class. Civilization was a bad move, the mesopotamians really fucked us on that one.

I follow the transfem style of agender kung fu. I think gender and sexuality is socially constructed bullshit without inherent meaning. I have opinions on transmisogyny and think it's an important axis of societal oppression unique to transfemininity. Also DIY HRT is fucking based.

I have type 1 diabetes. I wear a P100 grade 3m particulate respirator whenever I'm in enclosed public spaces because covid is still among the most deadly transmissible diseases in world history killing millions, vaccines and previous immunity have only temporary benefits when a virus is allowed to mutate unchecked, and masks fucking work. If you don't wear one I don't trust you and think you're being an asshole. Wear a fucking mask.

I'm not vegan and won't be. Even outside of the dietary challenges diabetes poses, I've only gotten less inclined to it as I've aged and gotten more conscious of where my meat comes from. My family are fishers, my extended family are cattle farmers, you don't need to tell me about what meat cultivation actually looks like, I'm familiar. I've also been trying to get my hunting license. Nonetheless, you have a right to choose what you put in your body, and access to vegan alternatives should be available to all who need with with the same convenience and price as animal products.

On that note: guns are based, and anti-gun legislation is cringe. I'm not American. Any law is evil when it's enforced by the pigs, but even if it weren't, the only reasonable restriction to gun ownership should be showing an ability to use it safely, as you do a car. Which is similar to the setup we had in Canada, sans a couple of nonsensical gun bans and magazine limits.

Speaking of legalization, drugs are morally neutral. You should be allowed to put whatever you want in your body. In fact you should be given unrestricted access to knowledge to make a completely informed decision, equipment to do so safely, and strong support systems if you need to kick the habit.

And finally: Bad movies are the greatest things ever made. An inspired failure is always more interesting than an uninspired success. Make art freely, take critique easily. Believe it to be the greatest thing in the world while you create it and when someone says it's trash say yeah I see why you'd think that it's not perfect. The time for ego is in the creation and the time for critique is in the consumption do NOT reverse the two.

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scintillyyy · 7 months

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was finally able to watch some more firefighter show

listen this whole "balace the ledger" thing the captain has going on continues to be deeply unhealthy. he should not be in this profession. at all.

oh god i forgot they made him a dude whose blood has high anti-d antibodies, so he can donate to help make rhogam. thanks for your service, captain needs to quit. as someone who has gotten like. 4 doses of rhogam i appreciate your service. and he's bitching about it. actually dude, i don't want your anti-d. please keep it. (i know i'm supposed to feel bad for him, but i don't. i really don't.) (all respect to james harrison, though, the man from australia whose plasma donations have saved more than 2.4 million babies (including one of his grandchildren!)

okay. i hate to say it, especially as someone who hates trophy hunting. but they would still very much kill the tiger no matter what public sentiment said, sorry. i highly doubt that they would have done anything but shoot on sight.

okay. okay. back to the dumb blood plotline. so. i am a little confused here. like. 1) from the get go. why. why. why are these stranger bitches being let into the nicu (? i'm assuming that's where they're at). that shit is so locked down it's not even funny. they don't just. let people in to see the babies. not on l&d, not in the regular mother-baby unit, and especially not the nicu. even pre-covid, my cousin had a baby in the nicu and it was very. one person could go at a time and you had to be specially let in. 2) okay so maybe the dad did let them in because captain's blood saved their baby's life or something. like it is a blood donation, not an organ donation. you don't know whose blood it is, it's all pooled together. and even if he had special rhogam blood that specially went to this baby....that's not really how this works re: rhesus disease???? i have some questions.

(side note the absolute hilarity of that scale for that baby saying 2.268 lbs....i know you can't have uber premature babies on tv but that's a full 10 lb baby on there. also, that is such an arbitrarily low number, but if it was real, that baby would not just be getting blood. i cannot emphasize how much that baby would be hooked up to, including, most importantly. oxygen. and would likely be in an incubator. there's just so much wrong here.)

anyways back to rhesus disease, let's talk about rhesus disease. so rhesus disease nowadays is incredibly rare, because of rhogam. rhesus disease occurs when a mother becomes isoimmunized to her baby due to the mother having a negative blood type and the baby a positive one and her blood cells start to destroy the baby's blood cells in utero causing anemia and jaundice, in worst case scenarios stillbirth. prevention is key and we are very good at preventing it. the key is to give the mother anti-d, and tricking her body into thinking it's already produced anti-d so then the mother won't produce her own anti-d if and when her blood comes into contact with the rh positive blood of her baby. so with prenatal care you generally get blood typed at your first visit so they know if you're positive or negative. if your blood type is unknown, they treat you as negative because it doesn't hurt to get anti-d. you get anti-d with any potential chance you may have come into contact with your baby's blood. any bleeding in early pregnancy, you get it (you have to get in like 72 hours after bleeding). you also get it standard at about 28 weeks (because the anti-d lasts in the blood for about 12-14 weeks and should cover through the baby's birth). when you have the baby, the baby gets blood typed and if the baby has positive blood for sure, you get it again. this will almost always successfully prevent the mother from becoming isoimmunized for future pregnancies and protecting her next children from the potential for rhesus disease.

because firstborn children (like the one captain gave his blood to) don't generally get rhesus disease, because a mother doesn't generally become isoimmunized until after she's given birth to her first child and come into contact with the baby's blood for the first time (because that's most likely happen during childbirth). even if the first time mom got exposed during the pregnancy without getting rhogam, she generally won't have produced enough anti-d to meaningfully attack the baby's blood cells by the end of the prengnacy, but she will by subsequent pregnancies. so the firstborn isn't generally at risk for getting rhesus disease. another thing you get tested for in pregnancy is whether or not you are isoimmunized and if so, how badly. if it comes back positive for anti-d, your prengancy is monitored very, very carefully. they monitor how bad it is, and they can do in-utero blood tranfusions if necessary should the fetal anemia be really bad.

so yea. i am not only shocked by this firstborn baby's rhesus disease (because that would assume the mother was already isoimmunized for some reason, which i suppose is technically possible if she had a previous miscarriage, but we're getting into highly unlikely territory here because if it was an early enough miscarriage the embryo wouldn't have been producing it's own blood type yet and if it was late enough she would have been known to be rh negative and received rhogam-) i am also raising my eyebrows at the fact that captain's lifesaving blood got sent directly over to this baby with rhesus disease ~to save her~ because saving babies from rhesus disease has nothing to do with transfusing special anti-d blood to babies (which probably does nothing special for them) and everything to do with preventing rhesus disease from even developing by giving the mother rhogam. mr. james harrison's blood plasma hasn't gone to babies--it's gone to mothers. because giving a rh positive baby anti-d doesn't do anything special for them--it's the mother who needs it so her blood doesn't attack the baby! (what i'm saying is that they probably essentially wasted captain's blood by transfusing it to the baby--that baby can probably just get regular blood without special anti-d antibodies transfused to help with anemia, along with phototherapy for jaundice and ivig as needed). so what is happening here. why. (i mean, i know why it's so chim can show captain in person how his blood will ~save the lives of babies~ and it's not near as exciting as going to an ob appointment to watch a woman get a 5 second shot with a sourpuss on her face cause it burns like a mofo but what they did instead is really, really not how it works-).

also, let's talk about james harrison's blood. he um. he wasn't born that way y'know...his blood produces a vast amount of anti-d antibodies because when he was 14 he underwent a chest surgery and received 13 units of blood. my guess is he is rh negative and received some rh positive blood at this time and as a result became incredibly isoimmunized (so how is captain's blood a match for him, hmmmmm?), which mycauses him to produce a lot of anti-d and would produce even more following donation. also. he didn't donate blood. for the anti-d it was far more efficient to donate his plasma (in fact, rhogam is made from donated plasma, not blood), which he did. an average of once every three weeks from the time they found out about his blood until 2018 for a total of 1173 donations, when he became ineligible to donate more at the age of 81. captain, you will never be on his level.

not much else to say about the end of season 1 tbh except good old romancing the uniform.com. you know i do think it's realistic to have a first responder dating site. farmers only is a thing after all. and women love first responders, or as my aunt put it when she found out i was dating a firefighter - "you have to be careful, scintilly, because women, they see these pensions and these good benefits and they just throw themselves at firefighters and will try to steal them" (she had a bad experience with this happening to my cousin. i still joke with my husband about all the women who throw themselves at him. they're tumbleweeds.)

and finally goodbye and godspeed abby. get out of this mess. i mean, you were also very much a part of this mess. but still. can't wait for you to probably become the bad guy for moving on because your actress didn't continue with the show when i'm sure they could instead do a "we drifted apart naturally" as a way of writing out your actress.

anyways currently starting the first episode of season 2, and lol at buck talking like a 45 year old old guy about "respect". that's the energy of the drunk guy who would ramble on about nothing during my husband's virtual union meetings during the height of covid. eddie being former military is very realistic, there's a lot of preference to get former military on public jobs.

#some firefighter bullshit

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