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maximelebled · 3 years

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2019 & 2020

Hello everyone! So yeah, this yearly blog post is about three... four months late... it covers two years now.

I did have a lot of things written last year, last time, but the more things have changed, the more I’ve realized that a lot of things I talked about on here... were because I lacked enough of a social life to want to open up on here.

In a less awkwardly-phrased way, what I’m saying is, I was coping.

Not an easy thing to admit to in public by any means, but I reckon it’s the truth. Over the past two years, I’ve made more of an effort to build better & healthier friendships, dial back my social media usage a bit (number 1 coping strategy), not tie all my friendships to games I play, especially Dota (number 2 coping strategy), so that I could be more emotionally healthy overall.

Pictured: me looking a whole lot like @dril on the outside, although not so much on the inside. (Photo by my lovely partner.)

To some degree, I believe it’s important to be able to talk about yourself a bit more openly in a way that is generally not encouraged nor made easy on other social networks (looking at you, Twitter). I know that 2010-me would be scared to approach 2020-me; and it’s my hope that what I am writing here would not help him with that, but also help him become less of an insecure dweeb faster. 😉

Not that recent accomplishments have stopped me from being any less professionally anxious. Sometimes the impostor syndrome just morphs into... something else.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is, the first reason it took me until this year to finish last year’s post is because, with my shift in perspective, and these realizations about myself, I do want to keep a lot more things private... or rather, it’s that I don’t feel the need to share them anymore? And that made figuring out what to write a fair bit harder.

The other reason I didn’t write sooner is because, in 2018, I wrote my "year in review” post right before I became able to talk about my then-latest cool thing (my work on Valve’s 2018 True Sight documentary). So I then knew I’d have to bring it up in the 2019 post. But then, I was asked to work on the 2019 True Sight documentary, and I know it was going to air in late January 2020, so I was like, “okay, well, whatever, it, I’ll just write this yearly recap after that, so I don’t miss the coach this time”. So I just ended up delaying it again until I was like... “okay, whatever, I’ll just do both 2019 and 2020 in a single post.”

I think I can say I’ve had the privilege of a pretty good 2019, all things considered. And also of a decent 2020, given the circumstances. Overall, 2019 was a year of professional fulfillment; here’s a photo taken of me while I was managing the augmented reality system at The International 2019! (The $35 million dollar Dota 2 tournament that was held, this that year, in Shanghai.)

If I’d shown this to myself 10 years ago it would’ve blown my mind, so I guess things aren’t all that bad...!

I’ve brought up two health topics in these posts before: weight & sleep.

As for the first, the situation is still stable. If it is improving, it is doing so at a snail’s pace. But quite frankly, I haven’t put in enough effort into it overall. Even though I know my diet is way better than it was five or six years ago, I’ve only just really caught up with the “how it should have been the entire time” stage. It is a milestone... but not necessarily an impressive one. Learning to cook better things for myself has been very rewarding and fulfilling, though. It’s definitely what I’d recommend if you need to find a place to start.

As for sleep, throughout 2019, I continued living 25-hour days for the most part. There were a few weeks during which I slowed down the process, but it continued on going. Then, in late December of 2019, motivated by the knowledge that sleep is such a foundational pillar of your health, I figured I really needed to take things seriously, and I managed to go on a three month streak of mostly-stable sleep! (See the data above.)

Part of what helped was willingly stopping to use my desktop computer once it got too late in the day, avoiding Dota at the end of the day as much as possible, and anything exciting for that matter... and, as much as that sounds like the worst possible stereotype, trying to “listen to my body” and recognizing when I was letting stress and anxiety build up inside me, and taking a break or trying to relax.

Also, a pill of melatonin before going to bed; but even though it’s allegedly not a problem to take melatonin, I figured I should try to rely on it as little as possible.

Unfortunately, that “good sleep” streak was abruptly stopped by a flu-like illness... it might have been Covid-19. The symptoms somewhat matched up, but I was lucky: they were very mild. I fully recovered in just over a week. I coughed a bit, but not that much. If it really was that disease, then I got very lucky.

(Pictured: another photo by my lovely SO, somewhere in Auvergne.)

My sleep continued to drift back to its 25-hour rhythm, and I only started resuming these efforts towards the fall... mostly because living during the night felt like a better option with the summer heat (no AC here). I thought about doing that the other way (getting up at 3am instead of going to bed at 7am), and while it’d make more sense temperature-wise, that would have kept me awake when there were practically no people online, and I was trying to have a better social life then, even if had to be purely online due to the coronavirus, so... yeah.

I’ve been working from home since 2012! I also lived alone for a number of years since then. For the most part, it hasn’t been a great thing for my mental health. Having had a taste of what being in an office was like thanks to a couple weeks in the Valve offices, I had the goal of beginning to apply at a few places here and there in March/April. Then the pandemic hit, so those plans are dead in the water. I wanted 2020 to be the year in which I’d finally stop being fully remote, but those plans are now dead in the water.

Now, at the end of the year, I don’t really know if I want to apply at any places. There’s a small handful of studios whose work really resonates with me, creatively speaking, and whose working conditions seem to be alright, at least from what I hear... but, and I swear I’m saying this in the least braggy way possible... there’s very little that beats having been able to work on what I want, when I want, and how much I want.

This kind of freelance status can be pretty terrifying sometimes, but I’ve managed (with some luck, of course) to reach a safe balance, a point at which I’ve effectively got this luxury of being able to only really work on what I want, and never truly overwork myself (at least by the standards of most of the gaming industry). It’s a big privilege and I feel like it’d take a lot to give it up.

Besides the things I mentioned before, one thing I did that drastically improved my mental health was being introduced to a new lovely group of friends by my partner! I started playing Dungeons & Dragons with them, every weekend or so! And in the spirit of a rising tide lifting all boats, I managed to also give back to our lovely DM, by being a sort of “AM” (audio manager)... It’s been great having something to look forward to every week.

Something to look forward to... I’ve heard about the concept of “temporal anchors”. I had heard about how the reason our adult years suddenly pass by in a blur is because we now have more “time” that’s already in our brains, but now I’m more convinced that it’s because we’re going from a very school routine such as the one schools impose upon us, to, well... practically nothing.

I thought most of my years since 2011 have been a blur, but none have whooshed by like 2020 has, and I reckon part of that is because I’ve (obviously) gone out far far less, and most importantly there wasn’t The Big Summer Event That The International Is, the biggest yearly “temporal anchor” at my disposal. The anticipation and release of those energies made summer feel a fair bit longer... and this year, summer was very much a blur for me. In and out like the wind.

I guess besides that, I haven’t really had that much trouble with being locked down. I had years of training for that, after all. Doesn’t feel like I can complain. 😛

(Pictured: trip to Chicago in January of 2019... right when the polar vortex hit!)

Work was good in 2019, and sparser in 2020. Working with Valve again after the 2018 True Sight was a very exciting opportunity. At the time, in February of 2019, I was out with my partner on little holiday trips around my region, and, after night fell, on the way back, we decided to stop in a wide open field, on a tiny countryside path, away from the cities, to try and do some star-gazing, without light pollution getting in the way.

And it’s there and then that I received their message, while looking at the stars with my SO! The timing and location turned that into a very vivid memory...

I then got to spend a couple weeks in their offices in late April / early May. I was able to bring my partner along with me to Washington State, and we did some sightseeing on the weekends.

(Pictured: part of a weekend trip in Washington. This was a dried up lakebed.)

After that, I worked on the Void Spirit trailer in the lead to The International. In August, those couple weeks in Shanghai were intense. Having peeked behind the curtain and seen everything that goes into production really does give me a much deeper appreciation for all the work that goes unseen.

Then after that, in late 2019, there was my work on the yearly True Sight documentary, for the second time. In 2018, I’d been tasked with making just two animated sequences, and I was very nervous since that was my first time working directly with Valve; my work then was fairly “sober”, for lack of a better term.

(Pictured: view from my hotel room in Shanghai.)

For the 2019 edition, I had double the amount of sequences on my plate, and they were very trusting of me, which was very reassuring. I got to be more technically ambitious, I let my style shine through (you know... if it’s got all these gratuitous light beams, etc.), and it was real fun to work on.

At the premiere in Berlin, I was sitting in the middle of the room (in fact, you could spot me in the pre-show broadcast behind SirActionSlacks; unfortunately I had forgotten to bring textures for my shirt). Being in that spot when my shots started playing, and hearing people laughing and cheering at them... that’s an unforgettable memory. The last time I had experienced something like that was having my first Dota short film played at KeyArena in 2015, the laughter of the crowd echoing all around me... I was shaking in my seat. Just remembering it gets my heart pumping, man. It’s a really unique feeling.

So I’m pretty happy with how that work came out. I came out of it having learned quite a few new tricks too, born out of necessity from my technical ambitions. Stuff I intend to put to use again. I’m really glad that the team I worked with at Valve was so kind and great to work with. After the premiere, I received a few more compliments from them... and I did reply, “careful! You might give me enough confidence to apply!”, to which one of them replied, “you totally should, man.” But I still haven’t because I’m a massive idiot, haha. Well, I still haven’t because I don’t think I’m well-rounded enough yet. And also because, like I alluded to before, I think I’m in a pretty good situation as it is.

It’s not the first encouragements I had received from them, too; there had been a couple people from the Dota team who, at the end of my two week stay in the offices, while I was on my way out, told me I should try applying. But again, I didn’t apply because I’m a massive idiot.

(Pictured: view from the Valve offices.)

To be 200% frank, even though there’s been quite a few people who’ve followed my work throughout the years, comments on Reddit and YouTube, etc. who’ve all said things along the lines of “why aren’t you working for them ?”, well... it’s not something I ever really pursued. I know it’s a lot of people’s dream job, but I never saw it that way. I feel like, if it ever happened to me... sure, that could be cool! But I don’t know if it’s something I really want, or even that I should want?

And if you add “being unsure” to what I consider to be a lack of experience in certain things, well... I really don’t think I’d be a good candidate (yet?), and having seen how busy these people are on the inside, the last thing I want to do is waste their time with a bad application. That would be the most basic form of courtesy I can show to them.

Besides, Covid-19 makes applying to just about any job very hard, if not outright impossible right now. And for a while longer, I suspect.

(Pictured: the Tuilière & Sanadoire rocks.)

I’m still unhappy about the amount of “actual animation” I get to do overall since I like to work on just about every step of the process in my videos, but well. It’s getting better. One thing I am happy with though, is “solving problems”. And new challenges. Seeking the answers to them, and making myself be able to see those problems, alongside entire projects, from a more “holistic” way, that is to say, not missing the forest for the trees.

It’s hard to explain, and even just the use of the term “holistic” sounds like some kind of pompous cop-out... but looking back on how I handled projects 5 years ago vs. now, I see the differences in how I think about problems a lot. And to some extent I do have my time on Valve contracts to thank a LOT in helping me progress there.

Anyway, I’m currently working on a project that I’m very interested & creativefuly fulfilled by. But it has nothing to do with animation nor Dota, for a change! There are definitely at least two other Dota short films I want to make, though. We’ll see how that goes.

Happy new year & take care y’all.

#year in review

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uschi-the-listener · 6 years

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A Gratitude List for National Gratitude Day

I haven't written one in a while. That doesn't mean I haven't needed one. I write them when I feel down and need to remember that things aren't always absolute shit. And they aren't. I had an interesting and unusual Thanksgiving yesterday, at least, interesting and unusual for me. I spent it alone, eating a turkey leg and watching movies on Netflix, then going to my ACoA meeting in the evening, which is always great, but was especially great last night because there were only 3 of us, and I ran the meeting.

We had an old-timer, who has been doing this for years, we had a newcomer, who cried all through the meeting and shared very movingly, and there was me. I shared things I'd never shared before. The sharing was unbounded. In 12-step parlance, "sharing" is talking about personal stuff that is on your heart at the time. I mentioned struggles I've been having with loneliness and that feeling that I'm just not getting it right, and describing what I would want if all my dreams came true. Not sharing that here, right now. You aren't supposed to tell if you make a wish.

But I definitely ran a powerful meeting last night. I've been going there steadily for 11 or 12 weeks and am still struggling with the second and third steps. In my life, experience has taught me that trusting anybody or letting anybody else control anything is a recipe for exploitation and life-threatening disaster. So you can see why being willing to turn anything over to a Higher Power of my choice sounds like an attack. But I'm working on it and trying to be open to it. It's a difficult step.

But on to Gratitude.

1. I am grateful I'm working. The job is not my dream job, but I can do it, and what I do seems to be helping.

2. I am deeply grateful for my beautiful, funny, intelligent, compassionate, silly son, who owns my heart and is very gentle with it.

3. Dishwashers fill me with gratitude. I have spent most of my life without one, and now I've had one for several years. I know what it's like to do every damn dish by hand and what a disgusting nightmare it can turn into during flu season when there are extra dishes and they build up because you're too sick to stand for that long. Dishwashers aren't perfect, but they're close enough.

4. Cooling temperatures are such a relief; I'm grateful for the way the seasons change in such a way that we don't have to be either hot or cold all the time. It was a dreadful summer, here in the desert. I am sure my air conditioner use helped fry the environment, but I and my pets would not have survived the 127 degree Fahrenheit crap we had thrown at us this year without it. I'm expecting winter to be extreme, too, but it hasn't happened yet. It's still in the nineties here. It's ridiculous. But cooler.

5. I am grateful for the pain and suffering in my life, that seems to be, thankfully, subsiding somewhat. Why am I grateful for such awful stuff? Well, it makes me a more compassionate person. It helps me see everyone around me as someone with a story. It tenderizes my already soft heart. I hope I don't have to have any more of it because this last bout damn near killed me dead. But I have to be grateful for anything that makes me more myself, and pain and suffering do tend to strip away the non-essentials.

6. Always, always, I am grateful for the night sky. I spend time outside alone, just admiring the stars and the moon, nearly every night. It connects me to people who don't know I am connecting with them. It also reminds me of my dear late husband, who had a job once working for an astronomer at the observatory at Haleakala in Hawaii and learned a lot about stars, constellations, the moon, shooting stars, and satellites. He and I had so much fun, going out into the wilderness for a relief from the light pollution and watching the stars come out, and spotting satellites. We permanently dented the roof of one car we had from climbing up and lying on it. Neither of us was a lightweight at that time, and the roof was not expecting it. Anybody I go out with from now until the stars fall from the sky is going to be subjected to the night sky, like it or not.

7. I am grateful that even now, past middle age, I am still learning and discovering all sorts of new things about myself and about the world. There is no end to learning. Some of it isn't fun, but knowing things is important and sometimes a relief. It's amazing how our brains and minds can expand. Closed minds are not welcome here.

8. Of course I feel deep gratitude for my little pets, Miss Betty Anderson and Miss CarlyQ. They are always glad to see me and know when I need to be sat upon and treated lovingly. And it keeps me alive sometimes to have someone depending on me to scoop the litter and open the cans and refresh the water and arrange the little beds. Without Miss B and Miss C, I would have been in worse trouble this past few years than I had been. Pets look you in the eye and read your mind. They don't understand the reading, but they can recognize universal feelings of sorrow, happiness, defeat, and anticipation, among others. I am grounded in the basics around my little furry girls.

9. I could not survive homelessness, and I came close to it once or twice this past year. I'm a creative person, so I might almost survive it, and I did spend some time on the street at one time. Never again. I will die before I let that happen again. I am grateful for my small and cluttered apartment. I am gradually making it more like a home and less like a warehouse of sorrow and brokenness. This time next year it might look like people, and not trolls-under-the-bridge, live here. I wish I knew more how to achieve that, but I suppose I'll figure it out in increments. I didn't grow up in a house that made it possible for me to learn any of that. But I'm definitely learning now. There are no dishes in my sink, thanks to our friend The Dishwasher, who probably deserves a name and a title. I'll give it some thought.

10. I'm grateful that I see things. I am, of course, grateful that I have my sight, but you know, I see things that other people miss all the time. I see why people do what they do, and why they are who they are, at least somewhat. I see the hummingbirds perched in the tree. I see grasshoppers assessing me for danger. I see the way the flock of geese connects to each other and I see who's in charge and who is the goofy yearling who thinks he ought to be. I see little wrinkles and creases on the faces of people I love and know exactly what that means. I know who I am and there are things about me that I see very clearly that I hope aren't visible to everybody. I see. I look and look and I see. Now, if only I could afford to get my cataract surgery... everything in good time, right?

11. Typically, gratitude lists only include 10 entries, but I feel like I need a bonus here. I am grateful that I have this as a coping skill, and I've learned so many ways to light a candle against the backdrop of my natural darkness. I am by nature a morose and pessimistic individual. I don't have a lot of hope for the future. But I absolutely do not allow that part of me to control my actions. I recognize it and honor where it came from, but I prefer to live on the assumption that this is just my jaundiced and faulty view, that yes, life sucks and then you die, but you get to choose how you look at that. I'm a primate. My nature is to make a new nest every night. I get to decide what I take with me and what I leave behind. I am gradually eliminating pessimism from my life. It grows back, like a fungus, but I'm eradicating it as often as I notice it starting to take hold.

12. And another: I am grateful for my courage. Somebody complimented me on that last night. It always astonishes me when anybody notices. Courage is not something this current society "gets" at all. Courage in individuals is not encouraged. See what I did there? I am grateful for my mostly lack of cowardice and for knowing when enough is enough, most of the time.

So, comments, as always, are welcome. I would love to see somebody else's gratitude list because we are all so wildly and delightfully unique that we think things that don't occur to anybody else sometimes. I have lots more things to be grateful for, but this is enough for now.

#gratitude #thanksgiving #gratitude list

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andrewdburton · 4 years

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Lessons in Fear and Wealth from the Coronavirus

As I write this, the biggest story in the entire world is a virus that is making its way around the planet, leaving a trail of sickness and death in its wake, while sending a much bigger shockwave of fear and uncertainty out front. Last week, the US stock market dropped 15% in just a few days, the most shocking correction since the 2008-2009 financial crisis (and the most interesting drop since the founding of this blog in 2011).

I am sure you’ve been hearing, reading or watching plenty about it already, but the real question is, what should we do about it?

The Scary Side

Is this a screenshot from the fear-mongering TV news? Nope, just a moment from a classic zombie movie, although sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.

The fear and doubt seems to be what the news stories have been emphasizing. The disease is highly contagious, and very sneaky. Each carrier seems to infect 2-3 additional people, which means exponential growth. And with an observed death rate of about 4% so far, it is about 400 times more deadly than the common flu.

On the news, we see rows of hastily installed hospital beds, people wearing paper face masks even here in our own country, empty supermarket shelves and shuttered factories and public venues.

And we are reminded that we ain’t seen nothing yet, because with mild symptoms that can hide for days, most cases are going unreported and the disease is pumping its toxic tentacles through the arteries of our economy, plotting its attack while we are left POWERLESS UNTIL THE RIOTS IN THE STREET START AND PEOPLE ARE SMASHING THROUGH OUR WINDOWS TO TAKE OUR LAST FEW CANS OF BEANS AFTER WE RUN OUT OF AMMO IN OUR SHOTGUNS.

Some people are just prone to this type of thinking, and I even have a few in my own life. They have warned me to gather “at least a few months worth” of nonperishable food in my pantry and make sure I have a generator and plenty of fuel, at the very least. And to reconsider my stance of not keeping any guns in the house.

The Not-So-Scary Side

I went out on the town at the peak of the scare. The reality is different from the news headlines.

As I write this on March 2nd, there have been about 90,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19. And while the number is still growing rapidly, at the moment it is still a tiny number, about one thousandth of a percent of the world’s population. So even if it multiplies 100-fold, it would be a tenth of one percent. And out of these 90,000 people, about half are already recovered and have moved on with their lives. And the vast majority of the remaining ill, and all those who are so far undetected, and those who are yet to get infected, will also recover.

Past and current status of the outbreak.

But do we have any idea how bad it will get, before it gets better? As it turns out, we do. But first, some perspective.

Here are this year’s numbers for the tried-and-true traditional flu for the 2019 flu season in the US alone (and remember the USA is only four percent of the world population):

Wow, 32-45 million cases of the flu already, and tens of thousands of deaths. Even I had no idea it was that serious, and yet the flu is something I don’t even worry about – ever!

Even scarier: every year, about 2.8 million people die in the US alone, and a full 70% of these deaths (over two million people per year) are caused by “lifestyle factors”, which to put it plainly means ignoring Mr. Money Mustache’s advice about bikes, barbells and salads every day.

So if we start with the common flu, which is surprisingly scary, choosing car-based transportation and TV-based entertainment and consuming processed high-carbohydrate food and soft drinks should feel at least an additional hundred times scarier than that.

But do you feel the appropriate ratios of fear in these two situations? And a much smaller amount of fear about the Coronavirus? Probably not, because we humans generally suck at putting numbers, statistics and probabilities into perspective.

We Have Been Here Before

In my lifetime alone, we have seen the rise and decline of quite a list of worldwide health scares, each of which was covered in the news with similar intensity to what we see today. AIDS, Ebola, SARS, Bird Flu, and the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic, also known as H1N1. That one was particularly serious in retrospect, having infected between 11-21% of the world’s population and taking the lives of about 500,000.

Yet here we are, with that fearful event gone from the rearview mirror and a global economy that is far richer than it has ever been. Which is exactly what we will eventually be saying about the present moment in time, from our vantage point in the even more prosperous future.

And Math Can Help Create Perspective

Contagious diseases don’t just grow forever until everybody is dead. They follow an S-curve, like this recent prediction for Covid-19’s spread. It currently estimates that we may see things flatten out fairly soon, but more importantly it continually updates to new information and makes an educated guess – a great strategy for dealing with unknowns in life in general.

One mathematical model that a researcher is updating each day – image source.

On the other hand, some estimates are more pessimistic. Disease modelers at Northeastern University uses different assumptions to predict between 550,000 and 4 million cases worldwide*, before we reach the flat top of our “S”. But that’s still only a twentieth of one percent of the world’s population who would even get the disease, and then a further 96-98% of those would recover.

As a final source of information, when it comes to world health issues I always like to see what Bill Gates has to say. And sure enough, he written this great opinion piece in a medical journal. His main point? The damage done by a virus really depends on how well our governments respond to it. Lots of caution and a quick response leads to much better results.

So there’s still a lot of uncertainty. But when faced with a lack of information, we can choose one of two options on where to learn more:

Good looking news anchors with fake tans and no scientific background, who make more money if they generate more viewership hours and advertising revenue, which is proven to multiply if they can cause their viewers to experience fear, or

Scientists and mathematicians who study this stuff for a living, and use incoming data to make a series of continually refined predictions.

As Mustachians, we get our information from scientists rather than news anchors and politicians, and then we choose a course of action based on what is in our circle of control. In the case of the Coronavirus, I would say that means taking the following steps:

Continue the usual program of living a healthy life. Just the incredibly simple steps of cutting cars, sugar and television out of your life as much as possible will virtually eliminate the 70% fatality risk factor of being inactive and unfit – and yet only a tiny percentage of people – even those lucky enough to still have fully able bodies – actually follow this advice. On top of that, this strategy will also greatly boost your immunity to Covid-19, and decrease your chance of serious illness or death if you do catch it.

Don’t try to out-guess the stock market. Just celebrate the fact that we have a temporary sale on stocks. While the endless stream of meaningless market commentary every day means absolutely nothing, one fact remains indisputable: stocks you buy today at a 15% discount from their peak, will be 15% more profitable for you over your lifetime.

And finally, still important but statistically less urgent is taking actual steps related to dodging this and other viral illnesses. Wash your hands a few times a day and avoid unnecessary large gatherings of people in close quarters, until the health organizations tell us we are in the clear.

Guns and ammo and a bunker full of canned beans not required.

* a really interesting quote from that same article about the size of the uncertainty around diseases: ” In the autumn of 2014, modelers at CDC projected that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa could reach 550,000 to 1.4 million cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone by late January if nothing changed. As it happened, heroic efforts to isolate patients, trace contacts, and stop unsafe burial practices kept the number of cases to 28,600 (and 11,325 deaths). “

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damonbation · 4 years

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Lessons in Fear and Wealth from the Coronavirus

I am sure you’ve been hearing, reading or watching plenty about it already, but the real question is, what should we do about it?

The Scary Side

Is this a screenshot from the fear-mongering TV news? Nope, just a moment from a classic zombie movie, although sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.

On the news, we see rows of hastily installed hospital beds, people wearing paper face masks even here in our own country, empty supermarket shelves and shuttered factories and public venues.

The Not-So-Scary Side

I went out on the town at the peak of the scare. The reality is different from the news headlines.

Past and current status of the outbreak.

But do we have any idea how bad it will get, before it gets better? As it turns out, we do. But first, some perspective.

Here are this year’s numbers for the tried-and-true traditional flu for the 2019 flu season in the US alone (and remember the USA is only four percent of the world population):

Wow, 32-45 million cases of the flu already, and tens of thousands of deaths. Even I had no idea it was that serious, and yet the flu is something I don’t even worry about – ever!

We Have Been Here Before

And Math Can Help Create Perspective

One mathematical model that a researcher is updating each day – image source.

So there’s still a lot of uncertainty. But when faced with a lack of information, we can choose one of two options on where to learn more:

Scientists and mathematicians who study this stuff for a living, and use incoming data to make a series of continually refined predictions.

Guns and ammo and a bunker full of canned beans not required.

Advertisement – An MMM-Recommended Bonus as of March 3, 2020:

Student loans click here ($300 bonus for MMM readers!)

Mortgages click here

note – Credible has now joined the short list of approved MMM affiliates, see more info here if you are curious how I handle them.

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literateape · 6 years

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American Shithole #16 — The Lord of the Rings and Beautiful Things

By Eric Wilson

“Maybe if I take a day off, I won’t have to write about Giuliani?” I thought to myself.

Life had been kicking me in the shins for weeks, and my legs were starting to buckle. It would be an ancillary benefit while hibernating and trying to nip this cold/flu in the bud — the coughing fits alone had me at the brink of exhaustion. Surely someone this revolting and stupid will implode and go away if I just slept for a few days?

“Nope,” said the Universe.

Instead, each coming week I will expect Giuliani to be a tornado touching down during an earthquake in the middle of a raging brush fire during a biblical flood — at least until Trump shitcans the idiot for what I could only imagine to be practicing law without an intellect.

Perhaps this relatively quiet week from the president’s new lawyer is a sign he is fading into the woodwork already… it’s Tuesday, and I’ve barely heard a peep.

Well I’m not biting.

Besides, he is definitely going to do something even dumber than he already has, which for an average idiot, I wouldn’t even consider possible, what with the hush fund and slush fund gaffes. Rudy Giuliani is no normal C-grade idiot though, so it’s a near-certainty this limelight hog is going to fuck up even worse (given the chance) and it seems that ol’ Trumpy is willing to keep Giuliani off the executioner’s block — for now.

Perhaps it’s part of the Don’s master plan — a plan that as much as we can piece things together, seems to center almost entirely on using the presidency as a front for mafia-like activities.

Which is of keen interest to American Shithole, this revelation that goons involved in the Trump campaign were running an extortion racket for an all-access pass to the presidential signing pen. The same pen he uses to chicken scratch his name on all manner of obscene laws and executive orders — producing a series of sharp vertical lines that look less like a signature, and more like a problem child’s drawing of the Gates of Mordor.

Good lord, did you hear his Mother’s Day message? Mom was “basically a nice person?”

Donny, can you show us where your mother never touched you?

Everything Trump does is like a comical, farcical, exaggerated take on our already over-the-top villains of film and literature, so it’s easy to dismiss some of his actions in the wake of so many others. Everything he does is some varying degree of terrible. He is the great eye, lidless, wreathed in orange flame.

Which I suppose makes Giuliani the Mouth of Sauron — I mean, he is a dead ringer.

I’d like to have been a fly on the wall during conversations with his dentist.

“Now about your teeth Mr. Giuliani, it appears that you have been chewing on broken glass and petrified dog shit for 70 years, so I have surgery scheduled for…” “No, I’m good.”

“OK, well, at least let me set some dentures for your uppers?”

“Fine, but you’re ruining my Halloween costume.”

Meanwhile, in Mordor on Monday afternoon — thousands injured, 60 dead and counting during protests at the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, and Washington is focusing on the first lady’s kidney operation.

Gosh, I hope she’s OK. Be Best, kidney!

Mordor by the way, is what the Trump Effect feels like for me at times: a painfully long slog through the shittiest part of Middle-earth. Somewhat like watching the films. Randomly fast-forward to a point in any of the three LotR movies, and more often than not, you will land on a scene of people walking somewhere.

I’m worried the Mueller investigation hasn’t even reached Gondor yet. The fucking congressional hobbits are still dicking around with the Nazgul at Weathertop? Shit, we’ve got months, maybe years to go.

Perhaps there is hope in this analogy as the Mouth of Sauron doesn’t appear until near the end of the Lord of the Rings saga.

Anyway, instead of dragging Giuliani through the mud prematurely, I’m going to focus briefly instead on this past week’s big reveal: presidential protection for your business interests is not only available; it’s quite affordable by today’s measure of corporate expenditure.

Hell, it’s a fire sale.

At least two separate LLC shell companies were created by different members of the Trump organization (Lewandowsky; Cohen), apparently in part, to shake down American businesses and industry. Both of which attempted to extort money from AT&T (Cohen was ultimately successful, where Lewandowsky was not), with the likely promise of favoritism from the administration for the Time Warner merger that Trump nixed anyway.

I don’t know how many times I am going to say it, but are you fucking kidding me?

I foolishly thought I was done being surprised by this embarrassing presidential failure of epic proportions only America could muster, but we have dropped trou for all the world to see — and the festering boils on our wrinkled, flaccid democracy are cause for retching from here to Timbuktu.

And it wasn’t just AT&T, it was everybody.

They shook down the auto industry, the pharmaceutical industry — they pimped access to Trump as if the Office of the President of the United States of America were simply some glory hole for anyone that’s got the cash and a stiff business proposal.

Essential Consultants LLC, Cohen’s limited liability corporation that paid Stormy Daniels the hush money, also received funding from Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, Novartis, Korea Aerospace Industries, as well as AT&T — and these are likely just the tip of the iceberg.

Also, was Cohen looking at his daughter’s Barbie Dream House when he named that fucking company? Is there a Ken working the phones at Essential Consultants?

"Essential Consultants, this is Ken speaking, how may I direct your bribe?"

Holy fucking shit. I am sick to my stomach just writing about this latest addition to the shame bucket. Nothing shames these people. Absolutely nothing.

Which brings me to my missed deadline, and what I plan to do about it in the future. First, my apologies, if you were looking forward to a fresh American Shithole last week — for whatever reason, I was unprepared. As I previously imagined, there are going to be weeks that I just don’t want to write about these evil fucking assholes. I may be under the weather, but let’s be honest here:

Writing about these evil fucking assholes every week, is quite often just as much of a slog as living with these evil fucking assholes every week. It’s not cathartic; most of the time I feel like I’m cleaning an outhouse with my brain.

So, between coughing fits and Nyquil-fueled fever-dreams, I figured on occasion I would write about the things in America that are amazing to me. The beautiful things that are not tied to this fucking nightmare we are living through. I’ve tried this before, but I always seem to be waylaid with fresh hell in the news cycle each morning on my now broken toilet.

The Beautiful Things will be an occasional, sporadic reprieve from Komàndant Bonespurs and his daily efforts to ruin my once blissful morning dumps. It will be an exploration of old and new, of the simple pleasures, and the timeless beauty of various creative efforts that for me, make life worth living.

It is my hope that you too, dear reader, will occasionally need a week away from the insanity; where together we can celebrate our artistic beauty unscathed by the ravages of this administration. This will also serve as an opportunity for me to pen a few backup articles that can be published in a pinch, the next time Ari brings the walking death home from one of her business trips — or the next time I don’t care to write about one of Trump’s boot-licking sycophants.

C’mon Mueller, throw the fucking ring into the fires of Mount Doom already.

B. S. Report

Heroes meeting heroes. Let us all celebrate Emma Gonzales meeting with James Shaw Jr., as the Parkland survivors gathered to celebrate another brave American. As the voices of our youth unite across our country, I worry less and less about the deadly opposition they face. Once a towering impenetrable monolith, the NRA of today seems more like a soon-to-be abandoned outpost of a dying empire.

4LWjr

#Giuliani #TRump #Mouth of Sauron #English teeth #Lord of the Rings #Michael Cohen #The Beautiful Things #Emma Gonzales

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theliterateape · 6 years

Text

American Shithole #16 — The Lord of the Rings and Beautiful Things

By Eric Wilson

“Maybe if I take a day off, I won’t have to write about Giuliani?” I thought to myself.

“Nope,” said the Universe.

Perhaps this relatively quiet week from the president’s new lawyer is a sign he is fading into the woodwork already… it’s Tuesday, and I’ve barely heard a peep.

Well I’m not biting.

Perhaps it’s part of the Don’s master plan — a plan that as much as we can piece things together, seems to center almost entirely on using the presidency as a front for mafia-like activities.

Good lord, did you hear his Mother’s Day message? Mom was “basically a nice person?”

Donny, can you show us where your mother never touched you?

Which I suppose makes Giuliani the Mouth of Sauron — I mean, he is a dead ringer.

I’d like to have been a fly on the wall during conversations with his dentist.

“Now about your teeth Mr. Giuliani, it appears that you have been chewing on broken glass and petrified dog shit for 70 years, so I have surgery scheduled for…” “No, I’m good.”

“OK, well, at least let me set some dentures for your uppers?”

“Fine, but you’re ruining my Halloween costume.”

Gosh, I hope she’s OK. Be Best, kidney!

Perhaps there is hope in this analogy as the Mouth of Sauron doesn’t appear until near the end of the Lord of the Rings saga.

Hell, it’s a fire sale.

I don’t know how many times I am going to say it, but are you fucking kidding me?

And it wasn’t just AT&T, it was everybody.

Also, was Cohen looking at his daughter’s Barbie Dream House when he named that fucking company? Is there a Ken working the phones at Essential Consultants?

"Essential Consultants, this is Ken speaking, how may I direct your bribe?"

Holy fucking shit. I am sick to my stomach just writing about this latest addition to the shame bucket. Nothing shames these people. Absolutely nothing.

C’mon Mueller, throw the fucking ring into the fires of Mount Doom already.

B. S. Report

4LWjr

#Giuliani #TRump #Mouth of Sauron #English teeth #Lord of the Rings #Michael Cohen #The Beautiful Things #Emma Gonzales

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abitoflit · 7 years

Text

Dagon

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realise, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death. It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a victim to the German sea-raider. The great war was then at its very beginning, and the ocean forces of the Hun had not completely sunk to their later degradation; so that our vessel was made a legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with all the fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners. So liberal, indeed, was the discipline of our captors, that five days after we were taken I managed to escape alone in a small boat with water and provisions for a good length of time. When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of my surroundings. Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by the sun and stars that I was somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knew nothing, and no island or coast-line was in sight. The weather kept fair, and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun; waiting either for some passing ship, or to be cast on the shores of some habitable land. But neither ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair in my solitude upon the heaving vastnesses of unbroken blue. The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know; for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous. When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away. Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more horrified than astonished; for there was in the air and in the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear. The sun was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me almost black in its cloudless cruelty; as though reflecting the inky marsh beneath my feet. As I crawled into the stranded boat I realised that only one theory could explain my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent of the new land which had risen beneath me, that I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging ocean, strain my ears as I might. Nor were there any sea-fowl to prey upon the dead things. For several hours I sat thinking or brooding in the boat, which lay upon its side and afforded a slight shade as the sun moved across the heavens. As the day progressed, the ground lost some of its stickiness, and seemed likely to dry sufficiently for travelling purposes in a short time. That night I slept but little, and the next day I made for myself a pack containing food and water, preparatory to an overland journey in search of the vanished sea and possible rescue. On the third morning I found the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. The odour of the fish was maddening; but I was too much concerned with graver things to mind so slight an evil, and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day I forged steadily westward, guided by a far-away hummock which rose higher than any other elevation on the rolling desert. That night I encamped, and on the following day still travelled toward the hummock, though that object seemed scarcely nearer than when I had first espied it. By the fourth evening I attained the base of the mound, which turned out to be much higher than it had appeared from a distance; an intervening valley setting it out in sharper relief from the general surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in the shadow of the hill. I know not why my dreams were so wild that night; but ere the waning and fantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern plain, I was awake in a cold perspiration, determined to sleep no more. Such visions as I had experienced were too much for me to endure again. And in the glow of the moon I saw how unwise I had been to travel by day. Without the glare of the parching sun, my journey would have cost me less energy; indeed, I now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had deterred me at sunset. Picking up my pack, I started for the crest of the eminence. I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source of vague horror to me; but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit or canyon, whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine. I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost, and of Satan’s hideous climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness. As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began to see that the slopes of the valley were not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined. Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy foot-holds for a descent, whilst after a drop of a few hundred feet, the declivity became very gradual. Urged on by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyse, I scrambled with difficulty down the rocks and stood on the gentler slope beneath, gazing into the Stygian deeps where no light had yet penetrated. All at once my attention was captured by a vast and singular object on the opposite slope, which rose steeply about an hundred yards ahead of me; an object that gleamed whitely in the newly bestowed rays of the ascending moon. That it was merely a gigantic piece of stone, I soon assured myself; but I was conscious of a distinct impression that its contour and position were not altogether the work of Nature. A closer scrutiny filled me with sensations I cannot express; for despite its enormous magnitude, and its position in an abyss which had yawned at the bottom of the sea since the world was young, I perceived beyond a doubt that the strange object was a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures. Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of the scientist’s or archaeologist’s delight, I examined my surroundings more closely. The moon, now near the zenith, shone weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that hemmed in the chasm, and revealed the fact that a far-flung body of water flowed at the bottom, winding out of sight in both directions, and almost lapping my feet as I stood on the slope. Across the chasm, the wavelets washed the base of the Cyclopean monolith; on whose surface I could now trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures. The writing was in a system of hieroglyphics unknown to me, and unlike anything I had ever seen in books; consisting for the most part of conventionalised aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, molluscs, whales, and the like. Several characters obviously represented marine things which are unknown to the modern world, but whose decomposing forms I had observed on the ocean-risen plain. It was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me spellbound. Plainly visible across the intervening water on account of their enormous size, were an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy of a Doré. I think that these things were supposed to depict men—at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shewn disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well. Of their faces and forms I dare not speak in detail; for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint. Grotesque beyond the imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiselled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for one of the creatures was shewn in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself. I remarked, as I say, their grotesqueness and strange size; but in a moment decided that they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring tribe; some tribe whose last descendant had perished eras before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal Man was born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the silent channel before me. Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then. Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my delirious journey back to the stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal, and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm some time after I reached the boat; at any rate, I know that I heard peals of thunder and other tones which Nature utters only in her wildest moods. When I came out of the shadows I was in a San Francisco hospital; brought thither by the captain of the American ship which had picked up my boat in mid-ocean. In my delirium I had said much, but found that my words had been given scant attention. Of any land upheaval in the Pacific, my rescuers knew nothing; nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew they could not believe. Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries. It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing. I tried morphine; but the drug has given only transient surcease, and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow-men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm—a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape from the German man-of-war. This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind—of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium. The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!

By H.P. Lovecraft

#science-fiction #science-fantasy #reading #writing #dagon #fantasy #monster #water #ocean #insanity

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