Moody Monday: another roundup

[mellowtigger]

The economic situation in the USA continues to worsen (see citations in the first reply), including here in Minneapolis.  The authoritarianism on display in the Republican party continues to grow.  Trump is still presumed to be their front runner in 2024, and he is under investigation for tax fraud, election fraud, insurrection, and violating the Espionage Act.  Of course, we can expect Democrats to ignore reality yet again.

New monkeypox cases worldwide have plateaued around 6,000 cases per week.  That's good.  It can transmit asymptomatically.  That's bad.

In the USA, you should take the opportunity to get your last set of free rapid Covid tests now.  Don't expect any more. The USA has succumbed fully to the #UrgencyOfNormal, even with 10X the excess death seen in other parts of the world for people under age 65, even with various healthcare facilities operating over capacity today.  It's not just immediate infection causing problems, it's also the aftereffects.  It looks like Canada will soon join us.  The willful ignorance is mind boggling.

We've known for almost 2 years now that SARS-CoV-2 damages the circulatory system, even in children with mild symptoms.  GOOD NEWS: Masking and air filtration are effective!  If, like other parents, you're concerned for your child's future health, then try building Corgi-Rosenthal boxes and donating them to every classroom where your child will study.  Test results look good for these do-it-yourself creations, with filters working effectively for months before needing replacement.  Ensure that your child has a steady supply of masks.  The American Academy of Pediatrics had to go on Twitter to tell everyone that masks will not interfere in your child's development.  In fact, a mother getting COVID-19 before birth increases the odds of neurodevelopmental disorders.

Like HIV before it, we will eventually learn a lot about human biology from this virus.  People interested in Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome have already noticed an unusual correlation with COVID-19.  We may eventually learn that connective tissue plays a significant role in immunological health.  Meanwhile, I've been trying to remind myself that eventually somebody would develop Kaposi's Sarcoma after covid, just as a statistical probability, unrelated to causation.  It is troublesome, however, when doctors note a previously immunocompetent person develops it.  We've seen this story in the 1980s/90s with AIDS.

I've seen the flooding in Pakistan, with more than 1,100 killed. I've seen the heat/drought in China. I've seen the Nazi warship in the Danube.  I've seen the report that nearly every marine species faces extinction this century.  But people are still expecting life to continue as normal. Sorry, but this is just the beginning. It will get a lot worse from here.

We can halt Earth breakdown, but only if we end the fossil fuel industry. We can have a livable Earth or fossil fuels. We don't get both. I don't make the rules, this is physics and it isn't negotiable.
- Twitter, Peter Kalmus, 2022 August 28

People haven't figured out yet how much they have to give up to ensure that future generations can even survive.  It requires reducing the meat and dairy impacts.  It requires complete elimination of gas consumption, so no more trips in airplanes or drives across the metro.  You go where you can walk or bicycle yourself.  Period.

Comments

[lilysea]

It requires complete elimination of gas consumption, so no more trips in airplanes or drives across the metro. You go where you can walk or bicycle yourself. Period.

There had better be alternatives for those of us who are so Disabled or so chronically ill that the distance we can walk/cycle ourselves is less than 25 metres...

In Adelaide, they had electric buses that charged themselves from plugging into powerpoints that were powered by solar panels on the roofs of the bus depot.

We need more of that!

We need wheelchair taxis that are electric, and charged up from power points that use grid electricity generated by solar panels or wind turbines...

[mellowtigger]

Mass transit needs to become the norm. That's problematic during pandemic, and most systems have seen ridership drop by 50%. If people are managing to work from home, that's good. But we still need mass transit (non-petrol) for everything else, with improved air ventilation and filtration.

I still hope that driverless cars will become the norm, so that people don't have to own/maintain their own equipment in superfluous private ownership. Wheelchair accessible versions are a great idea. But mass transit so frequent and accessible that nobody even wants their own vehicle is the best option I see, after drastically reducing all transit everywhere first.

Edit: Elimination of travel in the first place really is the required goalpost. Transit is secondary to providing a sustainable future. We can carve out exceptions for emergency and accessibility when we've ensured that travel for convenience does no harm. As long as we worsen climate change, nobody can reasonably expect our civilization to continue.

[lilysea]

Making it illegal for celebrities and Billionaires to have private jets would be a great start.

Also banning new oil rigs and banning new gas rigs.

[frith]

A few months ago one of the journalers here on Dreamwidth toyed with a question that went something like 'for what will people be nostalgic 20 or 30 years from now?' My answer was seafood. It still is.

Even if _all_ greenhouse gas production came to an abrupt halt, the carbon dioxide already released is going to last centuries. After we ate all the Pleistocene megafauna, we took up agriculture and a bunch of us turned a freaky shade of pale to try and get enough vitamin D on our new crappy cultivated diet. I wonder what we're going to come up with to cope with this fresh new hell we're creating? I am Groot?

[mellowtigger]

That's in interesting idea. I knew that most agricultural land is at higher latitudes, but I hadn't really paired that development with human evolutionary changes. There's also a theory that we didn't really start consuming meat in quantity until we needed it for big brains. Those poor megafauna, paying in dense calories for our expensive neurons.

"I wonder what we're going to come up with to cope with this fresh new hell we're creating? I am Groot?"
Funny you should mention that idea. There's a whole book that includes that concept, "The Actual Star" by Monica Byrne. A related story in "Galapagos" has humans evolving to become less intelligent, although it focuses on the need for streamlined skull shape rather than pure caloric issues.

[frith]

I used to buy into the northern latitudes = fair skin hypothesis, but the skin tone of the first nation hunter gathers, many of whom live in total darkness for several month a year, lends some doubt on that. European agriculture, along with fair skin and the ability to digest grain and milk (in adulthood) arrived with people migrating from the Anatolia region (Turkey). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_skin . Agriculture started worldwide around 11,700 years ago, about when all the Pleistocene megafauna were finally wiped out. It was a bad deal. People stuck farming did not prosper, grew about 5 inches shorter, died earlier and were sicker than hunter gathers. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution There really had to be nothing else to eat or to do to survive.

I had not heard of The Actual Star but I think I've heard of Galapagos and I believe I have an unread copy of Cloud Atlas.

[darkoshi]

Thanks for the info on the free Covid tests. I ordered another batch.

[wispywillow]

It's all one of the several reasons I refuse to bring a child into this world.

And the neo-fascism on display by the Republican party is mind-boggling. Their constant use of deflection, projection, and argumentative fallacies is so juvenile that it wouldn't even merit response... except that it is depressingly successful for them.

[zipperbear]

Alas, their religions oppose family planning, so they can out-breed us, while conscientiousness goes extinct.

[bitterlawngnome]

https://www.summerlandreview.com/news/obsolete-covid-19-information-continues-to-circulate-in-okanagan/

[mellowtigger]

Oh, thank goodness it's outdated. I was going to add this link to the twitter thread, but I see it's now already part of it!

[bitterlawngnome]

I figured it had to either be old or fake, since these are not the posters we're seeing in bus shelters now.

[mellowtigger]

It's too early to celebrate, though. :( Google is refusing to translate the whole webpage for me, but...

"After having multiplied the steps, Mr. Stringer [context: an immune suppressed teacher] finally learned on Monday that he will be able to return to class, at his own risk. He can be protected by a plexiglass partition, but he is still refused the purchase of N95 masks and the installation of an air purifier. According to the Ministry of Education, these devices are "to be avoided" in the classroom."
https://www.journaldequebec.com/2022/08/30/pas-de-purificateur-dair-pour-un-prof-malgre-un-billet-du-medecin