Hello, friends and enemies. One of the ways I keep track of things I see online has been with Pocket, which I use as something like a temporary bookmark station but it can also function as an archive of stuff you read and find interesting online. Unfortunately, because we don’t get to keep anything good on the internet, Pocket announced it’s shutting down. Well, they say it’s becoming a newsletter or something to deliver “the same high-quality content.” That’s cool and whatever but that’s not what I need. It reminds me of the death of Delicious in 2011, which was an earlier bookmarking tool. They don’t want me to keep an archive of things I read! Conspiracy! I kid, I kid. It’s just very annoying to try to keep a record online when these websites keep deciding there’s no money in … bookmarks. I am not sure if I’m going to start using regular internet browser bookmarking, or perhaps leave tabs open (god help me). If anyone has a good suggestion, please pass it on.
Current Events
I had been thinking for the last few weeks about getting into some discussion of covid and what we know, since that body of knowledge has of course evolved a lot in the last few years. We’re now seeing that a new covid variant, NB.1.8.1, has emerged and there are cases in California, so it seems like a good time to take a look. One reason I wanted to read up and share my thoughts on this is because I am still masking in public places as much as I can. So, I asked myself, am I right to still mask when so many people don’t? If you don’t want to read the rest of this, the short answer is yes, as far as I’m concerned, wearing a mask is still an important way to protect yourself and others from covid, and covid is a lot more serious than just a cold or even the flu.
The FDA recently announced that it will be limiting who can get vaccinated for COVID to “people over 65 or with at least one chronic condition.” Your Local Epidemiologist explains that, while it does sound scientific to say manufacturers “must run a new placebo-controlled trial after a variant arrives,” this contradicts current scientific practices. Scientists don’t run a controlled study with placebos on every iteration of a vaccine because it’s slow and unethical (imagine giving someone a placebo vaccine, that person now thinks they’re vaccinated but they aren’t! You can’t do that!), and because new vaccines are based on previously studied, safe, old vaccines. One good thing is many people will still be able to get vaccinated because the CDC says you can get it if you have one of many chronic conditions like asthma, fatty liver, depression, or you’re just fat (it’s once again a great time to be fat lol). Still, the fact that fewer people will be receiving updated vaccines makes me think it will be more important to mask to try to protect each other.
While the vaccine is important, it’s not the ultimate weapon against covid. The vaccine meaningfully reduces the most severe effects of covid, like hospitalizations, but unfortunately isn’t as effective as something like the polio vaccine is against polio, which allowed us to essentially eradicate the disease. Even though the vaccines don’t do it all, they are an important part of reducing the risk of long COVID, which is, to me, one of the scariest parts about the disease. A piece of research that has stayed with me is that every infection increases the risk of long covid. This contradicts the popular belief that getting infected with covid “builds immunity” (it doesn’t). The study followed over 138,000 US veterans who had covid over the course of two years. The findings showed that covid has a “cumulative” effect, and “the adverse health effects from two infections are worse than one, and three infections worse than two.” As dire as that sounds, I do think one optimistic thing here is that it suggests it’s never too late to start taking covid precautions. If you’ve had covid three times, trying to avoid a fourth round is still important and could be the difference between you and long covid.
The World Health Organization reported that it is observing increases in covid rates worldwide, although currently rates are “relatively low” with 4.8% of samples testing positive for covid. I am not a doctor or public health expert but I feel like one in twenty cases is still a lot. Those are not odds I trust when it comes to my health. The increase in cases may be due to the new NB.1.8.1 variant. Bloomberg reported last month that covid is “spiking” in Hong Kong and Singapore “Severe cases – including deaths – also reached its highest level in about a year.” Cases are also increasing here in California according to L.A. County wastewater data, which is basically the only reliable source of infection rates now. This may lead to a “summer surge” in covid cases.
This is as good a time as any to remind everyone that Biden ending the “COVID-19 national emergency” two years ago was not a declaration that the pandemic ended. All this did was end federal support for covid from an administrative perspective, basically letting the government off the hook for paying for things like testing. No one has ever said that covid is over! Shortly after, the CDC also changed how it reported covid rates, getting rid of the color-coded map that showed infection rates by county. This makes it harder for regular people who are not chronically online like I am to figure out what the fuck is happening and how risky covid may truly be.
I want to be clear that I’m not writing this to make anyone feel bad about how they have dealt with covid. It’s a very personal choice, although the consequences of our individual choices are intertwined. The pandemic is, unfortunately, a group project. I’m writing this for myself and my own records, in part. It’s good to check in with one’s biases now and then. I’m also writing it for anyone who is feeling confused or overwhelmed with covid in the last five years (presumably all of us). It has been difficult to navigate and figure out what is the safest choice, especially since covid is a novel virus, so no one knew what to do at first. I also think it’s important to document what’s happening with covid amid the unhinged rhetoric about vaccines, given that people in our government are promoting the conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism, which I wrote about at length a few weeks ago. The same people erroneously pushing “herd immunity” are the ones telling us vaccines cause autism. Yet, per the The Gauntlet newsletter, “The problem is that we cannot achieve herd immunity to COVID—ever. Herd immunity would mean long-term, durable protection from infection, like we have for viruses like measles, mumps, and rubella.” Herd immunity for covid simply does not exist.
The talk of herd immunity and the “vaccines cause autism” lie are features of eugenics, which seems to be the defining philosophy of our current government (perhaps the current era), and even of the Biden administration, given that he did not exactly promote robust covid mitigation strategies. I am once again going to boldly (selfishly?) come out and say that I don’t think some people should have to die because they’re disabled or have autism or a weaker immune system. The hallmark of a functioning society is how it takes care of the people least able to care for themselves. The government shouldn’t just decide that it’s fine for thousands of people to die because responding to a pandemic is too much work. Yet, that’s exactly what it has done. Masking up and taking covid precautions is a way that you can demonstrate real care for the people around you, which is increasingly important in a society that does not seem to care.
Books and Other Words
In Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia, philosopher Kate Manne discusses societal forces that make people, especially women, feel like being physically smaller is a moral imperative. Manne begins with discussion of fatphobia and some research on what we know about weight loss. This isn’t news for me but it feels like a gut punch anyway: “there is currently no known reliable, safe, and ethical way to make fat people thin.” You can surgically remove half of your stomach, but even then people may not lose much weight, plus bariatric surgery is relatively high risk considering it’s elective. Manne also notes that “several studies indicate that dieting is actually a consistent predictor of future weight gain” and “it appears that weight gain is the typical long-term response to dieting, rather than the exception.” So everyone who has ever told a fat person to try to lose weight can shut up. One of the saddest parts about fatphobia that Manne chronicles is that fat women, in particular, are taken less seriously and assumed to be stupid and incompetent, which she illustrates with personal experience as an academic and with research that has repeatedly found things like teachers assume girls with a higher body-mass index (BMI) to be “less able readers.” Which, god damn. Children. Another study found that “defendants in a fictional court case were significantly more likely to be judged guilty if they were fat and female.” This stuff is just hateful. I hope I never end up in court. I won’t get into everything I took from this book because there is a lot of good stuff. It’s full of thought-provoking perspective on being fat and, more importantly, how fat women, in particular, are perceived in society. I highly recommend reading it.
Alexandra Rowland’s A Choir of Lies is the sequel to A Conspiracy of Truths, which I read in April. A Choir of Lies focuses on Yfling, whose teacher, Chant, abruptly liberated him from his apprenticeship a year or two before this story begins. Yfling is writing account of his recent stay and in Heyrland, a place roughly analogous to Holland, and his role in events that are a fictionalized version of tulip mania. I like Rowland’s work a lot so I’m not surprised that I liked this one too. It’s ultimately a coming-of-age story, with Yfling trying to figure out who he is and how he wants to use his abilities in the world now that he’s on his own as an adult. I don’t have any deep thoughts about it, so there you have it!
Meanwhile, on the internet:
- Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry via The Verge. First of all: good. Second: Nick Clegg is both a former Meta executive and former UK deputy prime minister. He is basically admitting that the only way to make “artificial intelligence”—though we’re really only referring to large language models here—is to steal artists’ work. It’s bonkers that you can make a company founded on stealing intellectual property, but at the beginning of this century, record companies were literally suing children for sharing music files online. So, it’s cool when a corporation does it? I think that’s what we’re learning here: it’s fine to steal when you’re rich.
- The Human Workforce Behind AI Wants a Union via The Nation. Speaking of AI, here’s your regular reminder that AI is far from a finished product and still requires thousands of real human people working behind the scenes to train it, or, in some cases, to function as a Mechanical Turk. It’s a hard job and every corporation seems hell-bent on making it as miserable as possible on top of that.
- Admin is crashing out via Read Max. In this newsletter, Max Read explains the current Trump–Elon drama through the theory “that what we think of as ‘social media platforms’ are mostly just million-user message boards, and as such retain–especially among the most frequent and visible posters–many of the ancestral folkways, customs, and cultural conventions of their forum forerunners.” This made me laugh but it’s true. Internet old-heads know that this is just classic internet drama dressed up for the 2020s. Read goes on to state, “I want to underline that this is more than just another example of the ongoing and near-complete convergence between ‘electoral politics’ and ‘television entertainment.’ It is also an example of the ongoing convergence between ‘electoral politics’ and ‘forum drama,’ driven by the overwhelming mediation of politics by various message board-like social-media platforms.”
- Why Protests Should Be Promises via Time. I liked this reminder that protesting has to be backed by a coherent demand. It’s not enough to be in the streets for its own sake. Táíwò writes “for protests to succeed, they must be backed by movements with the ability to promise to withhold—labor, debt payments, rent payments, or consumer support—and to follow through if demands aren’t met. Protests by such movements consequently morph into real, tangible promises: demonstrations of an ability to escalate, backed by strategic leverage.”
Doing Things
Last weekend was very busy! My mom visited me (I forgot to take pictures but I know she got one of us and posted it on instagram) to see my dance recital. The recital was fun and I think all my pieces were really good! It was nice that my mom came to watch. On Sunday, my friend Lemon and I hosted another food party. This time, we did a garden/tea party and encouraged everyone to dress up. I got a fancy hat for the occasion. I made cheddar and scallion scones, a chocolate-caramel tart, and hibiscus-ginger punch. Unfortunately, the tart melted over the course of the afternoon and caramel was pooling all over, but before that point, it was very good. I want to try making it again (or just make and eat the caramel, who knows).
Languages
I have been extremely focused on my languages over the last two weeks! I’m noticing that Icelandic is feeling a little easier lately. Don’t get confused: I’m still buried in the intermediate level, but I’ve ascended a rung or two on the ladder of fluency. I decided that, if I’m going to learn German for our trip to Eurovision next year, I want to make sure I’m putting in extra effort with the Icelandic so I don’t lose my progress. I’m still studying Spanish too, of course, but I don’t feel it’s at risk in the same way. I’ve been working hard on translating my Wikipedia articles and getting caught up on my flashcards (I was ignoring them so now there’s a huge backlog to review. Alas). Here are two articles I recently translated that have some fun details: Ketubjörg and Úlfsstaðir.
Corporeal Form
This week I finally got “braces.” In actual fact, I have “clear aligners,” which is the non-brand name term for Invisalign (my dentist is using some other brand, but that’s the one most people have heard of). About a month ago, the dentist did 3D imaging of my mouth and sent it to a lab that models how the teeth move. They print out “trays”—basically sets mouthguards—that I’ll wear two weeks at a time. The dentist also glued little “buttons,” as they call them, to my teeth to give the trays something to hang on to (you can see them in the photo if you look closely).
I had braces when I was younger and I guess I forgot how awful they are because I’m having a bad time. Granted, I’m only two days in so I suppose it will get easier but I have been in a lot of pain. What I really don’t like is that I have to remove the braces to eat, and removing them and putting them back in are easily the most uncomfortable part since that reminds my mouth that it’s being bullied into place. It’s making me nervous about wanting to binge eat since I don’t want to take the braces out more than I have to, and of course, I don’t want to be hungry. I’m hoping I’ll figure out how to live with it all since they’ve estimated that it’s going to take 15 months to straighten out my teeth, and in my experience these things always take longer than they tell you.
Cat Therapy
Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves.
