Why does Windows not tell me when my graphics drivers are out of date? I get notifications that I can link my Android phone, which I don’t have, to my computer, which I don’t really want connected to my Android phone, which I don’t have, or any other phone that I do have for that matter but there isn’t anything that will tell me that my drivers are two patches out of date.
Apparently this is what I worry about when I stop watching the news.
We are so, so, SO fucked.
The new Republican talking point is that it’s the CDC recommending for people to start wearing masks again that is causing all the vaccine hesitancy in red states. The Governor of Missouri was on Fox this morning and said the following;
The recently updated CDC guidance regarding mask wearing for fully vaccinated individuals is disappointing and concerning. It’s disappointing because it is inconsistent with the overwhelming evidence surrounding the efficacy of the vaccines and their proven results, and it only serves to disrupt the increases we are seeing in vaccine uptake. This self-inflicted setback encourages skepticism and vaccine hesitancy at a time when the goal is to prevent serious illnesses and deaths from COVID-19 through vaccination. It’s concerning because the nation’s top public health agency appears to be cowering to the political pressures of those who only want to force mandates and shutdowns, which only further prolong the recovery we as a nation are working towards. This decision only promotes fear and further division among our citizens.
How is Missouri fairing with the latest surge in cases? I’m glad you asked!
This pandemic is never ever EVER going to end and all it’s going to take is one unlucky mutation incubated in some ignorant-ass yokel and The Stand will no longer be a work of fiction.
There is nothing that I, personally, can do about any of this and when I think about the fact that I am likely looking at ANOTHER year of wearing isolation gear and shoveling corpses in the ICU it just makes my dissatisfaction with current circumstances in general that much worse.
So this is it. I’m swearing off news media for at least a week. Maybe a couple months. FSM knows I’m not going to have to follow anything too closely to know when the surge hits the Trump-Humper counties in Washington because I’ll be neck deep in it at work.
I’m counting on my friends and family to keep me up to date in anything interesting and non-covid related that happens. Also, if anyone has any suggestions for podcasts with episodes of around 20-30 minutes that I can listen to on my commute I would welcome them.
Again stepping away from the cancer doom-and-gloom for a moment, I ran across the above comment in a libertarian discussion forum. I thought it perfectly encapsulated the thought process of the overwhelming majority of self-identified “libertarians”, especially the mental gymnastics required to somehow be wrong about everything all the time.
For those who can’t effectively see the tiny text, it reads as follows;
We’ve spent years with the position that we didn’t need the state to force us to behave. That we could be smart and responsible without having our hands held.
And then in the span of a year, a bunch of you idiots who are definitely reading this right now went ahead and did everything you could to prove that no, we definitely are NOT smart enough to do anything intelligent on our own, and that we apparently DO need the government to force us to not be stupid.
All you had to do was either get a shot OR put a fucking mask on and stop getting sick for freedom. But no, that was apparently too much to ask. So now the state has all the evidence they’ll ever need that, without being forced to do something, we’re too stupid to do it.
So thanks for setting us back, you dumb fucks.
Edit: I’m getting called an authoritarian bootlicker for advocating that people be responsible voluntarily. Awesome, guys.
Some Rando on the Internet
Several people, myself included, have mentioned that movies like Jaws have to be re-evaluated in the light of the pubic and especially political response to the pandemic. I have never had much faith that the general public will behave responsibly, even under the most extreme circumstances, but I always raged about how unrealistic Jaws was because the mayor of the town refused to close public beaches in spite of the fact that it was nearly certain that more people would be killed by the shark. I couldn’t imagine anyone being that stupid and shortsighted. I think it’s pretty clear now that many (most?) politicians would opt for the easy, expedient solution that is beneficial in the very short term even if it means worse political fallout in the medium- to long term. Like keeping businesses open because “ERMAHGHERD TEH ECONOMIES!” even though that means thousands of people will die a few weeks from now.
All this goes to explain why we’re looking at yet another Covid surge and could potentially be seeing 200,000 new cases per day nationwide again by October.
Keep wearing your masks.
Edited to add;
Or, and stay with me here, it is just possible that some of us don’t wish death on people with whom we disagree politically. Crazy to think, huh?
This pandemic is never going to end.
edited further to add;
I’ve done this twice now and, again, cannot recommend it highly enough. There is no way to adequately convey what it’s like. Which is why I’m going to half-ass trying to explain exactly that.
Your cerebral cortex, what us medical professionals refer to as “the wrinkly part of your brain” understands parachutes, at least on a general level. Not in any exact detail necessarily but in broad strokes. It also has at least some impression of their record for safety and reliability. It understands that humans are tool-using animals and that we can greatly extend our capabilities through technology.
Your cerebellum, known to medical professionals as “the lumpy bit near the base of the skull”, doesn’t understand any of that. The cerebellum hasn’t had a major update to its operating system in probably 100,000 years. The cerebellum is mostly in charge of your autonomic nervous system, the part of your nervous system that controls things like the fight-or-flight response. It’s still on the lookout for sabre-tooth tigers and hasn’t really figured out any other way to see the world.
So there you are up in an airplane, which is kind of throwing the cerebellum off a little already, and then you’re going to do something that, as far as your cerebellum is concerned, will be absolutely, 100% assured fatal. This tends to cause a certain amount of unease.
Then, of course, the parachute opens and you float safely back down to earth.
Now remember, as far as your cerebellum was concerned, ten minutes ago you did something that should have, without any doubt or question, caused your demise. It was as certain as night following day that you were going to die. No avoiding it, no other possible outcome.
And then you don’t die. And not only that, you’re not even hurt!
Just imagine how confused that must make your cerebellum. Here is this thing that hasn’t learned much of anything new for the last 100 centuries and something just happened that it has absolutely no way of explaining.
Anyway, it’s kind of like that.
Once again, the process itself was completely unremarkable. I asked the treatment nurse about side effects, specifically fatigue, and whether or not what I was experiencing was out of proportion or beyond what was expected. She observed that the overwhelming majority of people that she gives BCG treatments to are past retirement age or otherwise not working and they still complain about fatigue.
I am absolutely willing to acknowledge, what with everything else I’ve had going on over the last 18-24 months, that the lack of energy I’ve been experiencing may not be entirely the result of the BCG. There are certainly other factors that could all be coming together to make me feel like I have been feeling. That said, I’m sure the BCG isn’t helping.
I’ll see how this week goes but I may very well look in to going on light duty for at least the duration of my remaining weekly treatments.
Kind of puts things in perspective
Gaze as much as he might, he could see no end to the trees and the leaves in any direction. His heart, that had been lightened by the sight of the sun and the feel of the wind, sank back into his toes.
Actually, as I have told you, they were not far off the edge of the forest; and if Bilbo had had the sense to see it, the tree that he had climbed, though it was tall in itself, was standing near the bottom of a wide valley, so that from its top the trees seemed to swell up all round like the edges of a great bowl, and he could not expect to see how far the forest lasted.
Still he did not see this, and he climbed down full of despair. He got to the bottom again at last, scratched, hot, and miserable, and he could not see anything in the gloom below when he got there
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
I have used this passage before to describe a bit of how I feel on my off days, not necessarily cancer related specifically, but in general. Intellectually I know that nothing I’m going through right now is going to last forever but sometimes it is very difficult to see the end.
I think some of this is connected to the disparity between how much I need to do and how much I feel like I can do. I have no doubt that I could be doing more than I’m doing now in terms of maintaining the house, making progress in school, showing up for work, etc. if I just pushed myself a little harder. The question that I can’t settle in my mind is how hard do I need to push myself? How hard SHOULD I push myself.
There are two extremes; I could do nothing and just let everything fall apart or I could keep pushing myself to do everything until I collapse. Neither of those are good options but I’m not sure where the balance is. There is a big part of my brain that tells me I’m malingering or being lazy whenever I leave something undone to sit and rest for a while which is useful to a point, I suppose, but it doesn’t seem to have an off-switch. It’s hard to get a handle on what is a reasonable level of activity when that part of my brain is likely never going to be happy no matter how much I do. If it was a voice of encouragement it wouldn’t be that bad; “you’ve got this, keep going, you’re doing amazing, don’t stop” but instead I just have this constant drone about how lazy I’m being and how much time I’m wasting that could be put to better use.
My brain is not particularly helpful a lot of the time.
I was profoundly unconscious for about four hours there. One of those times when you’re so far out that when you wake up you don’t even know what day it is. Anyway, that happened and it helped a great deal.
I was going to expound on some trivial matter or other but instead I think I’ll go pass out again.
When you have insomnia, you’re never really asleep, and you’re never really awake. With insomnia, nothing’s real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Edited to add – Was unpleasantly awake and restless, now back to being so exhausted my eyes are crossing. In the space of about two hours I’ve hit polar opposites.
This is really strange.
The second treatment went very much the same as the first, minus the annoyance of driving and trying to park downtown since I was very kindly given a ride to and from so I wouldn’t have to deal with it.
I absolutely have been more fatigued than usual over the last few days but I’m still not sure how much is medication side-effects and how much is life side-effects. Treatment nurse said it was very likely both. It’s certainly not debilitating, but is is getting annoying. I have a couple days off with not much to do except homework so I’m going to try an experiment, FOR SCIENCE! My hypothesis is that if I spend the next two days being profoundly lazy, my energy level will improve.
I will post the results after a rigorous statistical analysis of the data.
Edited to add – Yeah, this is definitely more than my typical fatigue. I feel like I could go to bed now and sleep until Thursday.
Also, I’m starting to get some of those urinary tract infection-like symptoms. Sitting quietly wasting time playing video games and all of a sudden YOW! GOTTA PEE!
Fun stuff.