#I cannot overstate how busy I've been this is the most busy I've been in actual literal years

[emile-hides]

Tired of the cute facade, gonna start drawing myself uglier

[mono-blogs-art]

I saw BABYMETAL live in concert in Milan last night!

It was SO awesome!!! It was definitely worth the 5 hour travel and organisation around it (& a great excuse to meet up with the bestie @transimailisa again <3) despite the cold and wet weather. Though we were a bit late to the queue (we arrived around 30min before doors opened?) we managed to get pretty good spots to stand, maybe around 10-15m away from the stage. When my view was not blocked by Every Tall Italian Man Ever, you could see the performers really clearly. I really had such a great time. I cannot overstate how good of a time I had.

I got into BM casually somewhere around 2020, obviously couldn't see them in concert because of the pandemic. So of course I immediately jumped from my seat when the EU tour was announced. I've been a jp idol fan for a while now and I've seen quite a few idol concerts, and I've also been to metal concerts now, so I wondered how their concert would be like (lmao) and if people would bring stuff like light blades etc. I saw one guy with a blade but apart from that it was just like any regular concert I've been to. The energy in the crowd was great, despite the language barrier so many people knew the songs and sang along, the call and response portions especially in Monochrome (beloved beloved beloved) were just... saur good. Mwah.

I think the most surprising thing to me (up til now pretty casual fan, have only seen a few live performances of some songs of theirs but never a full concert) was how... goofy they were? I always imagined them being this super serious trio with a hard exterior that never cracked, but my god those girls were having the time of their lives on that stage, it was really infectious. Especially Momo & Moa moved around the sides of the stage a lot, interacting with the audience, and they were laughing and headbanging along. Pris caught this (I was too busy going insane) but we think that somewhere in Megitsune Su fumbled a lyric or something, and the other two immediately bullied her for it and they were all laughing :D I guess that is a tradition that continues with other groups I follow lmao

In general it was such a great concert, great sound and a GREAT setlist with really high energy songs at the start (Gimme Chocolate, PA PA YA) and overall a fun mixture of old and new bangers. The only sad thing was that it was only just over an hour long, I would have loved 2 or 3 more songs and a proper Encore. Despite that, we all went home exhausted and happy from dancing and celebrating, and now that I'm back in my own cozy bed and thinking about the experience I can't wait to do it again!!

[mishafletcher]

i'm sort of enjoying the influx of new people, but feel like there are a few tips i've seen left out of many welcome-to-tungle posts, so:

unlike most platforms, it's hard to tell who's following you on tumblr! if you have even a moderate amount of activity, it's super easy to miss the notification, and the only other way to tell if someone is following you is to go manually search your followers. sometimes this is a blessing, sometimes this is a curse. (mostly a blessing, tho.)

if you're a writer or a podcaster or an artist or whatever, put that info somewhere obvious! put it in your header, even if it's just "i wrote this thing!" i know you make cool stuff, but some of y'all're making it real hard for people to find out that you make cool stuff.

embrace tags as commentary. if you're adding substantive content to the post, sure, add it to the post, i guess. if it's a post about what you have for breakfast, though, or a meme about which [whatever] are you, just throw it in the tags.

if someone added stuff to a post that you don't agree with, or that isn't adding anything to the post, it's fine to fish around in the notes to find a version that doesn't have that addition.

back to tags. i literally can't overstate how much we love tags here. metacommentary on the post? throwaway comments? vaguely related anecdote? put it in the tags! tags are so much a part of tumblr's conversations that the options for filtering reblog notifications are "reblogs with comment" and "reblogs without comment"—and if you select "reblogs with comment", you'll still get the ones that have had tags added.

side note that you can filter your activity feed, which is where you can see how people are interacting with your posts. i personally try not to engage with mine—not my business—but if you want to look at a specific thing, like who's followed you recently, or replies on your posts, hit the little filter button above the feed and you can be very specific about the types of activity that you want to see.

nope, sorry, i'm still talking about tags. bonus to embracing tags as commentary: you can say whatever weird shit you want! tags are delightfully ephemeral. you want to search the tags? best of luck! you probably cannot. choose to view this as a feature, not a bug.

sometimes your tags pass peer review, as we say, and someone will screenshot or copy them and add them to the post. this is a compliment.

the queue function is the unsung hero of this website. are you posting in real time? are you posting from a queue? are you mixing it up and doing both at once? who can say? congrats, you're ✨mysterious✨!

another important function of the queue is that helps you make *your* blorbos into *our* blorbos. twenty-seven untagged posts about your new hyperfixation in two hours is the soul killer, the thing that makes your followers super tired of even hearing about it. the exact same twenty-seven untagged posts spread out over the course of a day, though, scattered among other posts like seeds on the wind, are somehow charming—compelling, even. wow, that sad wet cat of a man *does* seem awfully sad. i wonder what terrible thing has happened to him!

anyhow, these aren't rules and i'm not the boss of you, but if you were looking for unsolicited advice from a gremlin who's been on tumblr for way, way too long, now you have it.

[vidreview]

VIDREV: "We Finally Watched Nukie: The VHS Grading Video" by RedLetterMedia

[originally posted april 24th 2023]

there's so much i could say about RLM and won't, at least not today. you can't claim to have a serious conversation about video essays on youtube (or the tenor of nerd-related online media criticism generally) without talking about the Plinkett Star Wars reviews, and even still that convo would be incomplete without discussing their on-again-off-again relationship with abject somethingawful-style offensive edgelord shitposting. unlike an embarrassing quantity of their contemporary peers, however, the RLM guys grew and learned and changed, which is a big part of why i've stuck with them for so long. i was a teen in the 2000s, i also said slurs and thought being offensive was just good honest fun. i grew up as they matured, in contrast to a sea of other adult entertainers existentially committed to never doing so.

RLM is probably the closest thing i and a fair few millennials (from a very particular background) have to a Roger Ebert. i don't always agree with their takes, and there were a good couple years after The Last Jedi when i stopped watching them because it felt like they were playing too hard to reddit's tastes. i came back to them in 2020, when they (like me) finally just threw the entire mainstream blockbuster hollywood industry in the trash out of exhaustion and boredom, thus kickstarting what's honestly been the most consistently good run they've had in a long time. and i have to say, as someone who has been watching and reading online media crit for damn near two and a half decades now, i cannot overstate the immense psychic value i've come to place on the opinions of actual honest to god adults who like sci-fi and hate what's become of it. their spite for all things corporate schlock gives me infinite life. the fact is they've been producing entertaining, ambitious, and often shockingly insightful media analysis for more than ten years now. their Jack & Jill review remains an essential touchstone on the nepotistic business of modern ad-funded filmmaking! at least for me

but okay, i said i wasn't gonna talk at length about the legacy of RLM so i won't anymore. i'm here to talk about this relatively recent one-off documentary of theirs, which is nominally an extension of a years-old running gag but is in actuality a very matter-of-fact conversation between adults about the role of speculative collector's markets in nerd media. they begin by discussing the news story of a Back to the Future VHS tape selling for tens of thousands of dollars on eBay, thus sparking much buzz about the potential unmined value of old tapes. this serves as a springboard for an honest to goodness investigation of the entire phenomenon: the grading process, the inferiority of VHS, what it means to collect things, and to what extant the whole damn thing is a scam. they approach this topic with all the unflinching cynicism you'd expect of the crew who melted 2,387 vintage Star Wars figures in a vat of acetone simply out of spite.

the real throughline of this video is the question "what creates value?" and their answer is what i came here to talk about. condition, scarcity, and providence are the words they come back to-- how well-preserved is the collectible, how rare is it, how much story does it have as an object? they cite Beanie Babies here, the perennial example of corporatized speculative bubbles. one thing i really appreciate is how they clearly differentiate casual collecting from the activity of speculators. there's a pernicious expectation culturally that anyone who keeps a functionally useless Old Thing (vhs tapes, action figures, trading cards) must be doing so at least in part in hopes that its value will increase over time. as someone who does collect a few Old Things i've always hated this expectation. there's a lot of stuff i used to have and sold because i didn't really have a choice economically, and honestly in most cases it left me feeling kind of dirty. i don't like the idea of a toy that never gets played with, a movie that never gets watched, a card game that never gets played. i don't want to own a thing because it might get me money later. the things i collect are collected because they represent something personal to me, much in the way the RLM guys keep and display their own collectibles.

nothing can be called valuable if you can put a dollar sign on it, in my opinion. can there be a worse fate for matter than to be transmogrified into a metaphorical lottery ticket?

oh i hate this shit. i hate how our entire goddamn economy is just a series of gambling addictions stacked up in a trench coat called "banking." let's set aside cost of living, rent, education, healthcare, etc. i resent how expensive used clothes are now, how expensive vinyl is, old lenses for outdated mounting systems, weird analog a/v equipment, and honestly just like… everything? we're living in an era of such inescapable productive stagnation and engineered obsolescence, the only place left to turn to find something built to endure is the past. the demand for that stuff (and a lack of regulatory pressure to limit resale value) means sellers raise prices exponentially, which ultimately just ends up crowding out all the poors like me who just wanted some stupid little object to put in a corner where we can look at it and feel a fleeting moment of joy between shifts at the Food Pyramid. like i know this isn't A Big Problem but it fucking gets to me. everything old is expensive, everything new is expensive (ESPECIALLY if it's worth the money), and all the while we're just drowning in subscription services that treat every individual bank account like an oil field they've got mineral rights to. voting with your wallet doesn't make a lick of fucking difference when drainage enters the equation. god damned capitalists see a nickel changing hands and want a dime for each finger it touched. i made a video some years ago about all the Halo collectibles i had at the time and how conflicted they left me as i got older. i've all but removed the bookshelf from my recent essays because it just feels weird to me. the collection lingering softly behind you in a youtube video serves the same base function as a framed diploma at a doctor's office, which is… a little bit disquieting? i don't like that the only qualification that seems to matter in the world of media analysis is, functionally, how much money you have. but then that's true for becoming a doctor as well, isn't it. i guess it is kind of true of everything now. so yeah, the fact that RLM share both my enjoyment of collecting and my resentment towards most collectors means a lot to me. makes me feel slightly less psychotic

the big gimmick here is that they get a handful of tapes professionally graded (including a fake one just to see what happens), one of which is a copy of the wretched 80s b-movie Nukie. this is the aforementioned years-long running gag, a film that's been sent to them hundreds of times that they hadn't bothered to watch until producing this video. contending that this makes them owners of the largest private Nukie collection on earth, they proceed to put every single copy they own into a wood chipper to inflate the tape's perceived value ahead of listing their final, graded tape on eBay. i love this. i love this so much. generally i love how often the RLM guys destroy shit. in a world where everything is wrapped in plastic and rated for inevitable resale, there's immense catharsis in simply smashing something into worthlessness. we could use a lot more of that in some slightly more consequential arenas of human existence, imo

the tape sold for $80,600 and the proceeds were all donated to charity. that's awesome. but i wonder to what extent this whole episode works as an experiment. it certainly proves that you can create value where none ought to exist, though i think they should have listed a second Nukie tape without publicizing it like a week before releasing this vid just to have a control sample to compare from. but what i keep asking myself is, did destroying all those tapes ACTUALLY increase the speculative value of Nukie? it's not like they were in circulation before, and certainly the RLM guys had no intention of selling them down the line. the purpose of the wood chipper stunt is to create scarcity, but that scarcity only really exists in the narrative of Nukie as a running joke in RLM's videography. you're not bidding on the tape because it's the last, you're bidding on it because it's a funny joke from a youtube video. and that's providence, right? of course all that context imbues this worthless object with a parasocial value, it's the same thing as bidding on a prop from a movie you like.

but what kind of kills it for me as a proper experiment is that they explicitly say "we're donating the proceeds to charity." of course people are going crawl over each other to bid higher on this thing now, the internet LOVES seeing big numbers go to good causes. on the one hand, that's more providence. all of this is part of the mythos. whoever won the bid got plastic trash in exchange for giving RLM an $80k tax writeoff, which i think is hilarious. but that's precisely what pushes it into the realm of a stunt for me, rather than the proper experiment the rest of the vid puts a lot of effort into setting up, because our guys are very much pressing their thumbs on the scale. which, you know, i'm not REALLY complaining about this. anything they listed would sell for a lot, and i think we all know the aspiring VHS speculative bubble is a pile of shit. it doesn't need to be proven even faux-scientifically. but if we just seclude ourselves in the self-contained universe of this one video on its own, i feel like the stunt of the tape auction eclipses and maybe even undermines a lot of what came before. would it have been better if they'd held onto that now more-scarce graded tape with the intention of auctioning it off for charity someday at an unspecified date? for me, maybe yes. but of course everything you'd do to avoid unduly influencing the results of the auction ultimately results in giving less money to charity. i dunno. i don't even know if i'm complaining about anything at this point. i just know i've watched this video twice (once when it released, once last night because i was bored) and both times i found myself feeling somehow vaguely uneasy by the end. what does that mean? does it mean anything? supposedly it's my job to figure that out, but here i am at the end of this review and i've come no closer to really resolving it. maybe i am just unfairly cynical about youtubers doing charity.

in any event, i think this Nukie vid is an excellent example of what makes RLM special at their best. if you want a much more pure, personal, and distilled exploration of this emotion but filtered through the realm of memes stolen by corporations, definitely check out RLM's Dick the Birthday Boy: The Legacy Continues. anyway it's a good video so go watch it

[chelseydavidson]

Week #11 Progress

What is working?

So far, I almost feel like I'm falling upwards. I've just come home from what will be the third session with the Appleseed family. Johnny is definitely improving with his French. He's honestly a pleasure to tutor and his mum seems to be impressed, especially with what she describes as his change in attitude. 

More importantly, and most fortunately, I have my second client! Cue the victory dances and fanfare. 

I am overjoyed and, lo and behold, the client is an acquaintance of Mrs. Appleseed. Just to be fun, let's call them the Brady bunch. Why? Because I am tutoring two different students for one client, back-to-back. Even though the sessions are doubled in length and revenue, I still only deem this one additional client because, at the end of the day, the client is Mama Bear, not the two Baby Bears. (I'm starting to mix my metaphors. I suppose my client is then Carol, as opposed to Marcia and Jan.)

I am tutoring Grade 6 and Grade 9 mathematics to each of her daughters, respectively. I had my first session last week Friday, May 10, and found that it went moderately well, but not as productive as I'd hoped. It was pretty surface-level and I found that Jan was much more interested in having a snack than focusing on her textbook. Our tutoring environment was not the best at their kitchen table, as Jan was prone to distraction. She seems to understand most of the material. She just seems to lack focus.

Marcia was somewhat better at staying on task, but I sensed she felt the idea of having a tutor was somehow immature. Nonetheless, we had a conversation about what she's struggling with, and from what I gather, it's predominantly linear equations, but considering how the curriculum builds on itself throughout the semester, I made a mental note that she should have contacted a tutor sooner. I mentioned in a subtle way to Carol that Marcia might benefit from tutoring during the summer months to get her up to speed before heading into next week.

Carol Brady has scheduled another two-hour session for this Friday, May 17, so I'll continue to assess and report back here weekly.

What is not working?

Honestly, I haven't had the time to do any marketing. I have planned it out, but with the slight upswing in clients, I've had less time to dedicate to selling the business to the public in the way I intended. I've also given up on the notion of a digital marketing plan. I am starting to see how oversaturated this niche is with endless social media ads and targeted campaigns through Meta and Google that I receive, purely because of the research I did on this company before starting operations.

Also, I feel like I'm coming down with something, with difficulty swallowing and a sore throat. I did a strep test at my doctor's office today to rule it out before heading to the Appleseeds, but I was carrying a low-grade fever and have been asked to monitor symptoms all the same. I truly hope it's something innocuous, like a bad allergic response to a high pollen count, because I don't want to give up this momentum.

How do you feel the project is coming?

I honestly cannot believe my luck. I'm hitting milestones sooner than expected and it feels seemingly out of nowhere, since I've struggled so much with the marketing piece. 

I still feel adamant that I must do something but, with two clients currently, it becomes a question of when. With only so many hours in the day, in between prepping for the session and actually going and performing the work, it's no wonder I haven't paid enough mind to it. It's not an excuse, though. Marketing has to become a higher priority.

What are you learning about running a business?

I am learning firsthand the power of word of mouth. It took one client to get the cogs turning and now I have two. I've been absorbing every piece of feedback I receive (mostly implicit) from the Appleseeds and now the Bradys. The business model does seem to be viable. 

I also cannot overstate the power of a business card. It may seem silly, but I gave the Bradys a handful of cards, too, and asked them to share with anyone who might need tutoring. 

I also watched this video that focuses on how entrepreneurs who are successful are out to solve unhappiness. 

Anything that leads to frustration or dissatisfaction can offer an opportunity to fill a market gap. I particularly liked that one of the many listed frustrations was educating children, which made me feel like I am doing something profoundly helpful for my clients by reducing just one small burden of daily life for them. I like the framing of this idea; even if it is something I already knew, there is added clarity in pronouncing it correctly.

What are you learning about yourself?

I am learning I'm not seventeen anymore.

Running a business is exhausting.

As someone who enjoys a sense of organisation and control, it has been tough to let the reins go and just hope I don't fall off the horse. Still, I don't have much option, as I'm bone-tired at the end of the day and cannot spend a moment fretting over the next thing. 

I wonder if Ariana Huffington’s nap room is available.

[3ears]

Again I really appreciate the work and the response! Your response is as insightful and helpful as I was expecting. Thank you for all of the links and the thoughts. I'd already read some but not all of the linked pieces, but the ones I hadn't are good to have and your breakdown of all of them is super helpful. I also just wanted to say that I saw your post about where you're coming from, and I did not perceive your initial post as an abled person throwing disabled people under the bus. I respect where you're coming from and have been treating this conversation as an in-group conversation in a way that I do not do in most online discussions.

Re: 1. I will say, to the points about long COVID symptoms that go away after several months, in a point that I'm sure you are sympathetic to, I think when it comes to impacts on people's lives, several months of disability is certainly enough to cause people to lose their jobs, homes, etc – when I talk about high rates of long COVID, I'm also concerned about short-term disability so am intentionally including that whole ~10%. I'm open to the possibility you suggest that ~10% is just how many people get long-term symptoms from respiratory viruses, but 1. that just further incentivizes me to advocate for stronger protections now that I know more about respiratory viruses than I did pre-pandemic and 2. that just doesn't match up with the lived experiences I remember pre-pandemic and what I'm seeing now.

I understand how obviously you can't respond to my anecdotes and was just trying to include them for some context on where I'm coming from. In that vein, to be a little clearer, I work as an educator in a small school where I have a lot of info on students physical health and a lot of insight into COVID rates. I'm seeing multiple people with recently diagnosed symptoms that match with timing of recent COVID infections, and my student body is definitely averaging >1 COVID case per person per year, which is why I said they're getting it more than the flu. I'm not seeing people getting it more often than every 90 or 120 days or so, but that's still 2 or 3 times a year for many people, on top of other viruses, and that seems... Bad, given what you're saying about post-viral symptoms from COVID and other illnesses.

Re: 2. I think we basically agree on the large strokes here, but I do have some thoughts. My experience and that of people I know is not “getting five colds in the winter and assuming they're all COVID”, it's “basically never getting sick anymore” and “having regular scares where we are exposed to COVID because someone decided that they were safe to do something despite symptoms and then tested positive for COVID two days later.” So, that's where I'm coming from. I think if you have multiple negative rapid tests, it's pretty reasonable to assume you don't have COVID, but if you have symptoms I want you to stay home if possible and mask if not possible, and I want it to be more normalized to tell people that you are sick. Because again, my experience is a lot of “finding out after the fact that I've been exposed by someone I wouldn't have spent time with if they'd been up front with me.” I absolutely agree that we've made progress since pre-pandemic and that it will be very difficult to move the needle on this without changes to US law, but I am pissed about the ways that we have made steps backward since 2021 or 2022.

Re: 3. Ah, I'm seeing a couple of disconnects here. For one, I cannot overstate how much I want better ventilation. I do not intend to argue that the primary focus should be on masking. Better ventilation is so badly needed. I do get a lot of pushback from people when I try to increase ventilation in spaces, so it is not a zero-impact thing, even discounting cost. Second, when I say we should be requiring masks, I do not mean “we should be shaming people who don't wear masks”, I mean “event organizers and venues and businesses, especially radical ones or ones based around community care, should be requiring masks in at least some situations and educating people about wearing them.” The reason why I say “it is more feasible” to require masks is because I am thinking about groups that do not own the space they use, that run on shoestring budgets, etc. I'm fully in favor of every corporation and government building having to shell out for increased ventilation and would love to pay more in taxes for that (or, yeah, ideally my taxes would stop going to weapons and bombs and cop salaries and go towards increased ventilation instead)

Second, I absolutely agree that not doing things you like doing is hard. I've been absolutely gutted that I can no longer participate frequently in my lifelong passion of theater because no theaters around me are having shows that actually have good masking requirements. My eating disorder is exacerbated by needing to mask for my entire work day. Masking fucks with my gender expression in ways that I find frustrating and physically uncomfortable. But my experience of the world is not one where it is generally accepted that going to a restaurant makes you a selfish monster, it is one where asking your workplace to maintain COVID protections makes you a selfish monster, where asking your friends to hang out outside or consider testing before indoor events makes you a selfish monster, where advocating for radical organizations to put focus towards protecting disabled people makes you a selfish monster. Those are all real experiences that I and the people I know are experiencing on a regular basis, and it sucks so fucking much.

In conclusion, I agree that things are not the same now as in 2021 or 2022. The actual impacts of COVID are measurably lower, and given that, some lowering of protective measures is certainly to be expected. However, I'm incredibly frustrated by the extent to which we've reduced protective measures, including, in some places and in some ways, to lower levels of protection than we had pre-pandemic. I'm incredibly frustrated by people's inability to talk about living with COVID societally, by people's unwillingness to make changes to their behavior in response to things like winter surges, by people's responses when people try to protect themselves. I have many friends across a wide spectrum of COVID precaution practices, but it is getting harder to maintain them due in large part to their responses to my COVID precautions.

I do think a better world is possible, and I do think that we could be living in a world where COVID is not a serious concern without shutting down restaurants forever or requiring everyone to mask in all public settings, but I do not think we are currently on track to get to that world, and that sucks.

Friends, I think we need to talk about Covid.

I want to get a few caveats out there before I start:

I am aware that there are people who need to exercise extreme caution about Covid; I live with someone who has two solid organ transplants and who is at the most immune compromised level of immune compromised. *I* have to be extremely cautious about covid.

Masking does prevent a certain level of transmission, and people who think they may have covid should mask and people who are concerned that they may be at high risk for covid should mask.

You should be vaccinated and boosted with the most recent vaccines that are available to you; covid is highly transmissible and very serious, you do not want to get covid and if you do get covid you don't want it to be severe and if you do get covid you don't want to give someone else covid and up-to-date vaccinations are the best way to reduce transmission and help to prevent severe cases of Covid.

We should be testing before going to any gatherings, and informing people if we test positive after gatherings, and testing if we suspect we have been exposed.

It is bullshit that there aren't good protections for workers who have covid; you should not be expected to go to work when you are testing positive

It is bullshit that people who are testing positive are not isolating for other reasons; if you have Covid you should not be going out and exposing other people to it even if you are experiencing mild symptoms or no symptoms.

We do need better ventilation systems for many kinds of spaces. Schools need better ventilation, restaurants need better ventilation, doctor's offices and hospitals and office buildings need better ventilation and better ventilation can reduce covid transmission.

I want to make it clear that Covid is real and there are real steps that individuals and systems can take to prevent transmission, and that there are systems that are exerting pressures that needlessly expose people to covid (the fact that you can lose your job if you don't come in when you're testing positive, mainly; also the fact that covid rapid tests should be ubiquitous and cheap/free and are not).

All of that being said: I'm seeing some posts circulating about how we're at an extremely high level of transmission and the REAL pandemic is being hidden from us and, friends, I'm pretty sure that is just incorrect and we're spreading misinformation.

I'm thinking of this video in particular, in which the claim is made that "your mystery illness is covid" in spite of negative tests. The guy in the video says that there's nothing else that millions of people could be getting a day, and that he predicted this because a wastewater spike in December meant that there was a huge spike in cases.

I've also seen people saying that deaths are where they were in 2021-2022, and that we're still at "a 9/11 a week" of excess deaths and friends, I'm not seeing great evidence for any of these claims.

I know that we (in the US, which is where the numbers I'm going to be citing are from) feel abandoned by the CDC and the fact that tracking cut off in May of 2023. But that only cut off for the federal tracking.

I live in LA county and LA county sure as shit is still tracking Covid.

If you want a clearer picture, you can see the daily case count over time compared to the daily death count:

Okay, you might say, but that's just LA.

Alright, so here's Detroit:

Right, but maybe that's CDC data and you don't trust the CDC at this point.

Okay, here's fatalities in New York tracked through New York's state data collection:

It's harder to toggle around the site for South Dakota, but you can compare their cases and hospitalizations and deaths for early 2022

To cases and hospitalizations and deaths from early 2024

And see that there's really no comparison.

Okay, you might say, but people are testing less. If they're testing less of course we're not seeing spikes, and they're testing less because fewer tests are available.

Alright, people are definitely testing less than they were in 2021 and 2022. Hospitalization for Covid is probably the most clear metric because you know those people have covid for sure, the couldn't not test for it.

Here are hospitalizations over time for LA:

Here are hospitalizations over time for New York:

As vaccination rates have gone up, cases, deaths, and hospitalizations have gone down. It IS clear that there are case spikes in the winter, when it is cold and people are indoors in poorly ventilated spaces and people are more susceptible to respiratory infections as a result of cold air weakening the protection offered by our mucous membranes, and that is something that we will have to take precautions about for the forseeable future, just as we should have always been taking similar precautions during flu season.

So I want to go point-by-point through some of the arguments made in that video because I'm seeing a bunch of people talking about how "THEY" don't want you to know about the virus surge and buds that is just straight up conspiracism.

So okay, first off, most of what that video is based on is spikes in wastewater data, not spikes in cases. This is because people don't trust CDC data on cases, but I'd say to maybe check out your regional data on cases. I don't actually trust the CDC that much, but I know people who do tracking of hospitalizations in LA county, I trust them a lot more. Wastewater data does correlate with increases in cases, but this "second largest spike of the entire pandemic" thing is misleading; wastewater reporting is pretty highly variable and you can't just accept that a large spike in covid in wastewater means that we're in just as bad a place in the pandemic as we were in 2022. We simply have not seen the surge of hospitalizations and deaths that we would expect to see in the weeks following that spike in wastewater data if wastewater data was reflective of community transmission.

The next claim is that "there is nothing else that is infecting millions of people a day" and covid isn't doing that either. The highest daily case rates were in January of 2021 and they were in the 865k a day range, which is ridiculously high but isn't millions of cases a day.

But what we can see is that when people are tested by their doctors for Covid, RSV, and the Flu, more tests are coming back positive for the Flu. Covid causes more hospitalizations than the other two illnesses, but to be honest what the people in the video are describing - lightheadedness, dizziness, exhaustion - just sound like pretty standard symptoms of everything from covid to the cold to allergies. There are lots of things your mystery illness could be.

The video goes on to talk about the fact that people aren't testing, and why their tests may be coming back negative and I'd like to point out that the same things are all true of Flu or RSV tests. People might be getting tested too early or too late; getting a negative test for the flu isn't a good reason to assume you've got covid, getting a negative test for covid isn't a good reason to assume you've got the flu, and testing for viruses as a whole is imperfect. There are hundreds of viruses that could be the common cold; there are multiple viruses that can cause bronchitis; there are multiple viruses that can cause pneumonia, and you're not going to test for all of these things the moment you start feeling sick.

He then recommends testing for multiple days if you have symptoms and haven't had a positive test (fine) and talks about the location of the tests (less fine). Don't use your rapid tests to swab your throat or cheek unless it specifically says that they are designed to do so. Test based on the instructions in the packet.

He points out that the tests probably still pick up on the virus because they're not testing for the spike protein, they're testing for the RNA (good info!)

The video then discusses something that I think is really key to this paranoia about the "mystery illnesses" - he talks about how covid changes and weakens your immune system (a statement that should come with many caveats about severity and vulnerability and that we are still researching that) and then says that it makes you more susceptible to strep or mono and that "things that used to clear in a day or two now hit you really hard."

And that's where I think this anxiety is coming from.

Strep throat lasts anywhere from three days to a week. A cold takes about a week to clear. The flu lasts about a week and can knock you on your ass with exhaustion for weeks depending on how bad you get it. Did you get a cough with your cold? Expect that to take anywhere from three to eight weeks to clear up.

I think that people are thinking "i got a bad virus and felt really sick for a week and haven't gotten my energy back" but that just sounds like a bad cold. That sounds like a potent allergy attack. That doesn't even sound like a bad flu (I got a bad flu in 2009 and thought i was going to straight-up die I had a fever of 103+ for three days and felt like shit for three days on either side of that and took six weeks to feel more like myself again).

Getting sick sucks. It really, really sucks. But if you're getting sick and you're testing for covid and it's coming back negative after you tested a few times, it's almost certainly not covid.

The video then says "until someone provides evidence that it's not covid, it should be assumed to be covid because we have record levels of covid it's that simple" but that's not simple. We don't have record levels of covid and he hasn't proved it. We have record high levels of wastewater reports of covid, which correlates with covid cases but the spike in wastewater noted in december didn't see a spike with a corresponding magnitude of cases in terms of either hospitalizations or deaths, which is what we'd have seen if we had actual record numbers of covid.

He says that if you want to ignore this, you'll get sick with covid, and that about 30-40% of the US just got sick with covid in the last four months (which is a RIDICULOUSLY unevidenced claim).

He says that we need to create a new normal that takes covid into account, which means masking more often and testing more often and making choices about risk-avoidant behaviors.

Now, I don't disagree with that last statement, but he prefaces the statement with "it doesn't necessarily mean lockdown" and that's where I think the alarmism and paranoia is really visible here. We are so, so far away from "lockdown" type levels that it's absurd to discuss lockdown here.

What I'm seeing right now is people who are chronically ill, people who are immune compromised, and people who are experiencing long covid (which may not be distinct from other post-viral syndromes from severe cases of flu, etc, but which may be more severe or more notable because of the prevalence of covid) are talking about feeling abandoned and attacked and left behind by society because covid is still out there, and still at extremely high levels.

I am seeing people who feel abandoned and attacked because the lgbtq+ events they are attending don't require masking. I am seeing people who are claiming that it is eugenicist that their schools don't have a negative test policy anymore.

And this comes together into two really disconcerting trends that I've been observing online for a while.

The claim that the pandemic is still as bad as it's ever been and in fact may be worse but we can't know that because "they" (the CDC, the government, capitalist institutions that want you back in the office, the university industrial complex that wants your dorm room dollars) are covering up the numbers and

Significant grievance at the fact that people are acting like number one is not true and are putting you at risk either out of thoughtlessness (because they don't realize they're putting you at risk) or malice (because they don't care if the sick die).

And those things are a recipe for disaster.

I think I've pretty robustly addressed point one; I don't think that there's good evidence that there's a secretly awful surge of covid that nobody is talking about. I think that there are some people who are being alarmist about covid who are basing all of their concern on wastewater numbers that have not held up as the harbinger of a massive wave of infections.

So let's talk about point number two and JK Rowling.

Barnes and Noble is not attacking you when it puts up a Hogwarts Castle display in the lobby. Your favorite youtuber isn't trying to hurt you when they offhandedly mention Harry Potter.

If you let every mention of Harry Potter or every person who enjoys that media franchise wound you, you are going to spend a lot of your time wounded.

People are not liking Harry Potter at you.

Okay.

People are also not not wearing masks at you.

You may be part of a minority group that experiences the potential for outsized harm as a result of majority groups engaging in perfectly reasonable behaviors.

There are kind, well-meaning, sensible people who go out every day and do something that may cause you harm and it's not because they want to hurt you or they don't care about whether you live or die, it is because they are making their own risk assessments based on their own lives and making the very reasonable assumption that people who are more concerned about covid than they are will take precautions to keep themselves safe.

We are not at a place in the pandemic where it is sensible to expect people with no symptoms of illness to mask in public as a matter of course or to present evidence of a recent negative test when entering a public building in their day-to-day life.

I think now is a really good time to sit down and ask yourself how you expect things to be with covid as an endemic part of our viral ecosystem. I think now is a good time to ask yourself what risk realistically looks like for you and for people who are unlike you. I think now is a good time to consider what would feel "safe" for you and how you could accomplish feeling safe as you navigate the world.

I'm probably going to continue masking in most indoor spaces for years. Maybe forever. There are accommodations that SHOULD be afforded to people who have to take more precautions than others (remote learning, remote visits, remote work, etc.), and we should demand those kinds of accommodations.

But it is going to poison you from the inside out if you are perpetually angry that people who don't have the same medical limitations as you are happy that they get to go shopping with their faces uncovered.

So now I want to talk to you about my father in law.

My father in law had a bone marrow transplant in 2015. That's the most immune compromised you can get without having your organs swapped out.

The care sheet for him after the transplant was a little overwhelming. The list of foods he couldn't eat was intimidating and the limitations on where he could go was depressing. It cautioned against going to large events, it recommended outdoor gatherings where possible but only if he could avoid sunlight and was somewhere with no history of valley fever. It said that he should wear masks indoors any time he was someplace with poor ventilation and that he should avoid contact with anyone who had an illness of any kind, taking special note to avoid children and anyone recently vaccinated for measles.

It was, in short, pretty much what someone immune compromised would need to do to try to avoid a viral infection. Sensible. Reasonable. Wash your hands and social distance; wear masks in sensitive contexts and don't spend time in enclosed places with people who have a communicable illness.

This is what life was always going to be like for people who are severely immune compromised, and it was always going to be incumbent upon the person with the illness to figure out how to operate in a society that is not built with them in mind.

It is not the job of every parent I encounter to tell me whether their child has been vaccinated against measles or chicken pox in the last three months. That isn't something that people need to do as part of their everyday life. However it IS my responsibility to check with the parents I'm hanging out with whether their children have been vaccinated against measles or chicken pox in the last three months so I know if it's safe for my immune compromised spouse to be around them.

If you want an environment in which you feel safe from covid, at this point in the pandemic (when the virus is endemic and not spreading rapidly as far as we can see from case counts) it is your responsibility to take the steps necessary to make you feel safe. Some of those steps will involve advocating for safety improvements in public spaces (again, indoor ventilation needs to be better and I'm personally pretty extreme about vaccination requirements; these are things we should be discussing in our school board meetings and at our workplaces), some of those steps will involve advocating for worker protections, guaranteed sick time, and the right to healthcare. But some of the things you're going to need to do to feel safe are going to come down to you.

If you are concerned about communicable diseases you have to be realistic about the fact that our society doesn't go out of its way to prevent communicable diseases - norovirus among food service workers pre-pandemic is pretty clear evidence of that. You are going to have to be proactive about your safety rather than expecting the world to act like Covid is at 2021-2022 levels when it is measurably not.

[so-caffeinated]

You are the first and only writer I have read for this fandom. I love your work so much, I've re read all your Arrow stories twice (even the Firefly one even though I've never watched it). Do you have any favorite Olicity fics to recommend to keep me from going crazy my first hiatus? (I binged the first 4 seasons last year)

This is awesome!! Thank you! I’m super honored. And do I have recs? Oh yes, I have recs. 

First rec isn’t actually a fic, it’s a resource… @theolicitylibrary. If you want recs, they’ve got ‘em. If you want a specific trope or rating or genre, they’ve got that, too. Have a hankering for a fic where Oliver and Felicity are business rivals? There’s a link for that. Where she’s the vigilante instead? There’s a link for that, too. Where one of them is a werewolf? Yup. They’re an amazing resource and you can lose days (and weeks and months) going through lists of alpha/omega tropes and rockstar AUs and friends-to-lovers fics. 

But more specifically… how about I rec some authors, too? I haven’t been reading much lately - I spend all my time writing - so I’m more comfortable reccing authors I know are amazing and whose works I’m looking forward to catching up on. They’re all consistently excellent. This is by no means an all inclusive list.

@dust2dust34 - My co-writer for FiCoN and personal fav (though I admit to no small amount of bias). If you want smut and you want details and mining a scene for feelings, Bre is your girl. She has plenty of oneshots to choose from as well as some multichapter fics.  

@machawicket - Look, I can’t overstate Danielle’s skills as a writer. My husband doesn’t even read my fic but he likes hers. Her writing is funny, sweet, sexy and heartbreaking in turn but it’ll never leave you unsatisfied. She’s a master. 

@anthfan - Nikki is one of those writers that’s so good she makes you forget you’re reading a story, because it’s just something you’re living. It’s an experience. Her characterization is spot-on and her plots are super engaging. She writes both one-shots and longer stories. They’re all worth your time.

@hannasus - Susannah’s writing is the perfect balance of detailed exposition and tight narrative that lets you feel like you’ve experienced the whole setting in just a few lines. Add to that fully in-character characterization and interesting plots that keep you reading and you really can’t go wrong. I recommend reading her Something Like Fate series ASAP as she’s adapted it into the basis for an original novel (which she’s publishing later this year) and it may not be up on AO3 a whole lot longer. 

@rosietwiggs - I can always tell Rosie’s work in just a few lines. Her narrative voice is so very distinctive and so gripping that it pulls me in effortlessly. I don’t believe she’s writing for Arrow anymore, but even her unfinished works are worth a read. I especially recommend The New Normal, Lengths and How The Mighty Fall In Love.

@supersillyanddorky06 - I’d be surprised if you hadn’t heard around about Matty’s writing because she’s right at the core of the Olicity fandom’s best known fanfics. With good reason. She’s prolific, plotty, smutty and evocative. If you have a weakness for Bratva!Oliver, I’d start here. 

@jsevick - I first met Jaimie after reading her Jurassic Park AU (really!) and being both delighted and amazed that she could make it work. I’m extremely lucky to have had her help as my beta pretty much ever since. If you like my writing, she’s a big part of it (along with @alizziebyanyothername). While she hasn’t posted in a while, her stories are just fun and if you like Gilmore Girls, her Arrow AU for Gilmore Girls is a treat!

@realityisoverrated-fic - I have no idea how you would feel about Smoaking Billionaires, Anon (I personally love it), but I’ve got to very highly recommend her Infinite Love series. At 110 parts and counting, it deals extensively with Oliver, Felicity and Tommy’s family longterm, including their kids. It’s alternately hot, sweet, and heartbreaking. But, most of all, it’s just well-written and interesting. If you’re willing to read them as a triad, I cannot recommend this strongly enough.

@geneeste - I would pay for more of Caught a Long Wind. Quite literally. But, that aside, Genie is a top notch writer. Whether her one-shots, WiPs or brilliant, ongoing epic co-written work with @machawicket, everything she writes should be devoured. 

@juliesioux - Julie uses the setting in a story as another character. There’s so much life to the world she puts her characters in that it practically breathes. Above that, she doesn’t shy away from hard topics. She will rush in head-first and dig deep to explore what her characters are going through. When you read her work, take her warnings seriously, but if you’re looking for a rich story to read that challenges you, she’s the perfect option to turn to.

@thatmasquedgirl - One of the most prolific Olicity fic authors (with 110 fics, including the absolute opus Technical Assistance). She’s consistently excellent, creative and she gives us as a fandom a whole lot to read. You can probably spent a huge chunk of hiatus happily buried in her work.

@entersomethingcleverhere - As a rule, I do not read first person stories. Not even when they’re published books sitting on shelves at my bookstore. I will break that rule for her writing. I like it that much. It’s heartfelt, moving, well-paced, and the connections between her characters are both real and evolving as you go. 

@arrow-through-my-writers-block - Shelby is… well, she’s just fun! She’s a solid writer who never disappoints. She’s got quite a few one-shots and a few ongoing multi-chapters. She’s probably best known for Starstruck, but all of her work is worth reading.  

@wagamiller - I just really love wagamiller’s work. Like a lot. There are very few authors I have on alert, but wagamiller is. Stories that make me laugh out loud are few and far between, but the 35B series surely did (as did @machawicket‘s Unbearable Hotness of Being, btw). Strong, sharp, witty writing that will leave you with a grin on your face.

@callistawolf - When I think of Callie’s work, I think of the fanfic version of sitting down with some hot cocoa and curling up with a warm blanket to watch a Hallmark Christmas special. She’s consistently excellent about finishing her work, which is lovely, and you can pretty much always count on a feel-good romantic ending. 

@hopedreamlovepray - Writing one-shots that stick with your reader is hard. Keeping a story to 1-2k and still being impactful is even harder. She absolutely manages it every time. Hope27 (as she’s known on AO3, so you can find her) has something like a hundred Olicity fics. These are, in my opinion, absolutely perfect if you want to lose yourself in a story on the train to work or during your lunch hour. 

@dettiot - Mel has a lot of great stories (like really great). My favorite is probably the “ink in my pen ran dry” series, but that’s a really tough call. Core Curriculum is super hot. The Felicity Stark series (crossover with Avengers-verse) is brilliant and fun and made me giddy while reading it. Beauty in the Breakdown is excellent. Jerry the EA series features one of the best takes on a relative OC I’ve read in fics. Love is Red made me squeal like a teenager with excitement (I’m not ashamed; it was warranted). And Two Men, Same Name (written with @melsanfo) is one of those that I am absolutely dying for the time to catch up on. While I’m at it, let’s rec Mel Sanfo, too. Her Masquerade is another novel-length fic absolutely worth a read. You really can’t go wrong with either of these ladies. 

@ash818 - Ash is freaking awesome. So, here’s the thing. Her Legacy series is mind-blowingly good. I have to admit, I’ve only read The Man Under The Hood in the series (this is intentional, for a reason you’ll see in a moment, but you need to read all of her work ASAP, okay? You do). This series… you’ve got future, married Olicity with teenage children as they continue their mission. There’s action, plot, heartbreak, angst, love, everything you could want. It’s in first person from their son’s perspective which is something I would probably never have clicked on in the first place had it not come highly recommended, but good lord is it amazing. All of her characters have life. All of them have depth. Her OCs are fully formed and vital to the story without overshadowing characters you already know. I haven’t read the later stories because after I decided to continue on with FiCoN verse, I didn’t want to inadvertently shade my views on Olicity’s growing family and continuing mission with anything she did in her series. If anything I do happens to run parallel to her work, I want to know beyond any doubt that it’s 100% coincidence. But her stories are something I’m absolutely itching to get to read… eventually. Her writing is excellent.  

@tinaday3w - I’m tempted to say “JUST READ IT” but that’s probably not enough… But really, just read it. No one does slow burn like Tina. Victorian era AU with pirate!Oliver? Yes, please. Hello. I’ll take two.

@emmilynestill - She’s just so good. And sooooo hot. I don’t know if you know this, Anon, but writing a good sex scene is hard. You don’t want your reader pulled out of the scene by wondering if a position is actually possible or when underwear came off (or if it did) or how gravity isn’t making them collapse. Like… smut is difficult. But it reads so effortlessly with Emmilyne’s writing. And, beyond that, she weaves it in beautifully with plot that keeps you wondering what’s next and emotion that builds and grows in an organic way. Orgasms and organic feelings. Honestly, what else could anyone really want?

@ruwithmeguys - Jess will gut you and leave you asking her to do it again. Indecent Proposal… just… read the warnings and be ready and read it with a lot of time on your hands and probably in chunks because ouch. But still… read it.

@academyofshipping - Sarah has this dry sense of humor that comes out in her fics that’s as clever as it is fun. Fluffy, funny, smart, cute and rich with feeling, Sarah’s writing is consistently strong. 

@someonesaidcake - Felice is fantastic for completed, multichapter AU fics. She has quite a few and I’m pretty sure every single one included smut at some point (if that’s your thing) as well as plot. 

And… I’ve spent like an hour and a half on this which was a lovely diversion for my day. I know I’m forgetting amazing people but I have to stop here. When in doubt, take the title of a fic you like, google that name in quotes along with “rec list” and find someone’s list where that story was included, then explore the others. Or, check the bookmarks on AO3 of an author you like, that’s a great place to mine for fics, too. And, again, I can’t rec @theolicitylibrary enough. That said… happy reading, Anon! We’ll get through this hiatus together… through fic and sheer force of will. ;-)

[topicprinter]

Hey there Startups!I'm Tiago from Portugal. I am the CEO and founder of a small startup from Lisbon, we have a SaaS Software that we sell to everywhere in the world. Our first line of code was in September 2015 and we've been slowly burning since then.It all started when I, an engineer at a manufacturing company, noticed that the way they handled personnel and company certificates was very rudimentary (excel spreadsheets and paperbacks only), and as such me and my brother developed an application to help do some searches, export some excel reports. They use it successfully to this day! And i'm talking about a multinational company with over 1000 employees, who even have a software team in-house.Anyway with this we've realized that we were standing on an interesting product that may interest more companies. We started developing a similar but more complete version. Here's where the "learning part" comes!We started developing the software based on my experience, and that of some colleagues, no feedback from potential customers. This turned out okay (you'll see how later), but I would advise against it, we were basically lucky that my experience was similar across engineers in my field all over the world.We created our landing page when we had something that was already useful (sort of like having a landing page only when your MVP is done) - another thing I would advise against. We had no contacts except my personal ones.And this is when we realized we had no idea how to run a company! We had no sales whatsoever, but had some trial requests and some decent web-site viewership (around 500 sessions per month).It all changed when someone from a huge company discovered our software and wanted to try it. We had no idea how to deal with this, imagine a 2 man startup dealing with a multinational company that is part of one of the biggest conglomerates in the world.This is when our business actually started. Why? Because unlike before, we went to look for help. We got incubated in one of the biggest and most reputable incubators in Lisbon. With this we got access to a lot of networking with other founders that had been through our difficulties, and the biggest most important advice I can give:GET A MENTORSeriously I cannot overstate how much of a difference having a mentor was to our company. We started by having a cool little product, and our mentor (someone who was a CEO and Founder of a now very big company, has exited already and is just doing this as his new 'job')This person has made us create a Business Model Canvas (the advice was that you don't need a fully fleshed out business model with 30 pages, as long as you have the core of the business defined)We have installed a sales process (which is still evolving), which allowed us to get our sales, which involved getting a CRM, and defining the sales cycle from beginning to end.So where are we now?11 customers (UK, US, Netherlands, France, China)1760 € in MRR10% growth per monthI know these aren't the huge numbers that startups often post, but we're working hard and the company is growing (slow and steady)Last of all let me thank you for reading all this. Anyone out there who has had these issues and wants some tips, I would gladly talk to you. And anyone out there who is ahead of us and wants to share their advice, I would love to hear it.Here's what has been troubling us recently (credit cards): With U.S. customers it's very frequent that they'll request to pay by credit card, and we have an integration with Stripe on our web app. The problem is that we have had some declines of payment because our customers' banks. We have worked around this by having our customers contact their banks, which is not ideal.Is there someone out there who had this similar issue? I am fearful that it is because we are from a foreign country and an international transaction may pop up some red flags when they make the payment. Also we are working with a relatively small bank from Portugal. Anyone out there can give some tips on this?Thank you for reading!

[migatosabefisica]

the situation is a bit more complicated than stated here. my impression is that most americans have little to no idea of how things are going in the middle east and how exactly the u.s. is involved. a simplified explanation is that the houthis weren't attacking u.s. ships, they were attacking ships headed for israel (or associated with israeli oligarchs & companies) regardless of the flag they were flying. their stated reason is to force israel to stop their indiscriminate bombardment of gaza. so most ships could pass through the bab al-mandab strait unimpeded. the u.s. sent warships to patrol the strait in defense of ships headed to israel. these warships have been attacked while they were defending ships that were headed to israel.

here's a report on issues in the red sea up until dec 16: https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/12/several-new-major-incidents-in-the-red-sea/

here's reuters explaining the situation as of dec 18: https://www.reuters.com/world/bab-al-mandab-shipping-lane-target-israel-fights-hamas-2023-12-12/

here's a listing of incidents in the red sea, as reported by u,s, sources up to Dec 26: https://www.gard.no/web/content/incidents-in-the-red-sea

here's a more recent report announcing the 27th incident in the red sea since the houthis announced their blockade of israel: https://gcaptain.com/houthis-launch-27th-attack-against-shipping/

(i've included only media from the west because these are more likely to be trusted by americans)

despite these incidents, the bab-al-mandab strait remained open to any ship that wasn't headed to or associated with israel, which includes the great majority of ships.

now, most ships, something like 70-80% of ships, specially those coming from europe, decided to take the long way round africa, instead of risking it, which causes an increase in the price of consumer goods and oil. this is obviously a problem for the u.s. and europe (chinese and russian tankers were still passing through the strait)

the u.s. could have ended this at any moment by forcing a ceasefire in gaza. which it can do, since it provides most of the bombs being dropped on palestinians and sends billions of dollars to prop up the israeli government. instead, they have decided to bomb yemen, which does jackshit except effectively stopping ALL traffic trough the strait since it is now considered a war zone. they also decided to go against probably the only country actively doing something for the people in gaza.

americans probably think this is business as usual, but the optics here are really, and i cannot overstate this, really bad. israel is currently being accused of genocide by south africa in the international court of justice (the un's highest court )(here is the first hearing at the icj, here's south africa's case against israel). the overwhelming majority of people in the global south stand with palestine. from outside of the u.s. and europe, it looks as if instead of ending the slaughter of civilians in gaza, the u.s. has decided to bomb yemen and extend the conflict to the broader middle east.

ok so the US bombing the houthis isnt like. good, exactly. but it is the expected response to the houthis shooting missils at US ships in the red sea. like, its bad because the US shouldnt be supporting israel esp given what theyre currently doing but as opposed to eg what israels doing it isnt like a war crime or anything. its a normal response, aiui