#guns are more important than people?

[yzuposts]

You reap what you sow.

— refusal to ban dangerous weapons like AR-15s

— SCOTUS overturned the bump stock ban

— in PA, open carry w/o a permit is legal

What the fuck do you think is going to happen— that if you let people have dangerous guns willy-nilly that it would make America safer? The 2nd Amendment is part of a document created centuries ago. This is why we need to rewrite the Constitution & the Bill of Rights! It would have been valid back when settlers were getting attacked by Native Americans during Manifest Destiny or during the Revolutionary War or during the time of the Wild West maybe. But we do NOT need civilians to have guns anymore! It does not make anyone safer. By promoting gun freedom you enhance and create more freedom to commit violence. Remember the Las Vegas massacre which used BUMP STOCKS? Trump’s admin banned it but only because they were in the eye of the public — then the Supreme Court overturned it. There was a great hullabaloo about not having illegal machine guns on our streets! But we shouldn’t have guns in the first place. Even if the shooter was 20, and therefore could not have legally purchased a gun yet, he was still able to get his hands on a gun and shoot. Now Corey Comperatore, who had a wife and two daughters, is dead. It doesn’t matter what age a shooter is, because they can always get their hands on guns. Remember Ethan Crumbley, who killed people with a gun his parents got for him? Every year in America hundreds more shootings take place. There are thousands of people dead, families torn asunder, because someone with a gun took away lives. We should not have guns.

Above, this is what Trump said in February of this year. Below, this is what he said in April 2023.

[gingermintpepper]

In my Zeus bag today so I'm just gonna put it out there that exactly none of the great Ancient Greek warrior-heroes stayed loyal and faithful and completely monogamous and yet none of them have their greatness questioned nor do we question why they had the cultural prominence that they did and still do.

Jason, the brilliant leader of the Argo, got cold feet when it came to Medea - already put off by some of her magic and then exiled from his birthland because of her political ploys, he took Creusa to bed and fully intended on marrying her despite not properly dissolving things with Medea.

Theseus was a fierce warrior and an incredibly talented king but he had a horrible temper and was almost fatally weak to women. This is the man who got imprisoned in the Underworld for trying to get a friend laid, the man who started the whole Attic War because he couldn't keep his legs closed.

And we cannot at all forget Heracles for whom a not inconsiderable amount of his joy in life was loving people then losing the people around him that he loved. Wives, children, serving boys, mentors, Heracles had a list of lovers - male and female - long enough to rival some gods and even after completing his labours and coming down to the end of his life, he did not have one wife but three.

And y'know what, just because he's a cultural darling, I'll put Achilles up here too because that man was a Theseus type where he was fantastic at the thing he was born to do (that is, fight whereas Theseus' was to rule) but that was not enough to eclipse his horrid temper and his weakness to young pretty things. This is the man that killed two of Apollo's sons because they wouldn't let him hit - Tenes because he refused to let Achilles have his sister and Troilus who refused Achilles so vehemently that he ran into Apollo's temple to avoid him and still couldn't escape.

All four of these men are still celebrated as great heroes and men. All four of these men are given the dignity of nuance, of having their flaws treated as just that, flaws which enrich their character and can be used to discuss the wider cultural point of what truly makes a hero heroic. All four of these men still have their legacies respected.

Why can that same mindset not be applied to Zeus? Zeus, who was a warrior-king raised in seclusion apart from his family. Zeus who must have learned to embrace the violence of thunder for every time he cried as a babe, the Corybantes would bang their shields to hide the sound. Zeus learned to be great because being good would not see the universe's affairs in its order.

The wonderful thing about sympathy is that we never run out of it. There's no rule stopping us from being sympathetic to multiple plights at once, there's no law that necessitate things always exist on the good-evil binary. Yes, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to sufferation in Tartarus for what (to us) seems like a cruel reason. Prometheus only wanted to help humans! But when you think about Prometheus' actions from a king's perspective, the narrative is completely different: Prometheus stole divine knowledge and gifted it to humans after Zeus explicitly told him not to. And this was after Prometheus cheated all the gods out of a huge portion of wealth by having humans keep the best part of a sacrifice's meat while the gods must delight themselves with bones, fat and skin. Yes, Zeus gave Persephone away to Hades without consulting Demeter but what king consults a woman who is not his wife about the arrangement of his daughter's marriage to another king? Yes, Zeus breaks the marriage vows he set with Hera despite his love of her but what is the Master of Fate if not its staunchest slave?

The nuance is there. Even in his most bizarre actions, the nuance and logic and reason is there. The Ancient Greeks weren't a daft people, they worshipped Zeus as their primary god for a reason and they did not associate him with half the vices modern audiences take issue with. Zeus was a father, a visitor, a protector, a fair judge of character, a guide for the lost, the arbiter of revenge for those that had been wronged, a pillar of strength for those who needed it and a shield to protect those who made their home among the biting snakes. His children were reflections of him, extensions of his will who acted both as his mercy and as his retribution, his brothers and sisters deferred to him because he was wise as well as powerful. Zeus didn't become king by accident and it is a damn shame he does not get more respect.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Peeped the horrors

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[dykedvonte]

why do you hate Joshua Graham or Honest Hearts so much?

This DLC and character represents a bigger issue with fandom spaces I have but particularly fallout fandom in general.

Fallout tends to tackle a lot of topics controversial and not. The first two games it’s heavy cause they are the most satirical and direct with how anti-war, nationalism and etc… they are. 3 loses this as it’s very clear once you play or learn about all the games that Todd and a bunch of guys at Bethesda just liked the 50s post apocalyptic aesthetic and refuse to actually critique the ideals of the time period like the earlier titles.

New Vegas is the game that really gets back into it a degree it almost seems like it’s taking too much on. There are things done exceedingly well while other things are done horribly wrong . I’ve made posts about it before and plan to make a big series of posts (it’s a lot of writing) but my biggest gripe is with Honest Hearts and all the gross and white savior esque depictions it has of indigenous peoples. The entirety if FNV does not do the injustices faced by indigenous people correctly on any count. My two biggest complaints are with the Khans and the tribes in Zion but I’ll talk about the former on a different post.

Both characters of Daniel and Joshua are the most accurate depiction of white saviors I’ve seen and I hate how the DLC tries to justify and defend them. The DLC treats Joshua like this man who has repented for his past actions when he is just retracing his steps after his cruelty bit him in the ass. He was one of the worst parts of the Legion and it is all but explicitly stated that if you don’t force him to be non-violent he will turn the tribes of Zion into the legion 2.0. The Dead Horses and the Sorrows are horribly infantilized by both Daniel and Joshua who both use them for self serving purposes guised by religious duty. The White Legs are the horrible stereotype of violent and savage indigenous and I personally think a lot of their interlinking with Ulysses, his hair and Ulysses character in general are distasteful and very telling of how BIPOC or POC where involved.

But outside of the game it’s the weird obsession people have with these characters ideologies and trying to make them seem more interesting/philosophical than they are. Tumblr is an echo chamber and many fans of Fallout are not the people on this site. Many people are not educated in the issues these characters convey and how poorly they do or used these characters as a poor introduction for their takes. Contrary to what a lot of people believe in, fallout has a prediomeny white cis male fanbase. More importantly a large portion of the fanbase is white.

You can joke how FNV made you trans or see the numbers on post/fics or diverse headcanons but these are kiddy numbers compared to the millions that consume the franchise and aren’t in those more aware spaces or don’t engage in the spaces the same way someone like me does/has to. Their views shape a lot more than people realize and it’s exhausting to be in a space where people don’t correct the more subtle yet toxic aspects of it but also adopt them into some weird quirky view point on the characters or issues. Some people don’t realize and some people don’t care.

My main issue is just the idolizing of these sort of thing in this fandom space and people try to acts like a game like fallout whose tagline is “War never changes” and has never had a game not revolve around political or militaristic factions issues isn’t that deep or doesn’t relate to real issues. I think it’s mainly caused by how over powered you can become and how you can strong arm your way past these learning moments as majority of people who play this game do play it as a power fantasy where they can do so as they please (which of course, go ahead it’s fun) but never take in parallels or lessons in the story as if it was just another first person shooter.

Also like another personal gripe is Cazadores spawn like hell whenever I’m there and I have not found a mod that works to mod them out so I have to play Indigenous Racism the DLC while getting jumped by giant wasps WHILE helping Mormons. Like I cannot catch a break.

[tooies]

listen as someone who has actually fired a real gun before i can tell you that it is not actually very easy to hit a small target from far away. it is conspiracy theorizing to think that the fact that the shooter just grazed his ear rather than hitting him directly means that it's more likely that it was staged to get people (who were already going to vote for him) to vote for him than it is that the shooter just fucking missed because real life is not actually videogames and aiming a gun is actually very hard

[lightblueminecraftorchid]

I love learning ASL it’s so good. Makes me happy to learn it. I’m so glad my university has classes for it with professors actually steeped in Deaf culture.

[knxfesck]

"The revolution will kill people how can you condone violence" well me personally I think anyone who lets their brain believe whole groups of people arent human so they can sleep well at night after acting on the idea they shouldnt be alive deserves to meet the same level of violent insincerity but either way that doesn't matter because this is how US military soldiers talk online

[banterbears]

Just my personal onion

I'm not going to get into any debates or arguments about anything but I think when pro genAI people argue against its energy consumption ("it doesn't use as much as __") they tend to forget the very important fact that all consumer-focused genAI models concentrate on one thing and one thing only: infringing on copyrights and peoples' works (writing, photography, art, video) with Zero Consent.

Like that's what you're defending. I don't care if you think the energy consumption is minimal, the fact of the matter is you're championing machine learning models that specifically are stealing people's work (again without consent) and poisoning the internet (and real life) just because you like using it to create Content that you didn't previously have access to because you didn't want to invest the time or money into actually working on that skill.

I honest to god do not care what arguments supporting genAI might be (because almost all of it is "it's actually not AS bad of theft/energy usage" as people sensationalise it to be) because all you're doing is encouraging the usage of genAI to misinform, steal, and ultimately discourage people from wanting to create authentic art (since you're just going to steal it/use it to train your models without their consent)

genAI is not the same as machine learning tools that people implement within closed systems to speed up their processes; and the more you champion and endorse it, the more tech start-ups and investors are going to push their companies to make their own programs and models. As much as you want to say "it could be used for good actually," the reality of it is that it will do astronomically more harm than any good it can possibly do right now. Yeah maybe years down the road it'll actually be implemented for good purposes (can't think of any off the top of my head since it's only ever been used to cut corners and cheat people out of jobs by stealing what other people have already created), but that's like saying fascists were right to experiment on prisoners of war in wwii if it meant scientific progress was ultimately made.

And let me be clear this the same as the fear that cameras would replace painters, or that movies would replace stage plays; because those inventions/innovations didn't rely solely on the literal 1:1 replication of other people's pre-existing work to become a legitimate medium and were actually transformative.

[mychemicalroadworkahead]

Ya know what? No, it’s not all gonna be okay. We can try to cheer ourselves up and boost morale all we want but thoughts and prayers don’t bring back the dead.

201 mass shootings. 127 days. These numbers are fucking repulsive. That averages out to one mass shooting every 15 hours. A mass shooting is defined as a shooting that injures at least 4 people with the bullets, excluding the perpetrator(s), in one location.

This is fucking disgusting. The president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, proposed firmer gun control after 2 mass shootings. The United States has passed anti trans laws into effect and, in good old motherfucking Tennessee, expelled two of the three senators who stood with the 10,000 school kids demanding gun control, instead of actually doing anything about the shootings.

Why? Because this is the US, and our government cares more about the 2nd amendment than innocent civilian lives. Innocent CHILDRENS’ lives. Fuck the government. Fuck this dystopian nightmare where pistols get more protection than preschoolers.

Try to keep yourselves safe. And if you know you’re going down in a shooting, go down swinging.

Sources: https://www.reuters.com/world/how-countries-have-legislated-after-mass-shootings-2023-05-05/. https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/query/0484b316-f676-44bc-97ed-ecefeabae077/map

Really good tips for things to help you go down swinging: https://www.tiktok.com/@caffinatedkitti?_t=8c87q3wO9rn&_r=1 specifically her unconventional defense playlist

[timeisacephalopod]

Not American? Then your opinion is worth zero.

Your gun won't fuck you, buddy.

Also this is my blog so fuck off if you feel the need to send ignorant anon messages because I find certian gun people's bizarre murder fantasies that leaves them a morally superior hero to whoever they shot (and the examples are almost always extremely petty reasons that do not have a death sentence attached to them even IN America) is fucking disturbing. Sorry you think guns are more important than human lives but that's exactly no one's problem but YOURS. Also most illegal guns in MY country, Canada, come from YOUR COUNTRY so I have every right to care but I'll bet you don't know NEAR as much about Canadian anything as I do America so 🙄

Don't let the knob go up your ass on the way out, no lube on that.

[larrysblooming]

as an american living in a southern state and working in a public workplace, i am so fucking scared

[rescuefield-a]

things i'm hoping for in DI : claire referencing anything about rockfort ( so i can have some peace of mind about the cv remake )

[comradecowplant]

the CANADIAN i reblogged this from should worry more about her own blue fascist imperial running dog PM instead of finger wagging the minority of usamericans who are trying to maintain the controversial position of "having principles".

lemme ignore the hysterical phrasings & ask a few simple grounded questions: which administration & party was in power during this unprecedented wave of anti-lgbtq legislation?

which admin & party maintained and rehired trump-era immigration policy and ICE officials?

which admin & party oversees the hoards of jackbooted thugs beating anti-racist protesters in 2020, gave cops more money, and again supports jackbooted thugs beating anti-genocide protesters in 2024?

which admin & party claims to be allies of women and had multiple opportunities throughout the DECADES of Roe to codify it and yet didn't?

which admin & party, claiming to be the "pro-science" party, approved one of the biggest oil projects in U.S. history and walked back already-lacking Covid policy that has, to this day, effectively barred disabled people from much of public life?

which admin & party refuses to use the weight of the federal government to fight back against states enacting barbaric legislation (akin to how it was used to enforce integration during the civil rights movement) because they're obsessed with the self-aggrandizing image of "flying high" & politeness instead of keeping their word and actually using the power of government to improve lives?

We all know the answer. The christofascism is already here. "project 2025" is the same fascist wetdream reactionaries have had for decades, and the sense of heightened urgency is just the same shit different day. Democrats could stop it in their tracks if they wanted, but the dangling threat is what they rely on for gathering their base rather than having effective progressive policies. There is a bigger world than Orange Man Bad and Republicans Demons/Democrats Angels delusion that blueanon liberals rev themselves into a tizzy over rather than accepting the uncomfortable truth that blue & red are two wings of the same U.S.American fascist bird. That actually building a just society will require harder work than blindly voting once every 4 years for Good party instead of Bad (and starts with unlearning years of imperial indoctrination which, among many myths, asserts that the only form of valid political action happens at the voting box.)

Final things to get straight: so we cannot do precious democracy (aka biden is a failure so i will not give him my vote. which is the basics of the neoliberal democratic process, correct?) in order to prevent a HYPOTHETICAL loss of precious precious democracy next presidency? will we be able to do real democracy next election if we pwomise to vote for biden again, or will there conveniently be another "election of a lifetime"? How many "elections of our lifetime" should be tolerated if we're to maintain the guise of democracy?

If trump can TRULY become a dictator, that seems much more a condemnation of the political system that would allow him access to power, no? Who is going to be enforcing the fascism? Will the military be purged of anyone not a Trump supporter? Who will enforce that? Because as much as I hate handing it to anything U.S. military related, the last trump administration made it quite clear that most military personnel are status quo followers, which means there is not the concerted manpower eager & willing to do coup for Trump like he pretends to believe. Pretty sure last time the civilian "masses" of Trump-supporting christofascist foot soldiers tried to do anything, it was the most pathetic failcoup in history (and they even had the cops on their side!)

I'll even play the game for a minute & consider what Biden could do to wiggle the win. But given that he keeps going on television & spreading racist atrocity porn lies about Palestinian resistance, equates anti-genocide protesters to 1930s nazi germany, has DNC cronies routinely insult gen z voters by calling them dumb self-centered sheeple, called immigrants "illegals", and just 2 days ago claimed that Palestinians have an ancient desires to murder jews (& that's just from the top of my head from the last few months!) I'd say his shot of winning has never looked worse. Did us "moral purists" cause him to say those things? How much overt racism should be tolerated if your candidate seeks to maintain the guise of a progressive?

Are you prepared to look someone in the eye who has lost family from U.S. foreign policy that Joe "If there wasn't an israel we'd have to create an israel to protect u.s. interests in the region" Biden actively defends & maintains, who isn't voting for Biden because of these REAL MATERIAL TRAGEDIES they've experienced (instead hypothetical tragedies tomorrow that conveniently matter more because they affect you personally), and doesn't see the point in voting due to the duel genocide support of both parties, and tell that person that actually THEY'RE the one supporting fascism? Are you for real??

TLDR: Biden barely won the first time, and he has only lost voters from his parade of failures & supporting of genocide. If someone personally wants to vote for him & buys the delusion that it will matter, so what, no one cares, just do it quietly if you care to maintain a scrap of dignity. But blaming those who care about people & struggles other than their own is not helping your cause. When trump wins-- and believe me, i am not looking forward to it, if for no other reason than if blueanon's dystopia fetish becomes real I too will be thrown into the fagtrannydyke camps with people like OP & will have to hear their incessant whining about being right about it, which is worse torture than anything a nazi could come up with-- there will be no one to blame but BIDEN.

Gonna need yall to stop putting Biden is Just As Bad propaganda on my dash. Had to unfollow someone because I don’t want to a start a fight with them over it, but I’m about to bite the next person who puts that shit in front of me.

If you don’t like Biden, vote in your god damn local and mid term elections for third party or further left candidates so that we get better democratic candidates for future elections. But this one is already fucking decided, and I’m NOT ending up under a Trump led dictatorship because yall value protecting your personal sense of moral purity over the collective good. Whether it offends your personal morals to vote for Biden is IRRELEVANT in the face of the alternative.

This isn’t a lesser of two evils situation. One guy sucks. The other guy is LITERALLY PLANNING TO OVERTHROW OUR DEMOCRACY AND INSTALL HIMSELF AS A PUTIN STYLE DICTATOR.

PLEASE look up Project 2025 and stop acting like abstaining is some kind of personal ethical decision!

[odinsblog]

🗣️THIS IS WHAT INCLUSIVE, COMPASSIONATE DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE

Minnesota Dems enacted a raft of laws to make the state a trans refuge, and ensure people receiving trans care here can't be reached by far-right governments in places like Florida and Texas. (link)

Minnesota Dems ensured that everyone, including undocumented immigrants, can get drivers' licenses. (link)

They made public college free for the majority of Minnesota families. (link)

Minnesota Dems dropped a billion dollars into a bevy of affordable housing programs, including by creating a new state housing voucher program. (link)

Minnesota Dems massively increased funding for the state's perpetually-underfunded public defenders, which lets more public defenders be hired and existing public defenders get a salary increase. (link)

Dems raised Minnesota education spending by 10%, or about 2.3 billion. (link)

Minnesota Dems created an energy standard for 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. (link)

Minnesota already has some of the strongest election infrastructure (and highest voter participation) in the country, but the legislature just made it stronger, with automatic registration, preregistration for minors, and easier access to absentee ballots. (link)

Minnesota Dems expanded the publicly subsidized health insurance program to undocumented immigrants. This one's interesting because it's the sort of things Dems often balk at. The governor opposed it! The legislature rolled over him and passed it anyway. (link)

Minnesota Dems expanded background checks and enacted red-flag laws, passing gun safety measures that the GOP has thwarted for years. (link)

Minnesota Dems gave the state AG the power to block the huge healthcare mergers that have slowly gobbled up the state's medical system. (link)

Minnesota Dems restored voting rights to convicted felons as soon as they leave prison. (link)

Minnesota Dems made prison phone calls free. (link)

Minnesota Dems passed new wage protection rules for the construction industry, against industry resistance. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a new sales tax to fund bus and train lines, an enormous victory for the sustainability and quality of public transit. Transit be more pleasant to ride, more frequent, and have better shelters, along more lines. (link)

They passed strict new regulations on PFAS ("forever chemicals"). (link)

Minnesota Dems passed the largest bonding bill in state history! Funding improvements to parks, colleges, water infrastructure, bridges, etc. etc. etc. (link)

They're going to build a passenger train from the Twin Cities to Duluth. (link)

I can't even find a news story about it but there's tens of millions in funding for new BRT lines, too. (link)

A wonky-but-important change: Minnesota Dems indexed the state gas tax to inflation, effectively increasing the gas tax. (link)

They actually indexed a bunch of stuff to inflation, including the state's education funding formula, which helps ensure that school spending doesn't decline over time. (link)

Minnesota Dems made hourly school workers (e.g., bus drivers and paraprofessionals) eligible for unemployment during summer break, when they're not working or getting paid. (link)

Minnesota Dems passed a bunch of labor protections for teachers, including requiring school districts to negotiate class sizes as part of union contracts. (Yet another @SydneyJordanMN special here. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a state board to govern labor standards at nursing homes. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a Prescription Drug Affordability Board, which would set price caps for high-cost pharmaceuticals. (link)

Minnesota Dems created new worker protections for Amazon warehouse workers and refinery workers. (link)

Minnesota Dems passed a digital fair repair law, which requires electronics manufacturers to make tools and parts available so that consumers can repair their electronics rather than purchase new items. (link)

Minnesota Dems made Juneteenth a state holiday. (link)

Minnesota Dems banned conversion therapy. (link)

They spent nearly a billion dollars on a variety of environmental programs, from heat pumps to reforestation. (link)

Minnesota Dems expanded protections for pregnant and nursing workers - already in place for larger employers - to almost everyone in the state. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a new child tax credit that will cut child poverty by about a quarter. (link)

Minnesota Democrats dropped a quick $50 million into homelessness prevention programs. (link)

And because the small stuff didn't get lost in the big stuff, they passed a law to prevent catalytic converter thefts. (link)

Minnesota Dems increased child care assistance. (link)

Minnesota Dems banned "captive audience meetings," where employers force employees to watch anti-union presentations. (link)

No news story yet, but Minnesota Dems forced signal priority changes to Twin Cities transit. Right now the trains have to wait at intersections for cars, which, I can say from experience, is terrible. Soon that will change.

Minnesota Dems provided the largest increase to nursing home funding in state history. (link)

They also bumped up salaries for home health workers, to help address the shortage of in-home nurses. (link)

Minnesota Dems legalized drug paraphernalia, which allows social service providers to conduct needle exchanges and address substance abuse with reduced fear of incurring legal action. (link)

Minnesota Dems banned white supremacists and extremists from police forces, capped probation at 5 years for most crimes, improved clemency, and mostly banned no-knock warrants. (link)

Minnesota Dems also laid the groundwork for a public health insurance option. (link)

I’m happy for the people of Minnesota, but as a Floridian living under Ron DeSantis & hateful Republicans, I’m also very envious tbh. We know that democracy can work, and this is a shining example of what government could be like in the hands of legislators who actually care about helping people in need, and not pursuing the GOP’s “culture wars” and suppressing the votes of BIPOC, and inflicting maximum harm on those who aren’t cis/het, white, wealthy, Christian males. BRAVO MINNESOTA. This is how you do it! And the Minnesota Dems did it with a one seat majority, so no excuses. Forget about the next election and focus on doing as much good as you can, while you still can. 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿

👉🏿 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1660846689450688514.html

[infiniteglitterfall]

know someone who enjoys horror stories? share this one! it's true!

hahahahahahahahahaha aarrggghhhhhhhhhh 3,000,000 deaths due to COVID-19 last year. Globally. Three million. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. The reason people are still worried about COVID is because it has a way of quietly fucking up your body. And the risk is cumulative.

I'm going to say that again: the risk is cumulative.

It's not just that a lot of people get bad long-term effects from it. One in seven or so? Enough that it's kind of the Russian Roulette of diseases. It's also that the more times you get it, the higher that risk becomes. Like if each time you survived Russian Roulette, the empty chamber was removed from the gun entirely. The worst part is that, psychologically, we have the absolute opposite reaction. If we survive something with no ill effects, we assume it's pretty safe. It is really, really hard to override that sense of, "Ok, well, I got it and now I probably have a lot of immunity and also it wasn't that bad." It is not a respiratory disease. Airborne, yes. Respiratory disease, no: not a cold, not a flu, not RSV.

Like measles (or maybe chickenpox?), it starts with respiratory symptoms. And then it moves to other parts of your body. It seems to target the lungs, the digestive system, the heart, and the brain the most.

It also hits the immune system really hard - a lot of people are suddenly more susceptible to completely unrelated viruses. People get brain fog, migraines, forget things they used to know.

(I really, really hate that it can cross the blood-brain barrier. NOTHING SHOULD EVER CROSS THE BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER IT IS THERE FOR A REASON.) Anecdotal examples of this shit are horrifying. I've seen people talk about coworkers who've had COVID five or more times, and now their work... just often doesn't make sense? They send emails that say things like, "Sorry, I didn't mean Los Angeles, I meant Los Angeles."

Or they insist they've never heard of some project that they were actually in charge of a year or two before.

Or their work is just kind of falling apart, and they don't seem to be aware of it.

People talk about how they don't want to get the person in trouble, so their team just works around it. Or they describe neighbors and relatives who had COVID repeatedly, were nearly hospitalized, talked about how incredibly sick they felt at the time... and now swear they've only had it once and it wasn't bad, they barely even noticed it.

(As someone who lived with severe dissociation for most of my life, this is a genuinely terrifying idea to me. I've already spent my whole life being like, "but what if I told them that already? but what if I did do that? what if that did happen to me and I just don't remember?") One of its known effects in the brain is to increase impulsivity and risk-taking, which is real fucking convenient honestly. What a fantastic fucking mutation. So happy for it on that one. Yes, please make it seem less important to wear a mask and get vaccinated. I'm not screaming internally at all now.

I saw a tweet from someone last year whose family hadn't had COVID yet, who were still masking in public, including school.

She said that her son was no kind of an athlete. Solidly bottom middle of the pack in gym.

And suddenly, this year, he was absolutely blowing past all the other kids who had to run the mile. He wasn't running any faster. His times weren't fantastic or anything. It's just that the rest of the kids were worse than him now. For some reason. I think about that a lot. (Like my incredibly active six-year-old getting a cold, and suddenly developing post-viral asthma that looked like pneumonia.

He went back to school the day before yesterday, after being home for a month and using preventative inhalers for almost week.

He told me that it was GREAT - except that he couldn't run as much at recess, because he immediately got really tired. Like how I went outside with him to do some yard work and felt like my body couldn't figure out how to increase breathing and heart rate.

I wasn't physically out of breath, but I felt like I was out of breath. That COVID feeling people describe, of "I'm not getting enough air." Except that I didn't have that problem when I had COVID.) Some people don't observe any long (or medium) term side effects after they have it.

But researchers have found viral reservoirs of COVID-19 in everyone they've studied who had it.

It just seems to hang out, dormant, for... well, longer than we've had an opportunity to observe it, so far.

(I definitely watched that literal horror movie. I think that's an entire genre. The alien dormant under ice in the Arctic.)

(oh hey I don't like that either!!!!!!!!!) All of which is to explain why we should still care about avoiding it, and how it manages to still cause excess deaths. Measuring excess deaths has been a standard tool in public health for a long time.

We know how many people usually die from all different causes, every year. So we can tell if, for example, deaths from heart disease have gone way up in the past three years, and look for reasons. Those are excess deaths: deaths that, four years ago, would not have happened. During the pandemic, excess death rates have been a really important tool. For all sorts of reasons. Like, sometimes people die from COVID without ever getting tested, and the official cause is listed as something else because nobody knows they had COVID. But also, people are dying from cardiovascular illness much younger now.

People are having strokes and heart attacks younger, and more often, than they did before the pandemic started. COVID causes a lot of problems. And some of those problems kill people. And some of them make it easier for other things to kill us. Lung damage from COVID leading to lungs collapsing, or to pneumonia, or to a pulmonary embolism, for example. The Economist built a machine-learning model with a 95% confidence interval that gauges excess death statistics around the world, to tell them what the true toll of the ongoing COVID pandemic has been so far.

Total excess deaths globally in 2023: Three million.

3,000,000.

Official COVID-19 deaths globally so far: Seven million. 7,000,000. Total excess deaths during COVID so far: Thirty-five point two million. 35,200,000.

Five times as many.

That's bad. I don't like that at all. I'm glad last year was less than a tenth of that. I'm not particularly confident about that continuing, though, because last year we started a period of really high COVID transmission. Case rates higher than 90% of the rest of the pandemic. Here's their data, and charts you can play with, and links to detailed information on how they did all of this:

Here's a non-paywalled link to it:

https://archive.vn/2024.01.26-012536/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates

Oh: here's a link to where you can buy comfy, effective N95 masks in all sizes:

Those ones are about a buck each after shipping - about $30 for a box of 30. They also have sample packs for a dollar, so you can try a couple of different sizes and styles.

You can wear an N95 mask for about 40 total hours before the effectiveness really drops, so that's like a dollar for a week of wear.

They're also family-owned and have cat-shaped masks and I really love them. These ones are cuter and in a much wider range of colors, prints, and styles, but they're also more expensive; they range from $1.80 to $3 for a mask. ($18-$30 for a box of ten.)

[drdemonprince]

any advice for coping with being on the receiving end of a public callout ?

Oh yes:

Do not acknowledge the callout publicly. It will only further its spread, lend it legitimacy, cause you to be interpreted as guilty, and convey to anyone who bears you ill will that you are rattled and feeling socially threatened.

Do not act out of urgency. One of the ways that cancelled people get themselves in far worse trouble is by spiraling due to anxiety and rushing to issue a statement about what has happened, or to attempt to socially manage public impressions about what has happened. Do not do this. Anything that you say will be picked apart and used against you. The situation is truly not as urgent as it might feel. A lot of times, doing nothing and being quiet is the best way to proceed, and the dust will settle better if you do.

Do not issue a public apology. If you truly feel that you have wronged someone, that conflict should be worked out in private with the people you have directly affected. You do not owe the anonymous public audience a damn thing. Do not apologize for something you don't honestly believe that you have done wrong. Take time and really think about what happened, and seek the counsel of people whom you trust in PRIVATE.

Do not attempt to disprove the callout unless you have crystal clear, smoking gun evidence that the person who accused you is actually victimizing you. And even then, probably don't do it. I have only seen a disproof of a callout work ONCE, and that was when Juniper Abernathy revealed the person cancelling her had been abusing her. Even if the facts are on your side, acknowledging the accusations will only make more people aware of them, give your detractors ground to criticize your every word, and will muddy the waters and make people find the situation confusing and troubling rather than clear.

GET THE FUCK OFFLINE. Delete your social media apps for the time being. Turn off notifications. Turn off DMs requests. Change your settings so that you only ever hear from people you already follow (I do this, on the advice of Philosophy Tube). Get away from the computer.

Connect with IRL friends. When you're wrapped up in a cancellation, the negative opinions of a handful of foaming at the mouth freaks loom way larger than they actually are. And social media dramatically skews our sense of social priorities such that the approval rating of complete strangers starts to seem more important than people we actually know, and trust, and who actually know us. Go get a meal with a buddy. Watch a dumb movie. Talk to your grandma about her plans for her garden. Surround yourself with real people you care about and focus on their life and problems, to help put things in perspective.

Find distracting, active, rewarding activities that bring you out of the digital space and into physical reality. Not everyone is talking about you, not everybody hates you, most people have no fucking clue what has been said about you, and most people do not give a fuck about you (that's good). There are so many areas of life that are completely fucking untouched by what a bunch of social media power users have to say online. Go volunteer to clean up a park, run some errands, take an exercise class, foster a dog, regrout your bathroom, knit a hat. Even if the worst case scenario happens and a cancellation sticks, it's really only among a certain very vocal group of miserable fucking people. There is a whole world around you that will not ever care, and you will have a life outside of this.

Good luck!!