#tietensgo

[tietensgo]

note: spoilers

As i did for Squid Game, I am going to write down my thoughts about Alice in Borderland and its ending, which I thought was lovely and satisfying, despite my initial impressions.

1. Firstly are the parallels I picked up on*, given the title and character names:

Arisu: Alice

Usagi: White Rabbit (I’m late, I’m late)

Chishiya: The Cheshire Cat

(Danma) Hatter: The Mad Hatter (and the Beach is his teaparty)

Mira: The Queen of Hearts

Kuina: The Caterpillar*

Ann: The Duchess**

*I did not note this one personally, but looked into it and it made sense, given Kuina’s bent for smoking and the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly

**Also didn’t pick up on this one, (and the connection is less obvious to me) but it’s rumoured along with several more about Arisu’s close friends Chota, Karube, and others.

2. Secondly is the unfolding of the plot:

So Season 2 was much anticipated, and was an interesting change of pace from Season 1. We’ve figured out the mechanics of the game now, the ins and outs of visas, game rules, what the suits mean, and the practicalities of the world. The focus shifted more to understanding how the world came about, who rules it, and most importantly, how to leave.

I loved the ability of the show to keep a steady pace that alternated between the mind-bending, sadistic games that still gripped in both conception and visuals (death by sulfuric acid was terrifyinnggggg I couldn’t watch it) and the middle bits, the exploration of character arcs like the romance between Arisu and Usagi, Ann’s exploration of the physical world, or the persistent questioning about the meaning of life.

3. Lastly was the ending.

I must say I initially didn’t like it. I fully appreciated the nod that was given to the most plausible theories at the beginning of the last episode: Is this time travel? Is this some sort of deep brain simulation? IS IT ALIENS??!?! This part of the Episode 8 conversation with Mira showed that the showmakers (author even?), knew that the audience’s mind had been asking these questions almost since the Moment Arisu arrived in Borderland.

Compared to all of these theories though, saying it was a rogue meteor strike was... a let down. BUT. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it could’ve been anything, tbh, that caused them to be transported, because the point is that ANY near-death experience can take you to Borderland, the space between life and death. And it brings to front and center the conversations that each person had been having thus far about the meaning of life. The hypothesis is that when the body is fighting to survive an accident of some sort in the real world, the mind is also doing a sort of ‘Systems Check’, trying to search for a reason to keep going, a purpose for which to exist. And Borderland provides a place for such a battle to take place, a limbo of sorts where people are forced to remember how precious life is and why it needs to be fought for- enough that they get shaken out of their stupor and wake up.

Of course, this is not a perfect solution. Did Chota and Karube die in Borderland because they didn’t think life was precious enough? (No.) And what happens to the physical bodies of those who choose to become citizens? (They die, eventually. Time works differently in Borderland, but even Game Runners don’t appear to live forever.) I don’t purport to have every answer. I just mean that... by all accounts, /everyone/ affected by the meteor could’ve died. (It was a meteor, which a huge explosion!) But Borderland took the consciousness? souls? of the dead people there and provided a way for /some/ of them to live.

If you look at it that way, Borderland, despite the random death games and constant terror, actually /reduces/ the number of people who die from a mass-casualty event, and, makes sure that, of those that come back to life, most of them are determined to live life to the fullest when they get back.

ALSO, in the Netflix version, we see that the last shot is of a player with a Joker card. This is expanded on a bit more in the manga, but basically he’s some sort of limbo-esque character, giving credence to the idea that Borderland is a last-chance type of world, where, if you fight hard enough, and convince enough people to try with you, and hold on to hope long enough, you can earn one last chance to be returned back to the real world and live.

TLDR; Alice in Borderland Season 2 did not pull any punches with the games, which were as visceral and heart-pounding as ever. I personally enjoyed discussing extensively with my watch-mate about how we would approach each game, and loved seeing the details of the Alice in Wonderland characters woven into the narrative so well. The ending was at first disappointing, but the more I thought about what the Borderland represented, the more appropriate the ambiguity became, and eventually I could accept Borderland for what it is: a train station between the real world and the afterlife, where people fight for the opportunity to go board the train back to the real world and live.

[tietensgo]

note: spoilers

Commentary YouTuber Pinely (notable for, for example, The MrBeast-ification of Youtube), made a new video called Logan Paul's Consumerist Dystopia which I felt kinda :/ ... about, so I wanted to talk about it here.

The video is essentially about PRIME, the energy sports drink released by Logan Paul and KSI in Jan 2022. In it, Pinely discusses a number of points that criticize Prime, including how the taste is not as good as one might be led to believe, the fact that there has been a frenzy of purchasing of the drink (like lineups and increased resale value), and the fact that the ads for the drink can be quite embedded. But I watched it and don’t think the video lived up to its claims of identifying a consumerist dystopia, and certainly not one that Logan Paul created.

I say this firstly because, dystopia is a strong word for what is happening with Prime, and secondly because, the idea that Logan Paul created a consumerist dystopia (as opposed to him merely participating in an advertising campaign) makes little sense.

Let’s take each points one by one:

The title. Logan Paul’s consumerist dystopia. He didn’t say “Logan Paul and KSI’s consumerist dystopia”, or more generally, “YouTube’s consumerist dystopia.” He alleged, in the title, that Logan Paul specifically had done something to create a dystopia (with Prime) - that’s a high bar of proof to clear. And imo, the video doesn’t clear it. Instead of giving evidence of Logan Paul masterminding a concerted plan to benefit from consumerism, as the thumbnail might suggest, the video only shows clips of Logan... advertising Prime. We see him walking around some backstage area presenting the launch of the drink, walking through a grocery store where they stock Prime, and doing his job as a promoter of a product he has launched, bigging it up to the camera. Nothing new, nothing not seen in regular commercials on TV. Hardly evidence of him creating a consumerist dystopia. But with commentary and some really brutal editing (Pinely cuts video of Logan advertising Prime with a black-and-white tv commercial), Pinely tries to equate Logan’s quite average pandering of a sports drink to the camera as evidence of his crafting of a consumerist horrorscape (this term is used here because I can’t keep saying dystopia) akin to the Truman Show. In my opinion it’s exaggeration. The worst Pinely can say about Logan’s promotion of Prime is that possibly the love and friendship that is used by Logan and KSI to promote Prime is not genuine. (Maybe they’re not actually good friends). But then Pinely himself admits he doesn’t know whether they’re friends at all, and that it doesn’t matter- they’re business partners, and they’re promoting a drink. So if it doesn’t matter, and Logan Paul did simply promoted his product, why title it Logan Paul’s consumerist dystopia? It’s clickbait at best, and at worst, it’s selectively biased - it purposefully leaves KSI out of the title because KSI, at the moment of writing, is seen in a more favorable light than Logan Paul (and people might be quicker to realize that advertising Prime is not the same as creating a dystopia because KSI is seen as quite ‘hardworking’ broadly speaking, and deserving of his success).

The public reaction. Perhaps the most memorable clips of the video are of the public, where shots are shown of people rushing stores to buy Prime or buying so much at once the drinks in total retail for ~$1000. One couple appeared to pay $300 for (or at least spend that much to get) three bottles of Prime, a value of ~$90, a practice KSI has discouraged. However, instead of the public’s reaction being evidence of consumerism (defined in this context as “The situation in which too much attention is given to buying and owning things”.), all Pinely has managed to show, in my opinion, is evidence that Prime is a trending product. In 1996, it was Tickle Me Elmo, in 2007 it was the Wii, sometimes it’s concert tickets of a popular musician, this time it’s Prime. The crowds were not driven by materialism, the love of having lots of stuff, they were driven by a simple desire to try Prime or support Logan Paul/KSI through Prime combined with a response to scarcity. In other words, desire for a product, even a strong desire, (or strong sales), does not immediately equal consumerism (more akin to the love of buying and having a lot of stuff, for its own sake). What the video shows is regular people showing their support for YouTubers in their latest merch drop or jumping on the bandwagon of trying to get a taste of an item made rare by the number of people who want it. Nothing more.

(****I discussed this with someone, who pushed back strongly on this point that a large group of people wanting something purported to be overvalued /is/ evidence of consumerism, and I want to stress here that just because /some people/ wouldn’t have paid as much for Prime doesn’t mean that it is not right for /other people/ to strongly desire the product and even be willing to pay scalped prices for it- the fact that they are being scalped is not their fault, it’s the fault of those who recognize the demand and upsell the product****)

The advertisement. Pinely argues that Prime gets outsized amounts of free advertising compared to its taste (as distinguished from the quality of the product with respect to its ability to hydrate). Prime is an energy drink that doesn’t taste particularly good, if Pinely and Gordon Ramsey are to be believed. Not bad, but... not good either, or at least not as good as the claims made in the advertising done by other YouTubers. This advertising is often unpaid and can be over-the-top, designed to grab the viewer’s attention to the point where, instead of discussion about Prime having a spot in the middle of the video somewhere as a sponsor, the drink can be the entire point of the video, amounting to something like a 9-minute ad, in the case of (Mr. Beast adjacent) Matthew Beem, complete with stunts like jumping into the Thames river (quite unsafe, as Pinely points out). However, the reason for this behavior is explained within the video, again by Pinely himself: it is not evidence of a consumerist dystopia, they are simply YouTube creators trying to pay the bills, (or, more generously, individuals trying to make money) and they know that jumping on trends accomplishes this by getting views. If the trend was giving money away, they would do it. If the trend was doing a ‘largest of’ or ‘biggest of’ video, they would do that. At that moment in time, Prime was the trend, and to piggy-back on the success of KSI and Logan Paul, Matthew Beem made a video that was completely consistent with his over-the-top style, with countless others providing reviews for the same reasons (content and views). A YouTuber making a video is hardly news, and Pinely admits that he “Doesn’t blame them” [those who jump on trends] for doing it, so... why the alarmist references to a dystopia? And how does another YouTuber (Matthew Beem) independently deciding to create a video to jump on a bandwagon for free have anything to do with Logan Paul?

TLDR; The Pinely video was framed as a type of negative review on Logan Paul and consumerism, but it didn’t provide much evidence of an issue separate from the public’s general excitement about Prime or larger than Logan Paul advertising a product. Nevertheless, the video boasted a thumbnail of a puppetmaster Logan and a title referencing a ‘consumerist dystopia.’ While generally, clips of intense reactions of the public and possibly stretched truth about the taste of Prime were shown, I think the video’s framing might need tweaking or it might not amount to much more than Pinely’s feelings that Prime was getting so much hype.

[tietensgo]

10 to 5 - 5

It was too long to make one post so I made two. Part 1 here.

1) The post doesn’t discuss the timing and motivation of the change. Others have suggested before now that 10 days was a lot. (This person recommended that you can test out of isolation early). But the CDC didn’t change from 10 days as the guideline until now. What struck me most about the CDC’s update was that it was right at the holidays and right on top of a virus surge. Like, in the middle of a situation getting worse, where tons of people were getting sick, the CDC’s statement wasn’t to stay home more, it was more like most people are only mildly sick, so let’s get as many of the mildly sick back into society (back to work) asap so we don’t have staffing shortages.

This MSNBC interview even suggests that Delta Airlines lobbied the CDC to change its guidelines, (see the letter here) and some flight attendants themselves don’t feel safe going back. I don’t know that the CDC issued changes /because/ of Delta Airlines (Dr. Fauci says they didn’t) or outside of science or anything like that, but Dr. Fauci openly said that the new CDC mandate is to help people get back to work (increase people’s ability to work despite it).

TLDR; the new guidelines were issued seemingly to allow people to get back to work sooner during an acknowledged rise in Covid cases, mostly from the more contagious Omicron variant. One letter in particular from Delta Airlines demonstrates that CEOs are in favor of the change while some of their employees are hesitant.

2) The suggestions in the post are not exactly what the CDC recommended. The guidelines don’t differentiate by vaccination status; both vaccinated and unvaccinated people get the benefit of the 5 day shortened isolation. If they are asymptomatic or with “resolving symptoms, no fever for 24 hours”, they get to be out in public with a mask. (If I’m reading that right, it means yesterday Day 4 I had a fever, today Day 5 no fever, tomorrow Day 6 I’m good to be in public). A negative antigen test is not required to come back to the public, only a mask. (Dr. Fauci says that an antigen test wouldn’t be as useful to tell if you are contagious after 5 days anyway. But I think you can see where not mandating a negative Covid test before leaving isolation* leaves the door open to be contagious and be out in public. That is, the exception cases who are contagious for the longest (> 5 days contagious) are precisely the cases being missed by saying no test is required. For these cases, I think what they’re saying is masking will cover it. But if just masking covers them when they’re contagious over 5 days, why didn’t just masking cover the other people who were contagious under 5 days? Why did the less than 5 days contagious asymptomatic group have to isolate at all if just masking covers the (rarer) over 5 days contagious asymptomatic group? What if someone’s peak contagiousness happens on Day 6, when they’re in public and asymptomatic? The post said it exactly: the CDC used 10 days at first to be safe (see tweet 7). Recently, it was changed to 5 days with 5 masking. (I think people also point out that 10 days was put in place near the start of the pandemic, and more of the public is vaccinated now and contagious periods are generally reduced (for the vaccinated), so 5 days makes sense in that way also. But I’d also mention that not everyone is (or can be) vaccinated (adults and children), so their contagious periods aren’t reduced, and now, vaccinated or not, the isolation time has been reduced to 5 days without a negative test at the end).

*It seems like at one time test availability might’ve been a consideration for not mandating a negative test to come back to public/work, especially because antigen tests have that ‘test repeatedly for best results’ caveat that needs to kept in mind. But it seems like maybe getting more tests would be part of the solution, not leaving a testing requirement out of the guidelines.

TLDR; the new guidelines focus on a period of contagiousness of five days, which, while usual, isn’t true for everyone, but there is no requirement of a negative antigen test to return to the workplace. That means conceivably, some people are returning to work while contagious.

3) The post doesn’t address noncompliance. With the masking, in particular. People may or may not mask properly, and even those who do wear it most of the time might take if off to eat with coworkers during a break at work or take it off while in the car by themselves but put it on just before they pick you up for uber or take it off because they’re technically 6 feet away or take it off because it’s just a quick dash to the mailbox in the apartment building, I’ll only be on the elevator for a minute, etc. If we are in a reality where anti-mask sentiment not only exists but can be high, it’s interesting to note that a key part (5 days) of the new guidelines will depend on peoples’ good will to mask up. This as opposed to what it used to be, which was a longer isolation period (which hopefully would be backed by paid sick leave or something so it doesn’t do harm to people to step away from work) so the mask doesn’t have to make up for what the isolation didn’t catch. (Btw, It’s possible if one is the type to ignore CDC rules about isolation in the first place, one isn’t the type to wear a mask anyway, and if one does strictly abide by CDC guidelines, there’s a chance one might be a great mask wearer).

There’s another really nice post/graphic about where masks should be in this fight based on the hierarchy of controls. It’s a bit blurry but it’s in order from top to bottom as most effective: Elimination, physically remove the hazard, Subsitution, replace the hazard, Engineering Controls, separate people from the hazard (isolate, emphasis mine), Administrative Controls, change the way people work, and PPE, protect the worker with personal protective equipment (mask up). Masking, while important (necessary), is less effective than isolation in controlling spread.

TLDR; the guidelines seem to have taken 5 of the original days of isolation and replaced them with 5 masking days. However, isolation is more effective than masking in preventing spread, especially when given the possibility of noncompliance with proper masking.

4) This one is more nebulous but. The post seems to skip over... idk trying to stop Covid from spreading as much as is possible. And moves on to trying to minimize its effect on work life/the economy.

Note: I use the words *feels like* a lot in the following. Dr. Jha actually has the position that the pandemic is here to stay and we should all adjust around it because there’s no going back to 2019. He’s not saying we should give up common sense measures like vaccination and masking, but he has said we should try to “manage the pandemic” and stop “pining for a past that isn’t coming back”. And this CDC guideline feels like a general acceptance of this, like a management decision or something, taking into account ideal medical isolation on the one hand and real people’s tolerances of isolation on the other and coming down somewhere in the middle. But it seems like that middle errs on the side of dealing with Covid as if it’s inevitable, not as if it’s on its way out or could be in the near future. It’s like the fight to win is taking too long, so some kind of peaceful coexistence treaty is being drawn up. The goalpost moved from ‘aim for Covid free’ to now ‘if the person has waited long enough (and seems fine)’, let them back to work. And it was proposed amidst/justified by a concern about getting people back into the workplace. But (hopefully this isn’t naive) isn’t... what gets people back to work good health? (and a good job?). People still need to eat, pay for rent, pay for gas, Covid didn’t change that. So if they’re healthy and feel like their workplace is safe, they will work, and the economy will take care of itself (hopefully).

It seemed like there was a problem of ‘people not being able to work’. But it was read as ‘people aren’t able to work because they’re being forced to stay at home by guidelines’ instead of ‘people aren’t able to work because they’re sick’. I guess it depends on how you read the problem (is the issue the guidelines of Covid or Covid itself), but you might approach the solution differently.

It brought to mind that one post on twitter which i can’t find the link to (I tried though) that said if you’ve gone all this time without Covid, you’re weird/different/the exception. And I was like???? No??? It’s about 15% in the US and best I can tell about 4% (3.7% or so) worldwide who have ever had it. Maybe Covid is around, but it’s not unavoidable or okay or normal. It might be difficult, but I think fighting Covid itself is valuable. As always, we have to think of those who are not vaccinated, or cannot be vaccinated (the immunocompromised, the very young, the religious exemptions) and need to go through other pills/therapies to get a defense. (I’m not one of these people who can’t be vaccinated, and I don’t mean to use them as like a shield to defend my thoughts about the guidelines; I just want to mention that it’s not only the vaccinated who are affected by the spread of Omicron). This is besides the ~5%-60% of people who experience long Covid (depending on who you ask) even after the infection is gone. Letting these attitudes proliferate feels like we’ve... given up or something, which is part of why I wanted to write this.

Also what happens if something more awful than Covid ever surfaces down the line and we don’t take the opportunity now to train ourselves to act right during a pandemic? To the extent that is reasonable, maybe we need to try to fight and fight well against Covid now and not be too quick to slide into an ‘acceptance/management’ mentality

TLDR; So many people sick with Covid that essential services are affected might be an indication that something might need updating about the current approach to preventing spread, infection, and sickness, not an indication that we need to tolerate its presence and clear people to return to work faster.

5) This one is again hard to put into words, but. The post seems to gloss over the idea of getting better from Covid.

Similar to above, I’m not sure where this leaves the discussion of like, healing completely from Covid. As the focus is on rapid antigen testing and contagiousness, are PCRs (which measure presence of virus in the body) just not relevant as The Test That Needs To Be Passed to go back to work? I’m hearing/reading 2 negative antigens 24 hours apart a lot. And that’s good, definitely; a negative antigen is great but isn’t a negative PCR better? Anyway, in the examples I tend to hear on the news, I think the CDC guideline helps someone who say, has one job and has to attend it in order to make rent, and they don’t have 10 sick days back to back saved up like that, and they’re cleared (no symptoms, no contagiousness) after 5 days, so why use a guideline that keeps them at home? Or someone who has an essential job that cannot be performed from home (like a doctor) who is cleared after 5 days. For these cases, sure, I see how the guideline helps. But I’m wondering, if someone is out sick with Covid, (in general) shouldn’t they be allowed to stay out until they’re not (PCR) sick anymore? Even if they’re asymptomatic?

I feel like there are some people out there who are itching to go back to work the moment their symptoms clear. But for others, it might be important to not just have ‘no symptoms’ but to have ‘no Covid’. I don’t know that this current wording of the guideline helps this second group of people. Instead, it seems to (not literally, but in some sense figuratively? colloquially? idk), changes the shorthand, the language about Covid from ‘10 days off’ to ‘5 days off and 5 days mask’, with an asterisk about being asymptomatic. I think the latter might not intend to, but it gives the employer ammunition to want someone back sooner than they might be ready to go. (Like the flight attendants who are not comfortable with going to work under the newer guidelines).

It’s weird how it’s possible the guideline could push people away from work by sending the message that their coworkers might be coming into the workplace sick and they themselves have less time to care for their health if they contract Covid (ie making people nervous to be at work might perpetuate the very problem the new guidelines were attempting to solve)? Again, yeah, it’s an interesting shift in the discussion to like go away from aiming for back to work after healing from Covid to aiming for back to work as soon as possible after infection.

TLDR; I’m not sure where the focus on antigen testing leaves the conversation about fully healing from Covid. Is 2 negative antigen tests 24 hours apart the same thing as being Covid free? Is it possible your body is finishing off the fight with the infection, so you could benefit from the rest and hydration that comes with staying home even though there’s not enough levels of virus to be considered contagious anymore?

6) This is just a curiosity, I wanted to check my understanding. It seems like the post really espouses/depends on the strength of the antigen test in detecting Covid contagiousness (See tweet 9, “antigen tests are contagiousness tests”). But while being highly useful and very accurate, they are known to give false negatives (you have Covid but test negative) I was wondering if the infectious period is defined as what is detectable by lateral flow/rapid antigen tests (they seem to overlap perfectly on the chart)? If so, then what happens if the antigen tests ever fails to detect a variant? Maybe another way to put it is does the shape of that graph’s curve change for Omicron v. Delta v. whatever variant might hopefully never come next? Is 5 days always okay?

FWIW, if it was possible and wouldn’t like hurt people or be outrageously expensive or something like that, I feel like we should switch our approach to Covid from like, mask up, wash hands, but generally ignore it unless it is happening to us/someone we know/we have to take a flight. A shift towards like, societally taking a wholesale get-this-thing-out-of-our-lives approach I think would be something to consider. Maybe:

In addition to doing what we can about vaccination and masking (making these things normal and available and data-driven and not an indication of your political leanings),

Make testing widely available so it can be not just a practice for those who feel sick (it appears you don’t need to feel sick to be contagious and by the time you do feel sick, contagiousness might already be on its way out) but like a regular check-in everyone can do, sick or not.

Make it easier for people to work and live (and be entertained and thrive emotionally etc) remotely. Nothing feels like in-person interaction, but give us the option? To be safe? Instead of insisting that in-person is the only path forward, thereby inadvertently giving our employers the tools to badger us into making unsafe decisions. (Obviously not every job can be done from home, so only to the extent we can).

If people are sick, essential workers or not, let them stay home confidently (no fear of losing houses, jobs, favor, falling behind in school etc) so that we can attack the Thing at higher levels of effective control, namely isolation, instead of depending on masking to cover them when they get back.

Generally speaking, and this is obviously long term, build a society (education, energy, transportation, city planning, food, etc) more resistant to pandemics.

TLDR; I like the post, the graph especially, because it explained where the 5 days comes from and gave context to the CDC announcement. It seems like the new recommendation was motivated by a desire to prevent unnecessary work suspension for people in essential working positions (hospitals, flight attendants, wastewater treatment, etc) due to rules about isolation. But the timing/motivation, to get people back to work in the midst of a Covid surge, makes me feel like the emphasis has moved from trying to stop individuals from spreading Covid in the first place to accepting that Covid is here and working through it (likely to the benefit of economic interests), instead. The conversation is shifting.