“Lesbians don’t get periods” and even more great insights into the enigma that is woman from the NotHowGirlsWork subreddit

Isn’t “thigh gap” from that scene in Dr. Strangelove when they discover Russia’s women athletes have much more developed lower-body muscle mass than the USA’s women athletes?

I’m trying to figure out exactly how doomed I am and all I get from my calculations are infs and NaNs.

Let’s see … first, we have a COVID variant that is being billed now as the “2nd most contagious virus on earth”, behind presumably only the measles, with the vaccines ineffective against it. On top of which, it can infect people who have already had infections as well — natural immunity is not permanent, or even especially long-lived. And there are documented cases of people surviving a bout with COVID, but dying to a later COVID infection, so having survived it once doesn’t guarantee surviving repeat infections.

Add all that up and it looks like everyone will eventually die of COVID now, if nothing else gets them first. It won’t be possible to avoid infection, and if you survive, COVID will get another crack at you after a few months, and then another, and then another, and sooner or later the dice will come up snake eyes. Even if the chance of being killed any particular time is only a couple of percent, if that chance is taken enough times, sooner or later it will get you. Gambler’s ruin.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, civilization is looking increasingly precarious. We might be about to lose the coastal cities to climate change, not sometime around 2100 but sometime around 2025. That would easily be a death blow to civilization. That’s ignoring all the other multiplying threats, like the right wing resurgence that seems to be everywhere these days, the accompanying erosions of democracy (and then liberty, and then life for large numbers of people), fossil fuel depletion, and the COVID-associated supply chain woes. This is before considering that Omicron means COVID has just reduced life expectancies from 80 something down to 40 something throughout the developed world, and the catastrophic social upheaval that will cause once it starts to really sink in.

As someone whose sleep disorder alone makes him unemployable, I’m dependent on a civilization robust enough to provide public assistance such as disability pensions. If civilization goes I won’t live long before running afoul of either intolerance-associated violence, exposure, or starvation, if COVID doesn’t get me first of course. Lots of people are even worse off: visible minorities who are protected from bigots only by what thin veneer remains of the rule of law (and inadequately at that, else Floyd and Arbery would still be with us); those so disabled they need others to feed and clothe them, not just free money; anyone dependent on insulin or dialysis or some other such high tech medicine that won’t be available anymore once it’s Mad Max time.

Oh, and once the collapse begins in earnest things will unravel fast, not least because COVID will jump from 3% lethality to closer to 30% lethality once there’s no emergency room or hospital care anymore. 30% lethality plus no lasting immunity is not something we’ve seen since the days of the Black Death, and the Black Death pretty much ended the preexisting political order in Europe at the time. It will certainly solve our overpopulation problem, but in the worst possible way short of nuclear war, and too late to stop catastrophic environmental consequences. And of course that’s assuming that a great deal of forbearance is exercised by the guys with nuclear launch codes during the collapse …

If anyone can see a way that all of this might be avoided, I’m all ears. Otherwise, it’s probably time I put my affairs, such as they are, in order.

surplus

You’re right, we really are fucked. Certainly if we think we can restore anything like the climate of 1950 and earlier, that’s out of the question.

But. We can make the future better than it would be if we did nothing. Here’s a couple of examples that give us real hope. (Though I sometimes cry into my pillow when I think about how we could have avoided this in the first place and for my grandchildren and their descendants missing out on a whole range of circumstances and activities that I and most people my age took for granted.)

Try these.
1. The Loess plateau, Ethiopia & Rwanda. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGJz9XWBdIQ Especially the before and after shots at 8.25 to 9,35.
2.India The Miracle Water Village https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hmkgn0nBgk
3.Al Baydha in Saudi Arabia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T39QHprz-x8

And dozens of clips about The Great Green Wall across the Sahel in Africa and Ridge to Valley projects across large parts of India.

Can’t help that seeing how straightforward solutions might be can make us even more downcast. But a half hour of hope is better than no hope at all.

regarding the monthly cycle…

“If a creature bleeds for seven days and lives… don’t mess with it!”

re: pasted gif: It worked!!! I have a computer software learning curve slightly steeper than the north face of Everest, and (with apologies to Roy ‘n’ Buck) if it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all!!

I have even less-kind words for the local hydro monopoly here, which thought it would be fun to try to freeze me to death overnight last night, but I’d likely run afoul of the fucking comment policy.

You’re going to be full solipsist by the New Year, aren’t you?

What the fuck is this?

TEN THOUSAND new cases in Ontario today?

TEN THOUSAND???

I want to know two things right now.

One: Who would be an appropriate person for me to show that number to, jab a finger toward them, and say “This is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!”

Two: Why hasn’t some rich motherfucker with actual clout already said that to the same person?

They have informed the rich people that none of their assorted extra vaccine doses, early/privileged access to antibody treatments in hospital, and the like work very well against Omicron, right? The rich people know that their asses are hanging out now to exactly the same degree as plebes’, right? So their reasons for not caring if the virus runs rampant no longer apply, right? So why aren’t they clamping down on this the way they did before there were any vaccines?

And what the hell am I supposed to do to protect myself from this??? I feel like I’m stuck in the path of a runaway train here. What can I do to guarantee that this thing doesn’t kill me?

Surplus: I don’t understand the Ontario situation but here in Quebec where we’ve almost always had higher numbers than anywhere in Canada we have reacted pretty strongly already — just a week late compared to when we should have reacted. And we’ll probably throw in a bunch more after tomorrow.

The “good” news is that much of the very high numbers is due to vaccinated people getting infected, whereas in the delta wave we mostly weren’t getting infected at all. And we’re still pretty well protected. So the huge numbers aren’t going to map to similar hospitalization numbers as if we had the same numbers with alpha or delta. It’s still going to suck.

If you get a booster you’re about at equal risk as when delta was at its peak.

@ Surplus:

Regarding the idea that the aristocrats are in the same boat as the plebeians, do not underestimate the power of the self-delusion “it’s not going to happen to me!”

@Victorious Parasol, I just watched the movie version of Hogfather today! It’s my Christmas tradition, lol.

@Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie:

How are you getting images to embed and display? (I’m working from an IPad.)

@Surplus to Requirements: I gather you’re on Disability, or whatever it’s called in Canada. All I can suggest is, don’t go out in public unless you absolutely have to. Get everything delivered. Wear 2 face masks, if you do need to go out. I wear 2 face masks. I get plenty of disgusted looks and eye-rolling from people, but I don’t care.

I’m sure you’ve heard all of the above suggestions already. Sorry if this is too forward of me, but you sound as if anxiety has gotten the better of you. If the Antarctic glacier breaks apart, causing coastal cities to flood, well, we’re limited as to what we can do about it. I’ve resigned myself to catastrophic climate change, in my lifetime. I don’t believe humanity is capable of solving this problem, to put it briefly and bluntly. Our mental limitations, as a species, are too great.

@Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie:

Tumblr URLs, secure S or not, won’t link directly to images any more, leading instead to a display page with the image in question:

http://64.media.tumblr.com/b7548d67c2e1ab5d274042e1e4309bc6/3719a4353d47c40d-99/s500x750/6b50062d01e931c738e5714a303c35ae6771fe25.jpg