I think that because I do not fear death or even really suffering, this skews my perspective on things like re-opening society and my pushing back against the asinine liberal idea of infinite lockdown.

I’ll take the chance, but I won’t take it for others: this is why I wear my mask, as much as I hate it.

But life is for living, not staying huddled inside against even a persistent threat forever.

An inexpensive drug reduces virus deaths, scientists say.

Next headline will be: “Pharma Companies Hike Coronavirus Drug Price 9,000 Percent.”

You know it’s going to happen.

love this description of behavioural modernity as a ‘suite’ of dispositions, further emphasising the software metaphor for thinking about human behaviour pic.twitter.com/IrmtZR7AqQ

— krish (@krishkhubchand) June 15, 2020

I am not sure this is actually correct, though. But it’s not testable so also not sure if it matters. We don’t really understand how the brain is wired, or if that is even an apt metaphor, and how it might have changed evolutionarily. Is it stochastic? If so, how much? If so, what are the genetic inputs and feedbacks and their extent? What mediates this? How flexible is it? What are the first- and second-order epigenetic inputs and effects? If there are hard-wired modules, to what extent are they hard-wired and how much does it take to “unwire” them? Etc.

These are all open questions, even if many scientists don’t really want to admit it.

I really like this photo of Aella. It’s elegant and does indeed look like a statue:

Also, I am pretty sure that she has the same office chair that my partner used to. (And if you don’t like random nudity appearing on my blog, find another blog. A prude I am not.)

If you see this, I dare you to drop your last saved photo with no explanation

— Taylor Hugh ✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿 (@taylorjhugh) June 14, 2020

For the “experts” who say you can’t read in your dreams, I read in mine all the time. Unfortunately, I was reading about the death of “Duxell Sloat” who was in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street band as a saxophonist.

That’s not the name of anyone, particularly the sax player in the E Street band.

“Duxell Sloat.” Ha.

Another hellishly annoying thing I’ve seen liberals claim lately is that what’s occurred since the pandemic isn’t oppressive and psychologically traumatic, because we “have it good,” staying inside with our Xboxes, HBO Max, and Twitter. Never mind the vast job losses and economic dislocations, what’s happening is unprecedented in modern history and is taking a psychological toll on anyone who isn’t a daffy dipshit like the people making those claims are.

Here’s someone who said it better than I just managed to put it.

“Is this as bad as 1968?” is an utterly meaningless question precisely for this underlying reason. People do not invoke 1968 because of the objective similarities between 2020 and 1968. They do so because we have crossed a threshold at which basic foundations of social organization we take for granted now seem up for grabs. This is an inherently subjective determination, based on the circumstances of our present much as people in 1968 similarly judged the state of their worlds to be in flux. 1968 is an arbitrary signpost on an unfamiliar road we are driving down at breakneck speeds. You can blast “Gimme Shelter” on the car stereo for the aesthetic, but it’s not worth much more than that.

The trouble began with the virus. The virus – and the confused and incoherent response to it – shattered patterns of normal life and normal perceptions of agency. The virus is novel, but the collective shock it evokes is a common reaction under such circumstances. Subjective perception of space and time lose coherence and structure, a looming “sense of a foreshortened future” dominates, and the ability to imagine institutional realities as self-perpetuating diminishes. A symptom of this is the manner in which people suddenly find themselves addicted to enormous amounts of raw, unstructured, information. There is little context that would allow one to dismiss any particular datum, hence everything is mainlined from the content firehose.

Someone who actually understands what is going and its possible ramifications. Why is it so rare that someone can think credibly? I am constantly shocked by the utter naïveté of so many of my fellow liberals. They are worse than children, because at least children possess the perspicacity and clarity to notice when the world has shifted utterly and be distressed by the alteration; these mooks watch society crumble and tell us that we have it good because we can still play fucking Xbox.

What a world where you can find a furry and a fan of confederate anime (I know, wtf?) arguing over capitalism.