The Covidians are hurting those people with Long Covid, not helping them. Insisting against all evidence that everyone will get Long Covid and that as you get reinfected you will inevitably be struck with it because your immune system deteriorates is crazy talk. And it’s just fucking not how immune systems work at all.

It’s strange to watch people self-own. But religion often does that. And that’s all it is at this point: faith and fervor.

Friends, what are some good medical texts for an amateur to begin learning cardiology? Thanks!

— Trishank Karthik Kuppusamy (@trishankkarthik) December 29, 2022

The best two that I’ve read:

Essential Cardiology: Principles and Practice by Clive Rosendorff

Heart in Fours: Cardiology for Residents and Practitioners by Pothuri Radha and Krishna Murthy

I read those quite a few years ago now so there could be newer, better books.

You can avoid all the dangers, live in isolation, hide from the world. You can seal the windows shut, wear a mask, talk to no one and do nothing. The castle on the hill seems safe. The self-imposed prison. The phantasm of the unassailable sanctuary.

But there’s no safe harbor, not in this life. No final refuge. Our fate is written before we’re born. To borrow from Johnny Cash, no matter what you do sooner or later god’s gonna cut you down.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

I am so annoyed that people keep thinking I’m dating my father.

The opposite problem: I was with a younger friend in a supermarket. She’s around 20 years my junior but looks even younger than that, and has very youthful-seeming, girlish mannerisms and a baby face. I think to a lot of people she seems ~14. (For the fuddy-duddies, nosy nellies and other assorted worthless clowns, no, she was not a minor, being in her mid-20s).

Anyway, my friend was goofing around with me in an aisle and leaning on me a little. At the same time both of us noticed a 45-ish-year-old woman just glaring at us with the most intense death stare you can imagine. You know, the typical Karen glarin’. My friend, being a huge extrovert and completely unafraid of confrontation and like me having almost no capacity for embarrassment, immediately threw her arms around me and nearly shrieked:

“Oh, Mikey, when are you gonna put a BABY IN ME LIKE YOU DID SISTER-MOTHER?”

I’ve never seen someone vacate an aisle so quickly without running as that woman did. It was so, so great. The look on the Karen’s face can’t really be conveyed but it was a mixture of horror, fascination and something more than that…jealousy? Or perhaps regret that she didn’t get to diminish other’s good times and friendship? (A lot of women like that seem to just live to do that.)

With the Karen firmly banished, we were laughing like lunatics till I realized that we should leave the store as I thought we just might get arrested. God that was so much fun, popping that woman’s bubble just a little. Get on up in other people’s business, suffer the consequences.

I still can’t get over the fact nor can I understand that people browse the internet with their phones. Such a terrible experience.

Yes, he can. That’s literally his job. https://t.co/COjCEUXrys

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) December 30, 2022

The tweet from clown-ass motherfucker William Wittman is hilarious. Pete Buttigieg is the Secretary of Transportation. He is in fact the one person in the country with the ability to unilaterally regulate any airline that operates in the United States.

If he declared that all flight attendants all had to wear top hats and carry light sabers, tomorrow all flight attendants would be wearing top hats and carrying light sabers. And if he declared that Southwest Airlines was now under government control and would be run by said government till its shit got fixed, tomorrow Southwest would be under government control.

How do you become so clueless as William there? Just how? There shouldn’t be the word “wit” in William Wittman’s name anywhere, as he has none. None at all.

part of the problem here might be that some liberals may sincerely believe the Transportation Secretary’s only job is to do ribbon cutting ceremonies at train stations, and MSNBC and the NYT oped page won’t tell them that he’s actually the sole regulator of airlines

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) December 30, 2022

I really do think that’s true. The PMC libs can’t imagine anyone having actual power over a corporation. It is just beyond them altogether.

Under the PMC lib way of thinking your past self is an inferior partner to your future self as your future self is older than your past self, so there is one of those absolutely horrible age gaps.

Therefore, any decisions your past self made are definitionally invalid and indefensible. Thus your current self is oppressing your past self because it has no say in what your present self is doing — and all the while your future self is always older than your current self and capable of having nearly-omniscient power over your current state and past selves.

It’s hard being so oppressed all the time. That’s why I am not a PMC lib.

I find it endlessly amusing that the “impossible” workouts that celebrities do are just my regular workouts.

Our culture and level of wallowing in loserdom is wild.

The tragedy unfolding in China reminds me that lockdowns build no health care capacity and an outreach-based vaccine program saves infinitely more lives than brutally enforced quarantine.

— Stefan Baral (@sdbaral) December 29, 2022

Zero Covid and lockdowns were always a religious crusade and had very little to do with reality.

By the way, I very much agree with lockdowns when a novel virus is likely to be a pandemic or already is in its nascent phases. It makes sense until we can assess and understand. At most, they should last 2-3 weeks, though.