Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply

Our power company thoughtfully turned off our power this week for 30 hours because it was windy.  They claim this was to prevent fires, but of course every time they do it, they turn the power back on and something blows and it starts a fire.  (This year was no exception, although the fire wasn’t anywhere near us this time at least.)  Personally, I think they’re doing it because of the Camp Fire, which nearly destroyed the town of Paradise (there’s actually a new documentary about it on Netflix, although I haven’t watched it).  Anyway, a judge held the power company responsible for starting the fire and it cost them a bunch of money, so ever since then they turn off the power when it’s windy ... but only to the primarly residential areas, so as to piss off the consumers and have them complain to their local governments in the hopes that they’ll finally get sick of it and pass some law or other that the power company can’t be held responsible for keeping the power on.  Notably, most of the primarily business areas (where the power company presumably makes the most money) are not turned off at these times—this week, there was about a 10-block-square chunk right in the center of our city which had power the whole time, which was sort of like adding insult to injury, even though it did make it nice to be able to drive about 2 minutes to someplace that had power.  Still, annoying to have a corporation thumb their noses at us so blatantly.

Of course, I have no proof of any of this, so you could accuse me of peddling a conspiracy theory.  I would counter, though, that it doesn’t take much of a “conspiracy”: just 4 or 5 folks at the power company who care more about the bottom line than than whether all my frozen fish food is turning into disgusting goop in my freezer.  And, honestly, if you don’t believe there are way more than that number of people with that attitude running the power companies in our country, then I have nothing more to say to you.  Well, except for this lovely bridge I’ve got to sell you.

Anyhow, it’s sort of put a crimp into my whole week, and I never really caught up.  This should be a “long post” week for me, but as last week’s “short post” was, in fact, quite long, I think I’ll just skip this week, except for the obligatory ranting above.  Which you’ve already suffered through enough, I’m sure.

Back next week for another virus isolation report.

Isolation Report, Week #39

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

So, lately all the pandemic talk has been focussed on the vaccine(s).  I have to say, I’m a bit irked at the media’s coverage of the vaccines: we seem to have breezed past any discussion of safety and started arguing about who “gets to” get the vaccine first.  I mean, I’m pretty much always irked at the media’s coverage of vaccines, and in particular their attitude that anyone that dares to have any reservations about any vaccine is therefore a crazy person.  But this particular round of vaccine coverage has a whole ‘nother dimension to it that really saddens me.

You see, when Trump was promising a vaccine “very soon now,” the media was very quick to point out that you can’t really rush a vaccine.  The entire concept of vaccination is to infect you with something that will hopefully “fool” your body into thinking it’s sick without actually getting sick, so that it therefore produces antibodies that will protect against the infection before you ever even get infected.  This is actually a very clever idea, and, when it works, it’s pretty amazing.  Unfortunately, when it doesn’t work, it can be pretty devastating: early implementation of the polio managed to cause 40,000 new cases of polio.  That doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with the idea of vaccinating against polio, although I’m sure that some people interpret it that way.  No, the problem was simply a manufacturing error ... if we can describe a situation involving tens of thousands of infections of a paralytic and in some cases fatal disease as being “simply an error.” So taking time to study the vaccines carefully and make sure they’re being developed with all due rigor is pretty damned important.  Before the election, the media seemed to know that.  They considered it quite reasonable that some people—many people, even—would not want to take a vaccine which had been rushed to market to make Trump look good and was certified as “safe” by a government with a vested interest in doing just that.

But, somehow, now that the election is over and Trump has lost, now we’re back to statements like “some people may not want to take the vaccine, because of crazy conspiracy theories or whatever.” Look: I’m obviously no fan of Trump.  The fact that he even exists—that a person can be considered “rich” without demonstrating any actual monetary value, that a person can commit crime after crime without ever facing any consequences, that a person could demonstrate such a flagrant disregard for the truth and even for human life—the fact that there’s anyone like that on the planet, much less in the White House, that offends me on a fundamental level.  I’m also, contrary to the opinions of some, not opposed to vaccines in general.  There are many vaccines—including that for polio, despite the tragedies associated with its initial rollout—which I believe are medically essential for us humans to continue to endure.  But that doesn’t mean that I believe that anything that has the word “vaccine” printed on the side of it is therefore safe and necessary.

Concerns about these vaccines, which were very much rushed, are not crazy, and they’re not a result of believing in conspiracy theories.  Well, perhaps for some they are.  But the media made lots of good points before Trump was defeated, and those points are still valid.  There were very good reasons for rushing these vaccines—I’m not disputing that—but that doesn’t make them any less rushed.  Each one has had a single study done on them, and, despite the fact that those studies appear, by all reports, to be pretty damned thorough studies, a single study can’t conclusively prove anything.  Moreover, the studies were focussed on efficacy (which, again, is perfectly understandable and appopriate, given the circumstances), not on safety.  There simply hasn’t been enough time to figure out if the vaccine is fully safe.  Now, there could be situations where the threat of a disease was so dire, and the consequences so heinous, that the risk of not fully knowing the safety factor of a vaccine would be outweighed by the risk of contracting the disease.  But I believe that this disease doesn’t meet that standard.

Reasonable people can disagree.  After all, death rates are rising, people will point out, and for the first time in recent memory—possibly for the first time in living memory—we experienced a week where heart disease was not the number one cause of death in the United States: it was COVID.  But, let’s be realistic: our death rate isn’t so high because this disease is so dangerous.  Our death rate is so high because we’ve been remarkably stupid in handling it.  People refuse to wear masks.  People were explicitly told not to travel for the holidays, but they did it anyway.  This week we’ve heard about a rash of politicians telling their constituents to stay home and avoid gatherings while they themselves were doing the opposite, including the remarkable case of the mayor of Austin telling people to avoid travel from his hotel room in Mexico.  It’s silly to imagine that these things aren’t all connected.  And, anyway, the proof is simple: while the whole world may be experiencing a resurgence of the disease, only our country has numbers like this.

And I’m certainly not saying that staying home and wearing masks guarantees that you won’t get the disease.  Recently I received the unpleasant news that one of my coworkers, who by all descriptions was far more paranoid about being exposed to the disease than I or my family have been, contracted it.  It sounds like he and his girlfriend are going to recover, but it’s still a chilling reminder that nothing is 100%.  Of course, the vaccines are not 100% either.  If the initial efficacy numbers hold water, you’ve still got a 5% chance of catching COVID after you’ve been vaccinated with one of the current candidates, and we simply don’t know what the chances of any potential side-effects are yet.  Given that, and given how good our chances are for not catching the disease by simply continuing to observe the same best practices that we’ve all been doing for close to year now, it still makes sense to me to wait a bit and see how these vaccine fare in the real world before committing to anything.  Oh, I will be getting this vaccine eventually.  But I’m not in a hurry.

The thing that disturbs the most about the media coverage, though, is the hypocrisy.  When it was “Trump’s vaccine,” we shouldn’t trust it.  Now that Trump is on the way out, mistrusting a vaccine is a crazy conspiracy theory.  I’m sorry, but there’s no conspiracy theory, nor any sort of crazy, required.  The media made some great points about the dangers of a rushed vaccine, and Trump being defeated doesn’t change any of those points.  There are essentially two options here for what’s going on.  The first is that the media was just saying that we should be suspicious of a vaccine produced under Trump, for political expediency.  But that’s exactly what Trump was accusing them of: remember how he claimed that, once the election was over, we’d never hear about COVID again?  Obviously that was crazy, and also stupid.  But somewhow we immediately stopped hearing about the possibility that the vaccine might not be all rainbows and sunshine.  That means that Trump was essentially right—in the abstract, if not in the details—and that possibility makes me really sad.  Also the concept of Trump being right about anything upsets my grasp on reality.

But the other possible explanation isn’t any more comforting: that, rather than being insincere in their claims then, they’re insincere in their claims now.  That they know perfectly well that there could be consequences and ramifications to just shoving this vaccine into everyone’s veins ... and they just don’t care.  Or, to be more generous, that they believe that the number of people who will be hurt or maybe even killed will be low enough not to matter.  But, here again: that’s been the attitude of the Trump camp.  I don’t want to see that blossoming on the other side of the political divide as well.

One more particularly relevant analogy that I’ll give.  Last month, “Dr.” Scott Atlas, a “medical” advisor to Trump, was ridiculed extensively for talking about “herd immunity.” In one example story, ABC called herd immunity “a concept lambasted by public health experts as ‘dangerous’ and called ‘ridiculous’ by the federal government’s foremost infectious disease official, Dr. Anthony Fauci.” I specifically remember thinking at the time, “man, they better be careful how they disparage herd immunity, because that’s central precept of vaccination policy.” I was really curious to see how they’d handle it when it was time to actually push for herd immunity using the newly created vaccines.

And now the time has come, and, you know what?  They just all pretend like they never said that.  Now herd immunity is all good, and we all need to be concerned about whether we can achieve it, becauase of all those crazy conspiracy theory nutjobs, you know.  They’re essentially saying exactly the opposite of what they said before and not acknowledging that anything is different.  But, here’s the thing: that’s what Trump does. And, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t make it okay when it’s “my side” doing it.  It’s still wrong, and vaguely nauseating.  Have we had to turn into Trump in order to defeat him?

Let’s hope not.  Because that’s not okay.

Isolation Report, Week #37

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

This week (I think—time is still a bit mushy here in quarantine land) Biden said he wouldn’t personally pursue prosecuting Trump’s crimes (to be fair, he did graciously allow that others might do so).  I 100% expected this, of course, but it still pisses me off.  Democrats always do this.  They try to take the high ground, and the Republicans eat their lunch.

There are two very important reasons which this more than a terrible decision: it’s just plain dumb.  The first reason is a strategic one.  The Republicans control over half of many of our government institutions, even though they represent far less than half the population.  In fact, the Republican party is now in third place, behind both Democrats and independents.  Part of that is because the Democrats suck, of course.  But the point is, being less than 30% of the country doesn’t keep them from controlling at least half of everything.  Why?  Well, they’re smarter than the Decmocrats, and they’re far more ruthless.  To have proof of crimes committed by a political opponent and not pursue prosecution for them?  There’s no universe in which Republicans would do this ... hell, they don’t even really need proof to pursue prosecution against opponents.  They sort of do it on principle.  And the problem is this: even if the Democrats decide that they don’t want to be as ruthless as the Repubs (although, counterpoint: how’s that working out for ya, Dems?), they at least have to be as smart.  Letting Trump leave the White House and doing nothing to address the many illegal acts he’s perpetrated is basically rolling over and showing your belly to the Republican party.  Do you imagine that they’re going to feel bad and just leave you alone?  ‘Cause, I’m here to tell you, they’re just going to disembowel you and leave you to rot.

But above and beyond the stupidity, there’s a bigger moral issue here.  Trump is a man who has never faced any consequences in his life.  Susan Collins of Maine (who managed to win her re-election bid despite this amazing bit of doublespeak) said that Trump’s impeachment taught him “a pretty big lesson”: yeah, and that lesson was, do whatever the fuck you want.  There are no consequences.  There were no consequences when you were mean to people, there were no consequences when you cheated people, there were no consequences when you dodged your military service, there were no consequences when you siphoned so much money off your businesses that even your casinos failed, and, now that you’ve taken graft and corruption and nepotism to a national scale, you know what?  Still no consequences.  But once you leave office ... then there will be no consequences, apparently.  Because that’s the American Way: petty criminals get locked up for years; really big criminals get supported by politicians using phrases like “too big to fail” and “we just want to move on.” Democrats, think carefully: is this really the message you want to send to people?  Do whatever you want, we don’t care, we just want to move on?

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve fully predicted this from the beginning.  Trump will never spend a single day in jail, and probably not even a single day in court (nearly an exact quote from a previous virus isolation report).  Still, this is one of those times when I’d be overjoyed to be proven wrong.  Prove me wrong, Dems.  I’m begging you.

Meanwhile, the virus is not still raging: it’s actually getting worse.  I envy you people that are experiencing a second or third wave: for us here it’s all one big wave ... we haven’t left the house for anything significant for the better part of a year, and I would be absolutely stunned if there is not a “virus isolation report week 52” in my not-too-distant future.  Oh, sure: there’s vaccines out there, but even the folks on television who are normally all about letting big pharma inject them with anything at all as long as it has the “V” word stamped on it are saying that maybe it would be a good idea to wait for some larger trials, for some studies for side effects, for some independent verification.  Because, you know, as deadly as this virus is, it isn’t the most deadly thing you could have in your body: it is still possible for the cure to be worse than the disease.  As much as I hate being stuck inside, I think I’ll personally wait for a pretty wide concensus on safety for anything I want to inject into my children.  And, unfortunately, that just takes time.  There’s only some much you can rush it before you just end up with untrustworthy results and you’re back where you started.  So, while multiple vaccines are certainly welcome news, it’s the beginning of the next phase of waiting, not the end.

So, we soldier on, isolated for Thanksgiving, isolated for Christmas, isolated for New Year’s—although, to be fair, we typically spend those holidays by ourselves anyway.  There are 5 of us (counting only the humans), and we’re plenty capable of generating sufficient family drama without inviting extended family to help with that.  There are some parties that we would normally attend that we likely won’t get to (unless perhaps there are some smaller versions within our personal social bubble), but not a whole lot will change.  But, I gotta tell you, I miss going to out to sit down in a restaurant.  I miss going to work and seeing my coworkers.  I miss playing hooky from work and sneaking off with my family to the occasional museum or zoo or aquarium.  I miss going to the comic book and gaming stores, and to the movies, as rare as that was for us even before the pandemic.  When I do go out, I look at the retail locations that have closed, and I realize that even once things are “back to normal,” they won’t be normal.  And I’m bummed.

But surviving.

Isolation Report, Week #27

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, it’s been a few more weeks, and the world doesn’t seem to be getting any better.  Police officers keep killing innocent black people, Trump continues to do whatever the fuck he wants, and the only people who claim to have any chance at a vaccine any time soon are so unreliable as to make the prospect of taking a vaccine even scarier than not having one at all.

The only plus side whatsoever about the political situation is that Trump is apparently too stupid to stop doing skeevy shit for even a few days, so there are constant reminders about his unfitness for the presidency.  Of course, a majority of people voting against Trump is by no means a guarantee that he won’t win, as we all know from painful experience.  Nonetheless, it’s probably the best shot we have.

On the personal front, our guinea pig died a little over a week ago, despite an emergency trip to the vet, antibiotics, and feeding a liquid diet twice a day for several days.  The kids went to their first birthday party in months, although it was understandably small (i.e. attended by only the 3 families in our “social bubble”).  The PS/4 is still on the fritz, so it’s difficult to watch DVDs.  Work is going well, I suppose ... I mean, as well as one can expect given the prolonged lack of contact with my coworkers.  On the plus side, our work hired a comedian to do a Zoom show for us.  It ain’t the same as going out to a club with the folks from work, but it’s certainly better than nothing.  (And Adam was pretty funny, I thought.)

But we’re hanging in there, and certainly it could be worse.  And, you know ... only 3½ more months till this horrible, fucked up mess of a year is finally over.

Isolation Report, Week #24

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, The Mother is back from Colorado, safe and sound.  And virus free?  It seems so, but she (and our littlest one) are staying even more out of the public than usual for the requisite 2 weeks, just to be sure.  It seemed that Southwest, at least, is doing a soft-of-decent job at trying to keep everyone safe(ish): they’re only flying 2 people to a row, and I believe the masks were required (of course our ladies would have done that anyway—heck, we even got some glasses for the little one on the off-chance that that’s helpful—but it’s nice to know everyone else will mask up as well).  The trip itself ... well, I’m sure many of you know how it feels to go home to visit your family in the best of times, much less when people are in and out of the hospital.  Not so much fun, overall, although it was nice that The Mother got to meet her neice for the first time.

Meanwhile I was stuck at home with our two older children, one of whom is ostensibly an adult, but neither of whom is noted for their motivation or pliability.  I believe I described it as like pushing elephants uphill—the classic “herding cats” didn’t really begin to cover it.  If my elder child ever figures out how to monetize talking people into going out to buy them food, they will soon be wealthy; if my middle child ever figures out how to redirect all that time spent complaining about doing a thing into just doing the thing and moving on with his life, he will soon find it nearly impossible to fill all the extra hours.  Still, it was only 10 days that I had to do it unaided, and I’m somewhat compensated by the fact that my children refuse to read this blog, so they can’t bitch at me for bitching about them.

Our politics continues to be somewhat depressing, as Trump’s obvious strategy of constantly inventing new scandals so that all the old ones get forgotten continues to work on a grander and grander scale.  Having gotten away with kidnapping people off the streets of Portland, he’s moved on to screwing up everyone’s mail delivery in the hopes that will tip the election in his favor (remember: that’s not just my opinion of his actions—he actually admitted it), talking about trying to delay the election, and—perhaps most bizarre for its banality in the face of his other actions—looking into having his face added to Mount Rushmore.  Sober people are talking and even writing about the possibility that Trump could refuse to leave office even if he loses.  Trevor Noah’s old jokes likening Trump to an African dictator really seem less and less funny all the time ...

Am I heartened by the official acceptance of the Democratic nomination by Joe Biden?  Honestly, not that much.  (For my level of enthusiasm for Biden—as well as the level of enthusiasm for the majority of voters, I suspect—I will refer you once again to The Daily Show ... they sum it up better than I ever coould.)  A bit more so by the choice of Kamala Harris, who I’ve always liked, even though of course she’s not perfect.  But, hey: at this point, if lack of perfection is the worst thing you’ve got going for you, you’re a fucking political rockstar.  While Biden may not get us anywhere much farther that out from under Trump—assuming he can even get us that far—there’s always the chance that Harris will be president soon afterward, and then we might see some real reforms to the horrific state of our political system.  But, you know, I ain’t holding my breath.

I’m also extremely amused by the people (Colbert, for instance) who talk about the fact that Donald Trump fears going to jail once he’s out of office.  Even if Trump were capable of understanding consequences—and he’s definitely not, as nothing he’s ever done, no matter how bad, has ever spawned any—this is laughable to me.  We don’t send rich white guys to prison.  Roger Stone isn’t going to prison.  Nixon didn’t go to prison—hell, even Spiro Agnew didn’t go to prison.  The concept that Trump, or even any member of his family, might go to prison one day is so remarkably naive as to be amusing ... you know, if it weren’t so depressing.

Likewise, the concept that DeJoy will be in any way inconvenienced by having to testify before Congress—if he even does!—is also just silly.  If he decides to go, he’ll pretend he doesn’t “recall” anything and nothing will change.  Hell, if he decided to go and say “hell yeah, I’m sabotaging the post office: whaddaya gonna do about it?” ... still, nothing would change.  Better yet, why should he bother to go at all?  There are no consequences for not showing up, apparently, so he could make better use of that time on a golf course or a private jet or somesuch.  People on the screens rant about how Congress should be “grilling” DeJoy, or “holding him to account” ... I say, why bother?  What difference would it make?  There are no consequences for corrupt officials lying before Congress, there are no consequences for corrupt officials failing to appear before Congress, there are no consequences for Presidents scheming to rig elections, there are no consequences for police officers shooting innocent civilians ... why do we even bother any more?  Safer to expect the worst, I think.  Perhaps then I might be pleasantly surprised.

But, as I said before: I ain’t holding my breath.

Isolation Report, Week #22

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Today I drove to Burbank Airport (much closer and more sedate than LAX) and dropped off The Mother and my littlest one.  By this point, they’ve landed in Denver.  Flying during these trying times is certainly not something our family was looking forward to.  But due to some family medical issues, this trip really couldn’t be postponed.  So we put masks and goggles on them, we availed ourselves as often as possible of the many thoughtfully placed hand sanitizer stations, and we got in and out as quickly as possible.  That’s the best we could do.

I have to say, this was only my second time at Burbank, and obviously my first during the pandemic endtimes.  I was quite impressed at how helpful the airport and airline employees were.  When there were buttons to be pushed (such as the “walk” button for the crosswalk), there was nearly always a masked and gloved employee to push it for us.  We ended up touching nearly nohting the whole time, and everyone was super polite, not annoyed as you sometimes see with overworked transportation workers.  It was easy in, easy park, easy out.  I hope I get the opportunity to use Burbank more often.  You know, if flying ever becomes a thing we do on a regular basis again.

At $work, I was able to polish off a new project that came up with some urgency, so I’m pretty happy about that.  It wasn’t a difficult one, but it had deployment challenges, and a few times when I could have taken shortcuts: that is, doing lower quality work that could be completed faster.  But happily my bosses weren’t interested in that route, so we got it done in a relatively short timeline without compromising.  I was pretty pleased about that.

I haven’t been keeping up with the news as much due to Colbert being off for the past two weeks and Noah being off for the past one.  Possibly this is a good thing.  From what little I have heard, I’m probably better off taking a short break from it.

The grocery store Friday was the best it’s been for a while—possibly the best it’s been since pre-week-zero.  So that’s something to be appreciated.  Then there’s the fact that ... actually, come to think of it, that’s it.  That’s about all the silver linings I can come up with right now.

Recommendations for how to pass the time:

• I’ve finally gotten caught up on The Adventure Zone: “Graduation”.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, and even if you don’t normally care for D&D podcasts, I highly recommend it.  As good as Griffin is as a GM, I think Travis may be even better.
• Umbrella Academy season 2 is pretty friggin’ awesome—possibly even better than season 1.
• Portal Knights is still a great timewaster, although now my gaming partner is gone to Colorado.  No worries: my middle child just got a copy of PixelJunk Monsters 2.  We used to have a great time playing the original, years ago, so we’re hoping to recapture a bit of magic.  So far, it’s been pretty cool.
• Quibi, in its desperate attempt to remain (or maybe even become) relevant, has stumbled on a fun way to leverage the pandemic: they’ve done a “remake” of The Princess Bride, with different celebrites reprising the roles, each one shooting their part in their backyards or what-have-you.  Each scene features different actors for the same characters, and of course the whole thing has to be cut together to make it seem as if they’re interacting with each other when in actuality they’re nowhere near each other.  It’s all very low-tech, of course, and nothing matches (for instance, the Man in Black hands Vizzini a glass of red wine, but it’s become white wine by the time it gets to Vizzini’s hand), but that’s part of the charm.  Some of the casting is utterly inspired—Jack Black for the Man in Black’s climb up the cliffs of insanity, Dave Bautista for Fezzik’s rock smashing, Patton Oswalt for Vizzini’s battle of wits (for the princess? to the death?)—and it’s all great fun.  Of course, you can’t watch the whole thing, unless you have Quibi (which of course no one does), but you can watch what might be the best stretch of it on YouTube.
• I find that just sitting outside (by the pool, if it’s not too hot, or under the patio fan in the side yard) while working from home can be quite relaxing.  I have a new laptop and its battery life is much better than my old model, so I can be outside for quite a bit longer than I used to manage.  I’m still working, but just reminding myself that the outside world didn’t go away just because I never go outside any more can be good for the mental health, I think.

That’s enough for this week.  Shooting for a longer post next week.

Isolation Report, Week #20

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]


I had to go to the doctor for the first time during the pandemic: apparently, I (probably) have diverticulitis.  My grandmother had this for many years, so it doesn’t surprise me too much.  Now I have to go find a gastroenterologist, and I’m sure there’s a colonoscopy in my future, which is never pleasant to look forward to.  In other sad news, The Mother‘s dad and brother aren’t doing well, so it looks like she will have to undertake a short plane ride in these troubled times, which definitely isn’t pleasant to look forward to.  Our littlest will accompany; neither of them would sleep much otherwise.

We subscribed to HBO Max; it was the same price we were paying for HBO Now, so we figured why not.  Mostly what’s on HBO Max is the same as what’s on regular HBO, but there are a few extra things.  One of which is Doom Patrol, one of those marvelously inventive comic book series (like Preacher or Legion) that is oh-so-much-more than a typical superhero story.  While he wasn’t the inventor of the Doom Patrol (a group which actually preceded the X-Men by a few months, despite seeming like a rip-off of them, which makes it decades old), it’s Grant Morrison we truly have to thank for this bit of Dadaesque surrealism (see also Happy!, on Netflix).  While the core four characters predated him, Morrison gave us Crazy Jane, Danny the Street, and the amazing Willoughby Kipling, expertly portrayed by Mark Sheppard (a character actor who’s made a career of brilliant recurring characters in great series such as Supernatural, Warehouse 13, and White Collar).  If you don’t like shows where you are constantly trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, definitely do not watch this one.

Let’s see ... what else ... we’ve been playing some family board games.  The Wizard Always Wins, Betrayal at House on the Hill, and Bears vs Babies; all highly recommended.  Also some card games—Minecraft Uno and Timeline—and of course the littlest one still sucks me into Portal Knights on a semi-regular basis.  That game is for me what I understand Animal Crossing is for other folks during these weird times: we mainly just battle things and go on quests so we can get more materials to build our awesome house.  It’s up to 3 stories now, with a rootfop observatory on top and a vegetable garden and pool out back.  There’s also a large bathroom with a red crystal ceiling, a little marketplace full of vendor stalls out front, and a cannon in the side yard that we occasionaly fire off the edge of the world just so we can watch the flaming cannonball shoot off into the abyss.  We really do spend a lot of time on it ... it’s weirdly soothing, vaguely creative, and surprisingly social.  Plus my kid loves it when we share decorating tips.

So things aren’t too bad on the personal front, although I grow ever more fearful at the state of our country.  While the rest of the world seems to have figured out how this whole virus thing works, we’re traveling backwards in time; as The Daily Show recently pointed out, we’ve now arrived at 1918, when the president said to ignore the doctors and scientists and encouraged large gatherings, people claimed that wearing masks to avoid infecting each other was unconstitutional, and localities triggered a second wave by reopening too soon.  Protests for racial justice continue unabated, but the news seems to have forgotten (or perhaps merely grown apathetic).  In point of fact, we’ve now progressed to the point where our president is sending in secret police to disappear people off the streets, and our system continues blithely on.  Is this what people felt like in Argentina in the 70s? in Russia in the 30s?  (I hesitate to mention Germany in the 40s due to Godwin’s law, but I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t crossed my mind.)  I bet you all those people in all those countries said the same thing we’re all apparently thinking: “obviously that could never happen here.”  I mean, I’m assuming people are thinking that, because otherwise why the fuck isn’t everyone in the country freaking the fuck out right now?  A couple of news stories that faded fast and a few sternly worded tweets from the opposition?  Is that really all the reaction we can get for secret fucking police? kidnapping people?  I dunno, man ... I’m not feeling particularly sanguine about the future.

Isolation Report, Week #16

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]


I originally thought I might make up for last week by doing a full post this week, but a number of factors have conspired against me.  One is trying to finish a thing for $work.  Probably the more time-consuming, though, is that our cycle of D&D (and other TTRPGs) has cycled back around to the Family Campaign, which is the one game where I tend to put in a lot of work.  So I suppose we’ll have yet another virus isolation report.

Aside from the slight interruption of Father’s Day, it’s been pretty much business as usual.  The news seems to be confirming that, yes, we did open back up too early—perhaps I’m just cynical, but is there really anyone out there who is surprised at this news?  Experts said, if you do a thing, another thing will happen, and then people who are supposedly in charge did the thing, and then the other thing happened.  To borrow the eloquence of a fourth-grader: well, no duh.  I’m definitely not feeling bad about our family’s decisions to maintain our mostly-staying-isolated lifestyle.  In fact, honestly I would say we’re staying at home even more now than we were at the beginning of the pandemic: we’re going longer between runs to the grocery store, we’re eating out way less, and, while The Mother and the smallies have been out a couple of times recently, expanding our “social bubble,” overall extra-domiciliar expeditions are, on balance, reduced.

Protests over our militarized police state continue, but the media seems less inclined to continue focussing on the story, which is ... frustrating.  I guess we’ll just have to see how things keep going.  I do find it encouraging that so many people—especially so many white people—are calling for change.  On the other hand, the idea that the public outrage might  be quelled by the 24-hour news cycle is ... frustrating.

So far, I haven’t baked any sourdough bread or tried to pick up any new hobbies.  Unless my daughter sucking me into Portal Knights counts.  I have been, admittedly, watching a shit-ton of television, have blown through most of my podcast backlog, and been trying to watch more videos on the Internet, but there’s not as much out there as I wish there was.  In many ways, we’re getting some cool new stuff—to name just one, check out Josh Gad’s Reunited Apart series—but a lot of what I used to watch is struggling to figure out how to cope with the new normal, and that goes for television too.

One spot of good news: Critical Role is returning this coming week.  This is good news, because, I gotta tell you: watching people who normally play games together live try to figure out how to play on Zoom or other videoconferencing technology where the lag is just enough to make it difficult for people to figure out whether to jump in or shut up and let someone else talk is ... not as satisfying.  The people who have been doing it that way for years already have a leg up, of course, but a lot of the streams I’ve tried to watch (such as the otherwise entertaining annual livestream games from the makers of D&D, this year called D&D Live 2020) are just not what they used to be.  So the news that Critical Role is going to come back, filiming with everyone in the same room (albeit no longer at the same table), is quite welcome.  And, also, they’re going to keep doing their Narrative Telephone series (new episode came out on YouTube just yesterday), which brings me a lot of joy.  We’ll see if the new format works for Critical Role or not.

In the meantime, we’ll soldier on, try to stay safe, and try to stay sane.  Hopefully you all will as well.

Isolation Report, Week #14

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]


So, these past couple of weeks have been a bit surreal.  People are trying to open the country back up, but nothing about the virus situation seems to have changed: still insufficient tests to see if you have it, still unreliable tests to see if you already got it and recovered, seemingly no closer to a cure or a vaccine.  I did see one report that the number of reported cases is starting to climb again—to which I say, “no shit”—but no one is sounding any alarms yet.  Which I find disturbing.

But perhaps that’s understandable, since the pandemic as a news story has been eclipsed by the tenacity of the Black Lives Matter protests, at least in the US.  Although I understand that some protests are taking place in other countries too, so perhaps more than just here.  This is another issue that I hope for balance on: I am so happy to see that the protests are not just going to go away, as they have in the past, but I’m also very concerned that that crazy person in charge of our country is going to actually do something crazy as opposed to just talking crazy.  Following the news has become completely surreal: if it weren’t my country, I could almost find it ridiculous.  Is this what people in other countries were feeling right before their democracies failed?

And we’re still supposed to be having an election.  The primary voting is still fucked, and some election officials are saying “we’ve got time” to fix it ... but there isn’t.  In large counties, they have to pre-plan the elections months out—sometimes up to a year—and it’s very hard to change directions less than five months out.  And, even if some places are willing to try to do that hard work, other places just aren’t.  Hell, the president openly admitted that making voting easier makes it harder for Republicans to win.  (Well, I say “admitted” ... I guess “bragged” is more appropriate, as he was celebrating defeating legislation to make voting easier.)  Will our elections be fair?  Will they even happen at all?  The president is asking people to apologize for polls that don’t show him winning, and he already seemed perfectly fine with tear gassing citizens.  Once upon a time the concept that a sitting president might attempt to delay or even cancel our election would have been utterly ludicrous.  Now it’s only mildly silly, and becoming increasingly feasible every day.

So, I don’t really know.  This is supposed to be a virus isolation report for me and my family, but, for us, little has changed.  The “reopening” of things has certainly not been heartening, and we’re in hurry to rush out and mingle with the folks who don’t seem to give enough of a shit about their fellow humans to cover their faces.  We’re eating out slightly less, trying to get back to homeschooling the kids regularly, trying to reduce stress wherever possible.  Which is tough these days.


I’ll toss you a few more links for things I think people should watch, even when they’re difficult:

• Anthony Mackie makes an emotional appeal in an appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s show.
• The Daily Show once again exposes hypocrisy on Fox “news”; in this case, they interleave clips of Fox anchors and commentators ranting about racial justice protestors with clips of pandemic lockdown protestors.  (Of course, the Fox folks had nothing bad to say about those people being in the streets.)
• Dave Chappelle is full of (understandable) rage, and never afraid to be offensive, but I still think this show, which he believes to be the first in-person concert in North America since the pandemic started, is worth watching.
• Wyrmwood is a company that makes some things I like, and they released this video where they solicit opinions from all their employees about the ongoing protests.

I particularly want to highlight the last one.  You don’t know who Wyrmwood is, and, for purposes of watching the video, you don’t really need to know.  It might be useful to know that they’re craftspeople—they’re makers.  But even that is purely optional in the end.  The point is, this company didn’t just want to make a blanket statement, which many would (rightly) perceive as just words, and perhaps suspect that the statement is more for show than anything else.  Instead, they wanted to ask their employees what they thought.  Their employees don’t agree on what the right response is, and they put that in the video.  Their employees have different opinions, and different levels of engagement, and they put that in the video.  There are black employees and white, women and men, gay and straight.  Each one has a different take, and it’s all in the video.  Probably the most compelling opinion came from a white employee, who said this:

So, I’m a combat vet.  ... If a solider kills an innocent civilian in another country, you’re going to Leavenworth.  If a cop kills a person here, who is innocent, did not pose a threat, they at worst get fired.  That’s a huge issue.  There’s a lot of good police officers, just like there’s a lot of good soldiers.  How you deal with those bad people defines you as an organization.  And an organization whose slogan is “to protect and to serve,” if you’re putting your life before the people you’re supposed to be protecting and serving, that is an inherent problem.  The consequences for actions, those are what need to change.  You change those, you change the equation.

Just in case you decided not to watch the whole thing.  But you really should.


Finally, on a lighter note, I’ll leave you with another call to check out “Narrative Telephone.”  My peeps over at Critical Role have kept it up, and I swear it’s the only decent thing about this whole pandemic bullshit.  Not only the fun of watching the story degrade hopelessly over time, but the joy of watching their faces when they watch the same thing you just watched: they give each other shit, they shake their heads in despair at their own foibles, they analyze what went wrong and where.  It makes the whole thing take more than twice as long, but it’s so worth it.  Remember: you don’t have to enjoy D&D or even know anyhthing about it; just enjoy the stories.

• Episode 1
• Episode 2
• Episode 3
• Episode 4
• Episode 5

Because there should be a little joy in the world.  The pain is necessary, but sometimes you need to take a break.

Protest Is the Bedrock of Democracy

The world is suffering through interesting times right now—and I use the word “interesting” in the same context as the supposedly (and apocryphally) Chinese malediction “may you live in interesting times.”  In my own country (the United States), we are now undergoing a layering of protest against racial injustice on top of the pandemic concerns.  There are a lot of opinions on this out there, and I wonder if anyone still reading things on the Internet like this post has an opinion unformed enough to be changed.  I suspect not.  I suspect that we all just read and watch the things we already believe, so that we can feel good about how sound our beliefs are, and don’t do much challenging of them.  I don’t exclude myself from any of my criticism, of course, but then that’s why I named this blog what I did.

Nonetheless, I have listened to a few opinions that dissent from my own—probably not as many as I should, but a few.  I have to confess, though, that I’m a little puzzled this time.  That is, on many issues, I can at least understand where people are coming from, even though I don’t agree with them.  If you say that it’s wrong to steal money from the rich via the gunbarrel of taxes, and we should just rely on their generosity to support charitable works, I understand that point of view.  It’s crazy, of course—it didn’t fly for Scrooge, and it doesn’t fly today—but at least I see where you’re coming from.  If you say that your holy text tells you that non-heterosexual non-cisgendered people are an abomination, I of course violently oppose your viewpoint, but at least I know which religious passages you’re wilfully misreading.  This one though ...

I understand racism, at least a little.  I am, after all, related to a lot of racists.  If I were to tot up all of my blood relatives, I would feel pretty confident in coming up with more racists than not, even considering that a lot of the most racist ones have done the nation the great service of dying.  I understand that the majority of it stems from not understanding any culture outside their own, from the systemic dehumanization that was the foundation of slavery in this country, and from being educated in systems that didn’t address any of those issues on the grounds that this was “too delicate” to discuss with children.  At this point in history, it really requires a stubborn insistence on ignorance, but at least I understand the root causes.  But, okay: say you hate black people.  They’re less than human, you’re sure of it.  Now, how do you then take the leap to say it’s okay for police officers to kill innocent people without repercussion?

Because, you understand that the legal systems in place that protect the cops don’t just protect them when they kill black people, right?  It so happens that they tend to kill more black people than anyone else, and that’s why this issue has become centered on race, because figuring out why the police are more likely to kill blacks than whites (or even Hispanics, or Native Americans, or Asian Americans, etc) is a pretty damned important thing to figure out.  But the truth is, the police kill all of those types of people, and probably plenty more besides, and they are protected from prosecution for murder regardless of whether the victim was innocent, whether the officer in question followed procedures or not, or a million other things.  Are all police killings murder?  No, of course not.  But how can we know how many of them are when there is no way for the officers to be held accountable ... hell, not even any way to simply track how many deaths there are.  No matter how racist you are, I can’t see how you can be comfortable knowing that, if a cop decides to shoot you in the street tomorrow, there will not be any consequences.

And I also understand the fact that protests are inconvenient.  I understand that, when Colin Kaepernick takes a knee in the middle of the anthem while you’re just trying to enjoy watching a football game, that’s irksome.  But I don’t believe that anyone on Fox news actually believes it when they try to argue that this is the not the “right” time to protest.  The national anthem is not the right time to protest, right after a mass shooting is not the right time to protest, right now right here in my very own city: that’s not the right time to protest, people say.  But of course, this is a moronic argument.  If the protest didn’t disrupt your life, it wouldn’t be much of a protest, would it?  Of course “this” is not the right time to protest, no matter when “this” is, because the wrong time to protest is the only time to protest.  If there was such a thing as a “right” time to protest, protesting then would be meaningless.  And, again: regardless of how you feel about the protestors, you already know this.

Even more incomprehensible to me are the people trying to say that protesting is itself undemocratic, somehow.  Many of these same people claim to be students of American history, claim to idolize the founding fathers.  So obviously they know that this country was founded on protests.  We were protesting unjust government by the British, not being treated equally with citizens in the motherland, taxation without representation ... remember that great American slogan?  That meant that the government was taking money and not listening to those they took it from.  That was worth protesting.  But now some say that it’s not okay for the government to take lives and not listen to those they take them from?  How can anyone reconcile this position?

Though it’s written in a different time, for a different issue, in a different country, I feel these words from a British student protestor still have relevance today:

Those who take to the streets, or engage in direct action, don’t have lobbyists to fight our corners. This is the only power that people can exercise, beyond box ticking in a ballot once every five years. Protest is vital to our democracy, giving a voice to those with no platform or privilege. So next time you read about troublemaking activists, wait before passing judgment.

And yet this is not just a matter of people talking: the police themselves are more often than not taking the attitude that protestors are the enemy.  Not just through tactics of violence against them, which is already deplorable, but through tactics such as not allowing protestors to leave so that they can then arrest them for being out past some arbitrary curfew.  And localities are encouraging this by instituting more and more ridiculous curfews: I heard Stephen Colbert ridicule some places recently for 6pm curfews, but I’d say his research team needs to step up their game: here in Los Angeles, where I live, many localities are declaring 4pm curfews.  Is anyone even trying to justify this?  What justification could you even give, apart from trying to curtail or even eliminate protests, or to have a legal excuse to arrest people?

I’m even going a step further: to hear conservative pundits rail on about the horrors of looting, and what terrible people these must be ... again, are these not the same people who claim to idolize the founding fathers?  What the fuck do they think the Boston Tea Party was?  It was a massive, coordinated act of looting, which resulted in property damage of over a million dollars by today’s standards.  This is what the major conservative organization in America is named after, for fuck’s sake!  And now they want to turn up their nose when people are looting?  The hypocrisy is so rank you can taste it.

Look, I’m not advocating looting.  It’s terrible if you’re a small business owner, minding your own business and someone breaks your windows and takes your shit.  But we live in a capitalist society and, the sad truth is, if no one’s losing money, no one’s taking action.  I’m sorry, but in our country the bottom line is the bottom line.  Once the rich people start losing money over this issue, then we’ll damn well see some action taken in the government to fix it.  Am I happy that this is the fucked up way our country works?  Of course not.  But I’m not going to try to deny it either.

I guess the biggest thing I can’t understand is how anyone can continue to support Trump.  The man literally had people shot and gassed for a photo op.  Some of the people shot with rubber bullets and gassed with tear gas were journalists; others were clergy and lay members of the church Trump desired to stand in front of.  Sure, you could argue that Trump denies that they ever used tear gas, but but do you expect me to believe that you trust the word of a man who lies so often that he constantly contradicts himself over the word of dozens if not hundreds of eyewitnesses, one of whom is a Catholic rector?  Seriously?  This is the philosophical equivalent of plugging your ears and screaming “la la la I can’t hear you!” at the top of your lungs.  I understand that you can make such a statement.  I just can’t understand that you could do so sincerely.  I don’t buy it.  You know in your heart what is true.  You know what is right.  It’s time for us all to be honest with each other.  It’s time for us all to stand up for what we believe in, rather than just paying lip service to it.  It’s time for us all to stop trying to make our side “win” ... it’s time for us to just be human and strong and do what we know is right.

Links to things I think everyone should watch:

• Trevor Noah talks about the falling dominoes
• Wes Moore points out that the most peaceful protests come from the most peaceful police
• Roy Wood Jr tells us to take the pot off the stove
• Cory Booker says that we need love
• Hasan Minhaj makes a passionate appeal to Asian Americans
• the mayor of Washington DC renames the site of Trump’s atrocity Black Lives Matter Plaza

Isolation Report, Week #12

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]


Well, as promised (threatened?) last time, I took a week off from bitching about the virus and did a normal long post last week.  So now I have two weeks to report on.  What’s been going on?

Well, both the Mother and I lost parental siblings: she lost her favorite aunt, and I lost my only uncle.  In her case, it may have been COVID-related; in my case, it definitely wasn’t.  In neither case were we able to attend the funerals, both due to enforced smaller funeral sizes and just having travel be way too much to deal with right now.  So there’s a bit of grieving going on, which doesn’t do much to lighten the mood.

A few days ago I finally had to buy gas for the first time since this whole thing started.  It was under $3/gallon, which is a price I haven’t seen around here for perhaps 10 years.  I spoke to a friend on the East Coast and he said he also had just had to buy gas for the first time in a while, and it was under $2 for him.  Wacky.  I guess that’s what happens when the price of oil futures goes negative.

Possibly the biggest news, though, is that our governor (among many others, I hear) has finally reopened things, at least partially.  Restaurants can now have people dine in, for instance.  On the face of it, this seems like good news.  But ...

We’ve always eaten out nearly every Friday: it’s our family night, and having a nice meal is typically part of that.  Occasionally we’d cook something special, but often it was eating out—if we were managing to be good, it would be the only time we’d so that week—and, every other Friday, which was payday, we’d almost always go to a decent restaurant and sit down to eat.  It’s become something of a ritual for us.

Well, we didn’t necessarily want to let the virus stop us, though of course going somewhere to sit down and eat was obviously out.  But I could still go out and pick up some food from somewhere: I have a mask (not a very good one, granted, but good enough), and I know how to wash my hands when I get home, and anyway the local restaurants could use the business, because they’re struggling just like everyone else.  So we’ve been picking a different local spot every week and ordering a decent meal and sometimes we get it delivered, but usually I go get it.  Mostly these haven’t been chain restaurants, but I don’t necessarily have anything against the chains, and franchise employees gotta eat too.

This Friday I decided I wanted a good Cobb salad, and one of the places that had a decent one on the menu was TGI Friday’s.  And it just so happens that’s the one we picked.  I haven’t been there in a long time, but, again: nothing against it.  It’s slightly generic, but the food is often perfectly lovely.  So we ordered, and I trekked out into the night, not even thinking about the fact that this was the first Friday—if not the very first day—in our county that restaurants were allowed to have actual customers inside.  Foolish of me.

When I arrived there, the first red flag was that the parking lot was full.  You don’t realize how fast you get used to everything being deserted all the time, but I sure noticed when it wasn’t, all of a sudden.  Then I come up to the front door, and there are at least 16 (yes, I counted) people hanging around, waiting to get in.  And I don’t mean hanging around in widely spaced groups: I mean, bunching up, two or three feet from the neighboring group, just chatting gaily.  I actually heard one person high-five another and say “feels good to be out again!”  The accompanying “woohoo!” that I’m hearing in my head is almost certainly a false memory, but that was the sentiment, for sure.

Inside, there were a few tables with signs reading “this space reserved for social distancing,” but I have to tell you: it still felt pretty packed.  Outside, I didn’t see any tables marked off that way.  All the employees had masks, but very few of the customers did: I saw perhaps 4 or 5 out of the dozens and dozens that were there.  Most disturbingly, to get inside far enough to attract the attention of an employee, I had to pass through the little waiting area ... you know, the roughly 6 x 10 foot area with a bench on either side where, under normal circumstances, you cram in to sit and wait to be called to your table?  Well, these were not normal circumstances as far as I was concerned, but this place was just as cramped as it would be on any Friday night before the pandemic: I counted at least eight people, no more than 2 masks, and additionally two infants, in car seats.  And I could not help but think to myself, what sort of maniac takes their INFANT out into a crowded place during a time when a serious virus is out in the world?  Sure, this virus is hitting children way less hard than most do, but, still ...

Look, I have spent a lot of these virus reports saying that I fear that we’ve gone too far with draconian measures and pointing out that, no, you’re not staying home because you may kill someone if you go out—that’s still completely hyperbolic and, actually, ridiculous.  It might appear hypocritical of me to now complain about people going out and congregating in mass numbers.  But I’m not backtracking on any of my previous statements.  Remember that I’m the guy who believes in balance.  Both of these extremes are bad, in my view.  Just because “never leave your house or you could KILL me!” is completely crazy doesn’t mean that “the governor said we can go and eat so let’s see how many people we can infect!” is any more sane.

There has to be a middle ground here, people.  I hope we find it soon.

Isolation Report, Week #9

[You could also read last week’s report, or even start at the beginning.]


This week the Slack channel at work informed me that I was going on PTO.  You see, the work calendar connects to the Slack and, when there’s an all-day event, it announces it the day before around 6pm.  So, paydays, company holidays ... and people’s PTOs.  Helps us remember that so-and-so is going to be out for a few days.

In this case, I was completely caught off guard.  PTO? what for?  Finally, I worked it out that The Mother and the smallies were supposed to be going to Great Wolf Lodge for a homeschooling conference (slash vacation), and I was going to take a couple days off from work to just chill out at home.  But, you know, those plans were made a long time ago ... as of now, there’s no conference, no Great Wolf Lodge, and no need for PTO.  It’s a bit of a sad reminder that, you know, even though this interminable situation seems unchanging from week to week—to the point where it’s super easy to lose track of what day it is—time still is marching on, and more and more of our lives are being eaten up by this crisis.

Will it be over soon?  There are rumblings of reopening various things, but that’s primarily because our moron-in-chief seems to think that killing his voters is preferable to having them upset at him.  Who knows? maybe he’s right.  For the rest of us sane humans, though, it doesn’t seem like this ordeal is going to be over any time soon.

On the plus side, we’re gaming pretty regularly now.  I still have my two campaigns going, my eldest is up to two as well, and this week my youngest suggested that she’d like to try running a game.  At 8 years old, I’m sure she wouldn’t be the youngest GM ever, but surely in the ballpark.  We’ll see how serious she is about it.

Other than that, not a huge amount has changed.  The Mother’s sister had her baby, so that’s taken up some of her attention.  Sadly, she also has an aunt who’s in the hospital and not expected to make it.  This is an older woman, so the sickness is not coming as a shock or anything, but the fact that no one can visit her in the hospital is quite depressing.  And, if she does die, they will likely only allow a fraction of her family to attend the funeral.  It’s not clear if the illness is related to the ongoing virus or not, but respiratory failure is a component of the illness, so it’s certainly possible.

But, other than that, we continue to solider on, taking the good with the bad.  Hopefully we’ll last another week before having to return to the grocery store, and we’ll likely keep eating a lot of takeout and not nearly as much produce as we should.  But we’re together, and safe, and I’m sure there are plenty of folks in the world who are in worse situations than we are.  So we’ll be thankful for what we’ve got and hopefully things will return to some sense of normalcy before too long.

Isolation Report, Week #8

[You could also read last week’s report, or even start at the beginning.]


Not too much new to report this week.  I’m just going to give you a couple of pairs of links: one in the serious category, and one in the fun category.

First, the serious.  Now, the first thing I’m going to tell you is, always be suspicious of Internet links about the coronavirus (or anything else, really), and I certainly don’t except myself.  I’m going to be fully transparent here: I got this link off Facebook.  But, more specifically, I got it from my cousin, who works in healthcare (originally in admin, but I believe she’s now an X-ray technician).  So apply as much salt as you like.  I personally find it to be fairly balanced between conservative and liberal viewpoints, but I urge you make that determination for yourself.

The original article is by a doctor-turned-statistician, who was also involved in helping model the 2008 financial meltdown, so he knows a thing or two about getting burned by faulty computer models.  It’s a bit thick, though, so, if you’re not a statistician, you may appreciate the video version, by a different doctor, which attempts to condense the info into a format more friendly to the masses.  Or watch and read both, as I did: it’s totally worthwhile, in my opinion.

Next, the fun.  As you know, I’ve become somewhat of a fan of actual play D&D videos, and the biggest of those (and probably my second favorite) is Critical Role.  Now, a lot—nearly all, in fact—of these types of games are played online, so they weren’t terribly impacted by the current situation.  But CR is one of the few that’s always done in person, around a table.  So they can’t play right now, and, like everyone else these days, they’re looking to do something to keep themselves from going crazy (and to keep their fans engaged).

Their solution?  They call it “narrative telephone”: one of them tells a story, recording a video of it, then sends it to another member of the group.  That person can watch the video only once, then they have to record their own version of the story, which is sent to the next person, and so on, until the eighth and final member tells their version, which is of course barely recognizable as the original.  Now, they tell these stories as their D&D characters, but this is not actually D&D, so if you were thinking you wouldn’t like it because you don’t dig the game, never fear.  Just relish how each person takes the story farther and farther off track, and then watch the whole group listen to each version and give each other shit about how badly they messed it up.  Trust me: it’s hilarious whether you know anything about D&D or not.

• Narrative Telephone #1: Pumat’s Stroll
• Narrative Telephone #2: Jester’s Tall Tale

There’s only 2 episodes up so far, but hopefully they’ll keep doing them.  It’s the hardest I’ve laughed so far during all this.


Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this week.  Perhaps more next time.

Isolation Report, Week #7

[You could also read last week’s report, or even start at the beginning.]


The bad thing about everything being the same every week ... okay, one of the bad things about everything being the same every week is that it doesn’t necessarily give you anything new to talk about in your weekly virus isolation report.  The weather has radically improved, and the kids have spent a lot of time in the pool, and are actually getting quite brown.  Other than that, almost nothing has changed.

So I’ll keep it brief.  The only new thing that’s disturbing me is an increased use in the from-home media of phrases such as “you don’t have the right to risk my life.”  I find that to be a dangerously hyperbolic way to represent the situation.  I understand that there are good intentions behind it, but I still don’t think that makes it okay.

First of all, at the risk of sounding like one of the crazies (about whom I was lamenting last week), it really is fair to point out that, by this logic, no one would ever be allowed to drive again.  Every time I get in my car, I’m risking your life ... just as, every time you get in your car, you’re risking mine.  Now, to be fair, it appears that, at least currently (and at least in the U.S.), your risk of dying from COVID-19 is greater than your risk of dying in a car accident.  (Although probably not as great as many of the numbers you’ve been hearing: you can read about the difference between case fatality rate and infection fatality rate in several places, and it’s not a bad idea to do that, as it’s a bit encouraging to find out the overall rate is lower than the media often quotes.)  But the point is: we already live in a world with known risks of fatality, even ones caused by other people.  But in no other circumstance do we use that to claim that people are risking our lives.  (And, yes, I know that idiots like Dr. Phil are also using this argument, and, yes, they’re idiots.  However, that doesn’t make this perspective incorrect.)

Secondly and probably more importantly, we seem to have forgotten what the point of this exercise was.  We’re not trying to keep everyone from gettting infected.  We’re trying to keep everyone from getting infected at once.  The chances that you’re never going to get this infection are pretty slim, overall.  But the point is, as long as your infection comes as late as possible, you have a much better chance of surviving.  That’s sensible.  But to act like getting infected is a death sentence: that’s wrong-headed if you’re a civilian, and downright irresponsible if you’re a media personality.  We needed to flatten the curve, and it appears we’ve been moderately successful in doing so.  People who insist on going out unnecessarily are indeed risking lives ... in the abstract, because they risk raising the infection rate and blowing the curve up again and straining an already overstrained healthcare system.  What they are not doing, however, is specifically risking the life of any one person.  This is oversimplification, and I think it does more harm than good.

Because the ultimate thing that bugs me about it is this: this is exactly what those conservatives who are dangerously fanatical do, and we liberals (rightly) hate it.  They say things which are not quiiiiite entirely untrue, just exaggerated to the point of incendiary language designed to get people up in arms about things which really aren’t as bad as they’re being made out to be.  And, while I understand the desire to fight fire with fire, I still don’t think this is a particularly good approach.

Again, I’m certainly not saying let’s all go outside.  I’m not saying we need to stop being cautious.  I’m just saying, let’s not blow things out of proportion while we’re staying safe.

And hopefully each of you are staying safe too.

Isolation Report, Week #6

[You could also read last week’s report, or even start at the beginning.]


Okay, this shit is starting to get scary now.

Way back in week #1, I wrote:

Now, on the one hand, I find this somewhat silly.  It’s a cold, people.  Yes, it can be quite serious for some—mainly the elderly, those with compromised immune systems, etc.  I have a kid with a heart condition, so I’m not callous to that side of it.  But the chance of disease is always out there.  The flu (which is caused by a slightly different class of virus) can be fatal as well, and we have that every year.

You probably noticed that I’ve moderated my rhetoric over the last few weeks.  That’s not because I changed my mind so much as it is that, as the crisis wore on, I noticed that some of the things I was saying were being echoed by crazy old white politicians, mostly (but not all) men, mostly (but not all) Republicans.  As Twain once said about majorities, once you find yourself on the side of crazy old white Republicans, it is time to pause and reflect.

And, don’t get me wrong: I have come around a bit more to the common line of reasoning.  The explanation that, if too many people get sick all at once, our medical system (in the U.S., I mean) couldn’t handle the strain, thus causing more people to die than would otherwise, is a very rational and sensible argument.  (It says some disturbing things about our medical system, of course, which the conservatives are always assuring us is “the best in the world” whenever they’re explaining to us why everyone can’t be allowed to have it, but that’s a separate issue.)  But, as I’ve noted several times, treating this issue like we either all stay home or all go out at once is a logcial fallacy (specifically, the fallacy of false dilemma).  So I think there’s a more nuanced discussion to be had, but, honestly, I’ve avoided it, because “nuanced discussion” and “the Internet” go together like anchovies and ice cream.  If I say I have issues with this continued state of lockdown, most readers are likely going to lump me with people like this idiot (from a recent Huntington Beach protest) or like the Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, one of the main Republicans responsible for not delaying their primary, who infamously told voters it was “incredibly safe” to go out and vote while dressed in full protective gear.  Even worse, I could get lumped in with the multiple (and remarkably dangerous) idiots, mostly from or appearing on FOX “news,” who keep on saying that it’s okay if some people die as long as we keep the economy going (if you’d like a montage of such idiots made as humourous as possible given the subject matter, The Daily Show has got you covered).

So, no, I don’t want to be lumped in with the idiots, especially not the dangerous ones.  But ... I have to talk about this anyway.  Because a few things have come up that I find pretty disturbing.

First off, there was the announcement that Google and Apple were going to get together and start tracking infected people via their phones.  I don’t know that I was as disturbed by the announcement itself—although, any time Google and Apple want to work together, you should already be suspicious—as by the media reaction, which was, from what I could tell, “hey, that’s neat ... technology! am I right?”  Obviously what it should have been was, “holy fuck! 1984 much??”  And, yes, supposedly it will be voluntary, and supposedly there will be all these controls in place to protect privacy, but, honestly, any time a concept like this comes up and people actually think it’s a good idea, I get worried.

There’s also my lovely governor Gavin Newsom saying that, even once the lockdown order is lifted, restaurants might be taking my temperature before I can come in.  What the fuck?  How is that even a thing that people are considering?  Also, he said that all menus might have to be disposable.  Well, why not plastic utensils too?  Yay.  We’ll be safe from viruses and drowning in garbage.  Maybe we’ll finally get the plastic straws back.

I already talked about governor Newsom saying he expected my neighbors to put “social pressure” on me if they see me out and about for anything other than “essential purposes.”  Now New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, has announced that wearing masks in public is mandatory, and gave essentially the same response when asked how such an order would be enforced:

People will enforce it. They’ll say to you, if they’re standing next to you on a street corner, “Where’s your mask, buddy?” in a nice New York kinda way.

Again: don’t get me wrong.  Cuomo is certainly one of the heroes of this crisis.  But I can’t help but feel that people in our country don’t need more excuses to get in each other’s business.  Is it really okay to encourage this kind of public friction?

Still, I understand that, if I really am saying that I fear this solution may be doing more harm than good, I absolutely sound like one of the crazy people I described above, many of whom have used that exact phrase.  So allow me to very explicitly differentiate my position from theirs in two important ways:

1) I am not in any way advocating for immediately “reopening the country.”  Not even advocating reopening it any time soon.  Again, I have to stress: there are other options.  There are partial measures.  We can still be safe without becoming completely paranoid.  There is a better balance we can strike.

2) I have no desire to “protect the economy.”  Fuck the economy.  I could care less about the economy, at least on a macro scale.  I do care that restaurants and specialty shops (such as my local aquarium store, which I just visited today) are having a tough time.  I care that many people are out of work right now.  But I absolutely do not care that rich people are losing money in the stock market and large corporations are going to make smaller profits, and let’s be honest: when some idiot on FOX “news” talks about the economy, that’s what they’re really talking about.

So what do I care about?  Well, aside from my worry about people who may be losing their jobs and/or their small businesses, I’m honestly mostly concerned about everyone’s mental health right now.  We have a very good idea of how many people are dying from the virus, but almost no information on what “social distancing” could be doing to suicide rates.  How about the increase in domestic violence?  And it doesn’t even have to be that serious to be concerning: the mental stress is easy enough to see on the faces of those folks who are doing their best to keep us entertained, and those are the people making us laugh.  For those who are under no such obligation, the strain is even more obvious (for instance, check out how hard it is for Liam O’Brien to stay upbeat in the first “unplugged” episode of All Work No Play).

But I needn’t go out to the Internet to see depression setting in: there are signs here in my own house.  Irritability is on the rise.  There’s lots of sleeping at odd hours ... because, why the fuck not?  My eldest dropped their classes because online learning just doesn’t work for them, so now they really don’t have much to do other than sleep.  The Mother can plan no more field trips, nor park days, nor outings to DojoBoom for our younger two children, so even though homeschooling our kids is something she was already doing anyway, it’s still become difficult and frustrating for her.  I’m fortunate enough to have a job that I can do just as well from home as I can from the office, and yet ... it’s been very hard to maintain focus, and seeing your coworkers inside a box on the computer screen isn’t the same as going to out to lunch with them.  I absolutely dread weekly trips to the grocery store (in fact, we skipped last week altogether), which I used to vaguely enjoy.  Look, I don’t need everything to go back to normal all at once.  I just need things to get ... better.


One a more positive note, the experts are telling us that all this staying at home is having a positive effect, and that the computer models are showing not as many deaths as they had originally predicted.  Of course, the cynical side of me wants to point out that computer models were significant contributors to the 2008 financial crisis, so we probably shouldn’t just blindly trust them, but I suppose even cynical old me has to count that as good news.  Still ... I worry that we’ll take it too far.  I said privately at the beginning of all this that I feared we were in the midst of the first dangerous mass panic caused by smart people.  Because, you know, normally panics are caused by people who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.  In this case, the people making most of the decisions are absolutely right in their understanding and their reasoning ... and, yet, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re making the best decisions for us all.

Everyone out there: take care of yourselves.  Not just physically, with your handwashing and your masks—I mean, do that too, but don’t forget to take care of your mental self.  Stay sane, and stay as happy as you can manage.  And here’s hoping that we see some positive changes in our situation sooner rather than later.