I was impressed at how many ways this guy managed to not say the word “die.” I think my favorite was “remove itself from the census” 😂
Tag: death
The number of young and middle aged people dying from heart issues has increased since the start of the pandemic.
The excess death, defined as the difference between the observed and the predicted mortality rates, was most pronounced for the youngest (25–44 years) aged decedents, ranging from 23% to 34% for the youngest compared to 13%–18% for the oldest age groups.
, , , et al. Excess risk for acute myocardial infarction mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic. J Med Virol. 2022; 1– 11. doi:10.1002/jmv.28187
COVID-19 activates similar response to Parkinson’s disease, study suggests
Lead researcher Trent Woodruff, from the university’s neuro-inflammation laboratory, said the findings illustrated a potential future risk for neurodegenerative conditions in people who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
I’ll just give you a non-comprehensive run-down of various biases (which are basically rules of cognition that become errors when they’re incorrectly applied) and heuristics (which are basically thinking shortcuts or strategies that can lead to thinking errors), focusing on those that can cause people to be more alarmed by risk reduction than by the risk posed by actual threats.
“Why people don’t seem to care about the health risks”
- People don’t like to think about death or disability
- Death and disability are abstract without personal experience
- Selection and survivorship biases when they only see healthy people out and about
- People estimate their own risk based on personal experiences
- “base-rate fallacy: people are much more swayed by single dramatic events than by large numbers or probability statistics”
- Optimism Bias = expect they’ll have a good outcome
- Perceived invulnerability = don’t think bad stuff will happen to them
- Diffusion of Responsibility –> they can’t directly see or be held responsible for the consequences of their actions (e.g. passing along sickness so people you don’t know die)
- Just World Thinking = “people get what they deserve” because otherwise would have to admit the world is unfair and random, and can attribute their success to their own choices by blaming what others have done differently than them (e.g. get vaxxed)
- “Fundamental Attribution Error, which leads us to focus on personal vs. situational causes for other people’s behavior and outcomes – though not for our own”
“Why do people seem to care so much that YOU care about Covid health risks?”
- Cognitive Dissonance
- Confirmation Bias
- Psychological Reactance –> people get mad when they think their freedoms are under attack or they’ll lose control –> trying to reassert control
- “people personalize the actions of others, inferring that those people mean to have a negative effect on them – for example, thinking that masked people are deliberately trying to make them irate or imply they’re stupid” = hostile attribution bias
- group norms, conformity, and group consensus
- group think happens when going along with your group trumps making an informed decision –> group polarization = group beliefs gradually become more radical
“People wish to be seen (by themselves and others) as reasonable. Because of this, when folks try to decide on a “rational” response to an environmental threat, they often look at the array of available risk mitigation options and try to pick a percentage of these that is neither an ‘under-response’ or an ‘over-response.’” “Unfortunately, that’s not the way risk actually works; a threat is what it is, and it isn’t going to negotiate with you regarding how much you have to do or what is a “fair” amount of effort.”
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4% of the population, 30% of the deaths
jUsT a CoLd 🤪
It's interesting that when the rich and powerful talk about "back to normal," they don't include life expectancy. pic.twitter.com/9A5X5b9n0J
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) September 22, 2022
CEO of Pfizer tests positive *TWICE* within 40 days. This is the new normal our public officials are creating by only focusing on pharmaceuticals and giving up on source control with masks and not urgently implementing clean indoor air with filtration and ventilation. pic.twitter.com/7KmXU4XGnJ
— Joaquín Beltrán (@joaquinlife) September 24, 2022
Another climate/covid overlap is people are growing accustomed to a fucked up baseline. We've normalized mass death and mass infection in the US. What used to shock has become another day. Similarly, as anamolous weather has become the norm we remark on it less
— Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis (@KendraWrites) September 25, 2022
“Covid is here to stay, so are we just supposed to keep masking some places FOREVER?”
I mean, if the choice is between that or mass death and disability… yes?
Has humanity really lost all ability to adapt? Because that doesn’t bode well for the climate crisis… 😕
— Stephanie Tait ♿️ (@StephTaitWrites) September 25, 2022
Shifting baseline is a known phenomenon in ecology that’s led to / accompanied complacency with the collapse of the salmon population, for example. I didn’t really think people would adopt a new baseline for wildfires and drought and flooding but I guess I should have expected it 🤷♀️ People *really* hate making changes to their own life — and admitting when things aren’t working — and they’ll accept a *lot* before they’ll acknowledge the need for drastic change.
I’m frustrated by so much of the short-term thinking I see in the world today, and the way we think about websites is a part of that: it’s “normal” for them to just go up in smoke as soon as their authors stop paying attention. People switch platforms and providers and break links without a second thought. It pains me to see people build websites with no feeling of obligation to them — when you put something out into the world, it is your responsibility to care for it.
At the same time, I wonder if this obsession with permanence is misplaced.
This goes back to, what does a writer owe their readers? Nothing.
But what does a publisher owe their readers — because when we self-publish on our own websites and the material is available nowhere else, that may confer a greater obligation to preservation.
If nothing else, it is thoughtful and kind to consider your readers. To dismiss that your words have any carrying value may be a reflection more of poor self-worth or self-confidence.
Yet… even books are not so long-lived as we may presume. Most (?) books don’t get multiple printings — they have a limited lifespan, and that is just fine. To achieve cultural relevancy, works often lock themselves into a limited duration of relevance, some shorter than others, depending how close they hew to pop culture. The genre and readers’ expectations shape a book’s cultural durability, too — romance books seem to have a ten- to twenty- year limit currently, as the cultural mores around relationships and feminism are deeply ingrained in the stories. Bodice rippers were apparently important to the formation of the genre, but are no longer relevant — clear on-page consent, and usually explicit mention of protection, is a vital element of the genre today, and “dubcon” (dubious consent) is a specific niche market. I suspect most non-fiction writing is the same as fiction, in that it reflects the current knowledge, thinking, and cultural context when it was written.
[M]aking things last on the web is hard because the web was not made to build things that last.
This is an interesting observation I haven’t really considered before.
For my part, I try to think as I’m launching things about what my commitment to them is, and to be explicit about that.
I also like to consider my intent upfront: is it perennial or annual? In general I’m a fan of “build to last,” but sometimes that doesn’t fit the form or purpose of a project. I have run a time-constrained art project with a fixed duration, as well as a short-term art activism web-based project. From the start, I knew they had limited lifespans. I’ve left the time-constrained project online as a “magazine,” but it may not last forever — because of the personal nature of some of the reflections, there may come a time when I no longer feel they accurately reflect my experience, and could take them down.
I also don’t want to lock myself in to preservation when it no longer serves me; before this mind garden, tracydurnell.com was a portfolio website I hand-coded in 2011, which wasn’t responsive so Google penalized me for being bad on mobile. It was a sunk cost that I lived with for years because I felt bad destroying something I’d made, even though it was a pain in the neck to update and no longer reflected my visual preference or served my needs.
Sometimes, ephemerality adds to a work. Mandalas are destroyed as soon as they are created, their temporary nature inherent to the value of the form. Craig Mod recently ran a one-week email newsletter about walking Tokyo. He noted that knowing the newsletter wouldn’t be publicly archived anywhere made him feel more comfortable going in without a plan, letting each day’s subject come or not, and allowing himself to “publish to email” his inchoate, unfinished, unrefined thoughts.
During the early web, redesigning my website was part of the fun for me. A way to reinvent myself through new organization and style, and learn how to use my tools better. The internet is a sandbox, and we all play here a different way.
With Morpheus caught off guard, John settles in at a diner to watch the people around him – and put his theory about truth and lies to a terrifying test.
The diner episode was pretty brutal to watch, I stepped out for a minute.
The Death episode was fan service, not ideal for episode 6 in a 10 episode series to acknowledge it’s used up its plot and there is no arc in play anymore. Cool to see Hob but overall too much character/ emotional work and not enough action in one episode. Much as I like his friendship with Hob, it should have been axed — they only should have indulged one, and clearly Death is the winner there.
When Kumiko’s well-meaning adult daughters place her in an assisted living home, the seventy-six-year-old widow gives it a try, but it’s not where she wants to be. She goes on the lam and finds a cozy bachelor apartment, keeping the location secret even while communicating online with her eldest daughter. Kumiko revels in the small, daily pleasures: decorating as she pleases, eating what she wants, and swimming in the community pool. But something has followed her from her former residence—Death’s shadow.
Kumiko’s sweet life is shattered when Death’s shadow swoops in to collect her. With her quick mind and sense of humor, Kumiko, with the help of friends new and old, is prepared for the fight of her life. But how long can an old woman thwart fate?
Not totally what I expected, especially the ending was a surprise.
Shadow Life works as a title on multiple levels — both Death’s Shadow, but also that at the beginning she’s withdrawn from all her friends and family and is living a shadow of her life, and succeeds in her quest when she rebuilds her connections.
Interesting presentation of an old woman as the heroine. She keeps pissing her pants accidentally ☹ She deals with her physical limitations throughout, but refuses to let her intellect be constrained by them, asserting her independence and self-determination.
Her children are obnoxious and controlling, and the way they’re drawn makes them look like they’re about 20, when they’ve got to be in their thirties at least given she’s supposed to be in her late seventies.
Categories
Compost my body when I die
Become soil when you die
I would prefer to be reduced to useful organic matter than ash. It’s a little gross to think about, but also have you ever scattered ashes? Actually gross. Chunks.
Otherwise being electolocized or whatever clean and used in artwork like an ossuary would be cool. I don’t think they let people do that anymore though.
Probably neither of these can happen since I signed up as an organ donor 🤷♀️ But best of all would be to save a life (or make someone’s life better) with my death.