Thoughts

Whaz Up!?! Treading Water until Festivus

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Howdy y’all!

ICYMI: This Week’s Blog Posts

Why can't the Democrats ever seem to learn from the past?

Abortion, Democracy, the Economy, Race, and #COVID19: Dems Fail to Predict and Prepare

Why don't people vote pro-choice when they tell pollsters they support Roe v. Wade?

Abortion: Most Americans Just Tune Out the Noise and Dems Lose the Messaging War

This school year is so completely kicking my ass, I stopped laughing a long time ago. I had been hustling and keeping up with blogging and teaching. Then, I was treading water and keeping my head above water with both blogging and teaching. Now, my head is dunking underwater with blogging but still treading water with teaching. Luckily, it is only two weeks until the school’s Festivus Break begins and I can do some blogging and planning.

The only significant news is that La Petite Fille got her first dose of the #COVID19 vaccine, SinoVac, the crappy Chinese made vaccine that barely has efficacy against the earlier strains of the virus and probably will have none against omicron. She’ll get her second dose just before Christmas. This summer our travel plans will be centered on getting us to a country where we can all get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. It’s the only sane thing to do. That is, if travel is still allowed this summer.

ICYMI

In This Week’s Headlines

Here’s a crazy idea!

Share your hot takes on the weeks news in the comments! What about the parents of the Michigan school shooter refusing to do anything to stop the shooting even though they had a good idea it was coming? What about the WH metadata in Clark’s letter to states advising them to halt their state electorate delegations? What about Chris Cuomo being fired? Or anything I’ve listed here!

Whoa! This was a week of news, wasn’t it?

Lots of news this week. I won’t bother telling you the big ticket items. You’re Internet news feeds read the same as mine and you’re hot takes are as hot as mine are.

But, here are the items that caught the eye of Ye Olde Blogge this week because they were interesting and of lesser prominence:

  • The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is acting like a real island and supporting coastal sea life amazing scientists, creating a new ecosystem, and possibly leading to new species evolving. The byproducts of human destabilization of the earth’s biome won’t lead to the extinction of life, it’ll just lead to the extinction of people. Irony, much?
  • One in 44 children diagnosed with autism! With greater awareness, more diagnosticians, and more treatment options, more children are being diagnosed. Funny how that works. There is a evening out of the diagnoses, too, with fewer racial and economic correlates occurring.

#COVID19 News

Medscape, Ye Olde Blogge’s main source of medical news, published summaries of three #COVID19 related studies. Then NBCNews had a good one on the current #COVID19 surge in the US.

  • Comorbidities v Race in ICU #COVID19 deaths. In this one study of nearly 4,000 Louisianans at one healthcare provider system, race seems to be a spurious variable in predicting who died of #COVID19 in the ICU. We all know that various health concerns like obesity, diabetes, and coronary disease are correlates of worser outcomes of the disease, and Black folks have greater incidents of these comorbidities per capita. So, which caused the higher death rates of #COVID19 in the ICU for Blacks? It turns out the comorbidities did. Race didn’t shake out as an independent contributor. Hunh, something that isn’t directly due to racism but due to systemic racism.
  • depression increasing during the pandemic. Everybody knows that depressive symptoms are up about three times since the beginning of the pandemic, and specific populations, like healthcare workers, have even larger increases. What’s new here is that there is a strong correlation with socioeconomic levels in that people with higher economic stresses have a larger number of depressive symptoms. Hunh. Go figure. So, the #COVID19 economic relief packages might could’ve helped people’s mental health and well-being by alleviating their economic stress.
  • Mental health needs of adults continue to rise. Further findings from that same data indicates that adults 18 – 39 were particularly susceptible to mental health issues. These issues did not correlate with education, relationship status, or savings. They did correlate with income with lower incomes having a negative relationship with higher depressive symptoms. Again, supporting standards of living as in a livable minimum wage, a universal basic income, and other guarantees could, no matter how socialist, might could actually help people live happier more productive lives.
  • THE FALL-WINTER #COVID19 SURGE is back, but it is being brought to you by delta, AGAIN, this year. It takes two or three days to incubate after infection, and then you’re infectious whether you have symptoms or not. Get vaccinated and get your booster, folks.

Ye Olde Blogge Rolle

We found these nuggets of wisdom and insight waiting for us in our inbox from the blogs that Ye Olde Blogge subscribes to:

  • The Levine Lowdown revisits the issue of euthanasia. The Australian state of New South Wales is close to being the last state there to legalize euthanasia. Levine reviews the issues of legalized assisted dying. Well worth reading and considering.
  • A monthly roundup of French stuff. Our second favorite francophone — Ma Belle Femme being the first — posts a monthly round up of interesting stuff coming out of the francoworld. Here’s some GREAT stuff here: Josephine Baker inducted into the French Pantheon, the French flag’s blue going from cobalt to navy, and La Salon du Chocolat — the world’s largest gathering of all things chocolat.
  • Social skills and autism. When you ask non-autistics what autistics need, they say better social skills training, which trains autistic people to cover their autism and be more acceptable in the wider non-autistic world. When you ask autistic people about what they need, they say greater acceptance of who they actually are, which centers it in all of the greater acceptance movements we’ve seen in the late 20th and early 21st centuries for LGBTQ+ communities, communities of color, religious communities, and others facing discrimination. The Autistic Science Person gives a great run down of these issues.

Friends of Ye Olde Blogge

Ye Olde Blogge is grateful to the many blogging friends we’ve made along the way: the people who comment, share, and provide pingbacks. We try to pass the love around and give as well as we get. These blogs and bloggers have been especially generous towards us.

  • Stop and smell the coffee: Robert reminds us through some effective poetry that we’ve got to pay attention to our mundane world as well as to the world around us. Visit him at Of Cabbages and Kings.
  • More #covid19 tom fuckery: Tengrain gives us the low-down on that other piece of shocking #COVID19 news that came out this week: Missouri’s governor in all of his infinite wisdom commissioned a study of the efficacy of mask mandates in mitigating #COVID19. I guess he figured it would support the GQP position? Well, it didn’t, so he did what any GQP politician would do, he buried it, did the opposite of it, and when it came out claimed not to believe its findings. Find more from Tengrain over at Mock Paper Scissors.
  • Induced dyslexia: Ten Bears describes our world in his own ineffable sarcastic curmudgeonly style lays another one on us, trained monkeys barely smart enough to operate equipment. What it lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in brutal honesty. It’s hard to argue that what we’re experiencing isn’t exactly what the system was designed to produce. Get more of the same at Homeless on the High Desert.
  • Abortion abortion abortion: The GOP Dystopia grow and spread in state after state and assault our democracy and freedom, Burr brings us a round-up of the latest attempt to gut a basic and hard fought freedom, abortion. He provides links to many thoughtful insightful blog posts and news articles laying out the issue. Get more from him at Fair and Unbalanced.
  • Scottie’s Playtime: Apparently, Scottie has not only moved his blog, AGAIN — third times the charm, amirite, Scottie? — he has renamed it, Scottie’s Playtime. Same fun loving commentary on the day’s news and op-ed cartoons. We wish him all the best at his new digs and will subscribe to the newest edition of his blog.
HUzzah!
Jack

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Image Attribution

“Treading Water by Hebru Brantley” by wiredforlego is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Categories: Thoughts

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Published by CalicoJack

It's been five long years of blogging the Trump years. We've laughed, we've cried, we've pulled some of our remaining hair out, but we've made it. It is almost done and our democracy, nation, and souls are still largely intact. Unfortunately, we're not through.There is much more to come as we stitch ourselves back together like some kind of common Frankenstein monster as we recover from the PTSD that Trump gave us and the needless deaths and suffering from #COVID19. We also have to keep #BidenHarris honest & progressive, oppose Republican obstructionism anti-democratic tendencies, and whatever other black swans await us. All of which will be addressed using good old-fashioned snarcky, sarcasticky, profaney fun and psychological insights.

32 replies »

  1. Pingback: Festivus 2022: There’s Still Time!!1! – The Psy of Life
  2. Pingback: A Festivus for the Rest of Us: Ghosts of Festivuses Past – The Psy of Life

  3. Fer shits’n giggles: down through the years I’ve always been careful about greetings, though I’ve friends, collogues and, indeed, a son I have since the sixties stuck with “hey, how’s it goin’? Good day, how are you, think it’ll rain? Been known to slip a que pasa, donde es, ola in there but never, in particular in a crowded space, never “Hi Jack!”

    Pavlovian, it is …

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Howdy Ten!

      I started using howdy and huzzah for all correspondence some twenty-odd years ago just because I could. I’ll tell you one thing. My correspondance stands out in my receiver’s minds.

      But, especially in crowded airports, hijack and its homophones is to be avoided.

      Huzzah!
      Jack

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    • It’s was actually a student who coined that, right around the turn of the century when things weren’t quite so prolific. We were talking about computer games as they were just evolving to online. Sad part of it is he is now a trumper …

      Probably because we’re the only ones outraged?

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      • Howdy Ten!

        I remember in the divestiture movement to protest apartheid of the 1980’s being met with a lot of meh on college campuses where eventually it did finally succeed. I realized then that as long as the issues did not directly affect the white middle class and were not plainly obvious as they were being played out on the evening news, most people wouldn’t care.

        The dilution of the evening news through bothsideism and multiple outlets and the clear bias in some of the outlets means that no issue will get the airing that the Viet Nam War and the civil rights movements got on the news and not even #COVID19 directly affects people enough that emotionally-driven narrative can’t overcome common sense reaction to it as long as that grievance is front loaded.

        Huzzah!
        Jack

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  7. Again, thanks for the shout out.

    Gee! It actually is bad for a person’s mental health to be chronically stressed about basic needs – You know, that bottom level of Maslow’s pyramid. Who would have guessed? And, it is also bad for their odds of surviving COVID, also somewhat less than an amazing finding.

    So, thanks for several items to bookmark and share in my nightly visit to Face Book.

    And, in reference to our recent discussions of messaging, there is this:

    “Unless you frame yourself, others will frame you — the media, your enemies, your competitors, your well-meaning friends.”
    George Lakoff

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Howdy Bob!

      When it rains, it pours, knowwhatImean? I was happy to find those articles just because it keeps mental health and the ongoing crisis about the #COVID19 pandemic in the news… if only a little bit. It also supports the notion that the waves of #COVID19 act as natural waves of terror helping to soften up our psyches so that we’ll accept just about anything as truth.

      For being the party of rugged individualism, the Republicans sure do demand conformity and the Democrats allow their members to go every which way without the noted collectivism that socialism and communism are known for. Funny how that works.

      Huzzah!
      Jack

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      • The statistics on COVID death rates in counties that voted strongly for Biden versus those that did for Trump are stark, much higher in Trump counties. It strikes me that one of the responses to those natural waves of terror (as opposed to the manufactured ones) is denial. The anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-mandate behavior of the trump voters is denial based.

        Well, authoritarians will do authoritarianing, whether their surface ideology is Left or Right.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

        • Howdy Bob!

          Here’s a fun game that I’ve been playing lately: which of our rights will the fascists take away first? My money is on the right to peaceably assemble. They go after protesters first since the biggest threat to authoritarianism is mass peaceful protest.

          The #COVID19 death rate is a little like traffic accidents. You don’t realize how many there are or your risk because you just don’t see them that often. You don’t know that the traffic laws in another state have made them safer or put them in greater danger. It’s the same lack of perspective. You could find out, but it takes too damn much work. Add to that the willful avoidance of contradictory information, and MAGA just don’t want to know.

          Still, it must be festering in the backs of their minds somewhere that they’re being played for fools.

          Earlier today, I passed a two year old just having a hissy fit. His parents just ignored him, which seemed to piss him off even more. It occurred to me that one of the things that probably pissed him off is that his anger isn’t taken as seriously by his parents and the world as he takes theirs.

          It seems to me that that is the central issue with MAGA Nation. No one takes their anger seriously. No one takes their anger seriously because the things they are angry about just aren’t real. They’re angry about late term abortions, but late term abortions are extremely rare and only happen with extensive medical justification. They’re angry about masks and vaccine mandates and that ivermectin and other garbage treatments aren’t taken seriously because none of it is real. They’re angry about guns because they think guns make them safer, but it ain’t real.

          The Republican Party has sold them the biggest bill of goods, has done one major mind fuck on these poor dumb slobs. They vote Republican and see the quality of their live degrade year after year, election after election because the GOP doesn’t do anything for them other than stoke their outrage over things that aren’t real. None of those divisive social issues work in the way that they claim they do.

          Barnum and Bailey would be proud.

          Huzzah!
          Jack

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          • One observation on the effect of misinformation in COVID mitigation resistance was that conservatives don’t trust official sources because they think they are being lied to all the time. Well, they are being lied to, but they identify the wrong source.

            Yes, protest is the first target. Several states are already moving to criminalize it.

            Liked by 1 person

            Reply

            • Howdy Bob!

              That continues to be the most vexing point about the difference between conspiracy theorists and the rest of us, who do you choose as your expert to believe? Even between the non-conspiracy theorist MAGA supporter and the rest of us. Unless and until we can figure out a way to manage the marketplace of ideas without violating free speech rights, we’ll be stuck with this vocal minorities having disproportionate influence.

              Huzzah!
              Jack

              Liked by 1 person

              Reply

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