valhallaisland - Tumblr blog

[valhallaisland]

Making friends is a process that does not lend itself to visual documentation.

— Kathryn Jezer-Morton in When Lonely Children Go Viral, Should We Rejoice?

[valhallaisland]

Did I sleep? Did I connect deeply with people I love? Did I get some time to myself? Did I make choices for my body that felt good?

Ezra Klein’s four things that are gonna decide if he has a good day.

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The dining room at La Sirenuse.

Care-free incarnate.

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All of the post-truth factions of culture see fact-checking (and its usual attendant tone of sneering elite condescension) as proof of their own correctness, with cynical community leaders exploiting vulnerable true believers. Same playbook over and over.

Anil Dash on Twitter in reference to LuLaRoe but applicable to so much.

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I realize it’s boring to list all this. Journalism thrives on unconventional narratives. It may appear that Republicans are a threat to democracy, but the true threat lies on the left is a more compelling story than things are what they seem.

Michael Hobbes on The Methods of Moral Panic Journalism

There seems to be something irresistibly appealing about the idea that you have uncovered a secret underlying truth. It’s so strong that events clearly, obviously, unequivocally bad get ignored.

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This is laughable. Buruma, the senior editor of a national magazine, suffered a reputational hit after publishing an article that invited widespread public backlash. This happens in journalism constantly. Jonah Lehrer didn’t break any laws, but he was effectively banished from journalism after making up Bob Dylan quotes. Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana stepped down after retracting the infamous University of Virginia rape story. Applebaum is arguing that these consequences are not only unjust— regardless of the underlying facts — but evidence of creeping totalitarianism.

Michael Hobbes on The Methods of Moral Panic Journalism

Apparently only things that are illegal can have consequences.

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Sadly a rendering. No one's courageous/reckless enough to actually follow through and build something this cool and impractical.

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In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Cobb County School District said that the district’s rules for student dress “encourage a focus on learning for all 110,000 students in Cobb, not on what students prefer to wear.”

NYT on a 13yo rightfully protesting school dress codes in Georgia.

Bullshit like these dress codes, the inability to coordinate an effective covid policy and the ensuing psychotic school board situation has me thinking that it's the scale that's the problem. It's just impossible to do school at scale like this.

I support Sophia Trevino's protest but even better would be not having to spend precious childhood years on a protest.

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A virtual world where literally anything is possible and Facebook creates a meeting room in an office. One of the most boring places that exists. The lack of imagination is devastatingly sad.

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Getting into the Delta Variant Mindset:

Vaccines are still the best way to protect yourself and your community from Covid-19. The vaccines are still really good, better than we could have hoped for. But they’re not magic and with the rise of Delta (and potentially worse variants on the horizon if the virus is allowed to continue to spread unchecked and mutate), we need to keep doing the other things (masking, distancing, ventilation, etc.) in order to keep the virus in check and avoid lockdowns, school closings, outbreaks, and mass death. We’ve got the tools; we just need to summon the will and be in the right mindset.

Emphasis mine on the last sentence.

Many people summoned the will a year ago while many others did less than nothing. It required everyone summoning the will to be effective. It's been 18 months. The people who summoned the will are frustrated and tired. The people who did nothing aren't going to do something now.

I don't know how this'll end but we have to be real: "summoning the will" isn't it.

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As a teenager I got The Darwin Awards book as a gift from an aunt. The first story was about a 16yo couple who were fooling around on a roof, slid off and died. I think you're supposed to laugh or ridicule these people but I just found it crushingly sad. Death is too big a price to pay for a stupid mistake.

This guy's situation is different. It's far from a single mistake but it's still sad. I wonder when (or if) he realized how wrong he'd been. 33 is young.

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(Caveat: if you’re immunocompromised or living with someone who is or medically can’t get the vaccine or simply just want to wear a mask every day for the rest of your life I have absolutely nothing against it. You be you!)

Is continuing to wear a mask when the public health officials at the CDC say you no longer need to akin to not wearing one when the CDC says you should?

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How to spot a crumbling society.

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The disastrous healthcare landscape, the poverty minimum wage, the industrial-scale racism and the toxic politics are so bad in this country. If you’re privileged it can feel possible to insulate your family against those things (or, more likely, how those things negatively affect your life are indirect enough to make the connection harder to see).

But the relentless march of mass shootings with no response beyond “thoughts and prayers” is exhausting. It makes my choice to stay in this country feel like a horrific obvious mistake.

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Every time you have the opportunity to force someone to do something, but decide to appeal to their sense of reason or justice instead, you are being an anarchist. The same goes for every time you share something with a friend, or decide who is going to do the dishes, or do anything at all with an eye to fairness.

David Graeber’s Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!

Legacy power runs so deep that “anarchy” has a negative connotation. Before reading this great piece I associated anarchy with chaos. It’s really just the rejection that all hierarchy, rules and the punishment that goes with breaking them are both the source of suffering and plain unnecessary.

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That’s the headline that ran on the NYT front page.

In the very last paragraph of the story:

None of the volunteers who got the vaccine developed severe symptoms or had to be hospitalized, a major selling point for the shot.

AstraZeneca is 100% effective against severe symptoms including death. Why isn’t that the headline!? 

No one is afraid of mild Covid symptoms. If it was 0% effective against mild symptoms but was 100% effective at preventing death that would be excellent. Preventing death isn’t “a major selling point” its everything! Why, a year later, is the NYT still doing this?

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The average workweek is 105 hours; the mean mental health self-rating is 2.8/10 and physical health is 2.3/10; 100% of employees report negative impacts on their relationships with family and friends; 77% say they are victims of workplace abuse.

From a leaked Goldman Sachs slide deck titled “Working Conditions Survey” found via Chazzy’s World.

105 hours per week is 15 hours _per day 7 days per week_. Meanwhile Goldman’s almost-billionaire CEO is a part time DJ. Hell.