I think I’m being misinterpreted, which is on me for being unclear.
To address a sibling commenter first: no, I don’t think any mention of covid is a political statement, that’d be absurd. We all experienced the mayhem, fear, and uncertainty together, and most of us, though sadly not all of us, made it out alive. It itself is not political.
But it is often made to be. I find the articles opening sentence is phrased in a way as to be invoking a boogeyman, not least to which is because covid restrictions in japan were relaxed two years ago. The phrasing implies a strongly direct correlation, rather than a more nebulous one where all diseases would increase by the same reduction in measures. The overt entanglement in the opening sentence feels like baiting a response by disingenuous or superfluous association. The article would have stood stronger on its own legs, I feel.
please don’t mistake me for some kind of anti-vaccine anti-mask zealot. Having diligently participated in all the responsible social and personal anti-covid measures, my take on the article remains that it was a bizarre choice for the author to so directly entangle the two things together. CDC comments not withstanding, the flesh eating bacteria is enough of an eye catching story on its own, it doesn’t need to be attached to another horrible disease to be an interesting article.
For the interested, Tetlock wrote a book called 'Superforecasting', and also set up a company using his research to utilize the prowess of those forecasters (https://goodjudgment.com/about/). I don't know how good the company is at what it does, but the book was very good.
Sometimes I feel like I'm being caught in a pincer maneuver by contemporary US society where the far right is wielding increasingly concerning amounts of governmental power to force conservative changes, and the far left is wielding social power to force overly liberal changes. Not only is this very difficult to navigate at an emotional level, it's also just generally concerning that both legally and socially, radicalism is taking a stronger and stronger hold.
I understand that the team at BlueSky is tiny and that they were firstly prioritizing getting a stable, core featureset out, but I firmly believe that keeping posts private to non account holders followed by the iron grip on signups during Twitter's implosion era last year was an enormous strategic blunder that they'll never recover from.
Which is a shame, because I really want them to succeed. But the amount of dead accounts I see made by people with followings on twitter, who were lucky enough to get an invite is telling. A total collapse of momentum.
In my understanding feral is a domesticated creature that has found it self adapting back to the wild, while a wild creature was never domesticated at all. How can pigeons be feral?
I had an ATT unlimited data plan, grandfathered from way back in 2004 or something. It was wonderful while cellular data was still only available in limited amounts. I only finally moved off it about 3 years ago. ATT never seemed to care much. The only problems I had were when I had to make certain changes to my account, the staff could never find my plan in the system -- on more than one occasion we had actual ATT database admins on the line to resolve things.
Absolutely my experience with Starbucks. Their default Pike Roast drip coffee is black as pitch and tastes like pure carbon. It could very well act as a smelling salt to snap one out of stupor or slumber.
Their lattes are a treat, though. A white mocha, pumpkin spice, or in the winter, a creme brulee latte are all divine. Basically hot milkshakes.
To address a sibling commenter first: no, I don’t think any mention of covid is a political statement, that’d be absurd. We all experienced the mayhem, fear, and uncertainty together, and most of us, though sadly not all of us, made it out alive. It itself is not political.
But it is often made to be. I find the articles opening sentence is phrased in a way as to be invoking a boogeyman, not least to which is because covid restrictions in japan were relaxed two years ago. The phrasing implies a strongly direct correlation, rather than a more nebulous one where all diseases would increase by the same reduction in measures. The overt entanglement in the opening sentence feels like baiting a response by disingenuous or superfluous association. The article would have stood stronger on its own legs, I feel.