Y2/D237...Languishing...
Nov. 8th, 2021 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatMother: How are you?
Me: Languishing...
***
Took two brief walks today, since it was in the low sixties and an pretty day. First at lunch, the second after work.
Idiot soap actor (who was fired for not getting the vaccine) got himself into trouble again over the weekend. The man re-posted a transphobic, and racist tweet in his instagram account. It took me a while to figure out what he did and why everyone was so upset about it. Here's the post in case you are at all curious:
"Rademacher on Sunday also shared a photo of Dr. Rachel Levine, the first transgender person to earn four-star rank in the U.S. uniformed services, and newly elected Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears, who will be the first Black woman to hold the post, via Instagram Stories. The caption on the photo reads “Hello, and welcome to ClownTown, where the dude on the left is an empowering woman, and the woman on the right is a white supremacist.”
The post drew sharp criticism from fellow General Hospital stars Cassandra James, a transgender woman, and Nancy Lee Grahn. “I am aware of a transphobic post shared by a fellow General Hospital actor. Shame on you,” James wrote on Twitter. “You have some serious unlearning and education to do. I feel deeply disappointed that such a public display of ignorance could come from our GH family.”
Soap Actor Out for Transphobic Post (uhm no, he's actually out for not getting the vaccine. Although I think they were intending on writing him out anyhow for racist remarks he made in the spring on Twitter. But whatever.)
Then of course, he tried to apologize by stating that "transgender women don't empower women because they aren't women and where does that leave women who have worked so hard to distance themselves from men." Oh dear, Facepalm.
Monday, saying in a video that while he thinks it’s “not OK” to call a Black woman a white supremacist, “I don’t think either it’s OK to call a transgender an empowered woman, because where does that leave women?”
“I do apologize for not crossing out ‘dude’ and putting in transgender,” he says later in the video. “Me personally, I wouldn’t have written it that way.” He added that in sharing the post he wanted to call out “the hypocrisy of the left-wing media.”
Rademacher also apologized to James — “I think you’re an absolute talent and you’re very beautiful as well; I don’t think a transphobic man would say that” — and said he would address his status on General Hospital at another time. He then shared an anecdote about his son wanting to a wear a Disney princess dress when he was 3 years old. “I don’t think a transphobic dad would buy his son a Disney princess dress,” he said.
And you thought the Buffy fandom and cast was dramatic and toxic? It has nothing on soap operas. Cassandra James is a transgender woman who plays a transgender woman on General Hospital, a first for daytime soaps. People are confused about transgender women - they are women. "A trans woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women may experience gender dysphoria and may transition; this process commonly includes hormone replacement therapy and sometimes sex reassignment surgery, which can bring relief and resolve feelings of gender dysphoria." Just because they are trans doesn't mean they are into women. A lot are into men, and were before they went through the transition, some are into women. Sexual orientation and transgender aren't necessarily connected. Also gender is a spectrum.
I feel for Cassandra, although to my knowledge she never acted in a scene with the nitwit soap actor. And doesn't have to in the future. Also her cast mates stood by her as did the fandom, which is fairly liberal.
Anyhow that happened. Honestly, soap opera actors should hire publicists to manage their online accounts. Or stay off social media. It's very easy to get yourself into trouble.
**
Crazy workplace
As expected, cubical mates sudden departure resulted in more work. I inherited four of his projects, all of which have already been awarded and have change orders. I swear, I'm beginning an expert in change orders. It's all I'm doing at the moment.
Oh, well, job security for another two years at least.
Spent the afternoon figuring them out.
***
On a positive note? Mother is making herself meals now with the assistance of a cane, and is for the most part off the walker. Progress. She's been mobile for eight months.
***
Working my way through a contemporary romance novel that feels like the young Minnesota lawyer/Twitter version of The Shop Around the Corner. It is The Shop Around the Corner, just with two rival lawyers, who met anonymously on Twitter - even plays out more or less the same.
Also, enjoying the 3rd Season of Yellowstone. I saw most of the first season, skipped over the second (watched a recap) and binge watched a good portion of the third over the weekend.
***
In the news...considering where I work, I was pleased by the trillion dollar infrastructure bill being passed. Means more money coming my agency's way, and job security. But at the same time - I feel like I have to relearn my job again, why bother getting a new one? The one I already have feels brand new - new managers, new organization, new process...same people, same location, same equipment.
COVID
* New data shows that more than 101,000 New York City public school students were homeless last year, a staggering figure exacerbated by the pandemic. [ Dear god. Are we doing anything about this? Probably not. They did try to put shelters in place, but if you've tried the Netflix series MAID, it does make a good point about how unsafe it is to take kids to shelters.]
* Demand for booster shots in California has been lower than expected, The Los Angeles Times reports. [Nit-witty actors into holistic medicine.]
* A new analysis suggests masking is most useful indoors and during long exposures to infected people, Nature reports. [Hence the reason we still wear it on public transit and at work.]
*A jump in breakthrough cases in Britain is being driven in part by parents in their 40s and their largely unvaccinated children, The Wall Street Journal reports. [ Sigh. Britain is as dumb as the US, apparently.]
* In The Morning, David Leonhardt explains how the partisan gap in Covid deaths is growing fast. [Hmmm...hunting that link down..found it - Partisan Gap in COVID Deaths growing fast
It was only a few percentage points higher in counties where Donald Trump had won at least 60 percent of the vote than in counties where Joe Biden crossed that threshold. In counties where neither candidate won 60 percent, the death toll was higher than in either Trump or Biden counties. There simply was not a strong partisan pattern to Covid during the first year that it was circulating in the U.S.
Then the vaccines arrived.
They proved so powerful, and the partisan attitudes toward them so different, that a gap in Covid’s death toll quickly emerged. I have covered that gap in two newsletters — one this summer, one last month — and today’s newsletter offers an update.
The brief version: The gap in Covid’s death toll between red and blue America has grown faster over the past month than at any previous point.
In October, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of heavily Trump counties died from Covid, more than three times higher than the rate in heavily Biden counties (7.8 per 100,000). October was the fifth consecutive month that the percentage gap between the death rates in Trump counties and Biden counties widened.
[Keep this up, we won't have to worry about 2024, half the Republicans will be dead.]
* Derek Thompson at The Atlantic argues that the U.S. needs to rethink the antiquated way it funds scientific research.
* When someone with long Covid dies, should the person’s organs be donated? [Interesting question....also apparently the person who died, had committed suicide after getting COVID, and was a screenwriter for Dawson's Creek.]
Covid-19 ravaged Heidi Ferrer’s body and soul for over a year, and in May the “Dawson’s Creek” screenwriter killed herself in Los Angeles. She had lost all hope.
“I’m so sorry,” she said in a goodbye video to her husband and son. “I would never do this if I was well. Please understand. Please forgive me.”
Her husband, Nick Guthe, a writer and director, wanted to donate her body to science. But the hospital said it was not his decision to make because Ms. Ferrer, 50, had signed up to be an organ donor. So specialists recovered several organs from the body before disconnecting her from a ventilator.
Mr. Guthe worried that following his wife’s lengthy illness, her organs may not have been safe to donate to other patients. “I thought that they would kill the people they gave these organs to,” he said in an interview.
The case highlights an urgent debate among medical professionals about whether the organs of people who survived Covid, and even of those who died with the illness, are really safe and healthy enough to be transplanted.
Potential donors are routinely screened now for coronavirus infections before their organs are removed. Generally, the organs are considered safe for transplantation if the test is negative, even if the donor has recovered from Covid. But there is no universally accepted set of recommendations regarding when organs can be safely recovered from virus-positive bodies and transplanted to patients in need.
* Bloomberg Opinion asks, is India ready for another big wave of the virus? [I'm not sure anyone is? China keeps locking down to avoid it.]
* Northern Ireland’s health minister is suing Van Morrison over his criticism of Covid-19 restrictions. [Morrison is kind of like Clapton, he doesn't understand why COVID is an issue. Good musician, but an idiot.]
The 76-year-old musician, who was born in Belfast and knighted in 2016, has dismissed the coronavirus pandemic as media hype.
In June, he denounced Northern Ireland’s health minister from a concert stage, saying the minister’s Covid-19 restrictions were “very dangerous,” and one of his protest songs claimed that scientists were “making up crooked facts” about the virus.
Now, the health minister, Robin Swann, has sued Van Morrison for defamation. A trial is expected early next year.
[I keep getting him confused with Warren Zevon who is dead.]
* Romania now has the world's highest death rate per capita. (Keep in mind this is a small country with a small population.)
" Romania now has the world’s highest Covid death rate.
On Tuesday, nearly 600 Romanians died, the most during the pandemic. The country’s death rate relative to population is almost seven times as high as in the U.S., and almost 17 times as high as Germany’s.
An Orthodox Church bishop’s anti-vaccine clarion call, echoed by prominent politicians, influential voices on the internet and many others, helps explain why. Around 44 percent of adults have had at least one dose, the second-lowest share in Europe.
The country’s history of communism has also made many people suspicious of what officials and doctors tell them to do. And, said Valeriu Ghorghita, an army colonel leading Romania’s vaccination effort, “Fake news has a huge influence on our population, and in Eastern Europe in general.”
Yep, I've been noticing a pattern both in the US and elsewhere. The Eastern Europeans aren't buying the whole vaccine/mask effort. It's been an issue in my area, and it's one elsewhere.
***
Well that was fun. My allergies are back, along with the heat coming on and off, making it hard to sleep.
So random picture of the night..
Me: Languishing...
***
Took two brief walks today, since it was in the low sixties and an pretty day. First at lunch, the second after work.
Idiot soap actor (who was fired for not getting the vaccine) got himself into trouble again over the weekend. The man re-posted a transphobic, and racist tweet in his instagram account. It took me a while to figure out what he did and why everyone was so upset about it. Here's the post in case you are at all curious:
"Rademacher on Sunday also shared a photo of Dr. Rachel Levine, the first transgender person to earn four-star rank in the U.S. uniformed services, and newly elected Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears, who will be the first Black woman to hold the post, via Instagram Stories. The caption on the photo reads “Hello, and welcome to ClownTown, where the dude on the left is an empowering woman, and the woman on the right is a white supremacist.”
The post drew sharp criticism from fellow General Hospital stars Cassandra James, a transgender woman, and Nancy Lee Grahn. “I am aware of a transphobic post shared by a fellow General Hospital actor. Shame on you,” James wrote on Twitter. “You have some serious unlearning and education to do. I feel deeply disappointed that such a public display of ignorance could come from our GH family.”
Soap Actor Out for Transphobic Post (uhm no, he's actually out for not getting the vaccine. Although I think they were intending on writing him out anyhow for racist remarks he made in the spring on Twitter. But whatever.)
Then of course, he tried to apologize by stating that "transgender women don't empower women because they aren't women and where does that leave women who have worked so hard to distance themselves from men." Oh dear, Facepalm.
Monday, saying in a video that while he thinks it’s “not OK” to call a Black woman a white supremacist, “I don’t think either it’s OK to call a transgender an empowered woman, because where does that leave women?”
“I do apologize for not crossing out ‘dude’ and putting in transgender,” he says later in the video. “Me personally, I wouldn’t have written it that way.” He added that in sharing the post he wanted to call out “the hypocrisy of the left-wing media.”
Rademacher also apologized to James — “I think you’re an absolute talent and you’re very beautiful as well; I don’t think a transphobic man would say that” — and said he would address his status on General Hospital at another time. He then shared an anecdote about his son wanting to a wear a Disney princess dress when he was 3 years old. “I don’t think a transphobic dad would buy his son a Disney princess dress,” he said.
And you thought the Buffy fandom and cast was dramatic and toxic? It has nothing on soap operas. Cassandra James is a transgender woman who plays a transgender woman on General Hospital, a first for daytime soaps. People are confused about transgender women - they are women. "A trans woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women may experience gender dysphoria and may transition; this process commonly includes hormone replacement therapy and sometimes sex reassignment surgery, which can bring relief and resolve feelings of gender dysphoria." Just because they are trans doesn't mean they are into women. A lot are into men, and were before they went through the transition, some are into women. Sexual orientation and transgender aren't necessarily connected. Also gender is a spectrum.
I feel for Cassandra, although to my knowledge she never acted in a scene with the nitwit soap actor. And doesn't have to in the future. Also her cast mates stood by her as did the fandom, which is fairly liberal.
Anyhow that happened. Honestly, soap opera actors should hire publicists to manage their online accounts. Or stay off social media. It's very easy to get yourself into trouble.
**
Crazy workplace
As expected, cubical mates sudden departure resulted in more work. I inherited four of his projects, all of which have already been awarded and have change orders. I swear, I'm beginning an expert in change orders. It's all I'm doing at the moment.
Oh, well, job security for another two years at least.
Spent the afternoon figuring them out.
***
On a positive note? Mother is making herself meals now with the assistance of a cane, and is for the most part off the walker. Progress. She's been mobile for eight months.
***
Working my way through a contemporary romance novel that feels like the young Minnesota lawyer/Twitter version of The Shop Around the Corner. It is The Shop Around the Corner, just with two rival lawyers, who met anonymously on Twitter - even plays out more or less the same.
Also, enjoying the 3rd Season of Yellowstone. I saw most of the first season, skipped over the second (watched a recap) and binge watched a good portion of the third over the weekend.
***
In the news...considering where I work, I was pleased by the trillion dollar infrastructure bill being passed. Means more money coming my agency's way, and job security. But at the same time - I feel like I have to relearn my job again, why bother getting a new one? The one I already have feels brand new - new managers, new organization, new process...same people, same location, same equipment.
COVID
* New data shows that more than 101,000 New York City public school students were homeless last year, a staggering figure exacerbated by the pandemic. [ Dear god. Are we doing anything about this? Probably not. They did try to put shelters in place, but if you've tried the Netflix series MAID, it does make a good point about how unsafe it is to take kids to shelters.]
* Demand for booster shots in California has been lower than expected, The Los Angeles Times reports. [Nit-witty actors into holistic medicine.]
* A new analysis suggests masking is most useful indoors and during long exposures to infected people, Nature reports. [Hence the reason we still wear it on public transit and at work.]
*A jump in breakthrough cases in Britain is being driven in part by parents in their 40s and their largely unvaccinated children, The Wall Street Journal reports. [ Sigh. Britain is as dumb as the US, apparently.]
* In The Morning, David Leonhardt explains how the partisan gap in Covid deaths is growing fast. [Hmmm...hunting that link down..found it - Partisan Gap in COVID Deaths growing fast
It was only a few percentage points higher in counties where Donald Trump had won at least 60 percent of the vote than in counties where Joe Biden crossed that threshold. In counties where neither candidate won 60 percent, the death toll was higher than in either Trump or Biden counties. There simply was not a strong partisan pattern to Covid during the first year that it was circulating in the U.S.
Then the vaccines arrived.
They proved so powerful, and the partisan attitudes toward them so different, that a gap in Covid’s death toll quickly emerged. I have covered that gap in two newsletters — one this summer, one last month — and today’s newsletter offers an update.
The brief version: The gap in Covid’s death toll between red and blue America has grown faster over the past month than at any previous point.
In October, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of heavily Trump counties died from Covid, more than three times higher than the rate in heavily Biden counties (7.8 per 100,000). October was the fifth consecutive month that the percentage gap between the death rates in Trump counties and Biden counties widened.
[Keep this up, we won't have to worry about 2024, half the Republicans will be dead.]
* Derek Thompson at The Atlantic argues that the U.S. needs to rethink the antiquated way it funds scientific research.
* When someone with long Covid dies, should the person’s organs be donated? [Interesting question....also apparently the person who died, had committed suicide after getting COVID, and was a screenwriter for Dawson's Creek.]
Covid-19 ravaged Heidi Ferrer’s body and soul for over a year, and in May the “Dawson’s Creek” screenwriter killed herself in Los Angeles. She had lost all hope.
“I’m so sorry,” she said in a goodbye video to her husband and son. “I would never do this if I was well. Please understand. Please forgive me.”
Her husband, Nick Guthe, a writer and director, wanted to donate her body to science. But the hospital said it was not his decision to make because Ms. Ferrer, 50, had signed up to be an organ donor. So specialists recovered several organs from the body before disconnecting her from a ventilator.
Mr. Guthe worried that following his wife’s lengthy illness, her organs may not have been safe to donate to other patients. “I thought that they would kill the people they gave these organs to,” he said in an interview.
The case highlights an urgent debate among medical professionals about whether the organs of people who survived Covid, and even of those who died with the illness, are really safe and healthy enough to be transplanted.
Potential donors are routinely screened now for coronavirus infections before their organs are removed. Generally, the organs are considered safe for transplantation if the test is negative, even if the donor has recovered from Covid. But there is no universally accepted set of recommendations regarding when organs can be safely recovered from virus-positive bodies and transplanted to patients in need.
* Bloomberg Opinion asks, is India ready for another big wave of the virus? [I'm not sure anyone is? China keeps locking down to avoid it.]
* Northern Ireland’s health minister is suing Van Morrison over his criticism of Covid-19 restrictions. [Morrison is kind of like Clapton, he doesn't understand why COVID is an issue. Good musician, but an idiot.]
The 76-year-old musician, who was born in Belfast and knighted in 2016, has dismissed the coronavirus pandemic as media hype.
In June, he denounced Northern Ireland’s health minister from a concert stage, saying the minister’s Covid-19 restrictions were “very dangerous,” and one of his protest songs claimed that scientists were “making up crooked facts” about the virus.
Now, the health minister, Robin Swann, has sued Van Morrison for defamation. A trial is expected early next year.
[I keep getting him confused with Warren Zevon who is dead.]
* Romania now has the world's highest death rate per capita. (Keep in mind this is a small country with a small population.)
" Romania now has the world’s highest Covid death rate.
On Tuesday, nearly 600 Romanians died, the most during the pandemic. The country’s death rate relative to population is almost seven times as high as in the U.S., and almost 17 times as high as Germany’s.
An Orthodox Church bishop’s anti-vaccine clarion call, echoed by prominent politicians, influential voices on the internet and many others, helps explain why. Around 44 percent of adults have had at least one dose, the second-lowest share in Europe.
The country’s history of communism has also made many people suspicious of what officials and doctors tell them to do. And, said Valeriu Ghorghita, an army colonel leading Romania’s vaccination effort, “Fake news has a huge influence on our population, and in Eastern Europe in general.”
Yep, I've been noticing a pattern both in the US and elsewhere. The Eastern Europeans aren't buying the whole vaccine/mask effort. It's been an issue in my area, and it's one elsewhere.
***
Well that was fun. My allergies are back, along with the heat coming on and off, making it hard to sleep.
So random picture of the night..